Whitney Reese came to us from her physical therapy facility in Austin, TX. I always love to see what our coach’s spaces look like, and this one didn’t disappoint!

What are macros and micros - macronutrients and micronutrients

Macros are:

●      Protein

●      Carbohydrates

●      Fats

Micros are, outside of vitamins and minerals, are the things that fill the spaces in between the macros. Whitney likened micros to pebbles whereas she said that macronutrients were the rocks and vitamins/minerals are the sand. When you fill up a “nutrition bucket” in your body, you need all types, but they each play specific roles. We didn’t go down a deep rabbit hole here because it was outside of what we intended to chat on for nutrients. Sufficient to say, though, you won’t optimize your health and wellness without adequate amounts of each.

Whitney mentioned that nutrition is very often grey in that even when information or nutrition statistics are put out to the world, they are never perfect because no two pieces of food are identical and no two people who eat that piece of food are identical. If we can agree that there is some grey, we can better talk about a process to improve your health, wellness and performance through nutrition.

Where do I begin to improve my nutrition through macros and micros?

It’s important that you remember that there are always multiple components at play in terms of how you will react and adapt to your nutrition. Some of the important aspects are:

●      Genetics - what you’re born with

●      Epigenetics - environmental

●      Lifestyle and behavior

●      Goals, outcomes and emotions

●      The growing process of the food

●      The additional processing of food

All these aspects need to tell us is that we will all react a bit differently if we bite into a strawberry. No two people are identical, though there are consistencies between groups and types of people.

When you begin down this macro and micro road, Whitney made it clear that it’s less about the specific macro count or micro brand type, it’s about YOU. You must know where you are in your life. What are you doing in your life and how is that working to you? You need to take one specific strategy at a time and see how that change makes you feel. If you get ahead of yourself and attempt to change numerous parts of your life, you’ll likely confuse yourself with what’s “working” or not because there are simply too many different reactions going on at once.

You can also ask yourself “how have you been at making changes in your life?” If you have certain fears or conditions - think depression, anxiety, eating disorders - you really want to be careful on adding specific diets or counting plans to those people. The added stress and control of food can have negative effects for people.

Whitney did not say to begin with complex math or specific foods. You need to know where you, the client, sits and how you’re doing in your life - in your own eyes - before you make big changes to your life. It’s important to know if you’re in the pre-contemplation phase, the contemplation phase, or the action phase in your life before you throw a bunch of potentially stressful “rules” into your nutrition.  The earlier you are in this process, the more basic you want to begin your “plan.”

What milestones do I need to be prior to counting macros?

You need to be in the actioning phase of your life where when you’re asked “on a scale of 1-10, how ready am I to take action on this” you’d answer 8, 9, or 10. If you can list the barriers that you’ll have in front of you to make this change, you’re ready to make the effort. If you do implement the changes, you need to track those changes and see what your actions/behaviors look like as you execute so that you can see how positive this change is to you.

If you’re not ready for action or you’re not ready to see/overcome those barriers, it’s not time to put stressful changes into your nutrition life. You can make more basic changes, and you will most likely have a lot more success with those more basic changes. Forward progress is the name of the game.

What’s the best vegetable?

“I’ll go with my grandpa here and say broccoli.”

Cooked or raw veggies?

“Cooked.”

Why cooked?

“I have texture aversion issues”

If you had to live on 1 macronutrient, in fantasy land, what would you go with?

“I love my vegetables!”

Is juice good?

“I view good as in “good and evil” - if you were to have asked me if strawberry juice is good?, I would say it’s amazing!”

What is the number one thing that seems to get your clients off track with nutrition?

“Strategies around stress.”

What do you do to help your clients build strategies to help that stress?

“I do an extra dedicated consult to identify the type of stress and the trigger and how they can stay ahead of it.”

I enjoyed this as always! 

Thanks so much for reading. Leave any comments below or check out the other content to continue to progress yourself forward

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