Weights and Plates Podcast - #21 - Macro Tracking: Going from Training Wheels to Intuitive Eating

Episode Date: February 12, 2022

If you want to make a positive change in your bodyweight or body composition, it's hard to avoid tracking your macro intake. At some point you've got to understand what you are taking in day to day, to establish a baseline of nutrients from which you can then make changes. It's kinda like a budget -- before you start making changes to your spending habits, it really helps to know where your dollars are already going.   That said, macro tracking has its pitfalls, too. The data you need to track macros is notoriously inaccurate and/or hard to measure, and it's possible to chase numbers without focusing on the day-to-day habits. Robert and Trent walk through some strategies for learning to track macros and avoid frustration along the way.   As usual -- and this will be a reoccurring them -- restaurants are a trap!     Weights & Plates: https://weightsandplates.com Robert Santana on Instagram: @the_robert_santana   Trent Jones: @marmalade_cream https://www.marmaladecream.com    

Welcome to the Weights and Plates podcast. I am Robert Santana. I am your host along with my co-host Trent Jones. Howdy folks. Today we are going to talk about the topic of tracking. Something we discuss in the context of dieting. You know, it's a common thread that comes up in pretty much a variety of settings, whether you're in this business or not. I like how you start every episode as like, today, it's the weight of the modern world. I didn't notice I did that setting down yeah so yeah tracking man that's there's there's so many analogies so one of the other podcasts that i work on is uh you need a budget it's the name of the podcast and uh it's the name of the company as well that has the podcast and uh it's basically that what they do at You Need a Budget is they sell a software for tracking your finances.

And it's not just tracking. It's actually also kind of giving your dollars jobs so that you essentially prepay things that you know are coming up in the future. But I find it funny that when you start talking about personal finance and budgeting and things like that, that food analogies work perfectly. In particular, diet analogies, when you're talking about how much are you going to eat or how much should you eat in a given day to meet your goals. So yeah, it's kind of the thing that nobody wants to do, but I think it's essential for everyone to do, at least at the beginning, is to learn how to track your food and to actually get a sense of what you're eating. like kind of the mechanics of losing weight and particularly like re-comping, you know, like losing body fat and what you have to do, like it's kind of obvious, right? You've got to eat fewer calories if you want to lose weight. Okay. And then there's certain ways that we want

to do that. Like, well, we don't want to skimp on protein to do that, right? We want to skimp on, maybe cut the fat out of our diet first, right? And then manipulate carbs later on, right? But the thing is, none of these strategies matter if you're not, if you don't have an accurate picture of what you're eating on a day-to-day basis. And that includes the weekends, right? Part-time dieting. Yep. Yep. That includes a weekend. It's got to be a full seven days, I think is what you said. A week at a time and you don't, you don't lose fat. Intra-week weights are bullshit and yet everybody gets wrapped up in them. You know, that's why I don't like weighing often, you know, just gets you focused on the wrong things. And, you know, you associate that number with, you know, success or failure and yeah there's a fine delicate balance there but uh

yeah what i like to think of tracking the same way i like to think of training wheels on a bike you know you know eventually they have to come off and you just ride the bike so it's the same concept you're're front-loading yourself with work because new habits require work. Sorry, we're not going to skip that part. I know you want me to give you a system where you press a button, take a pill, do one little rapid action of some sort, and you're hitting the ground running. It's not like that. You know, you have to organize your goals first and then create structure around how you're going to eat of some sort. You know, even people who eat bad have structure. You know, they stop at Dunkin' Donuts. Yeah, they go to Dunkin' Donuts. They get a couple donuts and a coffee every morning.

You know, they go to McDonald's in the afternoon and eat a bunch of shit at night, sit on the couch eating Cheetos. Right, right. I like how you pointed that out a couple episodes ago that people have fairly limited palates when you really look at it. And we tend to fall into patterns of behavior, whether we are cognizant of them or not. And yeah, that includes the people who eat poorly, right? They tend to just do the same things, just like the people who eat really well, tend to just fall into a habit of doing the same things. But yeah, if you're going to, if you want to change your habit, if you're not eating well, you're not eating in accordance with your goals right now, and you want to change that, yeah, it's going to take some work up front. Yeah, tracking is a way to organize

what you're doing and structure it in a way that's predictable, reliable, and valid. So let's just talk about the most common tracking method that people tend to default to. It's macros, at least in the gym business. I'd say if you were to sample a large population of people, regardless of whether they train at a gym or not, calories are probably more popular. Carbs, I would say carbs. I'd say if you were to sample a million people that have done some sort of diet before and you ask them how they track, you probably hear carbs the most in 2022. Yeah, interesting. Not calories.

I'm just guessing. I don't know if this has been asked in any type of a survey. It's an interesting question. You know what that makes me think of, right, when you're saying that? And I believe you of, right? When you say in that, like, and I believe you too, right? I'm sure that people have a much more awareness of their carb intake in, you know, grams or whatever than they would have, you know, 20 years ago when they'd be maybe talking just about calories. The 800 pound grill in the room when you say that is that keto is like the new thing. Everybody's into keto and yeah, you yeah, you got to know how many carbs you ate

if you're really going to do keto. But yeah, that's a rabbit hole. We're going to save that one for later. I'm slowly getting fired up about that. You want to talk about that one so bad. Oh, so bad. Since we started this podcast, I'm like, when do we get to talk about keto?

I'd have to go back and brush up on some biochemistry. I don't want to do that right now. You know, I know enough that I know, I understand it pretty well. I just really don't want to go into the biochem rabbit hole today. Yeah. Yeah. But, but yeah, so like, so, so back to, to macro tracking though, I think that's what we're all kind of familiar with, right? Is, uh, you know, the idea that we have a target or we have sort of these goals of how many grams of each of the big macro nutrients that we're going to eat every day. And we need to track those to, you know, to know if we're making progress or not, right? Yeah. And in terms of people that are involved in strength sports, I think macros are the most popular right now.

People outside of strength sports, probably carbs. But the reason we track macros is because if you're in a strength sport or you're a strength athlete or whatever word you want to use, you have to account for performance, number one. Number two, there is an aesthetic component for a lot of people who engage in strength sports. They want to look a certain way. So the individual macros become important when you add those variables in, especially performance. If your goal is to perform at a certain level or mitigate performance losses, because remember, I've said this in other podcasts, if you are in a calorie restriction of any kind, regardless of how you shuffle up those macros, you have removed resources for recovery.

And when you remove resources for recovery, you can only add so much stress and usually not as much stress as if you have the resources for recovery. So you've essentially turned training into exercise. And, you know, you're going to get people say, oh, you've essentially turned training into exercise. And, you know, you're going to get people who lost weight and got stronger. Well, you know, good for you if you did. You know, if you pull it off, great. You know, I'm not saying it happens this way 100% of the time. I'm saying it happens this way most of the time. And, you know, enough people listening to this have probably experienced it in their life. So, you know, there's no magic formula here for, you know, losing fat and, you know, building muscle and getting stronger. It just tends to not happen. Even guys like, you know, I think of Mark Bell, you know, he's loaded up on sauce.

He was a highly competitive power lifter. His best squat was 1,000. You know, he did carnivore, lost a ton of weight, got really ripped. You know, he held on to a good chunk of his muscle mass because he was on a bunch of drugs. But he's not as strong as he was when he was a fat guy. He'll be the first to admit that, you know? Right. Yeah.

And you see this all the time, you know, when powerlifters go down weight classes. Sometimes, you know, Ed Cohen was strongest at 220, you know, but he went up to 242. And, you know, that happens, but it doesn't always, it's not always the case. More often than not, you see people drop a significant amount of weight, the performance follows. So how do you, so how do you want to approach that? Number one, first, you have to accept that it's most likely going to happen unless you're a novice. The less novice you are, the more muscle mass and strength reduction you're going to experience in a weight loss phase. So that's why a lot of guys tend to stay in the

same weight class and don't oscillate as much as they get more and more advanced. You watch bodybuilders, their body weight doesn't change that much year to year at the Olympia, you know, these top guys. And, you know, drugs aside and all that, what we're talking about here is how you have guys that have reached ceiling effects, whether're on drugs or not the amount of time and progressive overload that they've put their body through has put them into an advanced status there's they're scraping for you know fractions of a pound of muscle at this point so if you look at them year to year they weigh about the same ronnie weighed about the same in the last few years that he competed you know arnold weighed about the same in most of his competitions if you look at power

lifters you know they tend to stay in a weight class you know the more advanced they get this swinging around body weight you don't see it as much um now you see people doing silly shit like competing in federations that have 24 hour weigh weigh-ins, and they might, you know, pretty much the 181 class is really the 220 class. Right, yeah. People can make these ridiculous swings of body weight. Some people can. Some people can. Yeah, so if you want to know how strong you should be

and you're looking at those types of sports and those types of records, subtract 20 to 30 to 40 pounds from the weight class you're looking at, and you'll find the guys that are about your size you know right right so for me that's probably the 148s that's that's i can't even yeah i can't even fathom cutting down to that i don't think you can i think i think the big the small the lower weight classes they don't lose as much but it's still quite there's no way there's no way yeah so's no way. Yeah. So, yeah, that's the thing. And it works the other way too. So you're talking about losing weight, right? And why you need to pay attention to your

macros if you are trying to lose weight and lose body fat. But it works the other way too. If you are skinny fat and you need to gain muscle, or maybe you're just underweight and you need to gain muscle and just body weight in general, then you need to pay attention to your macros because training, the stimulus of training, especially barbell training, heavy barbell training, leads us to, causes us to partition the food that we eat, right? The calories that we eat into, in different ways, right? Right. Than somebody who's not trained. So somebody who is training heavy with the barbell lifts is going to be able to utilize protein to build muscle mass in a way that somebody who doesn't

train at all won't. So even if you're on the other side of the equation and you need to gain weight or you just need to gain muscle, right, then you need to be tracking your macros in some way because you need to be eating a sufficient amount of protein to drive that muscle growth. And then also you need a sufficient amount of carbohydrates to ensure that you have enough energy on hand to actually do the workouts and get through the workouts without dying right so yeah so there's a reason why we just don't eat like we don't just say like ah you need 4 000 calories and just go right it might work but it may not be very optimal either yeah and i've you know i've said that before, Rip gives that

kind of advice, you know, because it's just simple enough. And the assumption is they'll, you know, eat most of everything. And if you're a guy who's a buck 30, then it's probably going to be fine. And a lot of the times it really is fine for those guys. But then other times, what I end up seeing is, oh, I got to eat 4,000 calories. I want to chew all that food. So then they start eating nuts and fat and not getting enough carbs, you know? So I've seen that. Right, right. Ice cream. I was like, I don't want to chew all that food. So then they start eating nuts and fat and not getting enough carbs, you know? So I've seen that happen. Right, right. Ice cream.

Why is my squat the only thing that's going up? Because you've used all of your carbs to squat. I mean, not literally. I'm oversimplifying. It's not actually what happens when you're squatting. But typically, they'll blow through all their fuel when they're squatting, and then nothing else goes up. I've seen that happen many times with the guys who just get fat eating it the wrong way. So what is the right way?

We just talked about it. You want to have enough protein. You want to have enough carbs. And if you have to gain weight, then you need enough fat. If you're trying to minimize weight gain or lose weight, then you scale back on the fat. But that's why we worry about that. But that's one way to track, right? So you look at the food labels. You look at the amounts per serving, the serving size, and you portion out what you need, etc. So that's method number one,

macros, right? And then all those macros add up to calories. So for those of you listening who are confused about this, and you say, well, what about calories, you know, because calories in, calories out? Yeah, each one of those macros has a caloric density. So carbs, four calories per gram of carbohydrate. And protein, four calories per gram of protein and fat, nine calories per gram of fat. Alcohol, I'd say seven calories per ml or gram. Mls and grams are equivalent of alcohol. So yeah, all those macros add up to something. And if you're eating consistent, then it doesn't really matter what the calorie level is, as long as you're

eating similar calories day to day, right? Then you can just adjust them, depending on the goal, right up if you want to gain down if you want to lose, you know, or stay the same if you're good. So that's pretty simple. So what about just counting calories? You know, well, that's what people used to do in the 90s. You know. Everybody was looking at calories, calories and fat, which isn't a bad way to look at it if you're not training. I'm not totally against that, but protein's important whether you're training or not. We've learned that since. But calories are just where you look at the label, you see the calories, and then you just record those and don't worry about where the macros are coming from. Sounds simple enough. And sure, if you keep your calories low, you lose weight. If you keep your calories high,

you'll gain weight. But if you're trying to lose weight and you just track calories and you're getting it off from carbs and fat, you might lose more muscle mass than you want to. So, you know, generally don't recommend that. You should always track protein regardless of what your physical activity situation is. But calorie counting can be very useful when you have to eat out. Because when you eat out, you can't estimate fat. You have no idea what that cook put in that food, you know, in terms of fat. You can estimate protein if you get really good at, you know, if you're weighing your meats a lot, you can kind of eyeball it after a while. Same thing with your carb sources and your vegetable sources, etc. But you just can't track

the fat. So what do you do, right? You're going to go eat a meal out and, you know, let's say you're on a diet, you're trying to, you know, lose weight, or let's say you're trying to, you know, not get fat when you're gaining weight, because that's a problem too. These guys, they eat the right stuff during the week, and then their meals out are so huge that they end up gaining too much body fat, you know, because they're out eating, you know, a whole pizza and things like that, right? On top of their normal 5,000 calories a day or 4,000 or 3,000 or whatever, you know, depending on the person. But calories can be very useful because, for instance, if I go out to eat, you know, these habits are pretty much embedded at this point. You know, I didn't grow up around a

lot of junk and, you junk and calorically dense foods. They were considered luxuries. So eating what people consider a quote-unquote healthy diet, which is really like a low-fat, high-fiber diet, high-protein too, that's normal for me. So when I go to a restaurant, my assumption is I'm getting three meals out of this plate. So I only need one the rest of the day. And I'm probably getting double the fat that I need, maybe a day's worth of it or more. So I'm just going to keep my carb. I'm going to go keto for my one meal.

Maybe have some fruit for some carbs so I don't get low blood sugar. And then I'm going to go out to eat and, you know, I'm going to have a full course meal. And that usually works. I, you know, I do that no matter what, like it tends to work out well, because I'm pretty aware of, you know, my body cues and I'm too full and whatnot. And if I eat like four meals and go to a restaurant and eat a typical restaurant meal, I'm going to be so full. I'm going to go to bed full. It doesn't feel good, you know? Oh yeah. That's like Louis CK. He would always say, the meal's not over when you're full. The meal is over when you hate yourself. Yeah. Fuck that.

That's that, that's that point. Yeah. So, so what you're saying is basically like, if you, all right, so if you know you're going out to eat and you're going to have a big meal for dinner, then you might look at it from a calorie perspective. I purely look at it from a calorie perspective. You're not balancing macros if you're going to a pizza joint. Right, yeah, exactly. So you might say for that meal that you eat, you might eat one meal during the day prior to the dinner. the day prior to the dinner, and let's say that you know that your, you know, your sort of baseline is 2,800 calories, right? That's what you need to eat just to stay the same, right? More or less. So you would eat, let's say, 800 calories for your one meal during the day,

knowing that what you're going to eat for dinner is probably going to be on the order of about 2,000 calories. Probably. If it's a real big one or whatever. I mean, in my brain, I'm like, best case scenario, it's 1,000. Worst case scenario is 2,000. We'll plan for the worst. And then let's say that it ends up being 1,000 and I ate 800. Okay, I had 1,800 calories one day. That's not going to fuck up my training, you know? Right. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, exactly. And you probably, that would self-correct anyway, probably go home and have a little extra. Yeah, yeah. I'll tend to eat more the next day. I mean, I'm not hungry and I'm not,

my blood sugar is not dropping and I'm not dizzy. So it tends to work. I pre, the meal tastes better too, because I go in there nice and hungry, you know? Yeah, right, right. But, uh. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, I like that. I like that strategy. Actually, you, you mentioned that in a article or a podcast years ago, and I've started doing that since then. If I know I'm going out to a big dinner, then I'll usually only eat one meal. Maybe I'll have that small meal and a protein shake or something, just make sure I'm hitting my protein numbers. And yeah, it works pretty well.

The challenging thing today is that we have a first-world problem of too much food. Historically, we're seeking it out because it was scarce, which is again, why this, I'm not worried about this strategy. We didn't eat five or six times a day throughout history, no matter what the research journals want to tell you. In fact, they all contradict each other on this topic. This is, I think it's mostly bro science that, oh, you know, you eat every couple hours, it's superior for fat loss, superior for blood sugar, this, that, and the other. You know, the blood sugar thing kind of makes sense, you know, but I don't think you need to eat six times, you know, you eat three times, you're probably going to get some nice glucose

and insulin curves, you know, and people are so different with that, you know, it's just, right, like, come on. Don't, bro, bro, bro you gotta have a steady stream of protein no into the muscles at all times distraction you know i'm hungrier too because i'm eating often and then i'm distracted i can't work continuously i mean historically we probably ate what two to three times a day in past history so sure you fast one day essentially is what we're talking about. Not like a true 8 to 12-hour fast,

but you're just going longer without food. It ain't going to fuck you up, you know? You're going to be fine. So, you know, I'm fine with that. I just assume that when I go to, let's say I go to a steakhouse, if I get a steak, you know, a carb, like potatoes or whatever, and vegetable,

which is usually doused in oil, and have a drink, you know, I'm probably getting 2,000 calories, you know? maybe even 2,500. So I might just have an omelet for breakfast that day, you know? Yeah. So I don't think people, so here's, this kind of getting to the heart of why we're doing this whole episode on tracking the first place. I don't think a lot of people understand the magnitude. And I've said this before. No, there's a huge mismatch between volume of food and caloric content of food. Right. Like, I don't think most people realize

that when they go out to dinner, like if you asked, if you just ask people like, you know, walking out the door of the Mexican joint or whatever, like, what did you have today? It's like, oh, I had the chimichanga. They're like, did you have any like drinks? It's like, oh yeah, I had a, had a Dos Equis. And you're like, well, how many, how many calories did you have today? It's like, oh, I had the chimichanga. They're like, did you have any like drinks? It's like, oh yeah, I had a, had a Dos Equis. And you're like, well, how many, how many calories did you eat tonight? And it's some wild guess. I doubt most people would get even close to the number of calories they actually ate. That would be my guess. No, I don't think so. I didn't. And so I, and I think this is a big deal, right? Because we're talking about if you're not, if you don't have accurate records of what you're doing, if you're not tracking accurately, you just, you can miss by such a

large margin that you undo the progress that you've made, right? So if you've been in a, if you've been in a two to 300 calorie a day deficit all week, and then Saturday you miss, you miscount your calories by a thousand. You've, you've, you've essentially undone all of the work that you've done that week, reducing your calories. Right. So I think, I think that's a big deal, right? It's like, this is why you have to track at least a little bit in the beginning, because you need to understand and have just sort of a nice mental, like some rules of thumb of how many calories are in the food that you're eating and what's the macro content. When it's knowable,

right? And understanding, like you said, at restaurants, sometimes it's just not knowable, like the fat thing. But you can at least have a rule of thumb, like you said, like, you know, it's probably going to be between 1, between a thousand and 2000 calories. Well, there you go. You can, you can plan around that now. You know, you, I just, it, this conversation just inspired me to, I'm going to, I'm going to get some takeout and send the food out to this lab and get the information. Oh yeah. Can you, uh, can you just do that? Can you just find a lab and have them burn it up and measure it? I mean, maybe you can. You can.

I was going to say, I mean, it's America. Technology's there. Somebody wants to make money off it, right? I just, I want to get like some of the most common things are like pizza, like, you know, hamburger joint, Mexican food, you know? Yeah, right. Yeah, I think the combined stuff is probably the more interesting thing because it's like, you know, hamburger joint, uh, Mexican food, you know? Yeah. Right. Yeah. I think the combined stuff is probably the more interesting thing. Cause it's like, you know, it's not that hard to look up a donut and be like, well, you know, you can look up four different donuts in the nutrition facts and kind of like, you know, triangulate to what

it's going to be. But yeah, the, the combo, the combo platter, you know, with the two beef tacos and the cheese enchilada with rice and beans on the side, that's what matters. That's what I want to know. Yeah. Anyways. So, yeah, when you're ordering food out of the restaurant, and I'm not talking about McDonald's or Chick-fil-A or one of these chains that have their macros posted. I'm talking about a mom-and-pop you know serves you a full course meal right they the there is a mismatch between the volume of food and the calories in the food so you know

i remember when i worked in dialysis the patients say well i don't even eat that much and like there's a bag of cheetos sitting there and you know the volume of food isn't they're telling me the truth they're not eating that much volume, right? So you may not be eating that much volume, but you are definitely eating that many calories. And the problem there is that fat is the invisible macro. I call it the undercover macro. So you might get, you know, steak and vegetables at a steakhouse and get 2,000 calories because of all the fat. And it's like, well, I cut the fat off the side. Well, there's this thing called marbling. It's intramuscular fat, you know? Right. And that's still fat and, you know, it tastes delicious,

but it's fat. And then the cook probably cooked that in a cast iron skillet with butter, you know? Oh, yes. Undoubtedly, right? Yeah. Yeah. So, let's just do the math here. Let's say you know? Oh, yes. Undoubtedly, right? Yeah. So let's just do the math here. Let's say you get something like, oh, I don't know, a ribeye, right? And typically they're not going to give you four ounces at a steakhouse. You're usually going to get around 16, you know? So let's say you get a 16 ounce ribeye. I'm going to estimate here and then I'll look it up after I estimate. I'm going to say that there's probably, 100 calories per ounce so 1600 calories so now let's look up a ribeye oh okay i've you have got one here yeah i'll see we'll see what you know just pick around

we both work out all right okay this is just just straight off google right, ribeye steak, 16 ounce. You want the calories first? Yeah. Okay. 1,320 calories. I wasn't too far off. It's pretty close. It's pretty close. Yeah. It's almost like 90 calories per ounce there. Uh, Oh, Ooh. Ooh. Um, well I'll give you the fat last. I'll give you the fat last. So protein. So if you eat the whole thing, that's 108 grams of protein. I believe that. I can probably predict the fat, too. Okay. Zero carbs, obviously.

What do you think the fat is? I'd say probably about 115-ish, give or take. Okay. So, they're saying 98 grams of fat. Yeah. Not too far. But there might be, yeah, there might be uh i don't know you know sometimes this is here's the interesting thing and maybe you can you can we can talk about this

a little bit here so i have i'm going to sit here and do the math in this so if i do 108 grams of protein times four calories right because there's four calories per gram like you said that's 432 calories and then i go 98 grams of fat times nine calories that's 882 total calories from fat plus the 432 from protein okay that adds up to 1314 so it's pretty close to the total calorie close yeah many times i have, you know, on various nutrition labels, I have individually added up the macros and it's, it's far enough off from the total calorie number that, you know, I've seen 50 and a hundred calorie differences there. And it's like, what's going on here? That's so. Yeah. So do you see what I mean? So that's just, that's just one item on the. Yeah. Right. Yeah. We, yeah, we haven't gotten to the salad that's loaded with cheese and oil.

Yeah. Yeah, right. Yeah. So 1,600 calories just from the meat. Now, you know, I know not everybody listening is getting a 16-ounce ribeye. I'm just giving one example of a popular item that people order. So, but, you know, I only had the green beans with it. Yeah, and it had like five tablespoons of olive oil in it.

Let's just be nice and say three. That's another 420 calories. So you're already at 2,000 calories just from I just ordered the meat and vegetables, you know, and you're at 2,000 calories. And then you're going to have a drink or two. You know, let's say if you're having 80 proof, which I know most of you aren't, you know, it's probably 130 calories or 120 calories. And then you're having two, so you're at 250. So you're already at 2250. If you make that a cocktail, you're probably at 2500.

And that's still, we have not included a salad or a dessert. Yeah. But you just have steak and vegetables and just two drinks. Yeah, 2500 calories, buddy, you know? Right. You know, let's take something else like salmon. Salmon's a, you know, pretty healthy food. Yes.

And it's high protein, but it's also high fat, but it's good fat, but it still has grams of fat, which have seven calories for each one of those, right? So typically they're going to give you a six- salmon and, uh, oh, my guess is it probably has say 30 grams of fat maybe in a six ounce. What do you think? I'm just looking it up here. Very close. Yeah. So six ounce salmon, uh, this has given me three ounce, but I'll just double it.

Uh, 22 grams of fat it says. Yeah. So it's like a medium fat meat. It's not quite as high as ribeye, you know? Yep. So yeah. 22 grams of fat, it says. Yeah, so it's like a medium-fat meat. It's not quite as high as a ribeye, you know? Yep. So yeah. 34 grams of protein. Yeah, and that's great, right?

So you have 22 grams of fat out the gate, but they're cooking that in butter, so. Yeah, right. What do you want to do? Three servings of butter? So three tablespoons of butter? Or is that a quart? What's the serving of butter?

Gosh, I feel like normally, yeah, we could do butter. But I feel like normally you'd even use olive oil, which is even fattier. Olive oil doesn't have quite the, doesn't have the high smoke point. Wouldn't they use canola? Oh, no, you got to use avocado oil, right? Isn't that the? Oh, that's great for cast iron. Did I talk to you about this already?

Or are you just bringing that up? No, no. I mean, I've known that just because we cook with cast iron did i talk to you about this already are you just bringing that up no no i i mean i've i've known that just because we cook with cast iron all the time yeah you watch you watch cowboy rollins oh no that's where i learned do i need to yeah i think you should i'm gonna plug cowboy rollins here he doesn't need us to plug him but we're gonna plug him great cast iron guy so let's see here um you know that a quarter cup of butter i've never measured in cups so i never thought about it but it's not surprising has 46 grams of fat 407 calories dang yeah i believe it but i believe it but let's they don't do it like that usually they'll do what so yeah so each tablespoon of butter has about uh 100 calories and my guess is if they're

you know cooking a piece of salmon with it i mean all fats pretty much same amount per serving once you liquefy them you know yeah so you're probably looking at like two to three hundred fat calories right there and that that's me being generous could be more we don't know what the hell these cooks are doing you know usually they just want it to not stick to the damn pan so they'll just douse the damn pan with fat and then you don't know how much of it goes into the meat how much of it evaporates you know how much of it goes in the pan so let's just call it 300 calories right so what did we say for the salmon it was you said it was like 23 grams of uh fat well it's a calorie 20 22 grams of fat and uh 34 grams of protein and the total calories was 350. Yeah. So 350. So you're already getting six, six to 700 calories just from the

salmon. And then, you know, let's say you get the, uh, let's say you get the vegetable. So you get asparagus. You're like, well, it's just asparagus. There's nothing in there. Yeah. But then they're adding probably a couple tablespoons of olive oil. So you're getting another two to 300 calories, maybe more. So you're already at a thousand calories just from salmon and asparagus and uh let's say you're female and your calorie needs are 1500 you know which is not an uncommon calorie need for a lot of females right yeah and uh or even 1800 let's let's be generous let's talk about female who trains you know so you're already what is that, like two-thirds of your calories for the day? Yeah, at least. No, more than half, half almost. Yeah, 350 for the salmon alone, plus the butter in the salmon, you know, which we added, what did we say, another 3-400 for that? Yeah.

Let's just say 300. Yeah. Plus the asparagus on the side, which is another. We'll just exclude the vegetable calorie content and be nice. Yeah, it's negligible, right? I mean, yeah, like you said, it's about 1,000 calories when you add that all up. So that would be two-thirds of your caloric needs if you're a female. Yeah, I'm at 55% for the salmon and the asparagus. Let's say you have a salad, and you don't get cheese and nuts and raisins on it, you know, and you just get vegetables, right? You're going to, you know, and let's say you're having a dressing, you know, right? And let's say you get

it on the side and you're dipping it in there, right? But let's say you have half of it. So you're getting another 150 calories or you're probably at 1100 to 1200 calories just from that meal. And then you're going to have a glass of wine, which is another 130-ish. So you're getting up there. You're almost at like 100% of your calories for the day. And let's say you've split a dessert, right? The dessert's probably 500 calories or 400 calories just for the dessert. Let's say you split it, that's 200. I mean, you're going to hit that, you're going to hit a day's worth of calories at a restaurant quite easily. And from a volume standpoint, you really didn't eat that much. You're telling me the truth when you say that. I believe you. You didn't eat that much food,

you know, because you didn't, but you ate a lot of calories. So this is why I say don't attempt to balance macros if you're going out to eat. Just view it from a caloric standpoint and assume you are getting somewhere, and you know, you can judge based on your estimated calorie needs if you know them, but you're getting somewhere from 50 to 100% or more of your calories in a single meal, you know? Yeah, I like that. That's, I think that really drives the point home when you sit here and do the math. And, you know, so here's the thing, like, you know, this information is, if you just spend a few minutes on google that's i mean that's all i'm doing is type in like name of food and then nutrition facts after it and um you can find this stuff pretty easily now um you'll you'll get competing you know especially if you're looking at you know stuff that like salmon and these sort of like

single ingredient foods are pretty easy to find but if you're looking at stuff that's pre-prepared, you know, if you're like, well, what about a bagel or something like that? Well, you'll get, you'll get conflicting data depending on what bagel you look up, right? Because there's different sizes and different formulations and all that kind of stuff. But you can, you can pretty easily triangulate and figure out the average of the stuff that you're eating, you know, when you're, when you're going out and indulging at a restaurant or if it's just, you know, you're having some snacks around the house or something. So, I think it's a pretty useful exercise to just get some facts and figures in your head that are references for you. I mean, I just, as you were talking,

I pulled up another one. So, I'm thinking about the ribeye, right? So, I'm like, let me just look at a recipe. Are you going to about the ribeye, right? So I'm like, let me just look at a recipe. Are you going to get a ribeye this weekend now? I don't, it's too damn chewy. It's not the kind of fat that like, you know. That 16 ounce ribeye nowadays, it might cost you $100 nowadays. It might.

Oh shit, Valentine's Day is coming up. We go to a steakhouse for that. I order steak, she orders. I don't know what she orders. I think she got salmon last time. But let's take a look here. I'm going to crunch this recipe real quick. Okay.

Now, this is a website with a recipe listed. And the visual of it matches that which I would see at a steakhouse. Now, there's probably going to be variations in how various cooks and chefs make this, but I think we're probably going to fall into a range of a typical steakhouse. It's a pretty good experiment. I don't know why I hadn't done this before. Now, we got a bunch of spices in here.

I'm not going to count those because, you know, garlic doesn't have anything. Thyme doesn't have anything. Rosemary doesn't have anything. So in this one, they're doing a 24-ounce ribeye. So the ingredients, one 24-ounce ribeye, two inches thick at room temperature, salt, ground pepper, canola oil, unsalted, one tablespoon of canola oil, three tablespoons of unsalted butter, 2,274 calories for that steak.

Okay. Now, it says three to four servings. So if you divide it into three i don't i've never seen an eight ounce ribeye on the menu is the thing you know right yeah i mean you're gonna see typically see like eight ounce filet mignon definitely not a 12 ounce yeah not a six ounce ribeye with the four servings so that's the thing so it's like as a practical matter oh yeah in theory okay if you divide that by four you you're looking at, you know, five to 600 calories, but when have you seen a six-ounce ribeye on the menu? Right. You know, that's, so you have a problem.

This is a practical matter. It's going to be anywhere from 16 to 24 ounces. Yeah, so you see, it adds up real quick, and then you're like, oh, I don't eat that much, you know, and it was, or I, the one I hear the most, another one that I hear a lot is, oh, well, you know, it's all protein. Well, no, it's not all protein. Yeah, we just showed you. It's 100 grams of fat. Yeah. I trimmed... It's actually half fat. I trimmed the fat off the side. Well, there's fat in the muscle, too. There's fat in your muscles, intramuscular. Fat is a thing, you know, that thing called marbling, you know?

Yeah, right. There's fat there, and, you know, it was also cooked in fat, as we just, you know, discussed. So, no, you didn't just eat protein, and, you know, when you have liquor, well, you know, it's not that, oh, you know, I just drank straight liquor. Well, alcohol is almost as calorically dense as fat. So, you know, liquor and beer, you know, depends if you like volume or if you like something sharp and quick but uh if you're drinking a 12 ounce beer or having a one and a half ounce shot you're drinking you're consuming the same number of calories more or less i mean right i mean we're not we're excluding like you know high gravity stuff you know just a basic you know commercial

beer or you know 80 ounce spirit you know not a barrel proof. The numbers do get higher then, obviously. Yeah, your 15% Belgian quad is not what we're talking about here. No, we're talking about a Miller Genuine Draft versus a Jack Daniels shot. Neither of which I drink. I tend to go with

90 proof bourbon or barrel proof. I understand the calories are higher. You don't like the champagne of beers? No. Is that what you're saying? I mean, you know, if I want to pretend I'm king of the hill for the day, maybe. I like doing that sometimes, you know. I just don't have an alley to sit on.

Some duff beer. No, that's the Simpsons. That's the Simpsons. Well, he drinks that in the house. Hank Hill drank it. Well, I guess he did it on the front porch, right? It wasn't always in the alley. Yeah, that's true Simpsons. That's the Simpsons. Well, he drinks that in the house. Hank Hill drank it. Well, I guess he did it on the front porch, right? It wasn't always in the alley. Yeah, that's true.

That's true. Yeah. I have an appreciation for that sometimes, so maybe I need to get some cheap beer. But typically, I like an IPA if I'm drinking beer. I like the hops. And if I'm drinking bourbon, I tend to go 90 proof or higher, so it's higher calorie. But for those of you who just drink regular stuff and don't give a shit, most, you know, commercial whiskey is probably 80 proof, you know? Yeah.

And most beer is like 3% to 5%. So, you know, and the other thing— It's alcohol by volume, right? So think of it that way. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And the other thing I always like to point out here is that, you know, I don't know about you, but I know that if I'm having a couple cocktails,

my decision-making matrix for what I'm going to order after dinner is significantly altered. Like I'm going to have chocolate cake, you know, but I might not have ordered it. Had I not had the cocktails, I might've been like, I don't, I don't really want the cake tonight. I'm just going to have the steak. Nope. If I have two cocktails, I'm getting the cake. Right. So, so it kind of, you know, naturally follows like if you get the cocktails, it's not, it's not going to be the only thing. Yeah. So there you go. That's, I think that illustrates the point pretty nicely that, uh, A, you got to have a handle on your calories, you know, in sort of a rough number if you're going to eat out. And also B, if you're trying to lose weight, stop eating out. It's not going to work very well for you.

Just stop it. I mean, if you could stop it, that makes it a lot easier, you know? Yeah, it really does. And when I say stop it, I mean like, you know, go like once a month or something. You know, you don't have to deprive yourself utterly. But, you know, if you're going to the steakhouse once a week, it's just not going to work. I'm sorry. It's not going to work.

Just look at the math here. So I do want to ask something here. I'm sorry. Just look at the math here. So I do want to ask something here. Let's kind of pivot back towards macro tracking. And, you know, are there some pitfalls to macro tracking-day food, stuff that you'll be preparing, you know, in your own kitchen for breakfast, lunch, and dinner? Are there any downfalls to tracking macros versus maybe, you know, I guess the other sort of third strategy that we haven't mentioned yet, we've got macro tracking, we've got just calorie tracking. And I guess the third strategy is some sort of like intuitive eating, you know, where, where essentially you don't track, but you're by force of habit, you know, you, you have a, you are naturally going to gravitate towards the right balance of macros for your goals. So that's kind of like an implied third strategy, I guess, that we haven't really explicitly mentioned, but you know, are there any, are there any downsides to tracking your macros?

Because I know some people that have, I can think of a few, but I'm curious what you think about this. I think there are downsides to tracking anything because humans like to eat in units. We want to grab what's available and eat it. And when you're glued to a smartphone app or if you're doing it the old-fashioned way and writing it down, it's interrupting your day constantly.

You have to stop and do this. It's just another task you have to do. And that's why I say it's training wheels. Like when I go and eat, I know I need a lean protein, a vegetable, a carb source of some sort, like a fruit or a starch. And I might throw fat in there, like, you know, avocado or something, you know? And, you know, I typically know that I need that when it's time to eat. And that's just from years of doing this. I used to track diligently.

And then eventually I'm like, why am I doing this? I know what I need to eat, you know? And that's how it goes. When I go out to eat, like I said, I know I'm eating once. And then I know when I go out, I'm going to order what I want, and I'm going to pay attention to how full I get because, you know, the thing about fat is fat gets you full, you know what I mean?

Right, yes. So, you know, if you start getting full at a restaurant, you're probably satisfied, you know? But I think that when people start freaking out because, oh, you know, I went over my carbs and went under my fat, or went under my, you know, I went over my carbs and went under my fat or went under, you know, went over on my fat and then blew my calories out.

You know, they get real neurotic about trying to get it perfect and get the numbers to line up. You know, you got a problem now, you know, and I don't, the purpose of macros is to teach you how to, you know, teach you how to keep track of your food, provide structure, right? The purpose of it is not for you to eat for numbers, you know, teach you how to keep track of your food, provide structure, right? The purpose of it is not for you to eat for numbers, you know, there's a margin of error there, you know, you want to, you want to build structure. So what you were talking about with intuitive eating, part of that requires a certain level of knowledge, you know, because you want to eat the

right things, you know, if you eat intuitively, and you just, I'm just gonna eat when I'm hungry, but you're eating sugar every time, then you're always hungry, right? Right. You know, you want to have some level of knowledge. And that's where, like, the meal plan method comes out. And I look at meal plans as, like, a blueprint, right? Like, okay, I'm going to eat generally around these times. And I'm going to generally eat this combination of foods, like the example I gave a few moments ago. And then you just kind of follow that. You carry that out,

whether, you know, you're just me. I put them together as I go along. But there was a time where I, when I used to go into campus when I was a doctoral student in my first year, I would put all these containers together. And I had a six-pack bag and there were ice packs around it. And I'd heat them up in the microwave and eat them. And it worked. I don't like the container life personally. So I try to get things like instant rice, eat more fruit, just try to minimize how much I have to heat things up because I just don't enjoy it as much. But back then it was fine. And I just knew it was time to eat at certain times of the day. And it gave me a routine. And then, you know, I've followed a version of that ever since, you know, I've just continued to follow that for years and years and years. I know that I need,

you know, again, a lean meat, you know, either a starch or a fruit, or sometimes both depending on what's available, and a vegetable. I used to do the whole law. I'm going to eat more carbs when I lift and less carbs away from the workout. But I want a big-ass breakfast, and I'm not going to compromise that. So I wake up in the morning, and I have a ton of carbs, and I don't train until the afternoon, and it's fine. I've lost weight that way. I've gained strength that way. I just like waking up in the morning and having a big breakfast.

Yeah, same here. Yeah, no. So when you do a meal plan, again, a goal is not to eat for numbers. It's to construct a system, to build a structure for yourself that you can stick with. Let's say you're a school teacher. They have pretty rigid schedules. I've worked with them before many times. And you're going to probably be able to slip in a quick breakfast because you've got to get to school early enough since classes typically start between 7 and 9, depending on the school district. And you're not going to be able to eat until maybe noon, 1 o'clock, you know, 2 o'clock. So let's say your first meal is at 6 in the morning, you know, and you're just going to, you know, have a protein shake or some yogurt and fruit because you've got to run out the door and get to work by seven to teach class at eight. So you might not eat till one. That's, you know, seven hours. It's not the end of the world. Like

I said, you actually, I think personally the three meals a day and then maybe a protein shake around workouts or before bed works pretty good because you're not worried about food all the time. I find when I eat more frequently, I'm hungrier. You know, it's an anecdotal thing that I've heard from many people. I'm not, you know, trying to make an academic argument about that. I'm just saying that as a practical matter, you know, people report, there are people that have reported they tend to be hungrier when they eat more. So anyways, you know, a school teacher eats at six, just a small, quick, easy meal might say, hey, you know, blend school teacher eats at 6, just a small, quick, easy meal. Might say, hey, you know, blend that into a protein shake or something like that, you know.

And then they're not going to eat for six hours because they have to teach classes. You know, think about it. Remember when you were in elementary school? When do you think your teacher is going to be able to leave the classroom to, you know, go get food, right? Yeah, right. So, yeah, so you might go six, seven hours and eat. And then they might go straight to the gym so that they don't skip it if they go home first. And that's when a protein shake can be useful, you know, possibly Gatorade, you know, depending on what type of activity they're doing.

And then they go home and have dinner. And that's it. Three meals, one shake, maybe a second one before bed if they tend to get hungry later at night. But that's a meal plan for you, right? And then you just kind of pick foods that work, you know, that you can kind of do every day. Like I said, we're creatures of habit, you know. When habits tend to veer off is when, let's say, our school teacher has a day off, you know, Saturday, Sunday. Now she, you know, has to run errands all day Saturday.

She might have a bigger breakfast because she has time to cook, might do an omelet or something, some oatmeal, something that she doesn't have time for during the week. Then she's going to go run around all over town catching up on things and then might stop at a restaurant and get something to eat, whether it's somewhere that's takeout, not necessarily fast food. I don't think everybody eats fast food, but say, you know, stop somewhere to get something, you know, something in between, you know,

a full-out steakhouse and a McDonald's, you know, something in between, like a Chipotle maybe, you know. Yeah. Or more common, a dessert, you know. I'm just going to go out for ice cream on the weekend, you know. I'm going to have a glass of wine. These are some of the things I hear as a dietician. And that's where, you know, the calories tend to skew.

So where our teacher may be eating, let's say it's a female teacher. Let's say she's eating 1,500 to 1,800 calories during the week. Then on Saturday, she puts down 2,500 because she, you know, woke up, had a bigger breakfast, then went out and, you know, had some Dairy Queen, had some Chipotle, then sat down, had a glass of wine, watched a movie on Saturday night if she had time, you know? Yeah, right, right. So, you know, all that adds up, you know, it's a lot more than what she's eating during the week, and then she might replicate something similar on Sunday. So then you have two days of surplus,

five days of deficit. Best case, you have net maintenance, but in some cases, you have a net surplus. Yeah, that's right, and that's it. That's why we see, you know, commonly people year over year just get a little bit fatter, just very slowly. You know, I think most people that get to be overweight and with too much body fat and especially obese, it tends to happen slowly. It takes years to get to that point. And yeah, that's how that's, that's right there, how it happens. You know, I think we have a very recent example of this in a, you know, that's kind of magnified and that's the COVID lockdowns.

Oh yeah. You know, it's like, think about like it disrupted everyone's schedule, right? Disrupted everyone's habits. All of a sudden you're home more, you know, so you have more opportunities to snack or prepare foods or prepare that bigger breakfast and lunch and dinner. And then you layer on top of that a lot of fear and stress, which probably drove, you know, more food consumption. That would be my guess. But yeah, so there you go, right? And like how many people gained a bunch of weight during COVID, during the COVID lockdowns? It's a lot of people. Yep. And so there you go, right? You can just see how disrupting the habit alone changes the calculus quite a bit. We're creatures of habit. And you know,

if your structure changes, you got to add a new structure. You know, when my weekend rolls around, lately, it's been the same as the weekdays. I'm working so damn much. But when I was going out more, I knew that like, you know, me and Christy would go out and get pho or something, right? So I'd have my usual breakfast, but you know, typically my breakfast consists of vegetable omelet, make it on cast iron with avocado oil spray. Yeah. Yes. For the high smoke point oh yeah and it doesn't stick either so then i'll do that and then uh i'll have a oatmeal cooked and ultra filtered milk and i'll throw a banana in there sometimes i have a second one if i'm still hungry

so it's you know i've probably a thousand what is that thousand calories or something i haven't actually calculated i don't track anymore but uh know, I'm pretty satisfied enough to think about food till like noon, you know, and I wake up around six, seven. So I do that on Saturday, but then, you know, I'll just go about my day and I won't make myself anything else. And then I'll go get pho. You know, we get rice noodles and she gets the, what is that? That tofu, the fried tofu, it pairs well. And I'm not a big tofu guy guy but that's the one dish that i have with it because it just pairs well it just works it's like thai food you know if you get thai curry it's like the tofu is pretty good yeah in curry yeah yeah but uh we'll get a good mouthfeel it

does so yeah we typically get that and then we'll get uh spring rolls and peanut sauce so you know i know i'm getting probably you know a, a thousand calories there, maybe more. The noodles are, you know, pretty high calorie because it's a lot of carbs, you know. Right. but can really add a good chunk of calories, you know, because, man, it just seems like you could get a good amount of calories with a small volume of food. So, like, you ever seen a serving of pasta? It's sad, and it's like 200 calories, you know? Right, yes.

It packs densely. Yeah, those carbs are densely packed, probably because they grind it. I think bread's the same way. You know, when you grind up the flour, you can pack the volume so densely and get all those carbs in such a small portion, you know? Right, yeah. Does it fluff up like rice or? Yeah, I know, right? Right, yeah.

It's why I like fruit. But, you know, like the noodles alone, you're probably getting several hundred calories from when you're doing that. Then there's, you know, fat in the broth and there's fat in the tofu that's naturally there. Then there's also fat from the way they, you know, they fry it, you know? Yeah. Then, you know, the spring rolls themselves aren't, the ones we get aren't that fatty. We get the shrimp one, but I get the tofu one too, which, you know, has its extra fat calories as well.

So, you know, I'm probably getting, you know, a four figure calorie meal there. I don't know that I'm getting up to 2000 though, probably, probably 1,000, you know, to 1,500 range if I had to guess. And then, you know, have like my 1,000 calorie breakfast and I'm good, you know? There you go. And that's for one day when I'm like eating a proper day's worth of meals, probably getting 3,000 calories most of the time, you know? Yeah, right. You're on the side of caution. If I'm going to a restaurant, I'm like, I'm going to under eat today and it's fine, you know, because i'm going to eat normal tomorrow yeah and that that's the thing so like to bring this full circle right the way that i think you approach nutrition

and and macros or you know calories or however it is in your particular your particular circumstance that you're tracking this is that you kind of work backwards. You're like, am I achieving the goal that I set out to achieve? If yes, like by definition, you ate what you needed to, right? Like if you have a body composition that is acceptable to you and your goals

and your performance is good and you're meeting your goals and your performance is good and you're meeting your goals, then it's fine. You know, you there's, there's really, you know, I don't think you need to tweak too much from there. If you, if you aren't, then you make changes, right? That's when you start to dig a little bit and you make changes. Um, but it's kind of a, what do we call that? Like an empirical process or inductive. I can't remember the difference between those deductive and inductive. But anyway, you know, you can kind of work backwards. And by the way, that's exactly the same thing we do when we program. You know, it's like,

I can't sit down and tell somebody that comes up to me and is like, hey, you know, what kind of program should I do? You know, I can't sit there and draw up, you know, just looking at their numbers, like draw up the perfect program, right? What happens is I put down something that I know from my experience that's reasonable, given their level of advancement, whether they're a beginner or they've been lifting for, you know, eight years or whatever. I put down something that's fairly reasonable starting point. And then I watch and I observe, I see what happens, right? And if, if they start stalling out in one area, I know I have to make a change to get them to continue to progress, right? That's, that's

exactly what we do with programming. And it's the same thing with diet too, right? Is you, you start, you have a starting point and then you observe and then you make changes from there. So the whole, this whole idea of like tracking your food, um, like you said, it's training wheels, but the whole point is not to hit a certain number. The point is to change your habits so that you are getting closer to your goals, whatever they are, whether it's losing body fat or just performing well in the gym or your sport or whatever. And so, yeah, I think that was well said. One of the biggest pitfalls of tracking your macros is just the fact that sometimes it distracts you from the actual goal at hand. It's not about hitting X number of grams.

No, those numbers are bullshit anyway. Because yeah, exactly. Right. Like we, there's so much, there's so much slop in the data, right? You can't be accurate anyway. No. So, um, yeah. So I think that's, uh, that that's maybe, I think that's a good place to leave this off. What do you think? No, I agree. I think we've beat the hell out of this. So, yeah, let's close out. All right. So, thank you for tuning in to the Weights and Plates podcast. Stay tuned. We have more to come. You can find me at the underscore Robert underscore Santana or Weights double underscore and double underscore Plates at Instagram.

Yeah. On the Instas, you can find me on the Instas at marmalade underscore cream. And you can also email me, trent at marmaladecream.com. That's my audio production company, but I also answer questions about coaching and podcasts and whatever else you want to chat about. Chat about inflation, the price, beef prices. I'm game for anything. All right, we'll talk to you in a couple weeks. you