I made a presentation for a lunchtime learning at work called “Fire and Fuel” attached. I didn’t geek out on details of macros in that but will here.
StrongerU philosophy is simple foods, follow your assigned macros (grams of carbs, fat, proteins per day eating whenever and whatever you want as long as you get within 5 g of the targets). You have to log everything (I use myfitnesspal), report in weekly to your coach with your sleep, how you feel, what macros you ate every day, weight daily (used to calculate avg weekly weight and compare to week before), and bust/waist/hip measurements periodically. Coach will adjust you or advise you based on your progress. Lessons learned after doing this for a year:
- I think this shoulder surgery will result in me being better than I ever was before (especially with mobility) as I also have my physical therapist as part of my team who will help me with more than just getting my full range of motion (95% back) and shoulder related strength back (next gate to pass before being able to lift heavier weights in Dec).
- I am also tracking workouts and splits – I pretty much PR every week which is easy to do starting from where I am! My running is getting better all the time and actually fun again – has been a while! Losing 45 pounds can do that
- Details of when to/how often to eat in general don’t matter – total calories is most important for weight lost
- Must track macros. Without the data and consistency, it’s a waste of time.
- Food is way more important than working out to losing weight – that’s why I was so confused when I started after seeing little progress after a year of crossfit
- Food management helped me recover way faster – an incredible amount faster actually. I used to get destroyed at XFit and hope to go 5x a week without issues now.
- I was overeating thinking I had to eat more while working out and found out I recovered better and it didn’t matter when I cut back
- Blaming weight gain on middle age metabolism is B.S.
- Got a fitbit to track activity. LOVE LOVE LOVE my fitbit to understand activity levels and found comraderie because my family and I challenge every week for the most steps thru the app. Best feature I didn’t realize I needed was sleep tracking. I don’t get enough – need to work this still.
- Power of habit – being active daily vs. setting a target of 3-4x a week (which is easy to postpone). Got this idea stuck in my thru a Ben Bergeron Chasing Excellence Podcast – a series I love and you should check out
- I have a lot to learn
- I feel like I am back to where I was back in 1998 (please tell me you were born then!) when I was in great shape. Although I think I’m actually better than that now(!!) once I gain back the strength after shoulder surgery – have run further and probably lifted way more thru crossfit than I did then. There will be no more “I used to” – being able to NOT say that was my main goal. I have survived middle life and stepmotherhood and come out better on the other side (well, I’m still in middle life 🙂
- I can’t keep crap in the house or I’ll eat it and if I cheat, I cheat too much so expect to be strict or off; however, my “way off” isn’t really that far off these days. You can see Monday where I meant to eat one of the belgian chocolates I brought back and ate like 5 instead. I’ve learned occassional celebrations, etc won’t matter but to make it an exception vs. every day
- Consistency in workouts and nutrition will get you to badass. Funny as I also heard it since then from other sources (ie. great podcast on Tim Ferriss how where he interviews Ryan Flaherty – who coaches folks like Serena Williams and works for Nike now) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkFYWuc5MhE (You would like this and it gets pretty technical – I had to look a bunch of stuff up – he ties deadlifts to speed). Ryan was saying your body will adapt to the stresses based on the shape it is in – so I just need to keep running and doing crossfit while maintaining good nutrition and I will look better. I am on it and committed.
- Learning it is OK to be a little hungry – that is like a revelation.
- It rubs off – some folks I work with are inspired and making changes to their lives as well. I started a series called “Profiles in Awesomeness” and am interviewing/putting out articles on folks who made changes, why, etc and started a work movement called “Get moving” to help inspire/help others who want to be more active. We plan to do company races and build community thru that.
RP templates – You put in data, pay ~$100 and download them. Basic philosophy is also macros but broken up by meal and also with modified macros based on if you have a rest day, light /moderate/hard workout day (ie. more carbs for harder workout days). Eye opener is that crossfit is considered a light day!
During the weight loss phase, I was at around 1515 calories. Using the Inbody scan results I got last week, I need 1475 calories/day just to maintain my basic metabolic functions and I am at 24% body fat. Test results shown below:
When I downloaded RP templates, comparison of assigned macros to my last StrongerU macros in grams attached… this explains why it feels I am losing weight again!
| MACRO BREAKOUT AND TOTAL CALORIE COMPARISON | ||||||
| StrongerU | REST | RP Light | RP Mod | RP Heavy | ||
| carb | 150 | 120 | 125 | 200 | 230 | |
| fat | 60 | 55 | 55 | 55 | 55 | |
| protein | 125 | 125 | 120 | 120 | 120 | |
| total calories | 1640 | 1475 | 1475 | 1775 | 1895 | |
It took all last week to get used to the RP templates because of the following:
- Breaking up my carbs better by meal included changing my breakfast! this is huge! I have been an oatmeal, milk, berry, maple syrup breakfast person forever. Now on light days I am eating egg white omelets with tomatoes/spinach and something I LOVE – wheat toast with butter and a little raspberry jam.
- Love two meals between breakfast and dinner as I had been scrapping by with an Rx bar – with my long commute, I often don’t eat until 8pm and it is a long time between noon and 8!
- Changed my pre/post workout so am now slugging a scoop of protein in coconut water instead of an Rx bar.
- Toast and protein before bread is new but fun as I love the toast.
- RP meals have a “handful of veggies” per meal excluding peas/corn/corn which count towards carbs – this is a change but easy to do. My lunch used to be a frozen mix of veg and now I am more selective in what I’m including and adding vegetables to breakfast.
What I don’t like with RP: lack of fidelity around total grams/day so it is harder to meet the exact numbers (which I know are always an approximation anyway) and tracking of different macros/day makes it harder to program into myfitnesspal. It also requires knowledge of the following week and a commitment to do what you say every day so you eat all the meals appropriately. Not a bad thing if you want to have good habits!
Clean eating, honest reporting and en route to badass,
Laura
Move Forward Without Fear 