What's up, guys?
Sean Nalewanyj at www.SeanNal.com and in this video today, a pretty important topic, I think.
Something that I’ve been wanting to address for a little while here in a dedicated video
and that’s the question of whether or not counting macros is really necessary in order
to build a great physique.
This is something that I get asked about pretty often.
Before I jump into the video, make sure to hit the subscribe button below to stay up
to date on future videos.
And you can also click the little bell button right beside it as well, and that way you'll
be notified anytime I do upload new content so you don’t missed out on anything.
So, is tracking macros necessary or a better way to phrase it would be to ask just how
closely should you track your diet each day to get the results that you're after.
Should you count exact macros, should you track overall calories only, or should you
just eat intuitively and estimate things as you go.
Now, you guys already know that I rarely give black and white answer to these sorts of questions,
because with most things bodybuilding and fitness related, there're very rarely a one
single answer that’s going to apply across the board to everyone.
And with the question of tracking macros it really comes down to the individual.
It depends on their specific goals, it depends on their lifestyle as well as their personal
preferences.
So what I'm going to do here is break this down as clearly as I can by giving you three
individual levels of nutritional tracking to choose from, as well as who they would
apply to.
Level one being the least detailed amount and level three being the most detailed.
And you can just take the information I gave here and then apply it to your own situation
and decide what's going to be appropriate for you at your current stage.
So level one would be an intuitive eating approach, and that’s basically means you're
just going to eyeball your meals and you're going to based your food choices and your
portion sizes on your body’s hunger signals, rough estimations of the nutritional content,
as well as your personal fitness goals.
And there’re two main situations where intuitive eating is going to be a good option.
The first one is, really simply, if you’ve been using intuitive eating approach up until
now and you're consistently getting positive results that you're satisfied with.
I don’t recommend that most complete beginners to try to eat on the fly without any set structure
in place, because more often than not they're going to end up eating too many or too few
calories, but for some people it can work out just fine.
So if your body weight, your body fat percentage, your gym performance, if all of those things
have been moving in the right direction even though you’re not specifically tracking
calories or counting macros, then you can just continue with what you're doing and only
switched to a more detailed system later on if your results stagnate.
Maybe your goal is to lose fat and you’ve just been focusing on healthier food choices
and basic portion control, or maybe your goal is to gain muscle and you’ve just bumped
up your overall food intake a little bit to get the extra calories you need.
If that’s working right now then just stick with it because there's no reason to do more
than you have to.
And then the second situation where intuitive eating would work well is if you're a more
advanced trainee and you’ve learned how to do it effectively through experience.
So, you’ve tracked macros in the past, you have a good idea of which foods and which
portion sizes contain what, you know how your body responds at various calorie totals, and
you know how to adjust your intake based on your hunger level.
I mean, if you’ve just built up enough overall experience to be able to meet your nutritional
needs based on feel and on your own estimations then intuitive eating is going to be a great
option for you.
Next up is level two, and this is where you're going to track overall calories but then just
roughly estimate your macros.
So intuitive eating is the ultimate direction that most people are going to want to strive
for in the long run because it’s not realistic or necessary for you to be tracking calories
and macros for the rest of your life, but it usually does require a good amount of time
and effort for most people to learn how to do that properly.
So for that reason a more structured method of eating is probably going to be best through
the beginner and the intermediate stages until you gain more overall experience.
And in my view, this level of tracking, which is staying pretty on point with your overall
calories but then just approximating your macros, that’s going to be best suited to
the majority of people watching this, I think.
It’s detailed enough to get you optimal or near optimal results, but it’s also simple
enough that you're not going to need to revolve your entire day around food and count everything
in a precise detail.
Keep in mind that total calorie intake is by far the most important factor in your overall
nutrition plan.
That’s what's going to dictate whether you gain weight or lose weight, and as long as
your protein, carb and fat intake is reasonably balance in the big picture, tracking total
calorie is usually enough to get the results that you're after.
Calorie is absolutely do matter, though, regardless of what anyone tries to tell you.
So you do need to be pretty on point with them.
If you want to lose fat then you need to be maintaining a calorie deficit by burning more
calories than you take in.
And if you're bulking and you want to maximize muscle size and strength gains then you want
to be eating in a small calorie surplus by consuming more calories than you burn.
You can still gain muscle while eating at maintenance or in a deficit depending on experience
level and genetics and things like that, that’s something that I’ll cover in the future
video, but it’s not going to be to the same degree that you'll get in a surplus.
So what I'd advice here is to track your overall calories decently closely.
I mean, if on Sundays you go a bit over or a bit under that’s fine.
Keep in mind that it’s mostly about your average intake over the course of a few days
or the week.
And then from there just make sure you're hitting your minimums for protein and fat,
which is usually pretty easy to do.
I don’t recommend that people eat low carb unless they have a specific reason for it,
but protein and fat are technically the two essential macros that you need to make sure
getting enough of.
You need enough protein to build and repair muscle, obviously, and to maintain muscle
on a cut.
And you need enough fat to maintain optimal testosterone levels along with a bunch of
other important physical and mental health benefits.
So make sure you're getting in at least 0.8 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight daily
up to about a gram, and make sure that you're getting at least twenty-five percent of your
total calories from fat.
If all you're tracking is total calories without even thinking about macros at all then depending
on your dietary preferences and your calorie intake, it is possible that you might go too
low on protein and fat.
So I’d suggest that at least being conscious of those two to make sure that you're getting
enough.
But all in all, as long as you're getting the right amount of calories along with sufficient
protein and fat, interchanging your macros a bit isn’t going to be a big deal as long
as you're not going excessively high or low on any of them.
Just try to keep them reasonably balanced by basing each of your main meals around a
basic protein and carbohydrate pairing, add in a couple sources of healthy fat throughout
the day and get in a couple serving of both fruits and vegetables as well.
If you follow that basic outline then specific macros will usually tend to just take care
of themselves.
And then lastly, there's level three, which is the typical full on macro tracking where
you know pretty much exactly how many grams of proteins, carbs and fats you're eating
each day and you're consistently hitting those numbers.
And I would say that this applies in three main situations.
The first one is if you take your training very seriously and you want to be a hundred
percent certain that you're squeezing out every possible ounce of results from your
nutrition.
This is especially applies if you're trying to get into a specific shape by a specific
deadline.
So a physique competition, a photo shoot or something along those lines.
In that case, counting macros would make sense to make sure you're eating plan is fully dialed
in without any guesswork involve.
So as long as you're aware that tracking everything to the exact gram is probably only going to
give you a small boost in the overall picture and that boost is worth it to you, then go
ahead and track macros as normal.
The second situation would just be if you like the organizational aspect of it.
And if you find that having a set structure like that keeps you more motivated and more
on track because it lets you know for sure that you're hitting all of your nutritional
needs without any guesswork.
Some people find tracking macros to be too detailed and ultimately unsustainable because
of that whereas other people are perfectly fine with it, and they actually prefer it
because it gives them the structure that they need.
And then the third situation where tracking macros would be beneficial is simply for people
who have never done it before.
Just to do it for a temporary period in order to learn it as an overall long term skill.
Like I said, in the long run most people are going to be better off moving toward a more
intuitive style of eating but people who have tracked macros before are going to be in a
better long term position to do that because they’ll have a better understanding of their
body’s caloric needs and which foods roughly contain what.
And that’s going to make naturally eating on the fly a lot easier to do effectively.
So if you're still in those beginning stages and you're just learning the fundamentals
and you're really serious about maximizing your results and doing this for the long haul
then a temporary period of macro tracking is something that you can use just to gain
as an overall long term nutritional skill.
And then the final point I'd make here is for those who probably shouldn’t be tracking
macros regardless of the situation, and that's for people who are prone to eating disorders
or to where tracking macros is causing you a lot of daily stress.
You know, it’s really interfering with your social life or just causing a lot of obsessive
thought patterns to come up.
I'm not an expert on eating disorders but if you are someone who is prone to getting
overly preoccupied with food then I wouldn’t recommend tracking macros in that situation
and you'll most likely be better off sticking with a looser system for nutritional tracking.
So that’s my overall current view on the issue of nutritional tracking.
I hope that gave some useful insight that you can apply to your own program.
If you do want to grab a complete step-by-step plan that shows you how to lay out an effective
bulking or cutting phase from A to Z using that, sort of, nutritional approach along
with concrete meal plans, workout routines, supplement guides and one-on-one coaching
then you can check out my Body Transformation Blueprint by clicking here or by visiting
www.BTBluePrint.com.
The link for that is in the description box.
Make sure to follow me Facebook and Instagram as well for more daily tips.
The links for that are also in the description box.
The official website is over at www.SeanNal.com.
And if you did enjoyed the video make sure to hit the like button, leave a comment, and
subscribe to stay up to date on future videos.
Thanks for watching, guys.
I’ll talk to you again soon.