PWO shakes for the fat adapted

[Rafael David]

I've following the Paleo diet for 3-4 weeks and I'm great and all, but I've a big doubt, I know how much protein I must have in the PWO (~50g according to Poliquin), but how much fat (coconut milk, olive oil, etc)? :|

[Joshua Naterman]

I've following the Paleo diet for 3-4 weeks and I'm great and all, but I've a big doubt, I know how much protein I must have in the PWO (~50g according to Poliquin), but how much fat (coconut milk, olive oil, etc)? :|

You should have some glucose powder in there too, or maltodextrin or a natural carb source. You will need far less protein that way, and you won't be wasting a bunch of it by converting it into sugar. We aren't talking about a huge amount of carbs here, maybe a 1:1 ratio of carbs to protein.

As far as fats go, you should probably have a mix of fast and slow fats. Coconut oil is a fast fat. Olive oil is a bit slower but not much is slower than beef fat and non-homogenized milk fat.

[Rafael David]

I've following the Paleo diet for 3-4 weeks and I'm great and all, but I've a big doubt, I know how much protein I must have in the PWO (~50g according to Poliquin), but how much fat (coconut milk, olive oil, etc)? :|

You should have some glucose powder in there too, or maltodextrin or a natural carb source. You will need far less protein that way, and you won't be wasting a bunch of it by converting it into sugar. We aren't talking about a huge amount of carbs here, maybe a 1:1 ratio of carbs to protein.

As far as fats go, you should probably have a mix of fast and slow fats. Coconut oil is a fast fat. Olive oil is a bit slower but not

much is slower than beef fat and non-homogenized milk fat.

I should use carbs and fat, carbs alone (dextrose, fruit) or fat alone ( coconut, olive oil) for best results?

[Joshua Naterman]

You want to have all three together. For your purposes you just want to minimize the amount of protein catabolized and turned into sugar, while fulfilling the energy requirements of your body primarily with fats.

If I were you, I'd go with estimating an 8 MET rate for your exercise. In other words, figure out your resting metabolic rate (RMR) and then divide by 24 to find out how many calories you burn in 1 hour. Then multiply by 8 or so. That will tell you how many calories you will burn if you continuously perform bodyweight exercise for 1 hour. Obviously rest time does not count, but if you know how long your workout was and how long your rests are, both of which should be timed anyways for best results as a genera training rule, you can subtract your total rest time from your workout time and find the actual time you were doing work.

Example: I am 215 lbs at 6'2. My estimated RMR at my current activity level with daily workouts is 3459 calories. divided by 24 hours that leaves me with 144 calories per hour. That's 1 MET for me. Not for you, for me. That is the amount of energy, on average, I burn every hour at rest (sitting in a chair). 8 METs for me is 1153 calories per hour. That's a lot of calories.

So, let's pretend I work out for 30 minutes. I take a total of 10 minutes of rest. I just worked for 20 minutes. Well, 1153 calories per hour divided by 60 minutes = 19.2 calories per minute when I am working at 8 METS. 20 minutes of such work means I burn about 384 calories. You can guesstimate that half of that came from carbs, which is pretty fair and accurate. That means I need to replace 192 calories with carb calories, which comes to 48g of carbs. The other 192 calories can come from fat, which will be around 21.33g of fat. Add 10.4g of protein per hour and you're fine.

Now, it's important to understand that you don't have to give your body all of that at one time. You can, and that's fine, but things tend to work better when you split this into smaller meals. Having 25g of carbs, 10g fat and 10g protein twice will work better and lead to better recovery. Having that once an hour, from food sources that take about one hour to digest and absorb, is a good idea. It is an even BETTER idea to have your first serving about 10 minutes before you start to work out.

After you have replaced the calories you burned, which only takes 2 servings, you can go with 10g of protein, 4g carbs and however much fat you need to keep your body running for the rest of the calories you burn per hour. Obviously if you aren't going to eat every hour you will want to use slower digesting foods like sweet potato, casein or meat protein, and meat fat or milk fat.

Does that make sense? I know that was an awful lot to read, sorry. That's the simplest way I can think of to give you a truly accurate answer. It is 100% paleo to do this, just use the appropriate carb sources for whatever diet you are trying to stick to.

Don't let anyone tell you that ancient man was too stupid to be able to throw roots onto a fire but smart enough to do the same with meat, there is ample evidence of both.

In the end that's kind of a side argument that perhaps doesn't belong here, but I'm trying to get the point across that your most efficient path will always be to replace what your body actually burns, and to do so in a way that keeps you from wasting protein by turning it into sugar. This is not in conflict with a high fat diet.

[Rafael David]

Very nice Slizz, I understand well and I'll put this page in favorites here haha Also, write a lot just show that you like to help others, no problem read a lot, because we learn a lot and we're here to learn right?

[Philip Chubb]

Slizzardman, I like your idea of replacing everything so that the protein isn't used to fill in. Saves money on meat. The hard part is figuring out exactly what is being burnt and trying to break even.

[Joshua Naterman]

There are charts for that! You need two charts:

1) a MET chart to tell you how many METs whatever activity you are performing consumes

2) a MET to RER approximation chart

They both exist, and the RER part tells you what percentage of the calories you are burning comes from fat. The rest comes from carbs. At the HIGHEST, protein accounts for almost 10% of total calories burned, but that's during starvation conditions and should never, under any circumstances, be applicable to your training.

Anyhow, together those two will tell you nearly exactly how many calories you burned and what percentage was from carbohydrates. That makes it super easy to know what you have to replace!

[Philip Chubb]

There are charts for that! You need two charts:

1) a MET chart to tell you how many METs whatever activity you are performing consumes

2) a MET to RER approximation chart

They both exist, and the RER part tells you what percentage of the calories you are burning comes from fat. The rest comes from carbs. At the HIGHEST, protein accounts for almost 10% of total calories burned, but that's during starvation conditions and should never, under any circumstances, be applicable to your training.

Anyhow, together those two will tell you nearly exactly how many calories you burned and what percentage was from carbohydrates. That makes it super easy to know what you have to replace!

And I was just thinking how bored I was and didn't have anything to read or play with. Thanks for giving me something interesting to mess around with. This should help make even better gains!

[Joshua Naterman]

There are charts for that! You need two charts:

1) a MET chart to tell you how many METs whatever activity you are performing consumes

2) a MET to RER approximation chart

They both exist, and the RER part tells you what percentage of the calories you are burning comes from fat. The rest comes from carbs. At the HIGHEST, protein accounts for almost 10% of total calories burned, but that's during starvation conditions and should never, under any circumstances, be applicable to your training.

Anyhow, together those two will tell you nearly exactly how many calories you burned and what percentage was from carbohydrates. That makes it super easy to know what you have to replace!

And I was just thinking how bored I was and didn't have anything to read or play with. Thanks for giving me something interesting to mess around with. This should help make even better gains!

Hehehe! Anything to keep the holidays interesting my friend!

Let me know how all that works out! It should be good.

[Quick Start Test Smith]

I did some searching and found some charts that I think are good...

From: http://www.whyiexercise.com/metabolic-equivalent.html

From: http://www.whyiexercise.com/metabolic-equivalent.html

I also found this interesting but a bit less useful site: http://www.whyiexercise.com/rockport-walking-test.html

[Joshua Naterman]

Nice! Just keep in mind that those calorie numbers are not necessarily accurate for everyone. The more lean mass you have the higher your calorie count will be!

[Quick Start Test Smith]

Yeah, I was looking at the 3.5, 5.0, 6.0, etc. numbers to find the MET exercise number. The calorie numbers seem easy to predict. If my RMR is 3000 kcal, 1 MET is 125 kcal for me, so if I work at 8 MET's (1000 kcal) that's roughly 17 kcal per work minute, and so if I spend an average of 55 minutes working in a 90 minute workout, that's 935 kcal to replace... half of that from carbs is 117g and half from fat is 52g. That's a pretty big meal, so I'd split it into 2 meals (maybe 3?). That would make each meal about 58g of carbs, 26g of fat, and 10g of protein? Would it be advisable to split it into three meals and take one 10 minutes before workout and two afterwards? The 10g of protein isn't calculated from the MET is it, right? Is it a constant?

[Joshua Naterman]

The 10g of protein is pretty constant and has nothing to do with mets.

I would definitely split that into 3 meals, maybe even 4 if you feel like it. 3 should be fine though. I wouldn't worry about replenishing the fat unless you aren't interested in dropping body fat. If you're already lean go ahead and eat the fat too. Make sure you have coconut milk or coconut oil for your pre-workout meal fats because almost everything else will slow down the rate of absorption for that first meal.

[Quick Start Test Smith]

I want to lean out quite a bit, so I won't bother with the fat, then. 3 meals will be more comfortable, too. Good

[Rikke Olsen]

Sorry (maybe?) to bump the thread, but I actually found this chart:

http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin/backpackinglight/forums/thread_display.html?forum_thread_id=4608

Explanation is in the link - it's from a backpacker site; personally, I'm having difficulty deciphering the chart to have it make complete sense, but then again - I'm a linguist I have no doubt other of you can make more sense of it!

[Joshua Naterman]

I'm going to leave that chart only because I think it's cool that someone did this for another person.

That chart is confusing, because there are no labels on it. This was made for a particular sized individual to try and help him match his food intake to his multi-week backpacking energy requirements. This does not apply to anyone here unless you go backpacking or literally work without breaks all day at a 4+ met rate.

There are some flaws with this chart, but the general idea is correct... As continuous (that's an important concept) exercise continues, your body will shift metabolism more to the fat burning side, but it only changes something like 7-10% per hour and never gets above 70-ish %.

The first 4-5 columns are ok, but the fat % is being drastically under-represented. You have to get to about 80% of your VO2Max before you hit 100% carb utilization. At 50-60% utilization is initially very even.

Anyhow, this chart means nothing for the vast majority of people here.

For those who want to know, fat, CHO and Pro(protein) numbers are in CALORIES, not grams. Divide CHO and PRO by 4, fat by 9 to get the grams. Again, this chart will not help you very much for anything but the percentages and even those are a bit off. TO be fair, they are off in the right direction because your body can (and will) burn carbs if you give your body carbs.

[Rikke Olsen]

Ah, I see. I thought it was strange there wasn't any clearly indicative labels.

Thanks anyways, for taking the time to explain it, Slizz!