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1. Betty B
   June 29th, 2011 - 06:15

   Eat enough to cover your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) then eat more to account for physical activity (About an average of 8 calories/minutes at your age/height/weight like 320 calories for 40 minutes, walking/jogging, biking or swimming…) and then occasionally eat even more when getting ravenous during a growth spurt (until you’re 21) so you do not stunt your growth.

   Your BMR is 1,340 calories (female, 19yo, 5’6 and 107lbs). The ratio of carbs/protein/fats would depend on different factors like you would need more protein while building muscle mass (getting in shape) so you would have to eat more to get those OR eliminate saturated fats to reach your quota (you should get protein cravings like nuts, eggs, milk, cheese and meat, if your body needs it). With your gender/age/height/weight, a good protein percentage is 15% while maintaining muscle mass and 20% while building muscle mass.

   Some people favor a high protein diet as the body can use protein if you do not eat enough carbs…it’s just harder and some are male with male hormones and need tons of protein while building muscle mass 5 times faster than a woman.

   Others (women like me…I’m 5’5) favor a 60% carbs diet otherwise I do not have enough energy to exercise, especially for weight training which is anaerobic, meaning it is too intense so you cannot breathe enough oxygen to process fat cells and you have to rely on a high blood sugar level to make it easy and efficient.

   If I do not get a high carbs meal 2 hours before exercising, I’ll feel like my arms and legs are weak noodles, everything will seem harder to perform while the numbers (my speed while doing aerobics, my weights and reps while doing weight training, my heart rate…) will tell me that I am regressing instead of progressing (I monitor and time everything…I like numbers that I use for motivation).
   So I eat enough carbs to get an efficient and easy workout and progress as I should (I get faster and stronger) for the same physical effort as the last session.

   As a base, you could do 15% protein, 60% carbs (sugars are carbs too), 20% unsaturated fats and no more than 5% saturated fats.

   On a 1,340 calories BMR, that would be about 200 calories of protein (around 50 grams…each gram of protein is about 4 calories), 800 calories of carbs (about 200g), around 340 calories of fats but not more than 7 or 8 grams of saturated ones (5% of your BMR, grams of fat are 9 calories).

   The “less than 20 grams of saturated fats” from your other answer, Waldo, is a guy’s answer about strong big guys needing 3 or 4 thousand calories a day so a 5% saturated fat could be 20 grams (180 calories) on a 3,600 calories diet.

   When watching out about your diet, you only need to watch out about not getting too much saturated fat (which is a good incentive to reconsider eating a Big Mac which also has Trans fat btw) and eating enough protein, especially if you’re getting in shape. Then the carbs will fall into place and you just need to time your meals with your exercising so you can have a good meal then 2 hours later have a good exercise session and when you’re done 2 hours later you can dive into another good meal, while watching out for the saturated fat and getting enough protein.

   (“apprichate” that is the way I want “appreciate” to be spelled so it looks more like what it sounds).
2. waldo
   June 29th, 2011 - 06:15

   250 grams of carbs
   less than 20 grams of saturated fats
   85-100 grams of fat
   40 grams of sugar
   50 grams of protein

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