Macros and food choices

The big three macronutrients: Protein, carbs, fats…

Hello all, this will be one of the first write ups in the nutrition section of the site. In todays topic this is going to be aimed mainly at total beginners….. There is not overly much to macros and food choices. I think this is something people obsess over YET it is so simple. Like bodybuilding its so simple please stop overcomplicating it.

That doesn’t mean to say it is easy though. As I know from experience that that initial step of setting yourself macros and what foods to choose can be kind of daunting. But I’m hoping this topic can put your mind at ease.

Carbohydrates

Everyone loves carbs … but there’s such good reason for it. Not only does it taste great, offer satiety with certain food choices, but is fundamental to aid performance in the gym. Like protein, it has about 4 kcals per 1g of carbohydrate. Many recommendations on government sites recommend 50% of intake from carbs, and I would agree. In some instances, an even higher percentage may be warranted.

Carbs are used like stated for energy as a primary fuel source, and most stored in the form of glycogen via the conversion of glucose + insulin to glycogen. Equally, it can be reversed, and glucagon can convert glycogen to glucose again.

Now, when it comes to food choices for carbohydrates as this is the primary fuel source and likely in an offseason phase this amount will be high and continue to taper high you will want to find carb sources you: enjoy, digest well and offer the right speed of uptake at certain parts in the day.

Most meals you could use rice, potato, pasta, bread products like: bagels/toast/crumpets/ English muffins, cream of rice, oats. Most of these sources are generally relatively satiating, but if your lean as hell probably not haha!

Some parts of the day will potentially require faster digesting carbohydrate sources especially if you are an assisted athlete utilizing exogenous insulin. But even as a natural athlete post workout you are in a very insulin sensitive state … granted you train hard 😊 …. so, sources like jam, cereal, cereal bars are often seen in the post workout window for this reason. These are not very satiating so if dieting sources like these may not be ideal for hunger. But on the other end of the spectrum if you are struggling to get food in due to appetite these sources will often be lower volume whilst packing a punch with carb content.

Fundamentally, again it doesn’t just have to be chicken and rice 5 times a day! Find carb sources you enjoy digest well and suit your present hunger levels.

Protein

This is something that is obviously very important to any strength, performance, or aesthetic physique athlete. At its simplest form amino acids form different complexes to make up so many different parts of our body: Beta pleated sheets and alpha helices bla bla bla… What you need to know is that it is essential we have sufficient protein to match the demands of our body.

Most will know that protein contains 4 kcals per 1g of protein. Generally, as a rule of thumb 1g per pound of bodyweight is plenty enough for most individuals.

*Important to note this is based on direct protein not indirect* For example, if you weigh 170lbs make sure the minimum protein you are getting in is 170g from highly bioavailable protein sources.

What do I mean by bio-available?

Some proteins found in foods like bagels are not the same as that of protein in chicken. This is because lean protein sources ,such as chicken, have the full spectrum of essential amino acids. Furthermore, each protein serving should contain at least 3g of leucine to spike muscle protein synthesis at a mealtime.

Now food packaging most likely won’t tell you how much leucine is in a serving but a 30g serving of that bio-available protein we have spoken about is going to deliver 3g of leucine.

If you have ever looked at a bodybuilder’s meal plan and macros, 9/10 times I would imagine protein is higher than 1g/lb of bodyweight.

Why is this? - They are counting all protein even from bread sources, pasta, nut butter, rice as they do have some protein in which over the course of the day does add up. If they are in a dieting phase protein is shown to offer more satiety than that of other macronutrients, so this could be a dieting strategy.

And finally, some people just like high protein diets and have instilled in their head that a higher protein intake is better. Interestingly there have been a few studies that suggest if you were to create a surplus of carbs vs making a surplus of protein fat occural would be higher in carbs.

Protein sources I would recommend: Chicken, 5% mince, salmon, eggs, egg whites, steak fillet, venison, turkey, 0% fat yogurt, whey protein, fish, prawns I repeat you

DO NOT HAVE TO JUST EAT CHICKEN AND EGGS…

Its better, if current phase allows, to have a variety of different protein sources.

Fat

From my observation it is not uncommon to see predominantly high carb low fat diets for bodybuilders. From the many benefits of carbs outlined above I makes sense: optimise performance, satiety, and digestion.

But fats have so many benefits. So, yes in a dieting phase performance is key to retain muscle mass BUT in a surplus for males and females I am an advocate of introducing a good amount of fats.

This is because fats are important in the production of many hormones in the body. Fats from fatty fish and seeds and nuts will also help with total cholesterol. Increasing HDL and lowering LDL, 2 things that are often common issues in bloodwork. Plus… they taste bloody good!

We have established 1g/ lb of bodyweight for protein, around 50% of calories from carbs, so any remaining calories from fats. Do remember that per gram of fat it does contain over double the calories of carbs and protein sitting at 9kcals/gram. I will touch more on the role of fats in a bodybuilders diet in “how to structure your diet” but this is a general overview.

Fats are not bad if anything they are great for your health, assuming you aren’t having all fats from trans fats!

Some great sources: eggs, salmon, nut butters, seeds, dark chocolate, sesame oil

Micro nutrition ….

Obviously this is not a macronutrient, but in my opinion this is equally as important. Primarily you are going to get the full spectrum of micronutrients from actual foods. Vegetables and fruit.

Now we all know fruit and veg are important for health and all that sort of stuff. BUT I’m going to just add a few anecdotal points as to why it’s so so important to keep a plethora of these in your diet.

Firstly, we likely add lots of veg in during a dieting phase as it’s extremely high volume low caloric density compared to most other foods. So adding in spinach, broccoli, green beans, pepper, onions, mushrooms, cabbage etc will really bulk out meals. The aim here, and what I try to do, is to make sure my plate has as many different colours and textures as physically possible.

This may sound a little odd but this will ensure you are meeting the required micro nutrition.

To double check this has been done there are apps like cronometer which allow you to actually calculate how much micro nutrition you are getting.

Secondly, this variety of crunch and bite will increase total fibre intake as a byproduct.

Digestion is so key when it comes to bodybuilding. In the nicest way possible if you eat your food and it goes right through you there’s 100% something going wrong.

Secondly, fruit is also highly prevalent in my diet especially in an offseason. I say offseason as fruit does contain a decent amount of carbs so do be mindful of that ! On top of how tasty and nutritive the dense fruit is, some fruit does actually aid digestion due to the enzymes in them.

The main reason you will see a lack of veg is due to appetite. And I will always say get physically veg in BUT if you need to supplement there are some decent greens powders such Strom R&G Max. My advice would be keep veg in as it has so so so many benefits that outweigh feeling full in my opinion.

A healthy body is a happy body and all that !!

We look forward to continuing to bring you more content for our training guides & knowledge base, as always any questions, comments or things you like to discuss, topics you would like us to cover just drop a line to the article and we will reply 😀

Caitlin Hill Iron Paradise Admin