These days, there seems to be a lot of talk about the importance of tracking your macronutrients. For those who don’t know, macronutrients are your proteins, fats and carbohydrates. Macro trackers keep a daily count of their protein, fat and carbohydrate intake to ensure they meet their daily caloric requirement to reach their fitness goal.
That goal may be fat loss, hypertrophy or general health. In order to meet those goals, tracking your macronutrient profile is an absolute must.
It’s what needs to be done in order to have a successful meal plan.
Certain things that need to be considered when conducting an adequate macronutrient profile are the person’s daily activity level, if they play a sport, how often they practice or play, training frequency, training age, lean body mass etc.
Based on the above factors we will then come up with what that person’s daily caloric intake should be, and then total up the amount of proteins, fats and carbs that person should be eating on a daily basis.
However what needs to be considered more than anything is health. Your health should be priority number one with physique transformation occurring as a side effect to eating for better overall health.
And that is what gets lost in all of the social media hype of “counting my macros bro”.
You see, your health and longevity should not be secondary to physique transformation by incorporating shit foods into your diet to complete your macro profile.
For example, you may see someone adding one pound of cheese to their salad because it helps meet their fat intake for the day.
Or, someone may drink a low quality protein powder with complete disregard to all of the artificial chemicals it has.
Sure, you can certainly make some physique changes that way, but you’ll be doing it at the expense of your health. That is where people need to recognize the issue in the message they’re spreading.
And here’s how to change that…
For just a moment, start thinking of the MICRONUTRIENT profile in your foods rather than just the macronutrients.
I’ll elaborate…
Micronutrients are the nutrients that make up your foods, like vitamins and minerals. Rather than solely focusing on your protein, fat and carb content focus on WHERE these macros are coming from.
Let’s play a game so you can get a better idea of what I’m talking about.
Choose the foods with the better micronutrient profile.
- White bread or Quinoa
- Spaghetti or blueberries
- Big Macs or Organic free range chicken
- Cheese or coconut oil
If you guessed quinoa, blueberries, chicken and coconut oil, congrats! If you guessed bread, spaghetti, Big Macs and cheese then I pray for your mental well-being.
You can meet your daily caloric requirement by eating shitty foods but the inflammation they cause will certainly be at detriment to your health.
When you dial in your micros along with your macros that is when real, sustainable results occur. And, more importantly, that is when you will see the most improvement in your blood work.
Once you start eating REAL FOODS with a quality micronutrient profile your body starts to improve in many ways. Your immune system improves, your cognitive ability improves, your energy improves, your digestive system and gut health improve. Your body becomes enhanced down to a cellular level.
If you’re functioning better at a cellular level that means that fat loss, strength gains and hypertrophy, as well as improved performance, comes at a much faster pace.
However the best key indicator if a diet is optimizing your health is a complete blood panel. I recommend getting blood work done every 6 months to see where you stand. I suggest getting an extensive blood test at places like the Nutrition Treatment Center rather than just a routine CBC. But I understand that insurance can be an issue so for now, just get what you can afford.
Remember that your health is your top priority. Once you focus on the quality of your food rather than just your macros, everything changes for the better.
Including your physique and performance.
If you are only concerned with your macros you may be eating foods that are causing a fuck-ton of inflammation and wrecking your digestive system. These two things are directly linked to disease so keep that in consideration.
I really hope this article helps clear up a foggy topic. If you have any questions at all, please feel free to comment below.
Thanks for reading, guys.