Hey guys, before we get started with the intro, I just want to point out that the seven part miniseries on the nutritional pyramid of importance were Actually the 1st 7 episodes that I recorded for the podcast. So please bear that in mind when leaving a rating and review. My microphone technique was probably not quite up to scratch and I was still figuring out the process. So please bear that in mind, cheers guys. You know what is up guys, Welcome to the live train perform podcast. I'm your host, Sean cooper of performance functional training. I'm currently the head strength conditioning coach at the world renowned Tiger moisten mm A training camp based in Phuket Thailand. I'm a strength and conditioning coach, nutritional therapist. NLP master practitioner, a former Australian army soldier and combat veteran. This podcast is dedicated to bringing you the tools, knowledge, experience and expertise to allow you to live your life to your fullest, train to your potential and perform at your best. I'm going to do that by providing three different styles of podcast style one is going to be 3-5 part miniseries, 15-25 min episodes, each covering a numerous topics including nutrition, lifestyle, sleep, stress management and training philosophies style too, is going to be me interviewing people at the top of their game, who they are, how they started out where they got to where they're at and what makes them tick.

Style three is all about you guys, I'm going to be answering your questions, you can find that on my Q and a memes, which I'll be posting on my social media platforms. My social media platforms are at instagram at K O B E s. Underscore Pft at codes underscore PFT facebook is performance functional training and Youtube is at performance functional training. Make sure you like subscribe and follow those platforms. I will be referencing my Youtube channel throughout the episodes. So if you want your questions answered, go onto the men to Q. And A means that will be posting on my social media platforms. Pop in your questions and I will answer them for you on the podcast. Let's get it. Mhm. Mhm. Yeah. You know what is up guys in today's episode we are diving into macronutrients, what they are, why they are important, how to use them and what happens to them in the body. Macro means big nutrients are the basic compounds that our body requires to support optimal health and function.

What are our macronutrients? We're looking at carbohydrates, fats and proteins. I'm also going to discuss fiber and alcohol and what their role is in the body and how that affects your body. During this episode. Each one of these macronutrients provide a service for us but they also have a caloric content. Carbohydrates are four calories per gram, proteins for calories per gram. That's a nine calories program. Now. This is important to note because this is one of the reasons why fats were demonized in the 80s and 90s. It was simply because people were over consuming and it wasn't the case that fat was making people fat and obese and decreasing health markets etcetera. It was more the fact that people were over consuming simply because fats were had doubled the caloric content than proteins and carbohydrates. That does not make that bad. It just means that when you're going through a diet, it's important to make sure that you track your numbers.

But at the end of the day, it all comes back down to Rule # one on the nutritional pyramid of importance. And that is energy balance. Too much of anything good can be bad. If you drink too much water, you die if you have too many vitamins and minerals in your body, then you can have high toxicity loads. All foods that we eat are made up of these macronutrients. Let's take an egg. For example, it is roughly eight g of protein, seven g of fat and one g of carbohydrates. So it's considered a protein simply because that is the most abundant macronutrients in an egg. So let's work those numbers out. We're looking at eight g there. So eight times 4 32, Then fat is seven times 963 and then one g of carbohydrates. So forward. So we're roughly looking at around about 100 calories For a full egg including the Yolk.

Now, if you remove the yoke, which is the fat, then you can reduce that egg down to roughly 40 to 50 calories. Alright, But point to note that if you're doing that, you're concerning yourself with the caloric content. You might also be missing out on a lot of the micro nutrients because the micro nutrients are based in the egg yolk in the fat. So it's important to know that because if you're just simply counting calories, you might be missing the big picture for educational purposes. Let's discuss what these numbers mean for a moment. So, let's say the majority of foods are not a combination of macronutrients and carbohydrate is a carbohydrate, fats, fat and protein is a protein. Let's take a primary carb source. So, let's take rice and say Where we've got 100 g of rice now, four calories program, 100 g of rice. We're looking at 400 calories there. Let's take a protein source, say a steak.

Uh and it's just protein. 100 g of protein. Four calories per gram. There's 400 calories. All right now let's take a fat sauce being avocado and uh nine calories per gram, 100 g. And now we have 900 calories. All right, so, once I give that example, that should paint a very good picture as to why that's were demonized in the 80s and 90s, it's not the case that fats are inherently bad. In fact they serve a purpose for us. However, it's the caloric content that can really start bumping those numbers up An example of this is a post that I put up fairly regularly on my instagram page, which is at K. O. B. Es underscore Pft. But that is a salad that I used to make at home and it would be a very, very, very that heavy salad. So I was looking at salmon uh cottage cheese, um nuts and seeds and olive oils and eggs and yogurt and all this type of stuff.

Now. Very, very, very healthy salad, multiple colours, multiple food sources, multiple vitamins and minerals. But if I ate that, if I gave that to my girlfriend at the time three times a day, that salad was pushing 1000 calories. So she would have been eating 3000 calories. If she ate that three times a day, she would've been putting on weight, going, what the fuck is going on? I'm eating this healthy salad, but I'm putting on weight. What gives? Alright, so that comes down to rule number one of the nutritional pyramid of importance, which is energy balance. The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie, deliberate contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent persuasive and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought. That is a quote from JFK at the Yale University in 1962. Why do I bring that up when it comes to information. We, as consumers must be critical thinkers.

It's not uncommon for humans to go through these cycles of demonizing certain things. So we demonize fats. Then we demonize carbohydrates. Now we're demonizing protein in particular animal products. Now we need to look at the agenda or who is providing this information and what their agenda is, what they're pushing. Let's take the game changes as an example. They pushed against animal products in particular. Now, why are they doing that? Who directed the game changes? We're looking at James, Cameron. All right now him and his wife actually invested $140 million dollars into a vegan supplement company. Hmm, coincidence. I think not that's just marketing brilliant. Now at the end of the day, all of these macronutrients provide a service for us. It's all about how we use them when we have them and how they affect our body. Every single person is going to be different. So disregard all the bullshit that people push their narrative of demonizing these macronutrients. They are all important for us.

Fats and proteins are essential. Without them we die, carbohydrates are non essential but without them, we live a pretty shitty life. Alright, I'll explain why in a moment. But essentially all of these macronutrients do something for us in different ratios at different times. So it's important to make sure that you have them balanced out throughout your diet. Let's now dive into the individual macronutrients what they are and how we can manipulate them to best suit us throughout the day. So, the first one will talk about is our carbohydrates. Now, carbohydrates are our bodies primary and preferred fuel source. When digested, your body breaks them down and converts them into glucose glucose circulates in the bloodstream and provides us with energy. This is essentially our rocket fuel and our brain just churns through glucose throughout the day. Now, if you're not using that energy right away, that circular circulating in the bloodstream, your brain is literally going to go. All right, we're not using this, but we might need this energy later.

So instead of wasting it and burning it off, let's start storing it somewhere. So your body releases insulin and pushes this glucose in towards the liver and the muscles to be stored as glycogen. Now important to note here that when glycogen is stored, it actually binds to water. So it's going to take water along for the ride and sit in the liver and the muscles. Now, for every gram of carbohydrates that you have, your body might potentially hold onto 3 to 4 mL of water. So, if you have 500 g of carbohydrates on a sunday, during the sunday session, then you might be a keel on half to two kg up on the scales the next day. All right. Not a big deal, but once you start burning off those glycogen stores, then that waterway, just going to come straight back down. Just handy little hint for people that are concerned about any weight fluctuations very important to understand this. So you don't freak out. You can literally manipulate your body weight and body composition by manipulating your water and you can manipulate your water by manipulating your carbohydrate intake, sodium intake, et cetera.

Carbohydrate sources are primarily rice, potatoes, pastor breads, fruits, vegetables, oats and grains and all those types of things. Now, I'm not going to go too deep into this, but there are simple carbohydrates and complex carbohydrates, essentially, simple carbohydrates are broken down very, very quickly into the body. Um and use those glucose now that can create a spike in blood sugar levels. Alright, so typically I'm going to have my simple carbohydrates probably right before a training session. I might be having some fruit or something like that. Something that's going to be broken down. It's not going to sit in my stomach too heavy. That's going to be providing me the energy quite quickly. Alright, my complex carbohydrates uh take a lot longer to break down and typically contain fiber. So your body can't break that down as fast, which then means you don't get as high of a spike in energy, which means you won't get as low of a crash in energy also. And that energy is going to last longer.

So this is probably oats and things like that. So typically I'd recommend people maybe have some oats, maybe a couple of hours before a training session um might be an hour, hour and a half depending on how well you digest them. So basically that those um carbohydrates are essentially being broken down, digested just before training sessions that can provide that energy um and then maintain a high level higher energy level for sustained periods, then I'm probably gonna have my fruits directly after my training session, just so I can replenish those glycogen stores and kick off that recovery process. Once you understand a little bit about carbohydrates and the differences between simple and complex carbohydrates, then you can start implementing them into your day. Now how I like to explain it is you should be eating depending on what you've just done and what you're just about to do. So if I'm looking to hit a training session then I'm probably going to be having my carbohydrates around that training session to support cognitive function and energy system requirements.

Every single person is going to be different in how they react to these carbohydrates. So figuring out what's going to work best for you is always the best option. So I gave an example before where I said, you know, sometimes I might have some fruit directly before a training session, that's if I don't like to eat first thing in the morning and I want to train first thing in the morning, then I'm going to get some fruit in. Um If I plan on doing a couple of hours work first before I hit some training, then I might hit my complex carbohydrates a couple of hours before a training session. So it slows down the digestion absorption of the energy and it doesn't spike my blood sugar levels. Now, it's important to note that the breakdown of these carbohydrates into glucose is going to affect your blood sugar levels. So, a massive spike in blood sugar levels, brought on by simple carbohydrates is also going to create a physiological response where your body literally just shuttles a heap of insulin to push that glucose out of the bloodstream and then your blood sugar levels crashed.

And this is where you're feeling tired and lethargic and a little bit foggy. All right, So, um it's important to know that because then you can start thinking about when you can implement them. Uh and that's why I said that I would typically have a banana or a piece of fruit after a training session. If I'm hitting a training session a couple of hours after my day starts complex carbohydrates in the morning, couple of hours later, hit my training session, then I'm going to have some protein, some fat and some simple carbohydrates, like a banana, maybe mixed in with a milk and protein smoothie. Um So then that can bump my sugar blood sugar levels back up again and balance it out and that's an important thing, we want to maintain balance of our blood sugar levels throughout the day. So, so that we don't get these massive swings um in in energy levels where we're spiking, we're crashing were spiking. We're crashing because that can have an impact on your hormones in particular Grill and leptin, which essentially tell you that you're hungry and that leptin is that you're full.

Right? So, Ghrelin the leptin are constantly going up and down throughout the day and they work inversely as one raises, the other one lowers as as that raises than the other one lowers. All right. And how I'd like to explain this is that's like your emotions think about being really happy and then really sad and then really happy and then really sad. All right. So, if your blood sugar levels are fluctuating like that throughout the day, then you probably got a problem that you need to be dealing with and that can cause some insulin resistance and insulin sensitivity. So, when there is a dysfunction in the hormone regulation that can cause a problem when it comes to breaking down and utilizing these carbohydrates into their primary compounds. A good example of this is a Type two diabetic. All right. So, this is someone who is considered insulin resistance. So, their body basically doesn't understand how much or how to react to these blood sugar levels. Now, when blood sugar levels start getting low. Diabetics need to have something sugary so they can spike their blood sugar levels Again, their blood sugar levels get too low, then they end up going into a seizure, which is never good.

Alright then they'll not monitor their blood sugar levels throughout the day to ensure that their blood sugar levels aren't getting too low or getting too high. So they become reliant on external insulin to provide this shuttling service for them to push that blood sugar level. Also push that glucose out of the bloodstream. Next up, let's move on to proteins. So proteins are broken down in the body into amino acid, which our body requires. All of our body cells are made up of amino acids, many of which are essential, which means that our body can't make them and it requires us to get them from foods. Our primary sources of protein come from animal products. We're looking at red and white meats, fish, eggs, dairy products are those sorts of things. It is not all bad news for vegans and vegetarians though. Uh there are plant sources of protein, however, you just need to be a little bit smarter with it as the plant proteins are typically not complete proteins missing the meaning that they're missing one or more of the essential amino acids that your body can't make.

So this is where food combining comes into play. I'm not going to go into this in too much detail. But if you are vegan or vegetarian, please note that it is worth looking at your protein sources and food combining to make complete proteins with animal products. Those proteins are already complete with the right amount of essential amino acids making up that complete protein source protein is an important component of every cell in the body, hair and nails. And mostly made of protein. Your body uses protein to build and repair tissues. You also use protein to make enzymes which break down certain molecules in the body and the digestive system. It helps make hormones and other body chemicals and it's an important building block of bones, muscle, cartilage, skin and blood. So protein is important and our sources are just as important where possible. I recommend sticking with organic sources and try and keep it local. So support small businesses and go to your local farmers market to get the majority of your meat products.

Let's move on to our final macro nutrient being fat. Okay, so if that's a responsible primarily for hormone regulation but also in aiding in the body's ability to regulate temperature and also in breaking down are certain fat soluble vitamins. When fats are broken down in the digestive system, they are converted into fatty acids, which help control information, support normal brain development and allow blood to clot normally. Now the human brain is composed nearly 60% fat with fatty acids that are critical in facilitating brain performance in particular omega threes, ePA and DHA are necessary for proper brain development as we know it today. And there are very few vegan sources that are high in this critical component. They do however, include seaweed, flax chia and hemp seeds. Other sources of these fats are fish or dairy products, nuts, seeds, oils, butters, avocados. The list goes on when we ingest proteins and fats, we don't get as high of a blood sugar level spike as we do with carbohydrates.

Because the body takes a lot longer to break these compounds down, there are a lot more complex and it's going to take a lot longer for your body to break these compounds down into their core components. Now that we've gone into macro nutrients in a little bit more detail. We have an understanding of what they do for us. Then we start looking at our day to day and going right, when do I need to have these macro nutrients and how much should I be having throughout the day? Like I said earlier, eat depending on what you've done and what you're just about to do. So, carbohydrates are going to fuel my training uh and my physical activity level and movement throughout the day, proteins are going to fuel my reparation recovery, restoration regeneration. So I'm going to spread them out throughout the day to allow my body to have this constant flow of energy resources that can be used to regenerate throughout the day. And fats are going to be spread and sprinkled throughout the day as well just because they're going to be used for hormone regulation.

So carbohydrates to fuel my training, my protein to repair from the training and other stresses of life. So fats are going to drive that recovery by regulating my hormones and give my body what it needs when it needs it at the right time in the right amount. Next up, let's discuss fiber. So what is fiber? It's roughage. It plays an essential part in your diet and can be only found in plants. Now, there's two different types of fiber being soluble fiber and insoluble fiber. So soluble fiber is basically what your your body can break down, insoluble fiber, it cannot be broken down. So there's going to be certain foods that are high in fiber, insoluble fiber in particular, that is going to pass through digestive system without being broken down. So, if you take a orange, for example, it's going to have some fiber. So for educational purposes, let's say there's 100 calories in a orange, the insoluble fiber is not going to be able to be broken down.

Now, the orange might have 100 calories, but because your body can't digest and absorb it, it might only you might only get 50 to 75 calories from that orange, why is this important to note? Because an orange is good for you. But the health industry or the food industry in particular has caused some issues in the past where they basically sold orange juice on the amount of nutrients in the orange juice. Why is that a problem? Because their marketing was essentially drink this orange juice. It's the same as eating four oranges worth of vitamin C. And nutrients. That's a problem because the fire has been removed, which means that your body doesn't have to break it down. When was the last time you sat down and ate four oranges? All right. That is literally just a fucking shot of sugar straight into the bloodstream. The last component we'll talk about in this episode is alcohol. Now alcohol is basically a poison uh there's seven calories per gram of alcohol. All right.

So it's very fairly energy dense. However, it is anti nutrients. So basically what that means is there's only trace amounts of any micro nutrients in it, nothing really significant enough to register. But what alcohol does is because it's a poison. Your body actually has to start pooling resources and mobilizing energy and other nutrients to metabolize the alcohol. So, you're essentially robbing peter to pay paul. And that's basically what's happening when you're drinking alcohol, alcohol causes your body to go into a stress state. When your body goes into a stress state, it essentially mount is an inflammatory response. It thinks it's under attack. So it's going too far up the immune system and create and create a response to clear out that alcohol. I'll talk about this in a future episode where we look at balancing the autonomic nervous system which is essentially the balance between the sympathetic ST vital flight and the parasympathetic state, rest and digest.

It's important to balance the autonomic nervous system to ensure that everything is working correctly and we maintain what's called homeostasis or equilibrium. And that brings us to the conclusion of the macro nutrient episode. In the next episode, we're gonna be diving into micro nutrients, vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients as well as water and what those particular compounds do for us in our body and how they can promote certain health markers. So to recap this episode, have your grain based carbohydrates around your training session, spread out your vegetables throughout the day to provide those micronutrients. Likewise with protein, we need to spread that out throughout the day to provide the reparation and recovery from those stresses of not only training, but everyday life and I'm going to spread my fats out throughout the day as well to support the recovery drive that's happening behind the scenes to allow the protein and carbohydrates to do their thing.

Now, I know there's probably some listeners sitting at home saying all right dude, that's all well and good. Tell me what my numbers are, How many grams of fats, carbs proteins I need to hit. Let me ask you a question which one of these macronutrients is the most important. That's a trick question. Their all important. Alright, so typically I'd recommend 33% 33% 33% spread out throughout the day. That doesn't mean you need to have equal portions of carbs, fats, proteins with every meal. But towards the end of the day then you're going to be fairly evenly spread with those ratios. That is what I typically recommend as my baseline because again each one of those macronutrients is important to us. However, some people are going to do better on a higher fat, lower carb or high carb, low fat. And again this is where it comes back to individual variants. And my final point for the episode is that you need to pay attention to how these macronutrients affect you at certain times of the day.

Again this is why it's so important to track your food. So then you can start connecting dots with how these foods make you feel. Any type of indigestion or bloating or any other digestive issues. Could be pointing to a intolerance to some form of compound typical issues of concern. We're looking at gluten dairy products, potentially eggs. Some people have issues with night shades, the night shade category of vegetables as well as peanuts and prawns and other shellfish type foods, identifying food intolerances and rectifying The problem is quite a dense topic which I'm not gonna be able to get to in this episode. However I will put together an episode in the future that goes through how to identify these food intolerances and then how to put together an elimination diet to figure out what these foods are and figure out what your tolerance levels are to each one of these compounds that do cause some sort of inflammatory response. It doesn't mean you have to stop eating particular things that it means you might need to figure out how much of these particular compounds that you can get away with having.

That don't cause any adverse effects. If you enjoy the message that I'm delivering, please help me spread the word and like share, save and subscribe to my social media platforms, instagram is at K O B E s underscore. Pft at codes underscore pft my facebook is sean Coba and my business page is at performance functional training. You'll also find performance functional training on Youtube, Go and check that out and please pass this on to your friends, family, Anyone else who would benefit from hearing this message and if You could also leave me a five star rating and review, that would be much appreciated. Anybody who does leave me a five star rating and review will have precedence when it comes to my Q and A sessions I'm going to be posting on my social media platforms. In the coming weeks of questions and answers you guys ask the questions, I will answer them on a podcast episode.

That's it for me today guys. Hopefully enjoyed this episode and I look forward to bringing you some awesome content, moving forward peace.