The Art & Science of Physiologic's Assessment & Nutrition Program

Physiologic's nutrition and training programs derive from the scientific ability to measure nutritional/energetic depletion rates from the human body. I use the imagery depicted in The Carbohydrate Continuum so that all audiences can understand how everyday, familiar physical experiences like walking, swimming, resting, running, and bicycling directly relate to proper nutrition, i.e. how the body literally uses food. In a class setting, I conduct experiments with human figurines that flesh out the Carbohydrate Continuum as a simple physical phenomenon that in turn, makes nutrition easier to understand.

As we see a physics teacher demonstrate a natural phenomenon in a formal lecture or on The Discovery Channel, demonstrating how the body works with human-like models enable students to connect the qualitative and conceptual features of nature with the quantified measurements that we gather from nutritional, physiological, and bio-medical research.

In short, what we do physically reveals how we need to eat. Visualizing this connection using human figurines makes the science of nutrition and exercise physiology easy to learn, even for a 7 year-old child.

Enter Macroman, The Marvelous Mannequins, and Einstein’s Muscle. I use these models to teach how the body’s energetic cycles relate to nutrition, health, and any type of physical training. All this provides a marvelous advantage for creating a more precise, effective, and scientific nutrition and training program.

In addition - before designing a nutrition program, Physiologics utilizes a more practical use of your body’s composition tests compared to other programs. Rather than restricting these tests to a yardstick measure for obtaining simply external ‘before and after’ changes over time, Physiologics uses the tests for something integrally useful: to calculate the actual physical amount of ‘food energy’ stored in your body! This is the first step in understanding the relationship between food and the body.

Actually, most programs or trainers never use the information from a body composition test for anything beyond just numbers to describe physical changes that are otherwise detected by your clothing or even a dullard’s eye. Strange… is it not, how such valuable information is not linked to the client’s goals efforts, or edification? Plus people pay for it. As it goes, one must know what to do with this information in order to make it useful. It goes like this:

We calculate your body’s energy storage capacity, and then translate this in terms of the food you need to eat, and then further, adjust your intake relative to the rate of depletion due to physical activity (or lack thereof). So now we’ve taken two quantum leaps by: 1) actually using the information to educate people and 2) design quality nutrition and training programs.

In comparison, most fancy metabolic tests don’t shed any educational light onto the literal connection between nutritional needs and the energy burned during physical activity, and therefore provide no practical, scientific, or artistic bridge for creating a nutrition program. (Art does not serve to uphold views; it transforms them or adds something genuinely new, and elevates consciousness in a significant manner).

Overall, fancy metabolic tests are pretty much useless if they do not apply to your purpose in a practical way. You must make meaningful and personal connections between what you do, what you eat, and what is literally in and makes up your material body. Therefore, a literal physical measurement linked with what you do in the real world is paramount. Even genetic testing won’t shed light in the same respect compared to simple physical tests, and besides, it is too late to change your genetics. So learn to work with what you got.

Here is an outline of the assessment and nutritional calculations.

  1. Calculate your capacity to store energy based on your body composition analysis.
  2. Tabulate the sum total for each macronutrient in terms of energy.
  3. Adjust your caloric intake for each of the Three Divisions of the Carbohydrate Continuum accordingly:

NOTE: The Trainer's Palette Meal Program is based on these figures.

Your total intake in each division is based on your current activity level and goals. Be clear on this! This means you need to shift your caloric intake and your meal program when you make changes in your activity level, training regimen, or goals.

Also know that the Three Divisions of the Carbohydrate Continuum produce three different sets of calculations. Seeing these numbers should help you to better understand the relationship between food as energy and how you use your body. For beginners, I may recommend you only focus on one set, and therefore I may provide only one set, in order to focus on a singularity of purpose.

Moreover, these calculations DO NOT increase in a simplified linear progression as you progressively increase overall activity level throughout the Three Divisions. In other words, a certain shift in physical output (say, doubling your intensity level) does not mean you simply double caloric intake!!! This is why eating correctly is poorly understood, and why charlatans, plagiarists, and the unskilled have a hard time teaching nutritional and physical sciences.

Edward Watson (AKA The Demystifier)
Owner, Physiologics