Nutrition Pyramid of Importance
“Is rice fattening?”
“How many cakes can I eat a week?”
“Which is the best supplement to take?”
Are these some questions that you always grapple with? I was once like that too. And I can see why.
Information overload can confusing and stressful for a beginner.
Introduction
In the fitness and nutrition industry, there are endless streams of information, only to confuse someone navigating their way. The problem is that these are just generalizations instead of giving context. It is understandable, given how broad the industry is. However, these questions are actually missing the whole point here. It implies a fundamental lack of awareness of what is important in the realm of nutrition.
Furthermore, the current marketing side of fitness industry is making matters worse. A simple google on "how to lose weight fast" will fill the page with dubious supplements like detox teas, fat burners and magic powders that'll claim to make you lean and full of energy. These marketing tactics prey on beginners who desperately want short cuts, and end up burning a hole in their pocket only to realize that they were scammed. Sadly, people are clearly focusing on the wrong things.
Instead, nutrition should be prioritized in terms of importance. And in this article, I will be helping you to differentiate the big rocks and the pebbles. Let’s dive in.
The Pyramid of Nutrition
In the pyramid, there are 6 levels. Level 1 being the most important, and that should be the foundation of your nutrition.
Level 1: Consistency
Nutrition is a journey that must be continued for a long period of time to produce meaningful results. If you cannot stick to it, it doesn’t matter if it is the best nutrition plan in the world. 3 qualities I try to balance while planning a nutrition plan for myself, or for others are Accuracy, Flexibility and Consistency.
Make nutrition part of your lifestyle so that it can be sustainable.
Accurate
As much as we want to be as accurate as possible so that we can get to our goals faster, being overly detailed and chasing every grain of rice that falls off your food scale will only stress you out and drain your time and energy. The more accurate you are, you might be more consistent in hitting your targets and achieving your goals, but if you’re overly stressed, it will affect your long-term consistency.
How accurate to be will depend largely on your fitness goals at that point in your life. A bodybuilder in the final stages of preparation will need more accuracy than someone who is just trying to get lean for the summer.
Flexibility
As mentioned above, flexibility is a trade-off between accuracy. Different goals require different level of accuracy, but they all require consistency, which means adapting your flexibility to your goals. Research as shown that being accurate in diets has shown that people can lose weight, but being accurate AND flexible has shown that people can lose weight, keep it off and stay sane while doing so.
It is important that we do not see nutrition as a binary approach, where a slight deviation will result in failure. One way would be to use a range of targets (Good, Better, Best) instead of a hit-or-miss target. For example, having a caloric goal of + or - 500 kcals a week is Good. Hitting your protein intake in a range of + or - 20g a week is Better. Hitting your fats and carbs intake in a range of + or - 10g a week is Best.
Consistency
Even if you eat the most accurate amount of calories and macronutrients, without sticking to your plan consistently, you'll never be able to lose fat and gain muscle for a sustained period of time. Therefore, I always recommend a nutrition plan (be it keto, low-fat, vegan etc.) that you see yourself doing in the long term. This is done by balancing the two qualities above.
What we want to achieve is making nutrition a habit. But like every other habit, this will take time, effort and persistence.
Level 2: Calorie Intake
If you have studied science (physics in particular) in school before, you should be aware of the First Law of Thermodynamics - energy can neither be created nor destroyed. As calories are essentially energy, calories cannot be created nor destroyed by your body. In other words, the calories (or food) that you take in will have to go out somewhere. This is what some people term as “Calories in, calories out”. The idea is that to maintain a stable weight, the number of calories you eat needs to match the number of calories you burn (or Total Daily Energy Expenditure, TDEE).
There are 3 main components of your TDEE:
Basic metabolism. Your body uses energy to sustain bodily functions even though you’re doing absolutely nothing.
Daily activities, which include exercising, moving, walking, fidgeting etc.
Digestion.
Daily activities including exercise only takes up about 15-30% of your TDEE.
When the number of calories you eat match the amount of calories you burn, your weight will remain stable. However, if you eat more calories than you burn, you will gain weight, and if you eat less calories than you burn, you will lose weight.
There are many calculators online which can help you determine your TDEE, so you can adjust the amount of calories that you eat based on your fitness goals. However, these calculators can be quite inaccurate. If you would like a more accurate way of calculating your TDEE, drop me a message!
Level 3: Macronutrients
The three main macronutrients (or “macros”) are protein, carbohydrates (carbs) and fat. After establishing your TDEE and knowing how much calories to eat, you can further optimize your fat loss or muscle gain by adjusting your macros.
Protein
Protein’s primary function is to build and repair the structure of our tissues. I consider protein as the most important macro in achieving your fitness goals as it not only aid in retaining lean body mass, it helps one feel full faster and longer. Based on a few studies, I would recommend a protein intake of about 2.0g/kg of body weight per day for optimum fat loss or muscle gain. For example, if you weight 70kg, you should aim to consume about 140g of protein.
Fat
Once protein is set, I usually set fat first, as carbs are not considered essential for life and function. Fat is essential for hormonal production, brain function and absorption of vitamins. A minimum of 15-25% of calories would be a good number. For example, if you are consuming 2000 kcal a day based on what you have calculated in Level 2, you should eat about 300 - 500 kcal from fat.
Fats are considered essential for life.
Carbs
Finally, the rest of the calories after satisfying your protein and fat intake should go to carbs. Although not considered essential for life, carbs do have its advantages too, such as benefiting your training performance.
Level 4: Micronutrients
There are two broad categories of micronutrients (or “micros”) in nutrition. We have the inorganic minerals, and the organic vitamins. These help safeguard deficiencies and keep you healthy naturally. I will be going through some micros that are more commonly deficient and affect body composition during dieting, so that one can choose the right food to better reach your fitness goals.
Minerals
Examples include calcium, phosphorous, sodium, potassium. Common deficiencies include Zinc, Iron and Calcium.
Zinc deficiencies can result in down regulation of thyroid where energy expenditure is substantially reduced.
Iron can negatively affect progress. A study showed that sportsmen supplemented with iron resulted in greater total strength.
Calcium is another common deficiency that can affect bone health.
Vitamins
Examples include fat soluble vitamins such as A, D, E and K and water soluble vitamins such as B and C. Water soluble vitamins are needed in large amounts as water is processed in our body constantly. On the other hand, fat soluble vitamins are easier to overdose and are less likely to be deficient in.
Level 5: Frequency / Timing of meals
Frequency
Although there are a decent amount of research on pretty much everything from 1 meal a day all the way up to 14 meals a day, a study showed that eating a relatively normal number of meals (2-5 meals a day) would not make a huge difference on the actual outcome of body composition. However, if you go to the extremes of eating 1 meal a day or more than 6 meals a day, you can potentially run into issues with adherence. Going long periods of time without food can affect your hunger and ability to be consistent, while eating so many tiny meals a day will never satisfied you. Therefore, eating 2-5 meals a day is safe in most cases.
Timing
Should you eat carbs pre- or post-workout? What about protein? Although most studies and studies have shown negligible difference in peri-workout carbs and protein, if you would like to fully optimize your nutrition after satisfying the 4 levels above, my recommendation is to eat a normal sized meal with both carbs and protein about 1 to 2 hours before you train, and again 1 to 2 hours after you train.
Level 6: Supplements
Supplements, as the word suggest, are substances produced with the intentions of supplementing nutrients to your body that it would not otherwise get from your current diet. Some are ingested to reach a healthy baseline, while other are ingested to reach levels that cannot be attained from a normal diet.
Supplements are the least important part of the pyramid if you do not have any particular nutrition deficiency or condition that requires them. As mentioned in the introduction, most supplements do not do much other than burning a hole in your wallet. There are only a few supplements I recommend.
Creatine Monohydrate
This is by far the most tried and true and most affordable supplement. Creatine has shown to benefit strength, power production and retaining muscle mass over time.
Caffeine
Caffeine has shown to enhance performance and suppress tiredness. However, the more you take it, the more resistant you get to the performance enhancing effects. Thus, take it sparingly. For performance enhancing effects, take about 4-6mg/kg body weight.
Caffeine has proven performance enhancing effects.
Protein Powder
Protein powder is not necessary as protein is readily available in food. However, protein powder is quick, convenient and cost effective to hit protein targets.
Conclusion
I would like to end off with an expression depicted below.
Putting the cart before the horse.
This expression means that you’re focusing on the details before focusing on the bigger picture. For example, buying a car focusing on its top speed and acceleration, when you don’t even have a driver’s licence. It sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? That’s exactly how it is when you focus on Level 6 of the pyramid instead of Level 1.
So stop being stressed out on questions that do not matter that much! Unless you're a competitive bodybuilder, who probably would not be on this page 😂
Do share this with your friends if you found it helpful!
Have you been focusing on the wrong things? Let me know!
PS - still unsure how to achieve your fitness goals? Drop me a message!
