The Unf*ck Your Fitness Podcast

162. Calculating Calories + Tailoring Your Macros to Align with Your Fitness Goals

• Kristy Castillo

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I was having a recent conversation with a listener about calculating calories and macros. We were chatting about her dilemma with frequent dieting, calorie limitations, and macro calculations, and she was feeling pretty discouraged.


While I love that there are plenty of tools and programs to help with this, it can be overwhelming and confusing to navigate. It’s also never going to be something that is 100% spot on for you and YOUR goals! 


I think using a solid calories & macros calculator can be super beneficial (you can check out the one I recommend here).


But…this tool isn’t going to *magically* help you lose weight and create new habits! You’ve got to figure out why you’re feeling ‘stuck’, and thinking you need to diet your way to a smaller number on the scale. 


Drastically cutting your calories over and over again is NOT doing you any favors!!


I KNOW how scary it can feel to make changes with your health & fitness. Thankfully, you have choices, and you can take steps that will help you reach YOUR goals. 


If you need personalized support in calculating your calories & macros, or doing workouts that will help you build a body you love, I’m here for you!



In this episode, we cover:

  • Why your number of calories isn’t *actually* the problem
  • The online calorie calculator I’ve used off and on over the years
  • How to effectively input & figure YOUR personal calories/macro breakdown
  • What’s going to happen if you’re not fueling your body enough
  • What you can do TODAY if you’re feeling stuck & what you’ve been doing isn’t working
  • Why you shouldn’t be overly dependant on any fitness tools
  • Taking a customized calories & macros approach instead of  ‘one-size-fits-all’


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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Un-Fuck-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.

Speaker 2:

Hey guys, what's up? Welcome to today's episode. I am getting a little more excited. It's turning into a little bit more of spring. I mean we're into March, headed in that direction. We've got baseball season starting up over here. My way, that's our, with having my daughter graduate last year which to realize that it's almost been a year since my daughter graduated from high school is insane. Anybody that is going through a child graduating right now, I feel for you, I'm sorry and also congratulations. It's like. So it's been still really busy, but just in a different way. Adjusting has been crazy, but anyways, kind of headed into spring, headed into baseball season, which also makes me realize I feel like when spring sports start we would have track and baseball.

Speaker 2:

Typically it goes so fast Like the end of the year I feel like there's a ton of half days, like all these no school days. There's like a winter midwinter break and then there's obviously spring break and then there's all these conferences and teacher in service. Like I feel like there's never school for some reason, I don't know. So this time of year goes really fast. So I've just been trying to adjust plan ahead. Get things done, not procrastinate. Trying to adjust plan ahead. Get things done, not procrastinate, get ready so that I can kind of stay on track instead of just waiting until spring to do all the things. But yeah, things are busy over here and good, I'm finally feeling better-ish, so we're picking up the pace. But enough about me.

Speaker 2:

I want to do a. I'm going to read a message that I got an Instagram DM from a woman named Nikki and she messaged me and was genuinely kind of pouring her heart out just briefly, as I get a lot of times about macros and calories and feeling stuck, and so I asked her if I could talk about it on the podcast and kind of give a real life situation and got her age, height, weight, kind of some of the stats that I would need. So I want to go into this because I think it's going to be cool for you guys to listen to kind of really how I feel and what I would do. I'm going to talk about an online macro calculator that I really like. I don't use it now for myself or for clients or anything. I do it all on my own, but there are so many different macro calculators, so I'm going to talk about the one that I used to use in the past. It gives you a lot of different options and you can kind of play with it. Of course, when I say like a lot of different options and you can play with it, for me I like that. But I have a really good obviously a really good understanding of macros and kind of what that looks like for myself and for clients. But I'll tell you the site so you can go check it out and and play with it.

Speaker 2:

But I also just kind of want to walk through this scenario and talk through it, because, you know, even I told her, when I responded, like yeah, this is a very common thing, so I think this would be a great episode, and she asked me would you be willing to do that on the podcast? So let me read this to you. So you said, hey, firstly, love your podcast. I've been a dieter my entire life. I still remember being told at like 10 years old alarming that I need to lose weight. So this diet shit starts insanely early. So I always want to make sure everyone knows when you're struggling with this kind of stuff, it's because it was instilled at you from 10 years old that you need to kind of figure this out. So it's crazy.

Speaker 2:

She said I know too much. Now, if that makes any sense, and I feel stuck, and it does, because I talk about that a lot on the podcast. With social media and fitness culture, it's like information is so prevalent we can literally find the answer to any question that we have within 10 seconds of asking online and yet we have still no clue what to do. And even if you know too much, that's even worse. If you know it and you're like I know this and I still can't bring myself to do it or I can't figure it out right. So I totally get that I work with actually a lot of personal trainers inside of my program because and sometimes I have my own coach, like I've said before, where I'm like, okay, I need you to tell me exactly what to do, because I'm just overwhelmed and kind of reaching right, I have to lay it all out for myself, or take a step back and look at myself as the client, remove the brain part of myself from the physical part and write all my stats down like a client and be like, okay, if this was my client, what would I do with myself? She said now I feel stuck.

Speaker 2:

I did online calorie slash, bmr calculators and according to my height and weight, I need to lose, or I need to eat 1250 calories to lose weight. I can't hit my macros because it's so low. I feel bloated and horrible all the time and feel like giving up. I think that is so common, where we get into MyFitnessPal and we type in the numbers and the goals and it's like, yeah, 1,250 calories, 1,200 calories, 1,300 calories. And yeah, we're like, okay, you know, we try to plan and prep and all the things, and we're starving by the second day, if we're being honest. So it's hard, you can't stick to it.

Speaker 2:

She said listening to your podcast today which I don't know exactly which one this was this is very recently I can only dream of eating 1700 calories a day, which I talk a lot about body recomp and reverse dieting. So I'm sure that obviously that's where that came from. She said I know I need to recomp to gain muscle, but I'm so heavy right now I can't even figure out how to. Anyway, just wanted to know if you do an episode on counting calories. And so we went on and on.

Speaker 2:

She did say I know, not really your thing, but I don't understand how to get my macros right when my number is clearly too low. So, yeah, to do an episode on calculating calories is not really my thing, and it's because it's not a one size fits all. There's not one way for me to get on here and just explain this is how you calculate calories. There are formulas, and I have access to those, and I can. You know. I even told her like I can do an episode and kind of talk about you know the papers that I use and the formula that I use when I do a client's macros, but I always do the exact formula, and then I have to relate it back to. Well, is this person ready for this formula, as we're going to talk about in a minute here, the online calculator that I even am going to pull up for you in a second. It spits out a number, a calorie calculator number, so I can do an episode on counting calories, absolutely calculating them and how to do that, but you can also find that online, so I'm happy to. Obviously I'm like, yeah, I can tell you how to calculate calories, but so can Google, so can chat GPT, so can any. You type in macro calculator and it's going to give you numbers.

Speaker 2:

The problem is not the numbers, though, and that's where we're kind of going to, we're going to dive into is the problem is not the numbers, though, and that's where we're going to dive into is the problem is not the numbers. The problem is your past dieting experience. The problem is your adherence to those numbers. Right, like, yeah, 1,250 calories. If she were to eat 1,250 calories every day, she would lose weight, and that's her goal. Her goal is to lose weight. Or she said I'm feeling heavy right now, so she'd like to lose weight, build muscle, body recob. So yeah, on 1,250 calories, most people would lose weight.

Speaker 2:

The problem is is that you eat 1,250 calories one day, you eat 1,250 calories the next day, and then you probably go up to like 1,500, 1,600 the next day, and then it's a free for all for the next four days, because you're hungry, you're over it, you're done, you're, you'll give up. You'll start again Monday. So that's the problem is that these things, it's not the numbers. The numbers could be right, they could be wrong, it doesn't matter if you don't hit them. So I'm not going to really. I am going to talk about the calculating of calories, but I'm going to mostly talk about how to apply it to your life, because that's the part that we struggle with. Honestly, the calculators are the problem and they are not the problem because they're spitting out a number that is technically correct based on the information you input, but it doesn't mean that it's correct for your lifestyle. You know all of that kind of stuff.

Speaker 2:

So again, I asked her for permission and these are her stats she's 36. Her weight is 74 kilograms, which is also 163 pounds, and she is 5'6". So she did say that in 2020, she got down to 68 kilograms and she was eating 118 hundred calories. So she said I don't understand why this isn't working at the 1250. And then she said well, I do, because I'm starving all the time in all caps. So I chatted back and forth with her a little bit and kind of explained my thoughts and then said of course I'll do a podcast episode and my thoughts were that the reason you're feeling stuck is because for one for, for 1,250 calories, again, she's starving all the time.

Speaker 2:

If you are starving all the time and you're doing that correctly in a deficit and you've kind of weaned yourself off and you're down 300 to 500 calories in a cut and you're ready, your body is ready and primed and you're ready and primed. Yeah, a deficit is going to be uncomfortable. You are gonna be hungry. It is not for fun, it is not a great time, right, but it has to be done. So either I don't recommend, but either stick with the 1250 calories and be starving all the time. Not great, because that's just not great. That's not great. But if that's what it is, if that's what the numbers fit out for her with the information she gave, then that is one option.

Speaker 2:

So I personally went into. It's called jcdfitnesscom. Yeah, I will actually link this right to this page. So I have this link that I go to if you scroll all the way down on the page and it gives you an entire. It gives you a ton of information. It's how to determine your maintenance calories with a working calculator and it explains a lot about maintenance calories calories burned and consumed during a 24-hour period. So you understand your food intake. You understand your calorie output, calories to burn calories that you intake. It explains all of this really well. So I really do like this site. I've been on it often on for years, like I said for myself, and this is kind of how I learned my body and there's formulas on there and you can also find your BMR, like you can find anything, if you scroll all the way down to the calorie calculator part.

Speaker 2:

I typed in her age as 36, her gender female, her height at 5'6" and her weight at 163 pounds, and then you can choose your activity, which is you can find just your BMR. You can choose sedentary, lightly active, moderately active, very active or extra active. Holy smokes, what is extra active or extremely active? Seven plus hours of weights and or cardio exercise per week? Oh, okay, that's not that bad Anyway.

Speaker 2:

So I chose lightly active, sedentary. The definition on here is 15 minutes or less of daily exercise. Anything goes with a desk job. So if you're only moving 15 minutes or less daily, first of all there better be a very goddamn good reason that you're only moving 15 minutes or less daily. First of all, there better be a very goddamn good reason that you're only moving 15 minutes or less. That is not okay. We need to really talk about what's going on there. But I chose lightly active because I didn't ask her this question, so this is just kind of general. If I was doing this for a person and I didn't know this the answer to her activity level this is what I would choose One to two hours of weights and or cardio exercise per week. If you are moving more, probably get to eat more, right. So I just kind of choose lightly active.

Speaker 2:

So I come down here and I choose calculate is her estimated total daily energy expenditure, the calories estimate that she expends every single day because of her weight, because of how much physically she weighs to move around. And assuming that she works out or her activity is one to two hours of weights and cardio per week, which I think we should up, that but that's another story is 1989. So then I can click recommended macros and it breaks it down. It gives you maintenance, it gives you a moderate fat loss, it gives you aggressive fat loss and then muscle gain and it breaks down the macros. So it's really awesome. I'll link this for you. This is where I went.

Speaker 2:

So her maintenance calories, like I said, 1989. I'm going to go here. So for moderate fat loss, it says 1,790 calories. So that's kind of like when I talk about cutting 100 calories for two weeks, cutting another 100 calories for two weeks, right, that's about 200 calories that we're talking and kind of see how things go. That's going to gradually. So I'd say that's moderate. If you're just like, I'm kind of going to dip my toes, I don't really want to be starving, but I'll just cut back on a couple of things here and there. Right, that's moderate.

Speaker 2:

Aggressive fat loss for these targets, this person that I just put in here is 1,591 calories and that's for aggressive fat loss. So these numbers are different than what she's looking at for a calorie calculator. And I don't know, obviously, where she got it. Maybe MyFitnessPal, because she gave me her MyFitnessPal email so I could kind of check on there and look at her food and her numbers and stuff and just kind of investigate before I did this podcast about her. But so maybe it's MyFitnessPal where she entered all that.

Speaker 2:

I would not be surprised if it's MyFitnessPal, because their numbers are always so freaking low and I don't really know why. But that's why I always tell my clients like, don't use the numbers MyFitnessPal gives you, use the ones I give you, and then just log in my fitness pal and my app syncs with my fitness pal so I can see their food, I can see their numbers. I'm like log it in my fitness pal and then go to my app and see where you're at for macros. But on my end, on this app, which I really like. I think it's very realistic, which hopefully you'd agree that 1,591 calories is more realistic than 1,250. So this has her protein at 163, carbs 156, and fats 35. I would probably go somewhere in the middle. So she's like I'm trying to eat 1,250 right now and this app is kicking out. You know, let's say, you go to this app and you kind of go between the two because this is keeping her protein really high. I have her weight at 163. So this is using the formula of one gram of protein per pound of body weight.

Speaker 2:

I wouldn't do that. So that's what I mean when I take this number and I kind of play with it, like okay for aggressive fat loss, if she thinks, you know, and also if you've been eating 1250 calories, for, let's say, you've been doing that for four weeks, kind of right, let's say, on the weekends you're like I can't do it, so you're not really eating 1250 calories, but you've been aiming for 1250 calories. That's why tracking is really important, because someone can come to me and say or even tell themselves yeah, I've been eating 1250 calories, have you? Because I don't know, honestly, that seems impossible who in their right mind, as a grown person, grown man and woman could, yeah, eat 1,250 calories. I mean, that's unreal and unsafe and unnecessary and, no, we're not doing that. But in this scenario, if she came to me and said I'm eating 1,250 calories, I'm going to guess she's eating more, on an average of like 1,400, 1,500. And I'm just guessing.

Speaker 2:

This is most of my clients coming to me being like, yeah, I've been aiming for 1,250, but I also haven't logged my snacking. And last weekend I didn't log things like that, the normal shit that we all do. So. And last weekend I didn't log, you know, things like that, the normal shit that we all do. So I'm assuming you know you're going to be up around 1500 anyways, so this is actually not that far off if we're 1590. But this also this is a 20% deficit.

Speaker 2:

It says, like I said, it had protein at 163, carbs at 156, and fats at 35. Are you also joking? What kind of a grown human eats 35 grams of fat? Not me. So I'm going to take protein down to, let's say, the goal is 140 pounds. I don't know what that is in kilograms right now, forgive me, but let's say her goal is 140 pounds to weigh. She wants to lose 20 pounds. I'm going to cut that protein amount down to 140 grams and the carbs actually aren't bad and I'm going to take that extra protein and put that onto fats so that we've got more fats, because I don't want anybody in my programming, I don't want anybody honestly, eating 35 grams of fat. I think that's way too little. So the macros you can play with.

Speaker 2:

Like I've said before, protein is kind of most important as far as like setting that first. In my opinion, that's how I do macros. I'm like, okay, if you weigh 163 pounds right now and you want to weigh 140, like that's your goal weight, that's a very healthy amount of protein for this woman. So I would say let's set your protein there. If she's like I'm only eating 80 grams of protein right now, I'm going to set her protein at like 100 and then fill in the other two macros with the rest of the calories and then, once we get consistent with hitting 100 grams of protein, I'm going to up that to 110, probably 120, honestly, but I'm going to increase it gradually.

Speaker 2:

Is what I'm saying. There's no reason if you're getting 10 extra grams of protein that you can't get 20. Because I don't want someone going from eating 80 grams of protein a day to eating 140. That's going to be a big calorie increase. It's going to kind of be hard to figure that out macro wise. You're going to be like what the hell am I eating? How do I pair that with other foods without going over? It's going to be hard. So I would just do that a little more gradually, that a little more gradually.

Speaker 2:

Also, when you increase protein quickly, protein is the, I guess, hardest macro for your body to digest. It takes a lot of work for your body to cut it down, break it down, process it, digest it, use it. So, which is great, it uses calories to do that, which is another benefit of eating protein. Your body's burning more calories as it's digesting the protein. You literally have to do nothing and you're burning more calories, but it also is really hard. So if you're just introducing 60 grams of protein instantly, your body's that's going to be hard that and causes some bloating, inflammation, some pain, indigestion, things like that. So that happens quite a bit. So we'll just do it very gradually.

Speaker 2:

Again, this is exactly how I would do this, which is exactly what I wanted to talk about, so you can kind of take your numbers, your scenario. You can put it in MyFitnessPal Probably already have, because everybody's pretty much already done that. You can also then go to this JCD Fitness page and put your numbers in here and then finagle it right. The calories is what you want to pay most attention to. Yes, this gives you a macro breakdown based on percentages that are out there in the world, that have been researched, they're scientific, they're great, but you don't have to do that. You don't have to do that, and that's what I want to make sure is that you don't have to follow my Fitness Pals guidelines. You don't have to do that, and that's what I want to make sure is that you don't have to follow my fitness pals guidelines. You don't have to follow this JCD fitness page. You don't have to follow my guidelines. There's different guidelines that you can make adaptable for yourself, which is a while back here.

Speaker 2:

A couple episodes ago, I talked about different ways, five different, I think, options of how to break up macros for yourself on a day-to-day or week-to-weekend or however you want to do it, because you're going to spend a lifetime putting your information into these apps, into these formulations, giving them to a coach, finding out macro numbers and none of it matters if you can't apply it to your life. So, in her situation, she's saying you know, right now she's 74 kilograms, like I said, 163 pounds. Well, she said previously, in 2020, she had lost a little bit less than 10 kilograms, eating 1,800 calories. Now she's trying to lose weight, eating 1,250 calories and she's starving all the time. Clearly, if you're starving all the time, if you're truly starving, if you're truly hungry, if you're truly feeling hunger in your body, that's your body saying I need some food, okay. It's your body saying I need some fuel, I need some nutrition, I need some nutrients, I need some macronutrients, I need some micronutrients, I need some water, I need something right. It's not like, oh, I need some Oreos. It's like your body is saying, and that's what my brain says, oh, I'm hungry. Oreos sound good, but what my body wants when you're hungry, especially if you're starving, like she said in all caps, that's your body saying you are not feeding me enough and what's happening is you're not feeding your body enough fuel, so your body is holding on to fat that it already has right and keeping that because you're not giving it enough.

Speaker 2:

So what happens a lot of times is, yeah, usually like when someone diets and they like cut out bread and they cut out sugars, and they cut out all the things right, and they're like, oh my God, I dropped 10 pounds in one week, awesome, awesome. But eventually your metabolism is going to go. Oh God, she's not feeding us enough. We can't live like this. If we're going to lose 10 pounds week after week after week, we're going to die.

Speaker 2:

So eventually your body gets smart, because your body's main job is to protect you and keep you alive. Your body will do whatever it takes to figure out how to keep you alive. It will store fat as fuel. Once it burns through all that fat. If you're not feeding it enough, yeah, you'll lose weight again, but you'll also. Your metabolism will slow down. It'll affect your hormones, it'll affect your bodily functions, it'll affect your organs. You will then start having diseases because you don't have any muscle mass. Your bone density sucks, right. So we don't want to do this. If you're hungry, if you are starving, stop doing that thing.

Speaker 2:

So I mentioned that to her, of course, and she even wrote back and said, like I know, logically, I know, I think she even said, like I'm a teacher, maybe she's in science, I don't remember. She's like I know the science, like I understand the calories, but to eat more, like I understand the calories but to eat more sounds like I'm going to gain weight, and I understand that. I hear that all the time. People are like you're not eating enough, we have got to increase your calories. And they're like you want me to eat more. I hired you to help me and hold me accountable to eating less, because I need to eat less to lose weight. And I'm like no, you don't, we have to get less to lose weight. And I'm like, no, you don't, we have to get your body functioning again. So in this case, if this is a client, if you're listening and you come to me and you have a situation like this, these are exactly the things that I'm going to do. I'm going to get this basic information from you. If you're a one-on-one client, I'm going to get a ton of information from you and we are going to really talk through.

Speaker 2:

What are you doing? The exact things how much movement, how many workouts, how much walking? What are you doing on a day-to-day basis? What does that look like? What have you tried in the past? How long have you been doing this. How are you feeling, seriously? Are you tired? Do you have energy? Are you starving? What is going on?

Speaker 2:

We really dive into that and I explain all of that no-transcript. I'm gonna start with 100 grams this week and next week. I'm gonna bump it up to 120 the following two weeks. I'm gonna bump it up another 20 the following two weeks. So I'm at 140. I have my carbs at 156. I'll keep my fats around 55, 60. I don't know if the math is math thing. Do that on your own. Make around 55, 60. I don't know if the math is mathing. Do that on your own. Make sure it works for you. And then I would start doing that gradually. Lay that out on a calendar and write down your macros on every single day for two weeks, change them up every single day again for two weeks, map it all out and say this is exactly what I'm doing and I don't know what my body is going to do. But right now I'm starving and I'm not losing weight, eating a hundred and or twelve hundred and fifty calories. So if I bump that up to thirteen hundred and fifty calories next week, I'm probably not going to gain any weight and I'm probably not going to be as hungry, right? So if you're right now like I'm not losing weight and I'm starving, then increase your food a little bit and you'll be fine.

Speaker 2:

It's like people always get stuck in like, well, what if I gain a little bit of weight, if I eat more? If you increase your food slow enough, you won't. You won't because your body will adjust. And if you're not losing weight on 1,250 calories, what are you going to do? Go lower. And there's no freaking way. I mean, I've had people come to me before like I've been trying to not eat over 900 calories, or in the past I've not eaten over 900 calories or between 900 and 1200. I'm like, how did that work for you? You cannot survive like that. You've got to start doing things right. What you're doing right now isn't working.

Speaker 2:

But you're also afraid to change. And I get it. I get it and I've been there and I'm there now. Sometimes, when I go into my build phase, I'm like, oh God, here we go. What if I get fat? What if I don't build muscle? What if? What if, what if? And it's like just shut up and do it. You don't really have a choice. But that exactly what I would say if you were like you know, I don't really know I'm nervous to gain weight. Well, for one, you're not going to. For two, what you're doing now isn't working. You're not even eating 1,250 calories and if you are, you're starving. So we have to make a change. Right?

Speaker 2:

But scientifically, that's what's going on and this is exactly how I would calculate calories. Again, as she said when she asked me the question on Instagram. I know that's not really your thing because, yeah, I cannot calculate them for you and say this is it? Stick to it, it's a perfect amount of macros, for you, it's the perfect amount of calories. I don't even know that. I don't know enough about her because I haven't even asked right, but just with basic information, I can tell you that I will say, like I said, if you go to this site, there are the formulas. So you can see a formula of.

Speaker 2:

There's a. It's called the Harris-Benedict equation. Is where the macro formulation comes in. So if I scroll up here, I can see yes, they use the Harris-Benedict equation. So it says for simplicity, we're going to use this equation because, let's face it, each maintenance calorie calculator will give you similar numbers and it's not worth worrying about which one is most accurate.

Speaker 2:

Hey men, so even this website. It's on the same page as me. It's not worth figuring out which one is most accurate, because they're all kind of accurate and all kind of not and you need to personalize it for your life anyways, and you need to personalize it for your life anyways. So it doesn't matter what the calculations are. You want a ballpark, right, but it lays it out for women. It's got all the formulas that you want here. Like I said, it lays it all out for you. You take your weight and you turn it in centimeters and then you do by your age and you figure out your calories per day. So all of that is on there. So I really, really like this site.

Speaker 2:

If you are wanting a way to kind of double check, right, let's say, you put it in my fitness pal and you're like I don't know if that's right. How do I know if this is right? Well, you don't until you try it, and if it doesn't feel right, don't do it. Go gradually, always err on the side of patience when you are doing these things, but go to this website, look through all this information on this page. Again, I'm going to link it in the show notes. I used it, like I said, a long time ago. I used it for a long time and I really liked it and felt like it was a good way to kind of get started, so I hope that's helpful. Again, I know this is not a direct. This is how you calculate. This is the exact number, right? This is the exact formula and this is what you do.

Speaker 2:

But over on the SoulFit podcast recently, erin and I were talking about these apps and like these or not even app. Well, we were talking about apps as well in an episode which, if you haven't listened, go listen to the SoulFit podcast, s-o-l-f-i-t. Soulfit, and we talk about a lot of awesome things over there. But we were talking about things that we put, we over-rely on or we become over-dependent on, and they were just different techniques. But macros it's another one of those things. If you don't look at it correctly, right, you buy a Beachbody program and you think this is the thing. I'm so dependent on these programs and I'm so dependent on this app and I'm so dependent on these little food containers that are going to save my life and give me my dream body and help me figure this out.

Speaker 2:

Macros are the same thing. You can become over-reliant and over-dependent and obsessed with getting the correct calculation when in reality, macros are the food you eat. Macro is for macronutrient, which is the breakdown of calories. It's not a magic pill. It's not something that's perfect, like you're not gonna get a magic number, but you have to have a general idea. You do have to have a general idea.

Speaker 2:

Okay, it's like in money, like you can spend a certain amount. If you make a certain amount of money, you can overspend one day and you can underspend the next day, but if you overspend constantly, you're broke. If you underspend constantly, you have a shit ton of savings, but maybe no fun. You went on a vacation, right, you have to find a balance, and that's exactly what this is. But on a vacation, right, you have to find a balance, and that's exactly what this is. But I don't want this to be a number that you're like oh, I just I haven't found that perfect macro number for me yet. Yeah, don't spend so much time worrying about that.

Speaker 2:

Take what you're doing and say, okay, it's been out this number for me, I've been doing it and it's not working. So I need to, I need to do something else, or I've been following it and well, I guess I meant I've been following it to the T and it's I'm not losing weight, I'm not gaining muscle, whatever the end result is. So it's not working. Or I am not gonna eat 1,250 calories because I'm literally starving and I can't do it. I'm binge eating at night. I'm, or you know, just having these binge episodes of like eating all the chips and eating all the things, right? That's what I mean by binge eating Like just having these episodes where I'm like I'm I'm so freaking savagely hungry, I'm eating all of the things when you're supposed to eat 1,250 calories, right? So either way it's not working. So we have to figure out what will. And if your option is 1,250 calories, it's not working. Your only option, truthfully, is to increase your calories, because do not go any less than 1,250 calories. If 1,250 isn't working, certainly 1,100 isn't gonna work. Like that's insane.

Speaker 2:

We really have to kind of go back to and I just wanna touch on that quickly that I don't want you to be over-dependent on this number. I want you to be over-dependent on this number. I want you to be over-dependent on yourself and learn to trust yourself. And that's where I come in and that's why I want to teach calculating your calories in a way that is yeah, you can calculate it. There are formulas, there are things that are scientifically correct and it's true. These things are true. But if you're not there in the place to receive that, like if you're not in a place to eat 1,500 calories or 163 grams of protein, then don't do it. We have to ease our way into it if that makes sense, so the number could be correct. You just have to ease your way into it, or the number could be completely incorrect, which is why having someone to go to as a coach, someone to go to to give you information, a podcast to listen to to at least reiterate that you're doing a good job, you're okay, you know what you're talking about and just keep going.

Speaker 2:

But this is how I approach calculating your calories. I keep wanting to say calorie calculating and it's coming out backwards. This is how I approach calorie calculating and macro calculations, because it's not a one size fits all. I don't put it into a number in my app. It will calculate for me the over. It'll kind of spit out a number for me of like this is what we think and I change it every single time and I change the ratios from where I think the person should be based on what they tell me inside of the app.

Speaker 2:

So I don't use for myself or my clients a particular calorie calculator and just be like, oh, that's the end, all be all. No, I always, always, always modify. So I hope this was really helpful. I know in general I get a lot of comments about macro episodes and how helpful they are and just a lot of ways to make it personal, because it's one thing to know the information. It's one thing to know too much information, like she said in this message, and then it's another thing to apply it to your life and that's where that's where fitness is kind of lacking and that's the whole point of this broadcast as far as unfucking your fitness. So I hope that was really helpful and I will talk to you in the next episode.

Speaker 1:

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 Christy Castillo Fit. I will see you next time.