95. The Macro Mindset and How To Set Up Your Macro Targets

This episode covers two important topics: The mindset you need to see success with macros and the correct way to find your calorie/macro goals.

If you approach macros from a place of restriction you are doing yourself a disservice. Macros are the way you fuel your body for longevity and true health, it's not a quick fix. I help my clients view macros differently and this episode will help you too! 

Knowing how to set up your macro targets is a common struggle and I wanted to be sure to give you my practical thoughts on that topic. Finding your maintenance calories is the first step to setting up your macro goals (not an online calculator). I think you will appreciate the simple, personalized  strategy I give in this episode. 



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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

Welcome to the UnFuck your Fitness podcast. I am your host, christy Castillo, and I'm here to give you real talk and cut the BS so you can actually enjoy building a body you love. I'm a personal trainer obsessed with giving you simple action steps to take you from feeling stuck to feeling sexy. Let's go, hey guys, what's up?

Speaker 2: 0:34

Welcome to today's episode. We are going to be talking about macros today, one of my favorite topics. One of every time, I ask, anyway, what are your favorite topics of the podcast episodes? This seems to be a pretty good topic, something that it's kind of tricky to understand, it's hard to wrap our heads around, it's hard to do on your own, to set up your own macros, to figure out what calories you need to be consuming, and so I'm going to talk about that a little bit today. I'm also just going to kind of be talking about this is the time of year where you may have started something that is restrictive. You may have jumped into something thinking I have to be all in. You may have joined a crazy challenge. Whatever the case may be, and, if you did not, to be the bearer of bad news. But there's a good chance. In a couple of weeks if not already, that would be me You're going to realize that it's not sustainable. You don't like it, you don't have any energy, you're not getting the results that you want, it's too much work, it's too restrictive, it's too obsessive, whatever the case may be, and hopefully you're listening to this episode now, of course, and then hopefully you can come back to it when you're in one of those moods where you're like, okay, this isn't working. I signed up for this thing January one and it turns out to be something that I really don't enjoy. I don't really want to do that anymore. It's not going to work.

Speaker 2: 2:03

And I heard this podcast. Christy Castillo is talking about macros and how it's more sustainable and how it's the foundation for your fitness and all the things, and hopefully you'll come back to this and give it a listen and give it a go. So I'm excited to kind of talk about this beginning of the year and really just give my thoughts on the topic. And then I also want to talk a little bit about how you can figure out, or how you know, how many calories you should be eating. That's a question that I get quite a bit is like how do I set up my macros? How do I know how many calories I should be eating? Christy, I don't know how to calculate macros and every you know macro calculator that I put my stats into on the internet gives me a different number or the number is too high and it's scary and I'm not sure if it's right. So how do I know, and it's hard for me to answer that right off the bat honestly, because if I don't know you and I don't have any information to go off of, I can't really help you. You know, calculate your macros in the comment of a Facebook post or something. It's not just like a cut and dry answer. So I really kind of want to get into that a little bit too.

Speaker 2: 3:14

But let's back up a little bit and talk about a very brief overview of macros. I am currently putting together a course about macros and it's actually going to launch next week. I'm really excited. It'll be something you can join anytime, but the first round is going to start next week and I'm, like I said, I'm super excited and I'm just putting together all of this information on how to help you and what knowledge you need to know, and so the first module that I recorded the video for the other day was all about you know what are macros and how to calculate them for yourself, and so this information is fresh in my mind and it's something that I just love to talk about.

Speaker 2: 3:54

I think that even in the space that I'm at like, even in the place that I'm in in my fitness journey, it's so nice to go back and think about how macros have helped me and what macros actually are and why they're so important, and I like to hear other people who have had the same thing happen to them as far as a transformation with macros. I love to hear their stories and it's just really refreshing. So macros are kind of fresh in my mind. But the thing about macros is I don't want you to think about it as a diet or something restrictive. A lot of times people come in, come into macros and they're like I'm going to try cutting macros to hit my weight loss goal and that's great. But I kind of want to reframe that into something more positive or just something different, because macros stands for macronutrients, which is literally the makeup or the breakdown of the calories that you're eating.

Speaker 2: 4:53

So your body requires fuel, and I said this in the video that I recorded the other day about macros. Your body, just like a car, requires fuel gas. Your body requires fuel calories, and so macros are not a diet that you're following. It's not a short term thing. It's literally your body needs fuel. You give it fuel via calories your calories are made up of. Everything you consume is either a carb, a fat or a protein, and those are macronutrients, aka macros. So macros are essentially the fuel that your body needs.

Speaker 2: 5:30

So to begin your journey with macros, you first need to start it with that mentality. You are doing something great for your body by giving it the macros that it needs. And when you're tracking your macros, instead of thinking of it as something restrictive and it's limiting, you think of it as you're actually tracking the nutrients, the fuel that your body needs. You are making sure that you are providing your body with the right nutrients, with the right macros, with the right calories, with the right amount, right the brand of fuel, and that's really important. And so for me, when I think about it, as I'm doing something great for my body I'm not restricting. It has really helped my relationship with food, and so your mindset coming into counting macros can be, and needs to be, so much different than, like, I'm cutting calories or I'm doing a low fat diet or I'm doing a low carb diet Like you.

Speaker 2: 6:26

This is different. This is something that's long term, it's healthy, it's good for you, it will fire up your metabolism, it'll make your hormones happy, it'll make your body happy, like your body will finally start to run as a well oiled machine, and that's what you want in terms of being able to have the body you want and have it function properly and being able to maintain the body that you want. Not only getting the body that you want, but if you had the body that you want right now, would you be able to maintain it? If you woke up and looked in the mirror and you were like, wow, this is it. Bam Right, I just woke up and here's my body that I've always wanted. How are you going to keep it? You don't know.

Speaker 2: 7:10

And so that's where tracking comes in. That's where having someone to hold you accountable comes in. That's where someone that you can ask questions to comes in. That's where this podcast comes in, so you can learn about it and really succeed in tracking macros. And so your mentality with macros can be that of something that's freeing. And so, yes, you can use macros to lose fat and lose weight and gain muscle and tone up and have the body that you want Absolutely, but your mindset around it can be something that's healthy instead of restrictive. So that's no-transcript, my thoughts on macros. What they've done for me I've talked about this in previous episodes is exactly what I just mentioned.

Speaker 2: 7:48

It has helped me to have a better relationship with food. I no longer view food as good and bad. I no longer view food as something that I need to restrict. I mean, sure, if I'm going to put myself in a calorie deficit, then I'm going to have to cut back on some calories, obviously, but it's coming from a place of I chose to do that. I still get a lot of food. I'll be honest and, again, that's my choice, that's me being in control of that, instead of just saying, oh, I'm not going to have carbs anymore, I'm not going to have bread anymore, I'm going to cut out all processed foods and some of these other ridiculous things that people do when they want to cut weight and that's not maintainable. This is different. If I want to put myself in a calorie deficit, good, that's my choice. And then after a little while I know I won't be in a calorie deficit for that long because that's not healthy Then I'll go back up to maintenance and you know I'll live there and that's where I'm happy. That's where my body runs like a well oiled machine. That's literally where my body belongs at maintenance calories.

Speaker 2: 8:49

So, speaking of maintenance calories, let's get into this question of Christy how do I know how many calories I should be eating, like, how do I set my macros? How do I know? How do I know what I should be eating how much? And this is a really good question. So, like I was just saying, finding your maintenance calories is the key to that. The only way that you know for sure what your maintenance calories are is to track. You can do the calculations, you can find your BMR, which is your basal metabolic rate, which is the amount of energy, calories that your body uses each day to just do the tasks that you can do, like while laying down, basically, is how I think of it, like everything that your body needs to run and your brain working and organs, and you know all of the things that your body does when, like, I'm just sitting here recording this podcast and my body is working. So, just to have your body function properly, you need energy, and so your BMR is just that it's your very, very baseline of energy. And then you add on your movement throughout the day and your workouts and your walking and things like that. That would be your activity level. But when you add up what you are eating, consuming as far as calories and then you, you know, subtract what you are expending as far as calories. If that is equally balanced, that's basically your maintenance calories. So it's extremely important to learn your body, your body's maintenance calories, because that's the baseline needed to establish any goal.

Speaker 2: 10:25

I recommend tracking your food for two weeks into my fitness pal or whatever app that you want to use, and just actually tracking what you're used to doing, because that's what you're used to. Eating is what got you to where you are, and if you're stuck in your plateaued and whatever, that's your maintenance like. That's what your body is using to literally maintain where it's at. So that would be your maintenance calories. And then, if you are wanting to enter a slight surplus to gain muscle, then you need to know your maintenance calories first, because you can need to add on to that amount. And in the opposite way, if you are wanting to enter a calorie deficit to lose body fat, you also need to know where your maintenance is, because you need to subtract calories from that number. So you need to figure out, like I said, how much food you are consuming right now.

Speaker 2: 11:15

Go ahead and start tracking your food intake and your weight. I recommend two full weeks, 14 days, track very consistently every single thing that goes into your mouth that has a caloric baseline you need to be entering all the dips matter, all the bites matter, all the oils matter, all of it matters because it all adds up right. So once you have that two weeks of data, you can compare it to your weight. If your weight stays the same, if it goes up and down daily, that's normal. But if, at the end of the two weeks, you've not lost any and you've not gained any, then look at that average. Right, and that's your maintenance.

Speaker 2: 11:54

So, but also remember, like I said, weight fluctuations are normal on a day to day basis for so many different reasons, and I think this is important to touch on too, because, as we're weighing in daily to collect data, you need to remember that sleep, stress, soreness of your workouts I'm sore right now from a lower body day bowel movements, digestion, sodium intake, the time of the last meal that you had before you weight got on the scale, your hydration levels and, honestly, so many other things pay make a difference in the number on the scale. So, day to day, don't change anything. Just get on that, track it for data, data. But leave it for two weeks and you know, see what happens. Because we need to also get used to these daily fluctuations as being normal, because that is a part of life. It is what it is.

Speaker 2: 12:46

You have to start looking at the trends. You have to start looking at the averages, because that's what really matters. So what this data concludes is if your weight has stayed the same, like I said, you are in maintenance range. If your weight has been trending up slowly, don't panic. It's just two weeks, right, you can. We're going to reverse after that if that's not your goal, but keep going because you need that 14 days. So if your weight has been trending up, you're likely obviously eating more fuel than your body needs at the moment, but you're eating above your body's desired needs, like what it actually needs. So that's putting you in a caloric surplus. If your weight is trending downward, like you're losing weight in those two weeks, then you're obviously likely eating less than your body needs and that means you are in a caloric deficit. So that is good information, like, please take the time to do that, and sometimes it takes a little bit longer than that Right now.

Speaker 2: 13:44

I posted on Instagram the other day that I've been in a caloric deficit for three weeks and my body weight hasn't changed a fricking bit. And I know my body well enough to know that just stress, lack of consistency. My body doesn't trust me right now, so I'm not freaking out about it. But scientifically, if I'm in a caloric deficit, I should be losing weight. So sometimes the science can be a little funny right, and my body's like, nope, we're not doing that. So it's not always down to a T, it's not always tit for tat, it's not always put yourself in a caloric deficit and instantly you will lose weight. Sometimes it takes a long time and I am right there with you on on that journey.

Speaker 2: 14:28

Unfortunately, after that you are going to adjust based on your goal. So you're going to look at whether you're in. Those two weeks are telling you you are above me, telling you you are above maintenance calories, then you're going to go back down. If that's not your goal, if you are below maintenance calories and you're not looking to lose weight, but you are, then you're going to reverse back up. After that you're going to give yourself four weeks and you're going to focus on improving the consistency of your daily habits and the behaviors.

Speaker 2: 14:54

So think about the basics. I talk about this with my clients all the time. We're not doing anything drastic. We are talking about the basics Water intake, your daily movement, steps right, prioritizing your protein, getting in any extra movement, like your workouts count as daily movement, but also you're walking, just getting up in between meetings, things like that your workout schedule has definitely can play a part in that. Whether you're working out three days a week or whether you're working out five days a week, it has a lot of pull on that number. So pay close attention again to your biofeedback markers and this as well. So these are things like your stress, your sleep, your hunger, your energy levels and your digestion.

Speaker 2: 15:35

So how your body reacts to these changes over the next four weeks, whether you put yourself in a deficit or whether you're like I'm happy staying at maintenance, see how that works for a while. Or if you're putting yourself in a surplus, see how your body reacts, because that's very, very important. If what you have been consuming in those 14 days and that two week timeframe, if it's not a lot of food and you're like I just think I it's not in my best interest right now to continue eating this little amount of food, then I suggest reverse dieting for a while. If you are chasing fat loss and you are eating a very small amount of food, you might need to put your fat loss goals on hold so that you can reverse diet just for a little while to get your baseline up, to get your maintenance up, so that your body is used to eating a little bit more than you think like, a little bit more than you're used to, so that you can put yourself in a better deficit. So it's best for you to reverse diet to your maintenance calories and stay there for a little while. This will make for a much more effective fat loss phase in the future. So if you can reverse diet very slowly up to an amount of calories where you are staying the same for six to eight weeks, maybe even eight to 12 weeks, stay there, get your body very, very, very comfortable and get your body to trust you so that you can enter a deficit, deduct 300, 500 calories and still be eating a good amount to fuel your body, but also being in a diet phase.

Speaker 2: 17:12

One thing I do want to mention as well is if you're currently struggling with your fitness and even if it's the beginning of the year and you already started a challenge and you're like this already isn't working for me. When you come into macros, I want you to really focus on your mindset first and also start with the very small things like following a simple but effective workout plan, hitting your step goal, which should be between 8,000 and 10,000 steps per day, usually, managing your stress and your sleep and getting enough water. Those things are going to matter way more in the long run, in addition to your macros. So I don't want to make it sound like, if you just start tracking your calories and you do everything, that I just told you that your fat loss phase is going to be so easy and that you're just going to start losing fat and that life is going to be easy and this is going to be great, and you're just going to love macros and we love it. It's working so well and it's so easy. It's not like that all of the time. So if you've been chasing fat loss for a while, if you're already eating super, super low calories, if you don't understand macros, if your other habits are not in place, I suggest holding off on what I just said and work on these other things as well. But what I will say is. So work on right getting seven to eight hours of sleep every night. Drink half of your body weight in ounces daily. Follow a workout plan. I would say start with three to four workouts a week If you've not been doing any kind of a workout. Manage your stress a little bit, take a little you time, but in that time you can also be tracking your macros, but not stressing about it, just getting better at those behaviors and those habits to get you set up, because ultimately, what makes the biggest difference is consistency in tracking your macros, in consuming your macros, in your workouts, in stress, in sleep, in water and all of those things. So working on all of those things is great.

Speaker 2: 19:16

I always tell my clients, like the month of January is great, we want to kick ass, we are ready. Like holidays are over, let's go, let's get it. Mentally it's like this new start, this fresh start, but our bodies, like physically, were tired. It's. We just come off of the holidays. Happy New Year. Eating has been off, drinking has been off, schedules are off, everybody's just now back to school. We're getting back into habits. Don't try to throw so many things on your plate that you fail.

Speaker 2: 19:48

I would rather have you take January, get back into your groove or create a new groove. Take all of January to set yourself up for success. Do what you've got to do Create all the plans, all the trackers, get it in line, figure out your meals whatever Purchase the workout program like. Get consistent with one thing at a time. That's four weeks, essentially, that you have well, three weeks now left in January where you can get really habitual with certain things, and then in February you can hit the ground running. So I want you to keep all of these things in mind.

Speaker 2: 20:20

About macros I love macros. Obviously, I've talked a little bit about what they are, where you should start, what you should do, and that's honestly, honestly, what I believe. That's what I personally do and that's what I have my clients do, but I also want you to focus on those other things that matter just as much. So I hope you enjoyed this episode as usual. Reach out to me on Instagram at a Christi Castillo fit. You can now follow the podcast Instagram page at on fuck your fitness podcast. I don't have a lot on there right now. It's kind of just getting it set up and sharing the podcast episodes, but some of you are messaging over there and following there, and that's absolutely amazing. I have big plans for that page, but getting the macro course rolled out is priority number one. You can always shoot me an email. Be sure to rate and review the podcast while you are here, and I will talk to you next week.

Speaker 1: 21:14

Thanks for listening to today's show. Go ahead and leave a rating and a review and, of course, follow the podcast so you don't miss out on any future episodes. And I would love it so much if you came to connect with me over on Instagram at Christi Castillo fit. I will see you next time.