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.

There’s no getting around it: dieting down is not fun. Dealing with hunger is bad enough, but it’s worse when you have to give up some of your favorite foods for a time. Chin up, though, because there are a few staples you can keep around that will make the journey far easier.

Whether your macros du jour are low carb, low fat, or something in between, these are my top five picks to keep your sweet tooth ballin’ on a caloric budget.

#5 PB2

In short, this is dehydrated peanut butter.

You keep the delicious taste, you ditch most of the fat and carbs. A 2 tbsp serving of normal peanut butter weighs in at 210 calories, where as 2 tbsp of PB2 is a mere 45. Add some water and you’re in business. This is great because it can be added to all sorts of other recipes (including smoothies). There is also a chocolate version that has the same calorie count and a very similar nutrient profile.

#4 Arctic Zero Ice Cream

If you want to eat a pint of ice cream without paying the price, this is your free pass.

I have satisfied my ice cream craving many a night with this stuff. 150 calories, 16g net carbs, and 13.6g protein… per pint. No, it is not as good as full fat and sugar ice cream, but it is a close second and it will keep you from going to town on a bucket of Blue Bell. There are many flavors, but the Vanilla Maple is the closest to real ice cream in my opinion. If you like it, you should really try their ice cream bars. At 85 cal/bar, they are fantastic treats.

#3 Isopure Dutch Chocolate

As far as protein powders go, this is my favorite for the value/taste/nutrient profile.

When mixed in water, this tastes like chocolate milk, I kid you not. 50g of protein per serving, 1g fat, and 3g carbs — what’s not to love? Often, I’ll add some of the aforementioned PB2 in and make a PB/Chocolate shake, but it’s also very tasty alone. Beware, not all Isopure powders are equal. I tried the mint chocolate version… do not do this. That road is filled with suffering and regret. I read reviews from others who said it tasted terribly and I didn’t listen, thinking that they didn’t like mint chocolate as much as I do. Do yourself a favor: buy some mint extract and throw a few drops in with your Dutch chocolate rather than suffer that abomination. Like PB2, the Dutch Chocolate goes great with many other recipes.

#2 Walden Farms Pancake Syrup

This is pancake syrup that tastes pretty darned close to real pancake syrup, but inexplicably has no calories.

Granted, on a low carb day you will not likely be eating a ton of pancakes, but it does have its applications. The mighty Ogus Cake relies heavily on the stuff. (Ogus is not always family-friendly — be warned). You can pour some on your Arctic Zero ice cream, or even just have a spoonful when you need that sweet fix. I have been known to consume an entire bottle in one day… it is that good. Like Isopure, not all Walden products are the same. This is actually the only one that I have been able to consume on its own, but it is delicious. Some Walden products I’ve tried, like their peanut butter spread, are barely not palatable.

#1 Quest Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Bar

I have saved the best for last, and I promise, this is the best!

I’ve been a fan of Quest bars in the past, particularly the Coconut Cashew, Chocolate Brownie, and Peanut Butter supreme, but this is a totally different animal. It tastes almost exactly like chocolate chip cookie dough, but has the nutrient profile of a few ounces of chicken breast with a healthy dose of fiber.

I do not know how they achieved this, and I do not care. I suspect some sort of sorcery and goat sacrifice were involved. These taste better than most actual candy bars, and they totally destroy the nutrient profile of other cookie dough “nutrition bars” out there. Do yourself a favor and grab some. (Right now you will have a hard time finding quest bars anywhere but a GNC as far as brick & mortar, and otherwise you can get them at various sites online.) Don’t blame me when you develop an addiction, because you will. If Quest ever figures out how to make a mint chocolate bar, I’m convinced they will rule the world.

There you have it, friends. Go forth and eat!

Sometime in the last two years, I decided I was tired of being pudgy. Too many Bowflex and P90X commercials at 3am combined with not enough dates will lead you down that road. Of course, they sell you on the big prize: the elusive 6-pack.

Googling “how to get abs” will provide many different routes to that holy grail of fitness, but almost all of them share a single feature: You have to deal with calories, and you have to deal with macronutrients.

Pretty soon, you’ll discover that some restaurants share all of their nutritional information, right down to the last pickle. My favorite in this regard is What-a-Burger… check out their Build-a-Meal site. After you choose the main item, you can customize it by each individual topping!

Many are good about sharing most of their info in PDF form, but might not include toppings or account for options without bread.

Others just don’t share their nutritional information at all. I’m looking at you, Cheesecake Factory! From their FAQ:

Eat first, ask questions never.

Of course, most restaurants fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. One of my favorites, In-n-Out, happens to occupy this caloric grey area. All the items on their menu have basic information available, but if you are up to some crazy customization (I AM!!), then you’re out of luck…

…out of luck until now, that is. I’m going to show you how to use nutrition charts to beat the system and get annoyingly accurate, fellow calorie-counters! To demonstrate, I’ll calculate the calories and macronutrients for the glorious 20×20 burger of old! I tried to down this bad boy in a challenge last August. That did not go well.

So young... so optimistic. Next time, this burger will taste like victory.

If you browse on over to the In-n-Out nutrition site, you can see we have the information for a few different options:

Nom Nom Nom Numbers!

In my experience, it’s best to use a spreadsheet for this kind of thing. (I don’t always use spreadsheets, but when I do, I prefer the free one from OpenOffice.org.)

How can we start? We want to isolate whatever ingredients we can, so let’s begin with the easiest. We know everything for a Hamburger w/ Onion, and a Cheeseburger w/ Onion. The only difference between the two is a slice of cheese, so it stands to reason that if we subtract all the nutritionals for the hamburger from the cheeseburger, we’ll be left with the values for the cheese itself.

The method is simple: You type the information for the Burger into Row 1. You type in information for the Cheeseburger into Row 2. Then use your formulas to calculate the values into a new row. In the example below, type =B3-B2 into B5. Then, type =C3-C2 into C5. Finally, highlight both B5 and C5, and drag the rectangle all the way across to Q5. Bam! You now have all the nutritionals for a slice of cheese at in-n-out.

Yay, spreadsheets.

We can apply this process over and over to single out other ingredients:

• Lettuce is effectively nothing, so Hamburger w/ Onion – Protein Style = Bun
• Double-Double w/ Onion – Cheeseburger w/ Onion – Cheese Slice = Single Meat Patty
• Hamburger w/ Onion – Bun – Single Meat Patty = Onion/Sauce Combo
• and just for fun: Hamburger w/ Onion w/ Mustard and Ketchup instead of Spread – Bun – Single Meat Patty = Onion/Mustard/Ketchup Combo

At this point, we should take note of two things. First, the weight count (total grams) will be off. I suspect this is due to the fact that we’ve relied on the lettuce being effectively nothing, but it is holding enough moisture to outweigh a bun. Second, we cannot logically derive the individual values for Mustard, Ketchup, Onions, nor the Spread from the information given. These are fairly common, however, and everyone knows the Sauce is basically Thousand Island. You can get pretty accurate if you need.

No matter, though, because we now have enough information to calculate the behemoth 20×20!

1 Bun + 1 Sauce/Onion Combo + 20 Meat Patties + 20 Cheese Slices = 1 Massive 20x20

By my calculations, a 20×20 contains an impressive

• 4090 Calories
• 293 Grams of Fat
• 39 Grams of Carbs
• 307 Grams of Protein

Armed with this information, you can now be just about as accurate as you like with nutritionals if the restaurant provides even minimal information. Good luck!

well-done, food counter.