Before reading this, I’d like YOU to ask yourself a question:

During 2017 did you at any stage want to lose weight?

Did you start the year with a vision of health, fitness, performance, and leanness that you wanted to achieve?

Have you achieved it?

Sadly for so many this vision is never achieved and whilst it is too late for 2017, you can manage your calories well for the rest of this tricky month and begin to plan for 2018 – NOW.

Firstly, let’s look at how to manage those calories:

This is specifically aimed at those of you who know you are going to over consume on certain days over the next few weeks.

The best options available to you are:

• Fasting
• Carb cycling
• Calorie cycling
• Carb depletion

Note how I didn’t mention doing more training.

Sure if you want to and can train more then do but do this for performance gains, not fat loss.

Lets firstly discuss a fast day:

For this, simply reduce drastically your caloric intake for one day a week but make sure this is a nontraining day.

An example of how low to go would be to reduce by 2/3 your normal calories.

So if you normally consume 3000, have 1000.  This is enough to leave you with enough energy to get by but enough to negate any overfeeding days.

Carb cycling:

I am a big fan of this – Basically if you are to train less, eat fewer carbs.  If you are to train more, eat more carbs and ideally do this around your training sessions (before and after).

Calorie cycling:

Similar to the above but this time with less of a focus on carbs and more on general calories.

Carb depletion:

Another favourite of mine – Simply have a day with no carbs with any meal – I should mention I don’t count green veg as carbs, so you can go crazy for these.

All four options above are a sensible way of managing calories over the next tricky few weeks.

As for next year and your aims?

January is clearly a popular time to get started with these and it is also a great time to nail your nutrition.

There are few social engagements.

There are no big races.

It’s a time where many people get back to training and its a time where you can nail your nutrition and weight loss goals.

My one to one coaching service is ideal for this – sign up now and we can chat before Christmas so you are ready to go from the first week in January.

Now that is a commitment to yourself to make next year different and won’t suit the talkers – this is one solely for the doers.

Which are you?

http://www.nutri-tri.com/individual-nutrition-coaching/

Jamie “calorie manipulator” Leighton