How to Use Macros to Lose Weight After 35 (Simple, No Obsession)

0:09 Welcome back. To the body. Recomposition Revolution. This is Robin. Today we are covering the habit. Most women 35. Plus skip and then wonder why nothing seems to work when they are trying to drop weight or in reality when they're trying to. Get rid of their excess body fat if you are 35 or older. And you eat healthy. Quote. Healthy, whatever that means, and the scale will not. Budget This episode is for you because. If you are like me and many of my client, all of my clients, when they come to me, you.

0:46 Are busy. You are. Eyeballing portions Somehow your pumpkin spice latte didn't get on your tracking app or the handful of animal crackers you grabbed. Off your kids. Plate because they didn't finish them. In that moment. It feels like it does not count and it does not matter until it does. And I have been there. I have been there. So if you are as I said. Ambiguously eating healthy and you are unable to drop body fat. I promise you it's because you're not tracking your food. You are blissfully ignorant.

1:17 Of what you're. Putting in your mouth and the impact that is having on your body, even something as small as four animal. Crackers, which is roughly 38 calories for all four of them and about. 6 grams of carbs, something small like that seems super insignificant. And it is if it happened once in a while, right? But when it becomes. A habit of. Grabbing those 4. Animal Crackers grabbing a. Handful of chips, grabbing a few spoonfuls of your kids ice. Cream that adds up so fast. And those. Poor food choices.

1:51 Have big impacts on your body. They're low quality carbs, so today. We are going through the basics of tracking your food. How to do it? In under 5 minutes a day. And why tracking your food gives you freedom through knowledge. No more blissful ignorance in eating whatever you want. Because if you don't write it down, it doesn't get We're no more. If you have a goal, you need to understand how. To get to the goal if your goal is fat loss. You have to know exactly what you're putting in your body that's going to either.

2:24 Help you or hurt? You in terms of getting to your goal, goal and it really, it really honestly does take maybe 5 minutes a day, 8 minutes a day. If you're playing macro Tetris, then I can already hear because a lot of times when I tell my clients you need to track your food, you need to track your food. I get a lot of pushback. For that, they think it's obsessive. They think it's disordered eating. You could think what you want and stay the same, or you can do what you need to do to have the change that you want to see happen because tracking.

2:53 Food. It's it is. Not about restriction, it is 100% about awareness when you track your meals and you. Are. Looking at the data you can see the. Gaps. You can finally have the information you need. To see what. You have to change in your daily nutrition without slashing calories, without quitting going out to eat. It is true freedom because I have done. Every fad diet. Under the sun and I have been counting macros for over 15 years I am telling you macro counting, macro awareness is true freedom.

3:32 It's really just about knowing what you're eating and having that so ingrained in your mindset that you can go out to eat and know what to order on the menu and what not to order. It's just freedom. So let's get into it. Tracking your. Food is statistically. Proven to be the number one factor. That leads to results. In terms of. Fat loss I'm. Going to say that again. Tracking. Food equates to success. In fat loss, if you want to lose weight, you need to. Track your food. All that saying is that you have to know what you're eating through tracking in order to change your.

4:10 Body it's about. Education, it's about awareness now, whether you have tracked before in the past and it sucks too much and you're like, Oh my gosh, I can't do this anymore. Or if you're completely new to the concept, don't even pay attention to your macro numbers. Just track what you're. Eating every day. For a week. Just track what you're eating because when you look. Back at that data. The foods you've been eating all week, you're going to. See what your defaults are? You're a busy. Lady, you're on the go.

4:38 Maybe you have kids. Maybe you. Have a job, 2 jobs, whatever. Maybe you have all of those things, you're on the go, you're grabbing things to eat from where? So when I get in a rut and I don't have any food prepped and I am grabbing, grabbing and going. My go TOS now is somebody who is very cognizant of how much protein I need to eat on a daily basis and what my calories are. Now my go TOS are a protein bar. My go TOS are. Greek yogurt with chia seeds. My go TOS are honestly this is disgusting, but maybe some cold chicken breast wrapped in lettuce dipped in tomb sauce that I eat in my car at the pickup line, whatever.

5:17 Now, when I started tracking 15 years ago, or when I fell off the wagon of tracking and then tried again maybe 10 years ago, my defaults were more like. Chips or a cookie or whatever. Pasta with a little. Bit of chicken. Oh, there's the protein. Oh my. Gosh, so ignorant. And maybe I shouldn't say ignorant, but it just uninformed. Uninformed I I suppose I had macro amnesia and I completely forgot what's in food when I fell off the macro tracking bandwagon. But. Wow, you will be shocked at what is.

5:51 In food now, if you are like many of the. Ladies I work with. You might come at me and say, well, I'm eating mostly healthy. OK, well then why? Are we working together? What does that mean? What does that mean? Because to me, eating healthy is eating clean. Eating clean is eating something that either has a mom or comes from the ground. What does healthy mean to you? And I mean this with love, ladies, I mean this with love. Most of you are better nutritionally than I was to begin with. So they'll usually say.

6:21 Something like I eat obviously organic and I don't eat more than 900. Calories a day. And I do have some lunch meat from time to OK, OK. And and how is that working for you? Because eating. Healthy is a subjective. Term your idea of healthy might be drinking a diet. Coke that's. Also my idea of healthy, but somebody else's idea of healthy might be eating only Whole Foods that are organic and come from. Their backyard. Farm. Who knows? It's a. Very, very lofty. Term that holds no weight in my book so.

6:58 You have to track. To know what's in that quote. Healthy food you are. Eating because each macro nutrient is going to determine your body composition, meaning if you're not eating enough protein you are not going to look in many people's. Words. Toned. If you are eating enough protein, you might look toned, but if you're eating too many carbs and fats and you're going over your maintenance calorie amount, you're not going to look toned because you have. Body fat. Covering too much body fat, covering that muscle.

7:29 So the term eating healthy, that doesn't mean anything. It is basically. An opinion, a thought, a feeling, A wish, a dream, a hope. It doesn't matter when you are trying to change your body composition. You have to have data. You have to. Have information about what is in the foods you're eating, whether it's a granola. Bar or it's? An organic free range chicken from your backyard. You have to know how much protein, how much carbs, how much fat is in that piece of food, and how it's going to fit into your macro.

7:59 Puzzle for the day. Another thing I feel like we don't really. Talk about as a society is. When you're. Below age 35. You can kind of get away more in terms of. Food you have. So much more wiggle room when it comes to your caloric intake and the. Quality of foods you're. Eating and your activity level, you can kind of do what you want. You can bounce around, lift a few things, eat a good amount of protein and also have your snacks and have your weekend food and just live your life and look great.

8:28 But I noticed myself having these conversations over and over again with my fitness friends at the gym. I was telling one of them, it doesn't matter if I'm hitting my macros, I'm still not dropping fat. And this was when I was 30. 5 So this was a couple years. Ago and she suggested. That I cut out. Protein powder and that I stick to more clean foods. And I thought, well, I mean, if macros are all that matters, why does that matter? But for me that was the missing piece. I had to focus. And prioritize high quality foods, clean eating instead of these quick and easy on the go snacks or treats as I viewed them like protein.

9:07 Bars. Yeah, it's great. Are they full? Of processed ingredients, 100% are you getting your protein? Yeah. Is it OK? When you're in a pinch, yes, but for me, my body has become so, so sensitive. To. I don't know low quality foods. Not saying protein bars are low. Quality but I just. Eating clean is imperative for me. I try to do it 80% of the time and there's actually science behind why you have to. Be. Stricter with your macros. After age 35. And the first reason is hormonal shifts. So after age 35, you.

9:38 Have more of a. A belly. Fat bias and a lower carb tolerance in general, and that's just because your estrogen is decreasing. Your estrogen is decreasing and that's your body's response. You also have what's called anabolic resistance, which I had no. Idea what that was? Until. About two years ago. When I started my entire program and anabolic resistance just means that you need more protein as a woman above. The age of 35. You need more protein per meal to get the same muscle building signal. So essentially you just need to eat a little bit more protein because.

10:10 As you age. Your muscle is less sensitive to amino acids, which is protein. So hitting that protein mark at every single meal with and leucine at each meal becomes. So key so. When I was younger, maybe I'd have a meal with 50 grams of protein and then a. Little while later I'd. Have some ice cream. Well, hey, I hit my protein and my carb goal different times, different amounts. Now that's just it's not going to work and not to mention your sleep my. Sleep. Everybody's sleep. It seems is horrendous.

10:38 After age 35, I am always. Tired and wired and it's it's. Atrocious, but when your sleep is choppy, your. Appetite hormones. They misbehave. You lose sleep. Your ghrelin raises, it lowers your leptin, which means that you are hungry at night. I am ravenous, so I. Really, really really. Have to mark out my meals during the day and I look forward to a nice dense dinner at night. Now I touched on this in the beginning, but. Data is your. Friend, when you are putting these foods into your. Food app tracking.

11:07 Is just a tool for you to have control. Over how your body. Looks and when you see what foods you're putting in there and if you're hitting the mark or missing the mark, you have complete control and ownership over how you want your. Body to look. And honestly for me personally, the more I track my. Food the healthier. Mindset I have surrounding food in general because knowledge is power and my my former self when I was a teacher for many years, that was my mantra. Knowledge is power. The more you know, the more power you have to change anything in your life that you want to change, including your body.

11:40 So the more consistent you are with tracking, the more you know. What? Foods have in them. And so let's go back to our our girl. Sarah. I was talking about her in the last episode. Sarah's not a real person. OK, but for the sake of conversation, Sarah. Here she is. Sarah has a daily caloric. Intake of 1800 calories. She's in a. Small calorie deficit which? Is necessary to drop fat and her split is a standard. 403030 Which? Just means 40% of her caloric intake is going to go to protein, 30% is going to go to carbs, and the other 30% is going to go to.

12:11 Fat that leaves. US with 180 grams of protein, 130, 35 grams of carbs and 60 grams of fat. So Sarah's going to start tracking her food. She's going to track her macros. Specifically because she is. Loosely tracking her food. She looks at calories. She kind of adds them up in her head, but she's not really tracking macros. So here's an example of what happened when Sarah started tracking her macros. So here's a simple and I'm not judging anybody. Because I have lived. My life in the past and it used to involve daily McDonald's trips.

12:41 So no judgement to Sarah. You anybody? So Sarah starts her day. With a pumpkin spice latte of. Course, it's fall. Pumpkin spice latte Venti from Starbucks 470 calories Then for lunch, she went out with her coworkers and she. Got what she assumed to be a healthy. Choice, which was an Applebee's Caesar chicken salad I. Used to work at. Applebee's for many years. Shout out to my apple buddies that Caesar chicken salad. OK, it sounds healthy. It's 800 calories. OK, 800 calories then just. A little treat because she had a healthy.

13:09 Lunch. Which was a cookie. And it was 200 calories. Boom. Then at night she had a mocha. Madness Shake from Lifetime and for those of you who may not know, Lifetime is a very popular gym in the Midwest. A Mocha Madness is one of their protein shakes they have in the Cafe 370. Calories, so she had a total of. 1800. Calories that day, but if you. Add up her macros, she's sitting at 108 grams of protein, which is about 70g short of what she needs, so it's going to be impossible for her to build any muscle to look tone.

13:41 She's sitting at 152 grams of carbs, OK, and 92 grams of fat. Those numbers are not. Atrocious, but. They are not going to give her any sort of lean toned look. She's going to look skinny fat if anything. But after age 30. 5 She's probably not even going to. Drop fat because. Her body is just insulin sensitive and in her brain she made really good. Choices. She had a. Healthy salad for lunch, but that was. Still super super high. In fat. Because of. The dressing, the croutons, the parmesan. And then she had a protein shake at night.

14:16 She was nowhere near close to her protein goal, but in her brain she had some good choices and ate pretty light. Yes, she ate light. But she did nothing for her body recomposition. Nothing. And she never would have known that if she had not taken the time to. Actually log her. Food, and I want to reiterate it doesn't When you're just starting out, this is a new skill. Tracking your food is an actual skill. It's a skill. That you have to practice. It's a skill. That's going to be messy and dirty and that's OK.

14:44 Put in the cake. You wait. Put in the Applebee's. Caesar salad. Put in the pumpkin spice latte. You are never going to know what's in foods unless you type that food into your app and look at the numbers that time. That way the next time you roll up to Starbucks. Maybe instead of getting a pumpkin spice latte, try one of their new protein drinks. I haven't looked at the macros but it says protein so I'm going to assume there's some in there or? Do what I do, just get a black coffee. With a tiny bit of cream Or get one of those Nitro brews.

15:11 It's. They're great. They're very low calorie like. 100 or less. But you. Still get that caffeine buzz and the shock and awe I hear from women who are chronic Starbucks goers. Me. Guilty. Yes. They have no idea. That that latte has. Almost 500 calories in it. No idea. They think it's just a nice little morning buzz. Uh uh, you are offsetting your body the entire. Rest of your day. So get into the. Habit of justice. Tracking your food. Don't make food modifications to your. Lifestyle yet if. You're new, just get in the habit.

15:43 Because it's a habit. It's a skill. It's something that you have to. Practice. Consistently get in the routine of opening the app and putting in whatever you're eating build. That habit you will. Learn so much and I want to, I want to say this loud and clear. You don't have to be perfect. There's no fast track, there's no shortcut you have. To take it day by day. A lot of times my clients will say, oh, I failed and then I just stopped tracking over the weekend and they will unwind their entire last three weeks of being in a deficit.

16:11 Over a couple poor choices that. Weekend and they're done. They're so emotionally drained from that amount of work gone down the drain. Hey, what are you going to do then? Just stay the same? No, it was an experience you learned that you shouldn't have had. Those two lattes over the. Weekend that maybe you could have stuck to just one small piece instead. Of three pieces. Of cake. And now we move forward. And now the next time you're in a similar situation, you make better choices. When my kid gets a question wrong on his math homework, Is that bad?

16:40 No, How the heck? Else is he supposed? To learn, he has to try, he has to make mistakes, he has to learn how to do the math problem. Correctly you have. To go over on your. Fats you have. To go over on your calories, you have to make some poor food choices and log everything so that you learn what is in those. Foods that you love so you're if you. Have a mindset of all or nothing sometimes that can serve you well in life. With tracking, it won't. It won't because there's going to be messy days, imperfect days.

17:08 Just be flexible. Plan ahead of time, modify for the rest. Of the week, so if you do have two pieces. Of cake. This is not the end of the world. If you're over 60. Grams of carbs. Hey, you know what? Over the course of the next. Three days cut out. 20 grams of carbs each day and you're good. It's a balancing act. That's exactly why you can still go out to eat. That's exactly why there is. Freedom in counting macros because when you see, oh, I went over on fats, 20 grams over the next few days, cut it by, you know, whatever, I can't do math.

17:37 Just adjust because real, real progress. Is not built on perfection. It's just consistency. It's consistency. Do it again every single day and. See see what you're. Eating and the more you see, the more empowered you are and the more pride you have and what you put in your body. A lot of times I go to someone's. Grad party or whatever. And someone will walk by my plate and say something like, wow, how can you eat that much and and look fit Well, because my plate. Is full of three. Different types of meat, fruit and veggies.

18:06 That's why because. There's freedom and macro counting. I'm I'm going to. Gravitate towards the. Proteins, the meats and the fruits and the. Veggies keep the bar. Keep the bun. I don't want that. That's going to make me look and feel crappy. If we go out to eat. Which I have clients who will send me a picture of the menu at a restaurant and I really do love going through those menus and picking out what they should eat because to me it's so easy. It's so fun because it is so routine. At this point.

18:32 Even if you're at a burger joint, get the burger. Just don't eat the bun. Do they do? Do they do? Veggies or fruit instead of the fries? Do that at some point when you get to seeing progress in your physique and you start looking the way you never thought you could look, but there it is, standing in front of you in the mirror. You don't want the fries, you don't want to go back. You don't want the bun, you don't want the dessert. It doesn't do anything for you except make. You feel like crap. You don't even crave it anymore.

18:58 That is being empowered. That's taking pride in what you eat, what you put into your body now. I just wanted to go through a. Couple tips that I have. If you're new to tracking or if you've been tracking and it sucks. Tracking doesn't have to be forever, but for me. I have to track. If I stop tracking for a few days during the week, I kind of I. Don't go off the rails, but I'm back. At it the next day. It's at this point I need to, I don't know why, but I need to, and I go through phases where I don't and then that's reflected on my body.

19:27 But it's. It's something that I can't really deviate from because that's my personality type, but one thing and one of my clients will. Attest to this. Just eat everything on repeat if you're in a. Fat loss phase, which is a deficit if you. Are in a deficit. Just put those foods which. If you're one of my clients, I do the blueprint for you. Put those. Foods into your app ahead of time. Copy paste, copy paste. Have your week set. And don't deviate. That way it is right there. It's in the print. You know what you ate.

19:54 You don't have to take even that 5 minutes every day to log what you're doing, because. You already. Did it ahead of time and you know that that's going to assure you're in a deficit. So eat on repeat. Is it lame? Yes, so is. Being overweight and uncomfortable, I mean pick. Now this isn't so much a tip but a necessity. You need to pick one or two days out of the week where you prep your. Food for the week. So for me that always falls on a Sunday. The other one's kind of touch and go. Sometimes it's Wednesday, whatever, depending on my millions of kids on Sunday we make all the meats for the week and then I will make my sides depending on my mood.

20:28 But more often than not, that's just kind of a grab and go type thing. I have that are definitely always in my fridge and those kind of are my sides. So I will. Have this week we've got. Chicken breasts and I have a whole container of shredded chicken breasts as my sides. I have a big thing of spinach. I have a big tin of rice. I have a sweet potato ready if. I want to throw that baby in the microwave. I've got guacamole, I have fruits and. Vegetables already cut, prepped. Sitting in the fridge.

20:56 Ready to grab? Ready to throw into a pan or ready to munch on? Because if you're not. Prepared. Prepare to fail. I've said that in many of my eisodes and I can't. Reiterate it. With enough intensity if you are not prepared for your week. Reare to fail, that is exactly. What will happen if you're not? Prepared for a test. Reare to fail the last thing I want to touch on before I go and I had to make this. Episode because I. Got so many questions about macro tracking and there was quite a stigma surrounding it being not not conducive to a healthy relationship with food.

21:25 But to me, it's the alternative. To me, it's empowering. So the last thing I was going to touch on. Is there is. Nothing wrong with a meal plan. Yes, some people have a really hard time being confined to a plan, but for me? I really. Do well with a meal plan. I just did my own new meal plan last week and I have it printed out and hanging on my wall in the kitchen. That's my meal plan. Make those things, have them ready and then this is how ridiculous I am. I put a little check mark on my dry. I have a dry.

21:56 Erase calendar on my wall every time I hit my macros and I abide by that meal plan I got a little check mark my goal is to do. Six days out of the week. I have a goal right now. I'm doing the hard things that I need to do to get to my goal. Is it difficult? At times. I mean at this point not really. I just know what I need to do and I do it. And if that sounds ridiculous and impossible, it's not. I have been almost 200 lbs before and I've kept around 1:35 for years and years now. I'm 57 for reference.

22:25 It's not impossible once you learn. You just know what you need to do and you do it, and you detach emotionally from food. Because food is food. It's not a person you shouldn't have emotions with food, but there we are eating it when we're sad. Go for a walk. Read a book, call your sister, call your therapist. Do whatever, but don't derail all the hard work you've been putting in in the gym, in the kitchen, by sitting down and eating a tub of Ben and Jerry's. So if you are brand new to tracking an app.

22:53 I have loved. For many years and I've tried mini apps, but I've always been a big fan of macros. First, it's not My Fitness Pal. I've tried my. I don't get it. I have tried it. I don't like it. OK. I've people love it. I'm not one of those people. I'm a macros first girl. I am obsessed. It's easy and they just updated. It there's cute little pictures next to each food. Oh love, perfect. Go on macros first. Just start tracking your food, tracking what you're eating, and then you can start exploring different calorie calculators, macro calculators.

23:21 Whatever I talked about. That in the episode right before this one about why your deficit is not helping you drop fat if you do need help calculating your macros. I do that you. Can always e-mail me, it's a series. Of three quizzes, it takes a few days. You do have interaction with me, but it's only via e-mail. So my e-mail is RAC Fitness MN because I live in Minnesota. So RAC. [email protected] or you can reach out to me on Instagram that is RAC Fitness under Dash or Facebook. I think Facebook is the body recomposition revolution, which is also the name of this podcast.

23:55 Until then, download your meal tracking app. Start tracking your food. Don't shame yourself if you in your mind fail. It's not. Failure. It's just. Learning and growing and you can't change without that experience. Thank you for listening and I'll talk to you guys next week.