No matter what goal in life you want to accomplish, you will have to come up with a strategy. Without the proper strategy and gameplan a goal is nothing more than a dream. When it comes to meal planning and nutrition, your goals might be to lose weight, to gain weight, to lose fat, or to gain muscle, or to simply live a healthy life. Whatever your goals may be, this program is meant to teach you how to reach your goals and show you what strategies and principles are proven to work. In order to give you a complete and concise introduction into nutrition, we have to start with the most abstract principles and work our way towards more practical advice later in the course. So in this lesson, I want to teach you the most important dieting principles that govern your body composition, and will determine whether or not you will reach your goals.
Just like a properly functioning car must be based on the principles of internal combustion, structural design, and computer control. A diet must be based on the principles I'm about to show you Together they will make up what we call a meal and diet plan, and you have to understand each aspect to execute your plan correctly. All of these principles play an important role in your diet, but some are a lot more important than others. Think about it this way, the most important component of a car is the engine. Without it, your car won't go anywhere, no matter what the other features are. Now the frame and the wheels come in close second, and the control systems right behind.
But after that the details are much less important. Even a car with only a steering wheel, but no seats for display can get you from point A to point B. When applying this framework to nutrition and dieting, the most important principles are calorie balance macronutrient amounts, nutrient timing, food composition, and Leslie supplements. As you can see, your calorie balance is the most important principle of any diet and has by far the largest effect on your body composition In its most basic form, it implies that your weight gain is mostly a matter of eating more calories. And weight loss is mostly a matter of eating less calories. You probably already know this and think it's obvious, but trust me when I tell you that a lot of people neglect this principle when setting up their diet plan, determine your optimal calorie intake can be more difficult than you think.
But don't worry, I will teach you everything in more detail in the following lessons. For now, just keep in mind that calories are everything. They're the most important aspect of your diet period. macronutrients are in second place, whereas calories define how much you eat macronutrients to find what you eat. eating the right amount of protein, carbs and fats makes an important difference in your body composition, especially if you want to build muscle or lose fat. nutrient timing comes in at third on the list and a basic states when you eat.
Well third place might sound pretty high up on the list. It's really much less impactful than the first two principles more than this in the following lesson. Food composition takes the fourth place and as a minor detail of your dieting process, welcome composition is important for your overall health. It should only be considered when the top three priorities are in order, which is why we'll talk about it later in the course. The same applies to supplements. As the name implies, supplements are meant to supplement an already effective diet.
No supplement in the world will magically make you overcome errors in your calorie balance macros for timing. When designing a diet, it must be that you address the bigger picture first. If you focus on the important things first, and come up with a functional diet plan, the right supplements will further improve your diet. Of course, I will show you all the steps involved in this process. But let's get started with essential factors First, the last thing you want to do is invest all your time and energy into small details that have little to no effect on the outcome of your diet. Like so many others, you would quickly lose your motivation and give up dieting.
This is not what this course is about. Here we first build a solid foundation and later at the small improvements that will make your diet perfect. So without further ado, let's look at each dieting principle closely and gain an understanding of its impact on your daily success.