What Are Macros and How Do I Start Tracking Them?

Nikkiey: When you restrict your calories without adequate protein intake, your body doesn't just burn fat, it burns muscle too. And losing muscle is the last thing that you want, because muscle is what helps to keep your metabolism elevated, it gives your body the shape and the definition that you want, and it makes fat loss sustainable. This is why I say that protein is the macronutrient king. It does so much internally for your body, for repairing and building, but then externally for the results that you want to see in your body.

What's going on, everybody? Hey, you guys. Welcome back to another episode of The WarriorBabe Show. Or if this is one of your first episodes, welcome to the show with your host, Nikkiey Stott. On these episodes, my friends, we talk about mindset, methodologies and tactics that will help you lose body fat, build muscle, be strong and feel insanely confident. In today's episode, episode number 346, we're going to dive into some simplicity and bringing back the basics.

The majority of you maybe already know what this is, but for those of you that don't, we're going to dive into the world of macros. This episode is for every woman who has ever nodded along when someone said the word macros and then quietly went off to the sideline and googled what that actually means later. And there's no shame in that. The fitness industry throws the word around a lot, like everybody already knows what it is. I mentioned this a few episodes ago, that I'm over a decade into this space in the fitness industry.

What is so second nature to me is not to the person that I meet at a dog park who says, what are macronutrients? I have no idea what they are. So the fitness industry can toss it around like everybody knows what it is. But then there are a lot of women out there that feel confused, and then they give up three days into a tracking app. And we're wondering why that is. It's because there are beginners still starting their journey. And I want to lean into that with you guys today.

And if you're thinking, I already know macros and I follow macros, blah, blah, blah, this could also just be a refresher for you, diving back into this. It will also help you articulate this to somebody else who is starting their journey, or who has been where you are when you're a couple of years in, know what macros are and are tracking them. So overall, this can help everybody. We're going to dive into macros 101, the very foundation of it.

By the end of the episode, I want you guys to leave understanding what macros are, why they matter for your body specifically, what they actually do, and then what to do with that information moving forward. I'm going to break it down. No jargon. There's going to be science, but it's going to be at a level which I know you guys can understand. And no overwhelm.

So first, let's dive into what macronutrients are. Macros are short for macronutrients. They are three main categories of nutrients that make up your food and give your body energy. Every single thing that you eat is made up of some combination of these three: protein, carbohydrates and fat. That's it. Just those three. Everything you eat, what you had for breakfast, was made up of those three. What the majority of people eat for breakfast is made up of only two of them, which is carbohydrates and fat. So just keep those three in mind.

Then a lot of people wonder, what about calories? Calories are simply the unit of energy that the macros provide you. So how do they break down per gram? Protein is four calories per gram. So if you were to look at the back of a nutrition label and there were 28 grams of protein, you multiply 28 by four, and that's what makes up the protein calories in the total calorie number. Carbohydrates are also four calories per gram. Fats are a little bit more calorically dense: they are nine calories per gram.

So if you ever want to line up the nutrition label with the calories, minus things like the sugar alcohols and the fibers, which give or take on the calorie number, you just multiply the number you're seeing on the back of the nutrition label by four or by nine, and that will give you, for example, the fat calories of the overall calorie number. So when you track your macros, you're tracking where your calories are coming from. Not just how much you're eating, but what those calories are made up of.

And that distinction is what makes macro tracking so much more powerful than just counting calories. I'm going to circle back to that in the middle of this episode. But before I do, I want you guys to know exactly what each macronutrient does.

Protein is your body's primary building and repair material. It builds muscle. It builds or repairs your tissues. It produces hormones. It supports your immune system. It keeps you fuller longer than any other macronutrient does. And for women who want to lose fat, build muscle and change their body composition, protein is the most important macronutrient to get right. Hands down, period. This is what I call the macronutrient king of all the macronutrients. It's the most important one in regard to that goal.

Carbohydrates are your body's preferred energy source, especially for your brain and your muscles during training. Your body breaks down carbs into glucose for immediate energy, or it stores them as glycogen for later. So carbs fuel your workouts and help you recover. And let me just say this point blank, plainly: carbs are not the enemy. They are not the enemy. They are fuel. If you avoid them entirely, that is not the answer. You have to learn how to use them strategically. That is the answer.

I have seen so many women remove carbohydrates from their diet because of being on keto, or because they think carbs make them gain weight, or X, Y and Z, or because of their insulin and they need to be on lower carbs. That is a different category to talk about. But you don't need to cut them out entirely. There's a strategic way to go about implementing them into your overall intake on a daily basis. And plus, think about it realistically. If you're on keto, can you not eat carbs for the rest of your life? No. So it's not sustainable.

Fat is essential and so important for your hormone production, and that includes your estrogen and your progesterone. It supports your brain function. It helps absorb fat-soluble vitamins like A, D, E and K, and keeps your cells healthy. It also helps with your digestive tract, so the more fat you have, the more regular you will be. Now, as I mentioned, it's calorically dense, nine calories per gram. So when you eat fats, the portions matter, because they can easily add up. This is probably where people got the idea that eating fat makes you fat.

And yes, rightfully so, if you're eating tons of calories from fat, because they're calorically dense. So you want to keep them in mind. Mine are at 90 grams a day for my fat intake. My carbs are up in the 200s. My protein is at my body weight. So you can see that the fat number is going to be lower, and it's easy for a lot of people to overconsume. But I don't want you guys to eliminate it. You just need to know the portions matter with it. And your hormones depend on your fat intake.

For any of you that remember my story back when I was bodybuilding, I only had 14 grams of fat in my day for eight-plus weeks straight while I was in prep. And that's what landed me in the emergency room, because I was completely backed up. I had poop in both of my intestines all the way up to the top of my x-ray. It was the most expensive poop of my life, because I didn't have insurance at the time. And that was because I didn't have a high enough fat intake in my day. Just consider, if you feel like you're constipated, implementing fats can make a huge improvement to your digestive system.

So overall, the big takeaway is that your body needs all three of these macros. Cutting any one of them out entirely will create an imbalance and work against you, even when it seems to be working short term. Just like the carbohydrates I talked about: when you cut them out, people think they're losing weight, but you're losing water, because carbs hold on to water. So just reminding you of that. Cutting it out short term, even though you think it works, is working against you long term, and it will create some type of imbalance.

So you've probably heard calories in, calories out. At least for a lot of women growing up, that was the golden rule for fat loss. Calories in, calories out. I burn this many calories, so I can eat this many calories, and the cycle goes on. Yes, calories matter. But here's why that is an incomplete picture. Two women can eat the same exact number of calories and get completely different results based entirely on their macro intake.

The example I've always used, and I've probably said this in episodes before: woman A eats 1,800 calories, mostly processed carbs, very little protein and high fat. Woman B eats 1,800 calories, high protein, moderate carbs, moderate fat. Over time, woman B builds more muscle, loses more fat, feels fuller and more energized, and sees dramatically more change in her body composition. Guys, same calories. They're both eating 1,800 calories, but they get completely different results, because the composition of what they're eating, and what their body can do with those calories, is entirely different.

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Now, let's talk about what happens when women just restrict calories without thinking about macros, because I know so many of you have been there. You eat less, maybe a lot less, and it works for a little bit, then it stops. Or you lose weight, but you feel tired, you feel soft, you're not really getting to go work out and you're not toned. Or you lose it all and then you gain it all right back.

Here's what's happening. When you restrict your calories without adequate protein intake, your body doesn't just burn fat, it burns muscle too. And losing muscle is the last thing that you want, because muscle is what helps to keep your metabolism elevated, it gives your body the shape and the definition that you want, and it makes fat loss sustainable. This is why I say that protein is the macronutrient king. It does so much internally for your body, for repairing and building, but then externally for the results that you want to see in your body.

So the skinny fat thing I mentioned, where you lose weight but you're not toned. You're just looking skinny fat. The number on the scale goes down, but the body doesn't look or feel the way that you hoped it would. This was me when I first started my journey over a decade ago. I had no definition. I was low energy. My metabolism was tanked.

Macro tracking, specifically making sure that you're eating enough protein while managing your overall calorie intake, protects your muscle while you lose fat. I can't tell you what a drastic difference that was for me, and it's what a lot of women see in WarriorBabe. A lot of women come to us and either they don't know what protein is, or they don't know where to get protein from. They don't know what to eat that has protein in it.

So they're not consuming enough on a daily basis. They think a Clif Bar is healthy because it gives you 10 grams of protein. So there's that mindset. That was me too. Or there are people that start tracking, they're bringing awareness, and they're only eating around 80 grams of protein in a day. All of that to say: when I made the shift to eating more protein when I first started my journey, when I got into the bodybuilding space and was competing, that was what gave me drastic results. That's the difference between losing weight and actually transforming your body composition.

And that's why I'm so passionate about macronutrients and so passionate about protein. The majority of you all want to lose fat and build muscle, but you don't do the things needed to get there, which are eating enough protein and strength training. There's cardio and overtraining and yada, yada, yada, and all those approaches I've talked about. But macro tracking is so important. That's the goal that you want to get to.

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And I know you're thinking, well, I don't want to track macros for the rest of my life. I hear you. You don't have to track macros for the rest of your life, but you do need to develop a skill set that you don't have yet. Because if you're where you are right now, you need to change something. You can't keep doing what you're doing.

So implementing something new to develop a learning, educational skill set is what is needed of you in order to get the results that you want. And then once you do have it down, I'm telling you guys, five years in, six years in, I don't need to track macros anymore. I know it through and through. I know what protein is. I know what carbs are. I know what fats are. I know portions, because I've been weighing out and looking at portions for years. It just becomes this ingrained identity and skill set. So don't let those excuses get in the way of implementing these things.

A lot of you are probably wondering how much of each macronutrient you should actually be eating. This is what's called your macro split, which is the ratio of protein, carbs and fat in your daily intake. The honest answer, and you guys know this: there is no single perfect split that works for every single person. Your ideal macros depend on your goals, your current body composition, how active you are, your age, your hormones and your lifestyle. And this is why we have VIP one-on-one coaching in WarriorBabe.

You go into a 45-minute onboarding with your coach, and she gets to know where you are in relation to everything I'm talking about right now. Do you know macros? Do you not know macros? What's your level of understanding? Have you ever implemented it? And then we get down to, okay, this is the reality of where you are, and how can we create a clear path so we can start implementing the macros and also get you to where you want to be with your goals. There's no one right answer.

That said, there are principles that work for most women focused on fat loss and who want to change their body composition. Protein is always the highest priority. Most women doing well with changing their body composition eat somewhere between 0.8 and 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight per day. So at 150 pounds, quick math, that's roughly 120 to 150 grams of protein daily.

And I know that probably sounds like a lot, because for most women, like I said, it's significantly more than what you're currently eating. If you're only eating 80 grams of protein a day, you don't just go to 150. You could jump up a little bit, to maybe 100, allow your body to adapt and adjust, then two weeks later do a slight increase again, and then again, to get there. So you don't go from where you are right now straight to eating all of that protein. And trust me, when you do it that way, you're going to feel your metabolism saying, thank you for giving me this food. You may feel fuller, because making you feel full is protein's job.

Carbs and fat fill in the rest based on your preferences, your training style and how your body responds. I've talked about insulin resistance and being insulin sensitive: what can your body take when it comes to carbohydrates? Some women feel and perform better with higher carbs. Others do better with a more balanced fat-to-carb ratio. More people do better with higher fat, especially in menopause and post-menopause, and in perimenopause, which is where I'm at. The reason I'm eating 90 grams of fat is that my hormones need it, because I'm starting to feel the changes of entering perimenopause.

This is where real individualization matters, because you get to know those things and how your body responds. I'll tell you this: there are times when coaches set somebody up on their macros and the woman doesn't respond in a way where she feels great and energized. And just a little tweak of the fats and the carbs makes a world of difference in how that person feels within two weeks.

What I don't want you to do is Google a random split and assume that it is right for you. Eating the wrong ratios for your body can not only slow down your results significantly, it can also make you spiral and think something is wrong with you, wondering why the macros aren't working, even when you're doing everything else right. So I would not recommend that. What I would recommend is checking out a program that you feel is aligned with the vision and the goals you want to accomplish, getting inside of that and working with a coach. AKA, check out WarriorBabe if you're not inside of it.

All right. Before we start closing down this episode, I want to talk about some of the most common mistakes that I see women making, because knowing what not to do is important as you leave this episode.

The number one mistake I see is not eating enough protein. I've talked about this over and over and over again. This is the most common one I see, by far. Most women are eating half or less of the protein that they actually need. And without it, you can't build muscle. You can't preserve muscle. Your hunger is harder to manage. Your fat loss is going to stall. This single mistake can explain why so many women aren't seeing results.

The second one is fearing carbs and cutting them way too low. Very low carb might move the scale quickly. You're going to see that in the first week if you cut carbs, but most of that is water, like I said, not fat. Over time, chronically under-eating carbs is going to tank your energy. It's going to hurt your performance. It's going to disrupt your hormones. And it's going to make building muscle nearly impossible. Please understand that carbs are fuel and you need to use them.

Since I'm doing each one of the macronutrients, the mistake I see with fats is not accounting for fat. Fat is calorie dense, which makes it easy to go over and consume fats without realizing it. A tablespoon of olive oil, a handful of almonds. I've explained before how people take a scoop of peanut butter and think that's the serving size, when the serving size is literally almost a quarter, if not half, of that.

They add up fast, and not tracking them means your calories can be way higher than you think, even when you're eating quote-unquote clean. I'm eating an avocado. I'm having a handful of almonds. I'm putting olive oil on my salad. I'm having peanut butter. That adds up fast. It sounds like you're eating clean, but you could be overconsuming calories there.

Mistake number four is tracking inconsistently. You're perfect Monday through Friday and you completely fall off the rails on the weekend. Especially if you're new to this and just starting out, you have to be honest. This is incredibly common, and it's one of the main reasons women don't see the progress that they expect. Consistency over the full week matters more than perfection on any single day. If you track Monday through Sunday, you can see not only the inconsistency and the consistency, but also where you may need to improve. You're not going to be perfect at this, and that's okay. You don't need perfection every day.

It may look like 80% one day, 40% the next day, 90% the next day, then 70%, 50%, 10%. Okay? But tracking every single day will help you see why progress may be stalling and where you can improve.

And the last one is using someone else's macronutrients. This one gets me. Someone shares their numbers online, and suddenly hundreds of women are trying to eat those exact numbers. This is why you won't see me on social media sharing my numbers all the time, because people copy and paste that and then try it themselves.

Your macros need to be calculated for your body, your goals, your lifestyle. Using someone else's numbers is like wearing someone else's prescription glasses. It's close, but almost definitely not right for you. Let that sink in for a second. Every human being on this earth should have different macronutrient numbers.

Now, practical steps. Here's how to get started without feeling overwhelmed. Step one: download a tracking app. MyFitnessPal is great. There are different ones out there, like Cronometer. Both are free and user friendly. Pick one and set it up.

Step two: just log. Don't change anything yet. For the first week, just track what you're eating. Don't be perfect. Don't try to hit targets. Just get comfortable with the process and see what your current intake actually looks like. Most women are genuinely surprised by this, in both directions.

Step three is to set your protein goal first. Everything else builds from there. Working with a coach is the best way to get accurate targets for your body. But as a starting point, get your protein number set and work toward hitting it consistently.

Step four is to build meals around that protein. Choose your protein source first, then fill in the carbs and fat around it. This makes hitting your protein goal way more consistent and removes a lot of daily guesswork.

And you can probably guess what I'm going to say for step five: just be consistent. Not perfect. You will always have days where the numbers are off. That's normal, and it does not erase your progress. Just remember that. Tracking is a skill, and it gets way more intuitive the more you do it. Most women who've been at this for a few months can eyeball their macros pretty accurately, I'm telling you, without even opening the app. And like I said earlier, being 10 years into this, I don't need to track a macronutrient. It just becomes second nature.

That's all I've got for this episode today. That's macros 101. I hope this clicked in a way that resonates with you, and that it leaves you feeling more aware and in alignment with how to get the results you want, dialing it in a little bit more. If you want to go deeper, actually learn how to track your macronutrients, build your plan and get real accountability from a coach, that's exactly what the WarriorBabe VIP program is for. Real one-on-one coaching.

A strategy built specifically for your body and your goals. It's not a template. It's something that's actually yours. The link is probably below this, or go to warriorbabe.com/vip. And if this episode helped you, like I said at the beginning, maybe some of you already know this, so share it with a friend who needs it. Play it back and articulate it to a family member or a co-worker to get them on the right track. You hear it, and then you go encourage others to do the same thing.

All right, guys. I appreciate y'all, and I'll see you in the next episode. Peace out.

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