Macronutrients: What is the Optimal Ratio and Why They are Critical to Your Performance

Finn Melanson [00:00:14]: Hello, fellow runners. I'm your host, Finn Milanson, and this is the Run to The Top podcast podcast dedicated to making you a better runner. With each and every episode, we are created and produced by the Expert team of coaches@runnersconnect.net, where you can find the best running information on the Internet, as well as training plans to fit every runner and every budget. Today, we are lucky enough to have our very own Coach Jeff on the show to talk about the importance of macronutrients and how ensuring you have the right mix can help you hit your performance and nutrition goals. You'll learn the role of each macronutrient and why each is critical to performance and health. The optimal ratio of macronutrients to hit your goals, how you should adjust these macros based on your training, age, gender, and other factors. And if you stick around until the end, coach Jeff will give you some awesome tips to make hitting your daily macronutrient goals easier. There's a lot to unpack here, and Coach Jeff is going to get real in depth. So let's get to it. Today's episode is sponsored by Magnesium Breakthrough from Bioptimizers. Their industry leading magnesium supplement helps you sleep better and reduce stress. Head to Magbrakethrough.com Run to the Top to learn more and save 10%. Timeline Nutrition has developed a groundbreaking product called Mitopure that revitalizes your mitochondria, which create energy in nearly every cell in your body. Head to Timelinenutrition.com to learn more. All right. Thanks for joining us today, Jeff. To get us started and to make sure we all have the background, can you briefly explain what macronutrients are and why they are important?

Jeff Gaudette [00:02:09]: Sure, absolutely. So macronutrients are basically the components of food that supply us with calories or basically energy. And there are three macronutrients. There's carbohydrates, there's proteins, and then there's fats. And each type of macronutrient supplies energy in a different form and in a different way, and they combine to help fuel the type of different activities that we have or that we go through in our daily lives. And so, for example, we have carbohydrates, which are kind of like our faster acting energy source, and they provide us a lot of the energy that we need for running and just kind of daily life. And they're kind of the most efficient energy source that our body has. Then we have things like protein, which is a great energy source for our muscles. It helps repair muscle damage. It helps repair muscle fibers. It helps us build muscle, helps us recover. I should also say that as I'm talking about this, each macronutrient itself isn't confined into a certain space. So I should say that carbohydrates only do this, and protein only does that, and fat only does this. Obviously, the body is very complicated in terms of how it uses different micronutrients, but these are obviously the basics of how kind of or what these macronutrients help us do and kind of provide so again, with protein really kind of helping with the repair and recovery process. And the fats can be used as a source of energy, although it's not extremely efficient. But they're great for our hormonal systems. It's important for recovery and those types of things. So even though fats probably 1020 years ago kind of really had a bad rap, we're now realizing that the fats as a macronutrient can be extremely important.

Finn Melanson [00:03:50]: Obviously, the amount of calories a runner consumes is important. But how important are the types of calories you consume when it comes to fueling or training or losing weight?

Jeff Gaudette [00:03:59]: So that's a great question when it comes to macronutrients and how they can help your body and how they can help you improve. And I think the one thing that novices that are focusing on nutrition kind of get wrong is calories becomes this all encompassing goal. And that's all they really focus on. When macronutrients are just as not more important as the calorie totals in terms of how you're going to feel, how you're going to perform, and how easy it is it is going to be to accomplish your goals. And so the reason that I say that is like I said in my intro about macronutrients, each macronutrient has kind of an ideal purpose and an efficiency for how it accomplishes that purpose. So that's why we want to match our macronutrient needs with what our training needs or daily life needs are. So for example, when you're running, you are going through extreme amounts of energy. You're burning a lot of calories runs. Depending on a short, easy run, maybe three to 400 additional calories. And a long run could be something like six to 900 additional calories that you're consuming. And so your calorie totals are going to be pretty high. And during those runs, primarily your body is going to want to use carbohydrates as its fuel source because carbohydrates are the most efficient fuel source that your body can use. And so let's say that you had a calorie total and you just completely maybe you were really low on your carbohydrate. Let's say your carbohydrates were like 20% of your daily caloric intake because you had heard that carbohydrates are bad and you kind of eliminated them from your diet and your calorie intakes were focused solely on protein and fat. Well, what's going to happen is that your body is going to no longer have the carbohydrates the most efficient source of fuel for your running. And so your runs are going to go terribly. You're going to be tired, you're going to be lethargic, you're not going to be able to hit your paces. All of those things are going to combine. So that training is going to become much more difficult than it needs to be. And this is obviously going to have an impact on your race goals. And so that's why it's important. So even if you want to lose weight or if you want to promote recovery by calorie reduction or making sure that you have enough calories, that you need to make sure that you have enough carbohydrates along with those calories because you could be trying to lose weight. And let's say that your caloric deficit means you need to take in 1700 calories for the day and you're not getting enough carbohydrates, your runs are going to suffer. And while you may still lose some weight, your runs are going to suffer to the point where you're no longer going to be able to accomplish or achieve your running goals. And so you're basically going to be stuck from a running standpoint in a pretty big rut. And it's also going to potentially open you up for some injuries because you're just not recovering. So that's kind of one end of obviously the carbohydrates with the protein. This is something that runners really struggle with, is getting in enough protein. Now we know that protein isn't really a good source of fuel in terms of, for endurance training. So why is protein important? Well, protein is important because like I mentioned at the beginning, the protein is one of the basic, the best macronutrients that our body uses in order to repair and rebuild and recover. So if you're not getting enough protein, what's going to end up happening is when you're doing your training, you're going to be breaking down your muscles. And that's what training is all about. You go out, you run for an hour, 90 minutes, whatever it may be, do a hard workout, you're breaking your muscle fibers down, you're breaking down your body. And the way it gets better is by fueling it with protein, carbohydrate, fats. And then that recovery helps build that muscle back in a better form. So it helps it build stronger, bigger in endurance cases, allowing it to do more work more efficiently. And so without protein, you're not able to recover and properly recover from your workouts. So like very similar to the idea of not having enough carbohydrates to fuel your training, you are going to find that if you don't have enough adequate protein intake, that your body is going to break down a lot easier. And so you're going to recover less fast. So it may take you two or three days, four or five days between workouts to feel good again. So you're going to have to reduce the frequency or it's going to lead to injury because if your body's not recovering, if those muscles that you're breaking down are not recovering and building back up by the time you try to run hard or run long again, that's going to open you up to injury. And now fats are another important aspect because without fats, really the two biggest issues with fat are that your hormonal system gets really out of balance and it can actually help with recovery, it can help with sleep. It's kind of the macronutrient that really kind of helps us function in kind of a healthy diet type of way, or healthy outside of training. Now, I'm not going to get into this, but obviously there is the idea of the very high fat, low carbohydrate, moderate protein approach to endurance training or just a general lifestyle. And Tim Noakes talked a lot about that. That's a little bit of a separate thing. And if that's the type of training or the type of diet that really works for you, then that's totally fine. But you're still looking even if you're on that type of diet. In terms of relating to my talk, the macronutrients are still critical because if you're in that type of diet, then measuring just getting a caloric total is not going to help you. You need to make sure that you're getting the appropriate fat levels, protein levels, and carbohydrate levels to live or to adhere to that nutritional philosophy. So macronutrients are extremely important. Calories are not the only thing. They're obviously a part of the equation, but they're not the only thing. There's two more things that I want to say about macronutrients in terms of how they work. The first is that or how they relate to the caloric consumption. So every macronutrient has a certain number of calories that it adds to your caloric total. And that's how you actually get your calories, is that for every gram of protein, carbohydrate and fat you eat, they all add up to total your calorie total. So they kind of relate very similarly there. And just so you know, there are four calories in every gram of carbohydrate. There are four calories in every gram of protein, and there are nine calories in every gram of fat. And there is technically a fourth macronutrient. It's alcohol. Alcohol has seven calories per gram. But alcohol is kind of a separate issue and not really kind of how we relate to fitness goals here. So I'll leave it out. And then lastly, when we talk about macronutrients, in some ways we lump them all together. We lump all carbohydrates, protein and fats together. But there are different types of macronutrients within those categories and they are different. We call them good and bad, but in many cases they are just different uses or different functions. And so, for example, when we talk about carbohydrates, there are good carbs and then there are bad carbs. And I almost hesitate to label it bad carbs. And I'll explain why in a second. So the good types of carbohydrates are going to be those that are low on the glycemic index, meaning that when you ingest them, they take a little bit longer time to ingest and they don't stimulate a significant insulin response right away. And that's going to be really important if you're diabetic. And obviously you had Kim Mueller speak earlier about training as a diabetic. So if you are or concerned about your sugar levels, definitely check out that interview and they generally are longer lasting sources of energy. So you can eat those two 3 hours before your run and they're going to fuel your run, they're going to kind of stay in your stomach, stay in your system and fuel your run for that longer period of time. And there are what we call fast acting type of carbohydrates and these are typically associated with candies, the bad type of carbohydrates. But like I said, I hesitate to label them bad because they can be used strategically to help fuel your running. Now, you don't want to be eating gummy bears all day long and that be your only source of carbohydrate. However, if you're training and you're maybe 30 minutes from a workout and you're feeling a little bit tired or kind of under fueled or you're obviously during the race itself and you need energy and you need fuel, then these simple types of carbohydrates are going to be your best and most effective source of energy. There's no way you're going to eat brown rice or oatmeal during a race and nor is it going to be effective because by the time that breaks down and the carbohydrate and provides the energy, the race is going to be over. So they are bad in the sense that you don't want to be consuming them all the time in your daily lives. However, they can be used effectively and strategically in your training and in your racing to help you improve. And obviously day two talked a lot about this so definitely check out those interviews as well for more in depth. Same thing for fat. There are good fats and bad fats. So there are healthy fats like omega three, S, omega six. Those are going to be the ones that are found in fish, avocado, nuts, those are the ones I talk about that help with absorbing nutrients, regulating hormones, et cetera. And then there are the bad types of fats which are usually the saturated fats. Those are going to be the types of fats that you find when you eat a hamburger or a pizza, grease, those types of things. I would call that bad fat because as far as I know there really is not an effective or most efficient way for your body to use that fat. It's just not super healthy. So if you can avoid them absolutely with protein, I actually don't know that there's any less quality sources of protein in the sense of the peel protein. Obviously you can have a fatty protein source. So for example, you could have a fatty steak or a fatty Camberg versus a lean chicken breast. But when we're talking about the protein source itself, there isn't kind of a good or a bad type of protein. There are different types of protein. There's whey, there's soy, there's caseine and those are where again, if you want to get really specific and really kind of dialed in then you can say, well, we're using different types of protein for different methods. So, for example, Whey protein is absorbed extremely rapidly by the body and so it's really great for recovery because it's going to distribute that protein to your muscles much more quickly. Casein, on the other hand, is a slower digesting protein. So it's actually really great to eat before you go to bed because when you go to bed, you're hopefully sleeping for six to 8 hours. And so that six to 8 hours when you're not consuming any food. And that's when your body can go catabolic and start to kind of use energy, like use protein as an energy source because you're running out of carbohydrates. And so by having casein, which is a slower digesting protein, then you're able to kind of keep those protein levels higher throughout the night. And so it's not quite as important as like carbohydrate timing or carbohydrate type when it comes to fueling. But if you do want to get really technical, you can even tweak the types of protein that you use in order to better meet your protein needs for your training and just general lifestyle.

Finn Melanson [00:14:55]: Okay, so what macro ratio do you recommend for a runner that's trying to lose weight versus training for a marathon or optimizing for recovery or trying to build muscle?

Jeff Gaudette [00:15:06]: So great question on the carbohydrate or the macronutrient percentages. That's something that I think is somewhat unique for runners. And this is something that obviously, you know, you and I experienced when we put together our 30 day challenge. But that 30 day challenge, what we did is we really had to look at so much of the data that runners were giving us about what their macronutrient percentages were. And what we found was that a balance of 57% carbohydrate, 25% protein and 18% fat was really ideal for the runner. And here's why. First, runners really struggle to get their protein needs in. So what you'll see with a lot of traditional diets is they'll say 40% carb, 40% protein, 20% fat, and 20% protein for most runners is going to be a lot more than they're used to ingesting. And so one that's usually a big change to their diet. And so when we look at whether it be weight loss, recovery, et cetera, what we want to do is make sure that we're creating an eating style that fits around your lifestyle and we're eating plan that fits around your lifestyle. And so if we're asking you to all of a sudden start consuming 200 grams, 180 grams of protein when you're just not used to that, that's going to be a big change and it's going to be something that's hard to stick to. The second reason is that the needs of an endurance athlete, which hopefully you are watching this, are going to be different than a sedentary person or somebody who's lifting a lot of weights. So your primary energy needs are going to come in the form of carbohydrates because you're doing mostly endurance training. And endurance training is ideally fueled by slow digesting carbohydrates. So you're going to want your carbohydrate percentage is a little bit higher. The third reason is that what ends up happening is when you are training at a high level, you're going to have extreme fluctuations in your diet that most either sedentary people or people that are lifting weights like bodybuilders just don't have. So for example, if you're having a rest day, let's say your TDE, so what we call thermodynamic effect or energy effect, is basically how many calories you need to survive, plus like your daily life. So whether it be work, whatever you do for work, et cetera, let's say that your te is 2000 calories. If you wanted to lose weight, we would recommend that you try to subtract anywhere from 300 to 500 calories from that total. So you would be at maybe about 1700 calories just as a number here. So on a rest day when you're not doing any running, your caloric intake would be about 1700. Now, what happens on your long run day when you go and do an 18 miles run? An 18 miles run might be an additional 900 to 1200 calories, depending on how hard you're going, how far you're going, et cetera. But let's say it's 900 just for an easy number that's going to actually take up your caloric intake to 2600 calories. So if we did a 40 40 20 split at 1700 calories, 40% of 1700, I'm going to have to do some quick math because I'm really not good at the math on my head here. Luckily, I got my calculator is about 680 calories from protein divided by four for grams. That's about 170 grams of protein. So that's already a significant total. So that kind of gets the idea of if we're talking 40%, 170 grams of protein is a lot for a runner. I'm sure most of you here aren't consuming that much. Now, let's say that again, on a long run day, you're at 2600. 2600 calories times 40% is 1040, divided by four is 260 grams of protein. First of all, you don't need that much protein. Once you get over like 1.2 grams of protein per pound of body weight, your body just can't absorb and process that much protein. So it's kind of useless anyway. Second, getting 260 grams of protein is like next to impossible. So cutting down that percentage for a runner is extremely important. So that way you can stay within the ranges that are optimal for recovery without kind of going overboard. And so that's why we came up with those numbers. And again, it's 57% carbohydrates, 25% protein and 18% fat. And from all the data that we found from our 30 day challenge and just from analyzing everything, that's a great blend to allow for weight loss and recovery while also taking into consideration your training needs and what those are going to be.

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Jeff Gaudette [00:23:18]: In terms of how if it's going to change based on what you're training for, whether it be a five k, ten k, half marathon, marathon, ultra, the ratio isn't going to really change too much. Basically, when you're talking about the training, the type of training that you do for all of those types of race distances, it's going to be fairly similar. Obviously there are some differences in that. The five k, it's going to be comprised of a lot more shorter intervals and less long runs, whereas the marathon is going to be longer, slower intervals and more long runs. But that said, your energy needs are going to be roughly the same and so you're still going to need a lot of carbohydrates to fuel. Whether the interval training or long workouts, you're still going to need the protein to recover from both of those. Same thing with the marathon. You're still going to want adequate protein to make sure that you're recovering from the hard training sessions and obviously making sure that we get the right number of carbohydrates so that you're fueled for those training sessions, you're able to complete the workout. So no, I don't think it necessarily changes much based on what race you're.

Finn Melanson [00:24:21]: Training for, what else factors into the macro ratio that's best for you, age, gender, et cetera, in terms of what.

Jeff Gaudette [00:24:30]: Else fits or kind of what macro ratio would best suit you. Females are going to tend to let me say this, that you want to make sure that you're tweaking the macronutrient goals or macronutrient ratios to fit your lifestyle and to fit what works for you, whether it be training, nutrition, strength training, whatever it may be, you have to remember that you are an individual. Your body works in its own unique individual way. So you may be somebody who needs a little bit more protein or just likes to eat a little bit more protein. Perhaps you're somebody that needs or a little bit more carbohydrates or likes that you need to kind of tweak the diet to not only meet what you understand about your body, but also meet your dietary needs. If you're just somebody that really hates protein then trying to get significant amounts of protein are kind of maybe a little bit difficult. So in terms of those types of things, make sure that you're fitting it around your lifestyle but still sticking close to those percentages that I give you. So that doesn't mean that you can do 10% protein of your daily caloric, calories and like 40% fat. That's just not going to be healthy, that's not going to provide. But let's say that you're 25% protein and you want to take it down to 23%. Not a huge factor there if that fits your lifestyle a little bit better. Now in terms of age and gender, as you get older protein as you get older, protein does help a little bit more. Since you do need more protein to help recover, you tend to recover a little bit slower. So that's pretty helpful with females tend to need a little bit less protein than men. So again, if you're a woman, you could potentially bring that macronutrient protein down a little bit percentage wise, but not something that we recommend a lot. Generally, I find that the macronutrients fit well for both men and women, especially when it comes to running sedentary people and people that are doing like bodybuilders muscle composition, that kind of stuff, they tweak a little bit more. For females just because the body is definitely a little bit different, but because the training, the running itself is such a critical component to how your macronutrients are going to be used, it kind of lessens the impact of being a female or being a little bit older. And it kind of evens that out so that it's not necessarily so critical to adjust for.

Finn Melanson [00:26:49]: Is it okay to supplement if you find it difficult to hit your protein needs through whole food sources?

Jeff Gaudette [00:26:55]: Absolutely. So obviously I recommend eating whole foods as much as possible. But that can generally be pretty difficult and it could be depending on who you are, what your family life is. Like. For example, if you have children and they just don't want to eat protein for some reason, obviously they need to have their requirements. But if cooking a separate chicken breast is something that you're going to have to do every night in order to meet your nutrition needs and that's a lot of hassle, then using supplements or supplementation can be extremely helpful. And especially for, I find, new or people that are kind of just getting into the idea of macronutrient tracking supplements can be extremely helpful until they start kind of adapting their diet to have more protein. And I'm specifically talking about protein here because that is universally the macronutrient that runners struggle with the most. So, like I mentioned, that 30 day challenge that we did, I would say probably two or three of every ten people that sign up have a question about or. Their question is, or their struggle is that their protein needs are significantly under our recommendations. And so we even have a whole day or a whole day in that challenge of different types of protein sources that you can use. So what I recommend for those athletes is using a supplement until they can start to kind of fine tune and adapt their diet over time to allow for more protein. And I'll say this generally about kind of diet and starting a new diet. Ideally, what you want to make sure that you do is not make significance or drastic changes. So don't go from eating this one way and then just try to eat all these foods that you're not used to, that you may not like yet, you don't know how to cook yet, et cetera. That is kind of a recipe for failure. That tends to be where you do it for a week or two and then you're just like, this stinks. I'm going back. What I find is the most helpful is to slowly start changing things. So maybe start with breakfast. Start instead of having a bowl of cereal, have a bowl of oatmeal. So that's exchanging kind of a low quality carbohydrate or a simple carbohydrate to a high quality, long lasting carbohydrate and then maybe adding some protein to it. So what I do in the mornings is I actually add whey protein to my oatmeal. So it's kind of a great balance. It's a great balance of carbohydrates and protein. So start maybe doing something like that in the evenings. Maybe start switching out some of your maybe instead of having pasta, have a chicken dinner instead. Kind of slowly introduce the different types of macronutrients until you start kind of leveling out your percentages and needs to where they need to be, where supplements fit into that is, I think it's a great way to kind of fit that in into your lifestyle without having to do a lot of work. So if you are really low on your protein needs, like a weight, taking away protein, maybe after you run it during the day is a really simple, easy way that you can add protein. So like, for example, a scoop of whey protein is 130 calories. And depending on what type you get, anywhere from 23 to 26 grams of protein and like maybe three or four carbohydrates. And nowadays it used to be back in the 90s where most whey proteins taste like crap. Now most of them taste really good and there are like dozens and dozens of flavors. There's peanut butter cup, caramel, mocha, whatever thing you can think of. So, for example, one of my favorite things to do when I first started trying to tweak my macros was I enjoy coffee drinks. And so I would actually just take some milk, some whey protein and blend it with some ice. And it was cappuccino whey protein and it tasted just like a frozen cappuccino. So it's like this great treat, 130 calories, 26 grams of protein. It was like what else? That's awesome, that's perfect. That's one thing that supplementation is very important there. And then likewise the question that we often get is especially on long run days, well, how do I meet my caloric needs and having to kind of change my diet so much. So, for example, the example we talked about, 1700 calories versus 2600 calories, that's really difficult to meal plan for because you're talking about an extra 900 calories. Like, where does that have to come from? That's a whole other almost two meals of eating. And so supplementation can really help there. And so, for example, you could do like a shake. So you could do like after you run, you could blend up some oatmeal, some whey protein, some fruit, some milk, some micronutrients in there, like some spinach or whatever. And that's going to be a great way to get me 400, 500 calories and instantly kind of within a shake, as opposed to kind of figuring out where else during the day are you going to eat an extra two or three meals to make up for that caloric deficit you're in because of the run that you did.

Finn Melanson [00:31:36]: How should runners distribute their macros throughout the day to feel training, facilitate recovery and to maintain or lose weight?

Jeff Gaudette [00:31:45]: So that's a great question and it kind of ties along to kind of what I mentioned before or a little bit in terms of the shake, in terms of how can we kind of meet our caloric needs and macronutrient needs within our training. So one of the more difficult things to do in training when training for weight loss, so running and trying to train for a goal and also trying to lose weight, one of the most difficult things to do is to fuel for the runs. And that's going to be the most important part of your day. So ideally, what you're going to want to do is you're going to want to maximize the amount of or redistribute your caloric and macronutrient needs around your run. So you may want to make sure that you are eating a good quality carbohydrate source and maybe the bulk of your carbohydrates are going to come before your workout. So maybe an hour, hour and a half before your workout, that's going to be when you want to eat maybe good proportion, a good percentage of your carbohydrates. And then following your workouts, that's when you're going to want to have a little bit of carbohydrate as well as your protein. So that's when you can start to make sure that you're getting enough protein as well. And so by sandwiching your macronutrient totals around that run, you're going to make sure that that run is quality, that it's fueled well, that you recover from it, and that it maximizes the time that you spent training. And that means obviously throughout the day. That's when you have to kind of maybe distribute a little less calories. So maybe it's not eating as big of a breakfast if you run in the night. Or maybe it means not eating a big dinner if you run in the mornings. And one thing I will say is that there is no evidence and no research that shows that you have to eat that meal frequency matters. So whether you eat three meals a day or six or seven meals a day, that has absolutely zero, no impact on your weight loss goals. That is a myth. That is something that doesn't matter. So let's kind of get that out of the way. There's no research, no scientific evidence that supports that. So that's why you want to kind of target your macronutrient goals around your training days or your training times. That said as well, I think one of the things that we have to do as runners and as athletes is we have to kind of take ourselves out of the mindset of most of our calories come at night, at dinner. Breakfast is cereal, carbohydrate type foods. It doesn't have to be like that. Those are almost like social constructs that we kind of fall into from children or from our youth or whatever, that we kind of get stuck in this idea. But it doesn't have to be that way. You don't have to eat a large dinner. Like you can have a normal size or a smaller dinner or maybe even a snack if that's what kind of fits your macronutrient totals. And you can have a larger breakfast. And breakfast doesn't have to be pancakes, it doesn't have to be eggs, it doesn't have to be oatmeal cereal, that kind of thing. That's a social construct. Breakfast can be anything that you want it to be. And so if you do your, let's say you do your training primarily in the mornings, then that's when you could have your biggest meal of the day. And it could be chicken, rice and broccoli. Like it doesn't have to be eggs or waffles or whatever. It can be, but it doesn't have to be same thing at night. So I think that's an important thing to remember, along with the fact that I'm saying this again because I want to reiterate it, that meal frequency has no impact on weight loss in terms of kind of recovery, fueling for recovery, et cetera. Kind of getting back to that idea of kind of the shake. Basically, if your macronutrient goals or totals for a day are really high because you're doing a long run or extremely hard workout, then I find it the best way to do it is post run, because that's going to be when you can use shakes and recovery drinks like EnduroX those types of things where you can really fine tune your macronutrients within that window and it doesn't necessarily screw up the rest of your day. And that kind of gets back into, I guess, a little bit more of a lifestyle idea of macronutrients and eating and lifestyle changes, et cetera. Is that what I find most helpful for me when I am trying to follow a meal plan is kind of being able to meal plan and roughly eat in the same structure. So, for example, I always eat roughly the same size breakfast, same size lunch, same size dinner. Like kind of within those ranges. So if I need to supplement or fuel because of a particular workout, if I need to add, then it's easier for me to just add like a shake or something high quality directly after my training than it is to completely redistribute my macronutrient totals throughout the rest of the day. For me that it just makes it harder to calculate. It kind of throws my body off a little bit. So that's what works for me. On the other hand, it could completely work for you to redistribute your totals. Again, that's where kind of getting into what works for you is going to be best.

Finn Melanson [00:36:29]: Any other tips on macronutrients that you think our listeners would find helpful?

Jeff Gaudette [00:36:35]: Okay, let's see. Any other tips on macros? I guess I have a couple. The first is, I think, the challenge. I think whenever you first bring up you need to calculate your macros, you need to calculate your calories. I think the first thing that comes up is people say, oh, that's too hard, or that's a lot of work. Yes, it is some work, but anything in life that's worth doing requires work. If it was easy, everybody would do it. Everybody would have look like a rock star. Everybody would be on point with their macros and nutrients all the time. They would always feel great for their runs. Just because it's hard does not mean it's not worth doing. If anything, it makes it worth doing more. So I think that's the first step is realizing that, yes, it's some work, but work pays off and it's worth it in the end. The second thing is it's much easier to do nowadays than it ever has been. There are so many tools online that you can use to track your caloric and macronutrient goals. So it used to be obviously extremely difficult. Well, how do I find out how many grams of protein are in a chicken breast? Or how many grams are in this meal that I ate out and ate at a restaurant? Most restaurants these days post their nutrition guides online. If it's a chain restaurant, if it's not a chain, it's pretty easy to estimate. Likewise, it takes a quick Google search of calories, chicken Breasts 6oz. It's right there. It's really easy to do. And then there are the tracking apps. MyFitness pal is my favorite, but there are different ones on the regimen. Makes a really good one. But basically these trackers make it super easy the foods are already listed in their database. So you literally just go in and say, today chicken breast. Well, how much did you eat? I ate 6oz. Bam. It automatically puts all the caloric macronutrient totals in your daily list. That's what I ate. This is what you have left to hit your goals. So apps and stuff make it much, much easier. Second, or I should say third, there's a couple of tools that you can use. One, to me, a scale was life changing for me, they are very cheap. You can get them on Amazon for like $11 or something. Like maybe it's 15, but it's super cheap. They're not big, they're really small, but they are life changing in terms of being able to better understand the quantity of food that you're eating. So obviously, just in this couple of minutes, I've talked about 6oz of chicken breast a couple of times. It's really hard to estimate 6oz of chicken breast, but have your scale on your counter, really easy to plop the plate on there, press Power and then put chicken breast on it and cut it until you get 6oz. It's that easy. And then over time, you start to learn and start to understand. And this is where estimating macros, when you're out to eat, et cetera, becomes easy because I can look at a piece of chicken and say, I know that's roughly about 6oz. I know that's roughly about 8oz. So when I go out to eat and I order a chicken, I can look at it and say, oh, that's a big piece of chicken. That's probably like 9oz of chicken. Or It's pretty small, it's probably like four. And it really helps you calculate your macronutrient totals without having to actually measure everything. Fourth, make it a game. That's what made it fun for me is I always kind of made it a challenge. I love spreadsheets. So I had a spreadsheet and it was like, these are the calories I need. These are the macronutrient goals that I need today. How close can I come to hitting them? And it was fun for me to actually check the foods, check the labels, those types of things. Going to the grocery store, checking the labels, like, oh, how is this going to fit with my macronutrient needs? To me, it was a fun game. Maybe that's because when I was a kid, I played like RPGs with how much mana do you have? And all that kind of stuff. And now I'm probably nerding myself out a little bit there. But I love making it a game. I love making it that thing. Most runners are very data heavy. I mean, how often do you record everything that comes out of your GPS stride Garmin device? Most runners write everything down. So it's the same thing with your macronutrients. Just kind of get in that headset or that mindset, that writing down those macronutrient totals that you're eating for the day is a game that you're playing or something that you're tracking, that you like to do. And finally, I find that once you kind of get so let's say that all of those things don't hurt. You don't like making any game, you're bad at estimating you, you don't like taking the time, you hate it, et cetera, whatever. You don't have to do this for the rest of your life. Do it for three, four weeks. And like I said, what you're going to do is you're going to start developing a feel, a you're going to start putting together generalizations of what your day looks like. So generally, most people eat roughly the same things every day. Nobody's drastically changing everything they eat every day. Most of the people eat roughly the same thing every day or combination of foods. And second, it's going to give you an extreme awareness of how many calories are in certain foods, how many proteins, carbohydrates, et cetera. My example of that, that kind of kicked it home for me was granola, right? We always see granola as this super healthy food, or it's kind of marketed as this very healthy food. But go to the grocery store and look at a background granola package and look at how many calories it has per quarter cup. Usually it's a quarter cup is their servings quarter cup, and then how many calories it has and then how many grams of sugar. And then again, that kind of gets into looking at the macros. So you look at it and you're like, wow, this quarter cup of granola, which is supposed to be healthy, has 320 grams, about 320 calories perhaps, and 26 grams of sugar. That's insane. That's going to crush I mean, that makes it very difficult to stay within your caloric and macronutrient totals if that's the case. So pay attention to that. So anyway, getting back looping around off my tangent, you don't have to do it forever. Do it for three to four weeks and it's going to open your eyes to the caloric density of foods and the type of macronutrients are in their foods. And so once you do that for a while, then yeah, you can probably back off and you're going to be pretty close. If accurate, tracking is not kind of something that you like to do, but again, it's definitely worth it. And anything worth doing is usually difficult in life in general. A couple of other tips, I guess, along the same lines. One of the things that I found most enlightening, again, kind of going back to my granola example, is tracking nutrition stuff, like looking at nutrition packaging and looking at how these companies try to trick us with serving sizes. So maybe you get something and it's a small bag of something, and then you look at it, you look at the calories like, oh, cool, like 180 calories, like below whatever grams of carbohydrates, proteins, fats. And then you're like, oh, that's a good little snack. And then you look closer. Serving size two serving size, or, I'm sorry, servings per container, like, two, three. And you're like, servings per container. The container is like 3oz. Like, how am I supposed to break that into number of servings? But that's something that totally opened my eyes to just the marketing and the kind of sometimes maybe misrepresentation is too harsh of a word, but that companies do to try to make their products seem healthier. So definitely something that kind of opened my eyes to that world and something I think will hopefully will for you when you start looking at when you start paying better attention to your macronutrient totals, et cetera. And finally, I think this was a talk earlier, but I think meal planning is super helpful. Being able for me, Sunday evenings, like afternoons, is when I cook. I cook all my chicken. I cook everything that kind of takes a long time to cook, like rice, et cetera, baked potatoes. I cook those all on Sunday, and then I don't even necessarily pre proportion them, which some people do, which I think is awesome, especially if you want to bring it to work, like having it already ready to go, you just got to grab it out of the fridge. That makes such a big difference, because, again, it gets back to that. You don't have to drastically change or record everything. If you roughly have the same dinner, lunch, or maybe if it's just breakfast and lunch, if you just have the same breakfast and lunch or roughly the same, then you already know those totals. It's really simple. Again, MyFitness pal, you can have saved meals. So let's say you had three different types of breakfasts. You like to eat in three different lunches. Those are easy to meal prep. You can prep those all in one day, put them all in different containers so they're measured correctly. You only have to do it once. Boom. Take out for breakfast, take it out for lunch, eat it now. The only thing you have to, and you can easily, my fitness pal, I had breakfast two today. I had lunch three today. Now all you need to worry about is, like, dinner and your run. Like, we're calculating those macronutrients, so it makes it so much easier. And so those are, I think, probably my favorite tips for the macros. So yeah. Thank you so much. I really enjoy this. I love talking about this. Like I said, this has been kind of my passion over the last couple of years. And so I hope some of the data that I gave you and some of the examples and stuff really helped. And thank you so much for watching. I really appreciate it.

Finn Melanson [00:45:34]: Thanks for listening to the Run to the Top podcast. I'm your host. Finn milanson. As always, our mission here is to help you become a better runner with every episode. Please consider connecting with me on Instagram at Wasatch, Finn and the rest of our team at Runners Connect. Also consider supporting our show for free with a rating on the Spotify and Apple Podcast players. Lastly, if you love the show and want bonus content, behind the scenes experiences with our guests, and premier access to contests and giveaways, then subscribe to our newsletter by going to RunnersConnect. Net podcast. Until next time, happy trading.

Jeff Gaudette [00:46:14]: You.

Finn Melanson [00:46:20]: Our channel.