After calculating your targets (per Nutrition 103 Part I) and deciding actionable ways to begin implementing your plan (per Nutrition 103 Part II), there may come a time when you need to adjust your plan.
As I mentioned in Part I, nutrition and wellness are both an art and science. Even if you go to a gastroenterologist or another nutrition specialist, sometimes you will be sent home with instructions to test a hypothesis or a strategy, see how you react, and draw a conclusion for next steps from there.
Gathering data, testing different methods, and trial and error are part of the process. Hence, I wanted to provide some guidance on when and how to adjust your nutrition plan.
Refresher from Part II
The changes you implement take time to manifest. When testing a nutrition strategy – unless directed otherwise by a licensed professional – you’ll want to schedule a check in with yourself to evaluate your progress after a predetermined amount of time to see if you should make some changes to your plan.
A good place to start with this evaluation is a simple series of reflecting on “what’s going well”, “what isn’t going well”, “what can be improved”, “am I enjoying this”, “am I seeing results”, “how can I simplify this”, etc.
If during this check in you find that things are working and going well, for the most part you should be okay to keep at it. Always keep in mind: sometimes changes take more than a couple weeks or months to manifest.
However, if during this reflection you find that your results seem stalled then it’s possible your body has hit a plateau or acclimated to a new set point. If you’ve hit a plateau, or even if you just want to change things up, sometimes an incremental change is enough.
When and How to Incrementally Adjust Your Plan
After evaluating your plan you may decide you want to adjust your strategy.
When to Adjust Your Plan
A timeframe of 4-6 weeks of implementation to evaluation is ideal. Because of hormones, hydration levels, and a multitude of other factors, anything less than 2 weeks of implementation at minimum and you’ll barely be able to see the beginnings of any changes. 4-6 weeks is when you’ll get a clearer picture of true change.
Note: I should mention, if you’re a woman, our menstrual cycle and hormone fluctuations can impact how your results manifest. Meaning, even if you’re doing all of the right things, our hormones at different points of the month during our cycle may still cause us to hold more water weight or something else that will make it seem like we’re not making progress.
As an additional note for any men reading this: men’s hormones reset every 24 hours compared to a woman’s weekly fluctuation according to her cycle.
In my experience, 4-6 weeks is when I’ve found progress (either forward or reverse) to become physically/visually evident. At the 4-6 week point, you should have allowed enough time for some changes to manifest and to gather enough data to make an informed decision.
Keep in mind that sometimes if you made a really dramatic change it could take more than 6+ weeks for your body to adapt and adjust. Your plan may be working, slowly but surely. Consistency and patience are often key.
Still, if after 6-8 weeks you’re not seeing the progress you’d like, then maybe it’s time to adjust your plan.
How to Adjust Your Plan
Essentially, this is all an experiment. Therefore, there are endless ways you can adjust your plan. You can change specific foods. You can focus on increasing certain micronutrients. You can prioritize meal times. Typically, especially if your goal is body recomposition, then you’ll want to adjust calories and/or macronutrient distributions.
Adjusting Calories
If you’re looking at making changes surrounding your energy balance (aka the amount of calories you consume and expend in a day), incremental changes of 300-500 calories daily can be particularly effective for weight loss. Meaning, if you’re consuming 2300 calories a day, reducing your calorie allowance to 2000 calories per day will be effective enough to yield results. It’s important to note that changes of 250 calories or less per day is often negligible towards results, especially if weight loss is the goal.
If you’re looking at calories at a weekly level, then simply multiply your increment you choose between 300-500 times 7 to subtract that amount from your previous total calories for the week to find your new total calories for the week.
(Using the example above: if your average calories were 2300 per day and your weekly allowance of calories was 16,100 calories/week. Then your new calorie allowance for the week would be 14,000 if you dropped to 2000 calories per day. 16,100 - (300*7)=14,000)
Adjusting Macronutrients (Protein, Fats, Carbs)
If you’re looking at making changes around your macros, incremental changes can be increasing or decreasing the amount of grams you’re consuming. Don’t forget that adjusting your macronutrients may mean you need to adjust your remaining macronutrients accordingly. Furthermore, it’s important to realize that adjusting your macro distributions could impact your calorie allotment so make sure these changes align with your calorie allowance!
To see this in action, we’ll use the example of upping your protein intake. A protein shake typically has ~20 grams of protein so adding in a protein shake can adjust your protein (and potentially calorie) intake allowance.
For example, if I were to use my personal numbers for my protein requirement of 1.2 g protein per kg of body weight my protein allotment would be 60 g of protein daily. So in the example above if we add a protein shake that is 20 g of protein each day we’re upping my protein by 33%. This could begin impacting my body composition after a few weeks.
(You can calculate your personal protein allotment using the following equation: 0.8 to 1.2 g of protein/kg of body weight up to 2.2 g of protein/kg of body weight.)
The best way to know if changing your macronutrients will be significant enough to yield noticeable results will be to begin with adjusting your protein and then your fats. Why not carbs? The science continually shows that low carb vs high-to-moderate carb diets produce negligible results when protein and fat amounts are kept constant.
More Considerations
If Weight Loss is Your Goal
★ The maximal daily deficit upper threshold of 1% weight loss per week is generally considered safe for most people.
★ Guidelines say it is safe to only lose 1-2 lbs/week equivalent to ~500-1000 calorie reduction per day.
(One pound is equivalent to 3500 calories. A 500 calorie daily deficit for 7 days a week will equal 3500 calories or one pound.)
★ Remember: anything under a 250 calorie deficit is typically ineffective.
If Weight Gain is Your Goal
★ It is generally considered safe, increase calories roughly 10% from your baseline or previous calorie target to put on muscle.
★ Example: if your original baseline target was 2000 calories/day → 2200 calories/day to gain weight.
★ Guidelines say it is generally considered safe to only gain ~0.5-2 lbs per month depending how advanced you are in weight training.
The Bottom Line
If the math is confusing, all you have to know is that you don’t have to be dramatic in adjusting your plan. As long as the adjustments aren’t negligible (i.e. increasing/decreasing your daily calories by 250 or less), incremental changes can bring results. I personally like 300-500 calories per day change as a rule of thumb.
When you hit a plateau, it likely means that you’ve reached a new set point and you might need to up the challenge and make some adjustments one way or another. Keep in mind a plateau may be considered a plateau after 8-12 weeks of no change.
Furthermore, I want to reiterate that it’s important to make sure you’re not making too many changes, too soon. Give your strategy enough implementation time to gather data and measure your results. After evaluating, you can then make a strategic, informed decision. Give it time and trust the process.
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This is not advice nor a recommendation. The amounts listed are straight from the USDA Dietary Guidelines for the generic population and are not specific to you. Discuss specifics with your medical/licensed professional.