The Primal Blueprint (22 page)

To figure your true structural and functional fuel needs (and, hence, to achieve your body composition goals), it’s far more effective to look at a much larger span of time, like a few weeks, and aim for an “average” consumption. This approach will allow for the occasional party splurge, a preplanned (or incidental) calorie-restriction period, an over-the-top workout, or even a week of laziness—without any disastrous long-term effect.

With a big-picture approach, we can appreciate the three macronutrients as more than just typical sources of caloric energy where protein and carbs provide four calories per gram and fat has nine calories per gram. For example, the first 10, 20, or 30 grams of protein you consume daily go toward muscle and other cell repair and growth, not energy. Do we therefore discount those first 30 grams when we count calories? It depends on the context. If you don’t exercise much and you eat copiously as a habit, maybe most of the protein you eat will indeed count toward your energy budget (because your structural protein turnover rate is much lower when you don’t exercise). On the other hand, if you run yourself ragged, are under a great deal of stress (lots of catabolic hormones are tearing you down), and generally don’t consume much protein, most of that
high-protein meal might go toward repair and will be unlikely to be called upon as fuel. Simply saying that protein provides four calories per gram for energy needs is like saying that the two-by-four studs that support the walls of your house will burn nicely if you run out of firewood. They will in that emergency situation, but you’ll normally choose to burn other fuel first!

Fats aren’t just for fuel either. They are integral parts of all cell membranes and hormones and serve as critical protective cushioning for delicate organs. At what point do the fats we consume stop becoming structural raw material and start becoming calorically dense fuel? It depends again on the context. If there’s a ton of carbohydrates accompanying the fat on a daily basis, you can bet that dietary fat will be stored as adipose tissue sooner rather than later, because the insulin prompted by the carbs ingested will also deliver those other nutrients right to your fat cells. That’s nine calories per gram in the tank to use in the future (or never, considering that introductory stat about Americans adding one and a half pounds of body fat every year).

On the other hand, if you are eating insulin-balancing
Primal Blueprint
meals, fat consumed at a meal might be used quickly to provide fuel for normal metabolic processes at rest or during very low-intensity exercise, or for structural uses and never get stored. If your carb intake drops below 100 grams a day, you can dip into a mild state of ketosis, a fat-burning mode that creates what many now refer to as the metabolic advantage. In this context, fats are fueling most of the body’s energy demands either directly as fatty acids or as fat-metabolism by-products called ketones, which I will discuss at length shortly. The following sections define the macronutrients in the context of the
Primal Blueprint
and help you determine how much of each you really need.

Most nutrition researchers are in agreement that protein is essential for building and repairing body tissues and for overall healthy function. Intake recommendations among doctors and nutritionists vary, with most falling in the range of 0.5 to one gram of protein per pound of lean body mass per day (I favor an average of 0.7 to 1.0). There were days when Grok and his family probably obtained two or three times that amount, so if you happen to overdo your protein significantly on any given day or aren’t the type to obsess about such things, you’ll almost certainly be well within safe guidelines.

To calculate or estimate lean body mass, you must first determine your total weight and percentage of body fat. You can do this using any of numerous methods ranging from costly and highly accurate water tank tests to the easier fat scales, skinfold calipers, or online calculators using certain body measurements. Most good gyms can help you with this, or you can just estimate roughly for these purposes, knowing that the average moderately fit male and female carry about 15 percent and 22 percent, respectively.
Multiply your total weight by your percent body fat to attain your “fat” weight, and then subtract that figure from your total body weight to obtain your lean body mass. For example, a 155-pound woman with 25 percent body fat has a lean body mass of 116 pounds (155–39=116).

At a minimum you need 0.5 gram of protein per pound of lean mass per day to maintain your “structure” and healthy body composition. If you are even moderately active, you need closer to 0.7 gram, and if you work out regularly (or under a fair amount of stress), you need as much as one gram of protein per pound of lean mass. That’s at a minimum, but it’s on a daily average. So, our 155-pound moderately active woman with 116 pounds of lean mass needs an average of 82 grams of protein per day (116 × 0.7). If she gets 60 or 70 some days and 110 on others, she’ll still be in a healthy average range. She could even fast a day or two occasionally and, provided she has been regularly eating low carb and doesn’t overexercise on fasting days, easily preserve her muscle using the body’s tendency to retain protein stores in the short term. On the other hand, if she exceeds the 110 grams, it’s also no problem if she’s eating low carb because the excess protein will convert to glucose, which will reduce her effective carbohydrate needs (see next section). At four calories per gram, her daily average of 82 grams is only 328 calories per day in protein.

Again, I’m not concerned with you counting or even meeting this requirement every single day. You’ll find yourself intuitively arriving at a comfortable number or range of protein grams within a week of
Primal Blueprint
–style eating. You will discover that it’s quite easy to eat one gram of protein per pound of lean body mass without a lot of planning and pretty difficult to eat much more than two grams per pound without forcing yourself to. You simply aren’t as hungry when you regularly eat a low-carb diet. While Grok often ate more than two grams per pound, he was far more active all day long. Grok never knew when the next meal was coming, so he had to stock up in times of feast in order to be prepared for the times of famine. We have a little more leeway today!

If you have ample stored glycogen in your muscle tissues and liver (not a problem for most people unless you are engaged in high-volume, high-stress endurance training or severely restricting your carbs a la the Atkins diet) and your body is getting the rest of its energy efficiently from fats, it’s likely that the protein you consume will go first toward the repair or building of cells or enzymes. Proponents of the “a calorie is a calorie” Conventional Wisdom will pipe in here that excess calories are always converted or stored as fat, regardless of their original ingested state. This is true, of course (remember, the
Primal Blueprint
doesn’t like to piss off scientists!), and when we eat a high-carb, high-insulin diet, those excess calories indeed are stored as fat. But we must then ask what excess fat calories do when there is not a lot of insulin in the bloodstream (given that they cannot easily be stored as fat without insulin giving them a ride). No problem;
the body will respond by raising metabolic rate (to burn more calories at rest) and by increasing the production of ketones, which may be burned or excreted (more on this shortly).

In summary, if you are the type to enjoy and observe details in your macronutrient intake, I suggest you strive to obtain your protein requirements first, in the activity level–influenced range discussed previously. Focus on quality sources of protein such as the organic animal products that will be detailed in the next chapter.

If you’ve forgotten everything you ever learned in biology, just remember this and own it:
carbohydrate controls insulin; insulin controls fat storage
. Carbohydrates are not used as structural components in the body; instead, they are used only as a form of fuel, whether burned immediately while passing by different organs and muscles or stored for later use. All forms of carbohydrates you eat, whether simple or complex, are eventually converted into glucose, which the brain, red blood cells, and nerve cells generally prefer as a primary fuel. For reference, a little less than one teaspoon of glucose dissolved in the entire blood pool in your body (about five quarts in the case of a 160-pound male) represents a normal level of blood glucose.

In most healthy people, glucose that is not burned immediately (exercising muscles prefer glucose, if it is available, but don’t absolutely require it unless they are working at high intensity for long periods) will first be stored as glycogen in muscle and liver cells. When these sites are full, glucose is converted into fatty acids and stored in fat cells. It’s insulin’s job to take glucose out of the bloodstream and put it somewhere fast.

Unless you burn an extreme amount of energy every day (competing endurance athlete, etc.), there is no physiological reason for you to consume high levels of carbohydrate. In fact, carbohydrates are not required in the human diet for survival the way fat and protein are. The body has several backup mechanisms for generating glucose from dietary fat and protein, as well as from proteins stripped from muscle tissue (all done via gluconeogenesis). Some researchers have estimated that the body manufactures up to 200 grams of glucose every day from the fat and protein in our diet or in our muscles. Entire civilizations have lived for thousands of years on 50 or fewer grams of dietary carbohydrate a day.

That said, the
Primal Blueprint
is not designed to be a ketogenic (extremely low-carb) diet, because this strategy would restrict your intake of the most nutrient-dense foods on the planet—vegetables and fruits. I don’t even characterize the
Primal Blueprint
as a “low-carb” diet, as much as it is an “eliminate bad carbs” diet. I don’t advocate portion control or even diligently counting your macronutrient intake beyond a few days of journaling now and then to establish benchmarks and reference points (visit
FitDay.com
or
TheDailyPlate.com
to calculate your macronutrient amounts from a food diary if you are trying to lose weight). It’s really easy to stay in the optimum range of 100 to 150 grams per day even when you eat a ton of colorful vegetables and liberal servings of fruit—as long as you stay Primal and consume no grains. For example, a huge salad, two cups of Brussels sprouts, a banana, an apple, a cup of blueberries, and a cup of cherries totals only 139 grams of carbs.

Note
: Perhaps you are familiar with the concept of “net carbs” when measuring macronutrient intake. This is a calculation that subtracts fiber, because fiber is usually not digested and moderates the blood glucose impact of a carbohydrate food. For the sake of simplicity (and to assert the
Primal Blueprint
philosophy that you don’t need many carbs, nor any additional fiber from grain foods), all the calculations and zones in this book are represented by
gross
total carbohydrate grams.

The effects on the body of various levels of carb intake (detailed next in “The Carbohydrate Curve”) are a critical component of the
Primal Blueprint
, so I should mention a few caveats and exceptions to the guidelines that follow. Obviously, a light, moderately active female has different energy requirements from those of a heavy, active male. The 50-gram/200-calorie variation within each range on the curve attempts to account for the majority of these individual disparities. Also, if you are insistent upon doing Chronic Cardio, you must increase carb intake to account for regular depletion of stored liver and muscle glycogen and an elevated metabolic rate. You can experiment with consuming perhaps 100 additional grams of carbs per day for every extra hour of training and notice how your body responds. However, I’d prefer that you simply adjust your training program to conform to
Primal Blueprint
guidelines and thus reduce your need for dietary carbohydrate.

Hard-core
Primal Blueprint
enthusiasts who have the time and energy to compile many hours of low-level cardio and a steady dose of intense strength training and sprinting and who enjoy abundant servings of fruits and vegetables, trace amounts of carbs from nuts, seeds, and other Primal foods (e.g., even an almond is 14 percent carbohydrate), and the occasional indulgence will quite possibly exceed the 100 to 150 grams per day optimum zone. If you are eating and exercising Primally, feeling energized throughout the day, and effortlessly maintaining ideal body composition, it’s a safe bet that the
Primal Blueprint
is working—even if your carb intake at times exceeds the ideal zone described here.

“
It’s really easy to stay in the optimum range of 100 to 150 grams per day even when you eat a ton of colorful vegetables and liberal servings of fruit—as long as you stay Primal and consume no grains
.
”