011: Macros Aren’t Magic – How to Set Macros

Introduction:

You're listening to biceps after babies radio episode number 11

Hello and welcome to biceps after babies radio. A podcast for moms who know that fitness is about so much more than pounds loss or prs. It's about feeling confident in your skin and empowered in your life. I'm your host, Amber Brueseke, a registered nurse, personal trainer, online fitness coach, wife and Mama for every week. My guests and I will excite and motivate you to take action in your own personal fitness as we talk about nutrition, exercise mindset, personal development, and executing life with conscious intention. If your goal is to look, feel, and be strong and experienced transformation from the inside out, you, my friend are in the right place. Thank you for tuning in. Now let's jump into today's episode.

Hey, hey. Hey. Welcome back to another episode of biceps after babies radio. I'm your host, Amber Brueseke and today we're going to talk about macros and setting your macros and why your macros are not magic. The second thing that I want to mention upfront is that I actually have two freebies for you for this episode. So lucky you, you get two freebies. One I put together, and I did this a while ago, um, a document about how to set your macros. It's been in one of the most popular freebies that I've ever created and it's been downloaded by almost 10,000 people. So this document is a 13 page document and it walks you step by step by step from the very beginning to the very end of how to set your own macros. And so if you want to download that, you can go to www.bicepsafterbabies.com/11 that'll take you the show notes page. And on the show notes page, there'll be a button, a link there to be able to download that Freebie. The second Freebie that I have for you is about adjusting your macros. So we're going to talk a little bit about adjusting your macros to be able to get the results that you want. And I've put together a cheat sheet that has a flow chart of exactly the questions to ask yourself to know when and how to change your macros. And so if you go also to the show notes page www.bicepsafterbabies.com/11 you will also find that you can download that cheat sheet and that's gonna help you a lot in conjunction with after you set your macros, being able to adjust so that you can really get the results that you want. So with all that out of the way, now let's dive a little bit into setting your macros and why your macros are not magic.

Setting Your Macros: (03:49)

So here's what most people do. Most people learn about macros. They learn about tracking macros, about counting macros. Maybe they listened to episode 2 of biceps after babies radios where I talk all about getting started with tracking macros. And they kind of get intrigued and they say, you know what, that makes a lot of sense. I believe in moderation. I don't believe that you should have to cut out food groups in order to see success. And so they kind of start to buy into this and they say, hmm, this is something that I want to investigate. It's something I want to try out. Let me give this a shot. And so then one of the first steps that they need to do is set their macros. And this is where a lot of people come up on a roadblock. They start to break out in a cold sweat because they don't know how to set their macros. They don't understand how to adjust those numbers or how to get the results that they want. And even if they go and use it, you know, there's online calculators or a free download or um, you know, some other ways. There's lots of ways to be able to set your macros. But after they set their macros, then they start to second guess and they're like, well maybe 200 carbs is too much. Maybe I need a different ratio of protein to fat. Ah, maybe this is not, you know, these aren't the numbers that are going to give me results. And so then they start to second guess and you go down this like rabbit hole of not trusting your numbers and then not hitting them because you don't trust them. And I've just seen this kind of cycle happens so many times with people.

So there's really two options when it comes to setting your macros. The first option is you can pay someone to do it, right? You get, there's plenty of coaches out there who you can pay to set your macros. Option number two then is to set them for yourself and I think it's really important to understand that either way that you go, it is just an estimate at best and it's just a starting place. There is no magic to having a coach set your macros versus you setting your macros. There obviously can be a benefit in the fact that you know, a coach has probably set plenty of people's macros and you know over the years I've sent hundreds of peoples and macros and I have some experience there because I've had some of what works and what doesn't. So there's obviously some experience there that that can help in setting macros. However, even when I set Macros, it is just an estimate. It's an educated estimate but it's just an estimate. They are not magic. And so when you're deciding between, okay, am I going to set my own macros or am I going to pay someone to set my macros for you? I need you to understand that both ways are going to give you an estimate. They are going to give you a starting point and you have to use them for awhile and adjust to be able to get the results that you really want.

Macro Number’s Aren’t Magic: (06:37)

Now, I will say that if you find yourself second guessing everything, meaning you know yourself, and if you set your macros and you know that you're gonna second guess it, that you're going to know not have any consistency, because when it gets hard, you're going to not push through because you're like, oh, I don't know. I don't know if I set these appropriately. If you know that about yourself, having a coach set them for you can give you a little bit of peace of mind and give you the ability to push through and it gets hard because you may trust that coach a little bit more than you trust yourself. But even from that perspective, I really need you to understand it's still just a starting point and it's not set in stone. Um, macros are very individualized and figuring out the macros that are right for you and your body take some tweaking all of times. The only way to zero in on the macros that will be effective for you is to be consistent and then to adjust based off the feedback that your body gives you. For example, your results, whatever you're seeing your body do, you can then adjust off of that. Now there is one way that you can get a little bit more accurate and it's one of the reasons that it's one of the suggestions that I make and one of the steps I say in episode two about how to get started with tracking macros and that is to log your normal intake for one week. If you have a good idea of how much you're currently eating and if you're maintaining on that amount, then you have a much better idea of how many calories you need to cut in order to create the caloric deficit. So in order to lose fat, you have to create a caloric deficit. You have to be burning more calories than you are consuming. And if you can get really clear on how many calories you are currently eating and maintaining on, then you can easily create that caloric deficit. And you don't have to guess quite as much. Meaning, if you know that you eat 2,400 calories a day, you can then know that if you drop your calories by 15 to 20% it's going to create enough of a caloric deficit that you're going to start to see fat loss. Now, if you start tracking and you typically eat 3,500 calories a day, you're not gonna want to set your macros at 1800 calories or you're going to Frickin starve. So knowing your base of how you're eating right now is a really, really important first step to be able to set your macros at an appropriate level.

One thing I need to caution you on is that you do have to be really honest with yourself. One thing I hear really often is how shocked people are when they start tracking how much they're eating. You don't think it's a lot or you think your caloric intake is, you know is low, and then when you start actually logging and on paper and weighing out your portions, you may realize that you are eating more or maybe less than you actually thought you were. So you have to be really honest with yourself when you're tracking, making sure that you're just viewing it as data. It's not, it doesn't have to be emotional, but you're viewing it as data and to make that data as accurate as possible. And then after being really honest with yourself and tracking just your normal typical intake for a week, you can have a really good idea of what your maintenance level is and then create that caloric deficit from that.

Tracking Your Intake: (09:58)

From there, once you set your calories and your macros, you can just watch and see what happens. It's like, it's like a big experiment. You see how your body responds and if you see fat loss occur, you're in a deficit. If you don't see fat loss occur, you're not in a deficit. Now, the reason that you're not in a deficit could be for any number of reasons. One, maybe you're not really truly being honest with yourself and you're tracking and you're eating more than you think that you're eating. Number two, you could be overestimating how many calories you're burning with your exercise. I see this a lot with people. Um, they'd say, oh, well I go to crossfit five days a week. And so they're, they're saying, oh, I'm working out for an hour a day. And whereas you know, the actual workout portion of crossfit is like a 12 minute amrap. So really being honest with yourself about how many calories you are spending and also understand that if you consistently do something, your body acclimates very quickly to it. Meaning somebody who goes out and just runs a couple of miles is going to burn more calories doing that than a runner who goes out and runs a couple of miles Your body acclimates and becomes very efficient at whatever you put in front of it. So a runner who consistently runs is not going to burn as many calories running a mile as somebody who is usually a couch potato and gets up and runs a mile. The third reason that you may not be in a deficit is that you aren't being consistent. So you're not being consistent with your caloric intake. Meaning you think, oh, I'm eating only 1200 calories, but you may be eating 1200 calories during the week. But then you're over eating on the weekends or you're not tracking things at night or you lose it because you have a binge and restrict cycle. So if you aren't being consistent, it's you're not going to be able to have that consistent caloric deficit and you're not gonna be able to results coming from it.

Now, I highly suggest tracking your normal intake first, but then after you've done that, if you want help setting your macros and figuring out, okay, maybe I know where my calories should be, but figuring out how to break that down into carbs, fat and protein. I got you covered, girl. Go to www.bicepsafterbabies.com/11 that's the show notes for this episode. And in there will be a link to my free guide. And this is again, it's a 13 page document. It walks you step by step by step through figuring out what your calories should be and then breaking that down into how many carbs, fat, and protein that should be in order to get you the results that you want.

The Biceps After Babies Method: (12:33)

So then once you have your macro set, now what? Remember your macros are a starting point. They aren't set in stone, they aren't magic. They are where I want you to start. Now, one thing that I find with a lot of newbies for people who are just starting out tracking macros is that they feel a lot of overwhelm and overwhelm is this story that we tell ourselves and then I see a lot of people tell themselves this story of like there's too much information. It's too much like I can't do all of the things, and because they try to end up doing it all at once, they ended up doing none of it well. So I really want you to take this process, especially if you're, you're new to this, this tracking and like into learning about macros in general. I want you to take this process in three distinct phases. This is, we call this the bicester babies coaching process and this is the process I take all of my clients through and all the clients through that my team works with to be able to help people to be successful. And you need to do these steps sequentially. Meaning you can't jump from step one to step three you have to do step one, then nail. So two, and then nail step three. And that's going to really take you through this process where you can focus on things one at a time to be able to get you to where you're feeling very comfortable with knowing that you can get results with your macros.

Step 1 – Learn the Basics: (13:53)

So step one is to learn the basics. This is all of the how to stuff. This is the learning curve. There is a learning curve with macros and for most clients I see it's about a two to three week learning curve. So knowing that up front can be helpful because it allows you to give yourself a little grace and understand that you're not gonna just intuitively know this stuff. It's going to take you a little bit of time. But during that one to three week process of that learning curve, you're learning how to use your tracking app. You're learning how to find the food and the database and how to enter it in. You're learning how to weigh your food. You're learning how to arrange your day to be able to hit your macros and one tip here is if you are new to tracking and you are at the point where you're trying to hit your macros and you can't figure out why at the end of the day you end up with so many fat and not enough carbs in the protein that you didn't hit. I want you to start to pre log your day. You are going to be so much more successful if you pre-planned and you pre log everything first. That means you start the day with a plan. You already know if I eat x, Y and z throughout the day, I'm going to hit my macros. We call it macro tetris. You have to sit down and play a little bit macro tetris. You take your whole day, you pull, start plugging things in. You look and see where your numbers end up and then you tweak. You start to adjust you. If you're short on carbs, you start to add some carbs in. If you're over on fat, you look at your diary and see what you can take out, what fats you can take out. So you have to play a little bit of macro tetris and yes, it takes a little bit of time at first, but yes it does get easier. Macro tetris may take 10 15 minutes at first, but after you get really good at it, it's going to take like less than five minutes to be able to pre preplan your day. And I just want you to understand, and remember there is a learning curve, like just expect that going into this. All of these things that you're learning upfront of how to do, there's a learning curve and it takes time to feel comfortable with tracking and getting the hang of it. So give yourself, just understand that the first one to three weeks you're going to be focusing on all of these, like how tos and you may not hit your macros during that time. You may not hit it that consistently and that's okay. Take your focus on getting past that learning curve.

Step 2 – Nailing Consistency: (16:16)

Once you find that you're over that learning curve. And you kind of know all the hotties, you know how to track, you know how to hit your numbers, you know how to log everything in, weigh everything once you've finished step one of learning the basics, now we can move on to step two and step two is nailing consistency. And I would say that this is where most people get stuck. They intellectually know how to hit their macros, but then doing it consistently is another story. In fact, I sent out a survey recently, um, to people who are subscribed to my email list and I asked them what the hardest thing was for them in their fitness journey. And over 75% of the people who responded to the survey said that they know what to do, but doing it consistently is another story. And so I'm sure you can probably relate that maybe you have the intellectual knowledge of what to do, but then implementing that consistently over time is an entirely different story. But consistency is one of the most important things with figuring out if your macros are set appropriately. If you don't hit your numbers consistently, you cannot adjust accurately. So here's a little truth bomb for you. It does not matter how your macros are set. If you don't hit them. You could have the most perfect macros. But if you don't actually hit them day in and day out, it's not to actually do anything. So if you find that's you, if you're sitting there nodding your head and raising your hand and saying, Amber, that is totally me. Like I know how to hit my numbers. I know how to log it, I know what to track everything. How come I freaking don't do it every day? If that's you. And you're kind of at this point where you're struggling with nailing this consistency down, you have to be a little bit of a detective and you have to figure out where the breakdown is happening. And the problem that a lot of people have with this is they start to get very emotional about it. So when they start to look for where the breakdown is happening, it is a very emotional process process. And they may identify it. Well, every weekend I, you know, struggle because we go out to eat and things aren't as planned. And once they start to recognize that they start to feel bad about weekends and they start to dread the weekends and they start to feel like, well, I can't be successful on the weekends, and they have this whole emotional response and feel shame because they can't be successful on the weekends. And I think it's really important to kind of take a step back and recognize that this isn't about blaming yourself. It isn't an about inducing shame. It isn't about saying that you aren't capable of being successful. It's about identifying where your struggle is and then creating a plan to work through that struggle.

So I like to tell my clients, it's like you're being a detective, not a jury. This is, these are just facts. You're looking for facts, you're looking for patterns so that you can adjust them and so that you can identify where you can improve. I like this idea of turning frustration into fascination. So instead of it being this emotional thing of, oh gosh, I'm the worst every, every night at nine o'clock I just lose it and I just eat all the things and I'm so bad because I do that or every time my parents come into town I just can't, I can't handle the stress and I just eat and I, I am just so awful for doing that .instead of making it about you or about you, your ability to be successful. Taking a step back from that and viewing it just as data, it's data. You know when your parents come to town it makes you stress and because you're stressed, you overeat. That's some data. Now you can make a really good plan of how are you going to address that now that you know that you have stress when your parents come to town, now that you know that you tend to overeat because of that, how can we create a plan that is going to allow you to work through that because your parents are going to come to town like you're going to need to learn how to work through that. How can we create a plan that allows you to continue to be successful at that point? That typically trips you up. So consistency is huge. You have to have to have to nail consistency if you want to be able to accurately adjust your macros to be able to get the results that you want. And if you're struggling with consistency, this is where you need to focus before you start messing with your numbers, before you start trying to change things, I want you to really focus on what's tripping you up, how can you create a plan to be able to work through it so that you can really start to develop that consistency.

Step 3 – Adjusting Your Macros: (21:03)

So step number one was learning the basics. Take your time, focus on getting through that learning curve. And step number two then is to start to nail consistency. Once you have the basics, now you really need to focus on consistently hitting your macros. And that gets us to step number three. Now you can adjust to get the results that you want. So one of two things is going to happen as you develop this consistency, you are going to get a result. It's either going to be the result that you wanted or it's going to be a result that you don't want. And both of those are just feedback. It's just feedback. Are you getting the result you want or the result that you don't want? Either one, just feedback and with that feedback now what we can do is we can adjust and we can adjust so that we can get the results that we want. Now say one of the main problems is that people are often blind to their own success. Meaning they actually are seeing results but they don't recognize it. They don't recognize that it results. It can be kind of hard to see progress in yourself and it's one of the reasons that having a coach, a party who is non bias and can kind of step outside and have a bird's eye view of your progress and convince you that like yeah, you are seeing progress. It can be valuable. For example, my husband has been lifting weights for the past, you know, two and a half years, maybe three years and over that time he has put on 40 pounds of muscle. And it is hysterical to me that especially during the first year, year and a half, he could not see the progress. Like he would look in the mirror and he would be like, why don't I look any different? Like why am I not seeing any muscle gains? And I would just stare at him with my eyes bugged out because I was like, honey, like you, like you look entirely different. Like I can see the change, I can see your back as wider, I can see your chest as bigger. Like I can see all of these things. But he would look in the mirror and he wouldn't see any change. And so it's one of the reasons that progress pictures are so, so valuable. And I know everyone hates to take them, but they're valuable because they give you actual feedback. You don't notice the changes day to day. It's like your hair, you don't notice your hair growing longer and then all of a sudden it's time for a haircut. But you didn't notice that progress that changed like day to day. And that happens so often with our bodies is that we are blind to the results that we're getting in.

So, so often people will say, I'm not getting results. Nothing's happening. Nothing's changing. And one of the reasons is because they aren't paying attention to all the things that are changing, the little changes that are happening over time that are happening day to day so that you don't actually see or feel the changes until they compound. So now that you've gotten that feedback, you can adjust your numbers. And I want to make this really important point that a lot of people like they just want to mess around with their numbers. So they set their numbers and then they tweak them and then they tweak them and they, they just kind of like willy nilly adjust them thinking that they're going to find some magic numbers that are just going to work better than, than the previous ones. And I really am going to reiterate again that there's nothing magic about a set of numbers. The best way to get results is to be consistent with your macros and then be able to take that feedback that you get, the results that you get from that and adjust to be able to get the results that you actually want to get. So if you are stuck on step one or two and you're learning the basics or you're trying to develop that consistency, stick with those steps before you move on to step three, which is adjusting your macros. Because newsflash, if you aren't hitting your numbers now, changing them is likely not going to do anything. The numbers aren't magic. I cannot stress this enough to adjust accurately. You have to first be consistent.

How to Adjust Your Macros: (25:03)

Now. If you're to this point and you're like, okay, I'm good Amber, like I've been consistent. I learned the basics, I'm doing really well, but I'm not getting the results that I want. Now what do I do? Okay. So now is when we can talk about adjusting your macros, but before we do that we need to actually make sure that you actually aren't getting results because like I said, a lot of times it's really hard for us to see the results ourselves. So I have four questions that I want you to ask yourself and these four questions are on the cheat sheet that is on the show notes. So you can go onto the show notes www.bicepsafterbabies.com/11 and you can download this cheat sheet that gives you a flow chart of how to work through adjusting your macros.

But the four questions that I need you to ask yourself are,

1.  have you been consistent and have you been consistent for two full weeks? That means 14 continuous days. It includes weekends, it includes like every single one of those 14 days. Have you been consistent? And this is kind of like you got to do a little bit of gut check, right? Like have you really been consistent? If the answer is yes. Okay, great. Now we can move on to question number two.
2. Has Your weight decreased during that time and this is a pretty black and white one. You can look at the scale and you can say, okay, over the last two weeks has my weight decreased? Yes or no? If the answer is no, it hasn't decreased. Now we move on to question number three. Have any of your measurements decreased? This is a really important one and one that people don't often do. A lot of people skip measurements, they weigh themselves and they may even take progress pictures, but they skip measurements. And guys measurements are where you see a lot of the change happen. It is essential to be taking measurements and to recognize that your measurements may not decrease in the way that you want or expect. Meaning most people want their waist measurement and their hip measurement to go down and that may not be where you see the change. You may see the change in your chest or in your arms or in your legs or in your calf or in your neck. So it's really important that you're taking these measurements week after week so that you actually can get an accurate idea of if fat loss is occurring. Remember, fat loss and weight loss are not the same thing. You can have no weight change. The scale says the exact same thing and yet you can still have fat loss and you can see those measurements decreasing. And so it's really important that you're taking those measurements.
3. So the question number three is, has any have in your measurements decreased? And if the answer is no, then you move to the last question.
4. Question number four, do you feel or look leaner? So these are the two things you can you look at your progress pictures. Is there change happening on your progress pictures and or do you feel leaner? So often I get clients who say, well I wake up in the morning and I feel tighter and I feel leaner, but then I step on the scale and it hasn't changed and I just want to tell them, and I do tell them, trust yourself, trust your body. You know your body well. You've been waking up for the last 30 something years. If you wake up and you feel leaner, it is likely because you are leaner. I have clients comment that they're seeing their collarbones more or their rings are starting to fit or a shirt that used to be too tight isn't as tight anymore. Those are all results that point to the fact that you are seeing fat loss occur regardless of what you're seeing on the scale. So I need you to look at that. Are you feeling or looking leaner if you can honestly answer no to that. So no measurement change, no weight change, no difference in looking or feeling leaner.

Now is where we've gotten to the point where we can say, okay, this may be a weight loss plateau and now we can adjust your macros. And my suggestion to you would be one of two options. One, either drop your carbs by 20 grams, so that's each day so your carbs dropped by 20 grams each day. Or you can add an extra hour of cardio. And that's for the entire week. It's not like an extra hour of cardio each day. So for the entire week you're adding 60 more minutes of cardio. And what that does is it's going to increase your caloric deficit either by reducing your caloric intake or by increasing your caloric expenditure. And now you wash, rinse and repeat. You go back to being consistent and you use those new macros or that new exercise schedule for another two weeks and you reassess at the end of that two weeks. Are you seeing change on the scale? Are you seeing your, your measurements decrease? Are you seeing a difference in the level of leanness that you have? And so we wash, rinse and repeat until we find the level of, you know, your macros, your caloric intake, that is going to produce the results that you want.

Preferences to Consider when Setting Macros: (30:01)

Now the last thing, there are no magic numbers, but there are a few things to consider when you're setting your macros and when you're trying to develop this consistency and adjusting your numbers. And it goes back to what I said earlier, that I don't care how ideal your numbers are. If you can't hit them consistently, then they are worthless. And so some things that I want you to consider in setting your personal macro numbers and finding personal macro numbers that help you to be consistent and help you that fit into your life and not the other way around. One question is, are you finding yourself like constantly over eating because of hunger? So sometimes people set their macros really, really low thinking, Oh, if I set my numbers really low, really big caloric deficit, then I'm going to see faster results. And that may be the case. But if you find that you're overeating a ton because you're hungry all the time, then you're basically negating that caloric deficit. So if you find that that's the case, it is okay to increase your macros k to decrease that caloric deficit if it's going to help you to be more consistent. And so if you're struggling with consistency because it comes down to you being hungry all the time. Yeah, first focus on your water intake. First, focus on increasing your fiber and increasing the amount of high volume foods that you eat. Those are all good first steps, but it also is okay to adjust your caloric intake up so that you are able to stay more consistent because if you're able to stay more consistent, you're going to see more progress in the long run.

Another reason that you may need to adjust your numbers is if you prefer higher fat versus higher carbs. There is individual differences in this. Some people really prefer to have higher carbs. I tend to find that people who work out a lot tend to perform a lot better if they have higher carbs, but the people who are more sedentary, I often find that they perform better if they have more fat. This is as much of an individual thing as it is a, you know, workout versus non workout thing. But some people just like higher cards and their body responds better to that and some people like higher fats and it's okay to do a little bit of experimenting here and to use a little bit of personal preference to be able to set your numbers up at ones that are going to be able to be consistently hit by you. It's also important to think about, do you like to eat a lot more on the weekends? It's okay to adjust your numbers so that maybe you have more calories on the weekends and you're a little bit in a bigger deficit during the weekdays to compensate for that. So personal preference is really important when setting your macros and when adjusting because if you can't be consistent on it, it doesn't really matter. Dietary adherence is one of the biggest factors in seeing not only results but in seeing longterm results. And then the last one is a big one that with protein, cause this is what I get a lot, is that oh this is way, way too much protein. I can't eat this much protein, it's important that you feel like you're able to hit your numbers. And if that means bringing your protein down so that you can feel consistent in hitting it or so that you can eat foods that you like and that you enjoy, then it's okay to adjust your numbers in order to again, make you more adherent. So I want you to really remember, macros aren't magic, okay? There's no set of magical numbers that are like just gonna have you had these incredible results and if you adjust your macros 10 grams either way, then they just don't work. It doesn't work like that. We find what works, we tweak and adjust and find if something works better. It's all this big experiment. And so remember setting your macros is a starting point. It's a jumping off point, but you have to really start to have that consistency and then look at the results that you're getting and the versus the results that you want and adjust to be able to make those match up.

Do I need a Coach? (33:55)

One word about coaching, because obviously I'm a coach. That's what I do. Like I coach women to be able to hit the results and get the hit the goals that they want. So is it worth it to hire a coach? Let's kind of broach that subject. First of all, I think it is valuable if you, again, at the beginning and I said if you're someone who's going to second guess you setting your own macros and you just kinda want it done for you so that you can trust it and move forward. I think it's great to have someone set your Macros, a coach who has done it for a lot of people. I think there's a lot of value in that. However, I also think there's a lot of value in just setting your own numbers and know that you know your body and so there can be a lot of value in knowing yourself and being able to set your numbers and, and feel empowered by doing so. Now when it comes to like actual coaching over a period of time, a good coach is going to help you work through that sticking point of figuring out consistency. Again, this is where most people struggle and a good coach is going to help you create routines, create habits, create goals that are going to help you not only figure out where the sticking points are for you, but then actually help you to learn to work through them. A really good coach is going to help you not only figuring out the logistics, but also help you dive into the mindset, the stories you tell yourself, what you expect to happen, how you speak to yourself. Um, those types of things are, are stuff that aren't talked about enough in my opinion, and that really impact your results and not only your results right away, but your longterm results and your ability to maintain. I also think that it's really important to understand that there is value in, in a goal that you have. My Mentor, James Wedmore always says, the transformation is in the transaction. Meaning when you put money on the table, when you pay for something, it means that you're serious and it means that you are lighting a fire into your buns to say, you know what, I'm going to show up and I'm going to do this work and I'm going to make a change. And so for a lot of people, paying the money for a coach is a way to make them serious about a change that they wanted to see in their, in their lives. One of the best things that I have invested in in my life has been coaches. I've invested in business coaches, I've invested in lifting coaches, I've invested in trainings and education. And I think that a coach, a good coach is one that helps you see the forest from the trees and helps you to reach heights that you wouldn't have been able to reach on your own. So Is there value in coaching? Absolutely. There's absolutely value in the accountability. There's a value in having someone who's gone through it prior to you and who can kind of guide you through the thick of it. There's value in having somebody create the plan and just having you focus on execution. A lot of times people get bogged down if they have to both create the plan and execute it. When you can cut that in half, give the plan creation to a coach and just focus on execution. It allows you to put your energy and your effort into um, just the execution portion. So there's a lot of value in having a coach. Do you have to have a coach to see results? Absolutely not. You can for sure do a lot of this yourself and plenty of people have been successful adjusting and tweaking and doing their macros on their own. A lot of it really comes down to knowing yourself and knowing how you are going to be able to see results in the best way possible.

Wrap up: (37:29)

So that's going to wrap up this episode. I hope that this was helpful. I hope it really nailed home this point that there's nothing secret, there's nothing magical about setting your numbers. It comes down a lot to science and to viewing this all as one big experiment. Viewing it as something fun, like view it as something that you get. You get to put in something into the machine. You get a result out and you look and see is that the result I want? If not, what can I tweak and adjust to be able to get the result that I desire? Again, one more time. There's the two freebies for this episode, the setting your macros guide and the cheat sheet that's going to help you work through adjusting your macros and you can get both of those at www.bicepsafterbabies.com/11 which is also where the show notes will be for this episode. Please, please, please share this episode. If there's someone that you know that wants to dive into Macros, maybe send them episode two and then episode 11 as a followup. If there's someone who has been frustrated because they've been trying to get results and they can't figure out how to get those results or how to nail that consistency, send them this episode. Also make sure you hit that subscribe button so that every week, every Tuesday you get the new episodes that are being released. This wraps up today's episode of biceps after babies radio. I'm Amber, now go out and be strong because remember my friend, you can do anything.

Outro

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