do you guys think this has that big of an impact on your goals? between spending 2 hours in the kitchen every sunday to precook my meals for the week and school, precalculating the calories for every single meal would be really tough and i think a bit too meticulous
It might depend on exactly how much of a “beginner” you are and what your goals are.
While it is always a good idea to have a general sense of the amount of calories you’re eating per day, a newbie shouldn’t get bogged down in the fine details. If you have the time to do it, great. But don’t let it derail your efforts.
If you’re skinny and looking to add some muscle, spend the time actually eating. Once progress slows, start taking a closer look at your diet.
However if you need to lose a lot of body fat, you should be much more concerned with what exactly goes in your mouth.
I found my best gains where when I planned my diet out in advance, and was aware of the approximate total # of calories and protein I was consuming. Then, I tweaked things based upon my results.
I ate pretty much the same thing every day. So figureing out the ratios and all that didn’t exact take up a great deal of time.
Actually calorie counting is extremely easy. I don’t count every possible calorie per day but I try to hit a ballpakr figure and try to hit within 300-500 of that number every day. The easiest way to do this is by shooting for amounts of macro’s in grams. Once you have that figured out multiply protein’s and carbs by 4 and Fats by 9, add the three macro’s toghther and you have a good idea on total calories consumed.
a mistake i made, was to not count calories and estimate, i was consuming fewer calories than i originally thought. a calorie/macro count (doesnt take long) helped me alot. 