Diet, Nutrition and SupplementationPost here for supplement reviews or nutritional advice. If you're trying to get "ripped abz" THIS is where you should be.
So I just got done reading John Berardi's "Massive Eating Part I" and using his "Massive Eating Calculator" to determine my Daily Caloric Maintenance needs, and its telling me 3700 cals a day!
Many other calculators I've seen, or equations I've used have told me about 2500. Thats a big difference when you think of it as 8400 cal a week! I'm not trying to knock Berardi at all, because I do value much of what he writes about. Also, I know the article is from 2001, but I doubt the science of figuring out how many calories you need has changed much?
Can anyone tell if this calculator is accurate?
Here are my stats:
- 185 lbs (~153 lean)
- 24 yrs. old, thin build.
- 3 x week: 60 min Intense free weight training
- 3 x week: 30 min of moderate cardio
- Moderate protein diet (~1 lb /kg lean weight)
- I have a pretty sedentary job (desk/phone
work...ugghhh).
- Right now intaking about 2300 - 2600 cal/day
Any advice/help/answers would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
__________________
\"That which does not kill us, makes us stronger\"
You didn't mention your height (not that it is all that important since you've given us your LBM, but it helps to imagine what you mean by 'thin' build).
I will be interested in what Johnka has to say, because my base maintenance calories were also calculated pretty high for the usual calculators. Berardi's was off the chart when I looked at it as well. For the first few months, I ate what they recommended exactly and logged it accurately (maintenance) and got fatter pretty quickly, even when I figured in exercise kcal expenditure on the low side. So it didn't work for me and I chalked it up to metabolism difference. But that lead me to wonder: does a LBM always burn the same amount of kcals in a resting state? Is resting metabolism only effected by the amount of LBM? Obviously, it is also effected by things like resting heart rate (why ephedra worked when you were resting - it jacked up your heart rate) and climate (you sweat and burn more kcals when you are warm). In addition, it always seemed to me that Berardi's plan in this instance was for hardgainers. What about guys like me who put on LBM (and therefore fat as well) pretty easily?
So even though my (non-Berardi) calculated base maintenance kcals were around 2,800, my actual maintenance level, through many years of fudging around and logging, is actually around 2100 to 2200.
I'd be interested in hearing what the experts have to say about why I have the variance. (PS: Answers including the words 'thyroid problem' will not be accepted. )
Kaiser - I'm in the "exciting" city of La Crosse, working my 1st post-college job. I find myself having QUITE a bit of time available to putz around with weights and this nutrion sorta stuff. I guess its starting to become my new favorite past time.
I'm 6'3". Cross country in High school and High hurdles/long jump in Track. I've always been somewhat thin, but have really started to change my figure since high school through weight training and diet. I'm sure I used to be around 10% BF back in the day, but college certainly has its way of quickly changing that! I think scenes from Animal House come to mind...
I've definitely put on noticeable muscle in the last couple years, but am trying to shave off the 7% or more percent fat to expose more of my hard earned gains. Knowing my true caloric maintenance level is really where I need to begin in order to put together to right plan. I've been doing great so far as far as recording my macro-nutrient/caloric intake.
You bring up some good points on the differences though. I think resting heart rate definitely might have some influence.(BTW, I just took mine and its 60 bpm) Hopefully someone else might have an idea and will post.
Thanks for your feedback though.
__________________
\"That which does not kill us, makes us stronger\"
It is definitely hard, if not impossible, to come up with a standardized formula that works for everyone.
Berardi's calculations are about right-on for me, but most other people I know are in yours and Kaiser's boat: you don't need as much as the Massive Eating calculator suggests.
Metabolism certainly plays a large role in individual discrepancies, but I think that digestion is often overlooked. Some people are probably better at digesting what they eat than others.
So maybe how much you actually eat is not as important as how much you actually digest. I'm messing-around with digestive enzymes right now (Udo's), and I'm trying to see if maybe I don't need to eat so damn much if I take these things [img]smile.gif[/img]
Before I get into this discussion however, let me share with you a story that may impress upon you the potential importance of proper digestion. Late one night at the SWIS conference in Toronto, I was sitting in the lobby of our hotel talking nutrition with one big-mutha of a bodybuilder. The guy was probably 5'6" or 5'7" and well over 230 lbs, his weight consisting mostly of lean mass (I'd say he wasn't much over 10% body fat). Well anyway, we were talking about training, competing, drugs, nutrition, etc. when it became painfully obvious to me that this guy knew how to eat "well" (by conventional standards) but wasn't well versed in the art of "high-performance" nutrition.
Before "popping the question," I asked first about drugs. He assured me that he had used steroids in the past but it had been well over a year since he used anything. In addition, the doses he had used in the past were relatively mild by most bodybuilding standards. With this out of the way, I went ahead and asked the dreaded question that I always hate discussing with guys like this; the "How many calories do you eat per day?" question.
The reason I hate to ask this question is that I need well over 4,000 and sometimes upwards of 5,000 calories per day simply to maintain my weight (190-200 lbs). Therefore when these big dudes tell me how few they eat, I wanna plant my size 10 and 1/2 right in their heavily muscled gluteal region. Reservations aside, I asked the question anyway. And I got the answer that I feared. He told me that on a good day he "might get 2,500 calories," but some days it's far less. Arghhh! That man had size that I'll never - ever - see on my wiry-by-comparison physique and he spends half the time and half the money that I do in the grocery store.
So that got me thinking. Maybe it's true. Perhaps some people simply need fewer calories because their body digests and assimilates everything that it's given while others, like myself, waste (in more ways than one) a lot of food just trying to give our cells the fuel they need. With that said, let's look at how this difference may manifest and how those of us with "frequent shopper miles" can catch up to our full-walleted and heavily muscled friends.
There are three main factors that determine how much of our food gets into the body to provide fuel. They are digestion, absorption and transit time. You see, most food is absorbed in the small intestine. And if food isn't completely digested by the time it gets there, then the small intestine simply can't absorb it and it'll pass right out into the feces during normal transit times. Also, if there's a whole lot of digested glucose, fatty acids, amino acids and peptides in the small intestine, their transporters may become saturated and full absorption can't take place. Finally, if the small intestine transit time is too fast, then even complete digestion and the availability of receptors can't stop your nutrients from just being swept out of the body.
So with three potentially limiting factors, determining which is most important to assimilation is difficult but very important to your question, especially if you're eating loads of food. With respect to protein intake, several studies have shown that only about 75-90% of moderate doses (25-48g) of intact proteins are assimilated while 90-95% of very large doses (up to 100g) of partially digested/hydrolyzed proteins are assimilated. This indicates that digestion is the big limiting factor for protein intake. If you could get more protein to the small intestine in a more digested state, more will ultimately be absorbed.
In addition to protein digestion, a diet high in fiber - while very, very essential for good health - may also slightly impair digestion. Fiber tends to hold water and create thick, viscous solutions in the gastrointestinal tract (much like how casein clots in the stomach). This leads to slowed emptying of food from the stomach, which is a good thing as it keeps you full for longer and prevents large and rapid rises in blood sugar and insulin. Some types of fiber (soluble: gums, pectins, hemicellulose, mucilages) also decrease small intestine emptying time while others (insoluble: cellulose, lignin) increase small intestine emptying time. So different types of fiber may affect small intestine transit differently (the longer the food is in the small intestine, the more "time-released" it will be).
While soluble fiber may appear better as it slows digestion down, the thick solutions formed when fiber binds all this water may actually provide a physical barrier that impairs the ability of digestive enzymes to access all of the nutrients in the food. In addition to this physical barrier, fiber may actually decrease the effectiveness of some of the digestive enzymes for protein and lipid digestion by neutralizing them. Finally, this fibrous "sludge" may actually prevent nutrients from diffusing to their absorptive sites. But don't let this dissuade you from getting at least 20-40 g of fiber per day. This stuff is very beneficial in terms of dieting, disease prevention and management, and GI health. So how do we find a balance?
In individuals who suffer from pancreatitis (these people don't secrete enough natural digestive enzymes), digestive enzyme supplementation is very helpful in getting the most nutrition from their food. But it also appears, as evidenced above, that even healthy people with high-fiber and protein intakes may benefit from some added digestive power.
The problem however, is that regular ol' health store digestive enzymes are easily broken down in the stomach before they ever get to the small intestine. Since we want them to act in the small intestine (that's where many of the natural ones work), this isn't a good scenario. But there may be an answer. Some digestive enzymes on the market are enteric coated. Pancreatic enzymes delivered in this manner have proven to be most effective since they are protected from stomach acidity (pH of about 2) but dissolve well in the small intestine (pH of about 6). Other non-coated enzymes probably aren't very effective.
In addition to digestion itself, I mentioned that transit time is another important factor in nutrient assimilation. This one is easier to manipulate than digestion. Transit time is slowed down by specific foods like casein and fibrous (soluble) carbohydrates (as mentioned above). But again, be careful. Although fiber may slow transit time, it may actually decrease nutrient absorption. This is where eating these foods with additional enzyme support may make a difference. In addition, protein and fat intake also slow transit time. This slowed transit time (especially in the small intestine) gives the body more time for the protein to be digested and absorbed before it is swept away. The herb passion flower may slow down intestinal transit time without decreasing absorption.
So, what do I think of digestive enzymes? Well, unless you can find a good enteric coated digestive enzyme complex (good luck), you probably won't get enough benefit from regular digestive enzymes to justify the cost. If you can, however, you may be able to get away with a smaller grocery bill next month. Unfortunately you'll be making up the costs in enzyme pills.
And in regard to transit time, combine high-protein meals with some essential fatty acids. This will definitely slow transit time. And if you want to try a supplemental approach, 4-8 g of passion flower with your higher protein meals may also help.
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