Nutrition Principles are Greater than Diets
Every diet stems from a larger nutrition principle. If you understand the principles, then you can have more autonomy over the process.
To Health Advocates—
Through a lifetime, different diets will be presented and repackaged. Each one will have a new name and each one will tweak or modify a particular variable in order to drive a particular outcome.
Many of these diets will be better than the standard American diet, of course, but it’s important to understand that only a few variables can ultimately be tweaked, and that most likely, any diet you try in the future has most likely been tried before under a different name.
What I believe is more important to understand is a few guiding principles. A reasonable mantra to approach nutrition, would be principles > practices. What this provides is an opportunity for more autonomy over our eating.
Practices are ultimately what we end up doing, and when we don’t know the principles that our practices have evolved from then we are forced to adopt someone else’s solution to our problem. When we learn the principles, however, we can put the problem solving within our scope of control and come up with our own practices to suit our lives.
Today’s newsletter will serve as an introduction to the topic of nutrition. We will go through the basic principles that all conversations surrounding this topic must begin with.
Below you will see a few guiding nutrition principles in order to formulate your own practices. Additionally, you will see a reasonable starting point for determining the total caloric needs for any diet you put together for yourself in the future.
This article was written in collaboration with a good friend and peer, Ryan Giffin RD. Ryan is a Registered Dietitian working out of the Greater Charlotte area whose work focuses on helping veterans with their nutritional and dietary needs.
I hope you enjoy it!
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Principles > Practices
A diet is someone else’s solution to your problem. It is a vehicle to drive you to a destination that someone else has designed for themselves. If you understand the principles of nutrition that make up most of the outcomes, then we can build our own vehicle to get us to our destination, which is presumably better health, maybe weight loss, maybe muscle gain, depending on your goals.
What’s the benefit to this self-efficacy or plan creation?
In the New York Times' bestselling book, “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us,” author Daniel Pink points out that intrinsic motivation is made up of three factors: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. In order to stay motivated on a given topic, then we must have autonomy over the process, we must develop the skill of doing this process, and we must have a deeper purpose for doing it.
Having autonomy over your diet is one of the key components to creating a plan that you will stick to, and ENJOY.
Principles of Nutrition
Anyone wanting to put together a diet for themselves with the goal of first, enjoying it, and second, sticking to it, must be able to account for the following principles.
Calories do matter
Ultimately, how many calories you consume in a day will determine if your body loses weight, maintains its weight, or gains weight.
The only 100% surefire way to know this exactly is to weigh all of the food you eat. You don’t have to do this (I don’t), of course, but this is the only way to have 100% certainty.
Research has shown time and again that most humans underestimate the amount of calories they consume in a day.
Macronutrients
Carbohydrates, fats, proteins, and alcohol are the only things that contain calories. Our diet is made up of these items.
Fiber is considered a carbohydrate, but should be looked at as an additional metric.
The ratio of macronutrients can help make a grey area less grey when we create our own diet.
Food choices matter
Certain food choices are easier to over consume, thus should be avoided if you cannot be disciplined when eating them.
My general rule of thumb is that I lack willpower, thus, I don’t keep anything in my house that I will consume too much of. I walk to get it, if I really want it, in that moment.
Some foods contain more vitamins and minerals than others. These foods would be considered high in micronutrients.
Food is more than just calories
The goal of every diet should be to consume the most possible food, containing as many micronutrients as possible, while still avoiding overconsumption (unless of course our goal is to add weight to the scale).
This is a main reason why food choices matter.
Micronutrients help us round out the full scope of the value that our diet gives us.
Next Steps - Determining Caloric Needs
Estimating our Resting Metabolic Rate
Let’s first start off by using the Mifflin-St Jeor Equation, which is considered the most accurate starting point for equating calories.
Mifflin-St Joer Equation used for determining Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR). RMR is the minimum number of calories my body would need daily for basic human functions.
Men: (10 x weight in kg) + (6.25 x height in cm) - (5 x age in years) + 5
Women: (10 x weight in kg) + (6.25 heigh in cm) - (5 x age in years) - 161
For me, this would then put my RMR at 1587 calories. As a basic principle of nutrition, I would not really ever plan to eat less than this number, because eating less than this number of calories per day would sacrifice basic human function or health.
Now that I have been able to set the basement for my caloric needs per day, I need to equate in total activity.
Estimating Total Daily Energy Expenditure
To determine this, a multiplier is added to the Mifflin-St Joer Equation to equate for Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE). Total Daily Energy Expenditure accounts for the following
Resting Metabolic Rate
Non Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (fidgeting)
Physical Activity (structured and unstructured)
Thermic Effect of Food (your body burns calories to break down food)
The multipliers for TDEE are set on a range of 1.2 - 1.9.
1.2 would be a reference for sedentary behavior.
1.9 would be a reference for extremely active (think a professional who practices, trains, and competes frequently).
I’m neither sedentary nor extremely active.
I am a coach and trainer, who works on his feet, commutes around NYC (12,000+ steps / day), and works out almost everyday. I would say I’m on the high end of average for that range so I would give myself a multiplier of 1.6 or 1.7. By taking my initially calculated RMR of 1587 calories, and multiplying it by 1.6, and also 1.7, I give myself a range to aim for daily.
1587 x 1.6 = 2539.2
1587 x 1.7 - 2697.9
This would put me between 2539.2 - 2697.9 calories per day. Eating enough calories reasonably close to that range would maintain my weight.
Weight Gain Vs Weight Maintenance Vs Weight Loss
A pound of body weight roughly equates to 3500 calories.
If I wanted to lose a half pound of bodyweight per week I would aim to consume roughly 2300 calories per day.
If I wanted to maintain weight I would aim to consume 2600 calories per day.
If I wanted to gain a half pound of bodyweight per week I would aim to consume 2950 calories per day.
None of these amounts are drastically outside of my TDEE. That is the point. I wouldn’t be aiming for drastic weight loss, or drastic weight gain. Just reasonable changes in either direction.
Apple Watch Estimation of Resting Metabolic Rate
Is using a wearable or device at all accurate for determining TDEE?
To recap, using the highly applied Mifflin-St Joer Equation from above, my resting metabolic rate was determined as 1587 calories. This is the amount of calories my body would burn daily before activity is added into the equation.
Double checking this with the Apple Watch, my “resting energy” (Apple Watch language for resting metabolic rate), is determined as 1790 calories per day, on average, which is a slight overestimation.
This is a common theme, as no study has ever been able to confirm that fitness wearables are extremely accurate in their measurement of energy expenditure. When I look at my Apple Watch, I operate under the assumption that it is overestimating my caloric needs.
Additional Resources
Peter Attia Podcast: Layne Norton, Ph.D.: Building muscle, losing fat, and the importance of resistance training
Andrew Huberman Podcast: Dr. Layne Norton: The Science of Eating for Health, Fat Loss & Lean Muscle
TLDR
Diets are a vehicle to deliver us to an outcome that someone else has designed
Principles of nutrition help give us autonomy over creating our own diets
Four principles of nutrition to begin any diet venture with:
Total calories
Macronutrient breakdown (carbohydrates, fats, proteins, alcohol)
Quality of foods making up the calories/macronutrients
Micronutrients (vitamins and minerals) round out the health we receive from our diet
How to calculate your caloric needs using the Mifflin-St Joer Equation.
I hope you enjoyed this introduction into high performance nutrition. It is a complicated and often polarizing topic as people are passionate about what works or hasn’t worked for them in the past. Ultimately a great starting point for anyone would be to determine their caloric needs. After that, we can then move into macronutrient breakdown, gathering a wide array of micronutrients, and modifying our diet based on our goals.
Can all this seem tedious? Of course, but the process of developing intrinsic motivation first starts with autonomy. We want to have autonomy over the process, not blindly follow someone else’s solution. Second, we want to develop mastery. If we practice the principles and learn to adopt them, we develop the skill of working them into your life.
What starts off as tedious, eventually can become second nature.
Have a great week!