There are many important principles to bodybuilding, losing weight, getting fit, that you just can’t ignore if you wish to “cut up” and get fit. Key among them is the principle that you just can’t lose body fat until you are in caloric deficit, but while maintaining adequate proteins, carbs, and all other important nutrients while in the deficit zone.

If you are following the dietary principles set forth at fittransition.com, I have a recommendation which will make the calorie game more scientific. Livestrong.com is a fantastic web site which will allow you to enter your daily intake, calculate your caloric needs, and your caloric burn due to exercise. It makes the fat loss game much more accurate and easy to do.

For example, one day I stopped at a convenience store and indulged myself with a breakfast burrito from Rico. On a whim I typed it into my account on livestrong.com and was delighted to see the product was there, complete with the number of calories, grams of fat, protein, carbs, and milligrams of sodium. Of course, that particular indulgence cost me about 587 calories - yes it’s a fat burrito - and taught me the value of not buying them very often.

Livestrong.com even tracks how many glasses of water you drink per day. Also instructive to note is the number of calories that you burn during exercise. I’m a two-a-day-er, and it would be easy to guess my actual caloric burn. With Livestrong I now know that I am burning over 1000 calories a day with my exercise routine, so I need to carefully monitor my protein intake and meal frequency to ensure I’m feeding my NASCAR (my body) properly.

By the way, I’ve driven a NASCAR, and wow what a thrill! I can’t imagine pulling up to the local Chevron to fill it up. It runs on special fuel. Similarly, run your body on special fuel. Livestrong.com will help you to do this!