What is a “Good Diet”? Part 2 – Getting Started with Macros
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This is part two of a three-part series on defining a “Good Diet”! Please see part one here
How did I Get Started?
I was very lucky in my fitness journey and one of my great friends happened to be a nutrition nut like me! I asked her to comment on how I got started because I basically came crawling to her begging for advice…
“Unlike many people who have asked me for nutrition advice in the past, Cessa came to me pretty prepared. I don’t just mean curious and inspired, I mean she came with an open mind, ready to learn and commit herself from day one.
But needless to say, she was pretty ignorant. In her defense, so are most people on the street when it comes to basic nutrition and health concepts (I know that sounds crazy, right?) But it’s the sad reality of this day and age. We’re not taught about the finite methods of nutrition in school in the same respect math and English are taught. We need nutritional education for our daily lives, yet the vast majority of the public are severely undereducated on a topic that would come in handy at least 3 times a day 365 days out of the year. Without ranting myself off a soapbox, the long and short of it is that Cessa came to me out of desperation for that education which is why she’s been such a success story because she wanted to learn and commit.
Our first “intervention” consisted of me gabbing for the greater half of a weekend in spring 2016. She brought a notebook and took notes like I’ve never seen. For me, it was more or less a springboard for discovering where she was in her understanding and figuring out where to start with the very basics of day-to-day nutrition education. We started from scratch; I’m talking defining words like macronutrient, BMR, carbohydrate (like, veggies are carbs too??) how many calories are in a gram of protein? kind of basic. But we needed to start somewhere. You might be thinking all or some of those sound foreign too, but I promise it’s not rocket science. It actually makes a lot of sense.
By the end of our first lecture day, Cessa walked away with a sore right hand and what I can only imagine was a head spinning with new information. She also walked away with a realization and appreciation of how much she didn’t know about nutrition and how much she could gain from doing more research and peer connection.”
Steps to Set Up Your Best Diet
- Calculate your macro split:
The first thing she told me to do was go to body building.com to calculate my macro split.Once I finished entering all of my data I found that my split was 52% Carbs, 35% Protein, and 13% Fats. Hillary and I then had a lengthy conversation about this but she actually recommended starting with a higher protein diet (which, if any of you are hoping to change fat to muscle this is really key!) So I swapped around my goals to be 50% Protein, 30% Carbs, and 20% Fats. And I have to tell you I noticed a huge difference in my body within the first couple of weeks – it was CRAZY. - Putting those macros into context:
But What do These Numbers Even Mean?! Many women have been told to lose weight they should be eating under 2000 calories, and though I’m not a huge proponent of calorie counting it can be an extremely helpful tool if you’re first starting out.
Wait wait wait, you were just talking about percentages of different types of nutrients, how did we get to calories?! Well, the macros you eat basically make up the fuel that your body uses to create energy so you can do things like sit on the couch and watch a Netflix marathon of your favorite show (shout out to Gilmore Girls – I’ve lost count after the 7th re-watch…) Science Lesson Time! If you’re unfamiliar with the energy creation process that occurs in your body take a look at this great excerpt from this article on NSTA (National Science Teachers Association) if you hate learning about stuff, feel free to skip the part in quotes:
“Suppose you want to build a cabin in a mountain valley. Unfortunately, there’s an old barn sitting right where you want to build your cabin. You’ll have to knock that old barn down first, right? Being a clever person, you look around and think that if only there was a large boulder on top of one of those surrounding hills, you could just start the boulder rolling down the hill aimed at the barn, and you would end up knocking down the barn just like that.
Well, it turns out there’s just such a boulder sitting in a valley near you at a much higher elevation. The problem is that pesky hill in between. You’re so fond of your plan, though, that you figure it’s worth putting in a little bit of energy to get that boulder up to the top of the hill in order to get a lot more energy out as the boulder heads down toward the barn.
Nutrition is a whole lot like the situation with the boulder. Foods contain lots of stored chemical energy. Just as that boulder in the high valley isn’t much use to you in its present position, the chemical energy stored in foods isn’t, in its current state, much use for the human body. You can’t smear a plate of spaghetti on your legs and expect that to help you run faster. So, you put some energy into the food in order to get out of it the useful energy that’s stored in its chemical bonds.
How do you put energy into the food? First, you chew it and the enzymes in your digestive system progressively break down the molecules in the food. Eventually you end up with sugars and fats, and finally, a special molecule called adenosine triphosphate (ATP). This special molecule is the energy source your body has worked for. Individual cells in your body transform ATP into a similar molecule, adenosine diphosphate (ADP). This transformation from ATP to ADP, the equivalent of the boulder rolling down the large hill, releases energy that the cells use for bodily functions.
A couple of clarifications. First, not all foods are sources of energy. Carbohydrates and fats are good sources of energy, but proteins, vitamins, and minerals are primary sources of molecules that the body uses as building blocks for various processes. Second, going from the energy release from ATP to an action like the motion of walking is still quite a complicated process. To understand this fully, you have to know how all of the human body systems work, both independently and together, and you have to know how these systems get their energy from the ATP to ADP transformation. Sorry, but there’s not enough space here to go into all that.”
So when I say that my macro split is 50/30/20 I mean that 50% of the grams of food that I eat will be from protein, 30 from carbs, etc. The best tool, in my opinion, for doing this is myfitnesspal. They have a great app and an even better website.
Set up an account for yourself on my fitness pal and let them set up a calorie goal for you! Mine is currently around 1600 calories per day. Once that is set up you can also add macro goals. This is where you will enter your body building.com numbers from before (or if you chose to change them, feel free!) - Calorie Counting & Macro Counting
For this next part, you’ll wanna get out either a piece of lined paper and a calculator or an excel spreadsheet. You will also want to have my fitness pal up on your computer (in my opinion it’s way easier to start on the website and then maintain through the app)- I want you to decide how many meals you’d like to eat throughout your day – I personally switch between five and three a lot depending on my work schedule, but I based my original calculation off of 5 meals.
- Set up some columns on your spreadsheet/piece of paper and start thinking of foods you’d like to eat for your first meal, and look up that item in myfitnesspal:
| Meal | Food | Number of Servings | Calories | Protein | Carbs | Fats | Sugars |
| 1 | Egg Whites | 2 | 132 | 12 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| 1 | Whole egg | 1 | 330 | 19 | 30 | 17 | 1 |
A couple quick points about this:
A. If your calorie goal is similar to mine you’ll be eating 500-600 calories per meal for three meals per or about 300-400 calories per meal for 5 meals per day. Try to live by the rule “Eat Breakfast Like a King, Dinner Like a Pauper” (I’ve heard this in zillions of places but the most popular link is here) or here
B. Each meal should approximately fall within the macro goals that you decided on earlier
C. Note that I have listed sugars on my table as well and I didn’t mention sugars when I was discussing macros earlier – that’s because most macro counting websites don’t consider sugars as a core nutrient. But in my experience, it’s a really good idea to monitor your daily sugar intake and try to minimize it as best as you can (you can also do this for sodium as well!)
D. I also break down food into their parts – like egg whites and eggs. This is because you can actually find ways to manipulate the food your eating to have better health qualities. For example, egg whites individually are higher in protein and lower in carbs than an egg yolk.
E. YES, THIS IS EXHAUSTING – the first time I did this it literally took me 4 hours to put together my macros. But I promise you that if you stick with it you absolutely will see results, learn a ton about your body and that it will get way easier with time.
F. If you’d like to see exactly what I eat (though this does change about once a month,) I’ll be making a post on that soon! Stay tuned!
3. Once you have your structure for all of your meals, do your grocery shopping for your portions and then start eating and logging! Make sure to weigh your food for truly accurate measurements.
As always, thanks for reading!
Love,
Francesca Nicole
