Vigor Nutrition Part 3: Macros

Ok guys, its here...Part 3 of my Vigor Ground Nutrition Series and this is where it starts to get a bit more specific.Today I will be talking Macros! Oh how I love them… and hate them, at the same time!Why do I love them? Well, it lets me completely customize a diet plan to a specific person, with specific goals and a specific training routine. That is awesome and will truly create the best results we’ll be able to attain through nutrition.And why do I hate them? Well in all honesty they can be stressful for us, it takes time and a lot of tracking to keep up with them.But from long experience of dealing with my own personal nutrition, along with many clients, the best success with tracking macros and not getting stressed over them comes from applying the 10 Rules Of Nutrition I explained in Part 1 of this series before attempting anything dealing with calories or macros.When you have built that foundation, it all comes together so much easier.But enough about all that lets get right to the point!Lets look at the different ways to approach tracking macros...The first way I will go over and probably the best way to approach macros at first, in our opinion here at Vigor Ground, would be a percentage-based approach.

This is where we take our caloric intake and break it into a ratio of protein/carbs/fat. This is pretty common and can be a good way to start, as it is less stressful. You wont need to count the exact grams of food, you just have a ballpark range of calories and stay within a couple percentages of your macro ratios.Secondly, there is the IIFYM approach. This is where you have a daily goal to hit and the main thing that matters is reaching those numbers by the end of the day. This is the style of dieting where many people go overboard, they eat junk food all the time and as long as “It Fits My Macros” it’s ok… but in reality that is not true.

The reason it is bad is because they forget about the importance of health. You MUST get your vitamins, minerals, fiber and all the micronutrients as well or your body composition and performance will, without a doubt, suffer.And the third approach is carb cycling. This simply just means you will have low carb days, high carb days, and for those who have an advanced training regime, a moderate carb day will occasionally be implemented.High days are partnered with heavy/intense training days, low carb days with cardio/rest days and the moderate is in the case where you maybe have a high intensity cardio day or a specialty day where you work on a weak body part but it may not need as much recovery or energy as a large body part like legs would need.The fourth way I will use with clients is a macro-rotation diet. This is where I create a specific macro split for each meal, giving them specific food list to stay within and make sure that they’re essentially hitting everything almost 100% on point.Now as you can imagine, that is the most intense way to approach it and I wont even be going too far in depth on this one because it is much more advanced and specific. This is the approach I will use with figure, physique, and bikini competitors or anyone looking to take on the challenge of a more specific nutrition/training plan.

So what do I suggest that you all personally do? I suggest going through the first 3 options, in that exact order by giving yourself a couple weeks at each stage to get used to the plan and then advancing forward.So before you do anything with macros you will need to take your caloric intake that you calculated from Part 2 of the Vigor Nutrition Series… you did read that and do your homework, right?!Ok good, just making sure ;)So with this number of calories you will be consuming I want you to break it into percentages for your protein, carb and fat needs.The hard part of this is that it can be pretty individualized based on your body type, training/diet history and activity level. But for the sake of this article I will be giving you the best recommendation for these as possible.First is protein, we’ll be going with 40% of your diet for this. Why? Glad you asked!

Because when trying to achieve a good body composition, protein is an extremely important nutrient. It’s important because it allows great recovery for new muscle growth, is a low calorie nutrient and has the greatest TEF (Thermic Effect of Food). These essentially all mean you will burn more calories consuming protein and that you can maintain muscle in the process of dieting. So we want to have a lot of it!Second is carbs, just to be safe with this one we will keep it lower and say 25%. The reason I suggest it lower to people starting a diet is because it’s hard to tell who is carb tolerant and who is not.But when we start low we can easily monitor this by seeing how your training is fueled, how your recovery is and also by your body composition. If you’re training hard, feeling good and losing body fat, then we hit the target! If you’re losing fat, but feel sluggish in the gym then it’s safe for us to say we should raise your carb intake slowly.And in the case that you must do that, we would simply raise it up 1-2% and lower fat 1-2% bi-weekly until you have raised/lowered them both 5% each.And as you can probably guess, assuming you all went to grade school and know simple math, fat intake will be set at 35%.Now as some may know, fat is the highest calorie nutrient and 35% seems pretty high… Well there is great reasoning for this, trust me!Fat as a nutrient is one of the biggest influences we have on our body’s hormonal functions, which are HUGE when it comes to great performance, healthy internal bodily function and gut/digestive health which all lead to a better body composition.Because of fats role within our bodies, internally, it has a huge influence fat loss. Funny to think that consuming a good amount of fat can lead to a lesser amount of fat on your body!So now that you know where your macro percentages should be, all’s there is to do now is stick to it and keep it on track via your myfitnesspal app! Stick with this for at least 2 weeks, but really until you feel 100% confident that you can maintain this diet and do not feel overwhelmed.After that point you will move onto the second macro approach, the IIFYM approach. During this approach you will be able to get more specific, but it does take a little bit more work, as you will need to track the exact gram per day of all your macros.

When you make the switch your macros may change a little bit, that’s ok! Don’t stress about it and just remember that this is more tailored to you, this doesn’t mean what you were doing before this was wrong but that this is a bit more on point for your body and your goals.Once again, first things first we’ll look at protein and for this I just want you to simply use your bodyweight rounded up to the nearest multiple of ten. So if you weight 173, you’d use 180g of protein per day. Pretty straight forward and it will typically be around 40% of your diet anyway, worse case it is a bit more which is also fine because it is hard to gain fat from over eating protein…. Unless you down 20 chicken breast per day, you’ll be fine.For fat you will take your body weight and multiple it by .4. This is between the two recommendations I typically make, which are a high carb/lower fat diet and a high fat/lower carb diet. But the best approach is a well balanced diet all around, so .4 is a great number to go off of. And again, round the number but this time just up or down to the closer multiple of 5. This is just to eliminate stress and being overly anal about diet. So if you get 62, go with 60g...Got 64? Go with 65g.Now last but not least, our favorite to eat, carbs! For carbs you will literally take the calories you have left over and divide it by 4 to get your daily carb intake.[Just to give explanation, protein and carbs have 4 calories per gram and fat has 9 calories per gram. That’s why we divide the calories by 4 to get your total. ]You’re most likely going to look at your carb intake and think, “DAMN! That’s a BIG number?!” and I know this from experience that this calculation creates a bigger carb number then most are used too. Why?Well carbs are important, they supply us with the fuel to train and allow our body to function how it should from our muscular system to our central nervous system and brain function.But before you just jump up 100g of carbs overnight, remember that your metabolism is a very, very, sensitive system and it needs you to ease into things. So if your number is bigger on this nutrient you will need to add 5-15g of carbs every other week until you reach that number. Yeah this might take a while but it gives you the time needed to watch your body, monitor your weight and ensure you’re not going overboard or moving too quickly.And the last step to this macro madness, carb cycling. The reason I have this last is because changing macros on a daily basis can be stressful, so before doing so I think its important to lock down the process of counting macros in the first place.So how do you do this? Simple, lower your carbs on your cardio, conditioning and/or rest days.My suggestion is that if you’re consuming less then 150g of carbs per day, lower your intake by 50g for your conditioning day. If you are consuming 200g or more, lower it by 75g. And if you’re consuming 250g or more, lower it by 100g.Some may question whether or not to raise your fat intake on these days and that answer depends on one simple thing… Are you attempting to lose body fat? I’m going to assume yes because that is the main purpose of carb cycling, as most who just want to gain weight/size will keep their carbs higher all the time.So if you couldn’t tell by reading that, my answer is no don’t raise your fat intake up. This will give you the deficit we need to burn some extra calories and fat on these conditioning and cardio days.So there you have it, all you need to track your macros and advance your nutrition to a place where you can get the results you’re looking for!So what else could possibly be next??Reverse dieting, breaking plateaus, implementing cheats without losing progress, workout nutrition.... As you can see, I got plenty more to share!So stay tuned because Vigor Nutrition Part 4 is right around the corner and will excel your results even further!