What Should I Eat? The Basics Of Nutrition
So now that we have covered a basic approach to your training, we are going to take the same look at nutrition. Nutrition is one of the most fought about and volatile regions of health. People take up their defenses, dig in and vigorously repel anything they deem as an attack on their position and lifestyle. While it would be impossible to cover the entire swath of nutrition research in one blog, we can sum up a few points.
The first thing to realize in nutrition is that the correct answer is often in what context. People often select a diet for a variety of reasons and to declare one “better” than another does a disservice to people’s individual goals and reasons. Some select a diet thinking of the impact their food has on their planet and environment. Some select a diet based on longevity and trying to increase their lifespan. Some people want to build more muscle, some want to lose weight. The point being is when evaluating nutrition research, you alway have to look for the context of the study and how the results can be applied.
For hypertrophy, or building muscle, the nutrition data points to a few key points. The first is that you need to be consuming 10-15% more calories than your body needs. In other words, you need to eat more than you expel. The body is unable to build more muscle if it does not have extra resources. If you are not calorie positive, it is very difficult to build more muscle. This is often not quite as high as many people think. While yes you can go higher, about the 15% range, you often see a greater percentage of the weight being added is body fat. The 10-15% range is optimal for adding the most amount of lean mass while keeping the amount of body fat added in check. From there, if you want to start breaking down your macro nutirents, you need 4-7g per kg of body weight of carbs per day, 1 g per kg of fat and 2-4g per kg of protein. Protein is vital because it contains what are called essential amino acids. To keep the biochem to a minimal level, there are 9 essential amino acids, meaning that the body cannot make them. So we must consume them in our diet. This is often a place where those who chose not to eat animal sources of protein struggle because the most complete sources of protein (meaning they have all 9 essential amino acids) come from animals. If you are not getting your protein from an animal source, make sure you are getting 700-3000 mg of leucine per meal. If you are getting your protein from complete sources, you will be fine. The last piece of eating for muscle building, is you want to eat as many whole foods as possible. This means not processed or artificially flavored or sweetened.
Eating for fat loss is even simpler than that. To lose body fat, if that is your goal, requires one condition, you have to be calorie negative. If you eat more calories than you take in, you will not lose weight. So the question is often asked: where does that weight go. To answer that, we have to think about what fat actually is. On the chemical level, it is a long string of carbons hooked together with energy. So when we consume less calories than we take in, the body uses some of that energy stored in fat and we exhale the carbon in the form of CO2. That was a long winded way of saying, to increase fat loss, rule 1: take in less calories than required; rule 2: exhale a lot. In a practical application, that is often the addition of a form of exercise into your life. “But what is the best form of exercise for fat loss?” The best form is the one that you like to do the most and can do well without becoming injured and will continue to do for a long period of time. That is as simple as losing fat needs to be. As with eating for hypertrophy, eating from a variety of whole food sources is always better for the body in the long term, and is recommended for those trying to lose weight.
These are the very basics of nutrition. Yes, we can add what feels like almost infinite amounts of complexity to nutrition but the first rule is always, what is your goal, and what is needed to help you achieve it.
