If you’re skinny-fat and you wanna lose fat WITHOUT losing muscle, then you need to make sure you’re eating enough of THIS.

If you wanna lose fat without losing muscle, you need to eat a specific kind of food. This flies in the face of the Energy Balance Equation, which crows energy/calories king. Unfortunately, your energy/calorie situation dictates your physiological state more than one specific outcome.

Meaning: When your energy output exceeds your energy input (when you're in an calorie deficit), your body goes into a catabolic “breakdown and destroy” state — your body is apt take bigger things and break them into smaller things.

Luckily, your body is biased to break down mostly body fat when you're catabolic. But you can skew the odds further in your favor by eating a specific type of food — one that tells your body to cling onto muscle mass.

If you were sedentary and you only cared about shedding a few pounds, focusing solely on energy/calories wouldn't be a bad idea. Don’t worry about what you’re eating, worry about how much calories you’re consuming.

But that's not you.

You're here because you want to build the sort of body your former high school classmates will stalk on Facebook at 2AM. You need to make sure you're eating…

The three macronutrients.

The macronutrients are the energy containing nutrients, and there are three of them: proteins, carbohydrates, and fats. Long ago, some crazy dude lit food on fire and measured the amount of heat that… something. I don't know. He found that each macronutrient had a certain stock energy value, per gram.

• Carbohydrates = 4 calories per gram
• Proteins = 4 calories per gram
• Fats = 9 calories per gram

From a calorie/energy standpoint, fats are evil. They have over twice the amount of energy as an equivalent amount of carbs or proteins. But you're smart. You know something everyone in the 80's and 90's ignored: food is more than energy.

Calories aren't everything.

Food is energy, yes. But food is also nutrients. Even diaper dirtying toddlers know the OG pirates died of scurvy and not starvation. Scurvy is a NUTRIENT deficiency, not an ENERGY deficiency.

Nutrients do things for you that calories can't.

Different nutrients do different things inside of you.

This is why fats AREN'T evil. Although fats are calorie-dense, they are essential, meaning we need to eat them to survive; we can't produce them ourselves. In other words, if you don't eat fats, your body won't be very happy.

Worlds below macronutrients.

The three macronutrients get most of the focus, but there are deeper worlds you shouldn't totally ignore. There are micronutrients (vitamins and minerals), phytochemicals, bacteria, and other things I'm not smart enough to pretend to know about.

The sub-macronutrient world is often overlooked because it doesn't (directly) mingle with calories/energy; vitamins and minerals don't contain molecular madness your body can to recycle its energy supply. It's also overlooked because it's overwhelming. It's one thing to keep an eye on your protein, carb, and fat intake. It's another thing to obsess over the 10+ vitamins and 20+ minerals that your body needs.

SUB-MACRONUTRIENT SALVE

To prevent gnarling into a ball of overwhelm, here's the sub-macronutrient salve: eat a variety of Mother Nature’s food. AS. LONG. AS. YOU. UNDERSTAND. WHAT. MOTHER. NATURE'S. FOOD. IS. AND. ISN'T. Mother Nature's food usually ISN'T “natural.”

• Punch this link for more on Mother Nature's food

Eating Mother Nature's food is the best way to handle the sub-macronutrient situation without obsessing over the situation. Also, Mother Nature's food tends to make people less fat. (I'll explain why later.)

Your new bestie.

Although the macronutrients contain energy, they are still nutrients, which means they do different things inside of you. For physique purposes, the focal macronutrient is protein. Protein is your new best friend, for two reasons.

MUSCULAR REASONS

First, because it contains nitrogen. Neither carbs nor fats contain nitrogen. A positive nitrogen balance is associated with growth and repair of muscle tissue. A negative nitrogen balance is associated with decay and breakdown of muscle tissue. (Higher protein intake leads to greater muscle retention during calorie deficits.)

BODY FAT REASONS

Second, uhh… you're gonna have to wait. To ruin the punchline, eating protein is fantastic for fat loss. You have to continue on if you want to learn why, though.

Protein is good for building muscle and losing fat. You need to build muscle and lose fat. See where this is going?

How much protein?

How much protein should you eat? The old school recommendation: one gram of protein per pound of body weight. If you weigh 180 pounds, then you need to eat 180 grams of protein.

This recommendation has some wiggle room. Most research says you probably only need 0.7-0.8 grams per pound of body weight. Also, some protein recommendations are calculated using lean body mass, instead of overall body mass.

In other words, if you weigh 200 pounds and you have 10% body fat, then you have 20 pounds of fat mass, and 180 pounds of lean mass. Given this, you should eat 180 grams of protein.

If you're obese (read: not skinny-fat), then using lean body mass is a decent idea. But, in general, the one gram per pound recommendation is more user friendly, which is why I stick with it.

Protein has numerous other benefits, which is why I'm not worried about eating slightly more protein than what's necessary for maximum muscle growth. (For instance, it has a high satiety index, which means it makes you feel full.)

Finding the protein.

You have to make a conscious effort to eat more protein. You won't be eating enough protein unless you're trying to eat enough protein. Be sure to include protein-dense foods in every meal.

If you're a vegan, a vegetarian, or a vwhatever, then you have to do the best you can given your prison. Some of the best protein-containing carb sources are quinoa, split peas, chickpeas, and legumes.

Find the protein.

Eat the protein.

How do you know?

At this point, you might be wondering: “How do I know how much protein is in the foods I'm eating?” You can find calorie/macronutrient info via nutrition facts labels.

Prepackaged processed foods usually have nutrition facts labels on their packages. Fresher foods often aren't slapped with a nutrition facts label, which why Google exists. You can find the nutrition facts for almost any food by search.

The macro algorithm.

You know how many grams of protein you should eat: one gram per pound of body weight. What about carbs and fats? For starters, split your remainder calorie intake (after factoring out protein) between the two.

(Warning: there is math ahead. There's a spreadsheet in the Quickstart Guide that calculates your calories and your macros for you. If you're a succubus, you'll have to go alone.)

Let's say you're 210 pounds and eating 2500 calories. Using the one-gram-per-pound recommendation, you need 210 grams of protein. Once you have your protein ceiling, you have to reverse engineer protein-grams into protein-calories.

Every gram of protein yields four calories. You're gonna be eating 210 grams of protein, which equals 840 calories (210×4=840). Subtracting 840 calories from your 2500 calorie ceiling, you end up with 1660 calories (2500-840=1660). This is how many calories you have left over for carbs and fats.

You can divide the leftover calories across carbs and fats however you want. I recommend going with 50C/50F or 75C/25F for reasons that you'll just have to trust.

• 50% CARB, 50% FAT
• 75% CARB, 25% FAT

If you went 50C/50F, both carbs and fats get 830 calories (1660/2=830). Since carbohydrates yield 4 calories per gram, you're able to eat 208 grams of carbs (830/4=208). For fats, one gram yields nine calories. This means you're able to eat 92 grams of fats (830/9=92).

Bodybuilding macros.

The above algorithm yields a “bodybuilding-esque” macronutrient split. Don't let the word “bodybuilding” split your shorts. Eating like a bodybuilder won’t turn you into a bodybuilder. You need to religiously shove needles into your sphincter steak in order to become a bodybuilder.

Even if you don't want to be a bodybuilder, you want your body to function like a bodybuilder's. Because a bodybuilder's body (a) treats fat cells like Steve Jobs treated his children, and (b) treats muscle cells like Angelina Jolie treats her children. In other words, bodybuilders' bodies are pro-muscle and anti-fat.

Using a “bodybuilding-esque macronutrient split” facilitates fat loss and muscle growth. This is what you want, even if you don't you want to get on stage in a hot pink thong and shake your boom boom.

The war is just beginning.

You have your macros. You won the battle. But there's a looming war. Because there's a unspoken problem with the macronutrients: they aren't real. They don’t exist in nature. Carbohydrates don’t grown on trees. Fruit grows on trees, and fruit just so happen to contain carbohydrates.

Getting your calorie and macronutrients numbers is easy. Transforming these numbers into a tangible quantity of real foods is the tricky part. It's like shaking a black dudes hand for the first time. Do you clap-slide-interlock-nod? Finish with a shoulder-thrust-back-slap? I NEVER KNOW HOW TO APPROACH THE SITUATION.

Alas, now isn't the time to transform numbers into nomnoms. You know the importance of protein, which was the objective.

 

May the Gains be with you,
Ant

 

ps

If you want to become a wizard and transform your numbers into nomnoms without falling for Peanut Butter Syndrome (deadly), you should think about snagging Skinny-Fat Secrets. 

pps

Given the pirate anecdote, you might be thinking about vitamin and mineral supplements. I can hack the system by eating less and taking vitamin and mineral pills! Not so fast. Taking supplements isn't the same as eating real food containing vitamins, minerals, and the lot of shat we need, yet don’t know we need.

Here's something to chew on…

Some researchers hold that the benefits of vegetables may not be so much in what we call the “vitamins” or some other rationalizing theories (that is, ideas that seem to make sense in narrative form but have not been subjected to rigorous empirical testing), but in the following: plants protect themselves from harm and fend off predators with poisonous substances that, ingested by us in the right quantities, may stimulate our organisms—or so goes the story.

~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile

ppps

Eating Mother Nature's food is the best way to handle the sub-macronutrient situation without igniting OCD. If you wanted to dig deeper into the sub-macronutrient situation, then you'd need to get some blood work done (or do a reputable hair analysis test). This’ll help you create a specific game plan, instead of shooting a shotgun at a shadow.

pppps

There are two reasons why Mother Nature's food tends to make people less fat. First, because Mother Nature's food tends to be more satiating than processed foods. Second, because Mother Nature's food tends to a higher thermic effect than processed foods. Protein is fantastic for fat loss for the same two reasons.