 Macros. What are they? Why should you count them? Why should you not count them? Why is everybody in the fitness space talk about counting macros when it comes to getting lean, building muscle, or changing your physique? Indeed, they are very important to understand. In today's episode, we're talking all about macros who should, who shouldn't count them, and how the best ways are to use these to get to your results. How to do them right. How to do them right. I do get, we get a lot of questions surrounding this. Everything from do I weigh my food before or after I cook it? Is it important that I pay attention to saturated, unsaturated fats? Does it make a difference on what carbohydrates? How do I know where to start? And what a great episode to do when Justin can't make it. Yeah, Justin, Justin has to come over the hill and there's huge accidents, couldn't make it. So we picked an episode that we knew he would, he would not be disappointed. This will be good because he's normally rolling his eyes when I'm talking about macros any other time when we're answering questions. So it'll be an opportunity. Athlete at heart. All right. So for the sake of this episode, we're going to kind of cover macros from a body composition standpoint and we'll really kind of inform all of you the best ways to do this and the different ways you can do this. But let's first start about, start with what macros are, right? What are macros? Macro is short for macronutrients. So micronutrients are like vitamins and minerals and things that are in food that are typically present in very small amounts. Macronutrients are important things that are found in food in large amounts. And really, when we're talking about macros, we're covering three macronutrients. It's proteins, fats, and carbohydrates. So when people say they're counting the macros, what they're doing literally is counting or tracking proteins, fats, and carbohydrates. So first, I think we should talk about each one of their value. And then we can get to the rest. But proteins got to be on the top of the list. Yeah, in terms of its value. This is typically where I would start, even a client who maybe isn't care that much about body composition change, we just want to figure out where or what they should be doing as far as getting to their macros and starting them off in the right direction. I find just tracking protein is one of the easiest ways to get somebody's body to start moving in the right direction. And I've also found that it's probably the one that is the most miscalculated or overly estimated, like when someone thinks they're eating a lot of protein. Totally. You brought this up the other day when we were talking. I made the same mistake when I first started counting back in the days when we didn't have all these great apps and tools to support it. We had to do it by hand. And I remember thinking that, oh yeah, I eat high protein. I eat a lot of protein. And because I assumed because I had protein in every single meal I had, I assumed that I was getting plenty of protein. But when I actually started to track, I realized that I wasn't just under eating. I was grossly under eating. I wasn't even hitting what the kind of the minimum of what I should be doing for, especially for a building muscle. Totally. All right. Today's program giveaway is the RGB bundle. If you want to win that, you have to enter. Here's how. Leave a comment below this video on the first 24 hours that we drop it. Subscribe to this channel and turn on notifications. If you win, we'll let you know in the comment section. We're also running a sale this month. Map symmetry, half off. And the RGB bundle I just talked about is also half off. If you're interested, click on the link at the top of the description below. All right, here comes the show. So, okay, so protein is really important for a few different reasons. One, it's an essential macronutrient, you have to consume some, otherwise your body can function, period, end of story. So you have to have a certain amount of protein, but it's also the macronutrient that's most closely connected to body composition. Fats and carbs are connected to body composition when calories are appropriate. But protein is really interesting because same calorie diets with high protein versus low protein actually produce different results. Protein is more closely connected to muscle and fat loss. And here's the most important thing in my opinion, which is it's mostly tied. It's the macronutrient that's mostly tied to satiety, meaning of the three that we talked about. Protein is the one that's most impactful on keeping you full and satisfied. Now, why is that important? Well, if you're trying to get lean, the most challenging aspect of trying to get lean is your appetite and your cravings. Protein crushes those much more than carbs and even more than fats. Here's the other reason why proteins are really valuable to look at. They're the hardest to come by with your food. Now, why you think, why are proteins so hard to come by? Because when it comes to palatability and enjoyment or the enjoyment of eating something, the taste of something, right? Protein doesn't make the equation. Protein doesn't make food more palatable. Fats and sugars, salt is in there as well, but fats and sugars do. So food manufacturers and companies, they dole out fat and carbohydrates really easily. Protein, they really only add protein if they're trying to make something high protein, so it's harder to come by. I think shelf life has a lot to do with that too, right? So if you go to a gas station or somewhere quick to grab food, you're not going to see many times lots of options for protein because you can't leave a protein for the most part on a shelf. Yeah, I mean, other than maybe like some nuts, seeds, or like beef jerky, you're probably your three main sources of protein that you're going to see that could sit on a shelf for an extended period of time. Everything else you tend to have to make, and so it makes it that much more challenging for the person to consistently get their protein intake every single day. Yeah, plus, I mean, if you want to make something taste really good, the last thing you add is protein. It's always fats or sugars or salt, so it's just hard to come by. All right, let's talk about the value of tracking. Why is this valuable? Well, we are extremely unaware of the amount of calories and the grams of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates that we consume. In fact, they've done lots of studies on this, and even people who understand proteins, fats, and carbs and the foods that contain them are typically off when they estimate by 20 or 30%, let alone people who aren't really familiar with how many grams of protein are in six ounces of chicken or how many grams of fat are in half a pound of 80% ground beef. Even people who are aware, we're just off. We just don't estimate, and so there's this massive lack of awareness, and so what happens is you try to judge your food without tracking and you're going to be off, and then you're going to wonder why you're not seeing progress, and then what tends to happen is people overcorrect and then they get too hungry or they don't feel good, and it becomes like this, I'm walking through a room in the dark, I don't have a flashlight, and I can't find my way out. So there is tremendous value in tracking macros, especially through the learning process and the awareness process, but this doesn't mean that it's valuable for everybody. There are groups of people where I would steer away from tracking, and so we should say that first before we continue, and just generally speaking, if you have dysfunctional eating patterns, if you've had an eating disorder, if you have hyper-body awareness, tracking macros can lead to more stress, more anxiety, and more dysfunctional eating. So if that's you, if you've been diagnosed with anorexia or bulimia, or you know you've got really out of the ordinary bad relationship with food, or you just know counting calories, proteins, fats, and carbs is going to be trigger for you, then you probably don't want to go into tracking until you can figure that out because it's just going to make things a lot worse. Yeah, I want to be clear though, I think for my experience training clients, you would have to have an eating disorder for me to not recommend or want you to count. At least in some capacity, right? Yes. And that means in a real eating disorder, not somebody like, oh, I just don't like to count calories, or I don't want to, or I don't like, you need to have had some sort of an issue with tracking foods. Or it's like a big trigger, right? Right. And those clients, I don't think this episode is designed, these are for people that are trying to lose weight. They don't have an eating disorder. They're trying to figure out what they should do to start. And I think everybody, and I even think that even if you have in the past, that if you are getting ready to start like a new goal, like you hadn't tracked in a long time, and you're now, I want to build say 10 pounds of muscle, or I want to lose body fat, or I just, whatever the goal may be, if you're re-engaging again, I think you have to. I mean, still to this day, every time I decide I'm on a quote unquote kick, meaning I'm like, I'm setting like maybe an aggressive goal for myself to change body composition or even like build strength, I'm going to go and track for at least a few weeks to recalibrate because our lives are constantly changing. I mean, we just can't, you know, a couple of years ago, we had the pandemic, everybody's work life changed, their activity level changed, gyms were shut down for a while. There's a lot of times where just you go through these ebb and flows of lots of activity, not so much activity, more muscle, less muscle, and all those things factor in. Yeah, metabolism changes. Yeah. So it's very, you know, higher stress levels, like at certain points of your life than lowers, like all these good sleep versus bad sleep. So all those variables will change how your body is burning calories. And so it's important to at least recalibrate, figure out where your maintenance is. And then from there, we decide whether we're going to be in a surplus maintenance or deficit. Just put the cherry on top. This is coming from somebody who was a professional competitive physique competitor. So Adam understands macro is better than 99.9% of the people out there. And he's saying he still has to do this. So if you, so you probably still should have to do this as well. Well, what I've found is I'm almost wrong every time. Yeah. And it doesn't matter how good I am at it. And I think I'm pretty good. I have the ability to look at a plate of food and I can get pretty close to exactly where the macros and calories are at. So I'm very good at tracking. But it's the other thing that is always changing in my life that I don't account for. And when I actually guess, oh, I'm probably eating this or, you know, and then I put it all in and I actually tracked for a while. It's like, oh, wow, that was much more than I thought or way less than I thought. In most situations, 95% is great, right? In counting macros, 95% means you're 5% off, which means you don't lose weight or you gain body fat, right? That's just 5%. Now most people are off by 20% or more, right? So just, you know, I hope we nailed that down and hammered that home. All right. So first let's talk about how to figure out your macros and what macros you should aim for. Well, first and foremost, there are macro calculators that are out there. There are ways to get a generalized number of where you should probably kind of start. Now, I do want to say this, they are estimations and there's such a variance between individuals that I would never take an estimation as the hard number. This is just kind of a place to get started and give you an idea of a ballpark. And then from there, you got to kind of dig down a little deeper. One of the best ways to figure out your specific caloric intake or your needs is to simply track your calories for about two weeks with no judgment, no change in diet, don't try to change anything, and just see where your calories sit at now. And what that'll give you for most people is close to what's considered your maintenance calories, meaning that's the amount of calories that you'll probably need to consume. If you don't want to gain weight, you don't want to lose weight, you want to kind of stay where you're at. And then from there, we can decide if you want to go up or down depending on the goal. But it's about two weeks is typically where I'll have people go. Yeah, two weeks is plenty. I think even sometimes seven days, if my client is pretty consistent, I can get that. But I think it's so important to note that, and we have it. We have a maxmacro.com calculator that people know it's free. You can put it in your stuff to get an idea. Those things are really good for a client that has no idea of how much protein, carbs, or fat that their body should have. And again, there's an equation that breaks down their weight, their activity level, and their goal, and it'll give you this idea of where you should be at. But I like to use that as just like if someone is clueless completely. They've never counted any idea. They have no idea how much protein, fat, or carbs they're doing right now. And it's like, okay, plug all this in. It'll tell you based off of your goal, your body, your body type size, everything about where you should be at. And so that gives you a starting point maybe to where you should be at. But it's not the end all be all, even though they're presented to you like, oh, if you want to lose 13 pounds, you should eat this. I don't want to use that at all. I only am using it to give myself some sort of a baseline on what I want to start tracking the first week or two. So I can get a really good idea of where my personal macro maintenance level is. And what you're looking for is this, I'm looking to not really gain or lose anything in those two weeks. I want to eat when I'm hungry. Most people know when they are, you know, binging or eating outside of their normal eating habits. Like I would tell clients like if you have a Snickers bar every day at two o'clock in the afternoon, I actually want you to still do that during this time period. I want you to eat what you would consider consistent and what you normally do. So, and that is, and it's included in all these snacks or treats or things you normally, you normally would eat, no matter whether they're good or not for you. I want to see, I just want to see consistently your habits and your routine. This also helps us peer into, you know, easy little adjustments that we can make along the way that aren't super radical that will shift this person way down or way up by changing up their calories. Yeah. So you essentially want to figure out what your maintenance is and that's kind of a good starting point. Now the next step, and we're going to go step by step here. Okay. In other words, you know, step one, you can just track this, step two, we can add this to it and then, you know, so on and so forth. So step one, if you just want to kind of dip your toe and you're not trying to go full on into tracking everything is to just track and try to hit protein targets. Now, why do we pick protein? Again, it's the most satiety producing. If you're eating your protein intake, we don't need to worry about your fat. You're probably getting adequate fat. Fat is also essential and carbs, you can eat them or not. They're not essential and that'll come in or not depending on how you feel. But if you track protein and hit protein, most people will start to see body composition changes by just doing that. So this begs the question, well, how much protein should I aim for? Here's what you should aim for. Aim for your target body weight in grams of protein. I say target body weight because if you need to lose 50 pounds, use that as your target body weight. If you want to pack on 10 pounds of muscle, use that as your target body weight. But it's protein in grams that matches your target body weight. Okay. So if your target body weight is 130 pounds, then aim for 130 grams of protein. If it's 200 pounds and for 200 grams of protein, just start there. And most people, most people will start to see some pretty good progress just doing that. Now, it's harder than it sounds, so you may be listening like, okay, cool, I hit 130 grams of protein a day. It's not easy. So some tips. Do not skimp on protein early in the day. What you don't want to do is catch up with protein. Try and eat more than 50 grams of protein in a meal. You're going to hit palate fatigue real quick. I mean, satiety kicks in. You're like, I can't do this anymore. So start your day off with a really good high protein meal. Figure out your total protein and make sure you divide it through your meals so you don't end up playing catch up. Because the catch up game screws everybody up when it comes to protein. Well, the reason why I focused for with all clients at least here is because it's the one macronutrient that if it's off by a lot for what you need, it will make a difference in your body composition where the other two. So let's say if all calories were exactly the same, let's say 2,000 calories put you in a fat loss deficit or put you in a place where you should be maintaining but losing body fat or maybe gaining muscle. If you have most of those coming from saturated fat or carbohydrates, either one, and they go up and down a percentage, you'll still stay the same because your calories are the same. If you are grossly under-consuming protein in that same calorie range, your body won't build muscle. It just won't. You won't lose as much body fat. Yeah, and so it will, even though you're like, let's say it's a number that will actually make you lose weight and on the scale you go down but you are getting mostly carbohydrates and fat and your protein is really low, the scale weight went down but you lost muscle as fast as you lost fat. And so protein of all the macronutrients is the one that if we make sure that we're hitting that target every single day, I can really change the carbon and fat ratio and not make a difference on that client's ability to either build muscle or hold on to muscle. Protein makes that difference. And so it's normally where most people that are dieting make a mistake is thinking that, oh, all it matters is calories. So if I cut my calories, oh yeah, I will lose weight. Problem is you'll lose as much muscle as you lose fat. Here's what the data shows. The data shows that when it comes to fats and carbs, so long as you hit essential fats because fats are also essential. I mean, you have to have a certain amount in order to survive. Carbs are not essential so you could go all the way down to zero. But so long as you hit essential fat that the individual variance between how I feel, what gives me more satiety and energy can vary greatly. Some people do much better with a lower carb, higher fat diet and other people, vice versa. You could play with those, but the data shows consistently that high protein is beneficial for fat loss, for muscle gain, muscle maintenance, and for satiety. So in other words, for the vast majority of people listening right now, keep your protein intake high. Play with the other ones depending on how you feel, what you crave, and the kind of energy that you tend to get. Now the next thing that you probably would want to add to track is fiber. Now why fiber? Fiber is also satiety producing. In fact, if somebody's hitting a high protein, high fiber diet, they almost always don't overeat. It's hard to overeat when you're hitting, you know, let's say your goal is 130 grams of protein, you're eating 130 grams of protein and 25 grams of fiber. It's really hard to overeat when you're eating those two. Both of them have been shown in study after study after study to kill appetite and cravings. And in our experience as trainers, working with lots of people, it's 100% true. It's also one that tends to be under consumed when someone gets on a diet. Yes. So if you eat a lot of boxed and packaged food that's, you know, added fiber, got added fiber into it, and then all of a sudden you decide, okay, I'm going to go on a diet. I'm going to start trying to target whole foods, which I think is a great strategy and you should do. Many times people neglect to pay attention to how much their fiber intake gets reduced because they're no longer eating all these foods that have added fiber to it. And that makes a big difference in the digestive. Like you will, if you will be, and I would say women somewhere between 25 and 35 is like the bare minimum men 35 to 55 range, maybe ducks and double check. That's where I used to put my clients. 25 was the minimum for everybody. That was the bare minimum that I would aim for. Yeah. And what you'll see is a lot of times when someone goes right to like a whole foods type of diet, if they're not going after fruits and vegetables, they're going to add vegetables consistently, which sometimes we miss. I'm guilty of this, right? I'm guilty of preparing my, you know, my carbs and my proteins, so like my rice and my meat or whatever and cooking on a Sunday. A lot of times I don't like to eat my vegetables and, you know, four days later, after I cook them and reheat them, I normally like to do them fresh. Problem with that is what happens a lot of times is I don't account for how low of fiber I am. Where do you give me duck today? Yeah, that's it, right? Yeah, right around. The third to like 35 is probably a good range for most people. 25 was always the minimum, though, that I would aim for. Bare minimum you want. And think the best places and sources for that are like your, you know, berries are my favorite because they're high in fiber. Razberries, very high in fiber. Yeah, all berries in general, right? Blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries. All berries are high in fiber, high in antioxidants and low in calories. So it's an easy way to boost somebody's fiber without getting a bunch of additional calories and they taste good. So those are my favorite sources. We should talk real quick. We didn't mention great sources of protein. Animal sources are the most bioavailable. They have the best value. However, if you're hitting the protein targets that we said, the protein type doesn't matter. So if you're hitting a gram of protein per pound of target body weight, it doesn't matter if you get it from eggs, chicken, beef, plant, sources, it doesn't matter. If your protein's lower, animal sources become much more important. Well, along those lines, you know, and I don't even know why, for say, this matters so much. But when I was competing, I did some shows where I went 100% all-whole foods and then others where I used shakes and bars. And even though I still got in great shape, I noticed a difference in one. One was easier than the other. And then two, I felt like my body changed and looked different by getting whole foods. So when I coach clients, when we're trying to hit our protein intake, the goal, like what I would consider like a perfect day is getting it all through whole foods. Doesn't mean that you can't have a shaker bar in there to hit your intake. If I had to choose whether you hit it or not hit it, and then, you know, one of them is you eating a protein bar to hit it, and you not hitting it, is you not using it. Of course, I'd rather you do that. But I always want to teach my clients to try and get whole foods first and only use things like shakes and bars as a supplement to get to their protein intake because they missed it, versus what I think a lot of, like, the industry has promoted shakes and bars. Like, it's a health food and that when you go on a diet, you should put it in your diet. No, they're convenience foods. Yeah, use it as a supplement that if I couldn't do it through whole foods, I use this. I don't like to have, and I've seen this before, where I have had a client and they're hitting all their protein intake and then I see they're getting it through three shakes and bars every single day, and for some reason, that client always tends to have a harder time, you know, losing the weight or changing their body composition than the person who I've got hitting whole foods. It doesn't produce satiety the same as well. A shake will not produce the same fullness as whole natural foods. Right. And that's, especially if you're trying to get lean, that is the most important thing you want to look at. All right. Now, so we're, by the way, we're going in order of importance, okay? There's also one more. I want to add one more thing to that because we didn't touch on it in this episode, even though we have other. The other factor that I think plays a role in that is that food labels are allowed to be 20, 25% off. Yeah, yeah. And so if you've got three of your sources of protein coming from packaged bars or shakes. It's gonna be way off. That rule applies even for health foods. It's not just for junk food. You got to think that companies that promote healthy foods are going to use that rule that FDA allows them to be 20 or 25% off on the label to benefit their selling point. Like if you are selling that you have a high protein bar, I might exaggerate by 15%. It has more protein than what it really does. And I'm completely playing by the rules to do. They put on the label the lower than the actual. That's right. And that's where I think why this is happening or in my experience, I just notice a difference when people get a lot of their protein from shakes and bars. And so if you think that you're doing that two or three times a day, every day, and it has room of being 15% to 20% off all time, that could be the difference if you not losing weight or not building the same muscle that you did if you went all through whole foods. So just an important thing to think about. Totally. Okay, so like I said earlier, we're doing these in order of importance. So we start with protein tracking, then we said protein and fiber. All right, the next step, now you're going to track all of your macros. Proteins, fats and carbohydrates. Okay. Proteins and fats are essential. So you should eat a minimum amount of fat. Otherwise you, again, you won't thrive. I never like to see anybody below around 60 grams of fat. Even that is really low for a lot of people. So for most people, 40 to 60 grams is what's considered minimum. I know you'll look on the internet and it'll say even less. In my experience, people go below that. They start to notice negative side effects. Other than that, if your calories are where they should be and you're eating high protein and you're hitting your fiber targets, your fat and carbs can be very flexible. I mean, they could flip. You could go low carb, high fat, you go high fat. You could go low fat, higher carb. It's really, I like to base this off of performance in the gym and how I feel and what foods I crave and enjoy the most. Personally speaking, a low to moderate low carb diet for me feels the best. It just does. But I've worked with people where that makes them feel sluggish and they need more carbohydrates and they enjoy eating them. And it doesn't matter. It really doesn't matter. So long as you hit those minimums and you're hitting the protein and fiber, this is something that you can totally play with. And I suggest you play with it. I suggest you track them and notice which one makes you feel how and I feel more sharp when I eat this way. But then when I want to do a hard workout, I eat this way. For example, if I'm going to do a really hard workout, I definitely tend to bump my carbs. If I'm going to be in here podcasting all day long or speaking in front of an audience, lower carbs tends to work better for me. So I like to start a client out by splitting it pretty even with their carbohydrates and fat. So you focus on the protein, like we said, hit your one to one ratio. You've got your total calories from that. The remainder of calories, you basically split those in half between carbs and fat to start with. So 50% of the calories from fat, 50% of our carbs, not the equal amount of grams. Because remember, fat grams are nine calories per gram whereas carbs are four, right? So calories is what you're dividing. Yes, thank you for that point. I know somebody's going to be like, oh, cool, the equal. Yes, right. So I'm splitting the calorie difference by carbohydrates and fat. And that's just a start. And then I do exactly what you said. It's the same thing. And it's really going off how you feel. Some of my clients, you know, oddly would feel more energy on lower carb. They just, they felt better. And there was no blow. They didn't feel sluggish. They didn't have crashes. They didn't have that mid-afternoon. I felt like I needed to take a nap. And they loved the low carb. Other clients I felt like said, oh my God, if I don't get carbohydrates, I just can't get up and go. I don't have any energy. Or my workouts absolutely suck if I don't have carbs. I feel this way. If I don't have enough carbohydrates in me for the day, my workouts just, I don't have good workouts. I feel flat in the workout. I don't push as hard. I don't feel as strong. So I like to split it down the middle. And then I like to take that feedback from the client on how they're feeling. Do they, and then based off of that, I'm going to adjust. And I do love, no matter how you, whether you go, oh, I feel fine. I still like to play with it. I thought, hey, why don't we try this week? And there's two reasons why I like to do this. One, they may not be aware that they will feel better. I feel better by going higher carb or higher fat for the week. The other thing is, it just breaks up monotony as eating the same way all the time. I've always found giving clients these like week to week type of goals. And I do this with myself. It is easier to kind of like say, oh, just for the next seven days, I'm going to eat this way. And then next week, I'm going to go and eat this way. When you, when you break up the big, you know, goal over, you know, say three, six months, whatever it's going to take you to get to where you're going. It's, it gives you this ability to like focus in these small little milestones. So I enjoy it for that. And then again, like the education reason of not realizing that, oh, wow, I didn't realize that I felt a lot better on this lower carb or oh, I didn't realize I felt better on higher carb. Let's be very clear. This is, yes, you're trying to get to a goal, but this is also a learning expedition. You're really understanding and figuring out your body and how foods affect you. That is so invaluable if this is a lifelong pursuit for you. Like if you plan on getting leaner or becoming more fit and not going backwards afterwards, you're going to want to learn these things about your body and introducing novelty and switching things up will allow you to do that. Doing the same exact thing all the time, you're not going to understand how doing it the other way might make you feel. It's so important that you pay attention to the behaviors that are connected to this too. So I made the comment that, oh, my workouts just aren't as good when I'm lower carbohydrate. Well, you know, the benefit though when I'm lower carbohydrate is I have less cravings. So depending on what I'm trying to accomplish at that time, I may shift that focus, right? So if I'm in a bulk and I'm trying to build, I don't mind if I have cravings. I need to eat more calories. And so it's like doing a higher carb diet helps me with that. Well, when I'm in a cut and I'm trying to go the other direction, I tend to like a higher fat diet because then I'm not craving the food. So it's not just important to look at how you feel in performance, but also the behaviors that are attached with the different macro profiles that you're doing. And again, I recommend always I have my clients do both where they go high fat for a while, low fat for a while. And they're playing with those to get an idea of the pros and cons for them on each side. And so they can learn in the future how to adjust that. I know you talk Sal a lot like you're so much sharper when you don't have carbs. So if you have a profession, a job where you have to get up and present or you're on a podcast, you do things where you want to be clear and sharp. You may adjust your fat and your carbohydrate intake specifically for that within the context of still heading towards your weight loss goal or muscle building goal. Totally 100%. All right. So let's talk about how you would break this up to be more specific. Like should you eat smaller meals throughout the day or should you eat larger meals? Now, first, I'll say this. Ultimately, this doesn't make a big difference except for the extremes. Like for eating one massive meal every two or three days, probably not a good idea. Or if you're eating 10 small meals a day, also probably not a good idea. But in the context of what's considered, I guess, normal, like let's say between two to five meals, really the biggest thing you want to consider is which one you prefer doing. It really doesn't matter aside from that. Now, I will say this. Here's where small meals becomes very valuable and also where maybe less frequent meals becomes valuable. To hit high protein targets, it's really hard to do it in fewer and larger meals. If I'm trying, for me, my goals, I have to aim for about 200 grams of protein a day, maybe 210 grams of protein a day. It's really hard to do that in two meals. 100 grams of protein in two meals, it's just I feel like I'm stuffing myself. I don't feel good. It's too much. Four to five meals for me works better in that particular sense. So that's one major thing to consider. Here's the other thing. If you're trying to eat less calories, some people do better with fewer meals because they're less hungry. On the other hand, some people actually do better with smaller meals because they get to eat throughout the day and that helps them with their hunger. What's the ultimate learning lesson here? You got to do what works best for you. It really doesn't make a huge difference whether or not you eat it in less meals or more meals. And that's the truth. The answer to this is understanding yourself and paying attention to the behaviors around what it looks like when you get all your calories in two meals in a day. What does it look like behaviorally when you eat six meals a day? Because we know what the science says. There is no difference metabolically, none of them. But it is important to recognize behaviorally what is different about you. I tend to put clients on the smaller meals. I just think that they have an easier time hitting their protein intake. I also think they have an easier time combating hunger. If you have six small meals a day, you're basically eating every two hours. So I have found that when clients go in these where they only eat two meals a day or sometimes even three meals a day, they have these extended period of time when they don't eat. When that extended period of time when they don't eat, they tend to get the cravings kick up and then it's harder for them to discipline themselves to make a good choice. How many times have you done that yourself where you skipped lunch because you were busy working and five, six hours went by and eat and now like all you're thinking about on your way home, all the drive-thrus, right? Something you could drive through real quick and just eat. You're not thinking about going home and reheating your chicken and rice bowl that you have or worse, going home and having to prepare and make all that. And just behaviorally speaking, sometimes it's more of a challenge for the client to be disciplined. But as far as the science is concerned, it doesn't matter whether it's two meals or six meals, but where it does matter is the behaviors. So be aware of that. It's okay to have the flexibility where let's say you say, I'm gonna eat six meals most of the time, but I'm not gonna stress out when I have it in two meals, but recognize the difference in your behaviors that are attached to those different ways of eating. Yeah, and then again, it could go the other direction. Some people hate the inconvenience of eating every two hours and they like to work and they like to work through the day and then eat the larger meal. Some people find it easier to structure themselves when they know they're not eating till a particular time and it makes it easier for them. This is totally up to the individual preference. I can't stress that enough and I've had clients on either end of the spectrum. There is no right answer except for the one that works better for you. All right, lastly, and we've already made this point, but let's hammer it home. Whole foods rule, okay? I don't care what your goal is, getting most if not all of your macronutrients from whole natural foods is healthier. It's better for you. It's less expensive. It's more accurate. It's just going to make things a lot easier. Using engineered or processed foods in your diet is going to make things a lot more challenging. First off, they're engineered to make you overeat so that throws that signal off. As Adam said earlier, they could be off by as much as 20 to 25%. If you're trying to eat 2,000 calories a day, it could be 400 calories off. That's the difference between a gained body fat or a lost body fat, okay? That's massive. It's also, it's better for you. Whole natural foods, our bodies evolve with them. They metabolize them better. They digest them better. They're better for our microbiomes. They're just better overall. Now, we're not super religious about this or zealots about this. The processed foods and packaged foods have their place, and it's mainly around convenience, okay? It's not always easy to hit your targets or you're on the go. You're on a plane or you're in a car or you're in a meeting. Those are the times I would say that those foods can play a great role. I personally use protein powders and I save them at the end of the day if I miss my targets. If I'm off by 30 or 40 grams, I can make up the difference at night with a protein shake. But other than that, if you could just try to stick to whole natural foods, it will make this journey a million times easier. I find it extremely important at the beginning. I think that, I mean, like you said, we're not zealots about it. I have beef sticks. I use protein bars. I use shakes. I use, you know, processed high protein cereal. Like I utilize a lot of different processed foods along the way of my overall health and fitness journey. But if I'm about to get on a kick and I have a very specific goal to change my body composition, at the very beginning, I'm very disciplined about eating all whole foods just because I want to get a really good baseline that if I am going to allow these packaged foods that have the ability to be off by 20, 25% into the diet, I'm factoring that in as a possibility of why my body composition isn't changing or moving. Because, oh, wow. Well, I know when I'm hitting these exact targets, eating whole foods, my body is changing and this is the response from it. When I allow even these healthy processed foods into my diet, it stalls a little bit. So there's a good chance I'm over-consuming here or there or missing numbers here because I'm eating packaged foods. So I definitely think that starting off, it's important and it's important that you weigh and measure at the beginning. So when we talked about that first two weeks of figuring out your macros, do not make the mistake of thinking that you can look at a food and then look at your macro app, MyFitnessPal or FatSecret or whatever tool you use and go, oh, yeah, that's six ounces of chicken or, oh, yeah, that's a small yam. The way they categorize it in these apps are very general and generic. I remember the first time that I found this out was actually Sweet Potatoes and I had been tracking all my stuff. I'd been doing this for, I don't know, like a month or two and I could not figure out for the life of me why my progress was stalling and I'm eating so clean, I'm eating so healthy. But what I was doing was I was inputting my yam and I put it in as a large yam. We have an option in the app I was using back then. It was like... Small, medium or large? Yeah, small, medium or large. I'm like, oh, this is a large yam. Okay, well, what exactly did it... Well, when I dug deeper to find out what they constituted a large yam, it was like a certain amount of ounces. I don't remember... So you had a triple extra... Oh, it was three times now and I was eating yams at least two to three meals in every single day. Another 800 calories. Yeah, so I was literally... And of course, in my head, I'm going, oh, this is a healthy food. I wasn't really worried about it until I was stalling my progress so much and then... And I thought, oh, I was putting the largest one so it must be accurate. Oh, no, I was off by a few hundred calories and then I was doing that two or three times in a day. So I was massively off. And so at the beginning, it's important that you weigh all your foods. You measure, you figure everything out. Get accurate. Yeah, to get an accurate reading, to get an accurate baseline. Also, when talking about weighing your food, what I get asked a lot is, like, do I weigh it before or after I cook it? We're splitting hairs on, you know, like how much protein is cooked off after you barbecue a chicken versus before. What's more important is you're consistent. I like the way, after I'm done cooking, I don't like taking wet chicken breast or wet meat and throwing it on the scale and making a mess. And so I don't care if that is, you know, a fraction off from what the actual app is, how the app uses it. You just need to be consistent. Just like you, how we talk about utilizing body fat testing tools, it's less important about what the body fat test said or what the exact, you know, weight of that is. It's that you consistently. You just use it always. The same way. If you're going to weigh it one way, then always weigh it one way. That's right. That's what matters the most. What could throw you off is if you sometimes weigh your chicken before you cook it, weigh it after other times, like those things could make a difference because you're inconsistent. So whatever way you decide to do it before or after, I have always recommended after you cook the food to weigh it, just be consistent with it. Totally. I like to do it. I'll put the plate on the scale, subtract the plate, put the food on and then boom, it's real easy. Look, if you liked this episode, if you like Mind Pump, go to mindpumpfree.com and check out our free guides. We have free fitness guides that can help you with a lot of different goals. You can also find us on Instagram. Justin is not here, but you can find him on Instagram at Mind Pump Justin. You can find me at Mind Pump DeStefano and you can find Adam at Mind Pump Adam.