Food for Thought   

What to eat and when

The pros and cons of protein

Stop dieting and lose weight 

Ask any bodybuilder, tri-athlete, or racehorse trainer and he’s likely to say the same thing when it comes to the importance of proper nutrition: You are what you eat.

Sure, lifting can (and should) be an important part of your fitness regimen, but if you neglect proper nutrition, you’re likely to sabotage your potential gains in the gym as well as your overall health. While we all know people who seem to flourish while eat­ing a diet of pastrami sandwiches, jelly donuts, and coffee, most people will pay a steep price for such gluttony.

Typically, if you neglect your diet, you’re destined to struggle with your weight, feel sluggish during the day, or worse, invite sickness and disease. Even if you exercise regularly and have a washboard stomach, ignoring sound nutrition means you’ll probably struggle through your workout. “I just didn’t have it today,” is a common complaint heard in the gym. It says a great deal about the individual’s body chemistry and the lack of the fuel it needs to function. 

As you probably know, there are enough myths and misinformation about nutrition floating around out there to confuse even the most knowledgeable doctor. Don’t despair. In this chapter, we’ll walk you through this dietary quagmire and explain what constitutes a sensible diet. We’ll also discuss the changes you may need to make

as you improve your fitness level and health. If you have less body fat than Carl Lewis, more energy than Richard Simmons, and eat plenty of fresh vegetables and lean protein, you probably should just skip to the next chapter. If not, grab a pen or pencil and let’s get shopping. 

How Much Is Just Enough? 

Let’s start at the beginning—the basics of a sensible diet for the average healthy adult. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the average healthy male weighs 154 pounds, and his female counterpart tips the scales at 121. The phrase that we 3.0 often hear—Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDA) or Recommended Daily Intake (RDI)—refers to the levels of protein, vitamin, and mineral intake considered ade­quate to meet the nutritional needs of these exceedingly normal folks. Of course, if you weigh more than 50 pounds over or under those figures you’ll need to adjust accordingly. And similarly, if you’re pregnant, lactating, postmenopausal, or a kid, your requirements are different from what the RDA suggests. That said, here’s something to keep in mind: A guideline for dietary intake is laid out in the “Food Guide Pyramid,” which breaks down the recommended number of serv­ings for each of the five basic food groups (see the following figure). The groups are:    

Bread, Cereal, Pasta, and Rice

Vegetables 

Fruit 

Milk, Yoghurt, and Cheese

Before we get into the nuts and bolts of what and when to eat, let’s do a quickie course in basic nutrition.   

Carbohydrates (carbs), proteins, and fats are your sources of calories. Carbs supply four calories per gram and are classified as simple or complex. This isn’t a psychologi­cal profile, but is based on the properties each possesses. Simple carbs, which are quickly converted to energy, are high in sugar and found in treats like cakes, cookies, jams, and soda. 

Complex carbohydrates, which provide a more sustained and gradual release of glu­cose into the bloodstream, are found in pasta, bread, grains, and cereals. Complex carbs should be the mainstay of your diet. 

Fats don’t provide a lot of vitamins and minerals, but they serve a valuable role in your diet. For example, without ingesting some fat—about two tablespoonfuls a day— your body couldn’t process or absorb vitamins A, D, E, or K. 

Protein, which forms the structural basis for muscle tissue, supplies energy only when there aren’t enough calories available from carbs and fat. Foods high in protein include meat, milk, eggs, and legumes. 

First you need to figure out your basal metabolic rate (BMR). Your BMR is the amount of energy (calories) you burn just to keep going if you did nothing but lie in bed star­ing at the wall. (The ultimate couch potato doesn’t even use the remote control.) It’s both amusing and informative to figure out the approximate number of calories that your body needs each day to maintain your weight. To figure out your BMR for one day, get your calculator and punch in the following numbers. This estimate should be within 15 percent of your actual BMR. 

Men:              Body weight (pounds) x 24 -i- 2.2 

Women:         Body weight (pounds) x 21 ÷ 2.2 

For example: Jonathan weighs 172 pounds. To find out his metabolic rate, he multi­plies 172 by 24, which is 4,128, which he divides by 2.2 to get 1,876. So, without exercising, he needs to consume 1,876 calories each day to maintain his body weight, and thus to lose weight, he needs to eat fewer than 1,876 calories. Now Jonathan actually does more than lie prone for the day. In fact, he burns about 1,500 or so calories each day cycling, running, and lifting weights, which means he breaks even at more than 3,300 calories a day. (By way of comparison, the average sumo wrestler consumes 4,600 calories a day.) Being able to approximate your metabolic rate allows you to have an idea of how many calories your body needs each day.

                    
Do You Need More?         

As an aspiring body beautiful, you may be wondering if your caloric needs are different than the average. Should you eat some extra protein, and maybe less fat? Good question.  

                      
The Truth About Protein 

When it comes to strength training and building muscle, the role of protein is per­haps the most misunderstood. First, some facts: The RDA for protein is 0.8 grams per pound. For our prototypical 154-pound friend, that’s 56 grams of protein a day, or about one cup of milk (9 grams), 2 eggs (12 grams), and a four-ounce serving of chicken or beef (32 grams). In other words, it’s quite easy to meet the RDA requirement. 

Water, Water, Everywhere 

We cannot overstress the importance of proper hydration. Simply put, a human being can go for weeks without eating solid food, but can’t survive more than three to seven days without water. A male’s body is made up of 60 to 65 percent water; a female’s 50 to 60 percent. The human brain is about 75 percent water. Water aids in digestion and eases muscle soreness after a training session. Proper water consumption is crucial to weight loss. 

Why, then, are most people, even serious athletes, under-hydrated? The two most com­mon answers are: It’s a nuisance and maintaining proper hydration means you’ll pee a lot. While the first is debatable, the second is not. 

In the course of a normal day—no naps in a sauna or foot races in the Gobi Desert— the average adult needs about 80 ounces of water to maintain water balance. Most people probably drink half that, which is why so many of us are sluggish, suffer from headaches, and feel stiff and sore after performing just a moderate amount of exercise. 

If you exercise often (especially during the summer), drink a lot of coffee and booze (which act as a diuretic), or take medication, you’ll need to drink even more water. Even a slight drop in your body weight lost through perspiration can adversely affect your exercise performance. That means that you should drink about 6 to 8 ounces of fluid every 15 minutes or so when you’re exercising. On average, you should be con­suming at least 8 ounces roughly eight to 10 times a day. Sound like a lot? Try it for a few days and see how much better you feel. 

Here are some salient facts about water: 

Water is responsible for providing the building materials for cell protoplasm.

Don’t ask, just trust us: it’s important.

Water helps protect the body’s tissue and inter­nal organs.

Water helps regulate our body temperature as well as transport other nutrients, hormones, and waste products.

There’s more, but we assume you get the point by now: The more water you drink, the better you’ll feel. 

The Fancy Stuff 

Okay, so water is cool, but what about Gatorade, Sportsade, and the scores of other liquid “ades” sprouting up all over the beverage aisle? After all, if it works for Michael Jordan it’s got to be good. Right? To which we reply unequivocally, “Maybe.”   Unless you’re running, cycling, or engaging in any car­diovascular activity for at least 45 minutes to an hour a day or working out in a hot, humid gym, sports drinks really aren’t necessary. There is no real physio­logical need for the extra calories or minerals in a sports drink. (You’ll replenish everything you need in your next meal.) 

However, if you are pounding the pavement with a vengeance, a sports drink may help you speed up the rate at which your body absorbs the fluid. Perhaps the biggest advantage these sporty drinks have over straight water is taste. A cold glass of pure mountain water may be the elixir of life, but after a while your taste buds may be calling out for more. Simply put, the more you like the taste, the more likely you are to drink the stuff. 

Here are our top four tips for optimal hydration:   

1.   Unless a gator is chasing you or you’re working out under extreme conditions, cold water is thebest bet to keep you running efficiently. 

2.  Most commercial sports drinks contain a carbohydrate concentration of between S and 7 percent. Anything higher than that can cause gastric distress and actu­ally slow fluid absorption. Diluted juice (50 percent juice/SO percent water) with maybe a pinch of salt works just as well.  

3.   Drink 16 ounces of cold water or diluted sports drink before working out. 

4.   Drink water every 15 minutes or so to prevent dehydration. 

Lose It by the Book

We are a culture obsessed with weight, and for two reasons. First, we have before us the unrealistic standards set by the incredibly thin supermodels and actors who are viewed as “ideal.” Second, we are the most overweight culture in the Western world. And oddly enough, despite our nation’s keen interest in fitness, the rates of obesity are on the rise. 

If you’re one of the millions of Americans struggling to lose weight, you’re well aware of the countless products and diets promising to help you drop “those ugly pounds” in a matter of minutes. (Okay, days.) Not only are most of these products bogus, dan­gerous, or worse, even the best of them rarely produce long-term weight loss. 

Slow but Steady Wins the Race

Sorry folks, but as much as we’d like to unveil some secret recipe to get you looking like Fabio or Fabia, the simple fact remains: There’s no easy way. There is, however, a safe and extremely effective way to reach your ideal playing weight: eat with modera­tion, variety, and balance. 

With few exceptions, low-calorie diets, skipping meals, and fasting are counterproductive. When you make drastic adjustments to your calorie intake, your body’s survival instincts sound an alarm and slow its metabolism to a snail’s pace. Your goal is to speed up your metabolic rate, not the other way around. When you sit down to your next meal after a fast, your metabolism remains depressed, which actually causes you to gain weight. 

Because most health experts agree that a weight loss of more than two pounds per week is unhealthy, we recommend a weekly goal of one pound. Usually, when you lose more than that per week, you’re actually losing muscle as well as fat—a big no-no since not only does muscle look good, but it also helps you to burn calories.

In order to lose a pound a week, you need to burn 500 calories more than you ingest each day. That may seem like a formidable number, but it really isn’t if you exercise. If you can manage to burn an extra 250 calories a day—a 2.5-mile jog or 30 minutes on the exercise bike—you’re halfway there. As we said in Chapter 2, “Hurry Up and Weight,” your body won’t know the difference if you get those miles walking to the post office in lieu of running in the park. And keep in mind that as you increase your muscle mass, you’ll be burning extra calories. Even as you read this book your muscles are metabolically active. (Reading this book while you walk to the post office is even better.) 

Now, here are some handy ways to decrease the num­ber of calories you eat each day: 

In the morning eat a piece of whole wheat toast instead of a bagel. Calories saved: 150. 

Hold the mayo and use mustard on your turkey sandwich. Calories saved: 100 

Use tomato sauce (without sugar) instead of a creamy Alfredo on your pasta.

Calories saved:  190. 

Use skim or low-fat soy milk in place of whole milk. Calories saved: 60. 

Pass on the midday candy bar snack and down a piece of fruit. Calories saved: 180.  (If you’re still hungry, eat raw nuts.) 

Toss that can of Coke and drink water. Calories saved: 150. 

Use one instead of two sugars in your coffee. Better yet, use none. Calories saved: 15 to 30.

The Sad Truth About Fad Diets

You can learn the hard way or take our word for it right now: Wacky diets like the “Grapefruit Diet” or the “Cabbage Diet” that exclude or severely restrict whole categories of food do more harm than good since they typically exclude important vitamins and minerals. 

Take Barry Sears’s The Zone, a low-carbohydrate diet that in the early 1990s gained more notoriety than Linda Tripp. A few years ago, one of the guys Jonathan trains with raved about how he’d lost seven pounds in just a week by following Sears’s 40-30-30 diet (40 grams of carbohydrate, 30 grams of protein, and 30 grams of fat). Basically, the premise of The Zone diet is that eating too many carbs makes you fat. 

The ever-curious, always-sceptical Jonathan brought out his magnifying glass and went to work and came away extremely unimpressed. True, this man had lost a whopping seven pounds in seven days; however, when you know that carbs, which are stored in the body as glycogen (energy fuel), hold three times their weight in water, you realize that this suddenly svelte Zone-ite had lost water and sugar, not fat. That’s a good way to travel if you’re like Deirdre trying to make weight for a power lifting competition, but useless if your aim is to drop fat. Once again, if something seems too good to be true, it probably is. 

A Pound of Feathers or a Pound of Rocks

As we’ve recently noted, the scale doesn’t know the difference between a pound of water and a pound of fat. The same can be said about the difference between muscle and fat. Plainly put, “A pound is a pound is a pound” on the scale. However, there is actually quite a huge difference between the way a pound of muscle and a pound of fat looks on the human body. 

When clients tell Jonathan that they’re frustrated that they haven’t lost weight despite their best efforts, he reminds them that they’ve dropped a dress size or a belt loop. The bottom line isn’t what the scale says but your ratio of fat to lean mass.

 Take, for example, two chaps who stand 5 feet 10 inches and tip the scales at 180 pounds. Mr. Stud Muffin has only 10 percent (or 18 pounds) of body fat, while Mr. Potato Latke is schlepping 25 percent of his weight as fat. That means Mr. Latke has more than twice the fat of his counterpart. The scale can’t tell them apart, but a measurement of their body fat sure can.

 While there are many ways to gauge your percentage of body fat—underwater weigh­ing being the most accurate—most knowledgeable trainers with skin-fold callipers can give you a reasonable assessment. However, the best way to see where you stand is to step in front of a mirror in the buff and look for yourself. 

The Least You Need to Know 

Sound nutrition starts with sound science. 

When it comes to building muscle, protein is the most misunderstood food group. 

Proper hydration is crucial, but sports drinks have their place in the diets of serious athletes. 

Eschew fad diets and practice the only real way to lose weight: moderation, variety, and balance. 

The scale doesn’t lie, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. Your percentage of body fat is just as important as how much you weigh.