- Hi, I'm Dr. Josh Axe, Doctor of Natural Medicine
and founder of DrAxe.com.
In this video, I'm gonna share with you how
to consume the proper amount of calories
and macronutrients.
And I get that question a lot about hey how
important are calories?
How important are macro-nutrients?
And even talking about things like the keto diet,
paleo vegan, and how that affects
the amount of calories here as well.
So let's go ahead and dive in.
First thing you gotta know is it really depends, okay,
when we're talking about calories.
I think if you read on the internet
they'd probably say anywhere
from 1500 to 3,000 calories a day
is ideal for most people.
For women, it's probably 2,000, for men, 2500.
And for women to start really losing weight,
it's probably around eight, 15 to 1800 calories.
For men, it's probably less than two,
probably 2200 calories to lose weight.
But here's the thing you need to know.
If your diet is 2,000 calories of sugar,
you will gain weight, okay?
Versus if your diet is 2,000 calories
of fat, protein and carbs are equal,
you'll probably lose a little bit of weight
for most people and get healthier so it really
just depends on your macros.
But I want to share with you the principle
that you need to follow and then how
to keep your macros still in balance
if you're keto, paleo or vegan I'm gonna share
with you that on this video.
But here's the first thing to note,
you should eat real food, okay?
So I don't care what it is.
I don't care if your countin' macros,
calories, all this other stuff.
The first thing you need to do is eat real whole foods.
Apples, blueberries, broccoli, kale,
wild-caught salmon, grass-fed beef,
walnuts and almonds.
Eat real food, that's the first thing
you need to know and do.
And then the next thing you need
to be aware of is you should be getting some fat,
some protein and some carbs daily for most people.
Now if you're going keto, for a time being,
doin' that sort of diet or you're maybe trying
to do some sort of cleanse for 30 days,
hey maybe it's gonna be a little different.
But generally for most people, let's say equal amounts
of fat, protein and carbs.
Or let's say maybe you're goin' 40% fat,
30% protein, 30% carbs or something like that.
But hey, if that's the case, then you typically want
to do anywhere from 1500 to probably 3,000 calories a day.
But I have found that most people,
your body will tell you what you need to do.
And listen, I almost guarantee you
if you, I do guarantee if you just eat real food.
If you eat close to equal amounts of macronutrients,
you are gonna get really, really healthy
for most people, all right?
You want to keep your portions in mind, okay?
So have a plate, have your protein,
have your vegetable and have either your fat
or fruit or carbohydrate whatever that is.
And just have a normal plate, and then stop.
What happens a lot of times is we keep grazing
and we say okay I've had my meat,
and then we kind of go to the cupboard, right?
And it's what else is in here?
And I have found some cookies.
Oh hey, I found some chips now.
That's what happens with a lot of us,
it gets us really off of our, what our calories should
be 'cause we keep snacking.
What happens is if you eat, then give your body
another 15 to 20 minutes to see how full you actually are.
Your body does not get full.
Your brain doesn't hear that until sometimes 30 minutes
after your meal.
So hey, set your stopwatch and you can have
a few bites of something, but give your body
a full 30 minutes before you do it again
once you just have your regular meal laid out
and you consume that.
The next thing you want to consider
is consume only nutrient-dense foods.
This is what I talked about earlier.
Consume foods like wild-caught meat.
Lots and lots of veggies.
That's the other big thing.
You should be filling up on vegetables.
A big salad, baked vegetables, steamed vegetables
with dips like hummus and guacamole,
but go really big on your vegetables.
Here an ideal meal looks like for most of us lunch
and dinner, have a nice serving of meat,
maybe it's just four ounces but a small
to moderate serving of meat and then triple vegetables.
Load that plate up with vegetables,
and that will get you pretty full.
That's really the key to getting healthy
is going really big on the vegetables.
That will get you really far.
And then for breakfast, if you want
to do some fruit, do some berries.
Berries are more nutrient-dense, they're high in fiber,
so blueberries, raspberries, blackberries.
Those are gonna be the best when it comes
to filling up nutrient-dense foods
that don't have those empty calories.
Eat slowly.
So many times we are rushing, rushing, rushing
and our brain hasn't had time to say well you're full yet,
so then we keep eating and eating.
We eat two to three times the calories
sometimes that we need to.
That's a big problem.
So again, chew your food, eat slowly,
relax while you eat.
And last but not least, don't eat out
at places like fast food restaurants, okay?
Fast food is full of empty calories.
It's full of hydrogenated oils.
It's full of 100-plus ingredients.
And if you went and read the label,
you wouldn't recognize half the ingredients.
They would say things like blue 42 and yellow 47
and titanium dioxide.
Does titanium dioxide and blue 42 sound
like an actual food to you?
No, but that's what you're getting
when you're eating out at these fast food restaurants
or you're goin' to get your coffee
in the morning, you're adding in whipped cream,
cream and sugar and all of a sudden
your frap or whatever accino thing
has turned into 1,000-calorie milkshake.
That's how we do it.
That's how we blow past our calorie,
what should be our daily calorie consumption
is especially when we're goin' out to eat
at coffee places and fast food restaurants.
You gotta be really conscious there.
And hey, a little bit of organic clean coffee
can be great for so many people.
Some matcha green tea.
But don't ruin it by throwing a bunch of whipped cream
in there, okay?
There are a certain amount of calories we should
be consuming a day, but really I typically don't recommend
people count calories.
I recommend you eat three meals a day.
You eat real food at those meals.
And if you do that, you're well
on your way to better health.