CANADIAN PHYSIQUE ALLIANCE September/October 2020 | Page 36

NUTRITION
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JED WIGHTMAN PERFORMANCE/SPORTs NUTRITIONIST
CALORIE WISE
Good calories, bad calories? This is
36
Macros.
a very important question and
also correlates to something
commonly and in my opinion
irresponsibly used today in
our Bodybuilding, health and
fitness nutrition programs / plans;
First we must understand that no calories are created equal
even though that numerically they are the same regarding
protein, carbohydrates and fat. For example; there are
4 cal. per gram of protein, there are 4 cal per gram of
carbohydrates or 9 cal per gram of fat, no matter the source.
For the experienced individual this is well-known for the
layman not so, and for individuals without knowledge or
experience can be greatly misleading.
When we think about calories we think immediately that too
many is bad and less is better, now I don’t say this from my
personal opinion, but this is the feedback that I get from a
great number of clients. “We must eat fewer calories if we
want to lose fat and if we eat too many we will get fat”.
Unfortunately this archaic and simplistic rule is very
spurious. Sure if you eat a little bit of calories as opposed
to a lot of calories you’ll probably lose weight. And if you
the gain in muscle mass.
JUST
THE
BASICS
ADVANTAGE FITNESS LTD
eat a lot of calories as opposed to a little bit
of calories you may very well gain weight. But
what are we looking for here? We are looking
for the loss of body fat, and we are looking for
The importance here is the source of the calories and then
it’s the amount of calories. To gain muscle mass we need
a substantial amount of calories to keep our body in an
anabolic state. In that we need to have a substantial amount
of those calories coming from complete proteins. Now to
have that protein effectively synthesize (to do its job) we
also need to have fat but what kind of fat?
Now before I get any further into that, for the process of
muscle gain carbohydrates are not essential, maybe we
still can without them but it’s very slow and very much
a diminished return. So to gain effective muscle and put
on the necessary amount of muscle that we need for the
sport that we are so deeply involved in and love so much,