Why macros are the biggest key to nailing your nutrition while chasing kids

In this episode, I'm breaking down why macros (not another diet or more restriction) are the thing that actually gets you out of the all or nothing, "I'll start Monday" cycle. We're talking:

✔️ What macros actually are and why they matter more than a calorie number alone
✔️ The 3 biggest mistakes moms make when they start tracking macros
✔️ How to make this work in real mom life so that losing weight feels easier

Plus, a behind the scenes update on our move to North Carolina and my own shift back into a deficit phase (no stress macro tracking).

If you're tired of the good food, bad food cycle and ready for a system that actually feels easier, this one's for you.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey friend, welcome back to Stronger Within, the podcast for women who are done chasing quick fixes and are ready to build real strength and lasting change from the inside out. I'm your host, Christy Magri, and here we talk about becoming Stronger Within in your body, your mindset, and the daily habits that shape your life. If you're ready to build a body and life you feel confident in for good, you're in the right place. We are officially here in North Carolina. We made it and it is my first podcast recording here, which is so exciting. We've been here for almost two weeks and it low-key feels like we're just on vacation and we're gonna be going back to Connecticut any day now. I don't know when it will hit me that this is like home. I've read somewhere that it can take up to three years for someplace to feel like home, so I don't know what that's gonna look like, but I am loving it here. We met a set of our neighbors, which they're an elderly couple and they are so sweet. So we have some neighbors that we can rely on, which is nice because you guys know we don't have any friends or family down here. My husband does have a friend who lives an hour away, and then my great or my grandma lives an hour and a half away, but nobody like directly close to us, so we are thriving. We're going to the beach, we have a pool here, so we've been spending pretty much every single day in the water, which is so nice. And our neighbor told us that there's really only two weeks of real winter here, which I sign me up. That is like one of the biggest reasons why I moved here, but yeah, we are pretty much unpacked. I mean, I was like 90% of the way unpacked in the first 72 hours because I am so type A, everything needs a home, it needs to be done now. I simply cannot wait on things. So things are coming along good here. We have way more space here than we had in our previous house, which is amazing, but it's still a ranch style house, which I love because with two kids, it's just easier to have everything on one floor. Um, but I have my office, which is so exciting. I'm so happy to have an office. So we have our desk in there, we set up a couch in there, which I think is so cute. I posted some pictures on Instagram of everything. If you missed that, then I don't know, then you missed it. But the most ironic thing about my office is that I can't record the podcast in there because the audio is terrible, it sounds so echoey. The ceilings are pretty high in this house, so I don't know if that's what it is, or I just don't have enough furniture in the room, but it just doesn't sound good. So I'm sitting on the floor in my closet recording this episode and probably episodes to come. I feel like Hallie from the Parent Trap when she's in the closet talking on the phone with her sister, that is like exactly what this feels like, but you know, it's fine. I feel like this is the best place in the house I can get decent audio, and hopefully it doesn't sound terrible. Hopefully, I sound okay in here. There's you know, obviously all of our clothes in here, but anyways, I'm getting into a routine which my husband has not gone back to work yet, so that's kind of why it feels like we're just on vacation because Carter's not in school, my husband hasn't been working, so we're just all home all day every day. It feels like every day is the weekend, but you know, in the next couple weeks we'll get back into some normalcy. But I did join a gym, which I'm very happy that I'm back in the gym. I've been out of the gym since when was Carter's last day of school? His last day of school was June 18th, so it's been like six weeks. Um, so I've been to the gym four days this week. It feels really good to get back into my gym routine. I was doing Pilates at home, which was fine to hold me over, but like I need to go in the gym and lift some heavy shit to feel something, so I'm really glad that I can get back to doing that. I've also gotten back into tracking my macros consistently, not eating out a ton. We ate out two times this week, but compared to we were eating out like nearly daily for the last few weeks, and my scale has not been my friend. I have not felt good in my body. It's just been really hard for me. Um, so it feels really good to get back into that routine and hitting my macros and doing all the things that I know make me feel my best self. If you missed it, I actually started a new series on Instagram called The Deficit Diaries, which I think will be so fun. It's just a little vlog style behind the scenes of my weight loss journey. So I created a weight loss wall where I have sticky notes to signify uh losing 20 pounds by the end of the year. So I have that up on there. My scale is finally starting to trend back down, which feels really good. I put my Apple Watch back on after not wearing it for a year just so I can make sure that I'm hitting my steps. I took it off because I was pretty much getting in the same movement daily last summer when I stopped wearing it, and a lot has changed over the last year, and so just having that extra piece of accountability is good for me right now in this season. But yeah, things are moving back in the right direction, which is great, and I'm still enjoying meals out. Like I said, I ate out twice this week. I'm not stressing about cutting anything out, I am really just going back to just living a healthy lifestyle, living the same lifestyle that I was before. And this got me thinking about why macros are the biggest key to nailing your nutrition while chasing kids. I swear by tracking macros, if you have a weight loss goal, and if you're unfamiliar with what macros are, everything you eat has calories in it, right? Those calories consist of three different macronutrients: protein, fat, and or carbs. Sometimes it's a combination of the three, sometimes it's two of them, but everything you eat is made of that macro breakdown. So when we think about weight loss, we need to eat less calories than we're burning in a day in order to lose fat. The easiest way to actually know that number accurately is to track your food intake to make sure that you are in that calorie deficit. Now, I have talked to many moms who have tracked macros before, and sometimes not always in the most efficient way. So today I wanted to dive a little bit deeper into macros, why they're so beneficial, why they're really key to losing weight as a mom, and it's not that you have to track your food for the rest of your life, or you're gonna you have to be super strict and rigid. In fact, tracking macros gives you the exact opposite of that. It gives you the ability to have freedom and flexibility with your food, but still have enough structure to reach your goals. Because at the end of the day, if you have weight to lose, I don't care if it's five pounds, ten pounds, fifteen pounds, fifty pounds, you need some kind of structure, right? I'm gonna sit here and tell you, yes, you can eat the foods you love, but it's not a free-for-all. You can't just eat more calories than you're burning in a day, then you're not gonna lose weight. And so that's where macros come in as this really efficient tool to be able to know that you're in a calorie deficit without, you know, starving yourselves or cutting food groups out. And sometimes I see moms track macros in a not great way where they are cutting things out or they're being super strict or they're undereating. There are a lot of mistakes I see made there, which we'll get into. Um, but macros really are the thing that can help you get out of that constant dieting cycle, that all or nothing cycle, looking at food as good versus bad, having a bad relationship with food, starting over every single week. Macros for me are the thing that finally led me to success in my weight loss journey. I swear by them, it's why I still use it for my last, you know, bit of weight that I have to lose. And especially as a mom, I find that a lot of us really, you know, weight loss is simple in theory, right? We know that you need to eat less and move more, or have more discipline, or show up more, right? And then when that doesn't work for you, you're assuming that the problem is you, right? That you're not disciplined enough, you don't care enough, you're not capable. But what if the problem is that you haven't found or created structure that actually works in your life? I always like to use the example of back when I first started tracking macros. So I discovered what macro tracking was back in 2016, and I tracked macros from 2016 all the way through 2019 when I got pregnant with Carter, but I did it in all the wrong ways. And so I thought I was doing efficiently. I was like, oh, I have structure, I have a calorie goal, yay! But I was being really strict during the week. I was falling apart every single weekend, I was having cheat days every weekend, not tracking my food on the weekends, and making a lot of mistakes there. So, all of that to say, you know, the problem probably is not you. The problem is that you have not found some sort of structure that gives you consistency in your life. If I look at the number one thing holding most moms back from reaching their weight loss goals, it is the consistency. And that is the most frustrating part because likely you are putting in some effort, you are trying. It's not for a lack of wanting, it is that your consistency is not quite where it needs to be. So we need to figure out why am I struggling to stay consistent with this and how do I bridge that gap? And when we look at tracking macros, first thing we want to make sure right off the bat is that your macro goal is set at an appropriate amount. This is a very common mistake I see where I see moms set their own macros, but their macros are way too low. They're in this huge calorie deficit. So, what you want to do is find your maintenance calories, and then you're gonna subtract anywhere between two to five hundred calories, depending on how much weight you have to lose. That's gonna be your starting deficit. I have seen moms in 800, 900, 1,000 plus calorie deficits. It's like that is so unnecessary. That is wrecking your metabolism. You're gonna have to fix your body later. So do it the right way now before you you fully jump into the process. Not to mention, but when you're under-eating, you're also under-fueling your body. So this is gonna lead to more cravings, struggling to stick with it at night or on the weekends. So when you can learn to fuel your body and take that well-rounded approach to nutrition, you're not thinking about food all the time, you're not starving. It generally feels easy. If you're listening to this episode, you might not fully be in that place yet. This is something that can take months or even years to build, and so that's where you know another problem comes in of like you need to learn to be a little bit more patient and be willing to build that skill set because it truly is a skill. It's like learning how to play a new instrument or a sport or any other life skill that you think about, right? It takes time, it takes practice, it takes consistency. I see so often it's like you'll try to track your macros and you'll do it for a few days or maybe even a few weeks, and then you're like, this is too hard, I give up. When really there's number one, a reason why it felt hard, whether it's that you were doing it in the wrong way, you were underfueling, or maybe you just didn't give yourself enough time to be fully in the process. When it comes to macros, too. I don't consider macros to be another diet. Macros really are information that allow you to understand what your body needs calorically to have the energy to keep up with your everyday demands as a mom, but also feel well fueled, not feel starving all day just because you're in a deficit doesn't mean you need to starve and still lose fat in the process. So I personally teach a unique approach to tracking macros for my clients and in my own journey as well. But instead of focusing on all three macronutrients, which remember that's your protein, your fat, and your carbs, plus you track your total calories on top of that. Instead of tracking all of those numbers, we're just focusing on total calories plus protein. Your body is actually very forgiving of how your carbs and fats are split. So typically, you know, have assigning a certain number to those carbs and fats, it's really not gonna make or break any of your progress. So instead, focus on just the total calories plus protein, you're gonna be golden doing it that way. And if we look at just calorie counting itself, we're only looking at the total energy versus in versus out, right? So when you track macros, you're actually looking at the quality and composition of that energy. So back when I first started counting calories, which I'm ashamed to say was when I was in like high school, I struggled with my weight for a long time, most of my life. I downloaded my fitness pal when I was a freshman in high school. But I would just count my calories. So I did like the 1200 calories, of course, and that's all I was paying attention to. I wasn't looking at protein. Um, but the breakdown of those macros, specifically the protein macronutrient, that is what actually determines how you feel, how full you are, how satisfied you are, not having cravings throughout the day, whether you actually keep your muscle mass while losing fat, and whether this is something you can actually stick with too, because if you're constantly feeling starving, you're underfueled, you're not eating enough protein, it's gonna be really hard to sustain that long term. And so protein and carbs, yes, they are important. Obviously, carbs are you don't need to cut them, okay? They are your body's preferred energy source. That's what's gonna fuel your brain function, um, your workouts, your ability to keep up with your kids. You know, you do not need to cut carbs to lose weight. Fat is also important, right? That's gonna support your hormones, your brain, your absorption of certain vitamins. That is also an essential macronutrient. So don't feel like you have to do things like going low carb or low fat. Those are fads that were instilled or given to us to make us believe that we have to do those things for the sake of progress when really we don't have to do that. Every macronutrient is important in its own sense. And if we look at protein, right, because I just gave you some quick tidbits on why carbs and fats are important, but protein is gonna help you build and repair muscle, which is extremely important when you're losing weight. You do not want to be losing muscle mass that's gonna keep you full. And fun fact, but protein has the highest thermic effect, which just basically means that your body, it takes your body the most amount of work to break it down. And so that is your body burning more calories, which matters obviously when we're trying to create that caloric deficit. So, again, when we are tracking macros, we're looking at the quality of you know our overall breakdown, and that is what allows us to learn how to eat in a sustainable lifestyle sort of way, right? Treating this as, you know, not a diet. This isn't something we're gonna do for just a few weeks or a few months. I'm not saying you have to track your food for the rest of your life. I will say that when you get really good at tracking your food, it's gonna take five or less minutes of your day. If you're telling me you don't have that or you're not willing to do that, then I don't think you actually care about your goals. I'm sorry, not sorry. I'm gonna be a little bit mean there because one of the biggest um things I hear from moms, like, why didn't tracking macros work for you? It was too time consuming, right? It it felt too complicated. Okay, well, that just tells me that it's an underdeveloped skill that you haven't learned yet that you need more time and practice with. So now I want to quickly touch on the three most common mistakes I see moms make with macros. So that if you've made the these mistakes previously and tracking macros feels like it didn't work for you, or you haven't tracked macros yet, we can avoid these mistakes before you even make them. Let's talk about where you know some people go wrong because macros aren't magic, right? It's it's how you use them that that's what really matters. So getting right into mistake one, and that is setting your calorie number too low. I'm gonna mention this one multiple times because it is the most common one that I see in not only setting your calorie number too low, but also your protein number too low. This is a big reason why a lot of women lose weight and then gain it back because the method that they use to lose that weight was not actually sustainable, right? It worked in the short term to lose a good chunk of weight pretty quickly, but then you know you become burnt out, you're not able to stick with it, it doesn't feel worth it anymore, and then it's like, what's the point? And then you end up swinging back the whole other direction. So you're constantly on either this really low end where you're way underfueling for the sake of weight loss, or the complete opposite end where you just don't give a shit and now you're gaining weight because you know it it felt too hard. What if we created somewhere right in the middle where you were fueling yourself in in just enough of a calorie deficit so that you're losing the weight sustainably? Really, you need to learn to treat your fitness journey like a marathon, not a sprint. And this is very hard for people because we live in a society that really rewards, you know, instant gratification. A lot of people struggle with that delayed gratification, right? We could order something and have it Amazon primed by 4 a.m. the next morning. We, you know, it we just have everything we need in an instant, right? Your weight loss journey is not going to work that way. But when you can learn to be aggressively patient in the process, that is where the payoff is going to be so worth it. Because you can have a year go by, do a restrictive, extreme diet where you see amazing results in a short period of time, but then you rebound and you gain the weight back, so then you have to lose it again, or you can do it in a way where it's a slow and steady pace, and some days it's excruciatingly slow, and you are so frustrated, you're like, why is the progress not happening quicker? But then you look back over the course of the year and you didn't revert back in that process at all. You steadily kept getting better and better. That is what the goal is there. So mistake number one, do not set your numbers too low. Mistake number two is treating tracking as a punishment or as a strict tool instead of a flexible tool. So if you're logging your food and then freaking out every time a number is off, or you go over your macros by 50 calories or whatever the case, that is not the point of tracking macros, okay? The goal, especially in the first couple months of you tracking your macros, is really just information. It's not to judge yourself or shame yourself. Some days are gonna be higher, some days are gonna be lower. The trend over time is what really matters. So typically when I'm doing my one-on-one clients check-ins, which we do weekly, I'm looking at their entire data from the week. It's okay if they had some days that were higher and some days that were lower, but is our weekly average where we need it to be? So that is a number you should be looking at if you're not already if you're tracking macros. And I actually use a method called calorie cycling where I'll do five lower days of macros and then two higher days to give myself more flexibility on those higher days for higher days for meals out. But at the end of the week, my average calories are still where they need to be. Mistake number three is trying to track with zero structure or support. This is one of the biggest ones. You download my fitness pal, right? You plug your stats into a macro calculator, you get those numbers, and then you get overwhelmed after four days and you quit. This is so, so common. And I say this all the time, but this is where we really need to think about information, it's probably not my problem. Implementation of the information is where I'm struggling, right? And then you kind of look at this situation and you say, see, tracking macros isn't for me, it's too hard, I'm not capable, I don't know how to do it, right? When really what you're missing is the system that makes things feel easier, right? So, what does your meal planning process look like? How do you walk into every day knowing that you're gonna hit your macros? How do you handle meals out? How are you able to go out and enjoy ice cream with your kids and fit that into your day? Right? There are there's so much more than just the number itself. And so if we don't have actual structure, meaning weekly planning, even daily pre-planning, if we're not doing those things, of course it's gonna feel hard. That's what creates that decision fatigue. That is what creates so much friction when it comes to the choices required of you to be consistent with your goal. We can avoid all of that by having structures and systems. And I know it's not the most exciting thing in the world, okay? No, it's not like a sexy topic, but that's really what takes all of the overthinking and overwhelm out. Your fitness journey because if you walk into your day knowing exactly here's what I'm eating for breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, and if I want to plan in a dessert, and I took 10 minutes to plug it all on into my fitness pal this morning, and I know exactly what I need to heat to hit my macros, that is what makes weight loss feel easy. But most people don't do it that way. They're given, you know, the number and then they're trying to loosely track throughout the day, and there's no actual structure or process behind it. And this is where that support piece comes in of having someone there to guide you through the process, right? How many months or how many years have you been spinning your wheels trying to figure it out on your own? We invest in so many things, right? We invest in maintenance on our car, getting oil changes, right? We invest in getting our kids a tutor if they're struggling in a subject or investing in their sports or family vacations or whatever it is because those things are worth it, right? Why do you not treat your health and fitness journey the same way? Right? You're struggling month after month, year after year, but what if that one investment in yourself could be the thing that takes you from overwhelmed, insecure, feeling stuck, into finally having the support to guide you every step of the way? That was a little plug to let you know that one-on-one coaching applications officially opened back up this week. You can apply using the link in the show notes if you would like to talk about working together. I would love to help you. But all of that to say you need the structure in your life if you want weight loss to feel easy. So, how do we do this? In the midst of motherhood and raising kids and the craziness that is our lives. I want to give you the practical part here and how I coach my clients to make this actually work in their lives, not just with, you know, this quiet, easy life where everything goes perfectly and it's all rainbows and sunshine and butterflies. Like that would be great if that was the case. But you know, my kids are three and six, so that is not the case. But here is what I tell my clients to do. First of all, meal plan like your life depends on it, okay? Meal planning, we think about like a prerequisite in college, right? You have to get your prerequisites to move on to the next subject or next class or whatever. You have to do this when it comes to tracking your macros. If you're walking into every single day, just winging it with what you're gonna eat, it's gonna feel very, very hard. You're gonna be thinking about food all day long. You're gonna be staring at your fridge, wondering what can I eat that has 30 grams of protein or is gonna help me hit my macros. You're gonna be thinking about food all day long, and or you're gonna get to the end of the day and realize, crap, I didn't eat enough. I ate too much. Either way, we can avoid all of that by planning our meals. So every single weekend, it is Saturday specifically for me, where I will sit down. I have a weekly meal planning date with myself, and I am mapping out okay, what am I eating for breakfast, lunch, and dinner next week? And I don't overcomplicate it, I don't come up with these elaborate, fancy recipes. A lot of times I'm rotating between the same few things. From there, I'm creating my grocery list to see, okay, what do I have in the house on hand for this? What do I need to grab? I'm doing my grocery shopping on Saturday, and then I'm meal prepping some components or at least doing things like pre-washing and cutting my fruit ahead of time so that I have an easy option ready to go in the fridge. You being consistent with tracking your macros, there's like five steps before we actually get to that. So making sure that you are planning going into your week. Second, just like I said, I rotate between a lot of the same meals. So use repeat meals. You do not need variety every single day. You can have two or three go-to breakfasts and lunches that you already know the macros for. That's gonna remove like 80% of that daily decision fatigue. So I rotate between the same like three breakfasts. It's either my peanut butter and jelly um English muffin with a protein shake, or I've been doing protein smoothies in the morning, or my overnight oats, which with something like the overnight oats, I can use the same base, but I can change up the flavor profile. So maybe one week I do birthday cake, another week I do chocolate chip cookie dough, another week I do banana bread overnight oats, like whatever flavor profile I want. It's not complicated. I'm simply just switching up a couple of the ingredients in it, but I'm keeping it very consistent. Uh, same thing with lunches. I like to do a lot of salads, so like an easy salad kit, which right now with this like diarrhea outbreak, I haven't been able to do. And it's so unfortunate that Taylor Farms was the culprit in this whole scandal situation because that was my favorite salad kit, the chopped um uh what is it called? Chopped Chipotle ranch, and now I feel like I can't get it because I'm just disgusted. Um, so that sucks. So I need to figure out a different hyperfixation meal that's really quick and easy, but anyways, use those repeat meals. You don't need to constantly reinvent the wheel. We have tacos every single week as a family, and that's fine. We're having it once a week. It's not like we're having it for every single meal every day, but don't feel like you constantly need to be s reinventing the wheel. Okay, third, you want to look at your nutrition as an 80-20 approach, meaning 80% of the time you are eating nutrient-dense whole foods, foods that don't have a long ingredient list, foods that are mainly in their whole form. So, like you think of chicken breasts, ground beef, sweet potatoes, rice, oats, fruit, vegetables, right? And then 20% of the time, have the donut, have the ice cream, have the cookie or the cake or whatever the heck it is, fit it into your macros with that 20% guideline in mind, or the more processed food. Like if you want to make um like a mac and cheese with your dinner, right? But it's a boxed mac and cheese. It's not the end of the world. Okay, we don't have to eat 100% clean all of the time. Yes, food quality matters, but we also need to be realistic, right? Like I know for me, my kids eat mac and cheese all the time. I also love mac and cheese, and so I'm gonna have that sometimes. I'm not gonna feel guilty about it. I'm gonna fit it into my macros. I'm going to have that 80-20 approach in mind, and I'm just gonna move on. We don't need to look at tracking macros as I need to be super clean and super strict. That is what creates this obsession over food, where the moment you have any of those things, you feel guilty, you spiral, it gets you into that all or nothing mindset. We want to completely avoid that. I think about one of my clients specifically. She's a mom of three, all of her kids are under six years old. And when she came to me, she truly was convinced that she had tried everything and that her metabolism was broken. I remember she got blood work done to find out that she's fine. She was eating around, I want to say it was like 1300 to 1400 calories per day, barely any protein, and she still was not losing weight. She was exhausted all the time. And taking a look at her at her data, we figured out okay, you're under fueling. We got her up to over 2,000 calories a day. We've restructured her macro so that protein was a priority, and within a few months, she was down significant body fat. She's sleeping better and she feels better. She has the energy to actually keep up with her kids instead of feeling like she's really just watching them from the sidelines. And that is the whole point in the beauty in tracking macros. It's not about eating less, it's not about restricting yourself. It truly is about eating smarter for your specific body's needs. I know you want to lose the weight, I know you want to, you know, reach all your goals, and you will, but it's just so important that you do it in a healthy way when these days there are so many unhealthy ways out there to do it. So just a reminder: macros are not, you know, another diet or a strict set of rules that you have to follow perfectly. Macros are the information that you need to tell you exactly what your body needs to have the energy, you know, build strength and lose fat without restricting yourself and feeling miserable in the process. Let go of this perfection or this idea that you have to put certain things off limits, you know, really just take your time with it, be patient with yourself. As long as you are getting a little bit better each week, that is what matters. We put so much pressure on ourselves to have something figured out overnight. And truly, this is a process that takes time, it takes patience, and the more that you do it, the better you're gonna get with it. Don't forget that one-on-one coaching applications are open. So if you would like to receive more information about working together, see a little behind the scenes of the program, and see if you would be a good fit for my coaching program. I would love to help you learn how to apply this in your real life. I will tell you, hands down, having that support and that guidance from a coach in the process, it's gonna change your life and it's gonna change the entire traject trajectory of your weight loss journey so that you can lose the weight and build a body and life you feel confident as fucking. That is it for today's episode. If you found it helpful, it would mean so much if you left me a review or shared this episode with a friend who might need to hear it. Until next week's episode, keep becoming stronger within.