Hey, hey ladies. Welcome to episode number 11. We're gonna be real with you, this is the third time I'm recording this episode. I put a bunch of preplanned content on a piece of paper and the first time I recorded this episode, it sounded very scripted. And then I recorded it again and the words just didn't come out the way I wanted them to. I ended up sounding like I was, it sounded like I was starting a movement against the food industry. So we're going to try this a third time. We're getting into nutrition for the next 10 episodes. And nutrition is something I'm quite passionate about. I believe there's a lot of false information out there and available to us. I believe that we're taught a lot of false information about nutrition and I believe nutrition is one of the most important things you can spend time learning. What you put into your body, truly has everything to do with how you feel in your life.
So let's talk about this a little bit. I want you to know that nobody can tell you what nutrition is right for you, no diet, no doctor, no nutritionist. They can give you suggestions, they can do their best to give you information that they think will help you, but you're the only person that knows how food fills in your body. You're the only person that knows your taste bites. You're the only person that experiences your digestive tract. You're the only person that knows how much energy you have after you eat. And because of all these things, you are your best ally when figuring out what nutrition plan is best for you.
Let's just go back a little bit here. When I first became a nutritional coach about 10 years ago. Now I started off doing what most personal trainers/nutritional coaches do, which is design a meal plan for a client, and then they would go off and try to follow that meal plan to the best of their abilities. And this would work some of the time. But what I found was that even when my clients had great results, they would assume those results were because of the meal plan I had made for them. And it left them feeling a little bit dependent. When they wanted different results or new results or better results, they would come back to me for a new, better, different meal plan. And about three years ago or so, I started working with. I'm going to do a shout out here with a client named Tori. Who was a vegan. And I don't know a ton about vegan lifestyle. And it wasn't something that I was ready to spend a ton of time researching and putting together the exact micronutrient macronutrient spread that she needed. So instead we teamed up and she knew a ton about being a vegetarian. She had done her homework and was willing to put the work in. So we teamed up and I put together the macro math, which is how many grams of protein, carbohydrates, and fats would be required for her to achieve her goals, along with a calorie intake goal. And then she went to work on building a nutrition plan for herself. We're calling it a protocol. And nutrition protocol for herself that she would enjoy eating that fit into the macro math. And we had tremendous success with Tori. And she came out of that year very empowered to continue to do her own nutrition. And I loved watching that. I loved being part of the education experience that we both got from that collaboration. So I changed the way that I coach nutrition after that experience. I now coach nutrition in a way where my clients get to pick what they eat. When I do build somebody a meal plan, I build it with them, with them having a ton of input. So how I want to go about teaching you guys about nutrition in this podcast, we're going to do this very unscientifically. So for those of you who, you know, have a nutrition background or maybe a science or biology background, you might shake your head a little bit at me, but I want everybody to understand this. I want everybody to walk away from this feeling like they might be able to do this on their own, even just a glimmer of hope, is where I want you to be. And then you're going to keep coming back each episode over the next 10 episodes. And you're going to learn a little bit more. Okay. I promise.
Okay. So what you need to know about nutrition is basically everything that you put into your body has a job. It does something in your body, whether that be good or bad. And then it, the waste comes out. So if you're overweight the way I like to explain this again, super unscientific, my friends. I like to explain extra body fat on our body, kind of like a deep freezer. Some of you might laugh at this. So, you know, how, if you have, if your fridge in your freezer is full and you have more food, you go out and you buy a deep freezer, right. And then you put the extra food in the deep freezer. Well, when your body, when your muscle cells are full of glycogen and your organs are full of everything they need, your body stores the excess as body fat for later. It's very smart. It's like your own personal deep freezer. So when you want. Let's say you're, you know, downsizing and you want to get rid of your deep freezer. What do you do? You stopped buying so many groceries. You start using the things that are in the deep freezer, right? So when you want to lose weight, my friends. That's what you do. You just use the deep freezer stuff. You use the extra stuff on your body by consuming less day to day. Now, this isn't true in every single case and I want to make a note of this because I've been through some coaching programs where they say, if you want to lose weight, eat less period. And that isn't true. If you are someone who has been dieting for many years, or if you've tried lots of intermittent fasting or very low calorie diets, your metabolism, your metabolic system may be in a state of emergency in which case you need to actually eat more. This is probably the clientele that I work with most one-on-one now is clients who have a metabolic system that's in a state of an emergency, and they need to reverse diet their way back to a healthy metabolic state and that requires a little bit more overseeing and a little bit more finesse, let's say it requires some mindset work because it's hard when you're trying to lose weight or trying to lean out, when your coach tells you to eat more. Most people don't believe me right off the bat.
I had a wonderful experience this past year with a client who came to me in the January 16 week transformation. She was losing weight very slowly compared to the other participants. And I pulled her aside and her history had been that she had been one of those people who just never really was hungry and would live off of an apple some days. She didn't really think about it that much. I told her that I thought that her system might be in a state of emergency. And I wanted to try reverse dieting with her. She put her trust in me and we started to slowly increase our calories. And when we got to 1800 calories, something magical happened, and her weight started dropping a much quicker than it had been. And it was so much fun for me as someone who loves the science of nutrition to watch. And I think for her, it was a very eye opening experience, especially being somebody who helps other people with weight loss and body health. I believe that it changed the way we looked at things. So I just want to put that disclaimer in there that if your goal is weight loss, eating less isn't always the best case scenario.
So, what I wanted to do in today's episode is I want to just give you kind of an overview of a few basic things you need to know. So what we need to pay attention to here is your daily calorie intake. Now I know a lot of you don't like counting calories. Some of you use a calorie app. I'm going to talk about this a little bit more in next week's episode because I'm a big believer in manually recording your nutrition data, at least for the first three to six months, if you were trying to achieve a specific goal. I'm going to talk more about why I believe in that next week, but for right now, you need to know what your daily calorie consumption is, you can start doing this by recording in an app. You can write down everything you eat about your calorie intake. And it's a good idea to figure out, on average, how much you're consuming right now. So to get to the weight that you weigh today. This is how many calories you're consuming.
Now, how did he know how many calories you should be consuming? In the 16 Week Transformation Program? I don't do this math with those clients. When you have weight to lose, you can do the math, you can look at the deficit that you want to be in. But I like my clients to actually just test it out. I like them to create a protocol kind of blindly. I throw them into the fire. And to test it and see what the results are because when you have excess body fat on your body, when you have a lot of things in the deep freezer, a lot of fuel in the deep freezer, you can get away with eating less because your body has access to it. However, if your goal is muscle gain, or if you have less body fat on your body, and you're just trying to get those last few percentages down to get on stage. It's a little bit more complicated, but we're going to keep it simple for today. So find out what your calorie intake is. And then there's a special number that I think needs to be pointed out in this episode, in this nutrition 101 episode. And that's your BMR, that's your basal metabolic rate. And this is a really simple equation. It takes into consideration your age, your weight and your sex and your height, just those four things. And it gives you an idea and it's just a rough estimate of how many calories your body needs to maintain your current weight, if you were in a coma, if you had no daily activity.
How many calories would the doctors need to feed you, if you were in a coma to maintain your current body status. So this number, the formula to get this number is long and requires some math. So I'm just going to send you to the Google's my friend. Go to the Googles and type in BMR calculator and enter your data stats and figure out what your BMR is. Most women who weigh between. 120 and 180 pounds, will have a BMR somewhere between 1300 and 1600, maybe 1700. My husband who's 220 pounds has a BMR, I believe of like 1800 or 1900. So usually your BMR is going to be in those, those teen hundreds. Now, why I'm making this point or why I'm bringing BMR up in this specific call is because of that number, what I've learned about your BMR, what I've learned over my 10 years of nutritional coaching and comp prep is that it's kind of a bit of a magic number when you are trying to get your body to a state of leanness, it's never been before. If you're competing, that BMR number is a number that is going to give you a guideline of how low you should go, max. So if you're dropping your daily calorie intake below your BMR, you're risking putting your body into an emergency state, putting your metabolic system into a place where it's going to start slowing down your calories burn so that it can conserve energy and make sure that you survive. Because it thinks that the world is in a state of famine, literally. So if you have a lot of weight to lose and your BMR is a little bit higher, you can flirt with that BMR number. You can drop it down below that for a few days and then bring it back over. I even do this sometimes with my athletes as they're getting closer and closer to competition, but you don't want to drop too much lower than that BMR for too long of a period of time, or you do risk having your body start to hold on to weight as a survival mechanism. All right. So calorie intake, a little bit different for everybody, usually anywhere from 1400 to 1800 calories is a pretty safe place to be. Depending on what your goals are. So I'd figure out your personal BMR and start there.
Now let's talk about macro-nutrition. Does anyone know what macronutrient is? Do you guys know? I talk about macros as being one of the main trifecta legs of my business. So macronutrients are the building blocks to your nutrition plan, your protein, your fats, and your carbohydrates. So these are the nutrients that we take in, in larger portions. Micronutrients being your vitamins and minerals and electrolytes, but macronutrients we take bigger sizes of these nutrients into our body. I believe that protein is fundamentally important as a building block to any nutrition program, protein is what's going to stabilize your blood sugar, it's going to keep you more satiated. It's going to help you build muscle mass. Protein is the most thermogenic of all macronutrients. So it's actually going to help you burn more calories as well.
Let's talk about some protein options here. So we all know that meat is mostly protein, right? Depending on how lean the meat is. There might also be some fats in it, but meat usually doesn't have any carbohydrates at all, unless it's breaded or coated in something. Now, I want to talk about some other hidden proteins, because I have a lot of people that come to me that don't eat a lot of meat and they say they struggled to get their proteins in. So some other options are things like Greek yogurt or cottage cheese, or dry curd cottage cheese, which is actually the closest food product you can get to weigh protein powder. A protein powder is another great source of protein for those who struggle to get their protein intake in through their food. Eggs, fantastic source of protein. I think eggs are almost a superfood. You can also get straight egg whites. What else? Nuts have usually a higher fat ratio than protein, but they can still be used to boost your protein intake. What else? We've got seeds and legumes and beans, those are more things that I'd say vegetarian, vegan dieters use for protein intake. I honestly wouldn't put beans or legumes into most meal plans for clients for weight loss, just because of the high carbohydrate ratio. But is it possible to lose weight with beans to use in your diet? 100%, it is. Absolutely. I've definitely had clients who have chosen to put beans and legumes into their protocols and had tremendous success. Also the fiber component in beans and legumes is super high, which helps keep us regular and helps keep us satiated. Definitely, keep them in mind as well. What else is great for protein?
Let's talk about processed protein and what I mean by this is protein bars, protein, snacks, protein infused food items. What I like to tell my clients, especially those for weight loss is the more whole food you can eat, the better. The less packaged, processed artificial, fake food you eat, the better your metabolism is going to work for you, the faster your GI tract and your gut wall move back into a healthy state. It's okay every once in a while, or if you're traveling or if you have a protein bar thrown into your purse for emergency situations. to have a processed protein product every now and then, but it's definitely not something I would suggest putting into a day to day protocol. What I do find is that people who tend to live off of processed protein products or processed diet products, is they end up looking a little malnourished. They struggled to build their body the way they want to, they end up struggling to get their body fat down to where they wanted it to be, they often are a little pale or gaunt looking, they have skin issues and they usually don't have great energy and once we can move them over into whole food, all of those things seem to improve pretty substantially. So I highly recommend leaning towards whole foods.
So just wrapping up protein here. What I tell my weight loss clients, and what I talk about in the create your own nutrition protocol guide is the minimum requirement for protein. The way I teach it is 100 grams a day. Most people are not getting a hundred grams of protein a day. Most fitness apps don't even suggest that you get a hundred grams of protein a day. If your goal is weight loss or a sculpted physique and building muscle, you need to have a minimum of a hundred grams of protein going into your body every day. That's a really good place to start, depending on how tall you are, how much you weigh and how much muscle you want to put on. You may want to go more than a hundred grams a day eventually. But let's start at a hundred grams a day. All right. I could go down a rabbit hole in terms of how protein helps with mental health and with all sorts of different things in your body and in your systems, but let's just keep it really easy for now.
So let's move on to fats. Fats have a bit of a bad rep. A lot of people assume that eating fat will translate to fat on their body. And this is false. All right. Fat is a slow release of energy form. So it's fuel that doesn't have an impact on your blood sugar level. And it doesn't have an insulin response from your pancreas. The beautiful thing about that is it doesn't put your body into a storage mode whenever there's insulin in your bloodstream, your body goes into a storage mode, which is fantastic when you're trying to recover from a workout or build muscle. But when you're trying to burn stored fat, you want to be in the opposite of a storage mode. You want to be in a fat adaptation mode, which is when your body is using stored fat as fuel. So actually having fats in your diet isn't a bad thing when you're trying to lose body fat. And it also helps your body know that it's getting enough fat on a day to day basis, that it can use its access stores without worrying about survival. So I recommend a minimum of 50 grams of fat per day for those who are just trying to lose weight and have a balanced nutrition protocol. And how we want to get those fats into your body is we want to use healthy fats. So you want to look for fats in like natural fats found in meat. So salmon or chicken thighs, or even like ground beef or fattier cuts of beef are fine. We want to eat the yolks that are in the eggs. We want to use coconut oil when we cook our meats. We might want to pour a little bit of olive oil on top of our salads or on top of our vegetables, we can use grass fed. I use grass fed organic butter. You don't have to go that far, but you don't have to avoid butter. We just want to make sure that we use it in moderation and we want to try and get the healthiest version of butter we can possibly get. And this goes for all of the, I'd say for all of your macros in general, if you can get organic grass fed, get organic grass fed. If you can get free range eggs, get free range eggs, but do the best you can from a financial standpoint and from an accessible standpoint. But, I love using butter in my cooking and it makes me feel better when I'm using grass fed organic food. Okay. So what other sources of fats, nuts and seeds are fantastic sources of fats. Avocado is a great source of fat using higher fat dairy products like full fat Greek yogurt, or, fattier cheeses as long as your body can digest dairy, I've had athletes dial right into competition on dairy. I don't digest lactose very well, which is the sugar in dairy products. So there are definitely some dairy products that I stay away from. But others I'm fine on. So again, this is a personal discovery method.
So how do you know if your body does well on dairy? You test it. If you have to run to the bathroom, five minutes after a meal, you know that dairy doesn't work for you. And you can test out different dairies all on your own. Right? Okay, so that is fats. If you guys have questions about these after this podcast, please feel free to email me anytime. I'll put my email in the show notes, I'm also going to put a link to my, create your own nutrition protocol guide in the show notes. This is a really nice, easy to read, 10 page guide that walks you through these basics in a little bit more detail and helps teach you how to build and put together and cultivate your own nutrition protocol and how to test it.
Okay, let's move on to carbs. Carbs are a very controversial subject. I think that carbs should not be eliminated from a diet unless it's for medical purposes. Like if you're trying to combat diabetes or if you're trying to starve out a disease that feeds off of sugar. So, what I am a big fan of is using vegetables as your main source of carbohydrates. So in my current protocol, I have about 120 grams of carbs every day, about a hundred grams of those carbs are from vegetables, vegetables have a pretty high allotment of carbohydrates in them. They're also full of fiber full of micronutrients, like vitamins and minerals. And they keep us really nice and satiated. So you want to be using a ton of vegetables in your protocol, especially if your goal is weight loss. Now, if you're a person that really likes potato or yam or squash. My friends, those are vegetables. You can have those, if your goal is weight loss. You do want to use them in moderation, they may be something that you only put in once or twice a week. And you want to test out how your body reacts to them. Other carbohydrate sources are grains. So we have rice and oats, and then we have things that are processed grains like breads and wraps and pasta and all of those good things. Right? When it comes to grains, I'm a little bit more cautious in terms of weight loss, I find that for the most part, especially my female clients, don't digest grains as well as they do vegetable carbohydrates. Now again, I encourage you guys to personally test this out on yourself and see what your body responds best to. So this is the big question, right?
Let's talk about fruit. This is like a very controversial subject. When it comes to fruit, fruit sugar breaks down in our body very similar to how any other sugar does. So if you're not going to use that fruit sugar energy right away. Yeah, your body's going to store it as body fat. If you're eating copious amounts of fruit on a daily basis, you are eating copious amounts of sugar on a daily basis. So, what I highly recommend you do is strategically place your fruit in your protocol, in a space where, you know, you're going to utilize that energy, right? Sugar is just really fast fuel. I don't think I said that at the beginning of carbs. So carbohydrates are just like fats in terms of they're a fuel source and energy source, but unlike fats, carbohydrates create an insulin response, which means that our body goes into a storage mode right away. So our body is looking to utilize that sugar immediately, whether it be to repair muscle tissue, whether it be to put into the organs, whether it be to use it for fuel, it wants to get out of the blood. So fruit is definitely something that you can partake in. It's delicious and it's full of vitamins and minerals. It's great for you. If you are using it strategically for its fuel source, I wouldn't recommend eating a whole bunch of fruit before bed. I'm not a huge fan of combining fruits with fats, because then you're putting a double fuel source into your body. And if you're sitting at a desk all day, you're not going to utilize that fuel source, right. So be strategic with your fruit intake. I'm a big fan of berries because they're high in vitamins and fiber and tend to be lower in sugar. And fruits like apples that have a high amount of fiber in them as well. When it comes to tropical fruits, I tend to use those only once in a while for special occasions or special treats. All right, you guys.
So that kind of, is a really umbrella overview of your macronutrients, carbohydrates, fats, proteins. You'll notice I didn't give you a carbohydrate goal, this is on purpose. Everybody's body reacts differently to carbohydrates. Some people are more carbohydrate sensitive. Some people are more carbohydrate resistant. So, if you're trying to figure out your macro spread, just to kind of give you an overview. Let's say for example, you've decided to have 1400 calories a day. And I've given you the goal of a hundred grams of protein minimum which each gram of protein equals four calories. So that's going to be 400 calories of protein. I've also given you a minimum requirement of 50 grams of fats. And remember, these are just suggestions. I'm not trying to diagnose or cure or treat anything as a nutritional coach. All I can do is give you suggestions and you can test it out and figure out what works for your body. Okay, back to the math. So 50 grams of fat, each gram of fat contains nine calories. So that is 450 calories in fact. So if we do the math, we have a total protein fat intake of 850 calories. That means we have a remaining total of 550 calories left for carbohydrates. Now we know, I'm just pulling out my calculator here. We know that carbohydrates also have four calories per gram. Maybe you didn't know, you know, now. So 550 divided by four, leaves us with a total intake of 137 and a half grams of carbohydrates each day. I would probably round that down to 135. So that would be a protocol macro spread that you would then test out. So 1400 calories, a hundred grams of protein, 50 grams of fats, 135 grams of carbohydrates. This is just off the top of my head for an imaginary person. So then what you would do is you'd have to pull out your thinking cap. And you'd have to find some foods that you enjoy that total up that macro spread.
Now, this is why in the 16 Week Transformation Program, I really highly suggest creating a protocol for the week, because then you only have to do this work once a week, instead of doing it every day, which is what flex dieting is. Flex dieting is where you try and hit your macro spread every day, but you change the foods you eat every day, and that works great for some people, especially if your goal is maintenance or muscle building. But for weight loss, I really like a weekly protocol, because it really allows for you to feel what certain foods feel like in your body and you get to decide by the end of the week, if those foods in that order are serving you based on the result you get on the scale. So, if you would like to learn more about creating your own protocol, you can go into the show notes and download my nutrition protocol creation guide. If you would like me to take you through this process, and you would like to deep dive into your own weight loss and researching your body and how your body does with different foods and creating a relationship with food that is healthy and purposeful and gives you the results you want. You want to jump over to lylasleona.com, click on transform. And get yourself on the waitlist for the January transformation program. There's going to be an upcoming webinar on December 1st, on that program. And the registration for that webinar opens this week. So stay tuned.
All right my friends. That is what I have for you in episode number 11, we're sticking with this episode. I'm not going to rerecord it. This is what you get. Join me next week. For nutrition awareness this is where we're going to talk about why it's so important to be aware of what you're eating. What the math is in what you're eating and how what you're eating is reacting in your body and the results it's getting you. Why is all of that so important to your sculpted body and your sculpted life. All right, you guys. See you next week. Bye for now.
