So, I guess this means you’re gonna…
Ride the snake!
No, thanks. I’m trying to cut down.
In what world is 40% carbs 40% protein 20% carbs remotely practical? WTF foods have those ratios of macronutrients? Tofu with wheat germ or something?
If you’re on a 3000 calorie diet, and 40% comes from protein, that’s 300 grams of protein per day. People need roughly 1 gram per kg of lean body mass, maybe 1.5 if you’re very active - if you’re eating 300 grams of protein per day that covers someone that has roughly 650 pounds of lean body mass.
So I think you might want to check your advice there, otherwise find me any sort of nutrition source that seriously purports that protein should make up 40% of your caloric intake.
Of course there is. Take the blue pill.
So how did you come up with your BS figures for our fantastical man needing 3000 calories a day?
There is also The Skidmark Diet. It involves copious amounts of ExLax. But it’s only recommended if you have your own laundry facilities.
How many calories in the Blue Pill?
Uh, the OP? Basal metabolic rate for a 6’2 220 pound 29 year old male is 2200. Multiply by 1.55 for moderate excercise and you get 3400. Cut 400 out per day (the diet/calorie deficit part) and 3000 is a good round number.
What in the world do you think is fantastical about someone burning 3000 calories per day?
Even someone that’s 5’11 160 pounds and 30 years old needs 1800 basal and 2790 with the 1.55 multiplier. But the 160 pound guy doesn’t need to be on a diet probably, so the first person is more realistic.
Even so, let’s say I’m off by a generous 20%. Ok, so our hypothetical person needs 2400 calories. 240 grams of protein. (40% of 2400 is 940, 4 calories per gram of protein = 240 grams of protein per day). This is enough for someone that has a lean body mass of over 500 pounds.
So you support the idea that people should aim for enough protein to support 500 pounds of lean body mass, but you think the idea of someone burning 3000 calories a day while excercising is fantastical?
I am off to bed so I should confess I know how you came up with your BS. You are working backwards from diets that recommend far lower percentages of protein but far higher percentages of carbs. So if you asked the same question using carbs figures the guy on a huge 3000 calorie diet would weigh 160 pounds.
WeightWatchers. 
I’m a former fat person. I lost my weight using Weight Watchers, and hit my goal about 9 years ago (9 years on 4/24 to be exact). I am about 4 pounds over goal, but I still consider myself a success at maintenance, considering I lost 50 pounds.
I work hard to stay at maintenance. Most people who know me never knew me as fat. But inside, I know what I could be, oh so easily. http://www.runnersworld.com/article/1,7120,s6-243-297-519-13846-0,00.html
It never lets go.
DSeid: Thanks for the links. I’m still going through them. I have a question, however. Given your professional expertise, can you see any reason why any patient who decided to follow my basic program would fail to lose weight? After all, for every trick and feedback mechanism that our bodies have evolved to cling to fat, there’s a simple work around in my program. Eating 6 smaller meals instead of three larger ones, for example. That’s a work around. Speeds up your metabolism, stops you from feeling too hungry. It’s quite easy to stick to, once you get into it, because you can always tell yourself your next meal isn’t gonna be more than a couple of hours away. Using healthy carb sources with a low GI index, that’s a workaround. Keeps blood glucose more even, lowers cravings, takes longer to digest, keeps you feeling full longer. Working out 3-4 times per week, that’s a massive workaround, especially if you use interval training as I recommended.
No matter how much your body desperately wants to cling to fat, it can’t if you’re eating below your maintenance level (again, standard disclaimers apply to those with unusual metabolic conditions).
All this stuff is pretty easy to build into your life. You’ve just got to work out what you need to eat, buy it in bulk, get used to preparing your day’s meals ahead of time, and join a gym. The biggest problem people have is sticking with it.
SenorBeef: If someone following my advice calculated they’d need to eat 3000 calories a day to lose 1lb per week of fat then they would be likely be pretty heavy to begin with. Let’s assume that, as per my advice, they’re eating 500 calories under maintenance, and that they’re working out 3-4 times per week. We add 500 and then divide 3,500 by 1.55. That gives us a BMR of 2258. A man of average height (5ft 9in)in his 30’s with a BMR of 2258 would necessarily be about 250-260lbs. For such a man, 300g of protein is about 1.1 - 1.2 grams per lb of body weight. The big advantage to eating 1g protein per lb of body weight is that it takes a lot longer to digest protein so you feel fuller longer. Is the 40-40-20 split the only way to go? Of course not. Another popular split is 50% carbs 30% protein and 30% fat. That’d work too. As I said in my OP, I was just giving a method that works, not trying to be definitive.
If this all sounds very general, well…it is. Weight loss isn’t an exact science, no matter how many people would like it to be so. You follow general principles and monitor your results, tweaking if necessary as you go.
As for food preparation, well, unfortunately it isn’t really all that practical. My breakfast, for example, is 40g bran flakes w. 200ml skimmed milk, 50g cooked chicken and one tablespoon of olive oil. Weird? Sure. But effective. You may find you’ve got to mix and match foods in slightly odd ways to get the numbers to work. However, if you like all the foods you’re mixing and matching, what’s the big deal?
So the OP is positing 1360 calories of both protein and carbs, the rest fat. You are going backwards and saying that 340 gms of protein means he weighs 340 kgs. I say BS. He weighs 220 pounds.
Dont fight the fatinistas. You won’t win.
Maybe this makes more sense.
If I put someone on a diet of 300g (1200 cal) of protein and nothing else a day will that make them weigh 300kg?
You aren’t reading me or something because you’re just spouting nonsense. I’m not “working back” from anything. The human body burns calories every day just by staying alive - the basal metabolic rate. For a man who’s 30 and 220 pounds for example (seems like a fairly typical dieter), he needs 2200 calories. That’s just to stay alive. If this person does moderate excercise, you roughly add 50%, which comes out to over 3000. You want to lose weight, so you expend more calories than you take in, so you take in 3000.
Now, fat is 9 calories per gram, and carbs and protein are both 4 per gram. If this person is eating 3000 calories a day, and 40% of that has to come from protein, that means 1200 calories from protein. Since we know 4 calories = 1 gram, then that’s 300 grams of protein.
Here’s the part where you may be confused: Protein is generally not used as an energy-generating macronutrient the way carbs and fat are. Proteins are broken down to be used in various bodily functions like repairing tissues and synthesizing needed metabolic proteins. So you only need as much protein as your body needs to fulfill all those processes. Since a lot of protein goes into upkeep of lean body mass, nutritionists generally express protein requirements in terms of lean body mass. The general recommendation is 1 gram of protein per kilogram of bodyweight. A person that weighed 220 pounds but had, say, 140 pounds of lean body mass (not fat/bone/etc) would need roughly 60 grams of protein per day (roughly 60kg of lean body mass). If they were highly active, maybe you could bump that up to 80 or 90.
But the suggested 40% protein diet recommends that this person intakes 300 grams of protein, about 5 times as much as that person needs. If you’re using the 1 gram per kilogram guideline, this is enough protein for someone who has over 500 pounds of lean body mass … which is no one, ever.
The idea of trying to take in 40% of your calories in protein is absurd. No food has these ratios, no one’s body needs anywhere near that much protein, and no nutritionists recommend anywhere near that intake.
The idea that you can accept that people should aim for 40% of their macronutrients being protein, but scoff at the idea of an active man burning 3000 calories a day, calling it fantastical, is quite bizarre.
I don’t accept that. Personally I probably don’t. But you are saying that your pre-ordained calories per kilogram diet dictates what the hypothetical dieter weighs. I say BS. You may not like someone’s high protein diet but so what?
FFS, read what I said. I’m not saying that eating 4000 calories one day makes you 400 pounds and eating 2300 the the next magically makes you 170 pounds.
I’m saying that people have a basal metabolic rate that’s mostly a factor of the amount of lean body tissue they carry. It’s the amount of calories they burn in a day. A sedentary 120 pound woman may only burn 1500 calories a day. An athletic 200 pound man doing serious excercise might burn 4000. Michael Phelps burns about 11k a day when he’s training.
This is so simple that I have no idea how it is you keep getting baffled by it.
I’m also saying that consuming 40% of your calories as protein is an absurdly high number, not useful, and not recommended by any serious nutritionist anywhere ever.
I should have added that what I am scoffing at is that you are taking the number of calories, converting it to grams of protein, applying a completely different formula of your own choice, and using it to try to prove the OP wrong. BS.
Find me a reputable nutritionist or nutrition site anywhere that says 40% of your calories should be from protein. Unless I’m making some sort of math error, that would leave you with far more protein than you’d ever actually need unless you’re on some sort of auschwitz diet.
I’m sorry we are arguing at cross purposes here. I don’t think anyone recommends dietary intakes of protein that high and as I posted I don’t eat that much protein. I am just saying that you can’t criticize a diet backwards. If the OP recommended no protein you can’t say “why that’s enough carbs for a an XXX pound” person. The calories have to come from somewhere.