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Ask Ant is my way of turning an inbox of nightmares into useful content for you. Each question is taken from my inbox, and identities are always kept private. If you’re wondering how to ask a question, sign-up for this thing. I send out weekly notes with personal, honest training reflections and tips, book reviews and suggestions, and the most recent blog posts from my personal email address. All you have to do is hit reply and type away.
Just bought a copy of The Chaos Bulk. I was wondering if you take into account the protein content of the starchy carbohydrates consumed on workout days when considering protein intake?
For example, if I’m eating 2 cups of rice, that’s about 10g of protein. Shouldn’t this count towards the 1g/pound of protein you recommend?
If you wanted it to, it could. The blah blah science issue of counting protein in most plant or non-animal sources is that the protein is usually “incomplete” in that it doesn’t have a full amino acid profile.
Most vegetarians work around this by combining foods that have a complimentary amino acid profile. I think now a days though, if you eat a decent spread of food, the amino acids will compliment themselves without them being eaten within the same meal. Don’t quote me on that though.
The reason why I don’t is because it’s like freaking out over losing a penny. I think the more knowledge we have and the more data we track, the worse off we are. I like using heuristics and broader tips that eventually funnel into individualized solutions. In other words, I let the penny fall down the drain because I have a 100 bill in my pocket.
Part of my nutrition philosophy is using broad categorization to make for easy substitution and less counting. The BULK of rice is carbohydrate fuel, so to me it’s simply a certain type of carbohydrate that can easily be swapped in and out for a similar carbohydrate.
Is there protein? Sure. Do I care or worry about it? No. And primarily because, I feel, that it’s somewhat damaging to be in a spot and mindset where you’re relying on rice in order to hit your protein needs.
That’s why I stick to simple rules. If you want protein, eat protein dominated foods. Carbs, carb dominated foods. Fat, fat dominated foods.
Some foods have overlap, and this is where knowing a bit about food helps. Salmon, for instance, has protein and fats. Knowing that it has a lot of fats, you can mentally trigger yourself to adjust other typical fat intake for the day.
But I only resort to this tactic if the secondary macronutrient (fat in the salmon case) is large enough for me to care.
So per 40 grams of protein in salmon, you might be getting around 25 grams of fat. That’s a close relationship. With 45 grams of carbs in rice, you’re only looking at 5 grams of protein. That’s not so close.
You can drive yourself crazy with these computations, but I tend to be more macro than micro when it comes to nutrition. The recommendation of 1 gram per pound of bodyweight is just a rule of thumb. You don’t have to be 100% spot on, either. I’d rather you err above the number than below it, but your world won’t collapse if don’t hit it exactly.
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