Episode 85: Why Macros Didn't Work For You Part III

In the final part of this III part series, we're concluding our convo with the single most important part to ensuring your macro plan is set correctly (and how to tell if yours wasn't). 

For more info., or to book in for your free 1-1 Strategy Session, visit:
www.MindStrongFitness.com

Transcript

Podcast Macros Didn't Work Part III  

 | 00:00 Welcome back to the becoming mind strong podcast, and this is part three of three in our three part series of I tried macros, and they didn't work for me, and now I have a visceral reaction towards them, and I hate them and they don't work, or some shorter title, so I've saved the best, or and, or most important part of why, when people try to do macros, either on their own or with a coach who's doing it the incorrect way, and I'm going to purposely use that word, why it doesn't work. So far, we've talked about using online macro calculators, using generic formulas. They're never going to work. They're not personalized enough. And number two, we've talked about one and done macros. If your macros aren't being tweaked and adjusted, you are going to hit a plateau. You're going to hit a point where your body stops responding. Now, in this third part of the series, we're going to get much more hands in the dirt. We're going to understand how to do macros correctly, and the biggest reason that they don't work from us, most people check it out. The easiest way that I can explain why macros don't work for most people is by teaching you how to do it correctly. This is exactly what we do at mindstrong. This is, as I mentioned in an earlier part of this series, we have a whole branch of mind strong that most people don't see because it's not for the average person. It's for coaches who either aren't doing nutrition, or aren't doing nutrition well, and want some help with it. So when I talk you through the system that we use, the way we do this, you you'll get a very clear understanding of why it doesn't work for most people, because I'm going to add, like everything I do, but why? But why? But why? Right? I'm going to explain the why behind this system when you come to work with us in Ignite, our signature 12 week program. The first thing we have you do before we hit the ground running, before we get rocking with your macro plan, is we're going to tell you, for the first five days, I don't want you to change anything. I don't want you to try to eat, quote, unquote clean. I don't want you to do a major life overhaul. I don't want you to be on good behavior. I want you to eat the way that fears feels normal to you, and simply pop your food into an app track your food. We are not using the goal numbers that these apps produce, because, as we know, if you've been listening to this series, online macro calculators don't work. Goals in these apps do not work. I use my fitness pal for tracking. I do not use their goal numbers. They are wrong. I'm going to repeat that again for anyone who needs to hear it. Turn the volume up. Crank it up. Tattoo it on your forehead. If you are using an app to track do not use their goal numbers. I love MyFitnessPal for tracking their goal numbers are capital W wrong. I'm going to capitalize the whole word wrong. They are wrong. So we have people eat as you normally eat, track your food again. I use my fitness pal just because I find it to be very simple to use. But we do not use their goal numbers. We're only using it to track Okay? When I set someone's macro plan, when any one of my coaches set someone's macro plan, we use what we call an ABC method. Point A is your averages, right? I want to see in a daily basis, if you're not making any kind of changes in your life, how much protein are you eating? How much fat are you eating, how many grams of carbs are you eating? I need to know what your body is used to. Now, from there, we're going to set some goal numbers. Right? You've heard me talk a lot about how online formula or online macro calculators don't work. Formulas don't work. We have a formula that we use, and you're like, What the heck, Rachel, you just ranted about this. Bear with me, that formula which is based on age, height, weight, activity level. Those are not the numbers that we are going to use as our macro plan. The only thing that those numbers are telling us is the direction in which we want to trend, and here's 

why, and this is where we're going to start to really understand the why. Point A is your averages, without making any changes to your lifestyle, what is your body used to right now? Point C, are those formula numbers, those quote, unquote, goal numbers that aren't actually goal numbers, but just the direction and what we want to trend. What we do is we're going to meet your body closer to where it is. We're going to meet you towards more towards point A we're going to make some tweaks and adjustments, because we want to be trending in the direction to see. But we're going to meet your body pretty close to where it is. And over the course of 12 weeks together, we are going to slowly, emphasis on the word Slowly walk your body from point A to point C, not only doing it for you, but most importantly, teaching it to you. Because if we truly want to master the skill of nutrition, we have to know how to keep this going at the end of our 12 weeks. So we're doing it for you, teaching it to you. But the key, the key, because this podcast is not about Ignite. I just can't talk about that without saying the education piece. The key to this is we are meeting your body closer to where it is, and we are slowly walking it from where it is to where it needs to be. And this is one of the absolute biggest reasons that people don't stick with macros. 

05:00 

Because what most coaches out there do, or most if you use an online calculator, it's going to pump out some numbers, and it's going to say, Here you go, based on your age, height, weight, activity level, you should be eating 120 grams of protein now, right now, if your body is used to 40 grams of protein a day, right on average, I had to track your food for five days. Your average protein is 40 grams of protein, and I come along and say, go eat 120 grams of protein a day. In what world are you tripling your protein intake and thinking you're going to stick with it? Human psychology, human biology, says that our bodies and our minds hate massive change. My favorite analogy, if I had a bucket and I want to fill it up with water, I have two options. I can spray a freaking fire hose at it, and it's not going to fill it's too intense. It's going to go everywhere. Or I can fill it a little drop at a time, and it becomes a very organic process where we don't even really notice that it's filling, but it absolutely is. When we start your body close to what it's used to with some tweaks, so we're trending in the right direction. First and foremost, your body is not going to freak out because we're not making these massive changes. It's like, oh, this is pretty much how I eat. We're just leveling it out, because our body learns to trust us. It learns to release the weight and trust us by trusting it's being fueled the way it needs to be fueled, day in and day out. Number two is we're not doing this major life overhaul where we're drinking protein shakes until we want to vomit right when we meet your body where it is. The other perk of this, one of the biggest perks is that it gives us the space to master the skill of nutrition without a lot of change. And I want to dive deeper into that statement, because it's a big one. When I talk about the skill of nutrition, if you listen to this podcast, you hear me talk about it all the time, right? I always relate if you're ever playing the game Tetris. Tetris is all about fitting those puzzle pieces together. That's the skill in nutrition. How do I number one, I have to know what my personal body needs. And if you've been listening, you know the emphasis is on the word personal. How do I know what my body needs in terms of carb, fat, protein? Number two, once I learn to eat the foods that I love, including pizza and pasta, an occasional glass of wine, whatever your thing is. For me, it's whiskey and donuts. How do I stay within my budget while eating the foods I love? When you learn that skill, that's it. You have mastered the skill of nutrition. Doesn't mean we're going to track every day of our life. We can switch to intuitive eating. That's a whole other topic, but that is the skill of nutrition. Now, if you came to me and I said, Here you go, triple your protein overnight, in no world do you have capacity to learn the skill of nutrition, because all you are thinking about is for the love of everything. I can't keep drinking protein shakes. I am like housing more meat or tofu or whatever it is, just trying to get protein into me, and now my body's bloated and I'm constipated and I'm freaking out. But if we meet your body close to where it is with a couple tweaks here and there, and from there, we learn to master the skill of nutrition in a place where your body is 

very comfortable. Once we have that skill locked in, it is so easy to tweak and adjust your numbers to walk you from point A to point C, from where you are to where you want to be. Now, when we do that, there's very specific cues that we're watching for right when we talk about this being personalized with our members, you we're doing check ins with them all the time, and the questions we're asking are very specific. How's your energy? How's your sleep? How are your clothes fitting? A huge one is this, what are your tendencies? Because if you're coming back to me week after week after week, saying, I'm always, always, always low on carbs, high in fat, or high in fat, low in carbs, or I'm struggling to eat my protein, what we are never going to do is try to square peg, round hole it and say, well, suck it up buttercup. Just eat more fat and less carbs. No, the name of the game is mastering a skill. So if we need to tweak and adjust your macros, even if it's temporary, right, even if our ultimate goal is to get more protein in your body, but week after week after week, you're saying, No, I can't get this much protein. And why would we keep forcing that? It's not going to work. You're going to get frustrated. You're going to give up. So if we say, You know what, yes, our ultimate goal is to get more protein in but if we need to drop it a little bit, just for the next week or two, so we can get the wins, get that dopamine release that you're hitting your numbers, guess what? It becomes so much easier to keep filling that bucket, so to speak, to keep walking your body from where it is to where it needs to be. Once we've locked in the skill. This is the level of personalization that needs to capital and needs to I'm capitalizing a lot of a lot of letters in this this episode, macros have to be this personalized. Yeah. 

10:00 

Now, when people hear that, they're like, Oh, that's so much work. Oh, I don't want to do that. You're not going to do any of it. Right? If you have a good macro coach who knows what they're doing, or you work with us, we know what we're doing, 2500 women later, they're going to do it for you. But the key is, and I feel so passionate about this point, you have to be taught what's going on, right? What I always tell people is, we're going to do this for you, but every time we make a change, we're teaching you why. It's not this week we're raising your protein. It's this week. We're raising your protein X amount because A, B and C, because, if all I'm doing is shoving macro numbers at you each week, and you have no idea why I'm just another diet system, right? Will you lose some weight? Absolutely? Will you learn the skill? No. At the end of the 12 weeks, then what? Right, we're no better than if we'd gone on a point system, a shake system, but when you understand the why behind it, when you master the skill, you don't need me or anyone else. You have this for life. If your goal was to lose 15 pounds, you keep going. You want to go to 25 you want to reverse it and put on some muscle. You don't need me or anyone else, because you've mastered the skill by learning the why. Having a coach do this for you while they teach it to you, that is absolutely invaluable. And I'm not going to go on too big a rant, um, in this podcast, but it bears saying here. I am not a I don't think macro tracking needs to be a forever thing. Like, yes, in every every 100 women I work with, there's like one or two who are like, no the amount of control this gives me, I will absolutely track macros forever. That is not most people. For most of us, we just want to stop freaking thinking about food so much. We want to trust that we're fueling our body the way it needs to be fueled and just live our life. And that is genuine intuitive eating right now, we're not intuitively eating. We're eating off habit. But when we put in the time to track macros, I think of it as a little training ground. We're learning, number one, what your personal body needs to be fueled correctly. And number two, we are giving it time and consistency so that our brain and our bodies are communicating saying, Hey, I think I'm a little low on protein today. Hey, I think I'm getting creeping up there. I'm a little high on fat. Your body can only have those conversations if you've put in a training ground and you've gotten your brain and your body to speak to each other. So I say that to say, Yeah, macro tracking is going to take some work. It is not hours a day. That's one of the biggest things I hear from people, is I feel like this is going to be so tedious and it's hours a day, absolutely not. In reality, it probably adds 15 minutes to 

your day. What it is is a learning curve we're going to practice. We're going to get better at it. But the end result is that we put ourselves in the driver's seat. We completely master the skill of nutrition. We can switch to intuitive eating. And my favorite part, let's say you switch to intuitive eating, and, you know, six months in, you're like, Oh, I think I'm I think I'm slipping a little bit. You don't need to come back to me and relearn the skill of macro tracking. The tool is in your tool bag. You're going to go in there, you're going to use it. You're going to track for another week. You're going to go back. Going to go back to intuitive eating. But unless you have put in a training ground to know what your body needs and get your mind and body communicating, we're wishing and hoping and praying. We're crossing our fingers. And I hope this works for me. Macros are biology, 101, when you learn the skill and when you do it correctly, which is exactly what we're talking about in this series. Not online macro calculator calculators, not generic formulas, not one and done numbers, numbers that are personalized to you. There's no massive leaps. There's no major life overhauls. It's what's your body used to where does it actually need to be? Let's meet it closer to point A. We're going to slowly, slowly walk it from point A to point C, paying attention to your tendencies, tweaking and adjusting as we go. At the end of that, you're golden. You have trained your body. You are going to release the weight, you are going to fire up your metabolism. You are going to balance your hormones. This is the holy grail. So if you are new to Macros, we should chat, because there's lots more to say than I can fit in this one podcast episode. If you have tried macros and UN totally intended, it left a bad taste in your mouth, I'm going to encourage you to take a second and reflect. How were they done. If it was a macro calculator, if it was a generic formula. Maybe it was a coach. And you're like, I don't know how they were done, and I've lost touch, so I can't ask them. Here are some questions you can ask yourself, were those numbers wildly unreachable for me, especially protein? That's the big one, right? Was I just shoveling protein in my mouth till it felt unsustainable? Number two, were my numbers being tweaked and adjusted as I went and number three, did anyone take a look at how I was eating before I started this? And if the answer is that, no, that wasn't the process, your macros weren't done correctly. The problem is not macros. The problem is how they were done, and it's time to hit the reset button, and it's time to do them correctly. Because the beauty. 

15:00 

Macros. When you do them correctly, they work for everyone. So if you would like to chat, I encourage you to go to my website. You can book in for a free strategy session, and we can chat about it. But for the purposes of this podcast episode, understand that it is not the macros that failed you. It was the way they were done. The vast, vast majority of macro coaches out there. I don't say this to poo poo on any macro coaches. I train them so I know, I know what's out there. Most of them are doing it wrong. It has to be personalized to you. It has to be tweaked and adjusted. And when it's done right, it works 100% 

15:38 

of the time. Yeah.