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Read the Labels! "Take the Time to Educate Yourself"

These days almost every thing we buy has a label, even a packet of gum. You need to know what to look for in a food label, such as, serving size, number of servings per container, total calories, total fat, sodium, total carbohydrate and how much of it is sugar, protein, and even vitamins and minerals. Merely looking at labels is not sufficient. You need to know your daily allowances (that's where the expertise of a knowledgeable personal trainer comes into play, to configure your ideal diet, ideal percentages of the macronutrients, protein, carbohydrate,and fat, all based on your personal needs and GOALS). Once you have a general idea about your food percentages, you can then calculate the contents of each in a particular food. For example, a label says that the serving size is * a cup, and there are 4 servings per container. Total calories is about 250 (remember this is only for a quarter of the container), total fat is 10 g, total carbohydrate is 30 g, sugar 5 g, and protein 10 g. If I am looking to eat 1 serving of the container (1/4 of the whole), then:

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1 g of fat= 9 calories	(10 g)(9)=90 calories from fat
1 g of carbohydrate = 4 calories	(30 g)(4)=120 calories from carbohydrate
1 g of protein = 4 calories	(10 g)(4)=40 calories from protein

Let's assume that my daily percentages are as follows:

20% fat, 20% protein and 60% carbohydrate.

Thus, calculating the percentages of this particular food we see that it consists of:
35% fat (because 90 calories from fat divided by total calories which is 250=35%), 16% protein (because again 40/250=16%) and 48% carbohydrates (because 120/250=48%).

Seems pretty straight forward, no? May be not at first, but for a trained eye it becomes as easy as keeping a perfect body all year-round!

Once you figured out and prioritized your GOALS, you must keep a few things in mind:

Your daily total calorie intake
A feasible way to divide up these calories throughout the day so that you don’t eat all your calories by mid day, or the opposite, come midnight you still have lots to consume!
Your daily food percentages, i.e., fat, carb., and protein percentages

Then, you must learn to look at food labels and know how to do a few easy calculations. Don’t be deceived by the % Daily Value listed on the label. These values pertain to those and only those who have a daily 2000 calorie intake (orsome other mentioned number). If you want to see results, you must determine your ideal calorie intake and your ideal percentages. Every one is different, has different needs and different GOALS.

One other point about calculations: you must first determine the # of calories in each category and divide that # by the total # of calories per serving (which will be multiplied by the number of servings you are consuming). Don’t use the number of grams, since 1 gram of fat is not equivalent to 1 gram of protein nor of carbohydrate.

In the above example, if I had used the # of grams by mistake, I would have gotten 20% fat, 20% protein and 60% carbohydrate which is what my ideal diet dictates!