Good morning to everyone, in the previous chapter (which you can find HERE) we talked a bit about how to start a journey dedicated to achieving better physical fitness, also listing which foods to choose and which to avoid; In this chapter, however, we will go a bit more in detail talking about Macronutrients.

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What are Macronutrients?

Macronutrients are the main basis of which all foods are formed and are essentially three:

• Carbohydrates
• Proteins
• Fats

1 gram of carbohydrates brings 4 kcal, 1 gram of protein 4 kcal, and one gram of fat product 9kcal.
Each food we eat consists of these 3 macronutrients, but in different proportions.
Let's take an example, we take the nutritional values ​​of 100 grams of pasta:

• 80 grams of carbohydrates
• 10 grams of proteins
• 2 grams of fats

By calculating the caloric intake of each macronutrient, we will discover the total caloric intake of 100g of pasta:
80g carbohydrates x 4kcal = 320 kcal
10g protein x 4kcal = 40kcal
2g fats x 9 kcal = 18kcal
100g of pasta has about 380kcal totals.

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Carbohydrates

Carbohydrates are usually used as the first resource in the production of energy from our body. Is it good? Is it a bad thing? It depends!
It depends on our primary goal, that is, whether we want to lose fat (fat, not weight .. not always the two things are connected) or if we want to build muscle.
In the first case, having the goal of fat loss, we should not give too much carbohydrates to our body otherwise they will be used for energy production instead of our hated fat accumulated.

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Proteins

Proteins are the Holy Grail.
If you are looking for the magic pill to have results you have almost found it.
Proteins are made of amino acids, which are used for building muscles (our muscles are made from amino acids).
Proteins help to preserve the muscle that in a low-calorie diet should be the primary goal; It is unnecessary to lose weight if much of the lost weight comes from the muscle tissue and not from the fat (that's why I first said that weight loss is not always connected to fat loss).
Losing more muscle than fat will even have a worse physical appearance even having less pounds on the weight scale.
Another feature of the proteins that few people don't know is that they have 4 calories at a theoretical side, but they have about 2.5 / 3 kcal on a practical side for each gram.
This is because the body employs more power (and therefore energy) to metabolize a protein than a carbohydrate or fat.
How does this help us? Simple: Chicken breast for example should have 100 kcal per 100 grams (25g of protein x 4 kcal) on paper, but it's actually as if it were less than 80! All this gives us the opportunity to lose weight and maintain our muscle tissue, only by preferring protein sources rather than other foods.

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Fats

This macronutrient is seen as the devil because it is believed that make you fat. Nothing more wrong.
Fat makes you fatty simply because with a high amount of fat it's easy to have a caloric surplus, and as we know you accumulate kg because of this surplus.
By absurdity you can lose weight by eating butter and nutella and you can grow fat by eating chicken breast: the only thing counting is caloric intake.
Moreover, not only fat does not make you fat, but some even do well to the circulatory system such as Omega 3 and Omega 6.
They can be found in fish (mainly salmon) and in dried fruits (nuts).
Small amounts are enough to have beneficial effects and do not go into caloric excess.

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I hope today you have learned something new and useful, in the next chapter we will talk about the setting of macronutrients in a diet.
See you on the next episode!

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