Nutrition
Whether you’re an Athlete looking to reach certain performance goals, a Sculptor trying to gain or lose mass, or the everyday Natural trying to live a healthy, lengthy life, the facts are the same. Your paths may vary, but the rules of the road are universal.
Your muscles will only grow if they have the necessary resources. What resources? We’ll get into that, but protein should have been the first thing to come to mind.
Those resources are mostly put into use during your sleep.
The most effective way of losing fat is by burning more energy than you use.
You must drink water. You’ll be using and losing a lot of it.
We won’t be getting into specific diet plans here, for they vary too much depending on your breed. However, let’s discuss the important micronutrients and macronutrients. Before we dive in, let’s tackle the C-word.
Calories
Calories are difficult to explain. For the purpose of simplifying, let’s put it this way: a calorie is a measurement of energy potential. The body requires energy to carry out activities, thus why food—our main source of calories—is so important. The food we consume is converted into energy, based on the amount of calories the food (or drink) has. Some of this energy is used by the body; the remaining energy is stored by the body for future or emergency use, in the form of fat. Therefore, one of the keys to losing fat is using more energy (burning more calories) than you eat (intake from food).
Caloric deficit + exercise = less fat
That’s the magic formula. Let’s say you require 2500 calories a day to maintain your weight. In order to ensure you burn fat, you ought to eat less than your necessary caloric intake in order to lose weight. That’s part one of the equation above: a caloric deficit. Part two, exercise, ensures that you burn even more energy/calories. Assuming you need 2500 calories to maintain your current body weight, let’s fill in this equation.
2000 calories (you ate 500 calories less than needed) + burned 300 calories running = 1700 calories
You are going to end up needing roughly 800 extra calories to maintain your body weight. Now, due to the insufficient calories/energy in your diet—in addition to the energy lost to exercise—your body has to go into its emergency reserves to make up the difference. The emergency reserve is stored fat; simply put, this is how fat is burned. Therefore, watching your caloric intake is important, whether you’re trying to lose weight (deficit) or gain weight (surplus). That’s the simplest explanation possible. There are other factors, but that can be discussed with your coach in detail.
Keep in mind: 1 gram of protein contains 4 calories; 1 gram of carbohydrate contains 4 calories; 1 gram of fat contains 9 calories. Therefore a gram of carbohydrate found in pasta has the same amount of calories as a gram of carbohydrate found in a piece of cake. Thus eating healthy foods isn’t the only thing to consider when trying to lose weight, for instance. How much you eat is equally as important; you should monitor your caloric intake.
Protein
Protein breaks down into amino acids: the building blocks of muscle. You need protein, regardless of your breed. Some will need more protein than others, but regardless of the magnitude of the necessity, it’s important for everyone.
Amino acids serve as the single most important resource for the repairing of our muscles. If your diet lacks the necessary protein to repair your muscles, regardless of whether you’re trying to gain muscle or not, you will see no muscle growth. Exercise will increase the body’s demand of amino acids (via protein). Athletes especially need a high-protein diet, given their daily strenuous activities.
Some foods are a better source of protein than others. Among the best sources are the following:
Beef
Chicken
Turkey
Fish (Shrimp, Salmon, Tuna, etc.)
Eggs
Spinach
Broccoli
Lentils
Peas
Mushrooms
Beans (Kidney, etc.)
Nuts (Almonds, Peanuts, and Cashews)
Vegetarians will need to keep a close eye on their protein intake, putting more emphasis on vegetables high in protein such as spinach and such. Meeting your protein demand isn’t impossible as a vegetarian, but it is certainly more challenging.
Carbohydrates
Let’s throw something out the window from the jump: carbs are not bad. In fact, you need them just as badly as you need protein. Whether you’re losing weight or gaining muscle, you absolutely need carbs. Carbohydrates are our main source of energy, and we cannot function (much less workout) without energy.
For starters, carbs help replenish our muscles’ glycogen stores. Glucose is the main source of energy for cells. Any leftover supply of glucose is first stored in the muscles and liver, in the form of glycogen. Whenever our body needs a sudden boost of energy or doesn’t receive enough via our diet, it channels its glycogen stores, breaking down glycogen back into glucose to fuel our cells. The remaining glucose gets stored as fat.
There are two types of carbs: simple and complex. The terms simple and complex describe the chemical structure of the carbohydrates. Remember: simple is bad, complex is good. Complex carbohydrates take longer to break down, whereas simple carbs are broken down fairly quickly in comparison. Carbs consist of sugar, fiber and starch. Fiber and starch are complex carbs; sugars are simple carbs.
Simple carbs are usually higher in sugar and lower in fiber, compared to complex carbs that are usually higher in fiber. Fiber is extremely important, and this alone is huge when evaluating the two. Fiber is extremely important due to the benefits it provides the body with. Fiber can help decrease blood cholesterol levels and reduce the risk of heart disease. Fiber also helps with digestion, decreasing the chances of constipation as well as gastrointestinal disorders. Fiber helps the diabetic in that it slows the rate at which sugar enters the bloodstream. It also may help psychologically, given that it helps you feel fuller on fewer calories.
Here’s the deal: simple carbs are a very quick source of energy, due to the body’s ability to break them down so easily. This is both good and bad, one would think. It’s good for that purpose, which will be on rare occasions: a needed, quick energy boost. However, due to Insulin, that isn’t exactly the case (we’ll touch on that more below). It’s bad because that’s likely never the case. Complex carbs digest slower, thus providing the body with a slow, consistent source of energy over a long period of time. This is a more realistic necessity, given that you’re going to need all of your daily energy throughout the entire day, as opposed to just a few hours after you eat. In essence, all carbs are eventually broken down to glucose, whether it comes from something healthy (complex, such as vegetables) or something crappy (simple, such as cake); the difference is how quickly or slowly they break down.
Simple carbs are mostly used to enhance the taste of food or preserve processed food. For this reason, they tend to provide little of anything, beyond calories. Take for instance a can of Pepsi versus two slices of whole grain bread. The can of Pepsi contains roughly 150 calories, 0 grams of protein and fiber, and no vitamins. The label will read “corn syrup, fructose,” and other ingredients added for the purpose of taste. Meanwhile the two slices of bread, complex carbs with roughly the same amount of calories, will also contain about 6 grams of protein, 4 grams of fiber, as well as some vitamins. See the difference? Complex carbs have more to offer and digest slower, making them generally better.
A great source of [complex] carbs: beans, broccoli, apples, sweet potatoes, quinoa, corn, whole grains, etc.
A bad source of [simple] carbs: table sugar, soda, juice (that isn’t naturally juiced), cereal, cookies, baked goods (cake), etc.
Insulin
If you’re wondering where FAT is, be aware that in order to fully understand carbs, we also need to understand Insulin. We’ll get to the fat soon.
Insulin is a vital hormone produced by the pancreas to control the level of sugar in our blood. When we eat food, our food is broken down—carbs turning into sugar (glucose). Glucose is the main source of energy for our cells. However, our cells cannot absorb glucose without Insulin. Insulin attaches to our cells and signals them to let glucose in to be used for energy. Without the presence of insulin, sugar (glucose) levels can reach high levels in our blood, which is unhealthy.
Folks with diabetes deal with this issue directly. Depending on the type of diabetes they have, their bodies are either incapable of producing [any/enough] insulin or are resistant to insulin. For this reason, diabetics are more susceptible to obesity. Food that they eat may turn into glucose and not end being used/burned by the body. Such glucose is stored as fat, of course. This is why simple carbs are especially dangerous for diabetics, given the sudden spike of sugar in the bloodstream.
But, what about for those who aren’t diabetics? Well, insulin still plays a vital role in our quest for peak health. Whenever we eat simple carbs, they are quickly broken down and the glucose enters our bloodstream just as quickly (which is bad). This sudden spike in sugar within our blood causes the body to overreact. The pancreas is informed to secrete an excess amount of insulin and suddenly you have a spike in insulin in your bloodstream too. However, your cells will only need so much glucose for energy at any one time. Thus, a chain reaction occurs. Insulin overreacts and tries to take as much of the sugar out your blood as possible, turning it into glycogen to store it away for later use. That’s great in theory, but it ends up overdoing the job, leaving your blood sugar levels lower than normal. This is what causes a sugar crash. It’s why you can often feel sluggish or sleepy after eating cake or any sort of extremely unhealthy food.
Let’s Recap
Simple carbs are quickly broken down into sugar and released into the blood stream. This causes blood sugar levels to rise well beyond the normal.
The spike in blood sugar causes the pancreas to secrete an excess amount of insulin. The insulin, in an attempt to normalize levels, ends up lowering your blood sugar well below normal. Insulin takes most of the sugar and turns it into glycogen for storage.
The sudden drop in blood sugar eventually leaves the cells with too little energy and you feel not only sleepy and tired, but also hungry.
The sudden absorption of glucose leaves us feeling hungrier than we actually are, throwing us into a vicious cycle. If you eat something unhealthy (simple carbs), you’ll likely still feel hungry and continue to eat more. Plus, much of that glucose goes unused and is stored as glycogen. This is important for a few reasons. Firstly, we do not burn much fat during this period. In fact, we burn the most fat during our sleep. Why? Well, our stomachs are empty and because we aren’t digesting food, there isn’t much sugar in the blood. With blood sugar levels low, the body turns to breaking down fat for energy. And despite the fact that we’re sleeping, the body still needs energy during that state. Thus, the presence of too much insulin in the blood is detrimental, which is caused by simple carbs. Complex carbs break down slowly, and thus the secretion of insulin is also slow. And, remember, the lack of insulin is also a huge issue, for our cells cannot use glucose without it and glucose is eventually stored in the body as fat.
Insulin is great, when it’s used just enough. No insulin—or too little of it—is dangerous, as our body struggles to use glucose for energy, storing it as fat. Too much of it makes us unproductive and susceptible to eating more than we should. Just enough insulin—by eating complex carbs—is just right.
