#15: How Much Should I be Eating?

Hey friends,

A question I get all the time from people is “How do I know how much I should eating?”. Truthfully, it’s a pretty hard question to answer because like most things in health and fitness, there isn’t really one clear answer. But this week I’m gonna give my personal thoughts on how I approach this question.

Weekly Action Point

• Download any free nutrition tracking app, and track your food as closely as you possibly can for 3 days this week. (I talk about a couple options down below)

3 Days is all I’m asking for. Not saying you need to track all your food every day of your life. But I think it’s extremely valuable for everyone to understand how much they are eating and what portion sizes really are.

Getting Past the Emotion of Food

Before I start trying to talk through how much food you should eat in the day, I want to mention that I’m very aware that the topic of food (and food itself) is extremely emotional for people.

So while it’s easy to talk about food from a logical perspective while I’m writing in a newsletter, I know that’s not really the case in the real world.

As I already mentioned, there isn’t one “right” answer to how much you should be eating in a day. So when I’m answering this question, know that almost everything in today’s newsletter is just my opinion.

The information comes from my experience with clients and what I think works best for me in my life, not some scientific study. What works for me might not work for you.

How Much Should I Be Eating?

When I’m talking about how much we should be eating in a day, I’m talking about calories. We get calories from the macronutrients we eat, and if you missed last week’s newsletter, here is #14: The Basics of Macronutrients.

You could find all sorts of complicated formulas online about how many calories you should be eating, but frankly most of them are useless.

The simple equation that I think gets people somewhere in the general ballpark:

Take your body weight in pounds and multiply it by 14-18.

If you are a super active person who is moving around all day for their job (construction workers, laborers, restaurant servers, etc.), 18 will probably get you closer.

If you are someone who has a desk job and is sitting for most of the day, multiplying by 14 will be a much better estimate.

So for example, I weigh 205 pounds and exercise almost everyday, however outside of my workouts I sit for long periods at work. I’ll multiply my weight by 15 to get 205 × 15 = 3075.

That number of 3075, gives me a rough estimate for how many calories I could be eating in a day to maintain my current bodyweight.

A general formula that gives a really general result. The goal of that number is just to get you within a ballpark estimation. If you aren’t happy with a general number, what do you do then?

Getting an Accurate Number

In my opinion, the only way to actually know how much YOU should be eating is by tracking your food over a long period of time and making note of how your body responds.

You can track your food, see what your body does, and then adapt what you are doing if you aren’t getting the result you want.

When I recommend tracking food to people, I get looks like I just personally insulted them. People have negative reactions to the idea of tracking their food, and I mean STRONG reactions - almost everyone absolutely hates the idea of tracking their food.

Do I think everyone needs to be tracking their food in order to see fitness progress?

Absolutely not.

However, to show why I think it’s important I like to use a money analogy.

Let’s say you had a goal to save $1000 over the next year for a vacation, but you never track your money.

You don’t really know how much money you get in each paycheck, have no idea how much you are spending each week, and never look at the number in your bank account to make adjustments to your spending habits. Do you think you’re gonna hit your $1000 savings goal?

Possible? Yes of course. Likely? Definitely not. It sounds silly to have a goal of saving a thousand dollars and never looking at your money, doesn’t it?

In my opinion, the same is true for your food and your fitness goals, regardless of whether you are trying to build muscle or lose fat. Not ever looking at what you’re eating makes it far more difficult to achieve your goals.

Recommended Food Tracking Apps:

Best free app: Cronometer
- I love this app and is the one that I personally use every single day. Barcode scanner, ability to create and import recipes, literally has everything that 98% of the population would ever need

Best paid app: Macro Factor
- This app is driven by science and is the best on the market in my opinion. However, this is really only necessary for bodybuilders or people with extremely regimented goals and are religiously tracking every single day. Like I mentioned, cronometer works for 98% of the population, and is free.
- If you just like having the best product on the market, it’s $11.99 paying per month, or $71.99 per year ($5.99 per month)

Worst app: MyFitnessPal
- This is the biggest/most popular app on the app store, but I personally think it sucks. In October of 2022 they changed it so that the barcode scanner is a premium feature you have to pay for. Cronometer gives you the scanner for free, and if you really wanted to pay for an app, Macro Factor is better than the premium version of MyFitnessPal anyways. So in my opinion, no reason to use this app.

Coming Next Week

• Pros and Cons of tracking food - going to talk both sides of the debate so that you can decide for yourself if it makes sense to track or not, because there certainly are a ton of negatives to tracking food that you have to consider.

• Simple way to get started with tracking food.

• My personal relationship with tracking food: how I think about it, and what a day might look like for me.

I wanted to talk about these things this week, but it was already starting to get long. So I’m gonna continue this conversation next week! Food is such a huge topic in health and fitness, and I really want to give it the time it deserves.

Ben’s Best

Check out these two youtube videos from Jeff Nippard that give some good insight into these topics:

• How to Get Lean & Stay Lean Forever (Using Science)

• How To Build Muscle And Lose Fat At The Same Time: Step By Step Explained (Body Recomposition)

🎙️Podcasts I enjoyed this week:

• Mind Pump 2431: Over 85% of People Are Using Caffeine the Wrong Way Resulting in More Fat Gain and Muscle Loss (Listener Live Coaching)

• Deep Dive With Ali Abdaal: How Dopamine Shapes Your Habits and Productivity - Tj Power

That’s it for this week, excited to continue talking about food next week. Have an awesome week!

Ben