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The Great Macronutrient Debate Part I
“Differences of opinion can be creatively stimulating as well as frustrating.”
~Jim Coleman
When it comes to bodybuilding nutrition and trying to decipher what protein, carbohydrate, and fat intake to implement, things can certainly get confusing for our readership. If you ask certain gurus out there, they will tell you that carbohydrates are absolutely useless and need to be completely cut out. Others will shout from the rooftops that a high carbohydrate intake is required for maximal anabolism. Old-school bodybuilders may tell you that the only thing that matters is eating a zillion grams of protein per pound of bodyweight. They will also make it a point to discredit the arguments of anyone else who has a difference of opinion from their own. In fact, a more appropriate quote to use for this article may be "Opinions are like assholes. Everybody's got one and everyone thinks everyone else's stinks."
To be sure, there are many times when I feel bad for our readers getting so much conflicting information from so many different sources. So who’s right? Should you be cutting all carbs out and filling your pool with olive oil for better immersion in healthy fats? Should you be eating so much protein that you need to take out a second mortgage on your house in order to cover the staggering cost of your beef eating? Or should you be eating so many carbohydrates that you spend half the day in a delirious insulin coma?
Well I am here to settle this for you. All these gurus are right… and they are all wrong. What a shockingly unhelpful revelation, huh? But before you contact Boss Blechman and demand my head, let me explain why I say that. Despite us all having the same metabolic pathways, our bodies are strikingly different from individual to individual in their responses to various macronutrient profiles. Perhaps this is why even in the scientific community we see quite a bit of variability in the outcomes of controlled studies examining different macronutrient profiles. Increasing information about gene polymorphisms and different individual tolerances to drug and nutrient responses has made it very clear that in the coming years, nutritional advice is going to need to shift from generalized recommendations to specific targeted recommendations for the individual.
A practical example of what I’m talking about would be the case of a few actual clients I have worked with in the past. Let’s change their names to John and Joe to protect the innocent. Both John and Joe were approximately the same age (43 and 47 respectively), same height (about 5'7") and roughly the same weight to begin prepping for their shows (about 170 pounds). They both ended up at approximately the same weight for competition (about 142 and 145 pounds respectively). They both had similar structures and started at almost the exact same body fat.
As a coach, if you just looked at their stats on a piece of paper and were following generalized recommendations from a plug-and-chug type formula for protein, carb, and fat intake, then it is likely they both would have ended up following similar programs— but after having worked with each of them for several months I knew they both had differential tolerances to macronutrients, carbohydrates in particular. John never had to drop his carbs below 250 grams per day and he was able to get completely shredded. Joe, on the other hand, did not tolerate carbohydrates nearly as well and we had to take him all the way down to around 70 grams of carbohydrates per day. But in the end, both of them got shredded and both of them won their respective shows.
Now I have dozens of other examples of clients who have a similar story. I’ve worked with people who got show-lean on 400 grams of carbs. I’ve worked with people who had to drop all the way down to 25 grams of carbs per day to get lean enough! That’s a huge difference! As we’ve seen here however, finding exactly where you fit in the macronutrient continuum can make the difference between winning and being the pudgy guy onstage who everyone asks, “Are you serious???”
This is the reason that I always chuckle when I hear people talk about “doing Layne Norton’s diet” or “using Layne Norton’s diet program.” There is no such thing. What works for me may not work for your metabolism. I’ve worked with over 500 people in the last three years and all of them had different plans, at least subtly based on how they responded to various manipulations in protein/carbohydrate/fat intake. For a fortunate few, we determined that they tolerated carbohydrates extremely well and for one lucky individual, this meant consuming almost 850 grams of carbs per day in the off-season while staying lean! For others, it meant staying high-protein, higher fat and moderate-to-low-carb, even in the off-season, in order to prevent excess fat gain. So if you hear someone talk about “Layne Norton’s diet program” you can be sure that they have no idea what they are talking about.
As discussed previously, it seems that every guru out there champions a certain macronutrient or a certain type of diet and tries to apply that to every single person. As we’ve just demonstrated, that is the exact WRONG way to do things. Are there people out there who respond well to low-carb, high-fat? Absolutely. Are there people out there who shrivel up like a 70-year-old man’s testicles dunked into cold water when they follow a low-carb diet? You bet your nuts there are. All the macronutrients have various benefits; the biggest thing is keeping a balance that is beneficial for your individual metabolism. So before we go any further, let’s quickly look at the benefits of each.
Protein: I’m not going to beat you over the head with the importance of protein. Unless this is the first MD you’ve ever picked up, you know that protein is important. High-protein meals have been shown to increase muscle protein synthesis more than ‘adequate’ protein meals. Protein also has a thermogenic effect and high-protein diets have been shown to cause greater fat loss, compared to normal protein diets. But you can have too much of a good thing, so it’s important to keep protein in balance.
Carbohydrates: Carbohydrates increase muscle glycogen and spare dietary and muscle protein from being oxidized and used as energy. This saves the precious amino acids from dietary protein for muscle-building purposes. Furthermore, carbohydrates have been shown to have a synergistic effect with dietary protein on muscle protein synthesis. Insulin has also been shown to decrease protein breakdown. So as you can see, carbohydrates do have benefits, but need to be controlled to prevent excess fat gain.
Fats: Fats provide energy and are important for cellular integrity, turnover, and may be protein sparing.
So the big question is: How do you figure out where you fit? What is optimal for YOUR body’s metabolism? Well, I will be frank and say that there is simply no substitute for experimentation, documentation, and patience. Try different things and see how your body reacts, but make sure you are patient enough to give everything enough time. This also means tracking your protein, carbohydrate, and fat intake and documenting your response to various macronutrient profiles.
Now I know for some of you, that sounds like a lot of work, but let me tell you something, if you want to build a great physique, then you had better be ready to work your ass off, and if you are afraid of counting macronutrients, then all I can tell you is to cowboy up and get over it. Besides, programs on the net like fitday.com make tracking your intake very easy, compared to when I got into the game and had to do it on pen and paper. Did I mention I had to walk to school in 10 feet of snow uphill with no shoes on? So for exact macronutrient intake, I’m not going to be able to help you much with the exact amounts that will be optimal for YOU and anyone who says they can determine that for everyone and put it in an article either is flat-out arrogant.
The best I can do is give you some general recommendations to get you pointed in the right direction. In general, you want to eat enough protein to maximize anabolism, enough fat to get optimal fatty acid intakes, and keep carbs as high as you can while still losing fat at an appropriate rate, if you are cutting or preventing fat gain if you are bulking. As discussed previously, the exact amount will vary greatly from person to person. In next month’s column, I will elaborate on my recommendations and show you how to use some basic information to give you insight as to what may be optimal for your body.
Layne Norton is a natural pro bodybuilder with the IFPA and PhD candidate in Nutritional Sciences at the University of Illinois. He offers contest prep, nutritional, and training consultation through his company BioLayne LLC. To learn more about Layne and the services he offers, visit http://www.biolayne.com.
“Differences of opinion can be creatively stimulating as well as frustrating.”
~Jim Coleman
When it comes to bodybuilding nutrition and trying to decipher what protein, carbohydrate, and fat intake to implement, things can certainly get confusing for our readership. If you ask certain gurus out there, they will tell you that carbohydrates are absolutely useless and need to be completely cut out. Others will shout from the rooftops that a high carbohydrate intake is required for maximal anabolism. Old-school bodybuilders may tell you that the only thing that matters is eating a zillion grams of protein per pound of bodyweight. They will also make it a point to discredit the arguments of anyone else who has a difference of opinion from their own. In fact, a more appropriate quote to use for this article may be "Opinions are like assholes. Everybody's got one and everyone thinks everyone else's stinks."
To be sure, there are many times when I feel bad for our readers getting so much conflicting information from so many different sources. So who’s right? Should you be cutting all carbs out and filling your pool with olive oil for better immersion in healthy fats? Should you be eating so much protein that you need to take out a second mortgage on your house in order to cover the staggering cost of your beef eating? Or should you be eating so many carbohydrates that you spend half the day in a delirious insulin coma?
Well I am here to settle this for you. All these gurus are right… and they are all wrong. What a shockingly unhelpful revelation, huh? But before you contact Boss Blechman and demand my head, let me explain why I say that. Despite us all having the same metabolic pathways, our bodies are strikingly different from individual to individual in their responses to various macronutrient profiles. Perhaps this is why even in the scientific community we see quite a bit of variability in the outcomes of controlled studies examining different macronutrient profiles. Increasing information about gene polymorphisms and different individual tolerances to drug and nutrient responses has made it very clear that in the coming years, nutritional advice is going to need to shift from generalized recommendations to specific targeted recommendations for the individual.
A practical example of what I’m talking about would be the case of a few actual clients I have worked with in the past. Let’s change their names to John and Joe to protect the innocent. Both John and Joe were approximately the same age (43 and 47 respectively), same height (about 5'7") and roughly the same weight to begin prepping for their shows (about 170 pounds). They both ended up at approximately the same weight for competition (about 142 and 145 pounds respectively). They both had similar structures and started at almost the exact same body fat.
As a coach, if you just looked at their stats on a piece of paper and were following generalized recommendations from a plug-and-chug type formula for protein, carb, and fat intake, then it is likely they both would have ended up following similar programs— but after having worked with each of them for several months I knew they both had differential tolerances to macronutrients, carbohydrates in particular. John never had to drop his carbs below 250 grams per day and he was able to get completely shredded. Joe, on the other hand, did not tolerate carbohydrates nearly as well and we had to take him all the way down to around 70 grams of carbohydrates per day. But in the end, both of them got shredded and both of them won their respective shows.
Now I have dozens of other examples of clients who have a similar story. I’ve worked with people who got show-lean on 400 grams of carbs. I’ve worked with people who had to drop all the way down to 25 grams of carbs per day to get lean enough! That’s a huge difference! As we’ve seen here however, finding exactly where you fit in the macronutrient continuum can make the difference between winning and being the pudgy guy onstage who everyone asks, “Are you serious???”
This is the reason that I always chuckle when I hear people talk about “doing Layne Norton’s diet” or “using Layne Norton’s diet program.” There is no such thing. What works for me may not work for your metabolism. I’ve worked with over 500 people in the last three years and all of them had different plans, at least subtly based on how they responded to various manipulations in protein/carbohydrate/fat intake. For a fortunate few, we determined that they tolerated carbohydrates extremely well and for one lucky individual, this meant consuming almost 850 grams of carbs per day in the off-season while staying lean! For others, it meant staying high-protein, higher fat and moderate-to-low-carb, even in the off-season, in order to prevent excess fat gain. So if you hear someone talk about “Layne Norton’s diet program” you can be sure that they have no idea what they are talking about.
As discussed previously, it seems that every guru out there champions a certain macronutrient or a certain type of diet and tries to apply that to every single person. As we’ve just demonstrated, that is the exact WRONG way to do things. Are there people out there who respond well to low-carb, high-fat? Absolutely. Are there people out there who shrivel up like a 70-year-old man’s testicles dunked into cold water when they follow a low-carb diet? You bet your nuts there are. All the macronutrients have various benefits; the biggest thing is keeping a balance that is beneficial for your individual metabolism. So before we go any further, let’s quickly look at the benefits of each.
Protein: I’m not going to beat you over the head with the importance of protein. Unless this is the first MD you’ve ever picked up, you know that protein is important. High-protein meals have been shown to increase muscle protein synthesis more than ‘adequate’ protein meals. Protein also has a thermogenic effect and high-protein diets have been shown to cause greater fat loss, compared to normal protein diets. But you can have too much of a good thing, so it’s important to keep protein in balance.
Carbohydrates: Carbohydrates increase muscle glycogen and spare dietary and muscle protein from being oxidized and used as energy. This saves the precious amino acids from dietary protein for muscle-building purposes. Furthermore, carbohydrates have been shown to have a synergistic effect with dietary protein on muscle protein synthesis. Insulin has also been shown to decrease protein breakdown. So as you can see, carbohydrates do have benefits, but need to be controlled to prevent excess fat gain.
Fats: Fats provide energy and are important for cellular integrity, turnover, and may be protein sparing.
So the big question is: How do you figure out where you fit? What is optimal for YOUR body’s metabolism? Well, I will be frank and say that there is simply no substitute for experimentation, documentation, and patience. Try different things and see how your body reacts, but make sure you are patient enough to give everything enough time. This also means tracking your protein, carbohydrate, and fat intake and documenting your response to various macronutrient profiles.
Now I know for some of you, that sounds like a lot of work, but let me tell you something, if you want to build a great physique, then you had better be ready to work your ass off, and if you are afraid of counting macronutrients, then all I can tell you is to cowboy up and get over it. Besides, programs on the net like fitday.com make tracking your intake very easy, compared to when I got into the game and had to do it on pen and paper. Did I mention I had to walk to school in 10 feet of snow uphill with no shoes on? So for exact macronutrient intake, I’m not going to be able to help you much with the exact amounts that will be optimal for YOU and anyone who says they can determine that for everyone and put it in an article either is flat-out arrogant.
The best I can do is give you some general recommendations to get you pointed in the right direction. In general, you want to eat enough protein to maximize anabolism, enough fat to get optimal fatty acid intakes, and keep carbs as high as you can while still losing fat at an appropriate rate, if you are cutting or preventing fat gain if you are bulking. As discussed previously, the exact amount will vary greatly from person to person. In next month’s column, I will elaborate on my recommendations and show you how to use some basic information to give you insight as to what may be optimal for your body.
Layne Norton is a natural pro bodybuilder with the IFPA and PhD candidate in Nutritional Sciences at the University of Illinois. He offers contest prep, nutritional, and training consultation through his company BioLayne LLC. To learn more about Layne and the services he offers, visit http://www.biolayne.com.
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