Nutrition and Macros

I’ve always been fascinated by nutrition, but I’ve never had the discipline to really take control of my nutrition.  Well, it’s time.  It’s a good time for me to truly dive in and learn about nutrition as well as be able to teach my daughter good eating habits.

In the workout community, people seem to talk a lot about macros.  What the heck is a macro?

“Macronutrients are what make up the caloric content of a food,” says McMahon. Sometimes referred to as “macros,” the three categories of macronutrients are carbohydrates, fat, and protein. The caloric combination of the macros is where that mysterious total number of calories comes from. Here’s the breakdown:

• 1 gram of carbohydrates = 4 calories
• 1 gram of fat = 9 calories
• 1 gram of protein = 4 calories

So it’s not about how many calories are in your food, but what kind of calories are in your food. 

How to read nutrition labels Macro-style

From Muscle and Fitness

• Stats I entered for all the below calculators:

  39 F, 148 lb (that’s a guess), 5’7″, sedentary job (sometimes) but works out 3-4x/wk doing Alexia Clark.

• Training day (cardio not included): Carbs 205g (56%), Fat 33g (10%), Protein 126g (35%), Calories 1,620
• Rest day (including cardio): Carbs 105g (35%), Fat 42g (14%), Protein 153g (51%), Calories 1,408

Flexible Dieting macro calculator

• Carbs 157g (42%), Fat 41g (25%), Protein 122g (33%), Calories 1,491

IIFYM Macro calculator

• Carbs 137g (45%), Fat 30g (10%), Protein 137g (45%), Calories 1,270

Kathy Hearn Fit macro calculator

• Carbs 116g (39%), Fat 51.7g (18%), Protein 125.6g (43%), Calories 1,432

Meal prep on fleek macro calculator

• Carbs 172g (48%), Fat 44.4g (12%), Protein 138.8g (39%), Calories 1,646
• Per meal breakdown (for 3 meals/day)=Carbs 57.6g, Fat 14.8g, Protein 46.3g, Calories 549

Avg numbers according to the macro calculators above:

• Carbs 149g
• Fat 40g
• Protein 134g
• Calories 1,478
• 46% Carb/ 12% Fat/ 41% Protein

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I have to be honest…I can’t tell you when the last time I ate 1,500 calories in a day.  That seems to me to be more calorie restrictive than I would like to be.  We’ll see how this goes.  I’ll be logging my food diary via MyFitnessPal App.

From Women’s Health Mag UK

3 months postpartum and time to start a new workout regimen

Three months have flown by since Arden was born.  I started doing Classpass about a month ago to get back into pilates.  During my experimentation with Classpass, I found barre classes to be quite tough and intriguing.  From the various barre studios around me, I found Studio Barre to be fun, encouraging, girlie, and upbeat.  For a good cardio burn, both Cycle Bar and 9 Round were great at keeping my heart rate up!

From https://anomalily.net/classpass/

In about a week and a half, I have to go back to work.  Right now, I have mixed feelings about this as I’ve enjoyed my time with Arden.  I think the first week will be tough.  It’ll be the first time I’ve been away from her for any length of time.  Our hospital did a roll out of Epic, which is an electronic medical record — I’m nervous as this will be my first time using it when I go back.  I haven’t given an anesthetic in 3 months… this means I need to dust off the cobwebs and put my thinking cap back on.  I can only imagine I will be drained with the early mornings and late nights and plenty of mental stimulation.  It will be a different kind of tired vs. child-induced tired.

I want to put myself in the best place to handle these stresses.  Despite my current passes at my various studios, I will need a home workout to do when I can’t get out of work in time.  This led me down a rabbit hole last night of searching for various home workouts and reviews.

I’ve done plenty of home workouts as evidenced here and I appreciate everything it provides.  However, how do you keep the workouts fresh and non-repetitive?  The P90X series is awesome for a tough cardio and sculpting workout in 30 minutes with great results.  But there’s only so many times I can do the same exercises over and over again.  Then, I went to Sweat/BBG by Kayla Itsines.  This app/workout program got me wedding dress ready in 3 months!  This was a fabulous workout that had plenty of cardio, jumps, squats, upper/low/full body, weights, etc.  But I had the same problem of repeating workouts.  I was getting great results, but I couldn’t stay motivated to do the same workouts over and over again.

Searching for a constantly changing workout regimen led me to Alexia Clark.  There was just a little bit on her website describing her workouts, but I wanted more info.

• Comparison of the Sweat/BBG program vs. Alexia Clark
• Review: 5 Days of working out with Alexia Clark
• YourFitTrip review of Alexia Clark

After reviewing all this information, I decided Alexia Clark’s program is the way to go.  My classpass/barre pass ends at the end of May.  I’m pulling the trigger to start Alexia Clark on June 1.  My husband watched a bit of the review video with me and says he would start with me.  Now how’s that for motivation?

 

And this nifty little macro calculator was just what I needed to help me get my diet on track.

 

Do you have any recommendations or workout programs I should check out?