Getting The Right Mix of Protein, Fats and Carbs

Contrary to what some “experts” say, a calorie is not a calorie. Calories from fat affect your body differently than calories from protein and carbohydrates. The same goes for protein calories and carbohydrate calories.

If you don’t believe me, calculate your daily caloric requirements and for two weeks eat nothing but jelly beans. Then eat nothing but hamburgers for two weeks. I guarantee you’ll see and feel a difference.

While the amount of energy (calories) you consume each day is important, getting the right mix of protein, fat and carbohydrate calories can greatly affect your ability to…

• Lose weight and keep it off
• Gain muscle and increase overall strength
• Experience higher levels of energy.

It would be great if everyone responded the same way to the same mix of macronutrients, but that’s not the way it goes.
Some people react better to a diet lower in carbohydrates and slightly higher in fat, while some just can’t function on that mix.

With that said, after nearly a decade of coaching people on how to lose weight I’ve found that there is a mix that provides a great starting point. That mix is…

• 40% of your total calories from carbohydrates.
• 30% of your total calories from protein.
• 30% of your total calories from fat.

You may recognize this mix as the one recommended in books such as The Zone and The Formula, The South Beach Diet (final stage) and others.

In my experience, this combination provides some important benefits, mainly…

• It allows you to eat a variety of foods so you never feel deprived and you don’t get bored of eating the same thing over and over again. If want to stick to an eating program for life, not just the next six weeks, then that’s key.
• It does a good job of controlling blood sugar which helps with weight loss.
• It can help improve your moods and…
• Can increase energy levels.

For example, let’s say your total daily energy requirement (TDER) is 2000 calories. Here’s how to calculate your calories from carbs, protein and fat:

Carbohydrates: 2000 calories x .40 = 800 calories per day from carbohydrates.
Protein: 2000 x .30 = 600 calories per day from protein.
Fat: 2000 x .30 = 600 calories per day from fat.

Now you know how many calories from protein, fat and carbs you should be eating each day. Unfortunately these numbers won’t help you very much.

You see, when you read the nutrition panel on a food label they don’t list protein, fat and carbs in terms of calories, but rather they show you how many grams of each are in that particular food.

To properly decipher nutrition labels, you need to convert your caloric requirements into number of grams.

Here’s what you’ll need to know to make this possible:

• 1 gram of protein has 4 calories.
• 1 gram of carbohydrate has 4 calories.
• 1 gram of fat has 9 calories.

To convert your caloric requirements into grams, divide the calories by the number of calories per gram. Here’s what it looks like using my previous example.

We’ve already calculated how many calories from each macronutrient I would consume on a 2000 calorie per day diet:
To calculate the grams of each, here’s what you do…

Carbohydrates: 800/4 (calories per gram) = 200 grams of carbohydrates per day.
Protein: 600/4 (calories per gram) = 150 grams of protein per day.
Fat: 600/9 (calories per gram) = 67 grams of fat per day

Making Adjustments To The Mix

For many people, the 40/30/30 combination of protein, carbohydrates and fat will work well. For others, it won’t. So how do you know whether it works for you or not? And what do you do if it isn’t? All very good questions. Let’s see if I can come up with some good answers.

The best answer I have been able to come up with is…

Listen to your body.

Look at this as an experiment. Adjust your diet to the 40/30/30 mix for a couple of weeks or a month and notice how you feel.

• Are your energy levels higher or lower?
• Do you feel more alert or do you feel like you’re walking around in a mental fog all day long?
• Are your bowel movements more regular or less?
• Do you experience any stomach upset immediately after eating?
• Does your skin feel smoother?
• Are you sleeping better or worse or the same?

If, after your trial period, you feel worse than when you started, make a change and see what results it yields. What change should you make? Well…

It depends.

Increase carbohydrates and lower your fat intake if…

• Your daily job is physically stenuous.
• You have a mesomorphic body type, that is your broad through the shoulders and have a narrower waist.
• You’re a high-level athlete or perform more one hour or more of strenuous exercise – particularly strength training – per day.

Increase fat intake and decrease carbs if…

• You tend to gain fat easily, even when exercising.
• You have an endormorphic (tend to carry weight around the middle) or pear-shaped (carry weight through the hips, butt and legs) type.
• You have a personal or family history of diabetes.
• Your work is non-strenuous in nature.
• You feel hungry shortly after eating a meal.
• You experience extreme irritability, feel shaky, or nauseous if you haven’t eaten in 4-5 hours.
• You find it difficult to stop eating starchy foods such as potatoes, breads, pastries, pasta.

How Much Change Is Necessary?

When making changes to your diet, don’t go overboard. Increase or decrease your ratios 5% at a time and wait for the results.

Why Protein Levels Don’t Change

You may have noticed that I don’t recommend making changes to your protein levels. Unless you are a bodybuilder, power-lifter or high-level athlete, you won’t need more than thirty percent of your diet from protein.

If you do require higher protein, then you could simply decrease your fat intake slightly. Remember though, fat has twice the number of calories per gram as protein, so you really don’t have to reduce your fat intake that much to balance things out.

At this point, you may be asking yourself, “Do I really need to count calories to achieve weight loss success? Is it really worth all the effort?”

Rather than argue whether it’s better to count your calories and make sure you’re getting the right combination of protein, carbs and fat, let me suggest that you test it.

For one month, use the “eyeball” or “guesstimate” method. Measure your results. Then, track your calories and make the effort to get the right amounts of each macronutrient. See for yourself which one works better.

I have an idea which one will win out, but I’ve learned the only way to truly convince someone of something is to have them experience it personally.

If you do take me up on this little challenge, drop me a line and let me know how you did.