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Health & Fitness Redefined
Health and Fitness Redefined with Anthony Amen. Take a dive into the health world as we learn how to overcome adversity, depict fact vs fiction and see health & fitness in a whole new light.Fitness Is Medicine
Health & Fitness Redefined
WTF is a Macro?
What if you could unlock the secrets of optimal nutrition and harness the power of macronutrients to transform your health and fitness journey? In this enlightening episode of Health and Fitness Redefined, we break down the essentials of nutrition, focusing on the critical roles of protein, carbohydrates, and fats in our bodies. You'll discover how each macronutrient contributes uniquely to your muscle and tissue building, energy supply, and brain development. We also demystify the concept of calories, offering a clear explanation of how proteins, carbs, fats, and even alcohol convert into caloric energy, shaping your daily dietary needs.
Maintaining a balanced diet is key to sustaining muscle and energy levels, and this episode provides actionable insights to help you achieve just that. Learn about the importance of adequate protein intake, with a recommended one gram per pound of body weight to ensure muscle preservation. Understand how carbohydrates aid in energy provision and protein breakdown, and why focusing on net carbs and opting for whole foods over processed options can significantly benefit your health. We also highlight the significance of healthy fats in digesting fat-soluble vitamins and suggest practical dietary swaps like choosing smoothies over juices to maximize fiber intake.
Navigating the world of fats can be confusing, but our episode promises to clarify everything you need to know. Discover the differences between saturated and unsaturated fats, and their impacts on cholesterol and blood pressure. We explain the roles of LDLs and HDLs, shedding light on how genetics can influence cholesterol levels. With tips on understanding your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) and the caloric deficit required for weight loss, we empower you with the knowledge to overcome weight loss plateaus and appreciate the role of fat in burning calories even at rest. Don't miss our wrap-up, where we encourage listener feedback and future topic suggestions at healthfitnessredefinedpodcast@gmail.com. Tune in and redefine your approach to nutrition and fitness today!
What's up everybody and welcome to another episode of Health and Fitness Redefined. We are going to have a very in-detail conversation, just an overview of nutrition. I want to make sure that I can teach you guys enough facts about the foods you eat how to eat, how to understand what a calorie is, how to understand what different macronutrients, what even is a macronutrient? Who even knows? So you can take away from this and next time you're looking at foods and next time you're looking at different diets or maybe things like that, you have a broad understanding and you're not just going off of a he said, she said kind of phenomenon. So let's get, let's dive into this and hit some basics about nutrition.
Speaker 1:So, first and foremost, there's something called macronutrients. There's three of them. Macronutrients make there's three of them. Macronutrients make up all types of foods. And these macronutrients you've heard plenty of times before you have the one that we talk about all the time here, which is protein. Then you have carbohydrates and then you have fats, not to be confused with fat in your body. I understand that it is confusing, but fats are a macronutrient. So those three things make up all food.
Speaker 1:Now, each one has specific functions for your body. For example, proteins provide amino acids which are essential for building muscle, skin, blood and important structures of the brain and nervous system. So obviously very vital Fat is vital for brain development, insulation, energy reserves, cell functions and the protection of your organs. And then carbs don't do nothing for us. Like we've stressed it many times on this show before, carbs are energy and not only carbs are energy. Carbs are actually the only thing that can break the blood-brain barrier and supply fuel for our brains. So a lot of times you hear people the keto argument stating I don't need carbs. I, you know ketosis will give me all the energy I need. Yeah, you're right. Your body will eventually start breaking down fats to turn them into energy, to break that barrier. But it takes up to three to four days of being starved of carbs for your body to start producing ketones to put you into ketosis. So when you're thinking about doing a diet like that and this is what was my argument against this you're going to be in some brain fog and have such low energy they call it the keto flu because your body's entering starvation mode. And do you really want to do something that's going to put your body in that stage where it's like I don't know if food's around. We talk about the problems of eating too few calories all the time on the shelf and it's the same thing. You don't want to put that on your body, because the amount of stress that your body has to undergo in order to start producing ketones just isn't worth it. That your body has to undergo in order to start producing ketones just isn't worth it in the long run.
Speaker 1:So, now that I understand what the three macronutrients are, now that I understand what each macronutrient does, how does that turn into calories? So what are calories? Calories is just, it's just what is described as energy, but it's basically just heat. Right, it's what a heat something produces. So each macronutrient has a specific amount of calories associated with it per gram. Now, proteins and carbs are the same it's four calories per gram. Fats are nine calories per gram, so a little over double the difference between proteins, carbs and then fats.
Speaker 1:I'm also going to throw in, not macronutrient, but a fourth thing that we all know and love, and that is alcohol. Alcohol to its true form is seven calories per gram. So when you do decide to go for that drink, just understand. The purest type of alcohols are going to be broken down to seven calories per gram, and any kind of additives are going to bump those overall calorie counts. Now what does that mean for me? What do I want to take away from having a broad understanding? So let's start with just overall picture, right?
Speaker 1:Your body breaks down calories every single day. When we call this, we call this your BMR, or your basal metabolic rate. That's how many calories a day at rest does your body burn? A lot of people under the assumption I don't know if they say it as jokes or they truly mean it that if I lay down in bed I'm not burning any calories. And that's just not true. Your body is consistently burning calories On a day. Your brain's moving, your heart's beating, your liver's working, your kidneys are functioning. There's so many things going on inside of your body on a day-to-day basis. You're always going to burn calories, even if you laid in bed the entire day. So that's what we call your BMR.
Speaker 1:How do you figure out your BMR? There's a couple of equations out there that help give us a good baseline. None of them are 100% accurate. So when you're looking up BMR calculators, just understand. They're educated guesses going off of things such as your age, your sex, your body fat percentage, your height, your weight Each one has different factors of all that to get an underlying answer of what your BMR is. But obviously people can fluctuate between like 50 to 100 calories per day. Even if it's the same two people at the same two areas, they're all the same age, sex, height, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1:So the only true way to tell that our breathing tests. You breathe into a machine and it can give you out a more accurate idea of how many calories do you actually burn at rest. But to be honest, it doesn't matter unless you're like a bodybuilder or you want to really take it to the next level. You're an athlete and you're counting your calories down to the single gram. So it's not overall important for people to do that. So I like to use the Harris-Benedict formula and you can look that up. It's the Harris-Benedict formula to help calculate your overlying BMR.
Speaker 1:Now, people have different activity levels, right? So this is that will give us how many calories a day we're burning at rest before we go on and do any types of activities, aka walking to the bathroom, walking down the side of stairs, going to the gym, going for a bike ride. All these things get equated into how many calories a day we're going to burn at rest. So if I am super active and go to the gym four or five days a week, I'm actually going to almost double my BMR looking at how many calories a day burn at rest. Now the Harris-Bennett equation is good for those that do not have.
Speaker 1:I want to just say are not trainers right? You're not bodybuilders. Why? Because muscle burns more calories at rest than fat does. So if I have a lot of muscle in my body and this is why I'm a huge component of weightlifting to keep yourself from building fat, subcutaneous fat on your body the more muscle you have, the more calories a day you're going to burn at rest. For every pound of muscle you're going to burn between seven and I believe it's seven to 10 calories a day at rest. I might be off by a calorie, but I know it's a lot higher. It's around that range. So let's take for easy math. Let's say it's 10 calories per pound of muscle we have on our body, right? If I have 10 pounds of muscle, then I'm burning an extra 100 calories a day at rest. 50 pounds of muscle, which is where most of our personal trainers and all that is. I'm burning an extra 500 calories a day at rest before I even decide to go to the gym, right? So this is a big reason why somebody like myself eats between 3,500 and 4,000 calories a day because I am burning such a high rate of calories.
Speaker 1:I need to consume a lot of calories in order to sustain the muscle that is on my body. My body needs to know that it can support it. When I eat too little and I have a lot of muscle in my body, what happens? Your body says to itself oh, I can't hold on to this muscle anymore, we're burning too quick. I need fuel. Let me start eating away at some muscle tissue. Let's drop our metabolic rate Drop, you heard me right. Let's drop that. Let's eat some muscle. Burn fewer calories a day at rest because there's not a lot of food around. If it thinks there is a lot of food around like obviously we have now you want to constantly feed the muscles on your body. So you're actually always in a strict weightlifting program going to increase the amount of calories a day you're eating to order to sustain the amount of muscle that's on your body. Doesn't that sound so much better? Unlike somebody who doesn't weightlift, just goes for walks and just does cardio. They're eventually going to eat away their muscle tissue. Cardio they're eventually going to eat away their muscle tissue. Or like somebody who goes on super fasted this crazy like 400, 500-calorie diet, so like doing the keto diet, your body's saying to itself shit, get rid of the muscle. And it starts num, num, num, num, num, num, num, eating away the muscle tissue, dropping your metabolic rate. Therefore, when you go away on vacation, you're going to gain so much more fat than somebody who does weight lift because their body is saying I can sustain this, I don't need to eat my muscle tissue. They're going to be burning at a lot higher of a rate. So that's to just go back.
Speaker 1:Three macronutrients proteins, fats, carbs. Proteins and carbs have four calories per gram. Fat has nine calories per gram. We talked about BMR basal metabolic rate. We talked about the significance of BMRs how many calories a day you're burning at rest, which is equivalent to things like age, sex, height, weight, body fat percentage. We talked about how activity level plays a huge role in how many calories a day you're burning at rest. And then we talked about how, having significant amount of muscle on your body, it's going to burn more calories a day at rest.
Speaker 1:Great, what does this mean for me? So if I want to lose weight which is a common thing people ask for, hey, anthony, how do I get rid of fat on my body? Well, we do know that one pound of fat is roughly equivalent to 3,500 calories, right? So if we just did a simple calories in, calories out method, if I ate at a deficit of 500 calories from what I'm burning for my BMR, theoretically every week I should drop one pound of fat, right, because seven times 500 is 3,500. So I'm dropping that. If I want to make that quicker and get that up to two pounds of fat per day, per week sorry, I make that a thousand. Now there's two ways to get that thousand calorie deficit. It's not just eating less food. It goes into activity, doing more stuff, getting out, working out, going for a walk, going for a run, playing a sport, doing activities to burn an extra 500 calories a day. And the other side, eating 500 calories a day less than what you're normally eating.
Speaker 1:But the caveat with this like I mentioned before, eating too little could start ripping away muscle, especially protein, and a lot of people, when they start cutting foods. You start cutting foods in general not good. You want to make sure that your protein is always high enough that your body knows it can constantly rebuild and replenish the muscle on your body. So we've had a bunch of episodes on protein. I'm not going to dive into it too much. Just note a good rule of thumb one gram per pound. Women, that's slightly high, but it's okay. Highers always fine, men it's.
Speaker 1:Some people say one, some say 1.2. If we just say one, just for easy math, it's good for everybody. We know we're at least on the right track. So if I weigh 200 pounds, I need 200 grams of protein a day. Make sense. If I weigh 100 pounds, I need 100 grams of protein per day. I need 100 grams of protein for a day, making sure that I can sustain the muscle tissue on my body. Great.
Speaker 1:Now let's break down carbs. Carbs are good for you. Carbs are energy. You actually use carbs to help protein get broken down, to help repair your muscle. So you do need carbs in order to help its functions. You want to go play that sport for the day, right? You want to burn that extra 500 calories? You need carbs to fuel you for that stuff. It doesn't mean having excess carbs. It means just having enough to fuel you for the day. Now carbs can be broken down into simple and complex carbs, and I even just think saying that confuses people. So I'm going to just take a different approach than what you normally heard, which is that all you care about when it comes to carbohydrates, things that are high in carbs breads, rice, pastas you all know All I want you to look is the amount of fiber compared to the amount of carbs.
Speaker 1:The closer those numbers are together, the healthier that thing is for you. Why fiber helps regulate how sugar gets broken down doesn't all happen at once. I have a piece of candy my blood sugar is going to spike. There's no fiber in candy. If I have an apple, there's a lot of fiber in apple. It's going to take a lot longer for my body to break that down and have energy lasting longer.
Speaker 1:So when I'm looking at carbs, all I'm going to do is take the total carbs. I'm going to go back to the nutrition label. You can look up where it is and say it's 10 grams of carbs for X food and that has five grams of fiber in it. Right? So I'm going to do 10 minus five, I get five grams of net carbs. I know that's pretty good, that's pretty low. I have something that's 10 grams of carbs, zero fiber. That's double the amount of straight sugar I'm getting into my bloodstream. Does that make? I hope that makes sense for everybody and without really getting a lot into the science behind it. I don't want to overwhelm people. Look at carbs minus the way the fiber that. This is a good baseline. How many net carbs is something? And the higher, the smaller the net carb number I should say, the better that thing is for you. So the smaller the net carbs, the better it is for you, the more sustainable energy you have and I do recommend you eat it. What's high in fiber Easy Fruits, veggies, lentils, legumes, which are beans, things like that, and pretty much anything you can find in nature is going to be a lot higher in fiber than that that's processed.
Speaker 1:So when you're looking at foods, you always go for whole foods as opposed to not whole foods. An example I give to everybody to make it less confusing I went to the same orchard and I found an orange tree and I said, oh, look, there's an orange tree. Great. And I pulled two oranges from the same tree, took one of those oranges and I juiced it, put it in my juicer, or I just squeezed it out and put it into a cup and then I said and here's the other orange. So I have one orange that I juiced, one orange that I did not juice. One of them is bad for you. Which one's bad for you? The juice? But, anthony, it's the same tray, it's the same orange, yeah, but what did you do? You took away the fiber. All that little grainy stuff in the orange is the fiber. So you can eat that whole orange and have absolutely no problems, as opposed to drinking that juice and get a blood sugar spike. Weigh it out. If it's good for you, don't juice.
Speaker 1:Then what about smoothies? Great example. So smoothies, you're actually putting all the fiber into the smoothie as opposed to juicing it and stripping away the skin. It does have less fiber than it's in the original form. So don't get me wrong, it's not as high, but it's not zero. And what I will add in is usually chia seeds, which are very high in fiber. And what I will add in is usually chia seeds, which are very high in fiber, and that'll help balance out that smoothie. So now I have more fiber in it. It's almost back to its original form with the amount of fiber associated with that product when I do blend it all together. So that's why smoothies are, in general, healthier than juices, or even if it's juice whatever, it doesn't matter. Also, the proteins, the carbs.
Speaker 1:What about fats? Fats, as we learned back in the 70s and 80s, are good for you and you need them for a lot of things, specifically digesting fat-soluble vitamins. There's four vitamins that can only be digested by fat. What are they? Vitamin D, vitamin A, vitamin K and vitamin E. We're going to go into that another episode. But we do need fats for that reason. So fats can be broken down into saturated and unsaturated.
Speaker 1:The third category, being trans fats, does naturally produce naturally trans fats. And then there's processed trans fats. Processed trans fats occur from boiling oil. So if I took canola oil, vegetable oil, and I fried something in it, that's going to add trans fats to it, specifically canola oil, and I know that. Without breaking into details, trans fats are absolutely horrible for you and should be banned, and they are banned in a lot of European countries, just not here in America. That legislation keeps getting pushed off further and further and further, where is trans fats found? Really high in peanut butter? Peanut butter, yeah.
Speaker 1:So if you go look at a jiffy label or you go look at like you go to your local grocer and find all natural peanut butter, you look at the ingredients, One has trans fat added to it. It's partially hydrogenated oils. It does not say trans fat, it says partially hydrogenated oil, whereas opposed to the natural one does not. It just says peanut and salt. So the one that does not have partially hydrogen oils super healthy for you, peer Alert is awesome the one that says partially hydrogen oils. The label might say zero grams of trans fat. But here's the kicker According to the government, if something is under 0.5 grams, it can be labeled as zero. So what does the company do? Changes the serving size, gets it so that the trans fat is under 0.5. Therefore, it can put that the zero grams of trans fat on the label. Now how does that make you feel Great? That's why the look at labels partial hydrogenated oils. I know it's trans fat. Stay away from absolutely horrible. Cool, let's move on.
Speaker 1:And there's saturated and unsaturated fats. Saturated fats, also known as low-density lipids no, they had blood work, I've seen that on it. Oh, ldls. Unsaturated fats are high-density lipids. You look at that. It says HDLs low density lipids are lousy, lousy fats. High density lipids are happy fats. So which one do I want to have the happy, unsaturated fats.
Speaker 1:If you have any high blood pressure or if your overall cholesterol levels are high, this is where this plays a role. So that means you're having, if your blood pressure is high and your overall cholesterol is high, you're having if your blood pressure is high and your over-cholesterol is high. You're having too high of saturated fats compared to the amount of unsaturated fats that you eat. Without breaking down, of course and over-complexing things. Just know this. Unsaturated fats help break down saturated fats. So the more unsaturated you have, the more it helps drop your blood pressure and drop your overall cholesterol. Cholesterol is just the overall amount of fats found in the source.
Speaker 1:Eating cholesterol does not increase your cholesterol. Eating cholesterol does not increase your cholesterol. Go look it up if you don't believe me. So eggs, which is always the oh. They're good for you. Why are they bad for you? The yolks are extremely high in cholesterol. It's like 70%. It's crazy that there's even a seven suggested size on them, but I eat seven eggs in the morning. Seven. It does not raise my cholesterol.
Speaker 1:What actually raises people's cholesterol and this might suck for some people to hear, but genetics is the number one reason your cholesterol is high. So does mom and dad produce a lot of cholesterol? Because we naturally produce our cholesterol inside of our body, you're going to have higher cholesterol. You can control these by exercising. You can control these by having higher amounts of unsaturated fats and it will help and I highly recommend it. But just know genetics do play a really underlying role, but it doesn't mean just to give up and cry and make it worse.
Speaker 1:So what foods are high in unsaturated fats? Easy Nuts, seeds yeah, seeds. So those kinds of things or beans have really high unsaturated fats. Avocados Ooh, avocados are great. Whereas what's high in saturated fats?
Speaker 1:Different kinds of meats. So Wagyu meat is probably the highest in saturated fats. Therefore it is one of the unhealthiest meats to eat. I do eat it once in a while. It is absolutely delicious. Healthiest meats to eat. I do eat it once in a while, it is absolutely delicious, but, yes, very high unsaturated fat, whereas grass-fed beef and lean beef has higher amounts of unsaturated, less amounts of saturated fat. Therefore it's good for you.
Speaker 1:So red meats are kind of in that awkward category. It depends what kind of red meat you're eating. It depends how that cattle was raised, depends how much muscle was on that cow Tough. So it's up to you if you want to look at labels, try to understand or not understand. Regardless, foods that are very low in saturated fats, that are meat and do have really good sources of protein, are chicken, turkey, fish, bison. Those are phenomenal and you should definitely eat them, especially bison Really really good, highly recommend. And then, for those that want more exotic options, venison and elk are also two great options that are very low in saturated fats. You can always tell when you're eating something how fatty the meat is and the fattier it is it means the higher amounts of saturated fats are in that product.
Speaker 1:So we got a basic understanding of the three macronutrients. We broke down what each one does. We give the specific caloric accounts associated with each one. We broke down even further but the different types of each different one. We went into BMR. We went into how to calculate your BMR. We understand now that there's 3,500 calories in one pound of fat. So if I want to lose it, I get a deficit of 500 calories per day to lose one pound per week, and just note that. And then I'm going to add a little just side note comment here before we wrap this episode up Fat on your body burns calories.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it does. It doesn't burn nearly as much as muscle does, but it does burn calories. I think it's between two to four. I know it's somewhere around there. Don't 100% quote me. I think it's between two to four. I know it's somewhere around there. Don't 100% quote me. I think it's two to four. So let's take four. For instance, if I have 100 pounds of excess fat, I'm going to be burning 400 calories a day extra at rest, right? So a lot of people.
Speaker 1:And why this is relevant if you're on the scale where you need to drop 100 pounds, 150 pounds, 200 pounds, this is what you're going to notice and I just want to give you good news. You're going to drop weight really quick, really soon. Why? Because fat is burning calories at rest and then you're even adding exercise and you're starting to eat a lot less. So you're extremely high deficits in the beginning, meaning you might drop 10 pounds in a week. I've seen 25 pounds in two weeks. So you're going to drop quick.
Speaker 1:Now what happens is there's some point in your journey. Things start balancing out. You have less fat on your body and you're still eating the same. So your BMR like the amount of the difference you have in the deficit from your BMR is now less. So you start losing less weight each week. It's okay, it's perfectly okay.
Speaker 1:You will hit a plateau. This is what you call your plateau period. This is where most people get discouraged. Anthony, scale staying the same. We don't care about the scale, right, because we know we're building muscle. So we're gaining weight by building muscle, but we drop so quickly, so soon. We're just getting discouraged. Don't worry about it, just keep pushing. You've got to get through that awkward balance of building muscle, which obviously the scale weight. It's going to negate the difference of your dropping fat. So just know you're going to hit a plateau and eventually your muscle will start going higher. You're really going to ramp up your BMR from building that muscle because it takes time to build muscle About three months, months really, of consistency. So don't get discouraged. You just keep pushing forward.
Speaker 1:It happens to everybody, everybody. So this is why it's important to understand this stuff. If you guys have any ideas for topics going forward, please don't forget, you can reach out to fitness redefined podcast gmailcom. Thank you so much for listening this week's episode and we hope to see you all soon. Don't forget share the show. Fitness is medicine. Until next time, uh uh. Outro Music.
