We are currently living through extremely stressful times.
If you find yourself responding by “stress eating,” know that you are not alone.
One of the top issues faced by clients in our 1-on-1 Online Coaching Program is emotional or stress eating. With the eruption of the pandemic, these episodes have only increased.
Today, we’re going to show you exactly how we address emotional eating with our clients, including when it’s – GASP – actually okay to stress eat.
And you need to work out, but can’t seem to distract the little monsters any longer?
No problem!
We’ve been teaching people how to exercise at home since 2009. These days, since everyone’s trapped together, we’ve been sharing fun ways to get the kids involved too.
If you need some ideas on how to work out as a whole family, this guide is for you.
(Sign up in the box below and I’ll send you even more home workout goodies).
We love Star Wars around these parts (our site is literally called “Nerd Fitness”), so you’re in the perfect place to begin your training, my young Padawan.
We specialize in creating nerdy themed workouts and today one of our coaches will walk you through an exercise routine that would make even Mace Windu proud.
We’ve helped hundreds of thousands of people like you transform into actual superheroes, and we focus on proper nutrition to do so.
These are the exact strategies we teach our Online Coaching clients, and we’ve used these tips to help them lose weight and get in great shape without being miserable.
Plus, we use fun LEGO photos and gifs to keep you entertained.
In this Ultimate Guide, we’ll cover everything you need to start eating healthy today:
Whether you just got exercise bands in the mail from Amazon during quarantine, or they’ve been sitting in your closet since the 80s, you’ve finally decided it’s time to learn how to use the darn things.
Either way, you’re in the right place!
After all, we’ve been specializing in home workouts since 2009! Today I’m going to provide you with a full-body routine you can do with any resistance band, anywhere.
(By the way, sign up in the box below and I’ll send you even more home workout goodies).
Public gyms are closed for the foreseeable future and that sucks.
So you’ve decided to build a home gym, and that’s great!
Luckily, we’ve been helping people train from home for the past 11 years, and today we’ll share with you our top 16 ideas for building a gym in your garage (or apartment).
As you might be able to tell, we’re going to start with things you might have around your house. We’ll level up all the way to a legit home gym setup that you could charge a membership fee for.
With today’s Advanced Bodyweight Routine, you can burn fat, build muscle, and get a great workout in! All with no gym membership required!
It’s the kind of workout we build through our online coaching program. If you’re in a hurry, sign-up for our free weekly newsletter and we’ll send you PDFs of our “Work Out at Home” guides!
If you’re ready, click the sections below to get right into the action:
If you didn’t, I’d recommend starting there before moving onto this routine, because this is uber-advanced and designed for nerds looking for a brutally difficult challenge.
It’s time to learn how to get fit without leaving your home:
Maybe you’re practicing a self-quarantine.
Maybe you work from your apartment and are avoiding the gym.
Or maybe you just like living like a house cat.
Either way, you’ve come to the right place!
With Coronavirus (and Covid-19) chaos swirling around the world right now, more and more people are being advised (or ordered) to stay indoors.
That’s why I put together a practical guide for rational people to help you stay fit even if you can’t leave the house.
We’ve had incredible success with no-gym workouts for our 1-on-1 Online Coaching Program, allowing our clients to train from any part of the world…or an underground bunker.
Here’s what we’ll cover in our guide, How to Stay in Shape Without Leaving the House:
It’s time to learn about The CICO (“calories in, calories out”) Diet!
You probably have questions like:
Steve, does CICO work?
Will counting calories help me lose weight?
Okay, what the hell IS a calorie?
Well my friend, you’ve arrived at the right place!
I’ve been writing about this stuff for 12 years, and our team of coaches help their Online Coaching clients with all types of diets (including CICO). We are really flippin’ good at it!
Here’s what we’ll cover to answer the question: “What is CICO?”
The CICO Diet is a weight-loss strategy where the participant tries to tip the balance of what they eat (calories in) against what they burn (calories out).
That’s pretty much it.
It doesn’t really matter what food you eat, because there are no restrictions on any specific food groups with CICO.
It also doesn’t matter what exercise you do (if any).
As long as you get the equation right, and the calories you eat are lower than the calories you burn on a daily basis, you’re good to go.
To lose weight, we need to burn more calories than we consume regularly.
With this knowledge, it makes sense to design a diet specifically around this principle: match the calories you eat (in), with the calories you expend (out).
As long as you meet your calorie goal, you can forget about the rules of any specific diet.
This appeals to me personally, because I’ve created my own guidelines for how to eat, and I don’t pledge allegiance to any particular dieting strategy.
Because I’m a mind-reader, I know your next question is likely…
Does Calorie Counting Work? (CICO and Weight Loss)
In principle, CICO works.
In practice, it becomes a little more complicated.
Okay, fine, A LOT more complicated.
That’s because a lot of things influence “calories in.”
Ditto for “calories out.”
Let’s break some of this down.
Here are some of the things that impact “Calories In:”
Appetite: how hungry we are is going to drastically affect how many calories we consume. Hormones, our body composition, and tastes and preferences will all impact our appetite.[2]
Calories absorbed: the preparation of food will affect the bioavailability of calories. For example, cooking starches (like potatoes) generally increases the calories available.[3] Your own individual gut microbe can also influence the amount of energy extracted during digestion.[4] So will the macronutrient content of the food you eat.
Psychological considerations:your stress levels, sleep quality, and certain conditions like PCOS can all impact the regulation of hormones, which can influence your metabolism and appetite.[5]
Oh, and all of the above assumes we’re actually tracking calories accurately. Which pretty much nobody does. Ever. But I’ll get to that shortly.
And remember, this is only half of the equation.
Here are some of the things that impact “Calories Out:”
Energy burned while resting: your Basal Metabolic Rate is a count of how many calories you burn at rest and will be controlled by your age, weight, height, biological sex, muscle composition, etc.
Energy burned through Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT): do you fidget a lot? That increases your NEAT, or the energy you burn doing stuff other than exercising. Think tapping your feet, twirling your hair, using your hands when speaking, etc. Even just an hour of this kind of movement can accumulate an extra 300 calories burned.[6]
Exercise:of course, how much you intentionally exercise will impact your calories out, although perhaps not as much as most people think (more on this later).
This is only scratching the surface on what determines “calories in, calories out.”[7]
The important thing to consider here is that none of the above invalidate the basic premise of an energy deficit being necessary for weight loss.
These factors will just influence one end of the equation or the other.
For example, protein has been shown to help keep people feeling full and satiated.[8]
Eating plenty of protein can help folks lose weight, not because it changes the requirements for weight loss, but because it might allow them to get through the day less hungry (lowering their “calories in.”)
To recap this section: from a biological perspective, eating fewer calories than you burn is 100% necessary for weight loss.
But all sorts of things impact the amount of calories we eat and the amount of calories we expend.
This is going to lead us to….
The Problem With CICO (Humans Are Bad Estimators)
The majority of the problems people have with CICO is that it allows nutrient-deficient food to enter the diet, only limiting “how much.”
They’ll argue that people should be eating fruits and vegetables, lean protein, avoiding processed foods, and blah blah blah…
We all know this.
You don’t need someone else telling you to eat your veggies.
This isn’t the problem with CICO.
The problem with CICO is it’s really hard to estimate “calories in” and “calories out.”
Like, REALLY hard. We humans are TERRIBLE at it.
Take “calories in” or how much we eat: people generally UNDERestimate how many calories they consume by about 30-40%.[9] Even dieticians, who are specifically trained in nutrition science, underestimated how much they eat.[10]
“That may be true Steve, but don’t worry about me. I read the label on everything I buy so I know exactly how many calories I’m eating.”
Well, are you aware that the FDA allows a 20% leeway on total calories identified on packages?[11] Meaning that 100 calorie drink of Orange Juice might actually be 120?
If you’re a food manufacturer, which way are you going to lean towards? Especially when you know people might scrutinize the calories of your nutrition label in an effort to lose weight.
This isn’t just paranoia: this study found that packaged snack food generally contains MORE calories in it than advertised.[12]
Yeah…and remember, this is only half of the equation.
It’s about to get even worse.
People are also really bad at estimating “calories out.”
When folks self assess how many calories they burned by exercising, they’re generally WAY OFF, by as much as 50%![13]
Oh, and those fitness trackers we wear? They’ve been shown to be inaccurate by about 20%.[14]
This is the main problem with CICO: we’re stuck with educated guesses for “calories in” and “calories out.”
So we underestimate the calories we eat by 40%. And then we overestimate how many calories we burn by 50%.
No WONDER we think our metabolism is broken if we can’t lose weight! The truth is we’re unknowingly eating too much, and/or moving too little.
Ugh.
Even how many calories you need a day (your baseline or Total Daily Energy Expenditure) is an estimate, something we acknowledge in our calorie calculator, which you can play with right here:
THE NERD FITNESS CALORIE CALCULATOR
In summary: balancing “calories in against calories out” is really all quite messy when you get right down to it.
This post is not made to dissuade you from trying The CICO Diet.
I actually encourage everyone to track their food and calories for one week, because it’s often an eye opening experience on how much they’re truly eating.
If possible, take a few days and use a cheap food scale instead of just eyeballing it. You’ll be shocked at actual portion sizes of some foods!
When it comes to sustainable weight loss, here at Nerd Fitness, we encourage two paths:
Make small tiny changes towards “real food” (like the Nerd Fitness Healthy Plate above).
Make small tiny changes towards a strength training practice.
Both of these strategies can dramatically – and positively – influence “calories in” and “calories out” respectively.
In our Guide to Healthy Eating, we explain why every website tells you to eat vegetables (which we also tell you): vegetables are full of nutrients, contain lots of fiber to keep you full, and are generally low in calories.
Eating lots of vegetables, or “real food,” will help you naturally lower “calories in.”
How about another example to think about? Here are 200 calories of a blueberry muffin:
Compare it to 200 calories of broccoli (Thanks to wiseGEEK):
Which one do you think you’re likely to accidentally overeat for your calorie allotment?
Right.
For our other strategy, our Strength Training 101 series explains why growing strong is important for fat loss:
Building muscle takes a lot of calories (and so does maintaining it).
In other words, a stronger version of yourself will require more calories, which naturally raises your “calories out.”
The trick with it all is the “make small tiny changes” bit.
We’ve seen over and over that small steps (eating one new vegetable a week, a simple bodyweight workout) create momentum. Over time, these small changes are the keys to permanently getting healthy.
The exact “small tiny change” doesn’t matter so much, just pick one you feel comfortable with and get going! Once that habit becomes sustainable, pick a new one! And so on and so on…
Still here? Want some more guidance? An exact plan to follow on where to go next?
Alright, you got it, but only because you’ve been nice this whole time.
#1) Our 1-on-1 Online Coaching Program: a coaching program for busy people to help them make better food choices, stay accountable, and get healthier, permanently.
You can schedule a free call with our team so we can get to know you and see if our coaching program is right for you. Just click on the image below for more details:
#2) Exercising at home and need a plan to follow? Have questions you need answered? Join Nerd Fitness Prime!
Nerd Fitness Prime is our premium membership program that contains at-home exercise routines, live-streamed workouts with NF Coaches, a supportive online community, group challenges, and much more!
#3) Join The Rebellion! We have a free email newsletter that we send out twice per week, full of tips and tricks to help you get healthy, get strong, and have fun doing so.
I’ll also send you tons of free guides that you can use to start leveling up your life too:
Download our free weight loss guide
THE NERD FITNESS DIET: 10 Levels to Change Your Life
Follow our 10-level nutrition system at your own pace
What you need to know about weight loss and healthy eating
3 Simple rules we follow every day to stay on target
Alright, I think that about does it for this article.
Now, your turn:
What are your thoughts on The CICO Diet?
Do you have a strategy for balancing “calories in” and “calories out”?
Think I’ve got it all totally wrong?
Let me know in the comments!
-Steve
PS: Make sure you read the rest of our content on sustainable weight loss:
Read, “Food Label Accuracy of Common Snack Foods.” Source, PubMed.
Read, “Individuals Underestimate Moderate and Vigorous Intensity Physical Activity.” Source, PLOS. This study and this study came up with similar results.
Read, “Accuracy in Wrist-Worn, Sensor-Based Measurements of Heart Rate and Energy Expenditure in a Diverse Cohort.” Source, PubMed.
So you want to lose weight and get in shape, but you don’t want to leave your house?
