floydius

This is less an informational post than it is an attempt to articulate a major gap in my understanding of nutrition.

When I first entered the fat loss world, I gleaned that I needed to be in a calorie deficit — but that was about it. I’ve experimented with serious calorie restriction + lots of steady state cardio, a vegetarian diet, cyclical ketogenic diet + mild lifting, and IF carb cycling + heavy lifting á la Leangains.

In all that time, I’ve learned a few different things.

• Tracking food intake is key.
• You hit your macros, and good things happen.
• Lifting heavy + sufficient protein = muscle growth/conservation.

The basics don’t really change, but there seem to be differing voices regarding what is possible in terms of fat loss and specifically recomposition. I understand and accept that a deficit is required to lose fat. Energy requirements will be pulled from circulating macronutrients and then from fat stores after that has been exhausted.

The ideal (fantasy) case would look like this:

• Every gram of protein goes to grow muscle tissue.
• Every gram of carbohydrate goes either to fuel training or your brain.
• Every gram of fat goes to fuel other activity.
• Energy requirements unsatisfied by dietary fat are taken directly from fat stores.

We try to manipulate macronutrient ratios such that as much protein as possible goes to muscle growth and as much energy as possible comes from fat storage, but to my knowledge, such a golden ratio as above does not exist. If it did, we could eat more calories and still be in a deficit because our caloric needs would be increased in the process of building muscle.

That being the case, we try to supply enough protein to retain existing muscle mass or possibly grow it in a deficit. A small overestimation is preferable to catabolism.

However, things get much trickier with carbohydrate and fat intake. I’ve heard two different thought processes, and I’m not sure if they are mutually exclusive or just different ways of attacking the same problem.

Cyclical Ketogenic vs Higher-Carb Cycling:

The low-carb (by which I mean < 100g / day) folks emphasize that insulin spikes are undesirable in a fat loss program because they provide the perfect environment for fat storage. However, it is my understanding that calorie deficits being equal, any stored fat would be shuttled right back out for usage at some point in the day when the energy deficit takes effect. With an equal calorie intake, circulating protein and fat would (theoretically) be used for energy, thus cancelling out any benefit to avoiding an insulin spike. (It doesn't matter if dietary fat is stored and then released or just stays in circulation longer... it all has to be used before existing body fat will be accessed.) The low-carb writers I’ve read also recognize that insulin is necessary for shuttling glycogen into the muscles, but that is emphasized more for bulking and seems to be ignored in the cut except during a refeed. (I’m ignoring leptin and assuming refeeds are taking place to keep those levels up.)

I’m still confused as to what role ketogenesis plays in the process besides providing an alternate source of fuel with equal calorie burn given an equal deficit.

When I trained with Andy Morgan, obviously we used IF and carbohydrate cycling. Higher carbs on training days were alternated with significantly low carbs on rest days, as specified in the Leangains protocol. The only real explanation I ever read for the seriously low carbs on rest days was to allow more protein and fat into the diet, the fat being used to keep certain hormone levels up.

Leangains also stresses removing the obsessive nature of meal timing, but almost all the protocols suggest consuming most calories in the post-workout window. The only possible reason for this in a deficit state would be nutrient partitioning for muscle growth/preservation.

In the end, adherence to the calorie deficit is king, and that’s why I currently use a lower carb diet — I’ve found I’m more compliant with it. However, assuming I could keep compliance, I wonder if there would be a partitioning benefit to increasing the carb:fat ratio. If I were able to shuttle more protein to muscle, I could theoretically maintain equal fat burn while increasing protein to whatever level my muscles would accept it.

Summary:
Here are my lingering questions:

• Given an equal deficit and adequate protein, are insulin spikes undesirable, desirable, or irrelevant in terms of body composition?
• Is there an ideal ratio when combining resistance training with a deficit, and does meal timing have a significant effect on that?
• Is there any benefit to ketogenesis for fat loss besides adherence issues?
• If you are able to direct nutrient partitioning to muscle anabolism, are you effectively increasing your caloric burn by that very process?

I welcome the thoughts of any who wish to address my amateur ramblings.

You’ve done your homework and are seriously engaged in a fat loss endeavor. You’re probably tracking your food intake — you know how many calories you will eat in a given day and the macronutrient breakdown. If that applies to you, then you will understand what I’m about to say:

The week is humming along. You’re hitting those macros, but you can feel it — looming in the distance. This is an evil presence, sharpening its claws and threatening to tear your diet apart. You are going to be eating… OUT.

Maybe there is a work function. Perhaps you scored a date (good job!), or you just have a life on Fridays. Whatever the reason, it will come, and it will test you. For the unprepared, it can pose an extra hurdle to fat loss. Don’t you have enough of those already?

Of course, this is not a problem if you’re going to a chain restaurant; most have full nutrition information available. Just plan early what you will eat at the restaurant, and you’ll know what macros you have to play with for the rest of the day. Done deal.

Let’s be honest, though: chain restaurants are never going to beat individual establishments. Guys, do NOT take a girl to Chili’s. Just don’t.

You can almost guarantee a single establishment won’t provide nutrition information. I wish they did, but it’s expensive to get food tested and most restaurants are running on pretty thin profit margins as it is. Of course, they could tell you the contents of every dish, but then they’d be giving away trade secrets. Unless you want to boycott some seriously tasty eats, here are my tips for counting calories in a real restaurant:

1. Check out the menu ahead of time. Most often, you know where you’ll be eating by at least the night before1. Find the website and see what’s on the menu. If you plan ahead of time to have the grilled chicken instead of pizza and french fries, you’re more likely to stick to that decision. Don’t be waylaid by the wiles of sneaky mashed potatoes you weren’t expecting. If you wait to decide how far things are going to go until you’re already in the back seat… well good luck with that. Once you know the menu:

2. Pick something you can fit into your diet. You don’t always have to get Tilapia. I’m planning on having Chicken & Waffles this very night, but I’ve worked it into my macros for the day. Sometimes, you will have to make sacrifices. I’ll give you an example: this weekend, I went to a popular local Mexican joint for a friend’s birthday. The only thing I could possibly order without blowing away my carb count was Fajitas. Here was the description: “Grilled chicken breast, rice, beans, guacamole, flour tortillas, pico-de-gallo, chips and hot sauce.” Clearly, that wouldn’t cut it, so I modified the menu. I asked for chicken fajitas without anything else except refried beans. Oh, and I can already hear you screaming, “Well how do I know if I can fit it into my diet if there is no nutrition info?!?” I’m so glad you asked.

3. Find similar foods. From this weekend’s example: I ball-parked the chicken at roughly 8 oz. Then, I recorded it as John Soules Chicken Fajita meat, for which I *do* have nutrition information. I estimated the refried beans as nearly a cup, and recorded them as 0.9 cups of canned refried beans. I gauged the amount of sauteed onions and sauteed peppers and found them(fat included in cooking) in my tracking app as well. If you’re worried about accuracy, purposefully overestimate on the amounts to give yourself a cushion. Maybe it won’t be exact, but I can guarantee it is close enough for tracking purposes.

4. Learn to use a food scale. If you don’t have a food scale, stop reading this and get one. I currently use this from Amazon. A good food scale will increase accuracy when you are preparing your own food. I weigh out my lucky charms, chicken, and basically anything that is not liquid. Sometimes I even weigh liquids too (almond milk, etc). More to the topic at hand, though — regular use of a food scale will make you pretty accurate when ball-parking food amounts. I weigh out chicken almost every day, so I know what 4 oz of chicken looks like. Of course, you could take a scale with you, but you risk your friends/date/co-workers judging you as insane. Until such day as accurate food tracking becomes socially acceptable, you may be forced to hone your estimation skills. Finally, even if yours are undeveloped, you can:

5. Call ahead. Maybe you’ve found an item or two on the menu you can work with, but you don’t know whether you’re dealing with a 4 oz cut of steak or 8. If you call before things get busy, most places will try and find the information for you. Sometimes you’ll get lucky and they’ll actually have nutrition information available that wasn’t advertized. (Once, Texadelphia printed me out a whole sheet that wasn’t on their website. Score!) Ask for whatever information you need to feel good about your choice. If the restaurant wants your business, they will oblige.

Hopefully, these tips will give you a fighting chance when you’re eating out. It’s not easy, but you can definitely tip the odds toward your success with a little work. Bon appetit, and good luck!

1. Ladies, if you are counting macros and a gentleman asks you out, find out where you’ll be eating beforehand. He may want to keep it a surprise, but if you have goals and he’s smart, he’ll respect them.