Here is a short summary:

1. Anyone who says that calories don't matter is completely untrustworthy. But anyone who claims that calories are all that matter is even more untrustworthy.
2. Balance your metabolism and only then worry about calories if you need to. Hunger, energy and cravings are crucial to understanding your metabolism and working with it rather than against it.
3. The combination of sugar, fat and salt will short-circuit your appetite centers and turn that "cheat meal" into a cheat week or worse.
4. The idea that a calorie surplus will always lead to an increase in body fat and a calorie reduction will always lead to fat loss is not accurate.
5. The standard "eat less, exercise more" approach to dieting results in a loss of about 20 to 50% of lean tissue.
6. The quality of the food you eat can directly affect the future efficiency of your metabolism.

I'm on this health and fitness market analysis thing. There are all kinds of successful authors, medical professionals, health bloggers and other experts in attendance. It's not long before I find myself in a small group discussion about calories and weight loss.

There's the "calories are everything" camp and the "hormones are everything" camp. I think to myself, "This is just like debating which is more important to driving a car, the steering wheel or the gas pedal." It borders on something ridiculous. I watch them silently for a while and then ask a question: "Just out of interest, what would you guys recommend to a client trying to lose weight?"

Suddenly there's a consensus. Everyone agrees that the diet would consist mostly of protein and vegetables, that training with weights would be the dominant form of activity, and that sleep and stress management are crucial. Then I asked, "why the higher protein intake? Why not carbohydrates? Both nutrients provide the same amount of calories. And why choose training with weights over cardio? Cardio would burn more calories. And why do we emphasize sleep and stress management? Neither of those have calories."

And from there, the discussion spirals out of control again, with the calorie counters and the calorie deniers taking their positions. It's a shame. They didn't understand what I was getting at.

Is a calorie the same as a calorie?

Anyone who says that calories don't matter is completely untrustworthy. But anyone who claims that calories are all that matter is even more untrustworthy.

There are two things that are necessary for continuous, sustained fat loss: a calorie deficit and a balanced metabolism. Anyone can lose weight for a while, but if you do it the wrong way, you risk putting all that weight back on, as 95% of dieters do. And you'll probably gain even more fat than you originally had. This happens to 66% of all dieters.

But why? Most people believe that metabolism works like this:

Cut calories → Lose weight → Have a balanced metabolism

But the whole thing works as follows::

Achieve a balanced metabolism → reduce calories naturally → lose weight without effort

Calories are a part of both equations - it's the degree of their importance that differs. To understand how this works, you need to understand what I call the 3 Laws of Metabolism. These are just general guidelines, but I refer to them as laws because of their central importance in understanding metabolism.

The law of metabolic compensation

If you eat less and exercise more, then you will find it easy to generate a calorie deficit, but you will also create an unbalanced metabolism. This is one of the best understood and least controversial aspects of weight loss research. Eat less and you'll get hungry. Exercise more and you get hungry and develop cravings. Do both to an extreme degree and your motivation will dwindle and your energy will plummet.

Something else that will happen is that your metabolic rate will slow down. In the field of weight loss research, this is called adaptive thermogenesis, which varies greatly from person to person. Scientific research suggests that this slowing of the metabolic rate averages around 300 kcal, but can be as high as 500 to 800 kcal for some and very low for others. This is not just the result of a loss of body mass. A person who weighs 90 kilos and is dieting burns on average 300 kcal less than a person of the same weight who is not dieting.

Let's say you come to my clinic and ask me for help with fat loss. I use the calorie-only approach and tell you that you need to reduce your daily calorie intake by 500 kcal through a combination of reduced food intake and more exercise. You follow my instructions and lose weight during the first few weeks.

Then the law of metabolic compensation comes into play. You start to feel hungry all the time. Your energy levels drop and become less predictable. You start to develop nighttime cravings for salty, fatty and sugary foods. But you have an iron will and just live with it. But then adaptive thermogenesis comes into play. And let's say that you're one of those people who is highly adaptive and that your metabolism slows down by about 500 to 800 kcal per day.

Now you not only stop losing weight, but you might even start gaining weight. Not to mention, you're perfectly primed to start a three-month binge as your metabolism makes you crave salty, fatty and sugary foods that are high in calories.

At this point, you have a choice of options. You can redouble your efforts and make things worse. You could just give up and go back to your normal diet, which would cause you to bloat like a yeast dumpling. Or you can try to approach things a little more intelligently by first trying to balance your metabolism.

A balancing of the metabolism through an assessment of the HEC

I hope you've realized why a "calories first approach" can get some people into trouble. It's easy to see why such an approach is appealing. Calories are easy because you can count them. And when you reduce calories, you'll usually see some short-term benefits. The initial results are tempting and keep many dieters on track.

You can think of it like a metabolic credit card. You get some short-term credits, but there is long-term interest that you have to pay later. Hunger, Energy and Cravings (which I also refer to as HEC) is the key to understanding your metabolism and how to work with it instead of against it.

If your HEC is under control, then you can be pretty sure that your metabolic system is balanced. And if it is, then it will be easier for you to achieve a calorie deficit without having to exert yourself. So it's not about cutting calories, it's about balancing your metabolism first and then taking care of the calories if you need to.

Different calories affect the HEC in different ways. The differences between a donut and a chicken breast illustrate this point quite well. Both have 250 kcal, but which of the two foods is more likely to keep the HEC under control? And yes, reliable human intervention studies have shown that replacing equal amounts of carbohydrate calories with protein calories results in greater weight loss, greater fat loss, better maintenance of muscle mass, and less risk of regaining lost weight.

I'm not the guy who's going to bombard you with a huge amount of obscure study references that vaguely support what I'm saying. I'm going to give you a very good reference from a highly respectable journal and one that will quickly bring you up to speed on the law of metabolic compensation. This study validates pretty much everything I just said.

Calorie combinations

Another part of metabolic compensation is the way in which calorie combinations affect HEC. An evolving understanding is the way in which the combination of sugar, fat and salt (the so-called fast food diet) short-circuits your appetite centers. Research conducted with animals shows that these food combinations not only increase food consumption at the current meal, but also cause increased cravings for the same combination of high-calorie foods at future meals.

So a 250 kcal doughnut will not only make you want to eat more doughnuts now, but it will also cause cravings for more doughnuts in the future. There is no reason to suggest that this is not also the case in humans. This could explain the regular observations of my clinical patients who eat cheat meals and then find themselves in the middle of a cheat week during which they are unable to regulate hunger, energy and cravings.

The law of metabolic multitasking

The body is not very good at multitasking. It likes to either burn or build, but not both. There are some exceptions to this rule, but the two big exceptions are beginners and those using anabolic hormones.

Another name for this law is the law of metabolic demand. The body responds to what you expose it to. This is another important insight regarding the calorie argument. The idea that excess calories always lead to an increase in body fat and calorie restriction always leads to fat loss is not accurate. You can reduce your calories and lose weight, but the weight lost does not necessarily have to be mostly body fat.

Scientific research shows us that the standard "eat less, exercise more" approach to dieting results in 20 to 50% of the weight lost being lean body mass (water, glycogen, muscle). This is important because the basal metabolic rate (BMR) is responsible for over two thirds of the calories burned at rest and over half of your basal metabolic rate is determined by your muscle mass.

So you can increase your calorie intake and gain weight, but that weight doesn't necessarily have to be all fat. You could also build lean tissue (water, glycogen, muscle) instead, and if you do this, you'll be doing your metabolism a favor. The demands you place on your body will determine whether excess calories become fat or muscle and whether a reduction in calories will result in a loss of fat or muscle.

This is the reason that all these experts agreed that training with weights should be the dominant form of activity during a fat loss program. It is the only type of exercise that can result in extra calories being used to build muscle rather than fat. However, it is not a form of exercise that results in high calorie expenditure.

There is a study that illustrates this point quite well. It was published in April 1999 in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition and looked at two groups of subjects on identical low-calorie diets. One group performed an aerobic exercise program (walking, cycling, jogging four times a week). The other group performed resistance training three times a week and did not perform any aerobic exercise.

After 12 weeks, both groups had lost weight. The group that performed aerobic exercise lost 37 pounds, of which 27 pounds were fat and 10 pounds were muscle. The group that performed resistance training lost 32 pounds, of which 32 pounds were fat and 0 pounds were muscle. When the resting metabolic rate was examined, the scientists found that the group that performed aerobic exercise burned 210 kcal less per day than when they started the diet, while the group that performed resistance training increased their metabolic rate by 63 kcal per day.

What you do has a direct impact on whether a calorie equals a calorie. You can't separate calories from lifestyle.

The law of metabolic efficiency

There is no such thing as a perfectly efficient machine and the human body is no exception. This is the second law of thermodynamics at work. As an aside, many cite the first law of thermodynamics to prove that "a calorie is a calorie." The truth, however, is that the first law of thermodynamics does not apply to open systems like the human body. The second law of thermodynamics does, however.

Here is a highly simplified example to illustrate this: Diesel vs. regular unleaded gasoline. Both fuels have different efficiencies. Drive a diesel car and you will be able to travel more kilometers per liter of fuel. With diesel, the energy is converted more efficiently into motion and less energy is lost in the form of heat. Regular unleaded gasoline is less efficient because more energy is lost in the form of heat.

Protein is like unleaded gasoline - more of its energy is lost in the form of heat. Carbohydrates are more like diesel - less energy is converted into heat. And fat? Fat is the most efficient of all macronutrients.

Both carbohydrates and protein provide 4 kcal per gram, but your body will be able to use fewer of these calories if you burn protein instead of carbohydrates. And yes, this has been scientifically studied and proven. Replace a certain amount of carbohydrates with the same amount of protein and you will see your body temperature rise and you will lose more weight.

Protein is not only less efficient and more thermogenic, it is also more satiating. And it is more likely to result in maintaining your muscle mass in the context of a calorie deficit. This means that it is one of the best tools we have at our disposal to control all three laws. So is 4kcal in the form of protein the same as 4 kcal in the form of carbohydrates? No!

POPs and gut flora

This discussion would be incomplete without considering two other aspects of metabolism that influence its efficiency: POPs and gut flora. POPs is an acronym forpersistent organic pollutants. These toxins are found in the air we breathe, the food we eat and the water we drink. They accumulate in the body and are stored in fatty tissue.

When we lose weight, these toxins are released from our fat and make our metabolism more efficient at storing nutrients. (Remember, for weight loss you want a less efficient machine that releases a lot more heat). They do this because they short-circuit our metabolic hormones - and in particular our thyroid hormones. These compounds have even been shown to have a stronger correlation with weight regain than the hormone leptin.

This calls into question the wisdom of not paying attention to food quality. The quality of the food you eat can directly influence the future efficiency of your metabolism. These compounds also accumulate in the fat of the animals we eat. A lower fat diet and organic meat could play a role in future fat loss attempts.

And then there is the issue of gut flora. Gut flora is a term we use in the functional medicine world to describe the population of bacteria that lives in our gut (aka probiotics). There are more bacteria living in your gut than your body has cells. Scientific research has shown that certain colonies of bacteria affect the efficiency with which we digest and absorb calories.

You can think of these bacteria as an annoying friend that steals French fries from your plate. These bacteria reduce your calorie intake because they rob you of energy. This is a very exciting area of research. A twelve-week study saw significant weight loss (2 pounds) and a significant reduction in waist circumference (more than an inch) when a probiotic supplement was added to the diet. Not a bad result for not having to do more than swallow a few bacteria every day.

The right questions

So the question "is one calorie equal to one calorie" is not the right question. The right question is how important calories are in the short-term and long-term fat loss equation and what other factors influence how calories are consumed and stored. If we want to work with our metabolism instead of against our metabolism, we need to understand that quantity and quality are inseparable and linked.

References

1. Tackling overweight and obesity: does the public health message match the science? PUBMED 23414295
2. Medicare's search for effective obesity treatments: diets are not the answer. PUBMED 17469900
3. "A calorie is a calorie" violates the second law of thermodynamics. PUBMED PMC506782
4. A free-choice high-fat high-sugar diet induces changes in arcuate neuropeptide expression that support hyperphagia. PUBMED 20029382
5. January 2007 issue of Sports Medicine (vol. 37 # 1)
6. Effects of resistance vs. aerobic training combined with an 800 calorie liquid diet on lean body mass and resting metabolic rate. PUBMED 10204826
7. Postprandial Thermogenesis Is Increased 100% on a High-Protein, Low-Fat Diet versus a High-Carbohydrate, Low-Fat Diet in Healthy, Young Women. JohnstonThermogenesis2002
8. Dietary protein - its role in satiety, energetics, weight loss and health. PUBMED 23107521
9. Thermogenesis and weight loss in obese individuals: a primary association with organochlorine pollution. PUBMED 15148504
10. Regulation of abdominal adiposity by probiotics (Lactobacillus gasseri SBT2055) in adults with obese tendencies in a randomized controlled trial. PUBMED 20216555

By Dr. Jade Teta

Source: https://www.t-nation.com/diet-fat-loss/a-calorie-is-sometimes-not-a-calorie

10 ways to make diet foods tastier

A quick summary

1. Remove the calories from your peanut butter while still getting the same flavor for desserts, sauces and dips by using defatted peanut flour.
2. Replace bland, low-carb pureed cauliflower with pureed acorn squash.
3. Fry "boiled" eggs, make ketchup without sugar and cook bacon in the oven instead of frying it in a pan.
4. Make chicken tastier with mustard and prosciutto. Occasionally swap your oatmeal for hot rice cereal... while you sleep.
5. Use peppermint essential oil to reduce your cravings. Use avocado cream for a new flavor twist on your low-fat protein sources

Forget salad

"I need to eat healthy and lose some weight, but I just don't like salad. Besides, I don't have time to cook."

We hear this all the time and ask ourselves the following:

Why do most people think that eating healthy is synonymous with bowls full of leaves and twigs? And why do others think that cooking requires hours of preparation?

It's time to look beyond the edge of the salad bowl. Here are some ingenious ways to incorporate a variety of healthy foods into your diet.

1. bake your ham and eat it with bland meals

Harvard nutrition expert Mat Lalonde has redefined the term nutrient density by considering nutrients that are critical to human health. Fortunately, pork is high on the list.

So here's your excuse to eat more bacon.

Tired of half-burnt, half-raw bacon dripping with fat? Then bake your bacon - especially if you like it crispy. And as an added bonus, you don't have to bend over a splattering pan with this unconventional method of preparation.

1. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees.
2. Take an oven dish with a rack, line it with baking paper for easier cleaning and place the rack on top.
3. Place the bacon on the rack (turkey bacon also works...if you absolutely have to).
4. Put the whole thing in the oven and set a timer for 20 minutes. Depending on your oven and how crispy you like your bacon, it may take 17 to 23 minutes for your bacon to be ready.

If you make some bacon in advance on Sunday, you will have a supply for the whole week. A strip of bacon added to a "diet meal" can make a significant difference in terms of satiety.

2. the solution for peanut butter addicts

How many servings are in a jar of peanut butter? Just two...if you're addicted to peanut butter. Fortunately, peanut butter cravings can be satisfied with defatted peanut flour - minus a large amount of calories and fat.

You don't have to follow a low-fat diet to use defatted peanut flour. You just have to love peanut butter so much that it only makes sense to remove the oil and excess calories.

What's left is a peanut-flavored powder to which you just need to add some water and salt to make a substitute for peanut butter that you can also cook and bake with. Here are 5 things you can try with defatted peanut flour:

1. Use it as a high-protein and gluten-free flour for baking bread, cookies and waffles.
2. Use it to thicken Asian sauces and add extra flavor to Asian dishes.
3. Mix it with oatmeal and protein powder for a delicious breakfast.
4. Mix it with water and a pinch of salt to make a light version of peanut butter.
5. Mix it with sliced frozen bananas, vanilla protein powder and unsweetened almond milk to make peanut butter banana ice cream.

You will probably have noticed that no quantities for peanut flour have been given above. This is because peanut butter is not often used as a baking ingredient. Experiment. For soups, creamy desserts and other dishes, use as much peanut flour as necessary to achieve the desired consistency and flavor.

Tip: Forget the sugared stuff you occasionally find in supermarkets. It is overpriced. Buy the bulk pack online, which only contains one ingredient: Peanuts.

3. prepare ketchup for adults

Here's the secret to making the same old proteins new and delicious: Sauces, dips, dressings, condiments and garnishes.

Here's a recipe for rustic ketchup that tastes like it's actually made from tomatoes and not from a candy store:

1. Mix 200 grams of tomato paste (not tomato sauce) with 2 to 3 tablespoons of vinegar. Apple cider vinegar is best, but any vinegar will do.
2. Add a quarter cup of water and mix until there are no more lumps.
3. Season the ketchup with a little mustard flour, cinnamon and salt. You can also use cayenne pepper, cloves and spice mixes.
4. Place the finished ketchup in the fridge for half an hour.

If you compare this ketchup to regular ketchup overloaded with sugar, you probably won't like it. But if you think of it as a true original version of ketchup, you'll love it.

4. acorn squash, the ultimate pureed carbohydrate

Are you in a fat loss phase right now? Your best tool is food that fills you up and that you can enjoy every bite of. That's exactly what you can achieve with pumpkin...if you prepare it right.

Try pureed acorn squash. It tastes like sweet, pureed potatoes with a hint of onion and makes pureed cauliflower look old in terms of flavor. Yes, acorn squash contains carbs, but it will fill you up before you have a chance to eat much of it.

1. Cut an acorn squash in half and remove the seeds.
2. Bake the squash at 200 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes or until soft. Leave it to cool afterwards.
3. Remove the flesh from the skin with a spoon, put it in a saucepan and mash it with a potato masher.
4. Heat the pan and add the garlic powder, pepper and salt. Dilute with some chicken stock, water, unsweetened coconut milk or sour cream until you reach the desired consistency.
5. Eat this puree with any protein source that you're getting tired of seeing.

5. make your cooked food or chicken more exciting

There's a reason dieters eventually stop seeing skinless chicken breasts: they don't refine them. Yes, chicken breast is lean, but that also means it's drier than other meats. And no, chicken breast is not naturally packed with flavor.

The solution? Add things that make chicken breast less dry and more flavorful. Try Dijon chicken wrapped in prosciutto. Or even Dijon chicken without prosciutto.

1. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees.
2. Cut the chicken breast almost all the way through lengthwise.
3. Place the chicken pieces in an oven dish and season with salt and pepper on each side.
4. Brush the top of the chicken breast generously with Dijon mustard.
5. Roll each chicken breast in a slice of prosciutto.
6. Bake the chicken breasts in the oven for 15 to 20 minutes.

6. hot pumpkin rice cereal for breakfast

Breakfast can be more than oatmeal and egg whites. How about some nutrient-packed pumpkin?

Yes, this may sound strange, but we're talking about the stuff other people use to make pumpkin pie.

1. In your slow cooker, mix 3 cups of water and a cup of brown rice cereal. This will make 4 to 5 servings.
2. Stir in a 450 gram can of 100% pure pumpkin.
3. Add cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and other spices to taste or use a ready-made pumpkin pie spice mix.
4. Set your slow cooker to 6 to 7 hours on low before going to bed so that your breakfast is ready when you get up in the morning.
5. Stir in one to two scoops of protein powder after cooking or reheating.

Variations: Replace the rice cereal with rolled oats. Replace the pumpkin with two bananas or apples

7. protein-rich popsicles

You know you crave cool things in summer. You know you need more protein. And you know that berries are good for you. Why not combine all this into a delicious dessert?

1. Get yourself some cheap popsicle molds. If you don't have any on hand, you can also use small paper cups and plastic spoons as handles.
2. Mix 2 cups of Greek yogurt, 2 cups of berries of your choice, a third of a cup of canned coconut milk and a scoop of vanilla protein powder.
3. Pour this mixture into the ice cream molds and place them in the freezer for a few hours.

Variations: Replace the berries with pineapple or bananas. Use different flavors of protein powder. Use low calorie sweetener if needed.

8. hard-boiled eggs from the oven that don't cause bloating

Hard-boiled eggs are a convenient source of protein on the go. The problem, however, is that most people cook them incorrectly.

If your boiled eggs have a hay-green skin around the yolk, then they have been overcooked. It's okay to eat these eggs, but ferrous sulfur doesn't taste and smell as good.

Here is a practical solution that also makes cleaning up after cooking easier:

1. Preheat the oven to 160 degrees.
2. Place a dozen raw eggs in a muffin tray.
3. Bake the eggs for about 30 minutes.
4. After baking, place the eggs in a bowl of ice water. This will stop the cooking process - no more Hulk green eggs and no more sulfur bloat.

9. use peppermint essential oil

While not technically a food, essential oils are pretty much the coolest thing you can have on hand. But be careful, this is very powerful stuff.

One drop in a liter of water is plenty. Or add a drop or two of peppermint oil to your chocolate protein shake for a subtle after dinner flavor.

Why should you use it? Peppermint oil is known for its appetite suppressant effects. Of course, you should eat when you're hungry, but if you're just swiping around the fridge because you're bored, try some peppermint oil-infused water and relax somewhere else.

Peppermint oil also has a cooling effect on the palate and you may find that the snacks you were craving before are now a little less appetizing.

In addition to this, peppermint oil is said to boost energy and soothe stomach aches.

10. add avocado cream to everything

If tzatziki and guacamole had a baby, this is what it would look like.

Avocado cream goes well with fish, poultry, baked potatoes, vegetables and sandwiches.

1. Mash an avocado and mix in a quarter cup of sour cream.
2. Add generous amounts of dried dill, onion powder, garlic and salt for flavor.

Variations: Add 5 to 6 diced olives and half a can of coarsely chopped artichoke hearts.

Bonus. A low-calorie alternative to coffee cream

Coffee cream in coffee tastes delicious. It's also virtually free from lactose and carbohydrates. But a serving of 1 or 2 tablespoons is high in fat and calories. The problem is that these unsweetened variations of nut milk are not as creamy as coffee creamer.

Why not combine the two?

1. Take a bottle and fill it halfway with organic coffee creamer.
2. Fill the rest of the bottle with unsweetened cashew or almond milk.

If you want a ratio other than 1:1, simply add more or less of one of the ingredients.

And then enjoy a big, creamy cup of coffee.

From Dani Shugart, Chris Shugart | 04/21/15

Source: https://www.t-nation.com/diet-fat-loss/10-ways-to-un-suck-diet-food

"Bodybuilding is at least 80% nutrition" - Vince Gironda
"Nutrition is 100%, training is 100%, recovery is 100%" - Dorian Yates
"If you're not growing, it's probably your diet and not your training that's holding you back" - Dr. John Berardi

I remember when I first got serious about Olympic weightlifting: after every good training session I would reward myself with five burgers. And this wasn't just something I did occasionally. I practically always ate like this. It was therefore not surprising that, although I was quite strong, I basically looked like a pile of shit or the Michelin Man's fatter brother.

I trained hard - sometimes twice a day

I used pretty much every supplement known to mankind and still looked like a fatso moving weights. Which, of course, is exactly what I was. Why on earth wasn't I a lean, muscular Adonis? Was it a genetic curse? No, it was just old-fashioned lousy eating habits. One of my former clients, a 180 cm tall, 75 kilo field hockey player had the opposite problem: he trained like a maniac (I checked) and could also make reasonable strength gains (he once surprised the NY Rangers strength coach by easily power lifting 275 pounds) but he couldn't build an ounce of muscle. I suspected inadequate nutrition. He told me he was eating a lot, so I had him keep a food diary in which he was to write down everything he ate for a week. His eating pattern was exactly as I expected: he ate like a bird throughout the day, followed by a big meal in the evening. After this big meal he felt so full that he really thought he was eating a lot, but his average calorie intake was only 1700 kcal per day. This was a young man with a very fast metabolism who trained four days a week, twice a day (one training session with weights and one training session on the pitch). 1700 kcal was barely enough to keep him alive, let alone build muscle! I changed his diet and he was able to increase his weight from 75 to 90 kilos in less than a year.

The moral of this story is that if you are training hard and not building muscle, your nutrition plan (assuming you have such a plan) is not adequate. If you have the opposite problem of training hard but not being able to lose fat, then the reason is probably the same: your diet sucks. If your nutritional approach is not optimal for your goals, then you won't get the results you want.

With this information in mind, this article will show you the basics of good nutrition for your body composition (muscle gain and/or fat loss). Of course, knowing the basics is not enough. Maintaining a muscle-friendly diet is hard, hard work. In some ways, it's even harder than training: you can usually motivate yourself to train hard for an hour a few times a week. Diet is different. You have to stay disciplined 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Controlling your cravings and urges can be painful. Believe me, I know. It's not fun. After a hard day, when you're tired and stressed, that big pot of chocolate ice cream will start to look damn tempting. Proper nutrition can be rewarding, but the psychological price is high.

Having said that, if you're still willing to go that extra step on the road to your dream body, then you should definitely read on.

What are we actually talking about?

Understanding how to plan an adequate diet to improve body composition or build muscle requires a basic understanding of some fundamental concepts. My goal is not to give you a comprehensive course on every single component of a good nutrition program. Instead, I hope to give you enough information so that you'll be able to read a nutrition article or plan a nutrition program without feeling like you're lost in a foreign country.

Protein

Each gram of protein provides four kcal. The word protein comes from the Greek and means "the first" or "of primary importance". For bodybuilders and strength athletes, this nutrient is of primary importance because proteins are, among other things, the building blocks of muscle tissue. Protein is broken down into amino acids in the body and these amino acids are converted into muscle tissue through a process called protein synthesis or muscle anabolism (which comes from another Greek word meaning "to build").

Proteins (amino acids) make up most of the solid part of a muscle. About 20 to 25% of muscle is protein, 70% is water and other fluids, and the remaining 5 to 10% is muscle glycogen, minerals, intramuscular fatty acids and other elements. You do not need to memorize these ratios in detail. Suffice it to say that protein is the most important nutrient for muscle growth. No protein - no muscles.

How much protein is needed for maximum muscle growth?

Good question. Studies have shown time and time again that a high protein intake is associated with a more positive nitrogen balance and a higher rate of protein synthesis. In other words, the more protein you eat, the more muscle you build.

However, it's not quite that simple. At some point, the law of diminishing returns comes into play. Once you reach the maximum amount of protein your body can use to build muscle, any additional protein intake will stop increasing the rate at which you build muscle.

That sucks, right? Wouldn't it be great if all we had to do to build muscle was eat tons of protein? We'd all be 115 kilo defined monsters in no time! Even the women! Sadly, we are limited by our natural biochemistry when it comes to being able to use protein (amino acids) to build muscle.

Protein synthesis (the use of protein to build muscle) is heavily dependent on our hormones. Hormones are chemical messengers that circulate in our body and are responsible for our body "doing things." One of these "things" is the synthesis of protein. The hormones that are primarily responsible for stimulating this process include testosterone (the male hormone), growth hormone, insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1), insulin and cortisol.

Testosterone directly increases protein synthesis, allowing you to effectively utilize the protein you just ate. The more testosterone you have in your body, the more protein you can convert into muscle. This is the reason why bodybuilders and other athletes use injectable testosterone or synthetic hormones (steroids): by artificially increasing their hormone levels, they increase their body's capacity to use protein to build muscle.

Some people naturally have higher testosterone levels than others, which allows them to build muscle faster than others, especially if they consume more protein. But the fact is, if you're not using anabolic or androgenic steroids (and as a beginner you shouldn't be), then your body has a limited capacity to use protein to build muscle and testosterone is the primary limiting factor.

You may now be asking what about growth hormones. You might imagine that a substance called "human growth hormone" makes people grow. Well, this is also the case if you are a child, but growth hormones only have a mild anabolic effect in adults, meaning that growth hormones only slightly increase your capacity to build muscle. The hormone IGF-1, however, is highly anabolic. IGF-1 and growth hormones are produced in spurts (IGF-1 production follows a spurt of growth hormone production). As with other hormones, the amount of these hormones produced varies from person to person and this can be a limiting factor when it comes to building muscle.

Insulin is often referred to as the most anabolic hormone. This is because its main function is to tell the body's storage units to open up, suck stuff in and store it. The main storage units of the body are muscles, liver and fat cells and the "stuff" that is stored is the nutrients we eat (protein, carbohydrates, fat, etc.). Insulin opens these storage units, but each has its own level of sensitivity to insulin. The more sensitive a storage unit is, the easier it will open and store nutrients.

In an ideal world, our muscle cells would be super-sensitive to insulin, while our fat cells would be only slightly sensitive to insulin. This would certainly promote muscle gains and minimize fat gains. Basically, the more sensitive your muscle cells are to insulin, the greater your muscle building potential will be. The more sensitive your fat cells are to insulin, the greater your flab-building potential will be.

We'll come back to this concept later, but for now, it's enough to remember that the more sensitive your muscles are to insulin, the more amino acids you can store in your muscle cells and therefore the more new muscle tissue you can build.

Let's move on to cortisol

Cortisol is a hormone that inhibits muscle growth. But not only that - it can even reduce your muscle mass. Cortisol is what we call a catabolic hormone. Its role is to mobilize nutrients (release them from storage units) so that the body can produce more energy. This includes the muscles: Cortisol can break down muscle tissue into amino acids, which can then be converted by the liver into sugar (glucose), which serves as a readily available source of energy. This is what we call catabolism (sounds like cannibalism). Catabolism is the opposite of anabolism and for a bodybuilder this is a bad thing. So it seems like cortisol is a bad hormone.

Well, yes and no. Cortisol is actually necessary during exercise as it helps with energy production and increases the body's capacity to cope with physical stress. However, if cortisol levels remain chronically elevated after a training session, then the body remains in a catabolic state instead of entering an anabolic (muscle building) state. This often happens when people are under a lot of stress. Cortisol is a stress hormone that is released when stress levels rise. People who are exposed to a large amount of stress will therefore find it harder to use a lot of protein to build muscle, as their body is in a constant state of breaking down rather than building up.

As you can see, eating tons of protein will not necessarily mean that you will build more muscle. Excessive protein intake can also have another drawback: if protein is the dominant nutrient in your diet, then you run the risk of your body adapting to using protein as its primary energy source. If this happens, then your body will burn more protein for energy, resulting in less protein being available for muscle building purposes. The trick is to increase your protein intake to the point where you reach the maximum amount for optimal muscle growth.

How much is that exactly? As you probably understand by now, this is a very individual thing. However, most steroid-free exercisers will benefit from a protein intake in the range of 2.7 to 3.3 grams per kilogram of body weight. More than this is unlikely to lead to further gains. Protein is primarily found in animal products such as meat, fish, seafood, eggs, milk and cheese. And to make sure you get enough high-quality protein, you can also use a high-quality protein powder.

Carbohydrates

Carbohydrates are the first of the two energy nutrients. Each gram of carbohydrate provides 4 kcal. The main function of carbohydrates in the body is to provide a quick source of energy for physical and mental work. Carbohydrates can be stored in one of the body's three main storage units: in the muscles and liver in the form of glycogen, but also in the form of body fat. Carbohydrates are the body's preferred source of energy under most circumstances. So if there are sufficient amounts of carbohydrates in the diet, then it becomes difficult to force the body to use fat as an energy source. In other words, your fat will stay where it is if you eat a lot of carbohydrates.

Carbohydrates also cause the strongest insulin release of all three macronutrients (protein, carbohydrates, fat). The increase in blood sugar levels (carbohydrates are sugar) is the primary stimulus for insulin release. This can be both an advantage and a disadvantage: Insulin helps move protein and carbohydrates into the muscles (which is a good thing), but it can also stimulate fat storage (which is not so good). Furthermore, as long as insulin levels are elevated under normal circumstances, it is almost impossible to stimulate the release of fatty acids from fat cells. This means that fat loss is almost impossible as long as insulin levels are elevated. Remember that elevated insulin levels put your body into storage mode.

So elevated insulin levels are a good thing in certain circumstances (when you need to get nutrients into your muscles as quickly as possible), but most of the time elevated insulin levels are not desirable. The only two times you should eat a lot of carbohydrates (and thereby raise insulin levels) are at breakfast and immediately after a workout.

After waking up, the increase in insulin levels from breakfast will help you end the catabolic (muscle-depleting) state that comes from eight or more hours of fasting. After exercise, an increase in insulin levels will quickly transport nutrients to the muscles. This will initiate the recovery and muscle-building process while simultaneously ending the actions of cortisol. However, you should keep in mind that the amount of carbohydrates you should consume at these times will vary greatly depending on your goals and body fat percentage.

Any other time is not a good time to consume significant amounts of carbohydrates, as the resulting increase in insulin levels will have a negative impact on your body composition. Your insulin levels will remain elevated for up to 4 to 5 hours after a high carbohydrate meal, which can stall fat loss for this period of time. So not only will a high sugar meal add new fat to your fat stores, it will also effectively prevent you from using fat, turning you into a fat storing machine.

Even though carbohydrates are your body's preferred source of energy, carbohydrates are not essential in the same way that many amino acids and fatty acids are. This means that your body could function correctly even on a diet completely devoid of carbohydrates - the body would adapt to other energy sources and continue to function well.

There are many types of carbohydrates. Without going into too much detail, it should be mentioned that every carbohydrate from pure sugar to whole wheat is converted into glucose in the body. The main difference is the speed at which these carbohydrates are converted into glucose. The faster a carbohydrate is converted into glucose, the greater the insulin release will be (because more glucose enters the bloodstream at once). The rate at which a carbohydrate (or any other food) raises blood sugar is measured by the glycemic index (GI). Each food can be assigned a GI value and the higher this value is, the faster the food raises blood sugar levels. Even if this information is not perfectly accurate, it does give an indication of how much a given food will affect insulin production. However, you don't need to make a science out of this. If your goal is to improve your body composition, then the following rules apply:

• Carbohydrates that are a must: green vegetables (broccoli, cucumber, spinach, celery, asparagus, lettuce, etc.)
• Carbohydrates that can be eaten: other vegetables (except potatoes), berries (blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, currants, etc.)
• Carbohydrates for occasional consumption: other fruit
• Carbohydrates that should be eaten infrequently: brown rice, wholemeal bread, wholemeal pasta, semolina porridge, potatoes, yams
• Carbohydrates that should be avoided: White bread, pasta, oatmeal
• Carbohydrates that must be avoided: Cookies, cakes, sweets and other sugary foods

Fat

Each gram provides 9 kcal. Let me first mention that fat is not a bad thing. At least not all fats are bad. The "good" fats are the essential fatty acids - fatty acids that your body can't make itself but needs for optimal function. These fats must be supplied through food or in the form of supplements. These essential fatty acids fall into two broad categories: Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids. Most people consume plenty of omega-6 fatty acids in their diet, especially if they eat a lot of animal protein sources. However, a lack of omega-3 fatty acids is widespread in the USA and Europe, primarily due to the fact that fish consumption is generally quite low. Omega-3 fatty acids - especially the important fatty acids DHA and EPA - have numerous benefits for health and building a muscular body.

Omega-3 fatty acids

• Increase insulin sensitivity, which has positive effects on both muscle building (promoting the transport of nutrients to the muscles) and fat loss (reducing the amount of nutrients stored as fat).
• Increasing the use of body fat as an energy source - especially during training.
• Improving regeneration and function of the nervous system.
• Improve cardiovascular health by improving blood flow, reducing triglyceride levels and reducing the formation of plaques and blood clots.
• Reduce inflammation and promote healing.

In addition to the benefits associated with omega-3 fatty acids, fat consumption has other benefits. One of the main benefits is an increase in testosterone production. Cholesterol is the raw material for the production of our favorite hormone, testosterone. If you don't consume at least 20% of your total calories in the form of fat, then your testosterone production can drop. And as you should know by now, less testosterone means less muscle.

I'm not recommending that you stuff yourself with butter and lard with both hands or drink cups of cream - I'm just reminding you that reducing your fat intake too much can seriously sabotage your muscle building goals.

Fat is also required for the absorption of several vitamins (A, D, E and K) that are needed for optimal health. If your fat intake is too low, you may develop a deficiency in one or more of these vitamins.

The basal metabolic rate (BMR)

Your basal metabolic rate describes the amount of energy your body burns in 24 hours while doing absolutely nothing. If you were to sit on the couch and watch TV for 24 hours, you would burn this amount of calories. It is possible to estimate the basal metabolic rate using a formula. This is of course not 100% accurate, but this formula can give you a pretty good idea of what your body needs to function.

These formulas look like this:

• Men: BMR = 66 + (13.7 x weight in kg) + (5 x height in cm) - (6.8 x age)
• Women: BMR = 655 + (9.6 x weight in kg) + (1.7 x height in cm) - (4.7 x age)

As an example, let's take a 29-year-old man who is 175 cm tall and weighs 94 kilos:

• BMR = 66 + (13.7 x 94) + (1.7 x 175) - (6.8 x 29)
• BMR = 66 + 1287 + 297 - 197
• BMR = 1453 kcal

This man would burn 1453 kcal within 24 hours while doing absolutely nothing. Depending on your daily activities, your actual daily energy expenditure, i.e. the amount of calories you burn in the course of a day, will vary. You can estimate this amount by multiplying your basal metabolic rate by an activity factor.

• 0: inactive (you do nothing but watch TV and eat potato chips)
• 1.2: very light activity (desk job, no exercise, some walking)
• 1.4: light activity (no exercise, a job that involves some light physical work)
• 1.6: moderate activity (most of us: a job that is not physically demanding, but regular exercise)
• 1.8: high activity (daily exercise and a physically active job or lifestyle)
• 2.0: very high activity (training twice a day, sport + training or training and a very physically demanding job)

In our example, if our 1453 kcal man is moderately active, then his total daily calorie consumption would be around 2324 kcal (1453 * 1.6). This means that he needs to consume 2324 kcal per day to maintain the status quo (neither gaining nor losing weight).

You should remember that these are only approximate values. It's better than guessing, but it's only really accurate for "normal" people. For example, if you are a mesomorph (naturally very muscular and lean), then this formula tends to underestimate your calorie consumption by about 10%. It's still a useful formula, but it may need a few adjustments.

Another way to determine your total calorie consumption is to write down everything you eat for a week and then calculate your calorie intake. If you have neither gained nor lost weight during these 7 days, then you have basically consumed as many calories as you have burned. Even though this method is a little more precise, it can be a real pain, which is why most people stick to calculating via a formula and adjust their calorie intake depending on how their body reacts.

By Christian Thibaudeau | 11/05/07
Source: https://www.t-nation.com/diet-fat-loss/nutrition-for-newbies-1