Calories, macros, and why they matter

Brace yourself; today’s topic is a long one with a ton of information in it. It’s good stuff to know, so spending 10 minutes reading this can change how you think about food and nutrition for the rest of your life.

Definition of a Calorie

calorie (noun) The energy needed to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1 degree Celsius

Well, we got that out of the way! SCIENCE!

No more to say, right? It’s obvious what a calorie is and how/why it’s used to measure your food intake.

Ok, maybe not…

Let’s elaborate a bit.

A calorie is the amount of energy required to raise 1 gram of water by 1 degree. Think of it this way:

You have one gram of water. How much gasoline would you need to light on fire to raise the water temperature by one degree?

Not much, right? This is why food is actually measured in kilocalories or kcal, abbreviated as C even though we still refer to it as a calorie. Science, right?

Your body requires energy to function. You get this energy from food, which in turn gets broken down into the components your body can convert into energy. I won’t go much deeper than that- it’s irrelevant. Just trust me when I say ” You eat food. That food turns to energy.” To have a conversation with someone about how much energy they are consuming (i.e., food) vs. how much energy they are using, we need a standard of measure. It’s the Calorie.

An eight oz. steak has roughly 600 Calories (It actually varies, depending on the quality and cut of the steak, but you get the idea.). Using our definition of a calorie, that’s enough energy to raise 600,000 grams (158 gallons) of water by 1 degree. That’s a lot of energy! Now think about this: you eat much more than a single eight oz. steak daily: that indicates how much energy your body needs to function.

Your body needs energy for many things:

  • Your heart burns energy to keep the blood pumping
  • Your lungs burn energy to pull oxygen from the air you breathe into the bloodstream
  • Your muscles use energy to move
  • Your brain burns energy to control the body and for thinking
  • Even the process of breaking food into energy requires energy

Here’s a pivotal point to understand: when you put more energy into your body (by eating more food) than your body burns as energy, it gets stored as fat! Mystery solved, eat fewer calories, right? 
Not so fast, Sherlock.

Think back to our definition of a calorie: the amount of energy required to raise water temperature. Now consider the different ways we can do this: To help illustrate the point, let’s consider raising the temperature of a bucket of water. Now let’s pour gasoline underneath our bucket and toss a match on it. What happened? If you’re like me, you’ve already done this experiment many times as a kid, and you know the gasoline went up in flames immediately (luckily, before your parents discovered your little experiment). But what happened to our water? Not much, right? The gasoline burned too fast to impact the bucket of water.

So what if we used a nice, solid hunk of wood? If we get that hunk of wood burning (a hunka hunka burnin’ wood, as Elvis would say), it will burn for a long time. Long enough to raise the temperature of the water in the bucket above it.

We used the same amount of energy in both examples, but one had the desired effect, and one did not.

Let me bring this home to you and your goal now:

The same is true for the types of energy you put into your body.

Carbs = gasoline Fats and protein = wood

When we eat carbs, we get a big gasoline-style explosion. But if equal energy demand isn’t present in our body, those carbs get stored as fat. When we fill up on healthy fats and proteins (you’ll learn what those are later), we get a nice, slow-burning furnace to fuel the engine of our body.

For this reason alone, the source of your calories is more important than the number of calories you consume!

There’s another factor at play here too, and it concerns our body’s chemistry. When we eat, we get a big surge of energy. When this energy starts to fade, our body receives a signal that energy levels are going down. We interpret this as hunger. So we eat again.
Suppose we’re using gasoline as our fuel source (i.e., carbs). In that case, we continuously pour gasoline into our bodies to keep the energy levels high, even though we didn’t do anything productive with the gasoline in the first place.

So now I hope you can see that where your food energy comes from can impact your energy levels and weight loss efforts. But what to do? The answer lies in balancing carbs, fats, and proteins, and that is where we head next.

Definition of a Macro

Macronutrient (noun) a substance required in relatively large amounts by living organisms, in particular

  • a type of food (e.g., fat, protein, carbohydrate) required in large quantities in the human diet
  • a chemical element (e.g., potassium, magnesium, calcium) required in large amounts for plant growth and development

Assuming that you aren’t a plant, we can ignore the last part of that definition and focus on the part relating to humans. Our foods are categorized into different macronutrients: carbs, fats, and proteins. This categorization is based on how the food is broken down and used by your body. We’ll dig into that in a minute. The critical thing to know about them is that we need all three macronutrients in our diet, and we need them in the right amounts to meet our energy requirements. Almost all food contains some amount of all three macronutrients. We categorize each food by its primary macronutrient. A potato, for example, has 70g of carbs, 7g of protein, and 2g of fat. Since the primary macronutrient is carbs, it’s considered a carb source. Review the three macronutrients and learn how and why they are essential.

Proteins

Proteins are made of amino acids, commonly called the ” building blocks of the body”. There are 20 amino acids in your body, nine of which cannot be manufactured by your body. The only way to get them is to eat them, thus, protein to the rescue. Protein helps form and maintain muscle mass and provides energy for our muscles and brain. Protein is considered especially important for its role in building lean muscle mass and is known for its satiety effect, meaning when you eat protein, you feel fuller and longer. This is primarily due to the amount of time it takes to break protein down in your body and turn it into energy (think of our hunk of wood from above). The part you likely care about is that it suppresses your appetite. You’ll find many different recommendations on the amount of protein needed daily. Most answers range from .7 - 1 g of protein per pound of body weight. That should be sufficient unless you are specifically focused on bulking up and gaining muscle. Rather than debate the merits of varying protein quantities, we will let our macro ratio determine the amount. You’ll learn how to do that tomorrow.

Sources of protein include meat, fish, dairy, and some beans.

Fats

homer homer

Those of us who grew up more than a decade (or two) ago were taught that fat was the evil enemy. The root cause of your weight loss struggles. The Homer Simpson to your Frank Grimes.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Not all fats are created equal. Deep-fried foods, vegetable oils, and highly refined fats known as trans fats (found in margarine, vegetable shortening, baked goods, and processed snack foods) are indeed the enemy. Healthy fats, such as avocados, nuts, fish, and meat, are essential to providing energy, making you feel full after eating and regulating body functions. Healthy fats regulate hormone production. They help you control your body temperature. Fats are required for absorption of fat-soluble vitamins (like Vitamin D). Fat is also the primary energy source for your most valuable asset: your brain! When adopting a low-carb diet, fats are crucial in ensuring you get enough calories in your diet and minimizing the effects of feeling hungry (because they don’t come with the sugar high, followed by the sugar crash associated with carbs).

Eating fat does not make you fat

Contrary to our knowledge in decades past, eating healthy fats does not raise your cholesterol levels; it’s just the opposite. A diet comprised of healthy fats can help increase levels of “good” cholesterol (HDL) while lowering “bad” cholesterol (LDL).

Carbs

Carbs are the tricky part of this equation, so let me preface this section:

You will never struggle to get your daily requirement of carbs.

Seriously, they are in everything. But before we banish them to Mordor alongside Frodo’s ring, let’s put them in perspective. Carbs are broken down into glucose, which can easily be used for energy (think of them like starting a fire with gasoline) or, if you don’t currently need them- they are stored in the body for fat. (Notice that? Fat isn’t stored in your body as fat; carbs are!) Carbs are the body’s #1 source of energy. But don’t mistake that statement: it’s not a free reign to pound away some sugary snack just because you worked out this morning at the gym.

Myth Busters Myth Busters

Let me bust a few more myths (that I learned the hard way) while we’re here:

  • You don’t need to replenish your carb stores after hitting the gym.
  • You don’t need to carb load for a 5k tomorrow (or a 10k, or a marathon).
  • You don’t need to search for carbs to get fiber in your diet.
  • Net carbs are marketing tactics.

If you follow the methods laid out here, I promise you will get plenty of carbs in your diet, and while you won’t be eating whole-grain pop-tarts, you won’t miss them either.

Why Macros Matter

Cool story, bro. Who cares?

Most people focus on a specific calorie goal and expect unrealistic results. The truth is, where your calories come from is more important than the number. You’ll soon see how focusing on macros makes calorie counting irrelevant or necessary, with the added bonus of feeling better and hitting your goals.

Let’s start with an example:

Say your daily calorie intake should be 1,500 calories. You measure against this number, hoping to lose weight and body fat, without regard for where the calories come from.

Meal Plan #1

1 Milky Way Candy Bar (240C)
1 Vanilla Pudding Cup (240C)
1 Bag of M&Ms (240C)
1 Quarter Pounder with Cheese (520C)
1 20 oz. Pepsi (250C)

Total: 1,490 calories

Meal Plan #2

1 6 oz. Chicken Breast (335C)
2 T Hummus (70C)
1 C Cottage Cheese (200C)
Salad with spinach, bell peppers, tomatoes, and balsamic dressing (250C)
1 C Greek Yogurt (220C)
1/4 C Dark Chocolate Granola (170C)
1 Protein Shake (250C)

Total: 1,495 calories

Both meal plans hit your daily calorie intake goals. After 30 days of this plan, which plan do you think is likely to produce results? Hopefully you see the flaws in sticking to Meal Plan #1.

Let’s break it down to understand why.

Meal Plan #1 has the correct amount of calories, but it’s loaded with sugar. Eating this meal leaves you full but generates a massive spike in your blood sugar levels. An hour later, your blood sugar levels will start to decrease, signaling to your brain that you need to eat to replenish your depleting energy level. You’ll never be able to eat only this in a given day. You’ll be hungry and irritable and go in search of more food. As a result, you’ll overeat your daily caloric requirements (not to mention the severe lack of vitamins and nutrients in this meal plan).

Meal Plan #2 has the same number of calories but with huge differences in the way your body will respond. The chicken provides protein, which will be used by your body to repair damaged muscle fibers and build new muscle. It’s slower to digest, so you’ll feel fuller and more satisfied for longer. The same is true for the cottage cheese and protein shake (sort of). The Greek yogurt brings a mix of carbs, fat, and protein. The carbs will provide quick, accessible energy. The fat will be broken down slowly, preventing hunger from striking for hours. The salad provides fiber, vitamins, and nutrients, and the dressing is another source of fat for your energy reserves. I can promise you, after eating this throughout the day, you will not be hungry. In addition to not being hungry, you will provide your body with plenty of protein, fats, and carbs to maintain a healthy lifestyle that promotes sensible eating and sustained weight management.

Using these meal plans as an example (combined with what you’ll learn tomorrow), it becomes clearer that not all calories are created equal. The source of the calories becomes more critical than the actual number of calories.

There is some hidden magic here, too. By choosing our source of calories, we can manipulate how our body responds. Take a look at this:

  • Protein: 4 calories per gram
  • Carbs: 4 calories per gram
  • Fats: 9 calories per gram

Remember that carbs are like gasoline to a fire: it burns quickly and is gone. Protein and fats require much more energy to break down. That means that our digestive system is busy working for longer, leading our brain to believe that there must be plenty of energy available (after all, those guys down in the GI Tract are still working hard). By stacking our diet in favor of protein and fats, we can provide our body with the same amount of calories but at a much more controlled burn rate. So, we can hit our 1,500-calorie goal with 375 g of carbs, 375 g of protein, or 167 g of fats with significantly different results on our bodies.

The exact ratio of carbs, fats, and protein matters, and knowing how much of each you need is precisely what we’ll cover next.

Today’s Tasks

Don’t forget to complete today’s tasks for the challenge.

  • Drink 1 gallon of water
  • Workout for 45 minutes
  • Read ten pages from your book Once completed, be sure to head over to the tracking site and mark them as completed to track your progress for the challenge.