If you want to reduce your body fat percentage, build muscle mass, reach a goal weight, or improve strength in the gym, tailoring your nutrition to your goals is absolutely essential to achieving those goals.

When we start working with a new client, the first thing we do is talk to them about their goals so we can tailor their nutrition plan to their needs. Pretty often we hear goals like, 

“I want to lose 10 pounds and get stronger and faster in the gym. I also want to have more energy and get my body fat down to 15%. Oh, and I want all of this to happen in 3 months please. I’ll do anything to achieve my goals, except for working towards them patiently for a long time.”

Okay, maybe we’ve ever heard that exact sentence before, but it’s human nature to want to do it all and do it quickly, and unrealistic goals and expectations can set a client up to fail from the start.

It is important to recognize that different goals require different approaches.

Muscle gain requires a calorie surplus.

Fat loss requires a calorie deficit.

Peak performance requires a calorie maintenance or a surplus, plus some attention to meal timing and nutrient density in your food.

Overall health and a good relationship with food might require time spent working on the emotional and mental aspect of food before physical changes can occur.

If new clients don’t understand what goals they are actively working towards and what they can expect from their efforts, they will often feel defeated when they see positive composition changes but aren’t feeling 100% in the gym, or when they set a PR but see their weight on the scale stay steady. 

This Is why understanding that tailoring your nutrition to your specific goals is so important. Listed below are the three basic approaches that we use to categorize most goals. 

NUTRITION FOR OPTIMAL HEALTH

If your goal is to achieve optimal health, you should focus on finding balance in your diet.

Optimal health means something different to each of us.

To me, it's about learning to find the balance needed in your diet to maintain a healthy body, build sustainable eating habits, and feel less anxiety and fear around food. Being lean is great, and getting strong is cool, but what good are those goals if they leave your physical health compromised?

Eating for health also means working towards balance in your food choices and eating for your mental and emotional health. It’s great to eat all the fruits and veggies in the world, but are you truly healthy if you have social anxiety around food and you won’t let yourself enjoy a treat or a meal out every once in a while?

Practicing balance might mean adding in more fruits and vegetables, or maybe it means adding in the occasional dessert (the process is going to look different from person to person) but embracing the concept of flexibility and avoiding the mentality of restriction is an essential part of achieving balance in our mental and physical health.

Pursuing optimal health and practicing balance is best done at a maintenance calorie level, as this calorie level allows us to eat enough food to take care of our bodies while we work on the concept of balance, and our body physically does better when it has enough food. 

MAINTENANCE CALORIES = eating roughly the same amount of calories as you burn through daily activity

What is not the focus while working towards optimal health is aesthetic changes, because aesthetic changes require a different and more restrictive approach, as you’ll read about in the next section.

NUTRITION FOR AESTHETICS

If your goals are geared towards reducing your body weight or changing your body composition, your focus should be on eating in a calorie deficit.

Most people want to change their diet in order to work towards specific aesthetic goals. If you want to hit a certain body weight goal, reach a lower body fat percentage, or fit in a new size of jeans, being in a calorie deficit is without a doubt the most important factor at play.

CALORIE DEFICIT = eating fewer calories than you burn through daily activity

All successful diets result in a calorie deficit, either by cutting out certain foods or by restricting calorie intake in some way (gluten free = no bread, keto=no carbs, intermittent fasting= restricted eating times). When people follow these diets they create a calorie deficit by eating fewer calories. 

While we are quick to focus and celebrate weight loss from these diets, a lower number on the scale DOES NOT always equal fat loss, and I’m here to tell you that what people really want are body composition goals that are focused on fat loss. 

WEIGHT LOSS || A decrease in the number on the scale. Weight loss may be the product of both loss of body fat and loss of lean body mass (muscle and bone mass).

FAT LOSS || A change in your body composition. Fat loss refers to reducing your body fat percentage while maintaining more lean muscle mass.

For fat loss, you must be eating enough food, and the right type of food, so that the changes in your body composition are the result of decreasing body fat, not losing lean muscle mass and bone density.

Adequate protein intake is the most important part of fat loss as protein plays an essential role in helping our bodies maintain lean body mass, even when in a calorie deficit. The effects of fat loss may be seen on the scale, but can also be seen through changes in body composition, body measurements, and how your clothes fit.

Reducing body fat to meet your aesthetic goals is a process. It requires consistency and, most importantly, it requires patience. To achieve your aesthetic goals you must adhere to a calorie deficit consistently over time, and there may be some compromises involved in order to stay consistent. So while you should always have the flexibility to enjoy the foods you want to eat, pursuing aesthetic goals may require sticking to mostly high-volume whole foods and limiting meals out and higher calorie treats for a while.

And remember, 

• If you are working towards the goal of being as lean as possible, you probably won’t be the healthiest or strongest you can be.

• While you can still prioritize healthy habits and choosing high quality foods, being in a calorie deficit can impact your overall energy and performance.

Working towards aesthetic goals is hard work! There is no magic pill that will get you immediate results. It’s all about consistency and prioritizing your goals.  The compromises that may be required to adhere to a deficit are only temporary and should not be the case forever. Our bodies are not meant to be in a calorie deficit for a long period of time, and spending too much time in a deficit can have negative consequences on both our physical and mental health.  

NUTRITION FOR PERFORMANCE

If your goal is to improve strength and performance, your focus should be on eating the right amount to fuel your training and your recovery.

You do not have to be an elite athlete in order to prioritize performance! We work with many athletes - from weekend warriors to local competitors to those just starting their fitness journey -  that want to perform better in the gym, and we love helping those clients achieve their goals.

Eating for optimal performance means you should be eating at maintenance or in a surplus, and your intake should change in conjunction with changes in your training.  

If you want to get stronger, you must eat enough calories in order to build muscle mass. 

If you want to get faster, train harder, or perform better, you must eat enough calories in order to fuel your training and your recovery.

For a lot of athletes, enough calories looks like a calorie surplus, where you are trying to eat more calories than you are burning so that you can give your body the fuel it needs to recover from training, improve skills, and build muscle and strength.*

CALORIE SURPLUS = eating more calories than you burn through daily activity

Eating the right amount of calories for your specific goal is priority number one, but making sure your diet is balanced in macronutrients is also an important factor to consider. 

Each macronutrient plays a distinct and essential role in our bodies: 

• Protein helps us maintain and build muscle mass and repair tissues after training;

• Carbohydrates are our main source of energy and aid in helping our bodies recover 

• Adequate fats help us regulate hormones and keep our nervous systems functioning.

An athlete with performance goals should also prioritize quality foods, quality sleep, and recovery. Meal timing isn’t the biggest factor that will affect your performance, but eating the right food at the right time will help you stay properly fueled and recovered, and paying a little more attention to the makeup of pre- and post-workout meals can be beneficial.

Our goals are constantly evolving. You may not focus on improving performance forever, but if that is your current goal, making sure that your dietary approach matches the hard work you are putting into your training will result in better outcomes from that training.  

*I want to emphasize this - If you have performance goals, it is NOT the correct time to be in a calorie deficit! All athletes that aren’t actively trying to cut weight for a weight class sport should at least eat at a maintenance calorie level. Elite performance (or even above average performance) doesn’t happen in a calorie deficit, and while it is still possible to see changes in your body composition while training for performance, it’s not the goal and you probably won’t be at your very leanest when training and performance are your priorities. 

NUTRITION FOR YOUR GOALS

Different nutrition goals require different nutrition approaches.

In order to determine which nutrition approach you should take for your goals, list your priorities in order of importance, and then make sure your approach matches up with priority number one. 

Be okay with working on specific goals and realizing you can’t do everything at once. 

And if you still aren’t sure how to approach your nutrition for your goals and want help, please consider working with one of our coaches. One of our main goals at KLN is to teach our clients how to navigate their nutrition so that long after they are done working with us, they can confidently pursue their goals on their own.  

We believe that the best way to achieve your fat loss goals is working with a coach who creates a plan specific to you - your needs, your preferences, and your goals. A sustainable approach to our nutrition is essential to long-term habits and success. For high support coaching and guidance, apply for our 1:1 Nutrition Coaching here. 

A few other articles related to metabolic adaptation, maintenance phases, and how to know if you’re ready for a fat loss phase:

ARE YOU READY FOR A FAT LOSS PHASE? 

WHY A MAINTENANCE PHASE IS ESSENTIAL TO LONG TERM PROGRESS