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How to Find Your Winning Formula

This guide will teach you:

  • How to calculate your calories
  • How to find your TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure)
  • How to create a sustainable meal plan
  • How to lose fat without starving yourself

Let’s break it down step-by-step.

Use a Food Tracking App

If you’re new to fitness nutrition, tracking your food is one of the most powerful learning tools.

Apps like MyFitnessPal help you:

  • See your actual calorie intake
  • Learn portion sizes
  • Understand protein, carbs, and fats
  • Identify hidden calories
  • Takes the guess work out of planning meals
  • Visualize how each food choice impacts your goals

Beginner Strategy:

  1. Identify your current calorie intake. Track a normal day of food intake honestly. This includes snacks and drinks. It’s beneficial to see where you are starting from and lets you see how much you are really consuming on a daily basis.
  2. Make small, realistic adjustments. Making drastic changes too quickly can lead to getting overwhelmed. Slow and steady is key here. Growth doesn’t happen overnight, it takes time and consistency.
  3. Focus on hitting calorie goals before worrying about macros. Take this one step at a time and work your way up to macros.
  4. Remember to not only adjust portions, but play with different foods. You will be amazed at how much you can eat when you make the right choices.
  5. If you make a mistake, just learn from it and move forward. This is part of the learning process. It will eventually become second nature.

Slow and steady changes prevent you from becoming overwhelmed. Make one small change at a time and build on that as time goes on and you get more comfortable with each adjustment.

How to Calculate Your Calories for Weight Loss

This part is crucial. Your diet is 70%-80% of the battle and yes, it is the hardest thing to tackle. You must be in a calorie deficit to lose weight. It really is that simple. You cannot and will not lose weight without this and you cannot out train a poor diet no matter how hard you try. That means that you must burn slightly more calories than you consume. It is so important that you know how to calculate your necessary calorie intake and take steps to meet your individual needs. This is not a one size fits all.

Step 1: Calculate Your BMR

Use a trusted calculator like the one from Calculator.net to find your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate). https://www.calculator.net/bmr-calculator.html

Select:

  • Calories
  • Mifflin-St Jeor Formula

Your BMR = calories needed just to support basic functions of daily life.

Now, we need to take into account the fact that we move around. We need to calculate our EAT & NEAT to be able to calculate the true number of calories needed just to maintain our current weight.

Step 2: Calculate Your TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure)

NEAT stands for Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis. This is calories burned from basic daily activities like walking or doing household chores.

EAT stands for Exercise Activity Thermogenesis and this is calories burned from planned structured workouts. 

To calculate your EAT & NEAT, follow this guide.

Your TDEE is a calculation utilizing the following:

  • BMR
  • NEAT (daily movement)
  • EAT (exercise)

NEAT Activity Levels

Choose the activity level that best describes your current situation. If you are lightly active, find 30% of your BMR for example, and write that down.

  • Sedentary -A desk job, a lot of sitting, minimal movement +10–20%
  • Light – Light walking, some household chores +20–30%
  • Moderate – A lot of standing, active household chores, running after kids  +30–40%
  • Active – Super active, manual labor +40–50%

EAT (Exercise Calories)

Think about your current workout, if there isn’t one, this number would be Zero. If there is, you want to calculate calories burned based on that workout. For example, I typically do a 45-minute workout 5 times a week. I also add my 20 minutes of SIT training after my workouts, again 5 times a week.

A basic guide to finding your estimated EAT is the following:

  • 5 calories per minute burned during Strength training
  • 8 calories burned per minute for Cardio

My numbers look like this: 

  • A 45-minute workout, 5 times a week = 5 calories per minute x 45 minutes = 225 X 5 days a week= 1125 calories a week.
  • A 20-minute SIT training session, 5 times a week = 8 calories per minute x 20 minutes =160 X 5 days a week = 800 calories a week. 
  • Take those numbers and add them together to get 1925 calories a week burned with exercise. Divide that by 7 days in a week and we get appx 275 calories per day burned.  

Add your BMR + NEAT + EAT. This gives your maintenance calories (TDEE).

If my BMR was calculated at 1390, and my EAT is 275, I now get a total of 1665.

Now I add my NEAT calculation, which I used 30% of my BMR, to get 417.

1665 + 417 = 2,082 calories per day needed to support my current weight.

How to Adjust Calories for Your Goal

This is where the magic happens! Don’t look at the TDEE and get scared, were using that number to find what we need to reach our goals in a safe and sustainable way.

Once you have your TDEE:

  • Muscle gain: +200–300 calories
  • Body recomposition: -200–300 calories
  • Faster fat loss: -400–500 calories

For most women, a 200–300 calorie deficit is sustainable and protects muscle mass. The body recomp method simultaneously allows us to lose fat while building muscle and getting that natural toned look. This is my go-to every time because it’s allowing your body to change at a healthy speed while giving me that toned appearance I want.

Extreme deficits slow metabolism and increase cravings so I do not recommend the larger calorie deficit, especially when you are just starting out. By removing too many calories at once, you risk losing muscle and also hurting your metabolism. This can also leave you feeling hungry more often and in turn may lead to struggling with snacking which is counterproductive.

Going back to my TDEE:

If I follow my formula of 2082 – 300 calories, I get 1782 calories per day to lose fat and build muscle in a healthy and sustainable way. Believe it or not, this is around the calories I have been eating per day to achieve my body recomp and at 40 I have achieved a body that I haven’t seen since I was in my late 20’s to early 30’s. Patience is key here. Trust the process, don’t give up, keep showing up and the reward will come!

Pro tip: In the beginning progress is very slow as your body adapts to these new changes. That’s OK! Give your body 6-8 weeks, yes that’s right, 6-8 weeks to really get into this new routine. That’s a long time to wait to see results and this is the time that most people give up because they are not seeing results fast enough. Hang in there! It will happen! 

How to Track Macros Without Getting Overwhelmed

Macro tracking can feel intimidating and this actually made me cry. I never thought I would understand this, but it does become second nature. It is as easy or as complicated as you make it. Use your MyFitnessPal app and play with mock meals. Remember, every master was once a beginner. You will get this with time and persistence. It’s not a race and every small positive change you make is a step in the right direction. A whole is the sum of all its parts, so even seemingly small things are worth acknowledging and celebrating.

Macros include:

  • Protein
  • Carbohydrates
  • Fats

Beginner Macro Strategy:

Week 1–2:

  • Attempt to hit only your calorie goals. Work on this until you’re comfortable with it.

Week 3–4:

  • Once you master hitting your calories, try to hit your calories + protein goals.

After that:

  • Add carbs
  • Then fats

Focus on protein first as it fuels muscle and helps keep you fuller longer.

Pro Tip: Stay within +/- 50 of your calories and +/- 5 grams of your macros. You don’t always need perfection, you just need to be as close as possible.

Invest in a Smart Scale for Progress Tracking

A quality scale like Withings Body+ can help track:

  • Weight trends
  • Body composition
  • Long-term progress

The scale is not your enemy, it’s a valuable tool that gives you real-time data. It will show you if you have made progress or not, and if not, its ok! It’s just telling us we need to modify our methods so we can get back on track and move forward.

If progress stalls, common causes include:

  • Hidden snacking. Evry little thing adds up and it can add up in a big way.
  • Miscalculated calories.
  • Not adjusting calories every 2 weeks. As you lose weight, your calorie needs change and it’s important to keep up with our bodies as they are changing to avoid a plateau or unwanted gains.

Don’t Undereat (1200 Calories Is Not Magic)

Many women drastically under-eat. They believe that they need to starve themselves in order to lose weight and feel good. The truth is, you might lose weight initially, but this method will always backfire and you will never truly feel good. Undereating leads to fatigue and so many other unwanted side effects. Your body needs fuel to run and needs the correct fuel to run at optimum levels. When you know how to fuel your body’s needs, you will have so much energy and be eating more than you thought was possible while still losing weight! When you kickstart your metabolism and fuel it properly, your body will literally do the work for you. Trust the process and be patient. Your body is an amazing machine.

Your daily will depend on several factors:

  • Activity level
  • Workout intensity
  • Muscle mass

Eating too little can:

  • Slow metabolism
  • Increase cravings
  • Cause muscle loss

Fuel your body appropriately. When you find your winning formula, that’s when you start making progress. You need to find the combination of calories/macros that your body needs, and I am going to share with you exactly how to do that. 

Time Your Meals for Steady Energy

Aim to eat every 3–4 hours. You need to steadily keep fueling your body throughout the day. Like a car, you don’t want to let the tank go to empty. Keep the fuel going throughout the day to keep that engine running, and this is how you will drive your metabolism into high gear. I schedule my meals for every 3 hours, which allows me to eat 5 times a day. This ensures I am never hungry, which eliminates random snacking and keeps my body fueled consistently.

Example meal schedule:

  • 7 AM Breakfast
  • 10 AM Snack
  • 1 PM Lunch
  • 4 PM Snack
  • 7 PM Dinner

Balanced meals with protein and fiber help:

  • Maintain fullness
  • Support metabolism
  • Prevent overeating

Allow Yourself a Weekly Cheat Meal

While you can eat boring meals all week to meet your goals, total deprivation of the things you love leads to binge cycles, snacking and not making progress. That leads to giving up when we don’t see results.

Instead:

  • Plan one cheat meal (or ‘off-plan’ meal) a week.
  • Limit this meal to no more than 500 calories above your goal. Don’t over indulge. You can very easily undo an entire week’s progress in one sitting.
  • Log it for awareness so you can see its impact.

This keeps your plan sustainable long term which leads to success. I look at this as a reward for being on track all week and sticking to my plan. My reward is usually chocolate chip cookies after dinner! 

Measure Progress Beyond the Scale

This is very important. It is very normal to not physically see the little changes week to week as we progress. We expect to see drastic changes after a week or so of putting so much effort into something like this. The truth is that the drastic changes take time. If you’re doing everything right, there will be changes, but you may not notice them immediately in the mirror. This is where taking measurements helps. Get a soft measuring tape and keep a log. Seeing the numbers change, even if you aren’t seeing yourself change, will help keep you motivated.

Every 2–3 weeks track:

  • Weight
  • Chest
  • Waist
  • Hips
  • Biceps
  • Thighs
  • Calves

Also take progress photos that you can compare as needed if you think that might help you to visualize your progress.

Remember: You see yourself daily so you may not notice the small changes in yourself — measurements reveal real change.

If progress stalls, don’t panic or get discouraged, reassess your numbers and adjust.

Setbacks are part of the path to success. It is part of growth. Use every opportunity, even setbacks or plateaus as a chance to learn and move forward. Do not throw away your efforts over a challenge. Overcome it!

Your Winning Formula: Patience + Consistency

Nutrition is not about perfection.

It’s about:

  • Planning ahead
  • Staying consistent
  • Making realistic adjustments
  • Being patient (approximately 6–8 weeks to see initial change)

Most people quit too early because they don’t see progress quick enough. Trust the process, be patient, believe in yourself, and stick with it!

If you stay consistent, your body will respond.

Consistency beats perfection every time.