Chapter 9 – Optimising your macronutrient ratio
When unsure which macronutrient ratio will best suit your own particular body type and goals, a good starting point is to aim for the following daily distribution of carbohydrates, protein and fat in your diet:
Carbohydrates – 50%
Protein – 30%
Fat – 20%
Although there will exist some flexibility in these numbers from one person to the next, a carb-protein-fat ratio (cpf ratio for short) of 50-30-20 will achieve excellent results for most people.
Any adjustments to this cpf ratio of 50-30-20 should generally be geared towards ensuring that carbohydrates do not exceed 50% and fat does not exceed 20% of your daily calorie intake. For example, 45-35-20 would work very well also as would 40-40-20, particularly if you’re sensitive to carbs. If your body stores fat easily, you may even want to adopt a very low fat ratio such as 45-40-15 or 40-45-15.
By far the best way to calculate your cpf ratio per meal, per day and per week is within a spreadsheet. Those of you with an aversion for spreadsheets and formulas may not welcome this news, but there really is no denying the fact that spreadsheets will serve you best when it comes to evaluating your calorie intakes and cpf ratios per meal and per day. Appendix VI on page 130 includes a few healthy meal examples whose main numerical attributes have all been entered into a spreadsheet. You can use these examples to help you tabulate your own daily meal plans. Once your formulas have been set up, this method of tabulating and numerically profiling your meals will facilitate ease of calculation and enable you to quickly generate the important information you need pertaining to your meals when taken both in isolation and as a whole for the day. The most important formulas here will be those which enable you to calculate the total calorie content for your meals along with their associated cpf ratios. I show you how to create these formulas in Appendix VI.
Although it’s generally good advice to keep carbs limited to 50% or less and fat to 20% or less, no single ratio is the best and no single ratio will work for everyone 100% of the time. When thinking about which cpf ratio might best suit you, some other factors to bear in mind are as follows:
1. No ratio has any magical fat burning or muscle-building properties.
2. No ratio will supersede or defy the law of calorie balance – any impact that macronutrient ratios will have on your body fat level is minimal compared with the effect that calorie levels have on body composition, so make sure your daily calorie requirement (DCR) and subsequent deficit or surplus margin is determined first.
3. No cpf ratio exists which will prevent you going into starvation mode if your calories are too low.
4. No cpf ratio will prevent you from accumulating fat if your calorie intake is too high for your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) or maintenance level.
5. No cpf ratio will allow you to gain muscle if your calories are too low.
6. No cpf ratio will work the same for everyone.
Your own optimal macronutrient ratio will depend mainly on your goals, your body type and your sensitivity to carbohydrates. It is therefore up to each individual to experiment and work out which cpf ratio works best for them. As outlined at the beginning of this chapter, however, 50% or less carbs and 20% or less fat, with the remainder of your diet comprising protein, is a very good starting point.
Inspirational quote: Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs….. Henry Ford
