Counting Macros; Struggles, Tips, Lessons learned

Hey, Athletes! Counting Macros; Struggles, Tips, Lessons learned - Episode of The Garage Gym Athlete Podcast is up!

Counting Macros; Struggles, Tips, Lessons learned

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IN THIS 35-MINUTE EPISODE WE DISCUSS:

• Joe and GGA'er Kyle Johnson discusses macros
• They both give their accounts of how it is going for them in this recent endeavor. 
• Joe and Kyle both give tips and lessons learned when counting macros
• And A LOT MORE!!

Diving Deeper…

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• Counting Macros; Struggles, Tips, Lessons learned

Thanks for listening to the podcast, and if you have any questions be sure to add it to the comments below!

To becoming better!

- Jerred

Podcast Transcript

Joe: [00:00:00] Let's get ready to macro. This is the garage gym athlete podcast. And we're here to build autonomous athletes and put phenomenal programming into every garage, basement, and spare bedroom out there. I'm Jared moon and with Joe Courtney, we are strength and conditioning coaches who have turned over 20, 000 people into garage gym athletes over the last decade.

And we're here to reduce the information overload that exists in the health and fitness industry today. Thank you. We're going to do that by covering relevant science and give actionable takeaways, not only from the data, but from our years of experience. So let's dive in.

What's going on garage gym athletes. We are back with another podcast. And by we, not me and Jared. He has is on vacation, must much deserved. And he has left the podcasting reigns to me this week. Depending on that intro and how this podcast goes is if he lets me do it again, But I am joined with Kyle Johnson.

Kyle was on long time ago as an athlete, but [00:01:00] now he's joining me because we have something to talk about. What's up, Kyle. Hey, how's it going? Joe living in the future. I am way, way far in the future. You, you're even using a camera from the past. It's just the theme, it's worse. Yeah. So yeah, clearly.

So today we are talking about macros and counting macros specifically because we both just started counting our macros last week. So it's been about 10 days, 10, 11 days for me, you. It's been two weeks and let's see, today's Thursday, two weeks and two days. Okay. Yeah. So right around the same time. And that was why, cause like you asked me to help you with your macros.

And then I was like why is it we'll start counting? Because a lot of times when we get to a new place and once we get settled down, it's good to do that. We typically try and count macros twice a year. So anyway, getting into macro counting. Hey, what is macro counting? Typically that's the macros are your protein, carbs, and fat.

And you are. Keeping track of the, how much you have of those to equal to a total [00:02:00] calorie amount. Typically when you start counting there's a bunch of calculators you can use online, you can just Google them. You start with your calorie count. And then from there you decide the percentages of how you want to have your macros done.

So how many I like to percentage wise of like either carbs or fat. And it's also good to start with Protein as your fixed number. So typically your protein is based off of your own size body mass for the recommended amount. And so once I have that, I've calculate the rest for the other two macros and that'll lead us, go right into the goals that we're going for.

So for my macro counting and how I did. My macros is I like to do lower carb. I do well with low carb higher fat. I've tried high carb in the fast and I don't know why I just do better with it. It's fun to do higher carb. I thoroughly enjoy eating higher carb, but I just do better with lower carb, higher fat.

And I'm not like super low carb. It's 26 percent 25 and 27 percent of my [00:03:00] total macros are carbs, but my fats up in like the thirties to 40 or something like that. But I'll start with my protein amount, which is typically around 170, 180, something like that, because I weigh currently one 85, which I've actually lost weight recently.

I think about it. I've had to bump up my macros and then I figured the rest out and how I personally, so I'm doing mine to maintain. Right now. Cause how we count macros, I say we do it twice a year and I don't always do it for a deficit. You don't always need to count macros for weight loss. I count mine for a progress check.

A it's good to just keep things dialed in to see the ratio that you're eating. But also I'm a snacker, a hundred percent big time snacker. And I'm pretty sure I was either. I'm sure there's days I'm way under on way over because instead of making like an actual meal, I'm just going to go have a couple of bites and some snacks because.

Who doesn't like some midday snacks you're walking by the fridge, you got to put a dish away. Oh, wait there's a bag of chips or something. I'm just going to have some. Why not? So yeah, exactly. [00:04:00] Yeah. And so I'm a snacker, so that's why I'm doing that. And then Liz my wife, she's also counting, but she has the opposite issue.

She doesn't eat nearly enough. And every single time we count. She never eats is eating enough. It's always a big shock that she has to eat a lot more than she's thinking. And that happens a lot with females especially. So my goal is just to maintain, and I'm going to adjust as I go, depending on how my weight might fluctuate.

But it's always good to it's good to hit the reset so that you see how you need to be eating and then going from there. So Kyle, what are your kind of goals and why did you start counting macros?

Kyle: I think it's a good. Just systems check what you were alluding to just trying to stay on top of things.

I wasn't really counting any metrics except for protein, just trying to hit 180 a day, but I hopped on the scale for the 1st time in a while. And I was like, 2 25, which I wasn't too pleased with. So I got to the realization like life's about to get stressful. We're getting ready to move.

Work's been busy. I really just needed to dial it [00:05:00] in. My best habit for sure. Sure. is making it into the gym. I do enjoy it, I just need to get back into training mode in my opinion and get it a little bit more

Joe: dialed in. Yeah. It's all right. It's good that you already have at least one thing.

Well, a couple of other things dialed in so that, something like macro counting will help. And I don't always recommend like saying, Hey, if you're just starting out wanting to either lose weight, Get in shape, be healthy. I'm not going to just tell you, Hey, go count your macros.

Like you need to dial in something else, some other stuff first. You need to have a habit of being active first. You need to have a habit of actually cooking some food from scratch, being eating whole foods more and better first before you start really getting into weeds. Because then you're just going to hate eating.

You're just going to hate this whole thing. You're going to think dieting. Dieting sucks. And I wouldn't even, you shouldn't even think about it as dieting. You're just dialing in really, or you're optimizing. And I think that's the way to think of it, optimizing because you don't start off initially optimizing.

You have to start with habits and the good stuff first. That's right. So [00:06:00] struggles with counting. So we're in the, that first, it's almost like the opposite of a honeymoon phase when it comes to macro counting. The first couple of days you do it, you're just like, holy crap, I busted so hard on my carbs, or I am so off on this.

You start with your struggles and then it takes a minute to actually like really dial it like you have to get warmed up into it. So we're gonna go over some of our struggles at first. I said, I'm a snacker. That's always been my struggle. So making myself not snack and it's something that comes down to a laziness thing because If I'm going to make a snack, I have to actually weigh it.

And I don't, if I don't feel like weighing out some chips, then I'm not going to eat them. Say no, like it's not that I can't have them. It's just going through the process of actually weighing. Yeah, no, not at all. It's, it sucks. It's okay, I'm here counting chips out and it's just terrible. And I'm pretty sure I was eating more carbs.

And it was hard for me to, and I saw dialing my fat has definitely been the struggle because fat seems to be one of those harder. [00:07:00] It can be one of those harder macros because typically it's associated with something else. Like typically fat comes into the least amount, but because it's the most calorie dense, but it's hard to just eat straight fat unless you're having just a bunch of salad dressing, which ranch has been the great new hack for some of my fat bonuses and avocado and stuff like that. But yeah, so my struggles is just making sure I'm actually counting everything and just being accountable. Or some of the struggles you've started off with. For sure.

Kyle: The carbs, just the nature of tracking I snacking, I don't think was a huge issue, although I have been known to identifying that my kids maybe didn't eat their whole meal and, okay, that just seems there's a sunk cost there. So I may as well eat it. No, I just eat too much at meals.

It's I go too long and then I'm starved and I overeat but early on and even still, we're still early in it. Carbs have been a struggle. It's I'll text you in the morning or whatever. And I've eaten half of my day's carbs already. What is happening? This, It was only fruit, Joe, that's supposed to

Joe: be good for me.[00:08:00]

How can I get 50 grams of fat and only 10 grams of carbs? What meal is this? It's a stick of butter.

Kyle: And then even if you go that route, it's you feel gross. It doesn't really help you in the team at all. So it's okay. What are the foods that keep me full? Meet all the, check all these boxes and that's the game that we're playing

Joe: right now.

Yeah. And it does start missed the points sometimes. I will say that when you start counting, there are people who will like, Liz was like this for a while is whatever your macro is, Goal is you have your grams and they're the people who will sit there and get exactly specific weight on the scale so that every single macro is hit per gram.

Exactly. But to me, like your macro goals, whatever you're setting at is it's a percentage, but it's also somewhat arbitrary. There's not exact you're doing a, an approximation of what you think your body needs. So when you're calculating, you shouldn't be over over critical on a couple of grams here and there.[00:09:00]

What I do is I stick, as long as you're sticking to the, about the in general percentage to me and the total calories, like a hundred percent. First thing I got to make sure I hit every day are protein. Number two rule, don't bust on calories. Number three is getting the proportions that I want. So like yesterday, I think I was like 10 or 12 over on carbs, but I was like four or five, six under on fat.

Calories were like within 40 and my protein was good. I think I went over on protein. So right there, that's a successful day to me because your portions are still there. You don't need to nickel and dime the little bit of grams because it's just gonna, it's just gonna stress you out so much more than it needs to.

Especially if you're trying to. Get into good habits. I don't think you need to really worry too much. You're not going to be this bodybuilder competition that needs to, be at 3 percent body fat or something ridiculously crazy. You're probably just doing it for health to shed some weight fit into that last year's bathing suit, whatever it is.

So that's a pre tip while we're thinking [00:10:00] of our struggles so that maybe you don't struggle with it quite as much.

Kyle: I think that's it. It's I wasn't tracking anything, so if I go a little bit over, I'm still well under the amount of calories that I was surely, eating prior to this, venture.

So, any tracking

Joe: up to the good. Yeah, it's if you start working out and you say, you know what, my goal is to work out five days a week. And then you end up working out four days that week. And then you, maybe you go for a walk, but you didn't work out well. Are you going to really get that upset about, because yes, you didn't meet the five days per week goal, but you hit four workouts and you went for a walk and you still did something, but you were doing more than what you did before you set that goal, so are you really going to be that upset about it?

Get your five days in next week. So to me, you just gotta look at the bigger picture on, why you're doing it as well. I haven't really had that much struggles with the counting this time. It's always, it's always a little bit annoying here and there. And then we live in Spain now.

So getting the resources and like Amazon prime and certain things that we're used [00:11:00] to at the grocery store was a little bit harder. I literally made homemade yogurt this week because we can't, we couldn't find the yogurt that is good for our macro. It's a good that we like. So I made it. That was the first and pretty happy with it.

I think I'm going to play around with it more to make a. Higher fat yogurt, but that's besides the point. That's awesome. Pretty easy. Yeah. Yeah. It was super easy. I use my Instapot. All you needed were, all I needed was whole milk, which I used fair life, which is high protein milk and you buy the little packet of cultures and you put it in there.

There's the steps after you got to read it a few times. It's not hard. It's just. You just have to do the step by step procedure. It takes a while. So like probably all in all 16 hours of lapsed time, but most of it's just sitting in the Instapot and then cooling after that. So not hard. I'll do it. I'll definitely do it again.

What do

Kyle: the macros look like on that? Do you know a fan?

Joe: So what it's supposed to be and it, and I hope they're accurate. What, from everything that I've read is the macros that you use, [00:12:00] whatever you use for your milk, that's your macros for the yogurt. So one to one it's the exact same. You're not adding any girth to it.

It's just thickening and having the live cultures. Really? You're just getting the gut benefits of the yogurt. So I might, how I might play with it for higher fat is all to do with the fair life, like usual, but I might get like a heavy cream or something because that's going to be a lot fattier. And then make something from there. But we'll see how that goes. It's it did turn out pretty well, though. Pretty happy with it.

Kyle: That's great. Yeah, I got to do that. We have the insta pot. We just never use it. So that would be a good reason.

Joe: Do that on the stuff. Yeah, I love it. I love it for rice. I love the spot for rice.

That's the main thing that I use it for. Yogurt. Some beans as well. The only time we eat beans is with the instabot. You have to pressure cook those after soaking them, which also with this macro counting, I've been eating a lot more beans because I love love rice. I will eat the hell out of rice, but rice has so many carbs.

So like I need to have some other carb balance [00:13:00] and cooking beans in bulk is super easy because you just soak them overnight. Next day you wake up. Or whenever dinner comes, you put them in your crock pot and you drain and put them in your crock pot and put the, the water and the seasonings in and then it's done.

It only takes 30 minutes. I got to add that

Kyle: to my regimen. I'm still struggling to, have like my core meals, I guess you could say in place. I'm still playing around with what works best. And you know what? What helps me feel good too.

Joe: Yeah. And so like the beans will be a little bit less.

There'll be less dense and carbs and rice will, but you're also going to get protein out of it. And you're also going to get fiber out of it. And fiber is definitely awesome. Definitely great to have, especially if you're. Doing a little bit lower carb. There might be less chance for more fiber. Vegetables, you get a ton of fiber as well.

Yeah, so beans are a great add to that. We did, I did black beans for the first time this past week and garbanzo beans, so chickpeas and those turned out really well really happy with those, so I'm gonna keep doing those cycling them out. I do like just sweet potatoes, but sweet potatoes probably have [00:14:00] the most labor intensive as far as food prep goes, cause you got to skin them, You got to chop them, season them, and then how you cook them.

We might do them in the air fire, You just can't get sweet potatoes crispy. They just, they crisp a little bit and then they burn and then they just get soggy. They're still good. It still works. Very defiant potato. Yeah. I'll make them right. Yeah. You have any favorite meals or things could go to that you've been doing before we get into our tips.

So

Kyle: as I've been doing the the high protein pizza crusts that you've been Lovingly making fun of me for, but it's easy do a fourth of the pizza. I can just do the turkey pepperoni, some mozzarella cheese, that, that's a great quick lunch that I can prep during the day.

As long as you don't go overkill with the crust. But I think that's pretty solid. Keeps me full. I'm big on, I've been doing hummus. I think that's pretty filling. Got a good fat source for sure. I think I'm leaning too heavily on protein shakes right now. So I'm [00:15:00] trying to find, I'm, it's getting back into the grill season, so I need to get the smoker going and prep some food on Sundays and get ready for the week.

And like I said, I'm still trying to find like my core

Joe: meals. Yeah. I forgot what I said about your pizza crust, but so is that like just something you buy at the store? Is that a high fat pizza crust? Okay. That's interesting.

Kyle: Yeah. I'll send you the label. I might have it on my phone, even if I sent it

Joe: to you.

You sent me chocolate hummus once and it took me two years to find it. I didn't think it actually existed. I don't know if I, once again, I don't know if I can trust it. It's prevalent here

Kyle: in South Carolina. It's all over

Joe: the place. That's not Spain. Okay.

Now you got to make your own. Yeah. Jeez. So let's see. I guess we can just get into our tips. I don't, we eat a lot of the same stuff that we always have. I always cook what I do is probably one of my first tips for any, what you mentioned that cooking in bulk definitely helps so that you're not stuck doing it.

Cooking in [00:16:00] bulk always helps to me. And I would say don't do complicated recipes and that's going to help you because it's definitely a pain when you're making something, you have to weigh everything out and then you write that all list and then in the recipes, and then you have to have the total weight of what the recipe has so that every time you use it, yes, you just do that recipe.

So it depends on what you're making. We just did chili, chili is easy. Because every time you think you add, you just weigh and that's the total weight, but anything other kind of like, soups or stuff like the more complicated view, like casseroles, it's going to get more complicated. So we keep things simple to where we will cook typically like to meet.

And three veg and one or two carb for the week and we keep everything separate. So that when we make our dinner for the night, you take your plate. I usually just eat everything in a bowl, throw it all together, mix it up. It's good to go. I don't really care, put it on your plate and you pick whatever meat you need.

You pick the vegetables you need, which vegetables count for almost nothing. You could put on 200 [00:17:00] grams of broccoli and it's going to be like 30 calories. So if you I guess bonus tip, if you are. Cutting on your calories. Some just load up on vegetables because they count for almost nothing and the, they're going to be better for your fiber.

Yeah. So then, and then add the carbs that you need. There's been a few nights where I only had meat and vegetables. Cause I was like, I was already meeting my carbs. I didn't need any carbs, so I didn't add any carbs to my bowl or you just, and that, that's the best way for me to govern and you can cook two different kinds of meat I always cook chicken.

Cause it's lower in fat and it's just easier. And then here pork is inexpensive. Pork is typically our other one that's going to get me a higher fat boost. So if I, there's days that I do need, I hire a fat boost, I'll eat the fattier meat with my vegetables and then whatever carbs I might need.

So that to me is the easiest way to govern. And when it comes to dinner, that's when you're plugging holes and that's where that's the flexibility that you need at dinnertime. What about you? I like that analogy,

Kyle: catching up or not maybe catching up, but plugging holes at [00:18:00] dinner, it's okay, where am I short?

I think that's a good strategy. I need to employ that. Yeah, vegetables. So for me it's peppers like bell peppers and broccoli. Yeah I lean on those pretty heavily. They are a great snack. If you're feeling snacky with hummus, also carrots with hummus, pretty solid. I do subscribe to a, like a meat delivery service, wild pastures.

I really like that. And just, unrelated to the podcast, but I think, as long as I prep that and let it thaw out either the day before. The ground meat is really solid, but it's 80, 20. So you gotta make sure to measure it. The whole chickens, those are really good. Like I said, it's getting into grill season.

So the meat and protein side of things, pretty easy for me to meet. No pun intended. But carbs, like it's just so easy. Like I'll just go crazy on, if it's a sandwich or if it's, like I said, there's pizza crust. It's just so easy to go over. So I just need to make sure to keep tracking the.

The carbs and just stay in line. I think everything else will fall into place. I'm already down [00:19:00] 10 pounds and I do feel good but I'm still modulating, like what will make me feel best, like during the workouts and, just feel me through the day.

Joe: Yeah. Workout and meal timing as well, which we talked about the other day.

It's, it goes into the next tip and that is if you have a Macro. That's really hard for you. Prioritize that first thing in the day that your breakfast, if that's a problem for you, make your breakfast super fatty, get some high fat yogurt, get some some nuts, you can get some higher fat either granola or something or like seeds and stuff, put it in your bowl and prioritize fat get that out early because early in the day.

You can just load up on it and then the other ones might come, you might come get some with it, but then toward the end of the day, it's okay, I don't need to make up 30 grams of fat at dinner. I can just eat a normal meal and still, balance tweak as I need to go. But it's once you get to the end of the day, it's really hard to plug all the holes you need to, if you've put yourself into a deficit, [00:20:00]

Kyle: that was a good tip that you gave me early on.

Even, I was eating the what goes. Yogurt, which is high protein, almost no fat. So I switched that up and I like the, if it's available, I assume it's available everywhere, but the ratio yogurt, a lot higher fat content, and then also almonds, if you like nuts, pretty versatile.

Sliced or whole, I think those are good to lean on for fat sources as well.

Joe: Yeah. And I've always liked making a muesli. I told you what my high fat muesli is. Okay. That's my hummus.

Kyle: I cannot find this muesli. I don't think it exists.

Joe: Most of the mueslis has it's higher carb, but you can add the sliced almonds and the.

Coconut shavings because coconut, especially that they're gonna have a lot higher fat to make and then the yogurt that you use with your muesli will also boost the fat and then you put protein in there and it can be fairly well balanced. I need to make another batch. So that's a really good one that I like to do.

I have, we probably have four different kinds of bars. [00:21:00] At home that have their purposes. Two of them are usually higher protein, which is probably about 20 grams. Another one's a bit about balanced like we have RX AM bars for those. And then I just got some keto bars, which are high fat, like 21 grams of fat and only like 12 carbs and eight protein or something.

So that, what you do, if you do need a quick snack and you do see what you're failing on that day, you have the different bars or different things to just quick pick, quick, quickly pick, and it can help plug your holes as well for a like middle of the day.

Kyle: So yeah, I hear that. And I know that's something that would be very easy to overdo for me.

It's Oh, I can just eat these protein bars all day, but I still need to meal prep, but I still need to, so it's like when you're building these habits for me, I think my best tip is just to take the extra time. To dive into, what foods like real foods. Meet your macros and do the prep because it's always harder at the beginning, right?

And then it becomes a habit. So

Joe: that's definitely a good point. Especially cause you said about, all the bars all day or you're leaning on protein shakes. Yep. If [00:22:00] you're having those multiple times a day, you need to really assess your, what food you're making. I only do one protein shake a day.

I've never had two protein shakes a day. Bars are something that it is super easy to just pick and go be, especially on There's days where we only have one car here so far. So there's at least once a week where I have to go to base and I have to just hang out on base all day. And on base, the food options are limited.

They have a subway, which I'm not always crazy about, but at least I can look up the macros for those. And then they have a smoothie place, which the smoothie place is good because they are, it's a planet smoothie. I can get their macros online, but again, smoothies, carbs are ridiculously high. So I have to like really make up my fats somewhere else if I go on basically a smoothie and so that's why some of those bars are good, but I can't just munch on bars all day.

So, having, making sure you have the food prep down is helpful. And that's why that cooking in bulk and having the separate things help so much. And just

Kyle: accepting the fact that you might not get it right the first time. So I copied your macros just as a baseline. [00:23:00] I did the whole TDEE, total daily expenditure calculator, and I'm like, let me just lean on what Joe's numbers are. And that was too few. I, I didn't feel great. I bumped it up a little bit more. Yeah just by a smidge. And, uh, I think I'm getting closer to that point where I, I feel good. The macros are manageable and, and that, that's really it.

It's not I'm not training for anything. Too crazy, but it's just busy lifestyle trying to stay in the gym routinely and

Joe: just keeping up with everything. Yeah, we're on opposite ends of moves. I just, we just got settled here and that's why we're doing ours because we were traveling for and slightly homeless for two months and now you're about to go into that life.

So it's good to, to, to.

So if I build these

Kyle: habits, I won't go, just, I won't blow it up completely. I hope, over the next couple of months between, moves or during the move,

Joe: or at least it will give you an insight as to okay, when I was counting, I [00:24:00] need, I know I needed to eat, a lot.

stuff to get my fats. So when I'm traveling, I need to like have hummus to snack on with carrots. And it's, I wouldn't count macros on the road, but at least you have some sort of, you're somewhat cognizant of okay, yeah, I know I can't eat two cups of rice at dinner because that's just way too much rice or that's just way too many carbs.

So I need to have, you have some more fat. I need to have some more, protein or something. Exactly. And I guess probably should have said that earlier, but how, So how to calculate your macros. I've always, usually I'll do like a can think of terminology for it, but I'll go to several different websites every time I count.

So I've used three different macro counters, so I have them on there and I can just look at what the last time that I did. Okay. That's cool. And then I'll go to other websites. Because, my weight or my goals or something might have changed. My activity levels pretty much the same. But I'll go to three or four different websites crowd sourcing basically, and I look at all these calculators.

Okay, what do all of these calculators say? I should have. That's what's the calorie count. That's mostly what I look for. What's the calorie count that they should say that I should be at? Okay, it's [00:25:00] 26, 25, 4, 4, 2500 calories, whatever it is. Okay. Now from there, I have my calorie count. Now I'm going to put in my protein, which is I know I basically know what my protein is.

And then after that is when I do my percentage breakdown of the remainder for carbs and fat. And that's how I get my macros. And again, it changes. It fluctuates some a little bit here and there percentage wise. And that's why it's, you shouldn't get super anal about, Because every time you set your macros, it could fluctuate those times anyway.

So that's how I got mine and that's how I get mine every single time. I will relook at all these calculators and see what I did before and see what my goals are and then go from there. And there's even the app that I'm using some of them, they have like daily or weekly weigh ins and every time you weigh yourself in.

Yeah. Actually, if you met your macro goal and if your weight changed too much, then your macros will adjust based off of that, which is cool. That is cool. But some of those you have to pay for it. You don't have to do something like that as long as your weight's not fluctuating 20, 30 pounds, then you're pretty much fine.

But if you're going to count your [00:26:00] macros for four to six, 48 weeks and you do lose like 20 pounds, then you probably need to re redo your macros because your body's needs are different. You're, you don't need as much energy as you did before. Yeah, again, depending on what your goals are. Yeah, so if you're

Kyle: new to training and you're new to calorie counting you gotta figure out one habit first, right?

And I would recommend figuring out the calorie counting and the macros first. It's hard to build those habits, side by side together. So it's okay, am I basing this off of my daily lifestyle? Or am I training for something? Am I trying to create a new habit of also hitting the gym a few times a week?

Yeah. All those factor into

Joe: it create those habits and fret about macros until you have some other things in place, but I think the last and probably the most important thing tip thing to remember if from county macros, if you take away anything, and that is to be patient with it. It's not the short game.

It's not, Hey, I'm going to start counting my food and then I'm going to lose 30, 40, 60 [00:27:00] pounds in this month. And that's cause that's what I want to do. You should be thinking of it as more of a long term change for health and wellbeing. And no, I'm not saying you need to count macros forever, or I really, I'd say The longest you should count macros in any given stretch is probably 8 to 12 weeks, depending on because they don't want to start any sort of like food complexes or mental issues, mental associations with negative associations with food.

So you need to take breaks from counting, but you really do need to be patient. And that includes how you set your macros. And that is. If your goal is to lose 20, 30 pounds you're, you shouldn't be going into five, six, 700 calorie deficit. Like the, it's, this isn't a, Oh, the less I eat, the faster I'll lose the weight.

No, you can't be doing that. You have to little by little and adjust as you go. You do two or 300 calories at a time, depending on where you're at. As you lose 10, 15 pounds, Hey, guess what? You get to readjust and then you keep moving the needle until you reach your goal weight, but you don't do it all at once.

You have to do it incrementally, little by little, [00:28:00] step by step, not just, Hey, I'm just going to starve myself now. And I'll hit my weight because that's just going to lead to other issues, starving yourself I can't even force you to retain some fat or just be very lethargic, especially if you're working out.

Kyle: I think that's the root of yo dieting, right? It's I'm going to crash diet, lose all this weight, and then I'm just going to go right back to my old habits. And you're still not where you want to be. And I can relate to that. I have used, when I started this journey five years ago now to lose weight, I was 280 pounds and I dropped to at my lowest 195.

And it was that complex that you were alluding to. I used a, an app that in my mind was not something that created healthy associations with food. So it's like I'm eating 1700 calories a day and strictly focusing on calories weighing in every day and it just wasn't, it wasn't a long term strategy.

So I really struggled with that. So even getting back into the macro [00:29:00] counting here, I had a bit of concern. I don't want to get back into that. That's why I was asking you about maybe would it be right to increase these? Because I really don't feel good.

And you're like, yeah, increase it. The whole point is to feel good.

Joe: It's 1700 for you is crazy. It was

Kyle: not sustainable. I'm surprised it lasted as long as it did. It was like almost a year of eating 1700 calories and it was tough.

Joe: And that's 1700 is probably what I would say Liz would be on for a deficit and she's tiny.

So I

Kyle: don't want to get back to that, of course, here we are four years after all that. And it's been a good journey. I just need to dial it

Joe: in a little bit more. Lessons learned. That's why I do recommend if you have already gotten some decent habitants habits, and it's good to do.

We do it twice a year and only for a couple of weeks. I might only count this time for 4 weeks, 4 to 6 depends. We have a new cycle coming up in as this publishes 2 weeks from now. I guess we can segue right into that. The next [00:30:00] cycle will start April 1st. That is not an April Fool's joke.

It's just actually starting April 1st. So that's when we're gonna do a cut kicking off. Fit Week is the week before. It's March 25th, and that same week we will do sample programming sample. It always does, at least, especially on this end, because we're always ahead a few weeks sample programming, we should be out that same week as Fit Week typically.

It always is. And, encourage you to, come and check out. Check out what we got going on at Garage Gym Athlete our programs, there's a seven day free trial. And then there also, we have the circle community where I do post all of this stuff. All of these we'll do a, we might do a webinar going over the next cycles.

Programming, full breakdown and just communicating there. And even talking macros and food and stuff. There is a, Separate channel, which isn't used all that much, but the people do get in there and talk about macros and goals and tips in that way. If you're feeling it, then, check us out, garage, gym, athlete.

com, but hope, hope to see everybody there. And if you have any questions on macros counting or anything, then, reach out to us either on circle or somewhere [00:31:00] and we'll check in another episode. Thanks, Joe.

All right.