Alan Aragon Fans could use a little help

I just finished his book, and I will say that I am impressed. He has a lot of good info in there, but I find that when he gets to his calculations he gets just way too confusing, the constant change between KG and Pounds for a metric person is just out there.

 

Also, I have managed to complete my calculations for my body type and target body weight/composition, and I came up with a calorie maintenance reading o 3760 calories. I find this personally hard to believe, when I have never had a REE of more than 2500. I could be wrong, and this might be why I am struggling. 

 

So, I guess the topic question relates to, has anyone used his book and formulas to get a rough idea of what they need to achieve a target body composition? or do they just take his protein requirements for  a run and see what they are.

 

any info would be great on your personal experience.

 

Cheers

 

Bret

 

Just as an adjunct, I did find his macro calculator and input my info, it came back with 3340 calories as TDEE based on my Target body weight.

 

I am actually going to really give this a thorough hose down and go, and see if I can't get myself back on top of this underlying problem

 

again, any thoughts and discussions are welcome

 

Bret

Have not read the book yet, but some thoughts  nonetheless..

 

Even with best formulae you still end up with estimates, you have to experiment to hit your sweetspot.

 

My own experience is that applying Katch-Mcardle formula and multiplier I ended up around 20% deficit when shooting for maintenance.

I do not consider it a failure, just something you have to be aware of.

 

While it can be argued how much protein is actually needed to build/preserve muscle, I personally tend to overshoot, especially when cutting, because of taste (I do like meat/dairy/eggs) and satiating effect. So what if some protein is used for energy and not muscle repair/buildup..

 

Have a go and keep us posted!

 

Erik

thanks for the response. I set up my first day "today" with my food, can hapily post the diary, but I came up about 250g short for my carbs, went over my prot goal by about 53 g and fat by about 3 grams. so I think I am going to be taking a bit to get used to it.

 

something else I am interested in, Bread is something that in the holistic life (which has been my training for a while) is considered a no no for its processing, anyone here eat bread at all? or sourdough or something that is marked as good for you without all the processing? 

 

bret

Whow, now I'm curious, what are the macros you're trying to hit? Falling 250g short for carbs is quite a miss, do you feel the effect? I've bonked several times during F1 workouts (which tend to be quite endurance oriented, once you have to do holds 5x 1min with short breaks and exercises 5x15r with some exercises having mobility counterparts also quite exercise-like) when I was cutting and fell short of carbs.

 

I do eat bread. Not often (once a week perhaps on average), not in big amounts, usually made of rye (sourdough). And I do not have issue with foods being processed per se (cooking your own food is also processing), for me it's quality of processing that matters. Problem with bread for me is that there's lot of energy but not so many nutrients in it (whole grain products tend to have more nutrients but also worse absorption which makes them roughly equal choices).

Ok so I only missed it by 125g. Are 2 cups of rice not one

Macros

C:650g

P:95g

F:35g

This was all based off his calculator and calculations. It isn't bad to start, just have to play with some things. Ie: I eat at 7am and due to work won't eat for another 5 hrs, start to get hungry so have to put more days at brekkie.

I'm recording everything on my fitness pal, first time I am going to be doing it myself with real recording so I can keep you apprised...

This is exactly why it doesn't matter how loud Alan is on the internet or who he tries to partner with, he misses very fundamental concepts that make his (hardly) salient points very flawed.  

you will need to be more specific damon. I believe his scientific approach is a lot less flawed, than a lot of holistic approaches, which i have been about with my clients for quite a long time. I am trying to find the balance between clinical proof, and scientific proof. The best part about clinical proof is that it has been proven to work for a large majority of people, where science hasn't caught up yet. But I also find that some of it has been very destructive, especially to myself,

 

so I think it has come up in another forum topic, maybe some more of this evidence based info that you are saying is flawed can help me and others understand

 

bret

Bret,

 

His scientific approach I don't think is flawed.  What I don't like is that he constantly tries to put down other professionals by finding any sort of minutia that could be considered incorrect in their line of thinking so he can appear to be a hero to his fans, yet he has no salient points himself.  The biggest ongoing issue I have is that he still thinks a calorie is a calorie is a calorie, which can easily be debunked by anyone who has taken biochemistry 101.  That's why all these calorie calculations are not accurate - they can't be.  Do you think your T3, daily activity, thermogenesis from meals, etc. is EXACTLY the same every single day?  This doesn't even take into account the fact that it's incredibly difficult to figure out within 3% what your body composition is, and that has a huge impact on your energy expenditure.  Anyway...

 

Alan does a great job finding research.  Not a great job interpreting it. Most notably his meta-analysis with Brad Schoenfeld regarding post workout anabolism window was a complete exercise in futility.  It took them over a year of pain staking work to say exactly this: We're not sure if there is one, and we also don't know what the best method would be to figure it out.  

 

My salient point would be that nutrition needs are very individualized based on what we know of genetics and especially now, epi-genetics.  There are plenty of things we can make sweeping generalizations about (diurnal pattern of cortisol, insulin sensitivity), but there will still be outliers.  Bottom line is that just because something works for someone, does not in any way mean it'll work for you.

i apologise for sucha  long time in responding. 

 

I understand your points here totally. I agree there is no 1 right way to do things. i also agree with your last point, won't work for everyone. But in order to get to those subtelties of change in each and every person we need to start somewhere. I ahve been a CHEK prac lvl1 and a HOlistic lifestyle coach for nearly 7 years, and each of the variations in person to person information in that alone is unfathomable. I also agree that clinical studies and exploration is and always will be way ahead of science. But for me "personally" as you stated, for what ever reasons, none of my holistic training had worked on me. No matter what I did, I couldnt' drop weight. So I went back to basics of training the body, and I think we can all agree that a calorie is not a calorie, BUT.. if we are agreed that our food intake is non processed healthy food, then calories do come into play. I mean, the body uses calories for energy, this is a fact. The amount each body uses agreed is completely different, but with that baseline information can we not then progress slowly to find out what works best for my body?

 

I had been on a high protein diet based on my Metabolic Type, another holisitc approach, and I screwed my body up because it was too high protein. I can't sleep most nights, I get up between 3 and 4 almost every night and have thyroid issues, this was because of a total decrease in carbs namely grains rice and potatoes. Now that I am doing this training again, I have been eating more and more carbs and it seems to be working, for me... I am slowly but surely losing weight. Not in great amounts, but weight none the less.

 

I have taken 2 weeks of GB and will be returning to it this week, but I have bene involved in a 12 week transformation challenge, and now that I am happy with how I am training and improving, GB is back on my list of priorities.

 

I do love knowledge, but I also hate being told 10 versions of the same piece of information and just getting confused...

 

again, thanks for your input, I appreciate the knowledge and input from all.

bret

I'm feeling tentative about making a comment here. It's a struggle to know where to start without some basics. Can you tell us your weight Brett, where you are with F1 and what you're trying to achieve? From the numbers you have quoted, I'd guess you weight around 90kg?

 

If I ate 3300Cals (C:650g P:95g F:35g) it would be a bad day of overeating for me at 60kg. Eating 3700 would be impossible unless it was all cherry pie and chocolate. (might be worth a try)

 

And I'm not sure F1 workouts could be considered as having much of an energy requirement. The lightest ones probably use about a brazil nut, and the hardest ones might edge towards a slice of bread.

Interesting site Alan has though, with lots of PDFs http://www.alanaragon.com/articles. I hadn't come across him before.