Macronutrient Portioning: Athlete vs. General Population

Enhancing Human Performance Through Proper Nutrition and Resistance Training

In the previous first two blogs, I wanted to touch base on the basics of nutrition and differentiate between macronutrients and micronutrients. This blog is focused on the proper proportioning and how it can affect your specific fitness goals depending on how much of each macronutrient you decide to include in your diet.

Let’s begin with an individual who is more concerned with improving athletic performance. The first staple of this diet should be carbohydrates. Carbs are the main source of fuel that an individual’s body needs to initiate quick-muscle contractions that are often associated with athletic movements. As far as daily percentages are concerned, the jury is still out on that. Some experts claim that “40-60% of daily intake should be carbohydrates if the goal is to build muscle”.2 Now while this seems like a large portion of a daily dietary intake, it must be noted that the majority of the carbs should be coming from complex sources such as starch and fibers. Simple sugars don’t need to be over consumed as they can have a negative impact on insulin production from the pancreas. An ideal time to consume simple sugars would be during the pre-workout nutrition phase of your eating schedule.

Now let’s focus on an individual who is considered more general population, think of a “weekend warrior in the gym” of sorts. An individual like this needs to look at several factors such as “fitness goals, body type, and gender”.2 Other factors that need to be included are the individual's resting metabolic rate (RMR) and the “energy expended during physical activity”.1 The main focus of proportioning macronutrients on the carbohydrate intake as well, but to a lesser extent. Due to the simple fact that compared to an athlete, the general population individual will have significantly less daily energy expenditure because they don’t have a daily routine of practice, perform, weight training, etc. Carbohydrate intake for this individual needs to stay ideally in between 30-50% depending on how active the individual is.

http://www.diabetes.org

The basic principle of macronutrient balance can be determined based on how active an individual is. The more active the person, the more carbs that person can intake to compensate for the energy expenditure. It should be noted however, that too much carbohydrate intake can result in the body becoming insensitive to insulin due to the mass production of it from the excess of sugars in the body, so always keeping carb intake in check is essential to proper nutrition.

1Clark, M., Lucett, S., & Corn, R. J. (2008). NASM essentials of personal fitness training. Philadelphia: Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.

2Wilkins, S. (2016). 3 Keys To Dialing In Your Macronutrient Ratios. Retrieved October 06, 2016, from http://www.bodybuilding.com/content/macro-math-3-keys-to-dialing-in-your-macro-ratios.html