Emily Field (00:00:00) –  Welcome to episode 27 of the Macros Made Easy podcast, where we explore the intersection of nutrition, health, and lifestyle choices. In today’s episode, we dive into alcohol, especially in the context of tracking macros and pursuing body composition goals. Welcome to Macros Made Easy, the podcast that takes the confusion out of tracking macros. I’m your host, Emily Field, a registered dietitian that specializes in a macros approach. In each episode, I help you learn how to eat in a way that supports your health, body composition, and athletic performance goals. We’ll cover the basics of macronutrients how to track for various goals, the role of macros in your health, and how to make sustainable changes to your habits. I’ve helped hundreds of people experience more food freedom and flexibility while navigating their nutrition. So whether you’ve tried macros and it just didn’t stick or you just heard the word macros yesterday, I can’t wait to help you too. Before we get into the specifics of alcohol, let’s start with a quick refresher on macronutrients, proteins, fats, and carbohydrates.

Emily Field (00:00:58) –  Proteins are crucial for tissue repair and growth, providing four calories per gram. Fats serve as a concentrated energy source, offering nine calories per gram, while carbohydrates are main energy source provides four calories per gram. What makes alcohol unique is its role as a fourth type of macronutrient, providing seven calories per gram almost as much as fat and more than proteins and carbohydrates. However, unlike these macros, alcohol does not offer essential nutrients like vitamins or minerals. In this episode, we’ll explore how alcohol affects your body beyond just caloric intake. It alters your metabolism with the body, prioritizing its breakdown over nutrients like fats and carbs. This can impact the liver’s function and nutrient utilization, potentially hindering overall metabolic efficiency. Moreover, we’ll discuss practical strategies for enjoying alcohol while maintaining body composition goals, from choosing lower calorie options like clear spirits and light beers to the importance of hydration in moderation, we’ll cover how to integrate alcohol into a balanced lifestyle. So let’s dive into the ins and outs of alcohol as a macronutrient, and how you can handle its consumption while working towards your health and fitness goals.

Emily Field (00:02:09) –  All right, let’s just do a quick refresher on macronutrients, just to really set the stage for what alcohol is and how many calories it provides. Like we mentioned in the intro, proteins are essential for building and repairing tissues. They’re composed of amino acids. They provide four calories per gram and play a crucial role in your muscle growth and maintenance. Fats serve as a concentrated energy source and are necessary for hormone production, cell membrane structure, nutrient absorption. They provide nine calories per gram. Carbohydrates are the body’s primary source of energy, and they include sugars, starches, and fiber. They provide four calories per gram on are important for a lot of different things, but specifically in the context of what we’re talking about today for fueling your muscles and for supporting your central nervous system. Now, alcohol is considered a fourth type of macronutrient because it provides energy calories much like proteins, fats, and carbohydrates. But unlike those other macros, it does not provide essential nutrients like vitamins or minerals. Your body really can’t do much with that energy that it provides.

Emily Field (00:03:17) –  As you can kind of tell already, alcohol is seemingly energy dense. It provides seven calories per gram, making it almost as calorie dense as fat, which is nine calories per gram and more than carbohydrates in proteins. So compared to proteins and carbohydrates, which provide four calories per gram each, alcohol contains more than double the calories per gram. This higher caloric density can significantly impact daily caloric intake and overall energy balance, which is one of the biggest realizations I witness clients make during coaching when they see how much their alcohol is contributing to their overall caloric intake, and kind of deducing that that consumption is preventing them from seeing the changes they want to see in their body. Let’s run through some practical examples that I see often with clients. So one example is probably an older version of me. You love going to breweries. You love trying new beers. You know, in the context of skiing, cycling, snowmobiling, boating, all the things you like to do outside. Maybe beer is a part of it.

Emily Field (00:04:22) –  So let’s just say you’re on the cycling team, or you run a quick five K this summer, and those activities really can center around beer at the end. Let’s say you enjoy four beers on average, and they’re the yummy hoppy kind. Not necessarily light beers. Obviously, calories on beer like this can vary greatly depending on the alcohol by volume. You know, any additional starches or sugars they’re putting in the beer to flavor it differently. But let’s just say on the low end, that’s about 180 calories per beer, maybe up to 220 calories per beer. And if you’re doing tasters, maybe you’re trying a little sample of this and that. You can see how that might add to your intake. So in the context of macro tracking, and we’ll talk about this very specifically later on in the episode. But in the context of macro tracking, we’re going to want to carve space for that alcohol. It’s going to take up the place of where you would normally have food based fats and carbs. So in order to carve out the space to stay on track with your macro targets by the end of the day, stay on track with your calories.

Emily Field (00:05:22) –  By the end of the day, you’ll need to find room for those four beers by cutting out 180 to 220g of carbs, or 80 to 97g of fat. Now that’s a lot to accommodate in your macros if you want to stay on track with your targets. For many of you, that’s all the carbs you have. That’s all the fats you have in a daily recommendation. So, you know, if we’re really trying to be realistic about accommodating for calorie rich beers, it might be tough to do. Now here’s another example. Let’s just say you love wine. You have a couple of bottles hanging around in your house at all times. Maybe you open a bottle of wine on Wednesday night when you’re cooking and you don’t want it to go bad, so you drink it across two days, Wednesday and Thursday night, and we’re looking at an extra 650 to 800 calories across two days. That whole bottle of wine, kind of depending on how sweet that wine is, how dry that wine is, is likely to be somewhere in that range of 650 to 800 calories for the whole bottle.

Emily Field (00:06:23) –  Then let’s just say it’s the weekend you choose not to track macros because your routine is totally thrown off. It’s pretty normal for you to ditch tracking on the weekend, and without tracking for accountability, you go over on your macro needs with food and alcohol. In a third example, let’s just say you’re meeting your girlfriends for brunch on the weekend. That’s Bloody Marys and mimosas all around. Across three hours you have three drinks totaling about 500 calories on the low side, maybe 750 on the higher side. If you’re tracking macros, this means you’re trying to accommodate. You’re trying to carve space for about 125 to 150g of carbs, or 55 to 80g of fats. And of course, this is all estimation. I’m just totally throwing out numbers here, and I’m just setting the scene here for how calorically dense. Alcohol is, especially if you have never tracked alcohol. You’ve never attempted to track alcohol. It’s quite possible that you’re living in the dark for how calorically dense, how much energy, how many calories this macronutrient is providing you.

Emily Field (00:07:22) –  Now notice in those three examples I tried to say, if you want to stay on track with your macro targets and calorie goals, you’ll need to accommodate this much space for this alcohol. And this is really important. I want to call this out. It’s not realistic to expect that you’ll be able to eat to your macro targets every single day, forever, until you get to your health, your body composition, or athletic performance goals. You will at some point, intentionally or unintentionally, miss your targets. That said, there might be a season where it matters more to you and you really want to push yourself, but you have to weigh the pros and cons of sacrificing calories for alcohol that could otherwise be used for food. Okay, so in other words, you are in the driver’s seat of deciding whether or not you want to carve space for that alcohol, or it means more to you to not carve space into eat those calories instead to reap some nutrition from those calories. Instead, I should say this here, but I want to remind you that this podcast episode is not here to shame you about your drinking habits.

Emily Field (00:08:23) –  I’m pro accountability, pro mindfulness, pro awareness of your drinking habits. And part of that means you’ve got to take a look at it. You got to take a look at how much energy this is providing you throughout your week. Because if you have goals to lose fat and gain muscle, it’s quite possible that alcohol is hindering you from getting to those goals faster. Now, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. You can choose the pace at which you move towards those goals. If it’s not as super important to you that you get there quickly, maybe you don’t need to mind the alcohol content of your diet as much. If you are interested in getting to those goals very quickly, very efficiently, as effectively as possible, then yes, you’re going to have to mind your alcohol habit and it’s important that we talk about it. Alcohol affects your body in multiple different ways. And one of the main ways that I want to talk about today is the metabolism of alcohol. So there is a priority put on alcohol when it is present in the body to get it out of the body.

Emily Field (00:09:23) –  Because it is a toxic substance, it is a high priority item to break it down and to dump it out. And as a result, when alcohol is consumed, the body is going to prioritize that metabolism over any other nutrients. So that means that while alcohol is being processed, the metabolism of carbs, fats, proteins all slow down. And as a result, the essential nutrients may not be efficiently utilized for energy production and other bodily functions during that time, alcohol is being metabolized. Okay, so essentially you’re putting a pause on burning fat for fuel. You’re putting a pause on building muscle mass out of the protein that you’re eating. You’re putting a pause on getting carbohydrates to your brain or your muscles in order to think clearly or to be active. Okay, so all of that is paused even in a calorie deficit. So you’re working really hard and trying to stick and adhere to your calorie deficit. You may be creating that deficit across the whole week, and maybe you’re even doing such a great job to carve out space for that alcohol by holding back on carbs and fats in order to make space for those couple of drinks a week.

Emily Field (00:10:38) –  But even when we drink, you have to recognize that it is a toxic substance to the body, and all of that other metabolism is paused. So you have been turning body fat into fuel and burning fat. You are losing fat in the way that you want because you’re in a calorie deficit, but that metabolism is going to be paused when alcohol is present. Of course, when we talk about alcohol, we think of the liver, but there is a particular impact on liver function and metabolism. When we drink alcohol, in particular, the liver plays a central role in metabolizing alcohol. It’s converting the alcoholic we drink into acetyl aldehyde and then to acetate, which is further broken down into water and carbon dioxide. So this process requires significant liver resources, diverting attention away from its primary function, such as processing fats and carbs. So you can kind of see how that all goes together. You know, maybe this is a side note, but we’ll absolutely talk about this at the end of the episode about what are some best practices to metabolize alcohol quicker, how to reduce the impact that alcohol might have on your metabolism by doing particular things before, during and after drinking.

Emily Field (00:11:46) –  But I mentioned that acetate is broken down into water and carbon dioxide, so there is some research to support that. Maybe you can aid your body in getting alcohol out of the system faster by getting in a workout the next day. So by getting your heart rate up and your breathing a little bit heavier, you’re releasing carbon dioxide. You’re sweating a bit. You. May be able to aid the body in getting rid of that acetate, which can build up. This is what is essentially our hangover. We’re getting that toxic substance out of the body. We’re aiding our body in metabolizing it faster. So we’re talking about the effects of alcohol on the body. And I think all of us have the experience of feeling pretty dehydrated after drinking. Some of us will even wake up the next morning and step on the scale and see a 2 or £3 weight loss. And that’s not real body fat loss. That is simply water shifts. Because alcohol has a diuretic effect on the body, you increase your urine production and that can promote dehydration if you’re not consuming water alongside your alcohol.

Emily Field (00:12:52) –  Most of us can probably handle a little bit of dehydration every once in a while. It’s not going to have super long lasting impact, but you should understand that our hydration is absolutely impacted by minerals and electrolytes as well. Minerals and electrolytes. I will use interchangeably. Electrolytes like sodium, potassium, and magnesium are essential for muscle function and nerve signaling, maintaining fluid balance. And so alcohol induced dehydration can lead to imbalances in those electrolytes, resulting in things like muscle cramps, fatigue, and headaches. So some of the things that you might associate with a hangover might be due to the fact that you’ve increased your urine output, you are feeling a bit dehydrated. Maybe there’s a bit of imbalance in your electrolyte status. Okay, so to review alcohol affects your body in a number of ways. The main thing I want to talk about is the metabolism priority. You’re diverting attention away from metabolizing nutrients, as you typically would because alcohol is present is a toxic substance to the body. Its main priority is to break it down and get it out of the body ASAP.

Emily Field (00:13:58) –  So as a consequence, we are going to see some liver processing differences. We’re not going to see the same sort of processing that we normally would. Our primary function, such as like metabolizing fats and carbs goes away. Okay. We also see some effects on hydration and electrolyte balance. And that can have higher or lower impact on you depending on how active you are. If you’re drinking water alongside your alcoholic beverages, if you are practicing moderation or not, I will just leave it at that so you understand some of the consequences we’re talking about when we get into kind of that impact on your health goals, your body composition goals. Okay, now I am specifically trying to speak to the person who has goals to gain muscle and to lose body fat. When it comes to the people that I typically work with, this is the main bell curve in the middle there. Most people have those goals. They want to get leaner, stronger and fitter and boil that down. They want to see some muscle gain or maintenance.

Emily Field (00:15:06) –  They want to see some fat loss so they can reveal the strong physique that they know they have hiding in there. Okay, you should understand that alcohol has an impact on these goals. Okay. So let’s just say your main priority right now is to gain muscle support, muscle repair. You want to recover appropriately. You are pushing yourself in strength training for the main goal of building a stronger physique. Understand that alcohol is going to significantly impact your muscle protein synthesis, so building new muscle, it’s also going to impact the recovery from your workouts. Again, recovery from strength training workouts, in particular by interfering with the body’s ability to repair and then build new muscle tissue. It impairs the signaling pathways involved in protein synthesis, leads to dehydration, which exacerbates your muscle soreness and slows down recovery and negatively affects hormone balance, particularly testosterone, further hindering muscle growth and repair. So those three items are the ones I really want to highlight for that person who is so wanting to see bigger, stronger muscles. They want to see their efforts in the gym come to fruition in their body composition.

Emily Field (00:16:17) –  You may consider reducing or minimizing your alcohol intake. As for fat loss, alcohol absolutely can disrupt your fat loss efforts due to its high caloric content. Again, we’ve talked about how alcohol provides seven calories per gram, which can quickly add up and lead to a caloric surplus. As we’ve already talked about, when alcohol is present, the body prioritizes metabolizing alcohol over any other nutrient, slowing down fat metabolism, and increasing fat storage. Lastly, alcohol can disrupt hormone balance, raising cortisol levels and promoting fat storage, especially in the abdominal area. I’m speaking specifically to the person who’s complaining about belly fat gain out of any other area of the body, whereas, you know, you might have gained maybe equally across all areas of your body in your younger years. As you age, you’re noticing, you know, kind of just right around the abdomen. That’s where you’re storing your body fat and you drink alcohol. There may be a link here. I would also say that if you are a woman in perimenopause and approaching menopause, we have a switch from your hormone balance being kind of like navigated or, you know, being ruled by your ovaries over to your adrenal glands as that ovary function kind of shuts down.

Emily Field (00:17:35) –  And we’re transferring the responsibility over to the adrenal glands, which are responsible for releasing cortisol and supporting our stress response. This is typical. This is good. This is a normal thing. But you’re putting added pressure on the adrenal glands because of the stress alcohol adds to the system. You’re just kind of doubly taxing it. Right. And that’s probably the simplest way I can put it, is you’re doubly taxing these organs that are already so taxed due to the changes that you’re experiencing with perimenopause and menopause. So it might be in your best interest to moderate your alcohol consumption if your goals are to really make an impact on that belly fat that you are so concerned about. Okay, so we’ve been talking about alcohol’s impact on your goals to gain muscle and to lose fat. And while it’s super fun to talk about metabolism and hormones, we can’t really forget the low hanging fruit here, which is that alcohol, just simply put, impacts your appetite and impacts your food choices by increasing cravings for high calorie, high fat, and high sugar foods simply due to its effect on the brain’s reward centers.

Emily Field (00:18:46) –  That’s it. You know, like, even if we ignore all the fancy jargon that we’ve just been talking about, simply put, it just affects our brains reward centers. It impairs our judgment and our decision making, which can lead to poor food choices that can derail you from hitting your macro targets. Further, we are drinking usually in social settings, and that can result in late night eating, which also negatively impacts the metabolism and fat storage. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard, you know, if I could just teach my body to crave celery and carrots, I would not have a problem with my weight. And yeah, I wish that were true. We cannot do that. The brain’s answering the call. It is simply responding to a low fuel, low nutrient situation. I’ve already shared that alcohol is diverting our body’s attention away from metabolizing fats and carbs. It can’t do anything with those calories that you’re consuming throughout. Hall. So the cells are still hungry. The cells are like, hey, we we still need energy, we’re still deprived.

Emily Field (00:19:49) –  So they’re sending signals to the brain, hey, I need to eat. I need to eat something now. I need high sugar. I need high carb. I need high fat because these things will get the job done quickly, okay? You’re never going to crave carrots and celery. You’re always going to crave the crunchy, salty, savory stuff, especially after consuming a few drinks. And then couple that with your brain’s reward centers being altered. It’s going to be pretty loud messaging with very low resistance, really loud messaging from the brain to eat those foods that you would otherwise probably not eat. They would not be on your plate, especially if your goals are to lose fat and to gain muscle and you’re really sticking to your macro targets, coupled with the fact that you have very low resistance, those reward centers are highly active. You’re not going to have a lot of willpower to resist those temptations. But I don’t want to leave you in this episode feeling completely defeated, thinking you can never take another drink.

Emily Field (00:20:42) –  If your goals are to gain muscle and lose fat. That’s absolutely not what I’m trying to say. Certainly you can enjoy alcohol in moderation, and let’s talk about what that means. Let’s talk about some practical tips for enjoying alcohol while also being on a macro tracking journey. The first tip I’m going to have for you is to obviously counter alcohol towards your macros. Okay, this is key. This is building accountability for your choices. It’s shedding awareness, putting a flashlight onto the habit, which in and of itself can be very powerful. There’s many clients who, you know, I haven’t said anything about their alcohol intake. I have never recommended that they cut back, but simply logging it and seeing how much food they have to give up in order to accommodate those drinks changes the behavior for them. It no longer feels as important to take a drink because they know how good it feels to be well fueled with that food. So if you are tracking macros, I highly recommend that you account for those calories from alcohol, just as you would for any other food or drink, and this is going to ensure that you stay within your caloric goals for the day.

Emily Field (00:21:50) –  This is like best case scenario. Okay, so this is in a situation where you’re not ignoring your macro goals. You’re not purposely over eating or over drinking them because of a social situation or a celebration or something like that. This is for the person who really wants to, you know, make as big of a dent or as fast as the dent as they can and their body composition goals. They still want to enjoy alcohol. When you log your alcoholic beverage in your food tracking app, it might look a little confusing. So let’s talk about that a little bit. So between chronometer macros first and MyFitnessPal, some of the top apps that I recommend, if you are tracking macros, you’re going to search the database for something like a skinny margarita or a hoppy beer or a red wine, and you’re going to log it and you’re going to notice that there were really no macros adding up there. There were only calories adding up there. And that is because alcohol is a non-nutritive food. There is not a requirement to accommodate those macros on a food label.

Emily Field (00:22:48) –  You’re only going to see the calories, not the macros. And we care about macros more than we care about calories. So you have a choice. And I would say if you’re new to this, I highly recommend doing the math and figuring out how many carbs or how many fats you would like to give up in order to accommodate that alcohol. This is a very good visualization exercise. Okay, so in each one of those apps, you have the option of doing the Quick Add feature, or just simply logging carbs as a gram or fats as a gram, dialing it up as high or as many or as little as you want. So this is how I would accommodate that. I would say, I’m going to have three drinks today. They are around 120 calories each. Let’s just say it’s three glasses of wine. I’m going to take 120 calories times three drinks. That’s 360 calories coming from wine. I’m going to divide that by four four calories per gram to carve space out of my carbs for that, or I’m going to divide it by nine to carve space from my fats for that.

Emily Field (00:23:52) –  All right, so 360 divided by four is 90g of carbs that I’m going to hold back to accommodate that alcohol, or 360 divided by nine is 40g of fat that I’m going to hold back from eating. I’m not going to eat that many fats. I’m going to probably have a lighter fat meal or a lighter carb meal to accommodate the fact that I want three glasses of wine now. That’s I guess that’s step one. That’s probably the easiest way I could describe it. There are calculators out there where you can use like kind of a slider, and you can say, I want to have some carbs and some fats to accommodate this alcohol. I don’t want it all to come from carbs or all to come from fats. So I will link that in the show notes. Some of my favorite calculators. Last note here is that a special shout out to macros. First, this app is amazing and they have an. Alcohol calculator built right into their app so that you can use that slider. What I mean by that is you’re going to put the total calories of your alcoholic beverage by doing a quick Google search or quick database search.

Emily Field (00:24:54) –  Finding out how many calories about your alcohol content for the day is going to be, and you can slide between fats and carbs. You’re basically translating the alcohol macros to carbs and fat macros, if you see what I’m saying. And macros first built it right into their app, which I think is really, really cool. Okay, so you already heard me kind of talk about how you might adjust your macros on days that you plan to drink, and that requires a bit of planning ahead. So if you know you’ll be drinking, you’re going to plan your meals for the day accordingly, and you’re going to choose to consume fewer carbs or fats to accommodate those extra calories from alcohol. Notice I’m not saying protein. Protein interferes with muscle protein synthesis, so we want to make sure that you get enough protein throughout the day to support that muscle maintenance and repair. This one is not touched on days that you are drinking and days that you are not drinking. You’re going to prioritize protein rich meals. You’re going to try to hit your protein target like you normally do.

Emily Field (00:25:54) –  You’re only going to be holding back or altering the fat or carbohydrate rich foods in your diet in order to accommodate that alcohol, okay, you’re going to adjust your consumption of those two macros, the fats and carbs, in order to accommodate and fit alcohol into your total daily calories without exceeding your goal. So that might look like, you know, if you’re going to hold back on carbs, for example, to accommodate that alcohol, maybe you’re going to have steamed vegetables with your dinner instead of a baked potato or rice. Maybe you will skip the bread basket before a meal at a restaurant. You’re going to avoid desserts and snacks in the break room that are carb rich. Instead of things like toast or bagels at breakfast, you’ll skip that and instead have a protein rich meal that is lower in carbs. Maybe you’ll skip the tortilla, or the rice cakes, or the oats, or whatever it may be, and your breakfast and lunch meals in order to carve space out of your carb target in order to accommodate that alcohol.

Emily Field (00:26:54) –  It’s things like you might have those extras in your day, like fruit juice or cereal or honey or maple syrup or, you know, fresh fruit, whatever it might be. You’re cutting back on those in order to accommodate the space that alcohol is going to take up from carbs. Alternatively, if you wanted to adjust fats, maybe you’re doing things like opting for a leaner cut of meat instead. The fattier cut of meat because you need to save those fat macros for the alcohol. You’re going to prepare your meal without as much oil. You’re going to skip cheese or bacon or avocado on your salad or sandwich. You’re going to use a vinaigrette based salad dressing instead of a cream based salad dressing. Maybe you cut back on your portion of nut butters or seed butters, coconut products, things like that that you might add to your breakfast and lunch in order to accommodate the space that alcohol is going to take instead. All right, so as you can see, it’s going to be easier to accommodate alcoholic beverages.

Emily Field (00:27:51) –  If they are lower in calories. It’s going to be tough to have three drinks and make space for those drinks if they are. Each 200 calories, 200 300 calories we really difficult to stay on track with your calories and macros. At the end of the day if those drinks are super high calorie. So some of the things that I would recommend just high level, low calorie alcoholic beverages that might be better for you if you are trying to chase those body composition goals as quickly and efficiently as possible, you’re going to opt for simple drinks. Things with fewer ingredients with no added sugars, for example, vodka or tequila soda. It’s going to be much lower in calories than a sugary cocktail, a lighter beer, or dry wine. They’re going to typically have fewer calories than regular beers or sweeter wines. You’re going to avoid mixers that are high in sugar, things like soda, tonic water, fruit juices. They’re going to add significant number of calories to your drinks. Instead, you’re going to opt for a diet soda, club soda, or water as mixers instead.

Emily Field (00:28:55) –  There’s a lesson to be learned in moderation and setting limits here. I think this is probably where most people get stopped up. They don’t want to make a plan for their alcohol. They want to just go in and just say, I’ll figure it out. And that usually doesn’t work. Again, I’m pro mindfulness, whether that’s with food or alcohol. I want you to visualize your day. I want you to be thinking forward instead of being so reactive with your food choices and your drinking habits. So I would love for you to determine before you go out, how many drinks you’re comfortable with consuming without negatively affecting your pursuit of your goals, you’re going to stick to these limits to avoid not only excess calories, but also from feeling so terrible you can’t work out the. Or it negatively impacts your sleep, or it leads to intense cravings and it’s spilling into the next 2 or 3 days. That’s what we don’t want. Okay, so it’s both the calorie stuff, but also the alterations in our sleep and our cravings and impact on our other health habits like exercise.

Emily Field (00:29:58) –  We have a number of ways that we encourage moderation and drinking. And here are just some of the things that we talk about with clients. Number one would be rotating one alcoholic drink with water. For every one alcoholic drink you have a water. Don’t drink alcohol before a certain time of day, or don’t drink alcohol after a certain time of day. So for the person who’s, you know, knows that nothing good happens after midnight, maybe they’re setting a limit on the time of day that they stop drinking. Or maybe if they’re on vacation, they’re not drinking before a certain time of day. So really narrowing that window in which alcohol is consumed can be a really helpful. Instead of limiting the number of drinks they’re setting boundaries on time of day that they’re drinking. Another moderation tactic is to swap between a non-alcoholic or mocktail version of the drink that they like to have. So a na beer for every alcoholic one, or a Nar seltzer, or a mocktail for every alcoholic seltzer or cocktail that they have.

Emily Field (00:30:58) –  Listen, na beers have come a long way from our one and only choice of duels from like 15 to 20 years ago is no longer the case. There are a lot of Na beer choices, a lot of Nar mocktail choices out there, and a seltzers. So if you’re the type of person that really just needs something in their hand and a social situation, or you don’t want to answer to the fact that you’re not drinking for whatever reason in any situation, you’re welcome to alternate your alcoholic beverages with Nar versions and see how that fits. See how that works for you. Our clients are also usually sticking to one type of alcohol per occasion. They’re not mixing it up. You’re not doing tequila and then wine and then beer, because that typically leads to feeling really terrible the next day. Again, decide how many ahead of time you’d like to have and accommodate that in your food diary ahead of time. Carve that space out early so you know how to eat around it in order to hit your macro targets and calorie goals while accommodating the alcohol.

Emily Field (00:32:00) –  My last tip would be to consider mixing your own drinks so that you can control exactly what’s in them, and exactly the serving size that’s coming from alcohol. When I go out on the boat and I like to have alcohol, I know that I’m going to be sitting in the sun for multiple hours and that can make me very thirsty. The drive to want to consume a lot of alcohol is high. Like it’s I’m thirsty, I want something in my hand. I want to cool off. I want to consume the beverage before it gets warm. So one of the things that I do is I take a big tumbler and I measure out the tequila or the vodka or whatever I’m having in my tumbler, and then fill the rest with water or a zero calorie mixer. And that full, full drink stays cold. It hydrates me. I’ve already measured out and accommodated the macros for the alcoholic beverage. I’m not caught in a situation where it’s easy to over drink, so mixing your own drinks can be a great way for you to learn what an actual serving size looks like with alcohol.

Emily Field (00:33:02) –  A typical serving size is one thing, but a restaurant or a cocktail bar might do more or less of that. Certainly, if you’re at somebody else’s house, a pour can get pretty heavy handed. So, you know, mixing your own drinks can be, even if it’s just at home, can be a really great way for you to visualize how much an ounce and a half of liquor, or five ounces of wine or 12oz of beer. Really what that looks like. All right, so in this next section, I want to talk about some common mistakes and misconceptions about alcohol and macro tracking, because we’ve definitely seen it all when it comes to coaching. And this may sound silly, but the number one thing that we see is that calories in alcohol don’t count. And if you’ve gotten anything from this episode, you know that’s not true. If anything, it’s a very calorically dense beverage, but I don’t know what it is. It’s like beverages don’t count. The nutrition label for alcohol can be really deceiving.

Emily Field (00:33:55) –  And even if you are somebody who likes to flip food over or likes to flip their beverages over and look at the calorie content or the nutrition label, it can be pretty confusing. You’ll see a hundred calories for that seltzer, but zero grams of carbs zero all the way down on that nutrition panel. It looks pretty deceiving. It doesn’t contribute any macros, and we know that is because alcohol is a non-nutritive food. It is not required to be put on a label. Alcohol as a macronutrient is not labeled on a food label. So people see those zeros when they’re macro tracking. They think it’s a free food I suppose. So number one misconception is yes, alcohol is a calorie contributing beverage. It will impact your. Were all calorie goals. Staying at your macro and calorie targets means you have to accommodate that alcohol into your day. The second biggest thing I see is people ignoring the calorie content of mixers in their cocktails. So there’s obviously many mixers that are used in cocktails like regular soda, tonic water, fruit juices, and they contain significant amounts of sugar and calories.

Emily Field (00:35:05) –  So you might be accommodating the alcohol in that margarita, or that rum and Coke or that screwdriver or Bloody Mary or something like that, but you’re forgetting to add the calories of the mixers. So, for example, a regular soda mixer can add about 100 calories for an eight ounce serving. And those sugary cocktails like margaritas, pina coladas, daiquiris those can contain 300 to 500 calories per serving, significantly increasing your overall calorie intake. It’s a super common misconception that mixers then added ingredients don’t contribute much to your calorie count, but they can easily double or triple the calorie content of your drink. Now, quick sidebar here you might be thinking, oh man, what do we do when it comes to accommodating those calories in your macros? You know, we talked about the macro math of accommodating alcohol. I would simply find the full calorie amount for your drink divided by four to count as a carb divided by nine to count it as a fat, or using a calculator like the ones I’ve kind of mentioned to slide between the two to accommodate some calories from carbs and some calories from fat.

Emily Field (00:36:14) –  So there’s no reason for you to be doing the alcohol content separate from the fruit juice, from the soda, or whatever. Just take your whole drink. Find the total calories or rough estimate of the total calories divided by four divided by nine, or find a split between the two. Another misconception that people have about alcohol is just simply misjudging serving sizes. Many people are just simply unaware of what constitutes a standard drink, with the serving size being 1.5oz for spirits that your hard alcohol, five ounces for wine and 12oz for beer. And at home it’s easy to pour more than a standard serving, leading to the unintentional increase of calories the overconsumption of your needs. So it’s super common to underestimate the number of drinks you’ve consumed, as maybe a large wine glass can hold one and a half to two servings of wine, and they’re often counted as one drink. I mean, I certainly learned this lesson early on when I was in my macro tracking journey. I have a specific wine glass that I love to drink out of, and it’s very tall and it’s got a wide base.

Emily Field (00:37:19) –  And so I would fill it to the same exact line that I might fill another smaller glass of wine, another smaller container, and in it, unknowingly consuming one and a half, maybe two times as much alcohol as I thought. We should also note here that restaurants can do the same thing. You know, they’re serving maybe a six ounce pour or a nine ounce pour, which is already more than the standard drink. And when I tell you estimated calories for wine, for example, might be one 120 to 130 calories, that’s for five ounces. But if you’re being served six or 9 or 12 or multiple glasses, whatever that might be, you’re certainly going to be consuming more than 120 calories times however many servings you just had. The last misconception that I’ll touch on is that many people mistakenly believe that consuming healthy foods allows them to drink alcohol without considering its calorie content. I eat healthy, i.e. organic. I exercise regularly, so I don’t need to worry about my alcohol consumption. Alcohol absolutely does contribute to overall calories, and it can lead to a calorie surplus if you’re not tracking.

Emily Field (00:38:36) –  If you’re not in check with this. Eating nutritious foods is a good thing. It’s going to help you maybe detox that alcohol appropriately, you know, have a good base before you start drinking to avoid a hangover. It might even prevent a hangover, but it doesn’t fully nullify the calorie impact of alcohol. The body processes these calories, affecting your weight and your health goals, regardless of your diet. Regardless of how healthy your diet is, there’s also a common tendency to justify increased alcohol consumption after eating healthily, or maybe even working out, and that person is significantly underestimating its dietary impact and potentially could hinder your body composition or your fitness goals. Alcohol provides empty calories. It lacks nutritional value beyond just providing extra energy, energy that your body can’t really do much with. And disregarding this can compromise the benefits of your healthy diet. So to close out this episode, I want to leave you with some rapidfire practical tips for enjoying alcohol while pursuing body composition goals. Because I am not the coach that is going to tell you that you have to go sober in order to see body composition change.

Emily Field (00:39:46) –  However, I am pro mindfulness, pro accountability, pro awareness. So that means that you get to decide how much, how often, if at all, alcohol fits while you’re pursuing these goals. Number one tip is to plan ahead and track your consumption ahead of time. Determine how many drinks you’re going to have and stick to it. You’re going to track your calories or the macros for those alcoholic beverages. By being mindful of those portion sizes and mixers used, you’re going to adjust your macros on the days that you plan to drink. Adjusting your macronutrient intake to accommodate the calories and alcohol is imperative if you want to stay on track with your macro targets and calorie goals. Best practice is probably to opt for lower calorie options. When it comes to alcohol, you’re going to want to opt for clear spirits like vodka, gin, or tequila and pair that with low calorie mixers like soda water or diatonic. You’re going to opt for lighter beers or drier wines because they generally have fewer calories than their regular counterparts.

Emily Field (00:40:47) –  You’re going to avoid sugary mixers, so steer clear of cocktails with sugary mixers added syrups, because these can significantly increase the calorie content of your drink. You may not even be aware of how many calories it’s contributing and therefore, you know, sending you over your calorie targets for the day. Those macro goals for the day. To avoid dehydration, you’re going to alternate with water. Drink a glass of water between alcoholic beverages to stay hydrated and help mitigate the dehydrating effects of alcohol. Consider drinking water before and after consuming alcohol to maintain hydration levels and support. Overall, you know, great bodily function as you detox that alcohol out of your system. I would love for you to consider the timing of your nutrition around drinking. Eating before drinking can slow alcohol absorption and reduce its impact on your metabolism and hormones and your blood sugar levels, which will make it easier for you to avoid overeating later on in the night or giving into cravings. Having some disruptions in your appetite, things like that. I’d also recommend that you eat after you drink if you can.

Emily Field (00:41:56) –  I don’t know how realistic that is, but prioritizing nutrient dense foods or nutrient dense drinks to support recovery and replenish those essential vitamins and minerals can be super helpful for avoiding a hangover, which again, is a whole different story. If we’re talking about a hangover impacting our next day. And what kinds of food choices do you make when you have a hangover? What kind of choices do you make around workouts and recovery? When you have a hangover? Probably not great. So consider nutrient rich, colorful foods, especially those B vitamin rich foods and drinks can be super helpful after drinking to help you avoid a hangover, I would love for you to start paying attention to how alcohol impacts your progress. I want you to observe its effects by seeing how it affects your sleep, your energy levels, your workout performance, and then adjust accordingly. You have a lot of data. If you’re tracking macros, you have tons of data from the previous weeks and months of tracking. That is insight for your future choices. So consider using that to your advantage so that you can learn from what you’ve been through and change course if necessary.

Emily Field (00:43:02) –  Perhaps this is an opportunity for you to practice mindful drinking by savoring each drink, enjoying the social aspects that drinking can bring. There’s no doubt that alcohol is social and cultural and ritualistic. There are so many great aspects about sharing in an alcoholic beverage with friends, or after doing something collectively, you know, as a part of. A meal like we’re never going to be able to, at least for me, not going to be able to untie those things. And I don’t want to, but I do want to be mindful of my consumption and decide when it’s appropriate or not. I’m thinking of apres ski and meeting up at the brewery after a long bike ride or, you know, warming up with a boozy hot cocoa after snowmobiling. You know, alcohol on boats and in the summer while swimming and like, things like this, like alcohol goes together with many of my favorite things. And I’m just speaking from experience and echoing some of the experiences that my clients have. I’m not interested in untying that.

Emily Field (00:44:06) –  They go together for me, but I can absolutely become more mindful of my consumption by savoring each drink, by enjoying the social aspect of the physical aspect of whatever I’m doing. It’s not about the alcohol. The alcohol is not making or breaking that event or that experience. It’s only adding to it. And if there’s a time where it truly isn’t adding to it because I’m thinking about my calories, I’m thinking about how this is impacting my bigger overall goals for athletic performance or body composition or health in general, that I’m going to stop drinking, I’m going to moderate my drinking better. So treat this like an opportunity for you to decide where it belongs, when, how much. All of that last tip here is to incorporate exercise in that active lifestyle, because having a consistent exercise routine can help support metabolism and energy expenditure, so you can mitigate the effects that overconsumption of calories from alcohol can have. Okay. Also, we kind of talked about this before, but sweating and you know, breathing carbon dioxide in water is how we get the alcohol out of our system.

Emily Field (00:45:12) –  So consider getting a workout in and getting a sweat session in, and maybe a sauna session that can help you detox a little bit faster and mitigate the effects that we’re seeing from alcohol. In this episode, we talked about the relationship between alcohol and tracking macros. We started with a quick review of the main macronutrients proteins, fats, and carbs, and then introduced alcohol as a fourth macro. We talked all about its nutritional value, calorie content, and how it affects your metabolism, liver, and hydration. We also shared some practical tips for enjoying alcohol while still hitting your body. Composition goals like tracking your drinks, adjusting your macros, picking lower calorie options, and the importance of moderation. By understanding these points, you can make smarter choices about drinking and stay on track with your health and fitness goals. Thanks for listening and we’ll catch you next time on the next episode of Macros Made Easy. Thank you so much for listening to the Macros Made Easy podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, take a screenshot of the one you’re listening to right now to share it on your Instagram Stories, and tag me at Emily Field so that more people can find this podcast and learn how to use a macros approach in a stress free way.

Emily Field (00:46:23) –  If you love the podcast, head over to iTunes and leave me a rating and a review. Remember, you can always find more free health and nutrition content on Instagram and on my website at www.emilyfieldRD.com. Thanks for listening and I’ll catch you on the next episode.

Emily Field (00:00:00) – Welcome to episode 23 of the Macros Made Easy podcast, and today we are taking things back to basics. It seems like the episodes that people keep going back to are the very basic ones. It seems like no one’s really sharing exactly how to get started with tracking, like literally the first couple of steps. So that’s exactly what we’re going to talk about today. I’ll break it all down and categorize it by talking through some of the things that you should do before you start your first week, and then what your first week of tracking might look like. Welcome to Macros Made Easy, the podcast that takes the confusion out of tracking macros. I’m your host, Emily Field, a registered dietitian that specializes in a macros approach. In each episode, I help you learn how to eat in a way that supports your health, body composition, and athletic performance goals. We’ll cover the basics of macronutrients how to track for various goals, the role of macros in your health, and how to make sustainable changes to your habits.

Emily Field (00:00:53) – I’ve helped hundreds of people experience more food freedom and flexibility while navigating their nutrition. So whether you’ve tried macros and it just didn’t stick or you just heard the word macros yesterday, I can’t wait to help you too. So if you’re the type of person that hasn’t been able to string together a couple of days of tracking and you find yourself starting over a lot, I’m confident that this episode is for you, and I feel like you’re gonna gain some traction after hearing some of these steps. Okay, but before we get into anything, I have to mention at the top, you have to ditch your preconceived notion that this is just another diet plan, just another diet program, something that you have to follow starting on Monday. Macro tracking is a skill that you learn over time with practice. So let’s normalize getting better at something. The longer that you do it, normalize not being perfect at it right away. That is going to make everything go smoother. It’s going to help you have a little bit more grace for yourself.

Emily Field (00:01:48) – It’s actually going to keep you in the game a lot longer. All right. So prior to your very first week of tracking, there’s a couple things that have to come together. All right. So let’s review those first few things that you need to have ready before your first week of tracking. And the first is that you need to set your goals. You need to have actual macro targets before starting your first week of macro tracking. You’re going to want to take the time to define your health and fitness goals. Are you aiming to gain muscle, lose fat, support your active lifestyle, or maybe achieve something else entirely? Clearly, outlining your objectives will influence your calorie goals in your macro targets, guiding you towards the right nutritional balance for your unique needs. Which brings me to my next point. We’ve got to calculate your macros. You’ve got to have some macro targets in mind before you start that first week of tracking. So you’re going to calculate your personalized macro targets using a reliable method such as my DIY Macros guide or another online calculator.

Emily Field (00:02:45) – Alternatively, you could consider consulting with a dietitian to determine your ideal macro targets tailored to your goals, but also taking into account factors like your age, your weight, your height, your activity level, your food preferences, and more. Setting macros in grams, rather than percentages of total daily calories provides a lot clearer guidelines for your daily intake. It’s best if your macros are set in grams instead of percentages, but it’s totally fine if that’s all that’s available to you, you can absolutely get far with those percentages. Next, I’ll say that it’s probably a good idea prior to starting your first week of tracking macros to understand which foods provide which macro, at least at a very basic level, this will make meal planning a lot easier. And as your skill in tracking grows, it’ll become even more easy to make macro manipulable meals because you’ll have a better understanding of which foods contain which macronutrient. So which foods do you need to dial up or down in order to get you closer to your macro targets? We have an entire episode about the PFC found in different foods, so that might be an episode that you go listen to after this.

Emily Field (00:03:51) – If this is where you really need some help. But in general, carbohydrates are going to be found in your grains and grain based products. Fruits and vegetables. Proteins are going to be found in meat, fish, poultry, eggs, dairy, beans and then fats are going to be found in oils, nuts, avocados, coconut products, etc.. You’ll have to just understand that balancing all these macronutrients ensures optimal nutrition and overall health. We’re never going to want to limit one macro over another, because there are going to be consequences to doing that. Again, we talk about this in many different episodes throughout the podcast, but my general stance as a dietitian is that you need all three macronutrients in a balanced way to provide a lot of variety and a lot of like, wholesome nutrition for your body. Okay, so the last thing you need prior to tracking, prior to this first week of tracking is to choose your tracking method. Popular methods for tracking include using apps, tracking manually in a journal, or maybe using a spreadsheet on the computer.

Emily Field (00:04:56) – I absolutely love using technology here. I don’t know of anyone that’s really doing it manually or in a spreadsheet, but I know that people have before. I like to use Chronometer, but Macros First is another great app and my last, you know, recommendation would be MyFitnessPal. I would probably recommend them in that order too. Okay, so first being Chronometer, second being Macros First and third being MyFitnessPal or something else. Ultimately the method that works for you, the best method for you, is the one that you actually enjoy and the one that you can be consistent with. One where you like the interface. You can navigate the app pretty easily. It doesn’t feel clunky to you. It feels intuitive. I almost forgot to mention that, you know, maybe an optional step for your, you know, prior to tracking macros at the very first week is to obtain a food scale. Using a food scale would be the best, most accurate and precise way of tracking macros because it allows you to measure your food portions by weight, ensuring consistency and reliability in your tracking efforts.

Emily Field (00:05:59) – Now, there are a lot of people who start tracking macros without a food scale, so I didn’t want to make this a required step. But if you feel like this is something that’s really going to work for you, and you can see yourself really enjoying the data side of things, I highly recommend that you get a digital food scale. A food scale is going to enhance your portion awareness, help you understand and control serving sizes more effectively. With a food scale, you can easily adapt and adjust portion sizes to meet your specific macro targets, ultimately supporting you in the long run for, you know, progress and obtaining results. Using a food scale while tracking macros is probably what sets it apart and allows us to see some of those results as rapidly and as efficiently and effectively as we do. You know, when you have that control over the portion size to the ounce, it can mean the difference between hundreds of calories across a week, which could mean the difference between gaining, maintaining or losing weight.

Emily Field (00:06:53) – So when we talk about eating up to your macro goals, making sure that you have enough fuel to support muscle gain, a food scale is going to help you do that. Or if we’re trying to eat as much food as possible while seeing fat loss and supporting your metabolism, supporting your hormones, a food scale is going to help you do that. It’s going to really take out that guesswork of the portion sizes. You can be wildly inaccurate if you are using things like measuring cups, measuring spoons, or simply eyeballing it. Okay, so now we are ready to track our first week. Okay, you’re in your very first week of tracking macros. I’m going to walk you through six steps that I would say are probably just the rubber hits the road. How do I actually start tracking macros? And it may sound really simple. It may sound like duh. But the very first thing I’ll say is you’re just going to start logging your food in the moment without changing anything about your typical eating pattern. I want you to track your meals, your snacks, your beverages, as well as those like little bites, licks, taste pieces, anything that comes in contact with your mouth.

Emily Field (00:07:55) – I want you to resist the urge of changing your typical eats, because at this stage, it’s just about establishing a logging routine and learning a little bit about your normal eating habits. Okay, so be diligent about recording portion sizes and details of each meal and snack. You’re going to use food labels, online databases, maybe nutrition guides online to determine the macronutrient composition of the foods you consume. And this is going to be highly inaccurate. It’s going to be highly imperfect in the beginning, but I want you to do it anyway. This is a skill. Like I said, macro tracking is a skill that you develop over time, and you really need those reps right now. It’s best to be tracking in the moment, especially as a beginner tracker, but I do think that it’s worthwhile to log what you can ahead of time. This is just going to help you be a little bit more mindful of your eating pattern, and it’ll also help you cut some corners with time. Okay, so maybe you typically eat the same things for breakfast.

Emily Field (00:08:52) – Maybe you always have a midday snack or a pre-workout snack. If you can pretty much guarantee that you’ll have some protein powder or collagen powder somewhere in the day. You can probably add these to your diary ahead of time. And what I like to do is do this over coffee in the morning. I’ll just take 5 or 10 minutes in the morning to visualize my day. Even if it’s just skeletons of my eating pattern. Just portions of my day. Okay, I’m gonna copy and paste from days before. I’m going to log what I know I’m going to have just things that I know that are probably likely that I’ll have during the day. And as you get better and better at tracking, this pre-planning and pre logging step will be just become the dominant theme. They’ll probably be a lot less in the moment tracking as you become a more expert tracker. And that’s good. That means that you are a more mindful eater. That means you’re putting some forethought into your day. That’s probably going to lead to better results overall.

Emily Field (00:09:49) – I mentioned that this is pretty common for me to do over coffee in the morning, but it’s also something you can do in the evening, maybe before you go to bed. I have clients that will be watching TV in the evening, or just kind of winding down, and they’ll just take that 5 or 10 minutes, tie it to a habit or something that you’re already doing. And this is called habit stacking. We’re building a habit of pre logging. And you can stack that on to something that you’re already doing in the evening. That pre logging that pre-planning is just going to, like I said, make you more mindful. You probably have a much calmer mind in the evening or in the morning before your day starts. So you can reduce the decision fatigue that comes with tracking macros in the moment or tracking macros in your app in the moment while you’re eating. Okay, so we’ve got a couple of days in your diary. Now it’s time to evaluate and adjust some things. Okay, so you’re going to look at your days of data in your food diary.

Emily Field (00:10:42) – Maybe let’s say you have 2 or 3 days and you’re going to look at the breakdown of your protein, fat and carbohydrates in your meal. And you’re going to ask yourself some questions. Do my meals have some protein, some fat and some carb? Are my meals disproportionately higher in 1 or 2 macros compared to the others? Do I average about the same amount of protein, fat, and carbohydrate day to day, or is there really no pattern to how I eat each of these? This would also be the time to look at where or which foods do I get most of my protein from? Where do I get most of my fat? From? Where do I get most of my carbohydrates from? This is your evaluate and adjust step. Okay, we always want to treat macro tracking like data, right? You it is. It is data about your eating pattern. And we can learn a lot by looking back. So ignore where your total calories are falling and start to gather some information about how you typically eat.

Emily Field (00:11:37) – This step is all about informing the next steps to come in the process, knowing how to manipulate your meals, how to get more or less protein, fat, and carbs. You know, things like that. How to get closer to your macro targets as we get going. Okay, so now that we are kind of cruising into 3 or 4 days of tracking, I want you to really start focusing on one macro at a time based on the information you gathered in that step I just talked about prior. I want you to pick that one macronutrient that seems like it’s farthest away from your macro prescription goal, farthest away from your target. So again, you’re going to ignore calories and both of the other macronutrients for a day or two and focus on making changes to your typical meals and snacks to get you closer to that daily total for that one macro. Again, don’t worry about perfection at this step. Getting within like even 10 to 15g of your macro target right now is really sufficient at this learning stage. And for most people, the first focus is going to be protein, because unless they’re really conscious about getting it at every single meal, they’re probably drastically underreporting what’s needed to see health, body composition, athletic performance changes.

Emily Field (00:12:47) – So the focus of this step is just to master that one macronutrient, build some confidence around tracking macros before moving on to mastering those other macronutrients. And it’s okay that we’ve kind of like, you know, it’s your first week of tracking. We’re kind of getting in a groove of tracking in the moment, maybe a little bit of pre logging or assessing where we’re at at the end of the day. And now we’re going to go in with a little bit more intention on one macro. During your first week, it’s likely that you’re not going to be in control of every single meal that you eat. So my next tip or my next step here in this first week, is just to do your best with the meals that are out of your control. You have a lunch and learn at work, maybe an unexpected invite to the neighbors, or a last minute swing to grab some food to go. You know, it’s just not realistic to expect that your meals are going to be all perfectly balanced and planned by you, especially in this very first week of tracking.

Emily Field (00:13:41) – I want you to just track to the best of your abilities anyway, because this is where the real learning happens. Don’t skip tracking just because you know that you won’t be accurate or on target here each time you track. You’ve heard me say this before. Each time you track is a learning opportunity. It is helping you educate yourself a little bit more about the nutrition content of your food. When I think back about my first few weeks or months of tracking macros, and there were meals that I was not so confident in tracking because I didn’t make it myself, I treated it like a learning opportunity, and I leaned into that curiosity. Okay, I might say something like, all right. So I ate a whole portion from this restaurant, and that was a super big calorie and macro bomb. Maybe now, in the future, I know that I have to go for half that portion, or I might need to save more macros to accommodate that portion. Or maybe I just need to be okay with going over my macros on occasion.

Emily Field (00:14:35) – And another example, maybe I could consider swapping for a lower fat side dish that would serve me better next time. You know, whatever I logged. Maybe it was tots or fries or onion rings or something like that. It’s just not going to work for my macro targets. It’s not going to work for my goals. So I know for next time that I’m probably going to have to swap out for a lower fat side dish, something a little bit more veggie heavy, a little less deep fried, if we will. Another example here, maybe you just want to say in order to eat this meal and stay within my macro targets for whatever data I’ve gathered, from going out to eat and attempting to track this meal, I just might have to hold back on some fats and carbs for my breakfast or my lunch in order to allow for that meal to fit. Okay, there are going to be times where it is really worth it to you to have something that is pretty high calorie and pretty high macro, and there’s nothing wrong with meals like that.

Emily Field (00:15:28) – But in order to stay on target with your goals and to kind of progress you forward with tracking macros accurately and diligently, you might need to hold back in different meals to accommodate that bigger, more macro rich meal. Okay, to summarize, we’re saying do the best with the meals that are out of your control. Okay? This is a skill that will come in time. You’ll learn where to look up nutrition information for different restaurants, maybe how to find something similar on different menus that do have a standardized nutrition database you could log in place of what you’re eating. There’s a lot of tricks to logging foods that are out of your control, but the best thing to do in this step is to simply break down what you’re eating. Instead of finding a meal descriptor that’s kind of like, I don’t know, spaghetti and meatballs or burger with cheese or chicken tacos or steak fajitas, something like that. That sounds like a complete meal. What I’d rather you do is break down what you’re eating and find the individual ingredients and log those in the best guess portion sizes of what you’re consuming.

Emily Field (00:16:37) – Okay, so for that burger, you’ll find a, you know, eight ounce ground beef patty and you’ll find two ounces of American cheese, and you’ll find a burger bun, something like that. Or the fajitas, maybe you will track, you know, a tablespoon of oil that they probably cooked in and four ounces of skirt steak. And, you know, any avocado or sour cream or cheese or whatever else you added on that, maybe some six inch corn tortillas or flour tortillas that you can log your breaking down the meal that you see in front of you and to individual components. Because this is what’s going to teach you which macros are found in which food. If you’re just simply logging the completed meal, you have no idea where those macros are coming from, and it’s probably going to be wildly inaccurate because you have no idea what the portion is that you’re logging. You have no idea what the intention behind that tracked food was when that person put it in the diary or in the database. It’s so much better if you’re just kind of breaking down that full meal from an education standpoint and from an accuracy standpoint as well.

Emily Field (00:17:44) – Okay. So the final step in your first week of tracking is to grocery shop with macros in mind. And you might be wondering what the step is doing at the end of my list. It might have been better at the beginning of my list, but that’s because I think you need to fumble through your first week before being able to inform a great grocery shopping trip. And I have some tips on how to grocery shop with macros in mind, because I have been doing this for years and I’ve been helping clients do this for years as well. After you have been fumbling through your first week of tracking, you’re going to start to know pretty well where there are holes in your macro tracking experience, right? You’re going to know. Yeah, I definitely was falling short on XYZ macro. I don’t have enough food in my fridge. I probably can’t really make a meal from my pantry items. I could probably use some help with some freezer items. And now you’re going to inform a great grocery shopping trip because you have more insight to your typical habits.

Emily Field (00:18:43) – So I’d say the best and first place to start is to make a grocery list organized by section of the grocery store. So instead of like marking down what you need in a random order, I love to visualize your walk through the store listing items by major sections so your produce, the bakery, your pantry items, maybe dairy butcher, your frozen items, things like that. And then I would review that list and see that there are some protein, some fat, and some carbohydrate heavy items in. Several of the grocery sections on your list. So you’re going to grab carbohydrate dominant fruits and vegetables in the produce section, maybe the frozen section and the pantry section. Maybe you’ll find protein, dominant meat, fish, poultry, eggs in the dairy the butcher and the frozen sections. Nuts, seeds, avocados, coconut products, cheese are probably spread throughout, but I want you to take a once over glance at your list and make sure you’ve got a mix of PDF and see coming from multiple sections of the store for meal variety.

Emily Field (00:19:45) – And also, this is just going to help you in that macro manipulable stage where you’re looking at your meal and you’re like, what can I add to round out some protein, fat and carb here? Something that doesn’t make this into a Franken meal, but it rounds off the top and I don’t have to scramble at the end of the day. Another tip here would be to look at your list and identify fresh, frozen and shelf stable proteins, fats and carbs so you don’t want to rely on meat, fish, and poultry exclusively to meet your protein goals. Just like you wouldn’t want to rely solely on cooking oils to meet your fat goals or rice and sweet potatoes for your carbohydrate goals, it’s best to have variety and choice. So when you’re looking at where these foods are coming from in the section of the grocery store, kind of start to see, can you establish that some of these are frozen, some of these are fresh and some of these are pantry stable. Again, this is just going to help with meal planning and rounding out your meals in the moment when you need it.

Emily Field (00:20:41) – One of the biggest changes that you’ll be making as somebody who tracks macros, is to probably move away from meals that are already prepackaged and not able to be manipulated. Certainly there is room for frozen meals or family sized platters or snack foods, things like that, but the majority of your food will be coming from ingredients not already made into a meal. Okay, so this is where that term macro manipulable meals comes from. These are meals that you can dial up and down the fancy content based on your needs and preferences in the moment. This is what sets you apart from a very beginner tracker and someone who’s like an expert level. Okay, and the journey between that beginner and expert can be slow or fast, but I think the quicker that you’re able to recognize that we are making meals that are macro manipulable, they can be dialed up and down in the moment, and you become more creative with a variety that you have on hand in your house. The faster that’s going to be that faster that transition is going to be.

Emily Field (00:21:46) – So again, like prepackaged items like frozen meals, family sized platters, snack foods, meal replacements, foods that are packaged with like sauces, cream cheese. It doesn’t really allow for freedom to add and subtract and see. Instead, you are going to purchase ingredients to build your own meals that are balanced in the way that you want, according to your macro targets on a specific day. So there you have it. That is what I would consider the six essential steps to starting to track macros. Like the very first week that rubber hits the road. What do I do in my very first week? I have no idea where to start. And of course we have a lot of resources to help you along the way, so feel free to go back into the archives of this podcast and see some of the very first episodes that we published around tracking macros, how to get started, where foods are found. There’s a lot of really good juicy stuff. If you really like this method or this medium of learning, there’s a lot of really good juicy stuff there for you to really set yourself up for success in tracking.

Emily Field (00:22:52) – So in conclusion, to summarize everything we’ve kind of talked about here today before you’re even at your very first week, you’re going to clearly define your health and fitness goals because that will guide your calorie and macro targets. You’ll calculate your macros accurately with tools like online calculators or consulting with a dietitian for personal guidance. You’re going to start to dabble in where do you macros come from? Which foods contain which macro? Because that will inform some choices when your meal planning to make sure that you have a balanced diet, you’re going to choose a tracking method or tracking app that fits with your lifestyle and your preferences allows for consistent monitoring. You might integrate a food scale into your routine so that you can enhance the accuracy of your portion control and overall macro tracking. Then, as you move into your first week of tracking, you’re just going to focus on logging your food intake without making drastic changes to your eating habits. You’re going to use this data to evaluate and adjust your macro distribution throughout the day. You know, finding and learning about yourself.

Emily Field (00:23:56) – You’re leading with curiosity. You’re learning about yourself here so that you can make different choices in the days that follow. Finally, you’re going to approach grocery shopping with macros in mind, aiming for a variety of protein, fat, and carbohydrate sources to support flexible and balanced meal planning according to your macro targets, you will embrace this. I can’t stress this enough. You will embrace this as a learning process. And remember that macro tracking is a skill that improves with practice and patience over time. So thank you so much for tuning into the podcast, and good luck with your very first weeks of tracking macros. You’ve got this. Thank you so much for listening to the Macros Made Easy podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, take a screenshot of the one you’re listening to right now to share it on your Instagram Stories, and tag me at Emily Field so that more people can find this podcast and learn how to use a macros approach in a stress free way. If you love the podcast, head over to iTunes and leave me a rating and a review.

Emily Field (00:24:51) – Remember, you can always find more free health and nutrition content on Instagram and on my website at emilyfieldrd.com. Thanks for listening and I’ll catch you on the next episode.

Emily Field (00:00:00) – Welcome to episode 20 of the Macros Made Easy podcast. In today’s episode, we’re diving deep into the fundamental components of a macro balanced diet. That’s your proteins, fats and carbohydrates. 

Welcome to Macros Made Easy, the podcast that takes the confusion out of tracking macros. I’m your host, Emily Field, a registered dietitian that specializes in a macros approach. In each episode, I help you learn how to eat in a way that supports your health, body composition, and athletic performance goals. We’ll cover the basics of macronutrients, how to track for various goals, the role of macros in your health, and how to make sustainable changes to your habits. I’ve helped hundreds of people experience more food freedom and flexibility while navigating their nutrition. So whether you’ve tried macros and it just didn’t stick or you just heard the word macros yesterday, I can’t wait to help you too. 

Balancing all three macronutrients in your meals is not just about counting numbers, it’s about optimizing your overall health and well-being. So in our first segment, we’ll explore the importance of those macro balanced meals, discussing how each macro contributes to blood sugar control, energy regulation, and metabolism.

Emily Field (00:01:08) – Next, we’ll dive into actual sources of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates in your diet. So if you’ve ever felt confused about which foods fall into each category, this segment will be your guide. So from lean meats to fish to nutrient rich grains and whole foods fats, I will help you build a foundation for effective macro tracking. Next, I’m going to share convenience foods that align with your protein, fat, and carbohydrate goals, making it easier for you to meet your macronutrient targets by the end of the day. It is not realistic to expect that you’re going to cook or build meals from scratch every single day. So I’ll recommend some of my favorite pantry essentials and quick frozen options that can make for a hassle free choices when you’re in a time bind. And finally, I’m calling this the ten quick mixed macro meals that you can make with food that you already have at home segment. Or I’m going to provide you with some simple yet delicious meal ideas that encompass a perfect balance of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates.

Emily Field (00:02:00) – So whether in the mood for a deli sandwich with hummus, a Greek yogurt parfait, or a flavorful beef and broccoli stir fry, these meal ideas are going to get your mind turning and your creative juices flowing. Whether you are a seasoned macro tracker or just starting, this episode is packed with valuable insights and practical tips to make macros easy and enjoyable. Balancing macronutrients. Again, that’s your proteins, fats and carbohydrates. Balancing ingredients in your meals that contain all three of these things is crucial for a variety of reasons, because each macronutrient plays a unique role in supporting your overall health. But I think I want to talk specifically about three major areas why it might be in your best interest to pair proteins, fats, and carbs together at each meal. The first reason is for blood sugar control. So understand that a balanced combination of macronutrients and meals is going to play a role in regulating your blood sugar levels. So carbohydrates are the body’s primary source of energy and have a direct impact on blood sugar. But when you pair them with proteins and fats in a balanced meal, the digestion and absorption of those carbohydrates becomes much slower and more controlled.

Emily Field (00:03:12) – This contrasts with meals high and simple carbohydrates. Think like your kid’s cereal or gummy bears, candy, things like that. That’s going to lead to a rapid spike and crash in blood sugar levels. I like to use the imagery of a roller coaster, and you’ve probably heard this if you’ve listened to my podcast for any length of time. I’m always talking about the difference between roller coaster blood sugar and rolling hills. Blood sugar, those rapid spikes and those crashes in blood sugar resemble a roller coaster, and they’re not great. To be on roller coasters all day long are not fun to be on versus the opposite, which would be rolling hills, gentle rises and falls in your blood sugar all day long. It’s going to be much more supportive for your overall energy. You know, proteins and fats also contribute to a feeling of fullness because they slow down the digestion process, which leads to a more gradual release of those carbohydrates or sugar into the bloodstream. This promotes stable and sustained blood sugar. And again, it resembles rolling hills rather than the peaks and valleys of a roller coaster.

Emily Field (00:04:16) – We know that maintaining stable blood sugar levels is associated with better energy, improved mental clarity, better focused enhanced mood, higher quality sleep, and optimized hormone balance. And we’re talking most of your hormones okay. So in summary, a well-balanced combination of macronutrients in your meals is going to contribute to better blood sugar control and better overall metabolic health. Now are you doing yourself a disservice by not having proteins, fats and carbs in your meals? No. There might be times, especially if you get going in this journey where you want to purposely spike your blood sugar, like before working out, or before a big endurance event where you’re going to be utilizing those carbohydrates and you need that simple sugar, that energy right away. So again, this isn’t about being perfect. You’re not doing your body a disservice by missing out on all three macronutrients at a meal. It’s super unrealistic to expect that you’re going to have a perfect balance at every single meal, but this should be something that you’re striving for. The other piece of this is that you’re probably going to be more on pace with hitting your macro targets by the end of the day.

Emily Field (00:05:24) – If you’re nipping off a little bit of those targets at every meal. So, for example, instead of saving your macros by the end of the day or eating very imbalanced throughout the day, you’re going to probably have to play catch up if you want to hit your macros by the end of the day, but instead, if you’re really aiming for that meal to contain protein, fat, and carbohydrate in pretty sizable, substantial amounts, you’re probably going to stay on pace or on target for those nutrient totals by the end of the day. The next important piece I want to talk about, you know, kind of the benefits for having a balanced combination of macronutrients in your meals is from the energy perspective, carbohydrates serve as the body’s immediate energy source, providing quick fuel for daily activities and exercise. Meanwhile, fats act as a secondary, more long term energy source, and that’s crucial for maintaining your energy levels between meals or during long periods of low intensity activities. We don’t usually use protein as a source of energy, but it absolutely could be in a bind.

Emily Field (00:06:24) – And this is amazing. This just kind of like harkens back to how amazing the body is from an evolutionary standpoint. We are evolved enough to survive and get energy from our food no matter what the balance of our diet looks like. So in feast or famine, or in different parts of the world where there are different emphasis on different macronutrients because of the different foods available, that’s pretty amazing. If you think about it. We can get energy from any type of food, but the body’s preferred energy source would be those carbohydrates for that quick energy and exercise, and then those fats will be that secondary energy source. Think about like when you sleep for 7 to 10 hours and you’re not eating in that time frame. And that means your body is able to utilize the fuels that are stored, the stored fats as fuel, the stored carbohydrates as fuel in order to maintain your energy, keep your heart beating, your brainwaves going, your lungs going, and things like that. I lastly want to touch on the fact that eating a balanced combination of all three macronutrients is going to play a big role in regulating our metabolism, essentially turning our food into cellular energy and all the processes that have to come together in order to do that.

Emily Field (00:07:36) – The food is outside of our body and it comes into our body, and it provides our cells with energy. Okay. Proteins, for example, have a higher thermic effect, which means that they require. More energy for digestion and metabolism. Fats are essential for synthesizing. Hormones in carbohydrates provide that readily available energy source, so eliminating any of those macronutrients will play a really big role in your body’s ability to efficiently convert food to cellular energy, and it will absolutely influence your metabolism. Again, I feel strongly that you’re dieting history or, you know, any diets that you’ve participated in the past that really demonize one macronutrient over the other probably had some downstream consequences. You may or may not have realized them in the first few weeks of that diet. But if you really look back, if you tried to commit for months or years, the consequences do catch up with you, because there is some interruption in that process of turning food into cellular energy, aka your metabolism. So now that I have really set the scene for why it’s important to have a balance of macronutrients in your diet, let’s talk a little bit more about some protein, fat, and carbohydrate sources.

Emily Field (00:08:53) – Let’s get really down and dirty with sources for these proteins, fats, and carbs because chances are you don’t really have a great idea of which foods contain each macro. Unless you’ve been tracking for a fair amount of time, you’ve probably heard me say this in various episodes. But if you’ve really learned about nutrition, peace through social media, diet fads, or hearsay, it’s really likely that you have some misconceptions about what foods are comprised of protein, fat, and carb. So I’m going to talk about the basics. All right. And I usually like to depict this concept with a Venn diagram. All right. So if you can imagine there’s three circles. One circle is protein, one circle is fats and one circle is carbohydrates. Right. And they all come together kind of like a triangle where they are going to overlap in certain spots. That’s kind of like how our diet is, right. There are foods that contain a dominant portion of protein, a dominant portion of fat, and a dominant portion of carbohydrates.

Emily Field (00:09:54) – But most foods are going to have a combination of fats and carbs or proteins and carbs or proteins or fats. You know, they’re going to overlap in that Venn diagram. So I want to first say, if you are a visual person, I highly recommend that you download my DIY macros guide because in the pages following creating your macro targets, there are some support resources there. And one of them is this Venn diagram, which really covers the main sources or dominant sources of protein, fats and carbs, but also foods that have a combination of two or more macro that you can really easily see and learn a lot just from that one pager. So since this is an audio learning experience, I’m going to talk through some of your main sources of protein. It’s going to be easy. This is going to be totally review for you. And then we’ll move to fats and carbs. So mostly protein the foods that are contained mostly protein are going to be your meat fish, poultry things like that. So we’ve got your beef pork lamb your game meat bison.

Emily Field (00:10:55) – We’ve got salmon, tuna sardines. We’ve got chicken turkey duck. We have that Cornish game hens. You know I’m trying to give you plenty of examples, but then also things like fish and crustaceans, shellfish, molluscs that all falls into a category where the dominant portion of macronutrient in those foods is going to be protein. Okay. Now you might be asking like, what about eggs? What about Greek yogurt? What about dairy? Like cottage cheese, soy products, things like that? Because you might in your mind categorize them as protein. And you’re right, they have mostly protein. We do have a fair amount of portion of protein in those foods, but they also contain some fats or carbs or both. So your whole eggs, your Greek yogurt, your cottage cheese, your tofu, tempeh or soy products, they’re going to have a sizable portion of protein, no doubt, but they’re also going to have some fats and carbs. So that’s kind of why I left them out of that main category.

Emily Field (00:11:48) – You know, that big circle of protein containing foods. Let’s talk next about fats. I really like to categorize these as your whole food fats. Then your oils and solid fats and then cheese kind of falls in here to your whole food. Fats are going to be things like olives and avocado, coconut products, your nuts, your seeds. We got your almonds, walnuts, pistachios, chia seeds, flax seeds, sunflower seeds, all of them. I’m obviously not going to create an exhaustive list on a podcast, but you’re getting the idea of what I’m talking about. But then also like your olive oil, your coconut oil, butter, things like that will fall into this category as well. Now we have our third circle, which is the foods that are dominantly carbohydrate based. And these are going to be like your grains and your grain products, potatoes, all of your fruits, all of your vegetables, and even those legumes. So your beans, lentils, peas would fall here too. And that might surprise a few of you.

Emily Field (00:12:42) – You know, the fruits and vegetables don’t really surprise you. Maybe even the grains don’t surprise. Rise you, your rice, oats, quinoa, barley, all that. That doesn’t surprise you. But maybe you’re thinking, well, I thought legumes like beans, lentils and peas had protein in them and they were good sources of protein. And it might surprise you to hear me categorize them mostly as carb and and that’s really what they are. They have some traces of protein macro in them, but they’re not really going to be a dominant source of protein. It’s going to be really tough if you have a diet totally comprised of grains, potatoes, fruits, vegetables, legumes, it’s going to be pretty tough for you to hit those protein goals if that’s exclusively what you’re eating. So yes, it will contribute to your protein targets, but this is probably not what I would call a dominant source. And that’s what I’m trying to do here on this podcast episode is share with you those major circles protein, fat and carbohydrate.

Emily Field (00:13:34) – Having a sizable portion of each one of those categories in each meal is going to promote health and wellness in the ways that I’ve already described. I highly recommend that you take this nutrition education approach to macro tracking, where you are going to eat foods that you normally like or, you know, not even change your diet at all, but gain some understanding of the nutrition that that diet is providing you. So at the end of the day, after you’ve logged your food to the best of your abilities, you’re actually seeing, well, was I surprised by any of these things? Or was I surprised that I wasn’t getting as much protein as I thought in breakfast? Because I’m emphasizing whole eggs instead of something that has more protein? Or maybe you didn’t realize that your snack bar or your protein bar that you thought had a lot of protein was more fat or more carbon you had anticipated? You know, this is what the beauty of macro tracking, which is simply an objective lens, could be like for you.

Emily Field (00:14:28) – It’s such an advantage because, again, you probably don’t have a lot of experience understanding nutrition through that lens. It’s really always been through hearsay, social media, diet fads, things like that. Again, if you haven’t already, I highly recommend that you download the DIY Macros guide and scroll down into the Support Resources pages of that guide and see this Venn diagram for yourself. All right. So we’re going to have that protein circle that’s going to be your beef chicken pork lamb turkey things like that. Shrimp tilapia tuna all of that’s going to land in the mostly protein. And then in the mostly fats we’re going to have butter and coconut oil, egg yolks, your olive oil, sour cream, things like that will be there. They’re dominantly a fat macro food. And then we have that third circle which is dominantly carbohydrates. All of your fruits, all of your vegetables, all of your whole grains and your whole grain products. Now, where they meet in the middle is going to be education for you.

Emily Field (00:15:24) – Okay. So overlapping on the carbs and proteins, that’s where you’re going to find your beans, lentils and peas, but also your fat free dairy products. Okay. If you think about that makes sense right? Lactose is a milk sugar. So that is a carbohydrate. It gets broken down into sugar in our bodies, but it also has a fair amount of protein in those foods. But if it’s fat free the fat has been removed. Okay. So you can kind of see how your fat free dairy products would land you right squarely in the middle of protein and carbs. On the other side of that, we have mostly protein and fat. So what are the foods that don’t really have any carbohydrates but are rich in protein and fat? Well, that’s going to be like your high fat meat products, like bacon or bone in meats, or like your whole eggs of a mix of protein and fat oysters, salmon, pork, sausage, things that you know. Yes, they do contribute protein, but they’ve got a fair amount of fat.

Emily Field (00:16:20) – And they’re and we know it because those foods taste really good. The third category that overlap of carbs and fats are going to be like olives, coconut products, avocado. It might surprise you to hear that because you always hear of avocado as a healthy fat. We never really talk about how there’s a fair amount of carbs there too. But in the middle, let’s talk about what those foods. All three macros are pretty even in foods like your full fat dairy products, you’ve got protein, fat, and carbohydrate in all of those full fat dairy products, your full fat cottage cheese, your full fat Greek yogurt, full fat milk, half and half, things like that. But also nuts, seeds and nut and seed butters are pretty even split of protein, fat, and carbohydrates as well. It really depends on the nut or the seed. It kind of depends on the product that you’re eating, whether they added sugar to it or, you know, they reduce the fat to it. But this is where I would you know, obviously it can’t be an exhaustive list.

Emily Field (00:17:15) – This is an auditory learning experience. I can’t really list all of these things for you, but it is in your best interest to play around with your diary and your food tracking app to really see what foods contribute what macro, and see if that surprises you. Okay, I promised you that I would talk a little bit about some convenience foods that might help you meet your PFC macro targets, because, again, it is unrealistic to expect that you are going to be building your meals from scratch or cooking your meals from absolute. Scratch every single day. And if you are a modern person, you are going to be relying on some sort of food processing or some sort of package, or find processed food in order for you to hit your macro targets. So I’m going to talk about some of my favorite foods that helped me hit my macro targets. And the best way to describe this is by describing where you’d find them in your kitchen, or where you’d find them in the grocery store. So what I mean by that, you know, if you’re leading this whole endeavor of macro tracking and trying to make it easier for yourself if you’re leading this endeavor with categorizing foods as proteins, fats, and carbohydrates, that gets you pretty far.

Emily Field (00:18:25) – The next layer of detail here, or specificity would be to where would you find those proteins, where would you find those fats, and where would you find those carbohydrates in your home or in the grocery store. So I like to think about this in areas of storage. So we have pantry storage or dry storage. We have fresh which is like in your refrigerator. And then you also have frozen. So if we’re thinking about protein rich foods that would land in your pantry, those are things like your canned tuna or canned salmon, but also like your protein powder lives here. You’re ready to drink protein drinks, maybe a really great protein bar. These are your dominant protein containing foods that land in the pantry. Some fresh examples would be like an already cooked full rotisserie chicken or deli meat, or already cooked grilled chicken strips or something like that. They need to be refrigerated, but they can absolutely contribute to your protein targets and build out some roundness to your meal if you need to. The third category is frozen, and this would be like I put like turkey burgers in here.

Emily Field (00:19:31) – Beef burgers. You’re ready to warm salmon filets, meatballs, frozen already cooked shrimp, things like that. It’s really helpful to think if you’re trying to mix and match proteins, fats, and carbs to make a balanced meal. One of the best ways to do this is to make sure that you have food in each place of your kitchen, you know, building this up over time. Obviously you’re not going over the weekend and shopping like this, but it can be really, really helpful from the perspective of having food on hand and being caught in a time bind or a convenience bind where you need to build something quickly, you know you have something on hand that can round out a meal with protein, but this can also go for fat as well. So if we’re thinking about the pantry stable fats, it’s going to be your nuts, your seeds, your nut and seed butters. You’re going to have your coconut cream or coconut milk in the pantry. There’s a lot that can fit here. Obviously, you know your olive oil.

Emily Field (00:20:25) – Your coconut oil can live in the pantry as well. These are not hard to come by. Usually people don’t have trouble hitting their fat targets. But again, if we’re trying to just like categorize this in our heads, it’s always helpful to have a source of protein, fat and carbohydrate available to you in multiple areas of your kitchen. So that’s what I would say for pantry for fresh. I mean, your cheese sticks maybe like pre boiled hard boiled eggs that are ready to go. You know those hummus packets or guacamole packets something like that could fit here in the fresh section. Those are refrigerated easy to grab fat sources. As far as frozen goes, I didn’t really have a ton of examples. Again, because it’s not really that difficult to find fat in a typical American diet, so we’re not usually trying to catch up with a fat rich source. And we might not need to have this in the freezer. But, you know, if you have a variety of frozen ground products, I’m thinking like pork sausage or ground beef or ground turkey.

Emily Field (00:21:27) – You know, if you’re somebody that falls short on their fat targets and you need more in your diet, maybe you’re reaching for more of that, like 80 over 20 split of lean to fatness on that ground meat instead of like a 9010 or like an 95 five. You know, things like your salmon is going to be higher in fat than turkey or chicken. You might have a variety of chicken breasts versus chicken thighs, both of which have different fat and protein profiles. So again, it probably comes down to your personal preference in which foods you need more of in your diet in order to round out those macro goals. But I think for fats, probably a little bit easier to visualize those go to fats being in your refrigerator or your pantry. Now, if we’re talking about carbohydrates, we have a variety of sources of carbs that can be pantry or dry storage stable. That would be like your pasta, your cereals, bread, crackers, popcorn, tortillas. We also have like ready to heat packets of rice or barley quinoa.

Emily Field (00:22:27) – We’ve got applesauce. We’ve got canned fruit. You know, we have a lot of variety here to help round out a meal that you might need some carbohydrates. And the pantry is a great place to store some of this stuff. You know, for me, I am loving dried fruit right now, especially as a source for pre-workout. It’s easy to eat on the go and I don’t have to have a huge volume. Volume of food, which might be difficult right before a workout. So I might have like dried mango or dried pineapple. I love raisins and craisins. They can definitely round out some carbohydrate content in a meal and they last forever. They’re in your pantry for a long time. The fresh carbohydrates that I’m thinking of are. Be like your already washed pre-cut fruit or vegetables salad kits. Things like that would fit here. Your fruit that might be going bad soon would live here. And lastly, you know, frozen carbohydrates that I feel like I have on hand at any one time are going to be like my mixed frozen berries or mixed tropical fruits that I can add to smoothies or oatmeal or yogurt or something like that.

Emily Field (00:23:27) – You’re already parboiled rice, barley, quinoa that comes frozen. I love the Trader Joe’s packets that you just zap in the microwave for three minutes. You know, hash browns or potatoes, things like that could fit here in the frozen section for carbohydrates. Again, this is just probably a different way of visualizing your grocery list or visualizing your meals. I think a lot of times people get stuck because they’re trying to make everything come together without doing some preparation. From the perspective of having a variety of foods in their kitchen. So it’s not like this is going to happen overnight, but I highly recommend that you could rattle off a few easy to grab protein, fat, and carbohydrate sources that you could build a well-rounded meal no matter if you are relying on pantry, frozen or fresh versions of those foods. Okay, in this section of the podcast, I’m going to describe ten mixed macro meals that you could probably make with food that you already have on hand. Okay, so this might be a little bit rapid fire, but I’m hoping to kind of just give you some ideas of some PFC meals that you could absolutely put together and visualize what would be the contributing factor of protein, fat and carbohydrate together at that meal.

Emily Field (00:24:40) – Okay, so let’s just start with like a common breakfast food, like Greek yogurt. We’re making a parfait. Our Greek yogurt is going to be our protein contributing food. We’ve got granola or mixed berries that could contribute some carbohydrates. Maybe you’re adding some nuts and seeds that are contributing some fats. Okay, that’s pretty easy. Let’s think about like a deli sandwich. You’re making that with hummus. So you have your choice of deli meat. That’s going to be your protein contributing foods on some bread, which is going to be your carbohydrates. You’re going to layer it with some healthy fats like hummus. And then maybe you’re going to throw some like cucumbers, tomato, lettuce, whatever you want. That’s also going to contribute a little bit of carbohydrates, but also some fiber as well. Maybe you want to make a tuna salad wrap. You’re going to do canned tuna. That’s your protein source. You’re going to put it on a whole grain wrap. That’s a carb source. Maybe you’re going to throw in some cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers, mixed greens.

Emily Field (00:25:33) – That’s going to contribute some carbohydrates, but mostly just like fiber and other nutrients. And then we throw in some hummus or avocado for some healthy fats. You could also do mayo or a mix of mayo, mustard and Greek yogurt to round out more protein or increase the fat. Whatever you’d like to do. Their next example would be like a egg and vegetable stir fry. Let’s do scrambled eggs. Maybe you throw in a little bit of tofu, maybe don’t. That’s going to contribute protein. You’re going to put in some rice or quinoa which is going to contribute some carbohydrates. Throw in whatever mixed vegetables that you want. We’ll add a little bit of carbohydrate, but mostly just fiber and other minerals and vitamins. And then you’re going to flavor it with like soy sauce or teriyaki sauce, which might have some healthy fats contained in there. You might be using olive oil in the pan, something like that, to cook your eggs. Okay. Next example is a burrito bowl. We’re doing grilled chicken or black beans that contribute protein.

Emily Field (00:26:30) – Then we’re going to add some quinoa or brown rice. For carbohydrates you might do sour cream or avocado or maybe even like Greek yogurt. For some healthy fats you might layer on there salsa, lettuce, corn. All of that is probably just going to be negligible. Carbohydrates, but also some flavor and fiber in there as well. I find that burrito bowls, and just like bowls in general, that can be deconstructed or manipulated up or down and protein, fat and carbohydrate can be really, really good for your end of day meal when you need to round out your macros for the day. Let’s do like a turkey and avocado wrap. We’ve got sliced turkey breasts for protein. We have it on a wrap. It’s going to be like, let’s just do a whole grain higher fiber wrap. That’s carbohydrates. Let’s throw some avocado slices or maybe even one of those like quick packets of guacamole that you keep in the fridge for healthy fats. You’re throwing on lettuce, tomato, mustard, any other veggies that you want and you are good to go with a PFC meal.

Emily Field (00:27:29) – Let’s do like a beef and broccoli dinner. We’ve got lean ground beef or sirloin strips. That’s going to be your protein. You’re going to layer on some brown rice or quinoa. You’ll do some steamed broccoli. But flavor that with soy sauce or teriyaki sauce which is probably going to contribute some healthy fats. But. That broccoli is going to be mostly your carbohydrate contributor, a little bit of fiber there as well. What about, like a Greek bowl? We’ve got grilled chicken or maybe some chickpeas that are contributing protein. We’ve got rice that’s contributing carbohydrates. Maybe even do like you could do potatoes there too. Kalamata olives, feta cheese, maybe some olive oils contributing fat. And then you’re going to layer on some cucumbers, red onion, bell peppers, whatever veggies you want. That’s going to be contributing a little bit of carbohydrates, but mostly fiber there. A couple more here. What about a poke bowl? This is like probably not something you have quite on hand unless you have the use for it right away, but I wanted to include it as an example, like sushi grade tuna or salmon is going to be your protein contributor.

Emily Field (00:28:29) – You’re going to have white rice most likely. It’s going to contribute your carbohydrates, your avocado, your sesame seeds, your teriyaki sauce, things like that. That might contribute some fat. A lot of people like seaweed snacks or cucumbers at Imam that can also contribute some carbohydrates, but also some fiber and flavoring as well. The last example here I’m going to share is like a shrimp pasta. You’ve got some frozen shrimp in the freezer, and you’re going to cook that over a pan with olive oil. So we’ve got our protein in the shrimp and we’ve got fat in the olive oil. And you’re going to combine that with a grain based pasta or some other pasta alternative that’s going to be mostly carbohydrates contributed there. But then when you layer in like cherry tomatoes, garlic, onions, spinach or any other veggies that you want there, it’s going to do a little bit more carbohydrate, but also just fiber and flavoring. I told you that would be rapid fire. But if you are somebody that would like to see that listed, or you really want to see it for yourself, what are the protein, fat and carbohydrate contributing foods in those meals? You can follow the show notes and be linked to a blog post that kind of like reviews.

Emily Field (00:29:35) – All ten of those meals in which are the ingredients contribute the macros that you’re looking for. Maybe you can kind of inspire some meals for even dinner this week. Thank you for joining us in this episode of Macrame Easy, where we talked about the significance of balancing macronutrients, proteins, fats, and carbohydrates all together in your meals. Striving for and achieving balance in your meals is important for overall health, influencing energy regulation, blood sugar control, and metabolism. We explored the role of each macronutrient in providing sustained energy, stabilizing blood sugar levels and supporting metabolic functions. So from muscle maintenance and nutrient absorption to athletic performance, a well-balanced mix is vital for various physiological functions. Then I shared recommendations for tracking and sourcing proteins, fats and carbohydrates, debunking some common misconceptions about different foods. So whether you’re new to tracking or you’re a seasoned enthusiast, understanding the basics of these components of your meal is crucial for making more informed nutritional choices. In the following segments, I covered convenient foods that meet your protein, fat, and carbohydrate goals, ensuring a hassle free approach to macro tracking.

Emily Field (00:30:47) – Additionally, I provided some quick and easy mixed macro meals that you can prepare with ingredients you probably already have at home. From deli sandwiches to Greek yogurt parfaits to flavorful shrimp pasta, these meals are a perfect blend of macronutrients, so remember, achieving a balance of macronutrients in your meals not only supports your health and fitness goals, but also contributes to a sustainable and enjoyable approach to eating. As you navigate your macro journey, consider the recommendations shared in this episode, and feel free to experiment with the diverse and delicious options available to you. So until next time, stay macro balanced and enjoy eating your way to a healthier you. 

Thank you so much for listening to the Macros Made Easy podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, take a screenshot of the one you’re listening to right now to share it on your Instagram Stories, and tag me @emilyfieldrd so that more people can find this podcast and learn how to use a macros approach in a stress free way. If you love the podcast, head over to iTunes and leave me a rating and a review. Remember, you can always find more free health and nutrition content on Instagram and on my website at emilyfieldrd.com. Thanks for listening and I’ll catch you on the next episode.