I love a good nutrition-based self-experiment. Sure, most of them turn out like my spirulina trial: superfood promises followed by awful taste and zero noticeable impact on my health. But still, every once in a while, I find a winner, and I always learn something along the way (like: Lord help us if spirulina is the food of the future).
My most recent food-based experiment has been to strive to eat 5 macro-balanced meals a day. Macro, in this context, refers to the macronutrients protein, carbohydrates, and fat. The idea is that each of these components plays an important role in the body, so having a sufficient quantity of each is optimal. Sounds promising, right? These experiments always do.
There are a number of strategies for determining your macro targets, and I opted to go with the relatively simple ratio approach. Given my total caloric intake, I designated 30% protein, 45% carbs, and 25% fat.
Knowing my overall calorie goal of 2050 kcal, and a bit of simple math, allowed me to come up with both daily and meal-based goals in grams:
Component | Percent | Calories | Calories / Gram | Grams / Day | Meals / Day | Grams / Meal |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Protein | 30% | 615 kcal | 4 kcal/g | 153 g | 5 | 30 g |
Carbohydrates | 45% | 923 kcal | 4 kcal/g | 230 g | 5 | 46 g |
Fat | 25% | 513 kcal | 9 kcal/g | 57 g | 5 | 11 g |
The above math says that in a given day, I'm shooting to eat 153 grams of protein, 230 grams of carbs, and 57 grams of fat.
I found the last column, however, to be a game-changer. Trying to
consume, say, 57 g of fat in a day
was a maddening puzzle to figure out. But, 11 g in a single meal was
straightforward.
It also means that if when I eat a non-optimal meal (which
happens all the time), I can pick back up with optimal ones without
missing a beat.
For a week, I struggled to find five meals a day that hit these targets. The challenge was that my go-to foods weren't anywhere near these ratios. Fortunately, I work from home and have access to a full kitchen, so had plenty of opportunities to get creative. I was already in the habit of using Cronometer App to track calories, so using it to track macros was an easy habit to adopt.
To my surprise, the annoyance of assembling meals was offset by how effective the meals themselves were. By effective, I mean they left me feeling energized and full until the next meal. It wasn't just Internet promises; I felt like I could actually feel a difference. I'm sure some of this was the placebo effect, but at the end of the week I felt more than motivated enough to push on.
According to basic nutrition science, none of what I felt was a surprise: carbs are a primary fuel for the body and fat and protein both play important roles in making you feel full. I'd just proven out what's considered nutrition 101.
While this approach worked well when I had access to a full kitchen, I noticed that it fell apart the minute I was eating on the go. I'm not referring here to eating out, per se, as in this context you have far less control of your options. I'm talking about traveling, sightseeing, or even running a few back-to-back errands. In this context, I can bring any food I want with me, and yet, it wasn't obvious what to grab.
Of course, this doesn't really matter. First of all, life is too short and the body is too sophisticated to be a slave to macros. And second of all, one's macros aren't static. If I'm out for a day of hiking, then trying to consume the same nutrition as I do for a day in front of a screen would be ridiculous.
Still, as a problem solver at heart, I couldn't resist thinking about how I might solve this macros-on-the-go food challenge. Let's dig into that in our next post!
Bonus: A Backcountry Case for Macros
While preparing this post, I came across this podcast episode talking about backcountry nutrition planning, specifically for multi-day hunting trips. In the world of backpacking, food is: (1) considered a heavy resource, and (2) there's often an emphasis on choosing fat over other macronutrients because fat provides over double the amount of energy (kcal) when compared to carbs and protein.
For example, 100 grams of jelly beans provide you with 375 kcals of energy. That sounds pretty good. That is, until you consider that for the same weight, 100 grams of olive oil provides you with 884 kcals. In this context, jelly beans are 'heavy' and olive oil is 'light' (learn way more on this topic, here), and you're a fool for not bringing anything but a flask of olive oil on your next trip.
The guest on the podcast, Kyle Kamp, steps back from this fat-is-king mindset and instead focuses on—you guessed it—balancing your macros. One of his key points is that each macronutrient has an essential job, and focusing only on total calories can result in deficits you can feel on the trail.
To build on our example, protein is critical for muscle repair and recovery. If you get to the end of a hard day of hiking and only have olive oil on hand, then you have no protein source to meet this need. You're going to suffer.
It's a fascinating discussion that puts macros front and center. Give it a listen.
No comments:
Post a Comment