Are You Having Trouble Losing Weight? Track Your Macros.

Summary

In this episode of the Ernie Tata podcast, Danny Dumas discusses the importance of mindful eating and fitness, particularly for those in middle age. He shares his personal journey with weight management, the challenges of maintaining a healthy diet, and the tools he has found helpful, including counting macros and intermittent fasting. Danny emphasizes the significance of understanding food choices and the role of technology in tracking health metrics. He encourages listeners to invest in their health for a better quality of life as they age.

Takeaways

• Mindful eating is crucial for maintaining a healthy weight.
• Intermittent fasting can be an effective tool for weight management.
• Counting macros helps in understanding food intake better.
• Healthy food choices are essential, but so is portion control.
• Investing in health can lead to a better quality of life.
• Using technology can simplify tracking health metrics.
• Protein intake is vital for weight loss and muscle maintenance.
• Planning meals can help in achieving dietary goals.
• Accountability is important in a weight loss journey.
• Aging requires a different approach to fitness and diet.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Mindful Eating and Fitness
02:54 The Journey of Weight Management
06:08 Understanding Macros and Intermittent Fasting
09:03 Utilizing Technology for Health Tracking
11:55 Investing in Health for Longevity

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Transcript

0:00

Bye. Hey, what's up guys? My name is Danny Dumas and this is the Ernie Tata podcast. Today we're going to talk about our fitness, our health and losing weight, but not necessarily losing weight, but being more mindful of what we eat and how to lose weight if you need to. And this might apply a little bit more to the older guys. I'm 44, I'll be 45 in a couple of weeks. And I'm going to share a tool that I've been using and the reason why I'm using it and the reason I didn't need it before. you know, a lot of guys that you're in high school, you played some type of sports, you were active, then you get out of high school. So I played basketball in high school and I was, I was in really good shape. I could run up and down the court for an hour or so and I would be tired, but I could do it. And I got out of high school and I started my job and my job was physical. So I stayed, stayed healthy and I had different interests over time. I got into mountain climbing. So I would train for that. And as I moved from like, 18 to 25, I actually gained some weight in a good way. got much stronger. I started in the fire service. weighed 155 pounds and that was too little. I needed to become a bigger man. And so I moved up to roughly like that 190, 180, 190 got much stronger and I was a more efficient firefighter because I was just bigger and stronger. And then, know, that was 25 to 30 ish. I ran a marathon in there at some point. I slimmed down from the marathon, get up into 35. And this whole point, really, up until about 35 years old, I really just ate whatever I wanted. I'm a sweets-aholic, you know, if that is my addiction. I've talked about that before, but no big deal, right? I didn't gain excessive amounts of weight eating whatever I wanted. But if you're like me, you notice somewhere in your 30s, and it can be different for everybody. For me, it was around 35. I realized that I could no longer outwork a bad diet. That if I wanted to stay at a consistent weight, I needed to exercise, which was very important, but more importantly, I had to at least think about my food. Where before I didn't even think about it. was just, I'm gonna be fine. And so I went down a, I've gone down a journey of figuring out what works and what doesn't. And this is the very frustrating part about the human body and weight loss. What used to work doesn't work. or at least not the same quantities. So right around 35, I'd gotten up to 200 pounds or so, and I wanted to get down into that 190s, which I felt like was, I was just more healthy there. And I found intermittent fasting. And I still, I'm a believer in intermittent fasting. I think it's great. And that took me pretty good. I stayed around the 200 mark, but when I got to my 40s, I bumped up into the 210. you know, then to two 15 and I, at the beginning of this year, I found myself at 215 pounds, the heaviest I've ever been. And I wasn't happy with that. And, so I'm like, okay, you know, I haven't really been doing intermittent fasting. I'm going to, I'm going to hit intermittent fasting. for me that's stopping eating at eight and not starting till noon, decreased that time window. And I still wasn't losing weight. I'm like, what in the world? I was maintaining, I wasn't getting any more. And I still think it was good. but I feel it realized I had to do more. And so I started counting macros. And that's just a fancy term for counting, figuring out what you're eating, but not necessarily counting calories. Your macros are going to be protein, which is we think of those generally as like meat, but they can be, know, whey protein or there's some vegetables that have like beans and things that have proteins, fats. That's pretty, pretty self-explanatory in carbs. And I'm using a app called the macro factory and I'll show it to you here. You can see, you might not be able see it. And I'm actually going to do a whole YouTube video on how this tool works. There are several. One, you could just use your notes on your phone. Just type in what you ate and like just literally look at the nutrition label. You have the fitness pal and there was a lot of recommendations for this macro factor factor. Yeah. Macro factor. And it has some really cool tools. And so this is a little bit of a review. I haven't done these types of episodes. but it helps you record your macros because it is not the easiest thing to do. This is not the simplest way to figure out what you're eating. But I realized it's really important. know, I realized after doing this for several weeks that I understood what was good to eat or bad to eat. And I really don't like to those words because food doesn't have morality, but you know, healthy food versus nutrition versus not nutrition, whatever words you want to use. But what I'd didn't realize was the quantity, how much that was affecting me gaining or losing weight. So like I know Oreos have like 90 calories per Oreo, something like that. But I wasn't doing the math in the head and going, oh, I'm having five, right? So that's 450 calories. That's a lot. so by starting to count my macros, I was making... decisions to have some junk food when I had the ability, when I had not had the junk food earlier in the day, it's been very helpful. And you know, I'm down four pounds and I am gaining a better understanding of actually how to, how to plan my day so that I'm getting everything I need. And this is the other thing that's important. Like sometimes I'm hitting my calorie mark, like I'm getting enough calories, but there's one thing that's very helpful and very important when you're trying to lose weight is getting enough protein. And that is really hard. Intermittent fasting makes it a little bit harder because you're skipping breakfast basically. The way I do it, I'm basically just skipping breakfast. So I'm missing that window of getting protein. So I really, if I want to continue to intermittent fast, I have to hit that protein window pretty hard, which means probably two protein shakes a day in addition to protein heavy meals. Cause right now my, Calories, I'm shooting for 2,410. And what I did, I told them I wanted to weigh, I think I said I wanted to weigh 190. And so the benefit of this is it uses AI. I don't know how much AI it actually uses, but it figures out a half percentage a week. And that's gonna have me to my goal around June-ish, if I can continue hitting the mark. So I'm losing about a pound a week, which is a half percentage of my body weight. And then weekly, this adjusts my macro. I'm at 2,410 calories for the day. I'm trying to get 180 grams of protein, 80 grams of fat, and 241 grams of carbs. And this app does just about everything to benefit you from figuring that out. The big thing being the food log, multiple ways to log your food. And I'm gonna click on this just so I don't forget them. It has a scan feature, so you... take your barcode on your food and scan it and it instantly dumps it into the app. One thing you have to be cognizant of, especially if like, I'm like a protein shake and I'll add frozen fruit to it. Well, a cup of frozen fruit is a serving and I'm probably not using a, it's just a handful just to change the flavor. So you have to change that to like 0.5 servings, so it's a half a cup. So that can be kind of challenging, but most things are scannable. If it's not scannable, like we were at work the other day and they made lasagna. I obviously didn't go through and scan the meat, scan the sauce. So I just put a medium size sheet of a piece of lasagna and there is an AI thing and it breaks it down into what it's guessing would be a serving of lasagna. So, and the point is not to like get it perfect. And for some people that's really easy because they're not perfectionists. That's kind of me like, all right, I had a whatever, I had a cookie. I don't know how many calories in there. So I just put chocolate chip cookie. and it said it's 180 calories. Okay, cool. It's close enough. Some people that's gonna annoy you because it's not gonna be perfect, but it's been really, really helpful to figure out what I'm doing and what I've been was doing too much of. And I am actually making good decisions based on this app. Now it's a paid app. think it's 12. So I had a free one week. you go online, you find someone to review it. lot of those have an affiliate. which will give you two free weeks, which I didn't do, I would have done it. And then I paid for monthly, I think it's 12 bucks. And then I think if you do it for the whole year, it's $70. So if I continue to use it over the next two months, I'll probably switch to the yearly because I'll, want to keep doing it. So I always do that with an app, even though it's cheaper to do it for a year, I want to make sure that I'm actually going to use it. But I highly recommend this because what I realized as a 44 year, almost 44, 45 year old man, I cannot work a bad diet. And knowing, and I don't think you need to live like this by recording everything, but you know, one month out of the year, just get back into it. If you want to get really detailed, go get a scale and weigh everything. then, you know, if you plan out your meals for the whole week, you could, and the cool thing about it, like say, say you made lasagna and you did, you scan the sausage and the meat you put in it and the sauce and the noodles, you can make a recipe. So then you go back to your recipes and go, made lasagna again, and it's already all there. And you just said had one serving. And it figures it out. So there's lots of ways to make this useful and try it. If you are, you know, middle age, I guess is where I'm at, which is really crazy to say, you know, I'm halfway to halfway to 90. and you have struggled to lose weight and you realize that I'm working out and I am doing some things like intermittent fasting or whatever, then try this. I think it's very helpful. I will say this once I get to the weight that I plan that I want to be at, which you know, I'm shooting for like the 190s. I will stop tracking my macros and only track my protein intake. I think everybody should be doing that, trying to get that, you know, 180, 190 grams of protein. There's some debate on how much that is. Some people will say one gram per pound of body weight. Some people say one gram per pound of ideal body weight. So I think that's why I'm at 180, because that would probably be my ideal. I don't plan on getting to 180. I think I would look too skinny. Yeah, try it. Just try it out and see. It's an experiment. It's something different. Invest in your health. The thing that, my wife, she got me a, I'm getting a DEXA scan. So it's gonna see exactly how much body fat I have, where it's at. And do I need to do that? I don't need to do that. Not at all. But it makes me, by doing things like that, it was a gift. And by doing things like that, it makes me someone that does things like that, if that makes sense. You know, like I track my sleep and I had a whole episode on technology that I'm using. Invest in your health. You know, I have a HSA health signals and account that I could put money into every, every month. I'm going to up that because I found there's a lot of things like I just bought a percussive massage gun because you know, I'm sore after working out that was covered. I was completely reimbursed. You know, you know, having a scale that does body fat percentages, those are covered getting getting your blood work done that does like extra stuff like APOB and things that your doctor's not normally doing it, getting that done every six months to see where your markers at, to see where you're healthy, it makes you healthier. because you're investing in it. You're thinking, you're excited to see what your numbers are. So I know that that's a cost and you don't have to spend any money to be healthy. You can do body weight only exercises, never step on a scale, never go to a doctor, never spend your money on an app. That's all possible. But I think if you want to be successful, and you have the ability to invest, spend some money. Get off your pocketbook and spend some money because I will tell you this, I'm heavily involved with people who did not invest in their health and are living terrible lives. They're living unhealthy lives where they're just not capable of doing anything. They sit at home for the last 15 years and just wait to die as opposed to living their life right up to it. And I've said it once, I'll say it again, just being old and having one bad day. I'm super proud of my parents. I know they listen to every episode. So mom and dad, I am proud of you. They're listening to this episode. When this comes out, they'll be listening to it, either going to the gym at like five in the morning or coming home from the gym at six later on. Every single day they do that. And they're gonna live, you know, other than a car accident or my dad falling out of a tree stand hunting, you know, that happened once already. So hopefully you got that out of the system. They're gonna live a good, healthy life. And they're going to be there for me and my grandkids and probably, you know, take care of my great grandkids, which is just so cool to think about. And they're investing, you know, they're getting a gym membership because healthy people have that they're eating right. Cause that's what healthy people do. And you can be a healthy person. If you need help being a healthy person, I can, I was a fit. was a personal trainer for many years. You need a plan, you need some accountability. Reach out to me. My email is Danny at Danny doing this.com. would love to help you. You know download this app. I'll leave a link and I'm gonna try to make a actual video of how to use it I'm not a pro. I'm not a pro I'm sure there's people that use it, you know for a year two years, but I think I've got the idea So I'm gonna I'm gonna make a YouTube video about that and I can't wait to hear your success I can't wait to see some pictures of you before and after I'd be exciting As always my name is Danny Dumas. This is the earn your title podcast and I will talk to you later. Bye