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Bro, do you even nutrition?
Today, I'm gonna go over all the basics
that you need to know when it comes to nutrition.
Calories, macronutrients, micronutrients,
weight loss, weight gain, your questions answered.
Let's go.
In order for you to properly grasp nutrition 101,
I wanna introduce you to a very good friend of mine.
Welcome, to the Dr Mike channel,
Dr Mikes Nutrition Triangle 101 Education Basic
Thinagamabobits.
- I don't know what the deal is with with all that.
- Basically, I have this triangle set up for you guys
so you can understand the three legs
that are super super important
when you're talking about eating healthy.
Calories.
Now you've probably heard of calories
to some extent in the past.
A technical definition of a calorie
is the amount of energy needed to raise one kilogram
of water by one degree Celsius.
- Oh.
- Let's just stick with the idea that calories
are a form of energy and it's found in food
and your body needs it to function optimally.
Continuing on down the nutrition triangle,
we have macronutrients.
You may have heard of them referred to as macros.
First up, we have proteins like fish.
Next up, fats, like olive oil.
And your favorite, carbs,
which can be cookies, bread, cakes,
all the delicious stuff.
- [Guy] Hey.
- Oh, and I guess, we have alcohols too
and that's the fourth macronutrient
but we're not gonna confuse this video any further.
This is a really good time to let you know
that I partnered with the app Lifesum* for this video.
It allows you to track calories,
macronutrients, your weight, set goals for yourself,
set up delicious recipes.
Throughout this video, I'm gonna be showing you
how I utilize it when I'm creating
a healthy nutrition triangle plan.
And you should definitely think about
grabbing the app for yourself.
All right, jumping back into the macronutrients,
starting off with protein.
Protein's an incredibly important component
of every cell of the body.
Hair and nails are actually mostly made up of protein.
Protein is a vital macronutrient
that your body uses to build and repair
muscle, bone, and skin and even blood.
Jumping over to fat, I wanna first tell you
that I think dietary fats have gotten a bad wrap.
Dietary fats are essential to give you energy
and support cell growth.
They also help protect your organs and keep your body warm.
And finally fats help you absorb some nutrients as well
as producing som vital hormones, like testosterone.
Furthermore, fats break down into saturated
and unsaturated fats.
But that can get controversial and a little complex
so let's save that for the nutrition 201 video.
As for carbs, I'm not necessarily a huge fan.
Carb, don't worry I'm gonna tell them the good parts
about you too.
Carbs break down into three categories.
Fibers, starches and sugars.
Fiber is an incredibly important component of carbohydrates.
Not only does it help your gut bacteria
survive and thrive, but it could also possibly
curb your appetite, lower your cholesterol levels,
decrease some risks of cancer.
That's pretty exciting and that's the part of carbs
I really do enjoy.
Starches are the most consumed carbs on this planet.
You most often find them in grains and root vegetables.
And then, we come to sugars.
You know what a sugar is.
I now what a sugar is.
Sugar get rapidly absorbed into our bloodstream
causing a huge blood sugar spike,
therefore, an insulin spike and that can cause
a lot of problems when you overeat it.
And because it tastes so good,
it's very easy to overeat.
We went macro.
Time to go micro.
The third and final leg of our triangle is micronutrients.
Here, we're talking about vitamins and minerals.
Vitamins classically, you hear of vitamin B, C, D,
minerals like zinc and iron.
These are essential nutrients for our life.
The reason why they're called essential
is because for the most part,
our body is unable to make these on its own.
And we need to get them from our diets.
If you're low on vitamins, that can hurt your energy levels,
your immune system, your ability to clot and so much more.
And if you're low on minerals,
your bones won't form properly, you won't grow properly,
you could possibly be anemic.
This is why these bad boys are so essential.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Something you have to know
is that all diets are not not created equal.
And I'm gonna run through a single example with you
right now so that you can follow along.
Let's say there are two people in a given situation.
They have the same maintenance calories,
and they're looking to lose weight.
Person A decides to follow the cookie diet
and they're gonna aim to eat 1500 calories of cookies a day,
which is 500 calories below their required maintenance.
Person B is also gonna be eating 1500 calories a day
but they're gonna be following the Mediterranean diet,
basically a wholefoods, plant based diet.
Who do you think I'm gonna say
is following the healthy diet?
I mean it's obvious but do you know why it's obvious?
Both people will actually lose weight.
So, you may say to yourself, well,
so if they're both losing weight,
why is one worse that the other?
Go back to my little triangle that I created.
Both are eating a caloric deficit, check.
But person A is eating cookies, which is mostly sugars
and some fat, so they're not getting a great balance
of macronutrients.
Person B, Mediterranean diet.
Great balance of macronutrients.
Let's talk about micronutrients.
Probably the more important point of the conversation here.
If you follow the cookie diet,
what micronutrients are in cookies?
Mediterranean diet, rich in vitamins, rich in minerals.
Yes, we want you to lose weight if you're overweight
and yes, we want you to consume less calories
but that's not where the story ends.
We need to consider that whole triangle of calories,
macros and micronutrients.
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In the United States, obesity has become an epidemic.
So, I understand why most people wanna lose weight.
It's actually been proven in the best quality studies
keeping your weight healthy is one of the most important
things you can do to maintain your health,
to live a long life.
So, if you're trying to lose weight
or if you're possibly underweight and wanna gain weight,
here's what I recommend you do.
Calculate your maintenance calories.
You can do that through a calculator online.
And then if you wanna again weight,
add to the maintenance calories and eat that.
If you wanna lose weight, eat a little bit less
than your maintenance and you're gonna be losing weight.
What I recommend to my patients is that ideally
they lose or gain a pound a week max.
'Cause when you start going into extremes,
that could really mess with your body,
unless of course, you have a medical condition
or working with a nutritionist or doctor.
To make life even easier for you,
I recommend you just download Lifesum*
and plug in all your information
and it'll tell you what your maintenance calories are
or what you have to be eating
in order to gain or lose weight.
It's such a simpler process when dieting.
Let's use myself as an example
because I'm actively dieting.
I'm trying to lose some weight, not a lot,
but I'm losing weight trying to try to keep my muscle.
I'll show you how I use Lifesum* to make that happen.
All right, let's start with finding your plan.
I wanna have a high protein plan
where I'll lose some weight without going hungry
and losing my muscle.
So, I hit high protein, I hit start plan,
it allows me to choose how much protein I wanna take in
based on how much exercise I'm doing.
Let's keep it in the midline here
and do .9 grams of protein for body weight.
Some people say to do .8
Some people say to do one.
Let's keep it simple and do it right in the middle.
Hit continue.
It says I should be focusing on eating foods
that are rich in protein, I agree.
It gives me my breakdown in calories
and macronutrients.
It gives you some basic do's and don'ts
which is awesome.
You hit start plan, boom!
It tells me how many calories I have to eat today,
how many I've eaten, how many I've burned,
how many carbs I have to eat,
how many proteins I have to eat,
how many fats I have to eat.
So, let's add what I had for breakfast.
I ordered out actually, 'cause I was busy, don't judge me
but we got Muscle Maker Grill, I had a wrap
it's called a Rocky Balboa Wrap, boom!
Right there.
Were gonna add it to the diary
and you can see right here, you click breakfast
and it says, we have 59 grams of protein
with a little happy face, 'cause that's what we need to do.
It shows you how many calories I had.
I should have aimed for about 700 calories.
I did 646, which is close enough
because throughout the day, it'll average out.
And then if you look back onto the main diary here,
now I have 1500 calories left for the day.
It shows you my breakdown on my macronutrients.
You don't have to track the calories.
You don't have to put anything down on paper.
That can get very complicated and intimidating.
You now have a solid foundation
in understanding nutrition and what healthy eating
truly means.
When you're thinking about nutrition,
always remember that little triangle
of calories, macronutrients and micronutrients
so you can decide what's healthy and what's not.
Trust me.
There's a lot of nuance when it comes to nutrition.
And I didn't wanna bog this video down with controversy.
In general, the field of nutrition research
is an absolute mess and we'll save that
for the future videos.
For now, I just wanted you to have a solid understanding
for you to have a healthy and happy conversation
with your nutritionist, doctor, trainer,
you got the basics, so, click here
for my diet reviews to truly become a master.
And huge thank you to Lifesum for making this video happen.
Stay happy and healthy.
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