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In the overview of my new 3-phase diet plan, I described some of the nutritional strategies I’m using during this diet.

In short, nutrition will change in each phase. In some cases, the calorie deficit will be aggressive. In others, it will provide more flexibility. All of this is with the goal of greater sustainability and success with weight loss.

Today, I’ll describe nutrition in more detail. Please keep in mind that this entire nutritional strategy will work in concert with a fitness plan, which I’ll detail for you next week!

Let’s dive in…

For Starters

In order to get started with this diet plan, you first need to understand how much you’ve been eating on a regular basis.

Before you get started with Day 1 of Phase 1, you need to take at least a week and document your normal diet. There are tons of apps available for free that make tracking your nutrition easy. Personally, I recommend My Fitness Pal because of its expansive library of foods and ease of use (you can scan or search for just about everything you eat, and the app will provide you with accurate nutritional information).

To accompany the tool you use to actually log food each day, you should also probably invest in some cheap and easy food measurement tools like a food scale, measuring cups, etc. if you don’t already own them. Check out my YouTube video on How to Weigh and Measure Your Food for a comprehensive breakdown on how to use these types of tools.

Spend a week measuring, tracking, and logging your eating habits. Be honest with yourself. Don’t clean things up or try eating new “healthy” foods to make your food log look pretty. The purpose of this is to get a true estimate of your daily calories.

You’re the only person that’s going to see these numbers, and it’s going to be to your benefit to treat this seriously and make it accurate.

Create A Deficit

After you track for at least a week, you’ll begin to see trends. Whether a ton of variety is important to you, or whether you eat a lot of the same foods (most people gravitate to a lot of the same foods, whether they like to admit it or not), tracking will give you a global view so you can evaluate your diet.

Look at the amount of calories you ended up with each day. Average them out. Dig deeper and see how many carbohydrates, fats, and protein you consumed, on average.

Once you get an average, you can set up your calorie deficit. Each person’s calorie deficit will look different, and you’ll need to play around with the numbers a little bit to find something that’s most effective and sustainable for YOU.

At the end of this article, I’ve provided my specific numbers and how I set up my own calorie deficit to give you an idea of how this can all come together. But let me stress…

DO NOT use my exact numbers and calculations “because Chris did it and it’s working for him.” I can guarantee that if YOU do that, you won’t be successful with this program. It needs to be customized to YOU.

As I detailed at the start of this diet, the strategy for Phase 1 is to be in an aggressive calorie deficit. By “aggressive,” I mean a 20-25% reduction in calories for the first three weeks of this program.

So, for example, if the week of tracking your diet beforehand showed you eat, on average, 2,800 calories a day, you’d start Phase 1 by eating somewhere between 2,100-2,240 calories a day.

• 20% of 2,800 = 2,100 calories
• 25% of 2,800 = 2,240 calories

These numbers provide you with a starting point, and in the “track and adjust” section below I’ll break down how you can make sure these numbers are working!

Establish Your Maintenance Calories

Phase 2 is the other phase to plan for regarding calorie intake. In this phase (Weeks 4-6) you get to bump your calories back up, introduce some flexibility into your diet, and take a break from the aggressive dieting.

The way to set your maintenance calories number is pretty straightforward.

To set up your aggressive deficit, you reduced calories by 20-25%. For this second phase, you’ll want to take half of that deficit and add those calories back in.

Let’s use the example from above to map this out…

In that example, your average calories were 2,800 per day, so we reduced that by 20-25% to get between 2,100-2,240 a day. Let’s say you settled on 2,200 calories a day — that’s a deficit of 600 calories per day based on your pre-diet average.

What we’re doing for maintenance calories is simply splitting the difference. So, take half of that 600-calorie deficit — which would be 300 calories — and add it back into your diet.

So for this example, you’d add 300 calories back in to your diet (which was at 2,200 calories for Phase 1) and diet on 2,500 calories for Phase 2.

That should help you eat a little more, feel a little more refreshed, and indulge every so often in things you couldn’t have in Phase 1. Then, when Week 7 hits, it’s right back to the diet and you jump back into the aggressive calorie deficit.

Similar to what I mentioned above, these numbers you’re calculating are starting points. It’s only by consistent daily tracking that we know these numbers are working for you, so let’s dive into the final element of this program.

Track & Adjust

The only way you know a diet works is by tracking what you’re doing to see how your body weight responds.

Just like you logged your food before starting the diet, you need to keep logging your food during the diet. Hold yourself accountable by logging each meal and making sure you’re staying on track.

In addition, an EXTREMELY HELPFUL tool to add to the practice of logging your food is going to be weighing yourself daily. I’ve written an article on EXACTLY how you should weigh yourself, so be sure to check that out to learn the finer details of accurate daily weighing.

It’s not as simple as hopping on the scale at some point each day. Just like your diet, you need to be calculated and strategic about when and why you weigh yourself.

By tracking your nutrition and weight on a daily basis, you can once again identify trends over time and adjust accordingly. And I don’t mean trying this for a day or two, and if your weight doesn’t budge you make dramatic changes.

Give it at least a week. See how your deficit or maintenance calories are working for you. If after a week your weight isn’t moving (or it’s going up), when you’re in the deficit Phases (1 and 3), then go ahead and reduce calories. If after a week your weight is wildly fluctuating up or down in the maintenance phase, go ahead and make an adjustment (keep in mind that minimal weight gain or loss is acceptable in the maintenance phase — it’s very difficult to keep your weight exactly the same over the course of three weeks — the goal here is to stay somewhat static).

My Plan

When I applied these principles to myself, I came up with the following plan…

On average, I was eating 3,000 calories a day prior to this diet. This was purposeful in order to build muscle and strength. Since my calories were quite high, I went ultra-aggressive with my calorie deficit and set up the following numbers:

• 2,000 calories a day for Phases 1 and 3
• 2,500 calories a day for Phase 2
• Daily weighing each morning upon waking up

As I write this, I am one week into the diet and have lost a total of five pounds, so thus far the aggressive deficit is working exactly as it should. That doesn’t mean I’ll stop tracking, though. Weight fluctuations will continue to occur and, despite my early success, I’ll need to continue to monitor progress to determine if any changes should occur.

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If you’re interested in trying a diet like this, or would like to accomplish your own body transformation, and need some help and guidance, please contact me and we can talk about the coaching services I offer. As an online coach, I work with individuals across the United States to achieve their fitness and nutrition goals. I’d love to connect and talk about what your goals are and how I might be able to help.

Thanks for reading!

CGF