In partnership with
Who really owns your audience?
Being a Creator has never been easy, but unpredictable algorithms make connecting with your audience on social media harder than ever.
Enter beehiiv, the newsletter platform used to send this very email.
beehiiv frees you from the algorithms, giving you the tools to connect and create a more direct relationship with your followers.
Plus, with a network of premium advertisers and paid subscription options, you can tap into new revenue streams from day one.
We’re now in the last stretch of the year.
There are only 2.5 months left.
As much as I love a good review at the end of each year, the idea of waiting for the new year to start striving for your goals has always been crazy to me.
Move with the seasons.
The leaves are falling and the weather is getting colder. Now is the ideal time to lock in and work on yourself so that you start the new year off a changed person - not someone waiting for the ideal time to change.
Don’t wait - start now.
One of the ways I’m trying to start this new year is in the best shape of my life post achilles tear, which means it’s time for me to start a small cut so that I can be lean and prepped to bulk going into 2025.
Here’s how I designed my nutrition plan for this cut, hope it helps:
Getting started - Calories
Leaning out and losing body fat all comes down to calories in vs calories out.
So to start, I took a look at all of my data from the past few weeks. I wear an Oura Ring at pretty much all times to track my health data, so its pretty easy for me to access.
From there, I’m throwing some data points into a g-sheet I’ve made so that I can look at all the important ones next to each other for quick and easy access.
To start here though, I’m only looking at calories out - which I get from my Oura pretty easily.
Knowing what my calories out looks like on a daily basis, I can get an idea of what my calories in will need to look like to lose weight.
So I looked at my calories out for the past month, added them all together and took the average - which was 3098 calories.
Keep in mind that I’m pretty active and I’m also 6’4, 206.4 lbs - so this number is fairly high. But now knowing it, I can start to map out my macros and my nutrition plan for this cut.
I’ll be starting in a mild deficit because while I want to burn fat, I’m also trying to keep as much muscle mass as possible during this cut. That means I'll be focused on strength training, eating enough protein, getting enough sleep, and keeping my calories in lower than my calories out but not by too much.
Dropping your calorie count too low too fast isn’t good for you. It can lead a number of issues like:
Loss of muscle mass
Gallstones
Nutritional Deficincies
A notable drop in blood pressure
Hormonal imbalances
The general thought process today is that losing 1-2 lbs per week is typically a healthy range, but it obviously varies a ton from person to person.
If you’re 100 pounds overweight and you make some big changes, you’ll probably lose weight a lot faster than someone who’s in relatively good shape.
So knowing this, I’m starting at around a 400 calorie per day deficit.
3500 calories = 1 pound
So I’ll be losing just below 1 lb of weight per week. That feels good for me and where I’m at, so I’ll start there at about 2700 calories.
From Calories → Macros
Every macronutrient has an associated calorie count - we want the total of our macros to add up to the calorie count that we just came to.
You can do this a lot of different ways - carnivores only eat meat, vegetarians eat no meat, some people eat no cab, etc.
Personally, I prefer a balanced diet incorporating all of these things onto my plate to get a lot of variety because it works well for me - so that’s what I’ll do in this example.
ps: to make this easy and quick to read, I’m giving a gross oversimplification of what each of these are are. Again, I am not a dietitian - this is how I think of macros when writing for a cut.
Proteins:
Building block of muscle + tissue, help you feel full, 4 calories per gram, typically found in meat, legumes, etc.
Carbs:
These are your bodies first energy source, typically faster digesting, helps with quick twitch activities like a sprint or a max bench press, these are 4 calories per gram and are found in potatoes, breads, pastas, fruits, veggies, etc.
Fats:
Slow-digesting, good for your brain, help you feel full for a long time, high in calories @ 9 per gram and found in things like red meat, butter, cooking oils, nuts, eggs, etc.
My goal is to lose body fat while keeping as much lean muscle mass as possible - so I’m going to keep my protein high, while dropping my carbs and fats numbers down each week.
Protein: 205 gs
Carbs: 300 gs
Fats: 75 gs
Total Calories: 2695
So this is where I’ll be for the first week - in about a 400 calorie deficit.
I’ll also be tracking my weight each morning on an empty stomach to see how my progress is trending.
Hope this is helpful if you’re looking to shred up in the near future - and if you want a free consultation on it, I’m always here to chat.
Cheers,
Dane
ps: I made a few changes to the website and the name of this newsletter this past week. Sunday Coffee was the name I chose to get started right away - but now I have changed the name to TrainWithDane to match the name of my training business.