Breakdown of Percentages In Food?

[reboundstudent]

So let's say you are going for overall health, and a reduction of body fat (if not necessarily weight.) How do you break down your nutritional intake?

I've seen the equation that you should be having 1/2-1 gram of protein for every pound of lean muscle mass. So for someone my size (122-123 lbs, about 24-26% body fat) that's roughly 90-100g of protein a day. Sounds good.

But what about fat and carbs? Is a good rule of thumb keeping carbs below 100g? Should fat make up 40% of your nutritional intake? Half?

What is your guys' philosophy on this?

[oystergirl]

Keeping carbs the lowest helps you to lose weight the fastest plain and simple because either you control your insulin and stop spiking your blood sugar, or your body starts to go into ketosis where it burns fat as fuel instead of glucose. For weight loss and to approach ketosis, you want your carbs closer to 50G a day or you can cycle them, eating more on your lifting days. I also do not eat fruit, don't count the carbs in my non-starchy vegetables and only count starchy carbs, but I limit them to one serving a day, like 1/2 cup rice or 1 small white peeled potato. I also do eat a large amount of fat in the way of cheese, lard, butter, bacon, cream, sour cream, guacamole, coconut oil, olive oil, etc. I COMPLETELY avoid gluten and polyunsaturated vegetable seed oils (PUFA) so i only eat a few nuts and not on a daily basis--say 2 brazil nuts every other day for selenium.

In the past 2 months I have dropped 14 pounds and 6% drop in my tape measure calculated body fat. I also lost 27 inches from my body measurements. I love this diet, but I also do intermittent fasting and kind of stick to the warrior diet (one big meal a day plus 2 cups of whole raw milk spread out in coffee or tea or as my post workout drink. A great place to see a primal diet is www.archevore.com which is based on paleo but adds in dairy and safe starches.

Hope that helps! Best of luck!

[Waldo]

Kinda via trial and error I learned that 40% carbs, 30% fat, 30% protein works best for me (via playing around with the numbers in myfitnesspal and what I could hit with my goals and eating habits). After the fact I came to learn that it was target ratios for the zone diet. It really is my old diet minus most sweets/excessive carbs plus a protein focus supplemented as needed with shakes as needed to hit my LBM. Works out to be almost precisely the zone #'s. Don't really know any of the other theory behind the diet, but those macro ratios work for me.

OG - In keytosis as described by the Atkins tree of diets, ketosis is when your brain starts to burn keytones for fuel instead of glucose. Your body always burns both, but the brain has a somewhat separate energy conduit, even in a low carb diet the brain will run on glucose until the body is nearly starved of carbs and has no other option. As far as the main BMR calorie furnace, body heat regulation, fat and glucose are burned as availaible and there is no special state where it is burning one or the other. The process of burning fat for fuel is a constantly ongoing process in the body.

[oystergirl]

Yes waldo, you are correct, and I appreciate the reminder. My sister, who is ULTRA low carb, like NO carb is constantly complaining that no matter what she always has a swing in her ketones (as measured by pee strips)....

[aj_rock]

Purposeful maintenance of ketosis isn't really all that necessary to lose weight, although some people swear by it. If your only goal is control of your blood sugar and insulin, you're probably better off just cutting out refined sugars. Ketosis tends to increase insulin resistance, so if you go keto for a few months and then try to eat carbs, your body won't have fun.

In the end, just eat less crap and eat less in general. The weight will come off.

[Summer827]

Kinda via trial and error I learned that 40% carbs, 30% fat, 30% protein works best for me (via playing around with the numbers in myfitnesspal and what I could hit with my goals and eating habits). After the fact I came to learn that it was target ratios for the zone diet. It really is my old diet minus most sweets/excessive carbs plus a protein focus supplemented as needed with shakes as needed to hit my LBM. Works out to be almost precisely the zone #'s. Don't really know any of the other theory behind the diet, but those macro ratios work for me.

My experience is similar to Waldo's, though it wasn't really intentional. I track what I eat on myfitnesspal. I'm a former low-calorie eater and probably consumed about 50-60 grams pro/day in the past. My goals are to change my body composition and I'm hoping that I'm adding muscle with heavy lifting. To this end, for now I am eating at a maintenance calorie level and 200-250 cal above that on strength training days. (It's early days yet--I'm only about a month in). Since focusing on increasing my protein intake (I aim for 30% of my calories from protein, but I'll take a gram per lb!) and adding more (non-starchy) vegetables I find I'm almost always eating 40% CHO, 30% fat, 30% protein. This is really satisfying for me, so I'm going with it for now!

[Gainsdalf the Whey]

I aim for 30-40% of my calories from protein and less than 30% from carbs. If I cooked my own dinner I'd do less than 20% from carbs, but my wife cooks, so I don't decide on that. Typically I allow a few more carbs on lifting days post workout.

[Morrigainz]

I'm on approx. 35% carbs, 30% protein, 35% fat. or that's what i'm aiming for. i have a hard time getting all my protein in without going WAY over on carbs and fat. And it's not a hard and fast thing...I use it as a general guideline. I'm on 1500 calories (or so) a day but considering trying to increase that for muscle gains. I'm 5'3" and about 135-140 right now, probably a lil more body fat than you.

[sashi]

@Waldo -- you mentioned somewhere that you pull your MFP info into a spreadsheet to generate better reports (I hate the MFP reports as I find them pretty useless). Is there an easy way to do this or do you just plug those numbers in manually?

[Waldo]

@Waldo -- you mentioned somewhere that you pull your MFP info into a spreadsheet to generate better reports (I hate the MFP reports as I find them pretty useless). Is there an easy way to do this or do you just plug those numbers in manually?

I actually posted my charts in my blog/workout log the other day if you want to see them (here).

All manual. There isn't that much raw data:

1: Weight (I go directly into my SS, half the time I forget to update MFP with this #)

2: Waist (Same as weight, I measure every other day though. This gets forgotten on MFP even more)

3: Calories In

4: Calories Out

5: Protein

The protein is a relatively recent addition. To enter all the historical data for it I made use of windows 7's side by side feature and MFP's online data.

I don't keep track of other macros/nutrients though. They are there in MFP should I need them for something in the future. Given how easy MFP is to use, I kinda like the fact that I have a record of every little thing I ate and all exercise going back months and will probably continue well past when I reach my fat loss target.

I do it daily each morning when I get up.

[starmadepath]

So, it may come as no surprise to you that I'm a nerd. And ever since I started getting into fitness (about 2 years ago now), I read pretty much anything I can get my hands on about the human body, exercise, and how your body actually converts food into energy, etc., etc. I don't however have any degrees on the subject or have passed any tests or anything, but I have gathered what I feel is a lot of really good information on the subject of food and diet, and I'd like to offer some of it in the hopes it will be useful to you. I apologize if you're already familiar with some/most of this information - I'm going to write it in a complete sort of way in case it helps any brand-newbies.

I always like to start at the beginning, so when I was doing my initial research into nutrition, etc., I found that when it comes to calorie counting and percentages of types of calories, the first thing to know is your basal metabolic rate (BMR). Most people can find an approximate through one of the several formula's out there to calculate it. Harris-Benedict was recommended to me by a nutritionist who said her experience was that it was the one that came the closest to the BMR of those who did the breathing test - which seems to be (with the right conditions!!) the most accurate accessible way to know an individual's metabolic rate. Harris-Benedict instructions can be found here: http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/harris-benedict-equation/

That gives you the overall number of calories you should eat in a day to maintain your current weight. This is what you break down. I always start with protein because that's really important to building and maintaining lean muscle. If you're trying to build muscle, you want to go towards the high end of the spectrum, which is 10-35%. Over 35% protein can create issues with kidney function (according to some sources). You could also start with one of the ways to calculate protein (though there are different schools of thought and different equations, such as the one you mentioned in your initial post), and then multiply the grams times 4 (1 g. protein=4 calories), and then use that to determine what your percentage is and how much you have left to make up.

Healthy fats (unsaturated fats) should account for 20-30% of your total intake. You should (if you haven't already) try to eliminate trans fats and go easy on the saturated fats because these - to put it simply - make your body process things funky. I'm not sure what others' experiences have been if they've cut these out or limited them, but I noticed a "feel good/function well" difference about a week or two after doing so).

Carbs are the easiest to vary to create caloric deficits or surplus to help you lose weight or gain muscle, so these should account for the rest of your calories - usually 45-55%. These should be healthy carbs, not highly refined flours, sugars, etc., but the really good ones like from sweet potatoes, seeds, vegetables, beans, brown rice, etc.

Ultimately, it's a little try and tweak to find out what exact balance works for you. Most things I've read recommend finding your balancing point first, and then adjusting up or down to gain/lose weight. If you want to build muscle, you have to eat more that you burn in a day (all healthy things, and it should be only enough to build the muscle). Most sources have recommended planning a gain phase then a loss phase because you'll inevitably gain a little non-muscle weight with the muscle, the trick is to keep it limited to mostly lean muscle weight by exercising appropriately.

To then convert percentages into grams (if you'd rather track that way):

1 gram protein=4 calories

1 gram fat=9 calories

1 gram carbohydrates=4 calories

Sorry for the length of this. So for those with shorter attention spans:

Recap!

1. Find out your basal metabolic rate.
   
2. Determine your protein intake percentage (usually between 10-35%) based on your particular goals.
   
3. Determine your healthy fat intake (usually 20-30%).
   
4. Healthy carbs account for the rest (usually 45-55%). Remember that carbs include your healthy complex carbs as well as your fruits and vegetables.
   
5. Find your balance point (maintenance calorie intake, where you neither gain or lose weight).
   
6. Adjust to create a deficit (lose weight) or a surplus (build muscle). Find what works best for your body through trial and error.
   

* These percentages are conventional wisdom, of course. (I'm reading the Primal Blueprint and heading that direction now, but this was my guide prior to heading Primal.)