How To Manage Your Macronutrients

Posted January 6, 2010 in Nutrition Tip No Comments »
Dr. John Berardi
John Berardi

Since the late 1990’s Dr. John Berardi has published 8 scientific abstracts; 15 scientific papers and textbook chapters; presented at nearly 50 scientific, exercise, and nutrition related conferences; and published countless articles online.

His first articles at Testosterone Magazine so many years ago, provided me with the basis for everything I know about nutrition today. Now I will turn some of that knowledge over to you in the form of Nutrition Tips written by Dr. Berardi himself.

Today’s Topic – How To Manage Your Macronutrients

Every diet says to do something different.

There’s the Zone Diet, Atkins, Weight Watchers, South Beach, and 300,000 others all telling us to consume different percentages of carbs, fat and protein. Ultimately I think what works best is a diet that has a roughly equal percentage of calories from all macronutrient sources.

Sometimes protein should be higher for muscle gain, sometimes carbs should be lower for fat loss, etc… If you choose to go with a strict diet, you will need to compare the macronutrient values of each food you eat in order to get it all right. Even if you just choose a healthy eating diet, at times you should still reference macronutrient info to make sure you are maintaining the correct path.

So, what are the best resources for managing your macronutrients?

Firstly, you should check out the Project Swole posts that describe how much protein you should eat, how many carbs you should eat, and how much fat you should eat.

Next, you should keep a food log for a while. Writing down what you eat, how much you eat, and what is in the food you eat, will go a long way in building a permanent understanding of the macronutrient profiles of your favorite foods.

Finally, you adjust your macronutrients based on your progress, knowing full well that your diet is responsible for 80% of your results.

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Get Precision Nutrition

In order to manage your macronutrients efficiently, you will need some resources for obtaining nutritional breakdowns for the foods on your menu. Believe it or not, there are some resources out there that are even more useful than reading articles on Project Swole.

But don’t take my word for it. Let’s see what JB has to say about it:

Tip: How To Manage Your Macronutrients

“Are you more likely to be able to decipher ancient Greek texts than figure out how to construct a diet containing 30% protein, 50% carbohydrate, and 20% fat?

Well then check out the following resources:

  1. The National Agriculture Library’s Food and Nutrition Information Center. Here you can find basic information on dietary supplements, an advanced food composition database, information about the food guide, and a listing of interesting resources about special needs, food allergies, etc.
  2. Nutrition Data is a fantastic resource and although it uses the food database above, may actually offer a better presentation of the food composition data. It doesn’t offer the other information, though.
  3. Fit Day is another great food composition site that offers much more including online diet and fitness journals.
  4. Calorie King offers many of the same resources as Fit Day but has several excellent additional features such as an online ‘university’ (weekly education about the physiological and behavioral sides of nutrition). The extras cost money but are worth checking into.”

See Also

This tip is sponsored by Precision Nutrition – Project Swole’s pick for the best nutrition and supplement resource currently available. Containing system manuals, gourmet cookbook, digital audio/video library, online membership, and more, Precision Nutrition will teach you everything you need to know to get the body you want — guaranteed.

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