Breaking it down, from A-Z
No matter how many times I try to explain it, the general public still does not understand how “diet” works. So, I’m dedicating this post to explaining the whole process in (hopefully) simple terms. Again, I’m not going to be scientific, and a lot of people might disagree on what I’m going to say, but this is just how I see it (and obviously, It’s working well… atleast much better than the way nutritionists in this country handle/understand it)
First of all, let’s talk about macronutrients. You basically have 3 macronutrients:
1- Proteins
2- Carbohydrates
3- Fats
Let’s pick everyone of these apart.
Proteins:
Proteins are made up of essential and non essential amino acids. Essential amino acids are the ones that you need to eat because your body cannot produce them. Non essential aminos, as you might have concluded, are the ones that your body can produce from other tissue (mostly muscle). Protein is an essential nutrient that is needed to sustain life and keep your body functioning normally.
With regards to diet (food), you basically have two sources:
1- Complete proteins
2- Incomplete proteins
Complete proteins are ones that contain all the essential and non essential amino acids in different ratios, depending on the source. Best food sources for protein (pure complete protein) are: Eggs, fish, poultry, and beef
Incomplete proteins are those that do not contain a full chain of amino acids. Basically, they are crap. True, if you mix incomplete sources of protein in one meal, you might end up with all the amino acids you need. Still, the ratios of those aminos are no optimal and they are complete shit (IMHO). Sources of incomplete proteins are: Legumes, nuts, soy, and other crap that hippies are interested in.
Carbohydrates:
It’s surprising to know that most people’s diets are 100% based on carbohydrates, and most people don’t even know what foods are carbohydrates. I have heard people say potatoes are good sources of protein, and beef has carbs. Also, people don’t know that carbohydrates are a non-essential nutrient, meaning you can live without them. Anyway, carbs can be divided into 2 categories:
1- Complex carbohydrates
2- Simple carbohydrates
Complex carbohydrates are those that are made up of complex chains of sugar that are hard to break down by the body (it takes time to break them down). Most complex carbohydrate sources are limited to grains, legumes, and vegetables. Some of these sources are: oats, bran, most vegetables, beans (and crap), sweet potatoes, yams, brown rice… etc.
Simple carbohydrates are those that are made up of a simple chain of sugar. Glucose, fructose, and lactose… other sources, like sucrose (table sugar) are a combination of these simple sugars. Sources of simple carbs are just about everything you can think of: refined products (white bread, sugary cereal, fruits, white rice… etc).
Fats:
Fats, like proteins, are an essential nutrient. They can be divided into:
1- Saturated fats
2- Unsaturated (mono and poly) fats
You basically need fatty acids (fats are broken down to fatty acids) to survive. Saturated fats aren’t as bad as most people think, as long as they are less than 50% of your fat intake. Saturated fats aren’t bad, but that doesn’t mean they are good. Unsaturated fats (or healthy fats) should be anyone’s major concern. Your body can actually use these for cholesterol production and regulation (most people don’t even know how important cholesterol is… your body’s cholesterol, and not dietary cholesterol). Just take it from me, cholesterol production is fucking important. Saturated fat sources can be summed up in anything refined or cooked for a long period of time (the corn or vegetable oil you buy at the grocery store, butter, milk fat, cream, egg yolks… etc). Unsaturated fats are mostly natural products that aren’t from animal sources, like extra virgin olive oil, peanut oil, natural peanut butter (although regular peanut butter is quite full of unsaturated fats), nuts, avocados… etc.
Now that we’ve broken down these nutrients, let’s see how they are used to build a better physique.
Protein:Simply put, it builds muscle. Your muscles are made out of proteins (mostly glutamine, it’s an amino acid). If you want them bigger, or you want to maintain their size, you need a lot of fucking protein.
As you might know, I’ve eaten like a normal person from the beginning of august til the end of September. A normal person would be lucky to get 100 grams of protein per day. That’s good enough to sustain life. Hell, even 20 grams is enough to sustain life. But we aren’t looking for that. 1 gram of protein per lb of body is what you should shoot for.
Now, protein can be used in two ways in the body:
1- Goes to building muscle
2- Turns into glucose via a process called gluconogenesis
So, it’s either contributing to muscle building/maintenance, or turning into glucose and used up as energy or stored as fat (after it turns to glucose).
One thing you should know is that protein has a high thermic effect. This means your body has a hard time digesting the damn thing and it actually burns calories while doing it. The thermic effect differs from person to person, and the source of protein being consumed. This is why when you eat a shit ton of beef, you start sweating. Your body is producing energy by burning off the protein.
It’s being debated whether there is a limit on protein assimilation in one sitting. Some people think there is none (meaning you can eat 100 grams of protein per meal), and some people think it’s at 30 grams and you can’t absorb more than that every 2 hours. But all of this is based on bullshit and there are no real studies to prove any of this. My opinion is that if you keep meals at 40-75 grams (for men) and 20-50 grams (for women) you will most likely absorb all of it (depending on the time of the meal, which will be discussed later).
Most people would assume that when I say 50 grams of protein, I mean 50 grams of beef, or 50 grams of chicken or whatever. No, that is totally wrong. Let’s take a chicken breast for example. A medium chicken breast would weigh around 100-120 grams. In that chicken breast there is around 24-29 grams of protein. You have to account for the water weight and other crap. So when I say 50 grams of protein per meal, that’s around 2 chicken breasts per meal. And when I say 200 grams of protein per day, that’s around 8 chicken breasts just for your protein needs. The beef on a big mac will only give you 20 grams of protein if you’re lucky. You see how little that is? You have to eat 5 big macs (no cheese) to get 100 grams of protein. Even with the cheese, that’s only 150 grams of protein. There are tons of website that tell you the macronutrient breakdown of different foods by weight. Look it up.
Carbohydrates:
Their evil!!! NO NO!!! they said they’re good on CNN yesterday!!! NO WAIT!!! Ummm…. People are really stupid when it comes to this crap because they don’t know what carbohydrates are, or what they do. Here’s a basic breakdown:
When you digest carbs and absorb them, your body produces insulin. Now, insulin is a shuttle hormones. It takes fat to fat cells, protein to muscle, and stores unused glucose as fat (fat is burned, glucose can be turned into fat or used as energy, protein can be turned to glucose and the cycle goes on… it doesn’t work in reverse order). Now, if you eat 30 grams of carbs, your body won’t produce as much insulin as it would if you ate 100 grams of carbs. A molten chocolate cake from chili’s would have around 280 grams of pure sugar. How bad do you think it would spike insulin production? Anyway, back to the subject.
When insulin is active in the body, it inhibits lypolisis (releasing fatty acids from fatty tissue, which is what you want if you want to burn fat) but, it also shuttles nutrients (protein and glucose) into muscle cells. This is good news if you want to build muscle. When insulin isn’t active, fatty acids can be released for energy, BUT your body would prefer to release amino acids from muscle tissue as an energy source and you cannot shuttle amino acids into muscle cells. This is where the debate of “carbs are good” or “carbs are bad” came from. The problem with retards is they think it’s a black or white thing. No, it’s not. As long as you keep insulin production under control (eating reasonable amounts of carbs according to your sensitivity) you can burn fat if you are in a deficit, and you can build muscle if you are in a surplus of calories.
The GI (Glycemic Index)
I don’t believe this is of much importance because overeating is overeating no matter what. But the GI scales measures how fast a carbohydrate would increase an insulin spike. Glucose (pure blood sugar) has a GI of 100. This means it will give a very high spike. The lower the number, the lower the spike. This is why eating oats (very low GI) is better than eating white rice (very high GI). Still, I don’t believe in this crap because when you eat a bunch of different foods in one meals (bread, oil, beef, cheese… etc) you are fucking up the whole glycemic index and you are slowing down absorption of that carbohydrate. The glycemic index is based on eat a certain carbohydrate on an empty stomach without eating anything else. This is bullshit. The main reason for insulin spikes is basically over eating carbs. Whether it be oats, or table sugar.
Fats
It’s very hard to avoid fats in a diet, and there’s a reason for that. YOU FUCKING NEED IT!!! no, fat will not make you fat. Over eating will make you fat. Basically, eating fats slows digestion, and it gives your body all the essential fatty acids it needs (depending on the source of fat in the diet). There’s not much to be said about fat when it comes to bodybuilding and fitness since it’s a simple nutrient that is there to:
1- Increase calories
2- Help in fat loss by providing essential fatty acids that would promote lypolisis
How to put it all togetherIf you eat too much protein, you will convert a lot of it to fat
If you eat too many carbs, you will produce more insulin than needed and fuck up your fat loss
If you eat too much fat, you will have a surplus of calories and you will gain fat
So, what to do?
You have to develop a system. There are things that are given, like protein should be in every meal. But, there are things you have to account for to add in the other nutrients:
1- your goal
If it’s fat loss, shoot for less calories than you burn. If it’s gaining mass, shoot for more calories. How do you know how many calories you burn in a day? I don’t know. But in most cases it is between 12 and 15 calories per lb of body weight. You should have a controlled diet (let’s say 2500 cals per day) and see if you gain or lose weight. Then you will know.
2- nutrient timing
You should know by now that your body will absorb the most nutrients post training, and during breakfast. These are optimal times for eating carbs. Other times of the day, your body will be in a “relaxed” state, and you won’t burn many calories. So, you can eat fat and protein at those times. BUT WAIT!!!! What if you need carbs? What will you do then? What if you need 300 grams of carbs per day? (you will know this by trial and error. No one can tell you how many of each macronutrient you need. You need to figure it out on your own or hire a trainer who is experienced). If that’s the case, you can’t eat 150 grams of carbs during breakfast, and 150 grams post workout! You will get fat! Why? Too big of an insulin spike with too many calories!! That’s 600 calories from carbs only!!! Even if you are in a deficit, you will not burn fat this way. Solution? Divide the carbs on other meals. The higher the fat content, the lower the carb content and vice versa.
3- macro nutrient breakdown
You hear me talking about ratios all the time. There is a difference between 2000 calories at 40% protein, 40% carbs, 20% fat as a total for the day, and 2000 calories with 40% protein, 40% carbs and 20% fat PER MEAL!!! The latter means every meal has to have the same ratio of macronutrients throughout the day. The first one means that you don’t have to eat the same ratios at each meal, but at the end of the day, when you add up all the grams of protein, carbs, and fats, you will come up with that ratio.
As I always say, there is no (1) right way of dieting. If you know the basics and how this shit works, you can come up with anything you want:
Ketosis
High carbs, high protein, low fat
High protein, moderate carb, moderate fat
High protein, low carb, high fat
Carb cycling
Cyclic keto diet
… etc
Each one has it’s pros and cons. It’s up to you to choose.
I don’t think I have to mention anything about “starvation mode” because it’s very well known right now. But just to rehash, you eat less calories than you need, your body will hold on to fat and the only weight you’ll lose is muscle. Don’t go below a certain caloric limit. It’s usually 8-10 cals per lb of bodyweight if you’re overweight, and around 6-8 if you’re obese.
Say, someone who is 220 lbs at 5’8, his lower limit would be 1320-1760 calorie. This is a number he should never reach. And for the same dude at 190 lbs, that number would be 1520-1900 calories. This is not exact science here, but you know what I mean.
Again, always start high on calories. Add 1000 calories to your lower limit and start from there. Starting on a higher caloric intake will always be better than starting on the lower side.
I hope that helps…
If you have any questions, please feel free to ask.
