plateau's & brick walls

Plateau's are extremely common when you are trying to cut weight, because your body is so amazing at adapting! Before you decide that you've hit a brick wall and  that what you were doing isn't working anymore, I'd fist tell you to think back really hard on the past two weeks. 

-Did you honestly log every single thing that you ate? Or did you forget that you had that cup of ice cream that your husband brought you in bed after you had already completed your log for the day? Did you snack on things here and there through the day and not log them? Were you 100% on your diet plan? Did you drink your water daily? Many times we (because myself included!) think that we've hit a plateau because we didn't see a loss this week, when really there was no loss because I was not 100% on my plan and slacked off a bit here and there. 

-Did you cut back on your exercising? Your customized macros are based around the amount and intensity of your workouts. If you have macros set for you working out an hour a day, 6 days a week and then you cut that back to 30 minutes a day, 3-4 times a week, that can effect your loss. Go back to to what you were doing when you started your numbers OR have your macros re-done for you using your new workout routine, because your TDEE will now be a bit different. 

If indeed you have been 100% with your macros and food, and you have not decreased your exercise amount and are not seeing a change, you have options! Get in touch with your macros coach/nutrition coach, I would do one of the following depending on your situation: 

1. Increase your fats (by a lot!) and decrease your carbs. Some people respond better to high fat diets- I have found this true for myself. 

2. Add in a few days of HIIT training to your schedule and decrease your carbs slightly. 

3. Carb cycle. 

4. Move onto your next set of cutting/losing macro numbers. 

Whatever you do, do not give up! So many people get on the scale and don't see movement. They automatically feel defeated and give up all together. DON'T! You just need a tweak in your plan and a little adjusting to get you going again! 

Do not resort to low calorie dieting! Will you see results? Sure! Like I said above, you will just need a little change and you will see results. But low calorie dieting is going to ruin your metabolism (I'm a prime example of this) as well as...why be miserable and hungry? Why eat only 1100 calories a day for a pound a week, when you can lose a pound a week eating 1500 and 1600 calories? And one of the biggest things that I ask my clients: So you dropped to 1100-1200 calories because you stalled. What happens when you stall at 1100-1200? What do you do then? Cut to 1000? And when you stall at 1000, what then? Hiring someone to help you figure out a plan is your best option! 

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Dining out + macros

Counting macros makes being able to dine out with family and friends stress free and enjoyable- it just takes a little planning ahead!

1. Chances are very high that you are going to a restaurant whose nutritional data and meals are already in myfitnesspal. If you cannot find the meal item that you want in MFP- you can easily google the restaurant and get the food item/meal nutrition information from their website and manually put it into your database.

2. Most of the time you will know where you are going in advance, so the day of, input what you plan on eating out FIRST. Even if it's not the first meal of the day, skip down to lunch and input your choice. This way- done! Your meal out is logged. Now, you can add the rest of your day planned around your meal out.

3. Salad! Always a safe option! Add meat, ask for dressing on the side. Seriously, there are so many toppings and endless ways to make amazing salads. Recently my family and I went out for last minute pizza, so I ordered a chef salad with extra chicken. It was amazing and huge! I left feeling full and happy, not deprived at all. A lot of places will also make their sandwiches/subs into salads, too!

4. If you do happen to eat at a place that does not have nutrient content available, just do the best you can. At this point, you pretty much know what you should and shouldn't eat. Do your best to guess servings sizes as you input them into your log. You can do it all individually: my salad seemed to have about 3 cups of romaine, a chicken breast, 2 eggs, pepper and onion, 2 slices of bacon etc and just input each item individually if this is your only option.


Make sense? An example: New Year's Eve we planned to go out to dinner after church. We knew we wanted outback- so that morning before I decided even on my breakfast, I logged whatever I wanted to eat at outback that night. Immediately, my carbs and fat flew up, but were not over. But that made me aware, so I then knew that for my breakfast and lunch- I need to light on the carbs and fat and heavy on the protein so that I can fit it all and not go over.

I had a burger, by the way, and it was amazing. I love macros and flexible dieting because I could eat a burger and not have guilt and pressure and regret over it and also- not do any damage to my goals!

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How to set my macros in myfitnesspal

SETTING YOUR MACRO GOALS IN MFP:

This is actually really easy, once you know what to do :-)

Open your MFP app and click "MORE..." in the bottom right hand corner. It will bring you to a page that looks like this:

Once you are here, select "GOALS", which will bring you to this: 

From here you can change all of your nutrient goals. With the free version you will not be able to get exact, so just get them as close as you can to your numbers. I use this app so much that it was worth it to me to upgrade to premium but I do not expect everyone to do that, I used the free version with success for years. Once you change these numbers, you are set! 

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Macros for Beginners

There is so much information out there on macros and often times for people just starting out tracking their macros- they can get easily overwhelmed and think that it is not the right fit for them.  I've compiled some helpful tips to help un-complicate tracking macros that I hope will be helpful to you!

1. IT'S NOT AS HARD AS IT SEEMS
and, it gets easier with time. Once you get the hang of it you will see how truly easy it is!It is like a daily puzzle and ends up being fun! Scan foods, search for foods. Add them to your log and MFP adds up all your totals for you!  It does take time to get use to, but that leads me to my next point:

2. PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT
Spend some time familiarizing yourself with myfitnesspal. Practice searching for foods and adding them to your diary. This app will become a best friend, it is so helpful! Spend time learning how to work it and all that it offers.
A good way to begin is to start inputting all of the food that you would normally eat (before you start macros). Pizza? Find and add it! Cookies? Salad? Find them and add them, look at your nutrient tracker, play around and put different meals together. One of the best things about flexible dieting is that you CAN eat pizza if you want it! Just fit it into your day!

3. KEEP YOUR STAPLES STOCKED
Once you get the hang of it, you are going to have a handful of foods that you eat all of the time. You should have a high daily protein goal, so typically the foods you eat the most are going to be high in protein. Some things that I like to have on hand and that seem to be common things most macro counters do:

Fridge: 
-Eggs
-Cooked Chicken
-Cooked Ground Turkey Breast
-String Cheese (unless you are dairy free, of course)
-Fat free reddi whip

Pantry:
-Tuna
-Peanut or Almond Butter
-Oats
-Quest bars
-Dark Chocolate Chips

All of these things can be added to pretty much any recipe you want to make and other than the oats and chocolate are good sources of protein!


4. I CAN'T EAT THAT MUCH PROTEIN!
yes, you can! And you can do it without having chicken breast for breakfast, lunch and dinner. You will be surprised at how much protein you consume without tracking it at all, even a slice of bread has protein in it. To hit a protein number that you are not use to eating, you will have to eat foods that are higher in protein, but there are so many options to fit into your day! Greek yogurt, beef jerky, cottage cheese, eggs (which can be made so many different ways and used in so many different recipes!), cheese, protein bars and there are even some really yummy protein shakes you can have as a snack that will quickly make a dent in your protein numbers, although I like to eat my protein vs drink it!  It will take some adjusting and practice getting use to a high protein diet, but you will quickly get the hang of it!

5. YOU DON'T HAVE TO EAT AN ENTIRE SERVING
Thank you, MFP for making tracking so easy for us! You can change the serving size on your food entry, so let's use pretzels. One serving is about 20 pretzels. You don't have to eat 20, you can have 10, even 2. Just make sure you adjust the serving size when you input this and it will track that one or two or 10 pretzels correctly for you.

6. FITTING FUN FOOD IN

This is my favorite thing to talk with women about, because this is the part of macros dieting that is liberating. That gives you freedom and wiggle room. That relieves stress and pressure from having to follow a strict clean eating routine that is impossible to maintain for life. Because it IS ok to have a slice of pizza and it does not have to prevent you from reaching your goals. 

So, you've done so awesome with your macros this week. You've eaten clean, you feel great. You may even have already weighed and saw the scale or the tape measure go down! But your sister has had this big shopping and lunch date planned for weeks this coming weekend and every year you two go to your favorite pizza place. HELP! WHAT DO YOU DO!?!? 

Plan! First thing in the morning that day, LOG your pizza! Decide what you want to eat there, and log it! I will plan on having two slices of pepperoni pizza. So that is the first thing I put in for the day: 

There! It's in. Now for breakfast, dinner and any snack I want,  I need to work around my pizza.  My carbs and fat are going to be high, so I know that these two other meals need to be leaner and high in protein. So I may choose an egg white and veggie omelette for breakfast, and a large salad for dinner with a double serving of grilled chicken. If I'm hungry before dinner, I'll have some cheese and lunch meat rolled up. I'll play around with my foods in my log until I have hit my numbers and I will enjoy eating pizza with my sister and having ZERO guilt or worry about it! 

LOVE! 

7. TRACK EVERYTHING!
Everything has calories! Even cough drops, and they have 3g of carbs! I learned the hard way when I began. Gum? Mints? Calories. Track them! I am a gum fanatic, I could easily chew a pack a day. Until:

I realized that I was chewing 30 calories and 30 carbs a day. Ice cream has less than 30g of carbs! I'd rather have ice cream!

8. IT SOUNDS LIKE TOO MUCH WORK
When you are starting out, yes! What diet change and lifestyle change is not going to take work getting use to? The beautiful thing about this is that this takes very little time before you master it. I would say 7-12 days before you are able to calculate your macros perfectly and put together a day of food without even thinking about it.

9. COUNT TOTAL CARBS
Not net. Ignore the "net" completely. A carb is a carb whether there is fiber or not, you are intaking the total amount of carbs.

10. HEALTHY DOESN'T MEAN MACRO FRIENDLY, VICE VERSA
For something to be deemed healthy does not mean it has low macronutrients. And for something to be deemed macro friendly, doesn't mean it is healthy.  One of my favorite health bloggers uses the comparison of a banana and a skinny cow ice cream sandwich.
"A banana and a skinny cow hold the same amount of carbs and your body will essentially metabolize them the same. The skinny cow sandwich however is not going to provide you with the vitamins and minerals that the banana will but your body in strict terms of aesthetics will respond the same."

11. HAVE FUN
This isn't your average diet plan of chicken breast and broccoli. There is great freedom in macros, and I encourage my clients to take advantage of that! This is not about deprivation, there can be enjoyment! I like to add whip cream to my coffee, ok, sometimes even a little vanilla ice cream if I have room in my numbers. You can have some chocolate! Peanut butter on my toast, vanilla cupcake goldfish in my yogurt. I am an advocate for an 80/20 lifestyle, 80% clean eating (lean meats, veggies, fruits, nuts, seeds, oils) and 20% fun (chocolate and pizza).  The more you PRACTICE and become familiar with MFP, the better you will also become and being able to fit fun things in here and there.

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What are Macros??

What exactly are macros?

The word "macros" is short for macronutrients. Macronutrients are all of the nutrients that provide calories from your food: protein, fat and carbohydrates.

Carbs are what we utilize for energy and are your main source of fuel. Carbs are converted into energy.

Fats helps protect your organs and is the most concentrated form of energy. There are three types of fats (saturated, unsaturated and trans fat). No trans fat does not equal weight loss. It just simply has been shown that unsaturated fat decreases the risk for heart disease.


Proteins are essential for growth and development. Proteins help build lean muscle mass, and are the energy source when you do not intake carbohydrates. If you don't intake carbohydrates, you must use protein for energy breaking down your source of muscle mass preservation and essentially slowing down your metabolism.

When you are keeping track of your macros or following macros, you are simply keeping track of how much of each macro you are eating a day. Example: Lisa's calculated macro numbers for weight loss are: Protein: 130g    Fat: 60g    Carbs: 150g
That is the amount of each macro Lisa will aim to eat daily to achieve her results.

How do I know what Macro numbers I should be following daily? 

-There are many different ways that you can come up with a set of macro numbers, many ways to do it online or even the app myfitnesspal calculates macros for you when you set up your goals. However, all of these automated ways to do so are using population averages and norms. They do not know your diet history and your current metabolism rate which play a huge factor in following something to lean out.  I can input my information into one online calculator and get one set of numbers, go to another calculator and input all of the same information and it will give me a completely different set. The best way to go about this is...

1. Find a human to help you.  No worrying about which set you should follow, if they are correct, should you really eat 200g of carbs like this says? You will receive custom formulated numbers based on your body, your eating habits, your lifestyle and your history of dieting.

2. High protein, lowER carb. Yes, carbs are essential to our diets, but lowering your carbs (not eliminating them) simply works and is here to stay.

3. A basic formula that seems to work well as a baseline consists of 40% protein, 35% carbs and 25% fat.

4. Learning your personal baseline and total body expenditure can often be tricky, sometimes numbers need to be adjusted a little until the perfect set is found. There is no "one size fits all" macro numbers- even if you are the same age, height and weight as someone.

What is "IIFYM"? 

IIFYM is short for "If It Fits Your Macros", and is essentially the idea that no matter what kind of foods you are eating, processed or clean, your body will metabolize them the same way.

There is of course, with most things in the health and fitness industry, great debate on this. My stance is this:

In terms of health, and what one type of food does to your body (insulin response, gut health, longevity etc) vs another type is non negotiable. Vegetables and fruits, nuts and seeds, lean meats and clean, whole foods are indeed healthier for you and bring in a host of essential nutrients.

But in terms of just strictly weight and fat loss, nutrients, vitamins and your total body health aside, you can essentially eat bad foods in the same macronutrient distribution and maintain the same progress.

I personally aim for 90/10. 90% of my diet is clean and whole, real foods while 10% of it is "junk".  I believe a healthy balance is imperative for lasting results and lifestyle changes. It's unrealistic for most to never have a piece of chocolate or a slice of pizza again. Thanks to macros, you can enjoy a little "junk" here and there without halting any progress or guilt because you can "fit" it into your daily numbers. 

Make sense? Following macros changed my life by helping me to find a balance and a set way that I can live and enjoy food while still continuing to lose weight and meet my training goals. Without feeling restricted or having guilt over something I wanted to have or did have. I hope this answers some of the common questions and curiosity about the macros craze! 

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