Tracking Macros for Beginners: Why Protein Comes First

Nikkiey: One of the most common questions I've been getting asked while I'm a guest on people's podcasts is how we start women out when they come into the WarriorBabe program and they're learning the ropes of nutrition. Being that WarriorBabe is a macronutrient-based company, a lot of women have no idea what macronutrients are. So before I get into the full concept of how we start women out and carry them along their journey to the understanding of fully tracking every macronutrient: it also dawned on me, because I've been in this space and doing this for so long, that it's nice to be brought back and reminded that a lot of people are still starting their journey.

I was at the dog park one day with Maverick, and I was talking about WarriorBabe and the women we help. And this woman was like, I have no idea what macronutrients are. What are macronutrients? And I was like, all right.

That is so common. So if you're feeling like you also have no idea what macronutrients are, totally normal. Your feelings are valid. The way we start women out inside of WarriorBabe is basically this: getting to the macronutrients, the protein, fats and carbs, is your North Star. That's where we would hope you would get to after a year of being in the WarriorBabe program, and that's what our clients sign up for, a 12-month membership.

At the beginning, though, think about it: you have 12 months to get to understanding that. At the beginning it's okay to be learning something that is totally new, and to be okay with messing up and failing and hitting a bump or a pothole in the road and then having to get back on track.

So at the beginning, we just want to understand who the women are. I think about it like this. We have an onboarding call, and our coaches are sitting down with a client and just getting to know this human on the other end of a Zoom call. We try to meet the client where she's at. And part of that, first, is having the client download MyFitnessPal and log how she's normally been eating for at least seven days. Not trying to be fancy, not trying to be accurate, not trying to be perfect, and not thinking, oh, I need to eat better because my coach is watching me. Just having the woman eat as she normally would. That way, after the seven days, we can see habits, we can see behaviors, we can ask questions, and we can get a better understanding of the person we're working with.

After the seven days comes the next target, the more realistic goal we can get women to. One of the biggest things we need to help women fix is getting more protein in. After the seven days where we look at the MyFitnessPal logs, guaranteed at least 80% of women are eating probably 60 grams of protein in a day. No joke. And 60 grams of protein, you guys, is what dialysis patients eat in a day. It's not enough protein whatsoever for women, especially with the concept women come to WarriorBabe for. Our foundations are strength training and macros: building more muscle, being more toned, adding more years to your life with the more muscle you have on your body, being stronger, keeping up with the grandkids. Eating 60 grams of protein a day is not going to get you to those results. Even if you eat 60 grams of protein a day, it will probably take you 10 years, maybe even longer, maybe never, to build the type of muscle that people want. But you can do it a lot faster when you're eating the right types of food.

So we see that women are eating about 60 grams of protein. We have the North Star of getting women to track protein, fats and carbs, and then we have the goal that's closer to earth of getting people to eat more protein. If you're eating 60 grams of protein and, out of the gate, we tell the woman she needs to eat her body weight in protein, and maybe that's 180 grams, or 150, or if it's 250 you're not going to be eating your body weight in protein, I'm just broadly speaking here, that seems so overwhelming. She's like, I'm eating 60 grams already. How the heck am I going to possibly eat 150?

So without overwhelming the person we're working with, we bring it a little closer to realistic: okay, you're getting 60 grams of protein. We want you to get 100 grams of protein a day. And guys, I understand that learning how to get more protein in a day is also a challenge. What foods have protein? What can I eat that has more protein? But think about it like this. There's 100 grams of protein in a day. If you eat five meals a day, that's 20 grams of protein in each of those five meals. If you eat four meals, that's 25 grams per meal. That's literally three ounces of chicken, 150 grams of egg whites, 200 grams of yogurt, a serving of a protein shake, and then ground beef or fish, three or four ounces of that at the end of the night. I just named four to five different protein sources. If you just get the quantity down, the serving size of what you need, and spread that over four to five meals in a day, right there you have 100 grams of protein. Okay. So that's your first goal.

And guys, painting the picture here, it's two weeks by this point, three weeks, maybe even four weeks, and we're just focusing on this with nutrition. I have seen time and time again women come into the program who want to track all three macronutrients out of the gate, protein, fats and carbs. And they flop, and they flop fast. They fail, they get overwhelmed and they quit the program. This is not a sprint. It's a marathon. Grasp that concept and really realize that you can't learn these concepts and skills in a matter of four weeks. You can't learn them overnight. You've got to give yourself the time, the patience and the understanding that this is going to take time when you're learning something new that you've never done before.

So for three to four weeks we're just having them track, learning behaviors, learning habits, understanding who we're working with, why that person does what she does, what her days look like, and how we can structure a better routine around food. And we're focusing on just getting more protein. We haven't even talked about fats and carbs. If you're wondering what we do with fats and carbs at that point: we just tell women, don't even worry about that. Just eat the fats and carbs as you normally would, but in a controlled manner. The quality of the food has to be good.

After that, if we can consistently get the woman we're working with to follow just that protocol out of the gate, then we're solid. And that's hard to do if you're trying to do it yourself. You've got to be held accountable, because we've seen so many women try, and they always need more accountability. They always need that coach to say, I saw that you only tracked three out of the seven days of the week for this protein goal. We can't move forward if you're not locking this down. It's so important to have that accountability piece, and that's why it's also important to be working with a coach who knows their stuff and can push you and tell you things you don't want to hear but need to hear.

That's actually something the WarriorBabe coaching team talks about every single week in our coaching meetings. I ask the crew, what did you tell your clients this week that they did not want to hear, but needed to hear from you? That creates a transformation. Side note, there are some amazing, amazing stories there, because that's what gets clients to change.

So after that: we're tracking, then we focus on protein, and then if our client is being consistent with what we're asking for in this protocol, we can phase in tracking the carbs and the fats. They can be somewhat interchangeable at the beginning, so that you're not set on hitting exactly 200 grams of carbs and 50 grams of fats in a day. It's just trying to measure them and fit them into the meals with the protein.

Then it's all about consistency at this point. These sound like easy steps out of the gate, but the hardest thing is applying the consistency and actually doing the protocols we're telling women they need to be doing. If you can't get the protein locked in at the beginning and you want to go straight to tracking all three macronutrients, it's like putting together a new TV stand without reading the instructions. You get to step two and realize you put the arm of the chair on wrong, and now you've got to take it off and put it on the right way because you didn't read the instructions. No joke, that's literally it. If you skip understanding how to track your protein at the beginning and go straight to trying to track the carbs and the fats without grasping the full concept of protein, you're just going to end up going backwards.

So that's a very common question I get asked all the time on a lot of the podcast episodes I'm on, because macronutrients are a very hard concept for a lot of people to understand, and that's totally valid. But if you break it down like that, macronutrients can be your best friend. Until it's proven otherwise, it's just science at that point, and it's literally the way you're going to be able to change your body composition.

Macronutrients are the protein, fats and carbs. Let's say you're eating 1,800 calories in a day. People usually just focus on the 1,800 calories and not on what the food is made up of. And when people do that, the majority of the time they see a food item on a menu that says 500 calories. Well, that could be literally all carbs and fats and very little protein. When you focus on tracking the macronutrients, you're focusing on the protein, fats and carbs that make up that 1,800 calories. So you're giving your body the balance of macronutrients it needs instead of overloading on two out of three of them.

And one of those two is carbs. A lot of people eat a lot of carbs and they think the carbs are what make them fat. It's not the carbs that make them fat. It's because they're eating a shit ton of carbs and they're not eating the right balance of what their body specifically needs. If they're just eating 1,800 calories, 70% of those calories could be coming from carbs. But when you put an emphasis on, broadly speaking, a 30/30/40 split, you know that 30% is coming from fats, 30% from protein and 40% from carbohydrates.

Why macronutrients are so hard is because it takes work. It takes work first to understand what food is made up of. Then it takes work to track the food and put it into a database that helps you see what you're eating in a day. It just takes work. And I don't know what's wrong with this world, but what I see is that work is sometimes a hard thing for people to do. If you want to change where you are right now and you want different results, you have to put in a different type of work ethic than what you're doing right now.

So I think one of the reasons macros are hard is mainly behavioral. Because once you understand the concept, first of all, it makes total sense. And second, the time and effort you put into tracking gets faster and faster the more you do it. It's just like riding a bike. At first you've got your training wheels. It's a new thing, you're learning it, you're getting the feel for it. Then three or four weeks in, that activity becomes faster and easier to do. Same with tracking.

Why do people revert back to old habits and old training programs? Probably because, one, it gave them some type of immediate result. It slashed their calories, or it told them to follow one specific meal plan and one specific training protocol, and they think, I'm just going to go back to doing that. But they're never actually fixing anything.

I actually had this conversation the other day with a friend who came over to get some insight into how she could get back on track with her journey. She said, I've done all of these programs in my life. I was a poster child for the trainer. I listened and I implemented the work, but I never learned things for myself. I never understood why I was eating this food or why I was training this way. And I think that until people fully understand the concepts of nutrition and workouts, they're always going to keep going back to the quick fixes, unfortunately.

I think fad diets get people in so easily because they market to people's pain points. People see this and they want to immediately fix the pain. It's all behavioral. So they buy into a fad program that says if you do this and that, you'll get X result in X amount of time. People want instant gratification. It's just the world we live in. I joke about this all the time: people want to put their body in a microwave, and 30 seconds later out comes a toned body. That's how people are wired, and the marketing plays to that.

So I think the reason fad diets are so popular is that they give you, in my opinion, false promises. They promise you'll hit X weight loss or X result in X amount of time. And sure, if you do, it's probably in a very unsustainable fashion or through drastic measures. And when you do reach that false promise, in my opinion, you're so focused on the outcome that you don't really notice the habits and behaviors you're implementing along the way. Those habits and behaviors, without such drastic measures, are what actually help you learn how to be sustainable in the long run.

For example, think about alcohol. People jump into fad programs, and one of the first things they cut out to get the result faster is probably alcohol. Something people casually like to do every once in a while, they cut out cold. Or they stop eating one of their favorite foods, cold. So they have this concept in their head that these things are bad: I'm following this program, so I can't have this thing until the program is over. Now they're restricting themselves. And when they get to the end of the program, that false promise, they've probably attained some type of result. However, they're going to gain it all back. It's just like me telling you not to think about a pink elephant right now. What are you thinking about? A pink elephant. You want what you can't have.

So as soon as these programs are done, people go back to drinking alcohol or having their favorite food, maybe even more than before because they restricted themselves for so long, and the weight comes right back. So in my opinion, these programs give you false promises, but they rope you in because you're going to get an immediate result. Maybe you do, but not in a way that's sustainable. What you really need to do is learn how to implement behaviors and habits that will serve you for the long term.

What would I tell somebody living a very unsustainable lifestyle right now? First, I would try to understand why. Why are they doing this? Try to understand how they see the concept and dig deeper there. Then, once I understand why they're doing it, I would probably go in a little harder with some direct, constructive feedback, which I hope they'd be able to receive and change from. So it's a little bit more of a detailed answer.

If somebody's on a ketogenic diet, I can tell you this. About five years ago I was sitting next to a woman at an event, and we were talking about my career path. I was talking about fitness and WarriorBabe at that point; we were just getting it started and growing it. And she said, oh yeah, I've been doing keto for two to three months now. And I said, oh wow, really? That's cool. When was the last time you fell out of ketosis? And she said, oh, last night. I went out to dinner and had a couple of drinks.

And I said, okay, so your outcome is that you want to lose weight, so you're doing keto. But wouldn't you want to be able to keep those things in your lifestyle without cutting them out completely and still get the same result? And she said, well yeah, of course I would. And I said, what if I told you there was a way you could absolutely do that? And she said, well, I don't know. I see people doing this and I want to do it myself, and so on. And I said, yeah, but you're not actually following the plan. You're not actually doing it, because you went out and had carbs last night.

So I was getting her to think along with me, and I basically got to the end of it saying, you can have carbs. You can have alcohol. You just have to change the behaviors: maybe not eating so much of these things, not drinking all the time, not having a drink every single weekend, and being a little more self-controlled, essentially. Then you'll be able to keep those things in and still get the results you want. So if I were to tell somebody who's doing these things right now anything, it would be: why don't you learn how to change your behaviors and upgrade your habits so you can keep all the foods you want in your routine and get the same results?

As for why people go into fad diets or want some kind of immediate result, and wanting to understand why people do this, I'm going to pull back in the conversation I had with that woman the other day. The main thing she kept harping on, and I think a lot of women do this, is honestly, in my opinion, very superficial. And there's no shame in it, I just want to say that. It's a valid feeling. The reason people start things is often that they don't like the way their body looks. This woman kept pointing to her flabby arms: I want to get rid of that. And then, I have this belly from menopause. It's now being called the menopause belly in the fitness industry. And then, I have cellulite on my legs.

And I said, yeah, that's all totally valid. You want to feel more confident in your skin, and I so love that. But can we go a little deeper here? Sure, those things will be fixed. But what about your health? That's why I like to try to understand why. I'm here for that goal, and that's what a lot of people go for. But there are levels so much deeper than just the way your body looks.

It's you being proactive right now for your health at age 40, at age 45, even if you're 30. I started this when I was 25. It's being proactive earlier so that you're not reactive when you go to the doctor's office and your doctor tells you your A1C is above normal, and now you have to go on some type of drug to bring it down. Or your thyroid is out of whack. Or, I mean, when you're going through menopause, all your hormones are changing. Maybe you don't have symptoms now that make you feel like something in your health is wrong, because everyone's focused on the exterior of their body. But internally, the symptoms don't arise until it's too late.

I'm so passionate about this because fad diets aren't going to fix that. Fad diets are only going to make it worse, because you're gaining and losing and gaining and losing, you're being restrictive, and you're being severe with not eating enough. So I think if people understood a deeper why and wanted to get ahead of it, that would change things.

I love thinking that if you're strength training and eating right, you're literally adding years to your life. Because the more muscle you have on your body, and it doesn't have to be a ton of muscle, the stronger your body is, the longer you will live, the longer you'll be able to keep up with your kids, and the longer you'll be able to do all of the things: walk daily, do normal activities like grocery shopping, carrying bags and walking upstairs. The easier you'll be able to do that.

And you can't change that at 60, at 65, at 70. I shouldn't say that. You can't change that when it's too late. Or I shouldn't say you can't; it's just really hard to change later in life when you're already noticing a decline in your mobility and a decline in your health. People just kind of accept it as it is at that point. But I just want people to be proactive, and then, man, you can live so much longer.