20 April 2008
Food math
Posted by Nick Katsarelas under: Nick Katsarelas .
This is a long response to Shelly’s ”We’l, I hate to eat and run” post about weight.
It’s critical that your calories are coming from the right proportion of carbs, proteins, and fats. (All calories will come from those three sources.) For instance, many running experts will tell you that 50% of your calories should come from carbs, and 25% each from proteins and fat. Personally, I strive to achieve that 50:25:25 ratio.
Carbs are worth 4 calories per gram. (10 grams of carbs=40 carb calories). Proteins are 4 calories per gram. Each fat gram is 9 calories. My bowl of oatmeal this morning was 27 grams of carbs (108 calories), 5 grams of protein (20 calories), and 3 grams of fat (27 calories). Add them up, and you’ll get 155 calories.
To figure what percentage of calories is coming from each source, divide each calorie total (not grams) by 155. If you did that, you’d learn that 70% of the oatmeal calories came from carbs, 13% from proteins, and 17% from fats. I’ll balance that throughout the day by ensuring I get more proteins and fats.
There’s a site that contains a huge database of foods and their nutritional value: http://www.nutritiondata.com. It lists just about every kind of food, plus menu items from two dozen restaurants, from A&W to White Castle. In addition to listing the nutritional values of each food, it ranks food by glycemic load and inflammation factor. It’s a great site to bookmark.
Doing the math for every food is a hassle. But try it for a week. I’ll bet you’ll notice a difference in your perceived nutritional intake, and what you’re actually ingesting.
One Comment so far...
Shelly Says:
20 April 2008 at 4:17 pm.
Thanks for the extra info, Nick! This site I’m using is nice because it does tell me the carbs/protein/fat info. Good info to know! I’ll check out the site you recommended as well. In this first week plus a day of ADDING food back into my life, I’ve actually dropped 4 pounds. I realized I kept cutting out food as I wasn’t seeing anything happen on the scale, and that only made it worse. My poor body just wasn’t fueled well these past few months at all. Maybe with this newfound info I’ll actually start to be a *fast* runner–HA HA!!!