21 Day Fix Nutrition and PiYo Fitness

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I love PiYo.

After months and months of 21 Day Fix workouts, I was going through some family scheduling shifts, and when you added two toddlers into the mix I was stressed out to the max. I needed some new workout scenery and PiYo provided a mind-calming yet physically challenging workout to ease some of the stress in my life.

When I received PiYo in the mail, I was excited to look through all of the materials, and then I saw the nutrition guide. What? This isn’t my 21 Day Fix Nutrition plan! How do my containers fit into the plan? Do I need to start over and do the PiYo nutrition guide, too? So many questions began circling my mind. I loved the simplicity of the color coded containers.

The 21 Day Fix system has made a huge breakthrough with simplifying nutrition and eating foods in the right proportions. As a result, Beachbody has begun to use the color coded container system in their subsequently released fitness programs, including Tony Horton’s 22 Minute Hard Corp. These newer programs have had the container counts adjusted to complement each program and give you the results you want.

However, what about older programs such as PiYo by Chalene Johnson? The PiYo program comes with its own nutrition plan, however, since it was released before 21 Day Fix, it does not use the same container system as 21 Day Fix. With this knowledge, can you mix the 21 Day Fix nutrition plan and use PiYo for your fitness program? The answer is a resounding YES!

The sweet thing about the 21 Day Fix Nutrition Plan (also known as “Portion Fix”), is that you can use it with whatever fitness program you choose, including PiYo. Portion Fix is designed to teach you a lifetime of healthy habits, regardless of what fitness plan you choose. Additionally, Portion Fix can be used even without a fitness program (ie. for injuries).

Here’s how to do it:

The biggest change you will want to do is to re-calculate your calorie bracket according to your fitness program’s calorie guidelines. The PiYo program does not burn as many calories as 21 Day Fix, so the calculations are different.

Piyo’s Nutrition Calculations:

Body Weight x 11

Add 400 (for maintenance calories. More on that below)

Subtract 600 (for weight loss)

Total – Your daily calorie range.

For example, if you weigh 200 pounds, this would be your calculation:

200 X 11 = 2200

2200 + 400 = 2600

2600 – 600 = 2000 Daily Calories

The calculations explained:

Body weight x 11. If you weigh 200 pounds, your body would need (on average) 2200 calories to maintain weight without any additional physical activity. If a 200 lb person was to consume that amount of calories each day, their body weight would not change.

Maintenance calories. If you weigh 200 pounds, and exerted 400 calories daily through physical activity (such as PiYo), then your body would need to consume 2600 calories a day (2200 + 400) to maintain your body weight.

Weight loss subtraction – 600 calories is given as the standard for PiYo. This number creates a deficit of 4,200 calories per week, which would work out to 1.2 pounds of weight loss per week. (As a side note, I know 1.2 pounds weekly seems like a very small number. However, if you were to consistently have that same weight loss over the course of a year, you would lose 62.4 pounds!)

(For those wondering, the 21 Day Fix calculations are similar with the exception they subtract 750 calories for weight loss deficit instead of 600).

More notes:

Obviously, there are some fluctuations that will occur. Besides regular outside factors such as water retention, illness, hormones, and such, the containers have a range of calories depending on what food is put in each container.  For example, one red container of chicken breasts would have a different caloric amount as a red container ground beef. Portion fix was designed for you to not think about that, and instead think of how big your portions should be.

But Tina, I need to lose a lot of weight! Can’t I just stick myself in the lowest bracket?

Why yes, yes you could…but that might not be the best idea. For starters, hungry will very likely be an issue. For another thing, this program was created by nutritionists who have come together to figure out how much your body should be consuming for effective weight loss. Trust the nutritionists, and trust the program. While it may be tempting to lower yourself into the smallest calorie bracket, go easy on your body and your mind. I actually lose MORE weight when I consume the amount of calories than I do when I limit myself to 1200 calories a day. (And let’s just talk about how miserable it was to eat 1.200 calories when I was obese…I was not a happy camper to be around, and it did nothing but leave me frustrated).

Unfortunately, we can’t control our rate of weight loss. We can do all of the right things, but it still won’t guarantee that we will lose weight at the rate of speed we’d like to lose. However, we can ALWAYS control the nutrition we consume and the calories we expend by consistently making good choices. THAT, my friends, is where the magic will happen!