Today we will conclude our discussion about macronutrients. We would like to provide an overview and give you our recommendations. We feel that our clients that use these targets do very well achieving their goals.
Keep in mind that these are our general guidelines for overall health. The real fun starts when your goals get to be more specific. You can think of your nutrition as a sound mixer, where you can slide the knobs up or down to get a more specific sound. In that same way, you can play with these general recommendations and move things up and down to achieve your specific goals.
We will try to be brief (not our strength, as you may have noticed). For more in-depth information, click on the links below. They will help you find more comprehensive information. Protein-
We like to think of protein as the building block of life. Protein helps build muscle mass, which is important, but also builds the myriad other things that our bodies need. We consider it to be the most important macronutrient to focus on for general health. Because of this, we want our clients to go big.
We recommend that our clients eat somewhere between .8 and 1.2 g of protein per day per pound of ideal body weight. We use the term “ideal body weight” to help dial-in more specific recommendations. If you are 400 pounds and wish to be 200 pounds, we use 200 g as the target. We do the same if you are 135 pounds, but you want to be 165 pounds. 165 should be the target.
If you are trying to lose weight and/or are you are not strength training (you SHOULD be strength training), then .8 of your target should be about right. If you are trying to gain muscle and/or you are straight training or you are just active in general, then 1.2 of your target will be closer for you. Protein can accumulate from lots of different sources, but animal products are by far and away the best source of protein that you can find. We recommend an animal-heavy diet. Carbohydrate-
Carbohydrates are a fast fuel that we need in times of stress. As we evolved, we encountered things that would occasionally want to kill us, like bears or other (rude) humans. Under that type of stress, the body can activate its innate stress response so that you can sprint away from danger. But such an event would have likely been occasional and very short in time.
We have no problem with carbohydrates in the diet. There is a reason why fruit tastes delicious to nearly everybody. Our bodies want us to find carbohydrates when they are available so that we can store energy. We rely on that stored energy in the form of fat when we have a hard time finding carbohydrates.
However, we do have two problems with carbohydrates when 1) the amount of carbohydrates that are available to us today has been multiplied, and 2) that most of us are stressed out constantly from our busy lives. These things hijack our system. We now see that many people eat carbohydrates all day, every day, several times a day. They are always hungry and are craving more and more. That is where we have our problems.
We recommend that you consume anywhere from 50 to 150 g of carbohydrate per day, as infrequently as you possibly can. We recommend that you eat most of your carbohydrates from unprocessed sources, as seasonally and as locally as you can. If you have a weight loss goal, try to be as close to 50 g a day as you can tolerate. If you are active or are looking to add muscle mass, your target might be much closer to the 150 g limit. Frankly, we do not see much need for people to eat more carbohydrate than 150 g a day. We do not see much success when people consume more than that. But when you want to indulge in a treat, be sure to find something you really love and make it count and keep it occasional
We call fruits and vegetables “free”. Have as many as you like. And we have tried to be as mindful as we can when we make that recommendation. Have as many as you like. If you like them and they feel good to eat them, then go for it. But we also do not think you need to force them the way most guidelines recommend.
Remember, there is no such thing as an “essential” carbohydrate. If you decided to never eat another one for the rest of your life, you would not die. Fat-
Fat is used by the body for many different things and we think the most important is for clean, efficient energy. While carbohydrates provide the type of energy that helps you not get eaten by a bear, fat is more efficient fuel for doing most of its other daily tasks. Fat also helps us stay satiated, helps us regulate our cholesterol and our hormones, helps us absorb certain vitamins, among many other things.
We believe the fat was improperly maligned in the 1950s and 60s. We think that the nutritional guidelines that encourage us to avoid dietary fat are best to be ignored, as they are not at all based on science.
We recommend that use choose your fat from natural sources. We like animal fats, like the fat that comes on a steak or ground beef, or butter, lard or fish oil. We also like fruit fats, such as olive, avocado and coconut.
Saturated fats are the best to cook with as they are the most stable when heated.
Monounsaturated fats are primarily oils such as olive oil or avocado oil. They can be heated up, briefly and if the temperature is low.
Polyunsaturated fats include omega 3 fish oils, which are great. They can also include vegetable oils, a misleading term that makes them sound healthy for you. They are absolutely not healthy for you.
Avoid all forms of vegetable oil, like canola, corn, soy, sunflower, safflower, and the hardened fake-fats like shortening or margarine. And avoid anything that is deep-fried, which virtually guarantees that you will be consuming the toxic mess of oxidize chemicals.
It is difficult to know exactly how much fat to recommend, so we will leave that up to you. You should have enough fat in your diet to have great energy, curb cravings for carbohydrates. We want you to keep your body and brain working all day with very little hunger. You do not need to avoid dietary fat.
We also believe that it is unnecessary to go out of your way to consume massive amounts of fat. Most of us want to burn off the body fat we have already stored up, rather than chugging an extra cup of olive oil.
Let the fat in your diet help you reduce your need to be constantly eating and snacking, meal prepping, shopping and cooking for hours every week, and help you avoid binging on potato chips every afternoon.
To us, this looks like a well-formulated plan to be healthy and happy and let you create your best life here at Boundless Body!