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As we become more conscious of our health and fitness, we often come across terms that sound intimidating and complicated. Macros, or macronutrients, are one such term that is frequently used in the fitness industry. But what are macros, and why are they important? 

In today’s Episode of the Fitness Simplified podcast, your Host, Fitness & Nutrition Specialist Coach Brooke Davis, simplifies the concept of macros and sheds light on their significance in our diet. We’ll explore the role of proteins, carbohydrates, and fats in our body and why a balanced intake of all three is crucial for our overall well-being. With Brooke’s expert guidance, we’ll understand the importance of portion control and how to achieve a balanced macronutrient intake for optimal health. 

Tune in now and discover the world of macros with Coach Brooke!

Transcript:

Welcome to the Fitness Simplified podcast. I’m Brooke Davis, Women’s Functional Nutritionist and Fitness Specialist with Elysian Women’s Wellness, and I’m here to simplify your fitness. If you’ve been in the fitness industry and nutrition space for any length of time or done some research on reaching a fat loss goal or a muscle-building goal, you’ve likely come across macros or macronutrients.

Also known as IIFYM, or “if it fits your macros.” You have probably seen somebody with a six-pack and a box of donuts. While this is somewhat accurate, let me dive into this:

These can be largely overcomplicated, so we’re going to do what we do best today and simplify them. We’re also going to get into why these matter. It used to be just calorie counting, right? Weight Watchers gives you points, doesn’t really matter where they come from, so what’s up with this new system? Super confusing.

Well, if calories are king (energy in, energy out), then macros are the queen and the knights. The king might have the final say, but the queen and the knights are actually going to execute and get it done right. If you want to lose weight, count calories.

If you want to lose fat and maintain or build muscle, count macros (and work out, obviously, but that’s for a different day). The reason I implement these concepts with my clients is because when you are looking at the hierarchy of the nutrition pyramid, the base of it is adherence. Next up is going to be energy, calories in, calories out, macronutrients, micronutrients, and then supplements at the tip-top, doing very little for you.

It doesn’t matter what diet you use to reach your goals, if you can’t stick to it, your results likely won’t stick either. So, let’s dive into it. How can you eat your donuts and have your six pack, too? All foods fit into three macro, or large, categories: proteins, carbs, and fats.

Almost all food has a combination of two or more of these things, but the majority of whole foods will be mostly one of these things. Learning what these are and how to manipulate them throughout your day is going to be the key to the food freedom you’ve always wanted.

Before we can get into macros, though, you have to figure out your calories. Calories is a measurement of energy.

I’m going to give you some very rough ways to do that. The best way, which people tend to really struggle with, is to track your food and weight for two weeks and see what your weight does.

Ideally you would have a proper macro ratio when you’re doing that, and you have to be consistent. So, I suggest listening to this podcast first and then following that technique second. As a completely raw starting point, I do have a macro calculator that I’d be happy to share with you; I will throw it into the show notes. And this is the second most accurate way to calculate at least your needs.

Diet history plays a huge role in your metabolic rate. So, if you’ve been chronically dieting and under eating, a calculator would more so show you where you should be and where you could work up to (which would be great), versus where you likely are as far as your caloric expenditure or needs. Anyways, I will drop that into the show notes for you.

The simplest and least accurate way is to use multipliers for your body weight. For fat loss, you would multiply your body weight by 12 to 13, and that would give you your caloric intake or suggested caloric intake.

For maintenance, which would be my suggestion to start at least, okay, would be to multiply your body weight by 15 to 16. For muscle building, you would multiply your body weight by 18 to 19.

So now you have a quick calorie target. Let’s dive into macros starting with my favorite and most neglected macro: protein!

Imagine your body is like a big city; Proteins are the superheroes, basically, that help the city run smoothly. They are coming in to save the day. The easiest way to remember if something is a source of protein or the best sources is: if it has eyes, it’s a protein (I know, it’s a little funky) but you’re going to remember it.

So meat, fish, eggs, but also sources like dairy, tofu, and beans. A lot of other foods have protein in it, but are not the main component. So that’s something to be aware of.

Proteins are made up of chains of amino acids, which are essentially the building blocks of life. They make up just about every tissue in our body from muscles, tendons, and even hair, and are involved in almost every single process in the body as well. They’re used to build and repair tissue, like muscle, produce enzymes, hormones, and are, of course, a source of energy.

There are 20 different types of amino acids that can be combined to form different proteins. These are divided into essential and non-essential amino acids. There are nine essential amino acids, which means we have to get them from our diet.

The rest are non-essential, which means our body can either make them itself, or it can be made through different processes from the essential amino acids that we get. I also, I have to clear this up because I’ve seen it on so many different pages and some actually kind of legitimate pages, and I was shocked to see it. However, a complete protein, let’s talk about a complete protein.

That is a protein that contains all nine essential aminos, which is mainly meats, but also soy. Our body is smart enough, though, that if we don’t eat a complete protein at every meal, as long as you’re eating a combination of them on a daily basis, your body is going to use it, okay? Not every food you eat or meal you eat has to be complete. Your body will still absorb it. It will store it. It will combine it with other proteins, and it will use it. Incomplete proteins still very much so count as a protein and towards your daily intake. So, I’ve seen this comment on collagen a lot because collagen is not a technically a complete protein – It’s missing one. I’m not sure the single protein that it’s missing or the amino acids that it’s missing, but it still counts towards your protein intake. So just wanted to clear that up.

Some of these proteins help us hear, see, while others help us move, but they also support our immune system. Proteins are found in a lot of different foods, like I said, and they are measured, actually all macros, are measured in grams as a unit of weight, which then converts them to calories, which is that measure of energy. So protein is four calories per gram.

So when you look at a nutrition label and it says there’s six grams of protein in the food, the serving size, you would multiply that by four to get the calories or the amount of energy that it contributes, right, to that food. If something says that it’s high protein, it better be more than 50% of that total calorie.

Marketing labels can be very deceiving to downright lying, basically. So always make sure that you read the actual nutrition label, not just the thing on the front that says “high protein”, and then do that calculation to make sure that it actually is high in protein.

So how much do you actually need? For healthy people with two kidneys, no kidney issues, protein intake should be at least 20%, but even up to 35% of your total diet or your total caloric intake, depending on what your specific goal is, okay? And when you’re in a deficit, you actually need more protein in order to prevent muscle wasting. The real calculation is 1.8 to 2.2 grams per kilogram of lean body mass, which can get deep into the weeds of calculations, okay, and you have to know your body fat percentage and all that good stuff. So as long as calories are adequate, I find a sweet spot for most clients looking to lose fat is around 27 to 28%.

A serving size of protein is 25 to 30 grams or about 100 to 120 calories, which usually equates to four to five ounces in weight of like a meat. To keep it really simple, though, I like to use a couple different visual measurements for those of you who are not interested in weighing food. A lot of our clients don’t and are not, which is totally fine.

A portion of protein, like a meat, a fish, tofu, should be about the size and thickness of your palm. So, when you’re serving yourself protein, try to have a piece that matches the size, thickness, of your palm at each meal. Generally speaking, most people need four to five servings of that palm size serving per day. The other option is the plate method, which when you’re looking at your entire plate, okay, protein should take up a quarter of it. So if you have your circle, right, and you divide it into four quadrants, protein should take up an entire quadrant or an entire quarter of it.  

Most people, though, are not eating three to four square meals off of an entire plate. So thinking about that quantity and then prioritizing protein for some of your snacks and throughout the day can help you hit that goal. Next up is carbs.

Carbohydrates are like the gas in a car for our bodies, but also literally the fastest, most usable fuel and our primary source of energy, okay? All carbs are eventually converted to glucose, which is then transported by the blood, right, blood sugar, and used by our brains and muscles to function. Carbs are found in a ton of foods, including fruits, vegetables, grains, and sugars. You’ll notice I didn’t list bread, right? Keep listening.

So there are two main kinds: complex and simple. Complex carbs are things like fruits, vegetables, and grains, like rolled or steel-cut oats, rice, beans, quinoa, and potatoes. These whole, unprocessed foods can also contain fiber, which is an essential component of our diets for a ton of reasons, but a couple key things that it does is it slows digestion, which helps stabilize blood sugar.

It improves digestion through the feeding of our good gut bacteria with prebiotic fiber, and that transfers into healthy bowel movements and proper elimination of toxins in the body. You want to detox? Eat your veggies. Your body will do it all by itself, okay?

Simple carbs are technically either pure sugar or bread, crackers, pasta, etc., right? Simple carbs are very easily broken down in the body into that glucose because they are in and of themselves already broken down in a simple sugar, or we have done some of the job by breaking them down and removing the fiber out of them. We have stripped them essentially of their nutrients, of the things that are good for them, and put them into a nice little package, literally.

Generally speaking, carbohydrate intake should be about 40 to 65% of your overall diet. To measure in grams, you could shoot for two to two and a half times your ideal or healthy body weight. If you’re not using a scale, a couple easy ways to measure a portion of complex carbohydrates, which is 15 to 20 grams, you can use your clenched fist and should aim for about four to six servings per day. The rest of your carbohydrate intake can come from fruits, vegetables, and any additional simple carbs, which the serving size would then be based on the nutrition label.

For the plate method, you would be taking a quarter of your plate and filling it with complex carbohydrates. So again, dividing that plate into four sections, taking one of those, filling it with complex carbs.

For fruit, generally one cup of fruit or one apple, one banana, one pear, that’s going to be a serving size. And obviously that can vary a little bit depending on the size of those things, but you could also weigh them if you want to get meticulous about it.

For vegetables, a double cupped handful or one and a half cups constitutes a serving. And these fruits and veggies should take up the other half of your plate, aiming for five to eight servings per day of fruits and vegetables combined, but mostly vegetables.

Fruits do have sugar in them. I want to clear this up. There is sugar in fruits, but sugar in fruits, again, as long as overall calories and macronutrients are accounted for, is not stopping fat loss. It’s not bad for you. Fruits have essential vitamins and minerals in them that you need. So do not cut out fruit because you think it’s fattening or you think it’s bad for you because there’s sugar in it. Yes, there is sugar in it. However, the fiber and again, the vitamin and mineral content of it outweighs any detriment that excess “sugar” would give you.

Okay. So onto the last macronutrient, fats. Fats are the body’s storage system.

Essentially it is the backup tank. Okay. So it’s found in butter, oil, cheese, nuts, and seeds, but there also tends to be high amounts in processed foods.

Our body needs a little bit of fat to stay healthy because they help protect our organs and actually also help make our sex hormones like estrogen and testosterone. So especially as women getting enough dietary fat, maintaining that healthy body fat level is extremely important for fertility. Fats also give us energy just like carbs, but they’re stored for later use. Like I said, they are that backup tank.

Despite their reputation as being unhealthy, fats are actually essential for your health. They provide us with energy. They help us absorb vitamins and minerals like vitamins, A, D, and K, and they also play a role in healthy brain function. There are three main types saturated, unsaturated, and trans fats.

Saturated fats are the kind found in animal protein like meat and dairy. And the easy way to remember that is that they’re solid at room temperature. So like butter, it’s hard when it gets cold.

And then unsaturated fats, there’s monounsaturated and polyunsaturated. They are found in nuts, seeds, and oils. And these are liquid at room temperature. So like most cooking oil, things like that.

Lastly, trans fats are a type of unsaturated fat that are usually used in processed foods. They are used to preserve foods and they are also used to make them hyperpalatable but shelf stable. Okay. They are best to limit or avoid as it has been shown to increase your risk of heart disease.

Saturated fats should make up about 10 to 20% of your overall fat intake where the rest should mainly come from plant sources. Those have been shown to be the most beneficial and even protective for your heart health. Fats, unlike carbs and protein, actually provide nine calories per gram, which is why it can add up so quickly.

Okay. So when you look on the nutrition label that you’d multiply that number, you see it next to the fats by nine (or you can just add a zero to the end of it – by 10, keep it simple. That’s going to be close enough.).

And that’s the number of calories that it contributes. For your daily needs, again, if you’re not calculating macros, not being get super specific about it, you don’t want to go below 20% and up to 35% of your caloric intake. However, if your calories are too low, right? Those numbers might not be enough.

Simple calculation, again, if you’re doing the calculations, it comes out to 0.5 to one gram per kilogram of body weight, which would be your body weight basically divided by two. It’s 2.2 pounds per kilogram. And then take half of that 0.5 and up to or equal to that times one in grams of fat.

To measure a portion of fats, you can just use your thumb. It’s a thumb or a tablespoon is a serving. Like butter or oil, right? It’s going to be about the size of the tip of your thumb, which is about 15 grams or about 150 calories. Most people will need about three to four servings per day of this. For the plate, it’s going to look kind of like a topping. Honestly, it’s usually accounted for in the cooking. If you’re using cooking oils and then in the content of the food.

But if you’re going to do it, it’s going to be a small portion generally on the side or over the top, right? Sprinkling of seeds or some nuts over the top. Nuts add up really quickly, so something to be aware of.

That is your breakdown. Okay. I know this is a lot of information, but my hope is that you’re able to apply this to your diet starting today. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Even just the awareness is a huge step in the right direction. My first suggestion would be to start prioritizing protein and vegetables. These are what most people are missing out on. Once you dial that in, move on to your complex carbohydrates and your quality fats.

So, to recap: four to five servings or palm size portions of protein or a quarter of your plate. You want to aim for five to eight servings per day of your fruits and vegetables with a double cupped handful as your portion, and then use your clenched fist for complex carbohydrates and aim for four to six servings per day, or again, another quarter of your plate, and then sprinkle in the fats.

Over the years, each one of these macronutrients has been demonized and emphasized in an attempt to sell another diet. But the reality is that your body needs a balance of all three of these nutrients to perform optimally from hormones to muscle building, brain function, and let’s be real – sanity!

So stop cutting them out. It’s time to find a balance. You can download my nutrition simplified guide for free in the notes for a checklist and a reminder of all these concepts, along with some easy food list references.

If you want to get fancy, you can use my macro calculator for some numbers to shoot for. And I hope that is insanely helpful. It’s all linked in the show notes for you.

Thanks for tuning into this episode of the fitness simplified podcast.

If you have any questions, suggestions for future topics, or just want to chat, feel free to reach out to us on Instagram @Brooke_Elysian and Facebook linked in the show notes or via our website, Elysianwomenswellness.com. And if you enjoyed what you heard today, we’d be thrilled if you could take a half second to leave us a five-star review. Not only will you be helping others find our show, but you’ll also be entered into our monthly hundred dollar giveaway for new reviews. New episodes drop every Monday, so make sure to hit that subscribe button and stay tuned for more.

Thanks for listening. See you soon.

Coach Brooke Davis Links:
Website:bdavistraining.com
LinkedIn:Brooke Davis – Owner – Davis Fitness
Facebook:Brooke Davis, CPT | Grants Pass OR
Instagram:Brooke Davis  (@bdavistraining)
Free Community: Women’s Fitness Simplified: Lean down, tone up, build confidence!

Macro Calculator
https://docs.google.com/file/d/1FHkhXGjmkVNGVX_1V9SzbuWkxmCcg_V8/edit?filetype=msexcel

Nutrition Simplified
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vqX0zt4UvHx8hwO86LXJ5G5Zra1ijIBx/view