Following your Macros?

[Michael Morello]

Hey, you guys I have question on A diet fad that I hear a lot. Everyone says follow you macros but I am not that fond of this because I believe some days the body might need more nutrients and some days it might need less. Macros are always constant I believe. I have have never followed this approach but I am willing to on others opinions on this diet.

 

As of right now I follow almost a extreme Paleo diet right now. only meat, vegetables, some fruit and nuts(peanuts mostly). 

[Josh Schmitter]

As of right now I follow almost a extreme Paleo diet right now. only meat, vegetables, some fruit and nuts(peanuts mostly). 

Peanuts are, in fact, legumes. Not as extreme as you might have hoped eh? . On another note, check out Joshua Naterman's Nutrition posts in the forum...all the info you want and more.

[Connor Davies]

Yeah, ironically, peanuts are not actually nuts.

 

I can see your point about some days needing more nutrition and some days needing less, if you're talking about training vs non-training days.  However, if you're trying to lose weight eating like a non-training day on your training days would work, just like if you're trying to gain weight eating like your on a training day on your non-training days would work.

[Frankincensed]

Of course you need to adjust your consumption according to your physical demands, within reason.

If you are going on a 20 mile hike you won't want to eat the same as laying on the couch watching TV all day.

If you train for 3 hours a day you're going need more food than if you train for 30 minutes.

 

But if you maintain a regular pattern, and you eat a bit more or less than your need it's not a big deal.

If you are maintaining weight/strength over a long period that is an indication that you're close enough.

If your goal is to lose or gain mass it's similar - it's long term that matters most.

Daily fluctuations not so important.

[gravy]

Paleo is a fad diet.

[Josh Schmitter]

Paleo is a fad diet.

So are you .

 

The longest running fad in history perhaps .

[Connor Davies]

Paleo is a fad diet.

Yes and no.  The underlying concept is sound, but the execution is often lacking.  Just look at people eschewing all legumes, with no idea what a legume actually is...  The idea that we can't eat a baked potato is ludicrous, and a lot of people have terrible experiences by sticking to paleo too rigidly.

 

But the idea of eating fresh, local, raw food is gold.  These days I view paleo as a good explanation for why certain foods are healthy, nothing more.

[Falcon]

Paleo is a fad diet.

Yup. It's been a fad for the last 10 000 years.

[gravy]

Humans have been eating grains for >12,000 years.

[Frankincensed]

Humans have been eating grains for >12,000 years.

Might as well argue over religion. If believing it makes someone feel better, and it's not being forced down my throat, who am I to argue?

[Connor Davies]

Humans have been eating grains for >12,000 years.

Yeah, some people reckon humans have been eating grains for more like 100,000 years.

 

We clearly have a digestive system that has adapted to cooked food, so it's ludicrous to claim we can't eat starches that require cooking to eat.  We also have to cook meat, so how can you select for one over the other?  We would have obviously eaten both.

 

Anyone who has negative things to say about paleo should check out this. 

 

 

Might as well argue over religion. If believing it makes someone feel better, and it's not being forced down my throat, who am I to argue?

Agreed.  Let's not have a paleo argument guys.

[gravy]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but paleo followers proclaim that grains/gluten are the devil. Especially paleo extremists.

[Falcon]

Humans have been eating grains for >12,000 years.

Sorry for not being exact, you want me to go another 1.5 million years back?

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but paleo followers proclaim that grains/gluten are the devil. Especially paleo extremists.

Well, have you tried going gluten/grain free for yourself? And by the way, nowadays there is enough evidence to say that grains and gluten are bad for you.

[Connor Davies]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but paleo followers proclaim that grains/gluten are the devil. Especially paleo extremists.

Especially frankenwheat.  Modern incarnations of wheat have all sorts of strange new proteins in them (see here for why that's bad https://www.gymnasticbodies.com/forum/topic/13703-gm-foods/?p=134267)

 

But then for athletes, the carbs aren't quite so evil.  Gladiators were sometimes called "eaters of barley" (except, you know, in latin)

 

Brown rice can also be super good for you, but of course according to paleo....

[gravy]

What research? What evidence?

[Briac Roquet]

Mark Sisson (from Mark's daily apple) says white rice is okay, that's all I care about. 

[gravy]

Frankenwheat? How am I supposed to take you seriously...

[Connor Davies]

Frankenwheat? How am I supposed to take you seriously...

What is Frankenwheat? Frankenwheat is a term used to describe the modern wheat Americans eat today. While our ancestors mostly consumed einkorn wheat, decades of cross-breeding and hybridization (to create high-yield crops) have created a shorter, stockier “dwarf wheat†that now makes up almost all of the wheat we consume.

According to Dr. Hyman, a leader in Functional Medicine and a four-time New York Times bestselling author of such books as The Blood Sugar Solution, this new wheat is a triple threat:

It contains twice the number of chromosomes. This means it codes for a much larger variety of gluten proteins, or “super gluten,†as Dr. Hyman likes to say.

It contains high levels of a “super starch†amylopectin A, which excels at making both Cinabons and bellies swell.

And it’s full of wheat polypeptides called gluteomorphins, which trigger an opiate-like response in the brain, so guess what? You’ll want more Frankenwheat.

 

Taken from the first link on google when you search frankenwheat.  It's basically a result of cross breeding and selective breeding for certain aspects of wheat.  I'll admit the name frankenwheat sound ridiculous, but it's definitely a real thing, and it's definitely in any wheat based food you eat.

[Connor Davies]

Well, have you tried going gluten/grain free for yourself? And by the way, nowadays there is enough evidence to say that grains and gluten are bad for you.

Again, if you're an athlete, this isn't so much of an issue.  Sure, a significant proportion of the population is gluten intolerant (which everyone should test themselves for) but the main problem with grains is insulin sensitivity.  I'm not an expert here, but I know that insulin sensitivity is not just about fat storage, it's also about storing energy in your muscles.  You want a high level of insulin sensitivity in order to grow muscles and become stronger.

 

The solution, as always, is moderation (unless you're gluten intolerant.)  Eating some grains wont kill you, but try to make them good ones like barley, quinoa, brown rice ect...

[gravy]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=%22frankenwheat%22

 

I also ran a search on the sciencedirect database. There were 0 results.

 

I think I'm over this thread...

[Falcon]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=%22frankenwheat%22

 

I also ran a search on the sciencedirect database. There were 0 results.

 

I think I'm over this thread...

If you want to pop words into pubmed and read some abstracts, search for example... for WGA.

Or don't, I will do it for you. 

 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8399111

 

Is this enough research, or evidence, for you?

[Connor Davies]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=%22frankenwheat%22

 

I also ran a search on the sciencedirect database. There were 0 results.

 

I think I'm over this thread...

No no frankenwheat is just common wheat.  It's a name created by the paleo crowd to shock people, and so called because it's an amalgamation of many different species of wheat, like frankenstein was an amalgamation of various people.  It's supposed to conjure horror, not be an actual name for the species.  No company would ever put that name on their product, no scientist would ever name a newly discovered/created species that, it's just a nickname.

 

Anyway, it's perfectly fine to me if you walk away from this thread.  I'm only arguing with you because I have this compulsion to feed trolls.

[Connor Davies]

Anyway, OP: I don't know if anyone actually answered your question or not, but you don't need to rigorously count calories.  (Although it does help.)

 

The point of following your macros is to stick to the macro-nutrient ratio.  The point is to keep everything balanced.  If you don't feel like keeping everything in exact proportion, carb cycling works well.

[Karl-Erik Karlsen]

Hey, there are many roads to Rome, but you can't argue that Paleo doesn't have a few things going for it - read up on non-enzymatic glycosylation and compare it to a run of the mill Paleo diet for example. And all Paleo people are not extremists, listen to some of Robb Wolf's old podcasts from back in 2009/2010 etc, he is a really moderate guy and is more about health and performance than creating a religion out of it. Like he says: Milk is quite allergenic and can cause problems for a lot of people, so if you want to improve your GI health, you might consider to stop drinking it. But it's great for muscle growth, so if you lift heavy/train hard, you might want to use it anyway and live with the possible GI stuff. All about pros and cons. And Paleo (at least as he expresses it in the podcasts), are about making dietary choices to reduce a lot of lifestyle diseases. And since you are reffectively calorie restricting and managing  the insulin response, you'll likely get leaner too.

And I think that's why you should not demonize anyone for their views. Whatever rocks your boat and whatever serves your goals/makes you feel good. Vegan works, Paleo, works, other stuff works too. Just different approaches to the same goals: staying healthy and performing well. You gotta choose, but you gotta let other people choose differently than you, too.