Episode #329: Using Macros and Intuitive Eating for Fat Loss and Maintenance

Intro:

Welcome to The Healthy Catholic moms podcast where we make moving and nourishing our bodies the priority, so that we not only fulfill our vocations, but excel in our callings. I’m Brittany Pearson, a Catholic wife, mom, personal trainer, and I’m here to help you build healthy habits that actually fit your life. I am here to teach you how to get the results that you want and maintain the results that you want. Without spending hours at the gym, or meal prepping all weekend long. I understand I am right here with you getting my workouts done in the nooks and crannies of time, looking up recipes, while nursing babies and trying to prioritize my own health amidst everything else going on. But I have really good news for you, you can get the results you want. In less time without doing hours of cardio and restrictive dieting, I’m going to teach you how to use strength training and eating in a macro balanced way to get you feeling so good and your skin full of energy, and strong to carry out your life. Okay, on this podcast, we’ll delve into how to lose fat in a simple, sustainable way. What your workouts and nutrition should look like during different seasons of life, like during pregnancy and postpartum times. We’ll also discuss healthy quick meals, and how to get them on the table make food that kids will actually want to eat. Mom hacks for making your day run more smoothly, and so much more. All the while with continuous encouragement to stay the course and live with discipline. This is a place where we’re striving to steward our bodies well, in order to joyfully serve. I am so happy you’re here. Let’s dive in.

Main Episode:
Hello, beautiful people. I hope you’re having a wonderful day. Thank you so much for being here with me today. And I promise to try to make the most of your time I do not take it lightly that you have press play. And I’ve chosen of all the podcasts to spend time here today. So we’re going to happen in just one minute. I just want to let you know if you’ve not heard yet, I’ve been chatting about on the last couple podcasts. But I’m running a podcast review giveaway through the month of August. So you have until August 31. But don’t wait. Pause it right now go do it’s can take 60 seconds. If you’d be so kind as to leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts, Spotify, Apple, Google, etc. If you give a star rating and if it’s possible, because some platforms it is some it’s not to leave a written review, just screenshot your review, and email to me, that’s all you have to do to enter write a review or give a star rating, screenshot it and send it to Brittany and healthy Catholic moms.com. And you’re automatically entered to win a $25 amazon gift card. So of all the entries, I will just put them in a random online generator, let it do the magic for me. And I will announce the winner on the podcast and on social and all that great stuff. I’ll have your email from submitting it. So I will let you know. And that is again all the month of August but just get it done.

All right now I do hope you’re having a great August so far. And today we’re going to talk about how to use tracking macros, and eating intuitively for fat loss. Eating intuitively, intuitive eating, those are interchangeable, okay mean the same things when I say them. And we’re going to talk about it for fat loss and for maintenance. So if you’ve been around here awhile, or if you’ve done a an eight week program with me, that’s the beginner program where I teach you how to track macros, all that good stuff, or you’ve worked with me one on one or you’ve just been listening a while. Hopefully you’ve gotten the gist that what I like for I don’t know fat loss, maintenance pretty much all nutritional needs is an eye muscle building and whatnot as well, is to start with tracking macros. I think that’s a wonderful place to start, and then back off and ease off into intuitive eating or eating intuitively. So that’s kind of think of it just like a horizontal line with a little arrow going to the right, that is a progression I see is start with tracking lead to intuitive eating. Now, there’s differing opinions on this, of course, and there’s a book intuitive eating that I really love and I just actually recommended to a client the other day. But the difference I mentioned this when we were chatting was like I recommend you at all because I like a lot of the principles. However, where I differ with the authors is they kind of came from the world of seeing so many people stuck in calorie counting and craziness that they just want to get people to be able to eat according to their bodies and not have to do that not be a slave to it. I totally get that in the spirit of it and that’s where I want you to end up for me, seeing clients have no idea what they were taking in. It’s very hard to tell someone who’s eating a lot of processed foods. or very low protein or whatever their diets kind of all over the place to just listen to their body because their body has no idea, like cravings are very real, we can train our bodies to have cravings for things, I noticed that even if I’m having a higher process protein bar, regularly, like I will crave it, or because I’m having that I will crave other things that don’t usually crave other sweets and treats and whatnot, because I’m having that. So I think it’s very difficult to start with intuitive eating. And that’s my big disclaimer, in the eight week challenge too, I always say that with my ladies, like, we’re going to start out trying to track here, week one and two, if you get through week two, and you just have no idea. Like it’s stressing you out not you have no idea what you’re doing, because we can work that but it’s stressing you out and what makes you want to throw your phone across the room and you are not going to clean up any of your diet because that is your barrier to entry. Like you just cannot track you will not track really because anyone can, okay, but you just will not at this point, then we’ll work with that. And I’ll try to go a visual route with you instead like looking at your plate and filling it up. Because I get that it can be stressful to do in the beginning. But the ideal, in my opinion, is to get that true data to start things off, and then back off into intuitive eating. And I hope it’s encouraging and motivating.

Because I truly, this was like my exact journey I started out with just quote unquote, eating healthy. And it was actually I felt a lot more restricted. I felt like I was always eating the healthier stuff, picking the low calorie option saying no to this and that. But my body composition was not great. My body fat was pretty high. When I fell into and learned about tracking macros. That’s when my body totally changed, like my physique changed. I dropped a lot of body fat, but I felt like I could eat more than I did before. I was just figuring out the right balance for my body. Then once I backed off, you know, I got the gist of it. I backed off. This was like, I don’t know, married newly married season. Even before that I had tracked for a bit to kind of get in quote unquote wedding shape is what I was going after, you know. And then we got pregnant a month, I got pregnant a month after we were married. So I did not track the pregnancies. The only time I went back was after my first baby. Once I weaned him nursing like 14 months, I wanted to get a feel for how much I was taking in where my calories were at exactly what I’m gonna walk you through in a second. Because I knew things had tret drastically changed and almost whatever over two years of being pregnant and then nursing and stuff. I was like okay, my appetites super high, I have no idea what how much I’m eating from eating the right things I need to check back in. That is the last time I tracked my oldest son is six, and he was 14 months. So to this point through other pregnancies, other postpartum periods, I have been able to eat intuitively and never had to go back to tracking. So I hope that encourages you where you’re like, Oh, this is frustrating, I don’t really want to do it. Like it feels kind of obsessive or whatever. It the idea is, it’s a tool for a short amount of time that you can back off. And then I’ve have had clients who really love tracking who’ve done it, who did a challenge with me like two years ago, loved the freedom yet control it gave them to see oh my gosh, I can fit snacks in I can enjoy treats like and see it actually fit and no one within the confines of what I need to be and I’m not gonna gain fat from this and whatnot. And they’ve just stuck with it as a lifestyle, like plugging in a budget and an Excel spreadsheet, like they just like seeing that all matches up and lines up and fits. So to walk you through this journey in a very short time. I do want to say this is exactly what we do in the eight week program. So that’ll be coming up in September, I don’t have the date, or actually right in front of me, I think it’s September 19, mid kind of mid September where I want to delay it a little bit from the start of school around here. So all kinds of easing it’ll be after Labor Day for sure.

You can email me if you want to already you know you already want to get on the waiting list or you can do that on my website. And this is where I really hold your hand and teach you all of this but more to come on that later. This is the Cliff’s Notes version if you want to get started for yourself now or want to try to just do it on your own in general. So number one is to start with an awareness of what you’re taking in. How do you do that? You don’t just say I think I’m getting this I think even if I asked clients sometimes for like on a coaching call be like can you just tell me what a typical day of eating is like for you? That’s vary so much day to day and probably you’re gonna come up with like an ideal day like well, I start with a nice egg white omelet and then I have Ezekiel toast and did it and sometimes it’s just not like that. So we need to see how many calories you’re taking in over a period of time. This is also really important because if you just track for a day or two days and you send that to somebody say I was trying to calculate your macros, you sent me two days of eating, that’s not a full picture
of your calorie intake for the week. You know, some people do 1200 Calorie day and 1100 Calorie day then a 2300 calories a day. And it’s all over the map, especially if you know you’re logging for somebody else’s eyes, we tend to eat a lower calorie, which is not necessarily good. Those two numbers, I just threw out 1100 1200, I don’t want to see that on anybody’s logs, I want people eating more than that. Anyway, that’s kind of another another step on this. But you have to start knowing with what the heck is going on how many carbs fat, and protein in general, you’re usually averaging. So what I have my clients start with is just logging in my fitness pal, just putting it on. And I just had a coaching call yesterday, and she’s gonna kind of start this, she’s done the eight week program, but it was a while ago. So she’s in the chasing greatness group now monthly, and we just kind of need to rehash and fine tune nutrition. So this is exactly what her task is for this coming week is to just start logging. So we can get that average food. So exactly what I would tell you, this is you can totally do this. Okay, number one, just do that download, I use the free My Fitness Pal. There’s other apps too, but I used that log, everything you eat, don’t hold back, don’t try to hit any targets, even if you just signed up for it. And they’ll say put in your height put in your weight. Oh, look, Bernie, what are you talking about? It gave me targets right here, don’t follow their targets, they’re not good. Like it already sad to have 50% carbs, which I don’t already love. So just eat to hunger, get like a week of data. Okay, that’s what I usually recommend note number two. From there, you are going to determine what your overall calorie needs are, and what your individual macro targets are. This is the tricky part that’s easy for somebody like me, who has done this for 10 years, to look at your food logs, to see the averages to set you good targets. And obviously working within parameters, I’m not just going to cater to everything you just already ate, because that got you the result you already have. But I can see, okay, we need at least this much protein, but she tends a little more toward fat than carbs. So we’re gonna get a little more fat, we’ll take away some carb, you know, etc. It’s a lot to explain right now, I think I have an episode on this something about how to set your macro targets. But here’s the big but I have a PDF for you, that’s gonna make it really clear, really simple. It’s not going to take you long to read and walk through. But it’s really thorough, totally free. So just go grab that it’s on my website, right on the homepage is a free download. But it’s also in the link tree in my Instagram bio, I think it’s also like first or second thing. So just grab your free download there. And that will get you set with what your targets should look like. So one and two are already covered. One, you’re just logging. Number two, you’re going to actually try to make something of that data and put it into targets. Now. In that PDF, I go over how you move on from there, like what actually hitting your targets looks like how to go about that best tips for that, like I like to set with my meal that’s already kind of quote unquote set in stone, which for me is dinner, I know we’re doing tacos for dinner, and then I can play with the rest, like okay, then if I’m doing tacos, and I’m going to have gwoc that I’m gonna have to go lower fat at lunch, and I maybe won’t put feta cheese on my salad, yatta yatta, all of that’s in the PDF. Okay, so because I gotta get you through this whole vision, right of starting with tracking and moving to intuitive eating. So we’re kind of skipping steps. But say you’ve been dragging, Alright, step three is give it at least a month of hitting those targets, not a month of trying to hit the targets a month of actually hitting them. We’re assuming that you found the right targets, you’ve already done all the steps to know that you have know that it’s working for you that you know you’re in a calorie deficit if you’re trying to lose fat. So give it a month. Okay. Get used to it. Most of us, you know, some clients can expedite this process and do it like two weeks if you eat super similarly. However, a lot of us like there’s going to be some variance in a month that it’s nice to have these different combinations in your back pocket like oh, if I eat chicken parm and pasta for dinner, I know I’m going to need to not do as many carbs at breakfast or lunch. So I’m gonna have to do a salad not a wrap, like you just get more experienced logging and seeing what food consists of. You see, oh, three ounces of chicken breast is about 30 grams of protein. So if I almost always do some kind of chicken for lunch like buffalo chickens, Ed, I recently did an episode on my favorite rap and salad combinations. You know any of those things. I know the average is going to be like four to 500 calories, it’s going to have roughly 40 grams of protein. Like you get really good at ballparking things pretty quickly, but I would say at least a month so give it a month of trying to actually hit those targets. and actually hitting them. Now step four. If you do eat similarly, and you’ve gotten the gist of things, you can move to eating intuitively, what is that? What is eating intuitively, I think I have another whole episode dedicated to just how to eat intuitively, or something like that, or intuitive eating do’s and don’ts. But eating intuitively is literally just eating exactly according to those macros without logging, like you have figured out the right balance for you, you figured out I need 120 grams of protein, I need about 140 grams of carb and I need about 60 grams of fat, I just made those up. And everybody’s different. So don’t just write those down and try to do those, okay. And you now know all these different combinations of like, Oh, yep, like, it gets to the point where I know, like, I can’t also have peanut butter in my smoothie on the same day, as I’m gonna have gwoc as the same day as I’m gonna have cheese on my pizza or whatever, like, it’s gonna put me over and fat. So that habit and that little time that you put in, like, if you look at that, over the scheme of things, if it takes you a month, I’m telling you, I have not, I told you that I logged before I logged again for maybe a month when I was after my first son, maybe two months of logging for my whole life. And it has set me up for being able to lose fat between babies to maintain all of this for that tiny little like the return on investment is amazing for that little investment of time and energy to learn how to track Okay, and a lot of people this is not a shameless plug. It is but it isn’t. I know a lot of people do need the hand holding. So like, Yes, I have this PDF to get you started. Yes, I’m telling you, these x apps, where the faulty part comes in a lot is a lot of hiccups come with trying to do this on your own, like, hey, how do you best estimate this? Hey, what do I do when I’m going to a friend’s house like, hey, and that is where the eight week program really is helpful for people in setting that foundation, like, again, return on investment, like you do that once. And you’re set, honestly for life. And a lot of cases, there’s ladies who have talked to you years later who are like, Oh, my gosh, I learned what to do in the program. And then I can just live my life and I don’t have to track anymore. But I know what I’m doing. And you know, now you can move forward. So that’s step five is to move forward and use tracking as a tool for when you need to, quote unquote, get back on track, or buckle back down, or after a life change, like pregnancy or breastfeeding. And that’s all great and fine. That’s what a lot of ladies do is like they’ve learned it, they get where they want to get. They’re eating intuitively, and then it’s the end of summer, or you’re coming home from vacation, or different things you want to kind of check back in. There’s also like, if you vary your eating drastically season to season, that’s a good time, because maybe you’re going to learn how to do this in the summer. Right now, if you’re listening to when you’re eating a lot of salads or lighter foods, but then in the winter, you tend to eat more risottos and soups, and you don’t know how to ballpark that, that is a good time to check back in, use your tool and then be able to go back to eating intuitively and just going with it. But it’s not eating intuitively is not just whatever it’s listening to your body. If my body wants a candy bar, my body gets a candy bar it is eating according to your body’s needs. But you just know how to do it. Like think about it like intuition, like you intuitively know what to do. Okay, so I hope that paints a really clear picture for you. And give some explanation and you know, encouragement for why I think it’s so important to start with that first piece, I always do liken it to a budget where you can’t just set random budget categories. If you have no idea what you’re currently spending there, you cannot just I see people do this all the time too. And like some Aldi online group, I don’t think I’m in an all the airline group, but maybe I am because I see these things maybe it pops up is like suggested for you. And it’s like how do I how much you guys spending a month on groceries? So it was like 300 bucks and like, All right, I’ll do 300 We’re a family of seven. And you’re like what, like, what are you currently spending? Like, how are you doing this? So you’ve got to start with some data. And then ideally, yes, I want you to live in a place where the goal is that you feel really good. You’re really energetic. Your body is running so well you’re looking at food as fuel, but then you also get to enjoy life and do it guilt free. And also not gain fat. Like Doesn’t that sound like the world’s best plan because it really is. It truly is. I tell you if there was a better one. All right, ladies, I thank you so much for spending time here. Please go to the podcast review giveaway if you have not yet. Grab your husband’s phone do it there too. No, I’m just kidding about that one. And I will talk to you next time next episode we are chatting about five ways to cut down on decision fatigue and get healthier as a result. I cannot wait to dive into that. That is such a mom thing. saying that we all it stresses me out decisions so, all right, I will talk to you then have a great rest of your day.

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