to build hormones and keep bodily functions running smoothly.
N e v e rtheless, if you do hard labor, your fat needs incre a s e.
Also, eating enough fat keeps your body burning fat, as it
knows there’s not a shortage of that important nutrient.
Yo u ’ re reading this book, so you know the importance of
lifting weights for a lean, muscular physique. And we hope
y o u ’ re working out regularly to build muscle and stoke your
metabolism. If you are, that means you’re going to need 30 to
40 perc ent of your c alories from ca rbs, about th e same
percentage from protein and about 25 to 30 percent from fat—
mostly good, essential fatty acids found in fish and nuts. Those
are the totals in the carb-stacking diet outlined earlier. With that
strategy you also get the majority of your carbs in the morning
and limit carbs in meals later in the day so your body has to at
least partially rely on bodyfat for its energy.
We’ve covered a lot of information in this chapter, so there’s
a summary on the next page. After that, we’ll give you a real-
world example. What the heck. How about two? The next
chapter will show how we ate up to and through our one-month
body transformation experiment. (The training we used is
described at http://www.x-rep.com. We’ll also have more on training,
How to Figure Your Macronutrient Percentages
Say you eat a meal that contains 360 calories, 32 grams of
carbs, 40 grams of protein and 8 grams of fat. What are the
percentages? Here’s how to figure that out:1 )C o n v e rt grams to calories. There are four calories in
e v e ry gram of protein and carbohydrate and nine in every
gram of fat.
32 g. of carbs x 4 calories = 128 calories
40 g. of protein x 4 calories = 160 calories
8 g. of fat x 9 calories = 72
2)Now divide each of those figures by the calorie total:
128 carb calories ÷ 360 = .35 (or 35%)
160 protein calories ÷ 360 = .44 (or 44%)
72 fat calories ÷ 360 = .21 (or 21%)