8 Months and Macro counting

I haven’t posted any entry fully dedicated to my weight loss process in over five months, and I believe it’s about time I do it, for several circumstances that are now coming together.

First of all, I stopped the chronicles of my weight loss because from November until the beginning of February my process mysteriously halted and I was honestly and utterly freaking out. I cried my eyes out every night and I felt super vulnerable and questioned my every life decision, thinking what was it that I was doing wrong because it made no sense to have been surgically modified, spent so much money, put my life at risk, and just not get the end results I need – and yes, it is that “I need”, not that I want, and I would like to put this out there for every one who has been following my process so far, because I truly appreciate your support, your cheering and your interest, but I swear, getting to the 70-kilo mark is not an obsession of mine, but a real tangible goal set specifically for medical reasons…

I swear I appreciate your comments when I say “oh, well, I have lost these many kilos so far and I still need to lose these many more” and the response usually is “oh, no, but you already look so good! Do not get obsessed with a number if you are already so much healthier!” And I say this with my heart in my hand: I truly, really, deeply appreciate your words of encouragement, but remember, as I had explained in a previous post from August 2022 – I need to get out of the range of obesity and into the range of over weight to bank on the progress. Remember I had already gone a long way a couple of years ago when I lost 23 kilos just exercising and dieting, and suddenly my body started producing excessive cortisol and I regained most of my weight back even when I was doing it all correctly and strictly disciplined. In order to avoid that from happening again, I need to have a BMI of about 28 that would leave me in the overweight range, hence the magic number of 70 kilograms. My BMI is currently at 32, so not very far now, which takes me to the following considerations and news.

So, after consulting with my doctor back in February and asking him to provide some suggestions to reignite my process, he prescribed an injected drug called Saxenda and the weight loss took back its course over the last few weeks. Two days ago I woke up to the wonderful realization that I had gotten to weight 78.9 kilograms. It’s funny when you think most of my lady friends see that number and feel horrified because that is an extremely heavy mark for them, but take into consideration at my heaviest, back in 2019 I weighed 113 kilograms, and in March of 2022, last year, when I was in the pit of my desperation, not knowing what was going on with my body and after visiting a myriad of doctors and spent a small fortune on tests and studies, I was at 108 kilograms.

So, if you think about it, hitting 78 kilograms is a delightful landmark in my journey, because it rounds up my weight loss number – it officially marks a loss of 30 kilograms in one year, partially because of my effort previous to the bariatric surgery, but mostly as a consequence of my medically suggested mutilation. Ta da!

And of course, the journey is still ongoing. Remember I am to lose those 8.9 kilograms by the end of July for my surgery to be considered a sounding success, and for me to go with my clear conscience to the plastic surgeon and ask him to do the nip and tuck I already need. Perhaps I’ll lose somewhere between 3 and 5 more kilograms of excess skin and then, bam! Sexy suburban momma shopping for a new wardrobe. Noice.

So, I said several other circumstances were involved in the making of this entry, and the thing is I am so happy with my new results, I am religiously exercising – that’s the only thing I do religiously, I must admit – spending at least 500 calories in each session, and then if my stars align and I get the chance to do it, I go on another exercise session in the afternoon, whether it is just walking to the Oxxo with my kids, hopping on the treadmill for 20 minutes, or even doing some light stretches at night before going to bed. I am fired up and very excited, so I take advantage of this excitement and fuel my physical activity with it. And, of course, as these fitness crazed people we all know, I am sharing some of these landmarks I hit every day with my friends and family, and you’ll find me sharing the picture of the screen of the static bike and boasting “Dude! I just burnt 524 calories in this session! Woohoo! Endorphins, yeah!” (Sigh) Crazy people, I tell ya…

And as a part of these entertaining and encouraging conversations I’ve been having, my dear friend Omar Hernandez asked me how I take care of myself on the nutritional front. The way I take care of my nutrition nowadays is pretty much as I was doing it three years ago, I’m not going to lie, the difference is that now I have a physical barrier that stops me whether I like it or not because my stomach is 66% smaller than it was before, and back in the day, knowing when to stop depended solely on me and my discipline. However, it is not hard at all, I was happy back then counting macros, and I am happy now following the same logic, you’ll see why – these nutritional guidelines do not feel as a diet at all once you get used to them, and they give structure and order to your life. It even made me happier because I simplified my shopping process and my decision-making process when it came to food.

And yes, I know, for those of us who love eating – and believe me I LOVE EATING! – it sounds quite mechanical and lackluster, but I believe the secret about being able to enjoy food is understanding food is mere fuel 80% of the time, and pure pleasure the remaining 20%. If that concept hadn’t sunk into my head, I would still be eating as I did before, letting myself gain weight out of my hedonistic lifestyle, and like this I know I get to eat in a balanced way most of the time, and when I want to eat something delicious and decadent, I do it with no remorse, and 30 kilos lighter.

So, here goes nothing! This is my way of explaining to you how macro counting works, and why I believe it is one of the most wonderful nutritional routines you can follow – along with the keto lifestyle which I simply ADORE.

 

MACRO COUNTING FOR BEGINNERS, BY A BEGINNER

Step No. 1 – Know your numbers

Let’s get acquainted with a couple of concepts… a few paragraphs back I mentioned my BMI, but I did not explain what BMI stands for. Well, BMI means Body Mass Index, and it expresses the ratio between your body fat content and your height. For an adult to be considered within a healthy range, their BMI should be somewhere between 18.5 and 24.9.

Let’s assume a 46 year old male is 1.86 m tall and weighs 88 kilograms, that means his BMI is 25.4 which is honestly not bad at all:

The issue could be, perhaps, the quality of the content in this individual’s diet. I don’t know, perhaps he is an architect who lives off eating tacos, tamales, tortas and other high-carb similar foodstuff… I mean, I don’t know, it’s not like I am thinking of someone in particular (or am I?) but we are going to learn as a part of this macro counting process how important the quality of food is for any nutritional routine.

So, when counting macros the first thing you need to know is that you will be focusing on keeping track of what you eat in terms of how many grams of macro nutrients you ingest:

• Proteins
• Fats
• Carbohydrates

 

Don’t even mind about micronutrients at this point, we don’t want to feel overwhelmed thinking of how much sodium you are eating, for example… UNLESS!!! You have some pre-existing health problem, like high blood pressure. In that case YOU SHOULD DEFINITELY PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR MICRONUTRIENTS AS WELL.

What if I am a diabetic, you ask? Well, sugar is a carbohydrate, so the macro counting will help you keeping your diet under control as well. Remember most carbs are metabolized in such a way they become some form of sugar in our body, so even if you swear you are eating no sugar at all in your diet, if you eat 200 grams of bread and flour every day, I’m sorry to tell you, you might still have high blood sugar, because that’s the way your body processes those carbs.

 

Step No. 2 – Do your numbers

So a healthy weight for our imaginary friend in our example could be somewhere between 65 and 86 according to the BMI theory, so let’s assume 80 would be a perfect goal weight for him, gaining and losing 5 to 6 kilograms as an average – it’s perfectly normal to move around our goal weight, I mean, seriously who weighs the same every day of the week, every month, all year round? Only if you are a mannequin…

The macro counting theory says we should take the goal weight, multiply it times 22 (or if you are doing this estimation in pounds, multiply it times 12) and the resulting number represents the number of calories you should eat every day to be at a healthy deficit to achieve your goal.

So, our imaginary friend should have a daily intake of 1,760 calories.

Now, how to allocate those calories, that’s the interesting part. Depending on the nutrition expert you might talk to, they will tell you about the 60-20-20 or the 50-30-20 proportion, meaning the percentage of calories that should come from proteins, carbohydrates and fats. When I started macro counting, I had a 40-35-24 proportion because I found out hitting my goal of protein intake was much harder than I thought. For example, in the case of our imaginary friend, those 1,760 calories would be allocated like this:

And here’s where we really start crunching out math skills. Each gram of protein and each gram of carbs equal 4 calories. This means, if you ate 10 grams of proteins, you would be eating 40 calories worth of proteins. Each gram of fats equals 9 calories. Regardless of the quality of the fats, this is VERY IMPORTANT to take into consideration. Now, think if you ate for example two tacos, and they were made with tongue (mmmmm, tacos de lengua…) you would probably be eating this:

• 2 tortillas taqueras (small tortillas) = 10 grams each = 4.5 grams of carbs, 0.3 grams of fats and 0.6 grams of proteins
• 50 grams of tongue = 1.8 grams of carbs, 9.5 grams of fats and 7.4 grams of proteins

This would take your numbers to:

• Carbs = 6.3 grams
• Fats = 9.8 grams
• Proteins = 8 grams

Total calories = 134

So, as you see, tongue tacos are delicious, but perhaps not your best choice since there are 21 grams of fat per 100 grams of meat, and this would ride up your count of fats quite quickly.

If you changed your protein to chicken breast, the numbers would be like this:

• 2 tortillas taqueras (small tortillas) = 10 grams each = 4.5 grams of carbs, 0.3 grams of fats and 0.6 grams of proteins
• 50 grams of chicken breast = 0 grams of carbs, 3.1 grams of fats and 11.1 grams of proteins

Meaning:

• Carbs = 4.5 grams
• Fats = 3.4 grams
• Proteins = 11.7 grams

Total calories = 94

And this is basically what you have to do, every day of your life… check the nutritional contents of everything you eat, ponder which foodstuff is more convenient for you because it offers more food that is healthier for you, make your decisions, purchase what suits you better and complement what you can’t achieve with supplements – the Plenlife protein powder is wonderful, it costs about MXN$1,500 per container, you get about 40 grams of protein per serving (two scoops) and the chocolate one tastes delicious.

Do this everyday taking into consideration each 900 calories you burn, represent a weight loss of 100 grams. Meaning, if you create a 900-calorie deficit everyday, you would be losing 100 grams a day, or 700 grams as an average per week. A perfectly healthy and sustainable way to lose weight.

Of course, right now you are reading all this and thinking I lost my mind and that it is horribly complicated to plan your life around food like this, and I am not going to lie, the first few weeks it is. Specially if you plan to keep track of all this information on your own. I honestly couldn’t and I paid for the premium service of the MyFitnessPal app, although there are others like MyPlate that work as well. Those apps don’t tell you what to eat, they are just a means for you to keep track of what you are eating. The first days you’ll find out quite difficult to achieve all your numbers, but there is a learning curve and you’ll see you might be eating your carbs too soon in the day and leaving your proteins for later, or vice versa, and you will feel forced to eat too much of something at a certain meal, but then the next day you will tune your choices and try and have a more balanced allocation along the day, always keeping track of what you eat. Most of the foodstuff has already been recorded by somebody else in those apps, so you don’t even have to manually type your macros. They will usually be there for you to choose them and include them in your journal.

I found out not everything was worth recording, to be honest. I never recorded how many slices of tomato I ate, because the amount of calories in tomatoes were trivial in the overall scheme of my dietary plan, or you learn if you drink diet soda it isn’t worth recording it because it offers nothing – no calories, no macros, only chemicals…

After a few days you discover you know how many calories there are in the foodstuff you usually eat, because you tend to eat many similar things. If you eat two eggs every day, you’ll soon memorize the nutritional value of those eggs, and if you play your cards right, you will find ‘healthier’ or lighter options for everything. Instead of heavy or sour cream, you’ll see light cheese cream is still delicious but way more efficient in terms of your calorie intake; if you like beer, you’ll soon find yourself drinking the Ultra version of beer, which of course has been watered down, but hey, at 85 calories and 2.5 grams of carbs you can drink 4 of those and still feel good about your diet.

The days you want to ‘misbehave’ you can do it, and make some Oreo cookies fit in there by cutting your intake of calories, fats and carbs in other concepts, or if you want to include empty calories in the form of some distilled beverage like whiskey, tequila or vodka, you can go for it… just taking into consideration everything you drink is something you’ll have to stop eating.

And this is the general idea of it.

Once I got used to it, I loved it, because it was not your typical diet printed by your “nutrition expert” – I apologize for the quotation marks, but seriously, how well taken into consideration do you feel when the ‘expert’ you are visiting just prints out a piece of paper that you know every other person visiting her is getting as well, without any customization for your personal needs? I personally feel quite offended when that happens, hence this nutritional lifestyle is my jam and I love it.

If you want to try this out and I can help in any way, feel free to ask me (you guys know where to find me, or send a message through the form at the end of this entry). As I said three years ago when I first posted something about macronutrient counting, I am not trying to convince anyone of anything, it’s not like I am getting paid for bringing more people into my food religion – I wish! – but I am just putting this out here in case someone finds this information useful. I know I did, and I know eating like this makes me happy because it makes a lot of sense to me. Beware: many of your future decisions might be influenced by this knowledge and ruin your eating escapades. I haven’t eaten a taco de barbacoa dorado in over four years, because although they are delicious and appeal to the glutton in me, those things make absolutely no nutritional sense AT ALL, and eating them now feels like something useless to me. If you ever get to this point, call me. We can start a therapy group to support former gluttons in their rehab process.

And as an extra feature, to wrap this entry up since it has already gone for too long, I share a few of my photos depicting my weight loss journey since January 2022 thru March 2023. I can see the finish line guys! I’m almost there!

January 2022 – 108 kilograms

November 2022 – 85 kilograms

 

March 2023 – 79 kilograms