Having the right diet and focusing on what you put into your body can increase performance if taken seriously. Many baseball players focus all of their attention on getting in the weight room, throwing, hitting, etc. All of those things are important, but adding the nutrition component will allow you to recover better, get better results from your workouts, and increase energy. These are all things that a player needs in order to be successful. In this article I want to discuss how to know how many calories you need to maintain, gain, and lose weight.
How Many Calories do I Need to Maintain?
In order to find out how many calories you need to intake to maintain your body weight, I recommend using the Precision Nutrition calculator.
After plugging in your age, current weight, height, and activity level you will have a rough estimate of what you need to eat in order to maintain your weight.
How Many Calories do I need to Gain Weight?
Now that you know how many calories you need to maintain your weight, now you can figure out how much you need to gain weight. The first thing you need to know is how many calories equal a pound.
3,500 Calories = 1 Pound
In order to gain roughly 1 pound per week you should increase your intake by 500 calories of what your maintenance intake required. If your maintenance intake is 3,000 calories, you would intake 3,500 calories now.
500 Calories X 7 Days = 3,500 Calories
Of course, as you continue to gain weight you will have to adjust what your maintenance weight is.
How Many Calories do I Need to Lose Weight?
Losing weight is much like gaining weight. It starts with changing how much food you intake. Since we know that 3,500 = 1 Pound all we have to do now is subtract 500 calories from our daily intake.
If my maintenance intake is 3,000 calories, I now will intake 2,500. This once again will lead to roughly a 1 pound decrease per week.
In Conclusion
This gives you a general idea of what you need to intake if you are trying to gain or lose weight. There is much more that goes into a healthy diet then just your calorie intake, but this will point you in the right direction. If you are interested in reading more about nutrition I highly recommend looking into Precision Nutrition. They provide articles and information on diets, recipes, and really show an easier way to reach your nutrition goals.
If you have any questions you can email me at info@gaynorstrength-pitching.com
- Jared
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