Cheat Sheet for 40/30/30 (Zone-type) balance

MzFury

Hey, all,

I made this and put it on my blog, but maybe useful here. Obviously, this only really applies to a Zone-style macronutrient plan.

If you're looking at your meal or daily totals on here, you'll see gram counts, which isn't always easy to comprehend. These charts are based on 4 calories per gram each of protein and carbohydrate, and 9 calories per gram of fat - this is INEXACT but close.

Here are some cheat-sheets for typical daily and meal calorie levels and accompanying macronutrient grams that make up a 40:30:30 balance. When inexact, I opted for grams slightly under 30% of fat and slightly over 30% of protein:

DAILY TOTALS

Calories Carb. (g) Fat (g) Protein (g)

1200 120 40 90

1300 130 43 98

1400 140 46 105

1500 150 50 113

1600 160 53 120

1700 170 56 128

1800 180 60 135

MEAL TOTALS

Calories Carb (g) Fat (g) Protein (g)

150 15 5 12

200 20 6 15

250 25 8 19

300 30 10 23

350 35 12 27

400 40 13 30

450 45 15 34

500 50 17 38

MzFury

A longer note about macronutrient balance, also from my blog:

Understanding the Macronutrient Balance

I'm aiming for a Zone-based macronutrient profile in my diet: 40% carbohydrate, 30% protein and 30% fat. The idea of this entry is to help anyone looking for some direction on how to know they're covering macro-nutrient bases, and in what balance. Vegetarians are likely to struggle to get 30% of calories from protein but should be fine with 15 - 20% (see some end remarks), health-wise.

Knowing what we're eating without looking stuff up and using a calculator or a spreadsheet means knowing about what's in the whole foods you're handling in your day, and learning what a balance of macronutrients looks like in each meal. It sounds like just "meat, vegetables and starch", but there are so many gray areas and times we eat a bit strangely, or people who are vegetarians, that this doesn't just work automatically.

Foods that are easy to identify, macronutrient-wise:

Animal protein for protein; vegetables, fruits, grains and starchy vegetables for carbohydrate; oils and butter for fat.

Some "Gray-area" foods include:

Legumes and certain grains (higher protein, still mainly carbohydrate); nuts & nut butters (as with milks, contain a protein:carb balance, plus a lot of fat); dairy products ranging from skim milks to rich cheeses (creams and cheeses are so significantly fatty as to crowd out most other macronutrients but can offer rich micronutrients, like high calcium in several cheeses - but NOT in cream! - while lean dairy is generally a balance of carb and protein with little fat); eggs and fatty meats (see below); dressings and sauces (may be oil based or cream based, usually can be counted as fat; veg-based sauces as with tomato and chili sauces can be deceptive: look for visible oil floating in it).

NOTE ABOUT ANIMAL FAT: People can be confused by the fat percentage of ground beef, and of milk. If you're one of them, here's the concept to get: % Fat as marked on these products is BY WEIGHT, not by energy. This is why we're told to eat no less than 90% lean beef to try to keep fat to about 30% maximum of calories, and why 2% fat milk is fatty. Also why bacon is fairly useless as a protein (if it LOOKS like it's 50% fat, you know the calories are nearly 100% from fat). You can easily see these concepts on your milk carton, where it will say how many calories come from fat - the 1% goat milk I like is 20 - 25% fat, I believe and the carb : protein ratio is just about Zone-perfect. Cow milk tends to be a bit higher in sugars.

Some concepts that might be useful:

GRAMS AT A GLANCE: Looking at meal totals or daily totals in numbers, look for protein and carb grams being similar, preferably a 3:4 ratio, roughly, and look for FAT grams to be half or fewer than the PROTEIN grams. Because fat has 9 calories per gram to protein and fat's 4, you can know that you should see maximum of half the number of fat grams overall compared to the other two in order to make a similar # of calories from fat as from protein.

Even leaner meat has fat: If you're eating a meal with animal protein [EXCEPT FOR: white or shellfish, breast meat of poultry, completely lean loin or tenderloin of pork, or venison or lean buffalo], you probably have your fat bases pretty much covered, and should add any further fat to the meal very sparingly. Think about it: one Tablespoon of oil in a 450-calorie meal that may be 3 cups of volume overall will make up almost a THIRD of that meal's calories, already. This means that in addition to your skinless chicken thigh, your 90% lean burger, your pork chop, you might have "room" for a teaspoon of oil in a salad dressing, or a small sprinkle of nuts over your vegetable side dish, or a very thin slice of cheese... Just know to measure added fats. This is not "low fat" eating, but is often a lot lower fat than most American diets.

Most plants don't have fat and require some to get full micronutrient benefits: You know this, but if you're basing meals around legumes for protein, for instance, you should be sure that you do have a little cheese, some oil, some nuts - a measure to round out the fat end. Whole eggs are great, of course, as well, for adding a lot of good micronutrients + highly digestible fat, and protein, in a veg-based context. We digest phytochemicals in plants much better with a little fat - most of these vitamins and minerals are fat-soluble.

Garnishes, sauces, fatty meats, processed carbohydrates, dips and dressings: Sauces and dressings are probably 50 - 90% calories from fat unless you made them yourself and know better. Measure these as you would oil, up to 2X the amount of oil you'd add, to make up a much smaller portion of your meal overall. Use bacon and other low-nutrient, high-density foods as garnish or infrequent and measured indulgence, not as a macronutrient source. Processed carbohydrates and added sugar throw out your macronutrient balance and could potentially lead you to add more calories to try to balance protein, which of course may not be a good thing in your day, either. So be wary of the added sugar when looking for this balance in your day.

Learn about vegetables: You can add a lot of volume and a lot of flavor to your meals through broadening your vegetable horizons. You're largely "safe" if you base each meal around a lot of produce, then add a good source of lean protein in a moderate portion (4-6 oz raw weight ni dinner portions), a smallish (usually 1/2 cup) serving of grains, legumes or starchy vegetables and a little bit of healthful fat. Lots of ways to achieve this.

Zone-Neutral food: If eating DAIRY milk or almonds or another naturally protein:carb-balanced food at a meal or snack, mainly figure the rest of the meal to work out where you are when eyeballing what you're eating. For instance, adding a glass of juice to a meal hikes up the carb side significantly; adding a glass of milk should leave it "in tact" if it's already Zone-friendly. Of course adjust fats as needed when having nuts. NON-DAIRY MILKS HAVE DIFFERENT BALANCES - Soy is close to dairy, Almond is mainly fat (but super low-calorie) and Rice is mainly carbohydrate.

Some "professional" takes on macronutrient balance and 40/30/30 :

I'd also like to make a reference to real nutritionist Cynthia Sass, whom I think is very good and who writes for Shape - find a chronicle of her blogs here http://www.shape.com/latest-news-trends/weight-loss-coach-diet-tips-and-strategies-nutrition-expert-cynthia-sass). I'm pretty sure she has published that people don't absorb more than about 20 grams of protein at a time - I'm also pretty sure this may be not a hard and fast biological rule, but the point is that very high protein diets, I believe, are not terribly sound and/or should only be used medically under doctor supervision (I know that Atkins can seriously help cure people with diabetes etc., and that New Atkins is about more variety and whole grains, and higher quality protein, etc.). Namely: I don't panic if my protein is a bit lower than 30%.

From some professional Crossfit trainers I know: Crossfit uses The Zone ratios, but the fat element is flexible. They are concerned to keep their carbohydrate : protein ratio at 4:3 (they say 1:1 "unit"), but will up their fat or reduce it for overall calorie control. So, you could have 30% carb : 24% protein and 46% fat in that context - or much higher lean and lower fat. I'll save that concept for when I'm a mega athlete.

An Australian research institute also found evidence through a long, controlled study that a protein+ diet contributes to enhanced belly-fat loss compared to a diet of the same calories with less protein - search for the CSIRO diet (there is a book) if interested.

Every sound, balanced dietary approach I read about these days includes significant protein and a whole-foods, high-produce, high-variety approach... This is what I aim for.

...One more thought, to anyone seriously foregoing carbohydrates: the brain ONLY processes carbohydrate for its fuel. Don't skip it, and don't eat all and only leafy greens thinking this will replace complex carbohydrates. Seriously.

deathstarclock

You know, you really ought to look into the 3:1 carbohydrate to protein theory...