234: How To Count Macros Without Overwhelm

Introduction 

You're listening to Biceps After Babies Radio episode number 234.

Hello and welcome to Biceps After Babies Radio. A podcast for ladies who know that fitness is about so much more than pounds lost 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, wife, and mom of four. Each 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 experience 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.

 

Welcome  0:47

Hey, hey, hey, welcome back to another episode of Biceps After Babies Radio, I'm your host, Amber Brueseke. And first up before we dive into this topic of how to count macros without overwhelming, I want to tell you about something that is coming up very soon, meaning this Thursday. 

 

How to use macro counting as a tool effectively  1:04

If you are tired of your only tool for transformation being restriction and deprivation and cutting out food groups, and you want to be someone who can look in the mirror and actually see a visible transformation. And like me, and you aren't willing to cut out sugar to get there, then macro counting is the tool that is missing from your tool belt. But just like any tool, any hammer, a saw, the tool is really only as effective as the person who is wielding the tool actually makes it. And when I see time and time again, are women who start using the tool of macro counting without really understanding how to do it. They don't understand how to set or adjust their macros. And this leads them to get lackluster results, getting frustrated with the process and scrolling through Instagram just feeling defeated because they're like well, macro counting worked for that woman, why the heck didn't work for me. And then getting to this place where they just quit and you say something silly like Well, I tried macro counting and it didn't work. That's like letting go of a helium balloon and watching it float away and saying, Well, I guess gravity just didn't work. No friend, science is science. Gravity is working just like it should on that balloon, you just don't quite understand the nuances of gravity, right? And it's the same thing with macro counting. The question is not does macro counting work? Because macro counting is just basic science. The question is, how can I wield that scientific principle? How can I wield that tool of macro counting to get better results? How can I use that tool for my specific situation? And that's what I teach my clients inside of Confidence In Your Numbers. 

 

Confidence In Your Numbers  2:45

I created Confidence In Your Numbers because I saw a big glaring hole in the market. And that is too many women are relying on expensive coaches to set and adjust their macros for them. Now, again, I get it. Most coaches want you to pay them and in exchange, they'll set their macros for you. And then if you want to pay them more money, they'll “coach” you and they'll adjust your macros for you week to week. But of course, they're not going to actually teach you how to do it yourself. Because why? Well, it's simple. It benefits them to make adjusting your macros and set them to feel as complicated and as nebulous as possible. But it's really not that complicated. And well, that's not my business model. I don't want to set your macros for you. And I really don't want you to keep paying me to have me adjust them for you, I would rather teach you how to do it yourself. So that you don't have to keep paying someone month to month to do something that really is simple enough for you to do on your own. It's kind of like that comment saying, If you give a woman a fish, eat for a day, and if you give a woman teach a woman how to fish, eat for a lifetime. So the question really is, do you want to be the woman who gets given a fish, and then you're left metaphorically to starve when you stop paying for the fish? Or do you want to be the woman who learns how to fish so you can keep snagging those fish for free without having to rely on someone else to feed you? If you're like me, and you're the type of woman who wants to learn how to fish then Confidence In Your Numbers is for you. 

 

What is Confidence In Your Numbers all about  4:10

Confidence In Your Numbers is a live masterclass where I teach you how to set your macros for your unique body. And I teach you how to adjust them over time. Because here's the second common mistake that I see a lot of women making when they start counting macros. They set their macros and they're like, oh, success is just as easy as following these numbers to the finish line. Which is kind of like saying you can travel the world in a single vehicle, right? Okay, stay with me on this metaphor. So sure, a car is great for driving across the US. But then, when you hit the Atlantic Ocean, you can't drive that car any further, you have to get into a new vehicle like a boat or a plane to keep going. And the same thing applies to your macros. If you just set your macros once and keep following them, you're going to plateau, you're going to hit the Atlantic Ocean and you're going to get frustrated because what you're doing isn't working anymore. And then you're gonna quit and then you're really not gonna see results. So just like you have to swap out your vehicle based on the terrain. If you want to avoid plateauing in your journey, you're going to need to adjust your macros throughout the process, which for some people could feel like it's really complex, and that's what most coaches want you to believe so that you'll pay them to do it. But I'm not like the type of coach, which is why inside of Confidence In Your Numbers I've simplified, adjusting macros into something that anyone can learn and allows you to skip the overpriced coach, accelerate your results and keep your hard-earned money in your pocket. 

 

Come and join Confidence In Your Numbers  5:30

So if you want to learn to set and adjust your own macros, come join me for my Live, Paid Masterclass on July 28, you can go to my website right now and you can purchase a prior recording of Confidence In Your Numbers. It's always on sale for $199 but because I will be delivering this class live which is always more fun anyway. If you joined before July 28, you'll get all the secrets about setting and adjusting your macros for just $99 because Confidence In Your Numbers is the perfect step to take before signing up for MACROS 101. We also allow you to apply what you pay towards Confidence In Your Numbers into MACROS 101, which means if you're listening to this and you plan to join us for the next round of MACROS 101 at the end of August. Joining Confidence In Your Numbers is essentially free because the investment you make in Confidence In Your Numbers will be applied towards your MACROS 101 enrollment, which is super cool. So if you're ready to finally snap that after picture that you've always wanted, come and join my live masterclass Confidence In Your Numbers and you're going to walk away with all those secrets that most coaches won't share about how to set and adjust your own macros. To sign up, go to bicepsafterbabies.com/confidence to get registered for the class. And I'll see you on July 28. That's bicepsafterbabies.com/confidence. 

 

Experience of overwhelm  6:52

Okay, so let's dive into today's topic, which I'm very excited about. Because I think, as I've taught macros, and macro counting since 2016, and one of the common lines of experience of people, as they start to track macros, is overwhelming, I hear all the time, it's something that I have to work clients through inside of MACROS 101, it's just a very, very common experience of overwhelm. And so I thought, hey, it would be great to record a podcast to talk people through this because I think sometimes people get surprised and shocked by that overwhelm. And I think if we can normalize the experience of overwhelm and help you to learn how to move through it and get past it, it's not only going to impact you in being able to get better results with macro counting, but it's actually going to be able to be applicable in so many areas of your life. Because I have to imagine if you're like me that you get overwhelmed all the time like Becker County is not the only overwhelming thing that we experienced in our lives. Am I right? I get overwhelmed all the time. We have kids and jobs and houses and spouses and community service and personal development. And oh, yeah, every once in a while, I'd like to have a little bit of fun, please, and thank you. 

 

Overwhelm in the context of counting macros, and how to count macros without overwhelm  8:08

So I think many of us experience overwhelm in lots of contexts. And so as many of the things that I teach, and hopefully, if you've been around for a while, you've started to learn this that, like a lot of the things that I'm teaching you are absolutely applicable and directly applicable to your fitness journey. However, it's like this like secret that I don't talk about a lot, but a lot of you already realized, that the things that I teach you are directly applicable to plenty of your life outside of the realm of fitness. And that's one of the reasons I love what I do is because I always say what I do is about fitness but it's not only about fitness, it's about all these other areas of your life. And so we're going to be talking about overwhelm in the context of counting macros, and how to count macros without overwhelm. But the techniques and tricks and tips that you learn today are going to be very applicable in many, many, many contexts in your life. And that's what I love about what I get to do. 

 

Is feeling overwhelmed really the problem?  9:07

So first, I want to address the title of this episode because I named it how to count macros without overwhelm. But it's a little bit of a misnomer. Like I named it that way for like SEO sake and people finding the podcast and being interested in listening to the podcast and hitting play. Let's be honest, that's why I named it that way. However, I'm gonna put it out here right now that I think the expectation that we can do something without overwhelm is actually one of the problems. I think us seeing overwhelm as a problem is the actual problem, meaning overwhelm is inherent. Overwhelm is an experience you are going to have. Overwhelm happens when you are learning something new. We get overwhelmed when we're learning something new. It's a very normal experience. So the problem is not that you feel overwhelmed. The problem is what happens next. It's how you respond to that feeling of overwhelm. 

 

My daughter’s first-hand experience of being overwhelmed  10:08

So I remember back when my daughter was back in, she was just going into middle school, coming out of elementary school. And she really, really, really struggled with math, she was having a hard time grasping the topics, hard time grasping the subject. And we had just moved from North Carolina to California, which added like a whole nother layer, right? She came from the North Carolina curriculum, she came into the California curriculum. And while math is math, wherever you go, the way that they presented, the timing in which they presented, and the order in which they presented are different for different curriculums. And so she was having a really hard time transitioning into math and learning and understanding it. And every single day, it was really, almost every single day, she was in tears, trying to do her math homework. And it was like this consistent thing that she and her dad and I were both working through is, Okay, kids cry again, I got, we got to work through whatever she's struggling with. Because she just felt so overwhelmed. She felt like oh my gosh, it's like, I just don't know how to do these things I and even, she goes, keeps going on, it's like, I don't know how to do these things, which means I'm going to fail, and I'm never going to be able to graduate and you know, all these things that our brain starts to do running away with it. But in reality, she just felt very overwhelmed. 

 

When you do something new, overwhelm is a normal and natural part of that experience  11:28

And that experience you've probably experienced before. And I want to submit that the only way to not feel overwhelmed in your life, is to never ever do anything new. If you don't ever challenge yourself, if you don't ever push yourself, if you don't ever learn anything new, maybe you can go through life without overwhelming. But that seems kind of like a pretty lame life to me. So if you are going to do something new, if you're going to learn, if you're going to grow, overwhelm is a natural, normal part of that experience. And I think that the first thing that I want you to understand is that overwhelm is not a bad thing. Overwhelm simply means you're doing something new, you're learning something new. And when we start to have a different relationship with overwhelm, instead of feeling overwhelmed and having it be like this crisis, of like, oh, my gosh, I don't know what to do, I feel overwhelmed. And instead, we can take a step back and be like, oh, I feel overwhelmed. Yeah, that totally makes sense, I'm learning something new, we can have a different relationship with overwhelm. And when you can change your relationship with overwhelm, you can be more productive moving forward. 

 

Differences between a dieter mentality to a scientist mentality 12:40

I talk about this a lot inside of MACROS 101, we talk about the idea of moving from a dieter mentality to a scientist mentality. And let me talk through some of the differences between the two. The dieter is very reactive. This means you step on the scale, the scale is up, and they freak out, and they react to that situation. Or they put on a pair of pants, they look in the mirror, and they don't feel great. And so then they react to that situation. And it's very emotional. It's very off the cuff. The first thing that comes to your mind, dive into a diet, hate yourself, and feel like you have to like change everything, right? It's very reactive, and it's very emotionally driven. Whereas the scientist has a much broader perspective and is a much more calm, cool, collected thinker. So the scientist steps on the scale, see the scale is up, and is able to take a step back and work through that logically. What does that mean? How, why could that be? What are some variables I need to consider? What does my body trying to tell me, right and make a decision, a proactive decision, not a reactive, a proactive decision moving forward, based on the data and the feedback that they received. So you can already start to see that the dieter versus the scientists is going to get completely different outcomes. One is reactive and emotionally driven, and one is proactive and analytically driven. And so a lot of what I'm helping clients to do is to move from that very classic, most women fit into the dieter mentality, and helping them move and shift into the scientists' mentality. 

 

Establish our relationship with overwhelm 14:24

And it's the same thing in this situation when we're talking about overwhelm. Most people are very reactive to overwhelm. Oh my gosh, I'm feeling overwhelmed, throw your hands up in the air, and like, react to it, quit or sit down or cry or whatever. We react to overwhelm. And what I would like to offer is that when we can change our relationship with overwhelm, and we don't see it as a terrible, horrible thing, but rather just an indication that we are learning and growing, we can have a much better relationship with it and instead of being reactive to overwhelm, we can be proactive and make a decision from an empowered place first of how to proceed. 

 

Overwhelm becomes a sneaky way that we rationalize to ourselves why we can quit  15:03

Now, here's the tricky thing about overwhelm. Overwhelm is a very, very classic way that we self-sabotage. It's actually a way that we keep ourselves stuck. And it's a way for us to give ourselves permission to quit. So one of the things that I think is super fascinating about human psychology is that we never make decisions that we haven't rationalized for ourselves. Even if you think about, like, the most insane decisions, you know, somebody decides to go and shoot somebody, or murder someone or something like heinous, right, like a decision that most of us would look at and question like, how could you make that decision? If you go into the mind of that person who did that heinous thing, they, 100% walked themselves through a rationalization of why that was an okay thing to do. You know, you think back into, like the Holocaust. And, you know, there's been research studies that have been done talking to some of the Nazi soldiers, and some of the terrible things that they did to the Jewish people. And you talk to those Nazi soldiers and they will walk you through their personal rationalization of why they did what they did. We always rationalize our decisions and our actions. So anytime you are taking any action, you've rationalized it in your mind. There's a logical, rational reason that you come up with to get yourself out of it. And that's what we do a lot of times with overwhelm. Overwhelm becomes a sneaky way that we rationalize to ourselves why we can quit. So we feel overwhelmed and it's a way that we can rationalize, Oh, I feel overwhelmed. Thus, I can stop this. And what happens is, that we continue to stay stuck. Because we feel overwhelmed and then we give ourselves permission to stop because I feel overwhelmed, I feel uncomfortable. 

 

Every time you step outside of your comfort zone, welcome to overwhelm 17:12

But here's the key. And this goes back to what I was talking about with growth and learning and expanding. That process is inherently going to be uncomfortable. What you have done, and the actions you have taken to this point, have created the results you currently have in your life. Look around, whatever results that you've created in your life have been from the actions you've taken to this point. And if you're cool with that, and you're like, Yes, I love it, I love all of the results that I've gotten, and I've created in my life, I'm super happy just to stay here forever, then awesome. You can continue staying in your comfort zone and you can continue to keep doing what you're doing to maintain whatever you've created. But most of us desire something else, desire something more, and have a goal. We want to change something in our current reality. And so you can start to see that if you want to change something in your current reality, you have to do something different moving forward. And if you're doing something different moving forward, you're going to be stepping outside of your comfort zone. And every time you step outside of your comfort zone, welcome to overwhelm. Welcome to confusion, welcome to the process of learning. And yet, what a lot of us do is we start to exit that comfort zone because we say, hey, I want this new thing I want to this goal, I want to change my body, I want to lift this weight so I have to do something different. And as soon as we start doing something different, it becomes overwhelming and confusing. And then we give ourselves permission to quit. And so then we stay stuck, and we don't ever progress, and we don't ever hit goals and we don't ever change. So when you can change your relationship with overwhelm, and not have it freak you out when you feel it, and instead say, oh, gosh, yeah, of course, I feel overwhelmed, do something new. I'm learning something new. So yeah, that totally makes sense of why I would feel overwhelmed, you're gonna have a much relate better relationship with overwhelm and be able to move forward in spite of overwhelm and not let it keep you stuck. Not let it force you to quit, not let it rationalize us giving up on your dreams or your goals or your desires. 

 

The need for a systematic way to get out of being overwhelmed 19:15

So instead, what I want you to think when you feel overwhelmed. Well, I thought what you think first of all, of course, I'm you know, well, welcome to overwhelm, I kind of expected that was gonna be coming, I'm learning something new. So of course everyone was going to happen. But then the key is, is that simple when that happens, you need a systematic way to get out of overwhelm so that you don't stay stuck and that you don't quit. And that's what I'm going to walk you through here as I want to help you to have a way to get past overwhelm. So if I was technically naming this podcast accurately, it wouldn't have been how to count macros without overwhelm. It would be how to get past counting macros with the overwhelm that you're going to feel while you count macros, but that was a really long title. So I went with how to count backward without overwhelm. Are we cool with that? Okay, cool.

 

There is a learning curve in macro counting  20:05

Now, let's be a little realistic with macro counting. There is a learning curve, there's a learning curve. Anybody who tells you differently is the line, there is a learning curve with counting macros, it is likely different than anything you've ever done in your life before, or at least different enough that it's going to feel a little confusing, it's going to feel hard, it's going to feel a little bit overwhelming, it's going to feel like you're changing things. You are, you're changing things, you're doing something new in order to get a new result in the future. Okay, so macro counting has a learning curve, and you likely will get overwhelmed during that learning curve. So if you can go into counting macros expecting that, it stops surprising you when it happens. 

 

When you expect things to happen expect also that you will be overwhelmed  20:56

I've told this story before, but I'm going to share it again. Back when my husband was in residency, he worked very, very long hours for any of you guys who have to know anybody in medical training residency is long hours. And he would often go to the hospital at 5 am in the morning, and he would get home at 10:30- 11 o'clock at night, day after day after day. And it was a lot. And I had two little kids and ended up having two more during residency. So by the end of the residency, we had four kids. And the only way that I was able to make it through residency was by having the expectation that he just wasn't going to be home. I didn't ever expect him for dinner. I didn't ever expect him for weekends. I didn't ever expect him for any holidays, I made all of my plans and all of my life around the assumption that he was not going to be home. So then when I'm sitting down to dinner and feeding the kids, I'm not angry that he's not home, because that was what I expected. I expected that he wasn't going to be home. So sometimes he was home and then that was like, Oh, this is amazing. He's home, I didn't expect him to be home. What a great surprise, instead of me being angry when he wasn't home because I just I wasn't gonna be home on the weekends. I planned all my weekends. Like he wasn't gonna be home planned for holidays like he was gonna be home. And so if he was I was happy instead of disappointed. And that is what I'm talking about with overwhelm. When you just expect that it's going to happen, I'm gonna get overwhelmed. There's going to be a moment of overwhelm with learning how to count macros, then you're not surprised when it happens and you can be like, oh, yeah, hey, overwhelm there she is. And I already have a plan for how I'm going to work through you. 

 

The antidote to overwhelm is action  22:37

So when you feel that overwhelm, what do you do next? The key to overwhelm is action. That's the antidote. The antidote to overwhelm is action. Because what is the tendency, if you're just reacting to overwhelm? What is the tendency to stop, it's to quit. It's like, metaphorically like you're running a race, and then you sit down in the race. That's how most of us respond to overwhelm. We think I feel overwhelmed, which means I should quit. So I can stop feeling overwhelmed. Instead of I feel overwhelmed, which means I need to get into action to move through this. It's almost like if you get caught in a riptide so if you swim in the ocean, you know that there are rip tides that are tied that like pull you out to sea. And if you get caught in a riptide, the worst thing that you can do is to stop swimming or to like even try to fight the riptide. That's the worst thing that you can do because you're just going to stay in it and it's going to pull you out to sea. So what is the key to getting out of a riptide is actually to swim parallel to the shore. So you don't fight against the riptide, you don't try to swim towards shore because the Riptide is gonna be strong enough, that's gonna pull you out. But you also don't stop you just don't like float on your back, because that's gonna pull you out to sea. You keep swimming and you swim parallel to the short you swim a certain way when you get caught in that riptide and that gets you out of the riptide and like past the riptide and it's the same thing with overwhelm. When you feel overwhelmed, the key is not to just sit down. The key is to take action to get you out of the overwhelm, to get you past the hump to get you on the other side of that mountain. 

 

Ask: Where could I start? 24:31

So how do we do that? This is one of my favorite questions to ask my clients, because the question will always be will like which action should I take Amber, what's the right action? What's the very best action that I could take right now? In fact, I was working with a client recently and she had some experience some had some success and had kind of fallen off the wagon and had stopped tracking had stopped carrying had stopped you know, other things in her life became a priority. She was coming back and saying, I want to get back on track. I want to refocus on some of my goals. But  I'm paralyzed by like not knowing where to start, like, where should I start? And essentially, the question she was asking that she wasn't saying, in so many words was where is the right place to start. And she had paralyzed herself so much by not starting anywhere because she was worried she was going to start in the wrong place. And so I said to her, instead of asking the question, where's the right place to start? What if you could ask the question, Where could I start? Realizing that just starting in and of itself doesn't really matter where it's going to be more momentum forward than you're currently making just sitting there saying, I don't know where to start? I'm paralyzed because I don't know which one's the right one. There isn't any right one. Instead, the question, Where could I start? What is the place where I could start? And then starting there. 

 

Ask: What action could I take that moves me towards my goals and feels light and easy? 25:53

So here's the question that I'm gonna give, you can put this in your back pocket you can use it for those times that you feel overwhelmed. The question is, “What action could I take that moves me towards my goals and feels light and easy?” Okay, so it's two parts. An action that moves me closer to my goals. It gets me on the right path, it gets me on the right train. And it feels light and easy. Now, if you only focus on one or the other, it's not going to get it right. Because if you only focus on what's an action that I can take, that moves me in the right direction, a lot of times people will come up with things that yeah, you know, may move you in the right direction, but don't get you out of overwhelming, because they still feel super overwhelming. For example, people will be like, “Well, I just need to track every single food that I eat.” And I'm like, “Yeah, that would move you in the right direction. But when you check in with yourself on a scale of 0 to 10, how overwhelming does that fee?l” And they're like, “Yeah, it feels like an eight.” Okay, that's not the way to get out of overwhelm, is to like, give yourself something to continue to be overwhelmed about. And now if you only think about the back half of that question of like, something that feels like easy, there's plenty of things that feel light and easy that don't actually move the needle, right? Like, doing my hair feels light and easy, but it's not going to help me hit moving towards my fitness goals. Okay, so you need both something that moves you towards your goals and feels light and easy. If you're doing it on a scale, the action on a scale of 0 to 10, zero being like, oh my gosh, I could do that in my sleep, or like, oh, my gosh, I already do that. To 10 Feeling like oh my gosh, this feels so hard. I don't even know how I could do that. This should be something like a 3 or 4. Like it should feel like, yeah, it's kind of a no-brainer. I mean, I would have to take an action. I'm not like already doing that. But I'm pretty confident that I could do that tomorrow. So instead of I have to track everything that I eat, what if you pull that back, and you said, I commit to tracking my breakfast tomorrow. Well, all of a sudden, that tracking the whole day feels like an eight, tracking just your breakfast, like I can do that. That's like a 3 or 4 like I can knock that out. Great. That's a good action to take. That's a way to get out of overwhelming. Tomorrow, your commitment is to track your breakfast. Because it moves you in the right direction and it feels super light and easy. 

 

Compare what will actually happen 28:24

Now, when I present this to clients, what often will come up for them is that there's this feeling of Yeah, but it's like going to take so much longer to get there. Like that's like the slow way Amber, I don't want the slow way, I want the fast way. And might I remind you that the slowest way to get somewhere is to quit. And so our brain does this thing where we compare, like, that's how our brain works. Have you ever noticed, like, that our brain tends to use comparison in order to make sense of the world? And so a lot of you are comparing against the wrong thing you're comparing against if I did everything exactly right, and perfectly, I would get to my goal in three months. And if I take it a little slower, layer habits, do one thing at a time, it's gonna take me six months. I'm making timeframes up, it's gonna take me six months, and you're looking at a year and saying, six months is longer than three months. And you would be right. Six is longer than three. However, you're comparing against the wrong thing. You're comparing against everything perfect. And you're looking at it saying, Oh, this is going to take shorter. What you really should be comparing against is what will actually happen, which is that you feel overwhelmed and you quit. And so how long if you quit? Will it take you to get your goals? That's right, you'll never get there. So that's what you should be compared against. So is six months faster than never getting there? I guess it is. To see how we use wrong comparisons and we get ourselves all tied up in knots because we're comparing against the wrong thing. You're comparing against perfection which doesn't exist, yes. Versus what actually will happen is if you continue to require that of yourself, you will get overwhelmed and you will quit. That's what you should be compared against. So honestly, anything is faster than what would happen which is quitting, right?  

 

Steps in dealing overwhelm 30:37

Do you remember what the question is, hopefully, you wrote it down, hope you like slid it metaphorically into your back pocket so that you can pull up this question.  When you feel overwhelmed, the steps are to acknowledge the overwhelm. Welcome it. Hey, overwhelm, oh, my gosh, I know you're gonna come because I'm doing something new. This is new, of course, you're gonna be here. Hey, what's up overwhelm? Okay, so it's like acknowledging and not freaking the heck out when you feel overwhelmed. It's like, yeah, I expected this, I expected to feel overwhelmed. Welcome. Now, what's the question I can ask myself, I feel overwhelmed. What is an action that I can take that will move me toward my goals, and feels light and easy? And then here's the key. There is a commitment associated with this, right? You are now committed to whatever that action is tomorrow. You do that action tomorrow, you reward yourself, we talk a lot about celebrating wins and rewards. That is a brain hack. Your brain just like it learns to compare things. Your brain loves rewards. So set yourself up so that you're rewarding your brain. It's like training a dog. Right? Positive reinforcement when you do it, right. So you make a commitment, something that's light and easy moves you toward your goals, you execute it, you reward yourself, there's a celebration, there's a reward. The brain loves that. And then you do it again the next day, and you do it again the next day. And at some point, it's going to be like, Okay, this is like, super easy now Amber. This is just kind of part of me, I always do it, like it's not hard at all anymore. Awesome. Well, now, now we can layer on now maybe you tracked your breakfast. And that feels really easy. And you have no problems doing that. It's like, it's like what now? Cool? 

 

Taking something subconsciously and bringing it to the conscious  32:21

Well, now we can say what's the next step that I can take, that moves me in the direction that I want to go, that also feels light and easy. And maybe it's like we can go very linearly and we can say, well, now I'm going to check my breakfast and my lunch, right? So we could you could do move literally that but didn't you don't have to do it that way. But you're layering on something else. And so, from a brain perspective, what you're essentially doing is you're taking, most of our life is run on the subconscious. Your subconscious is running 99% of your day, we think our conscious brain is running a lot of our life, it's not, your subconscious running most of your life. Okay. So what you're doing is you're taking something that's happening, subconsciously, you're bringing it to the conscious, you're creating a goal, you're saying, I'm going to track my breakfast, and you are practicing it until it becomes route, and it becomes written in the subconscious, it becomes a habit. Habits are subconscious. So you've now created, you've taken something, bring it into the conscious created a goal around it, practice it enough that now it has been put back into the subconscious and now it's a habit you don't have to think about. And now you can do that with the next step. But the problem is, are so many of us trying to layer so many habits on or start so many new habits all at once. And now we have 15 new things that we're trying to do consciously. And that doesn't even work, because most of our life is well in the subconscious. So we can just be working one at a time on one of those pieces, and then make it into a habit, put it into the subconscious, and then bring the new one out. Over time, what you're going to see is you're going to start to pick up momentum. You start to see progress and that's going to make you excited, and that's going to give you momentum, and that's going to keep pushing you forward. And you may find that you can take bigger chunks, or you can take bigger leaps in your journey, or add bigger things on without resorting to quitting because you feel overwhelmed. But one of the biggest mistakes that I see people making is trying to do too much too fast with macro counting, getting overwhelmed, and then quitting. And quitting is the only thing that will guarantee that you will not get to your goals. 

 

Questions to take away in getting out of overwhelm and apply it in macro counting 34:26

So how do we take this concept of getting out of overwhelm and apply it to macro counting? I advise a step-by-step approach to counting macros. I teach this inside MACROS 101. So if you want a lot more specifics, I teach this process. But instead of diving all the way into macro counting, tracking every single thing that you eat, tracking all of your food, hitting your macros spot on every single day zeroing out your numbers, which is what most people do when they try to count macros. I advise a step-by-step approach. Now like I said, I teach that process inside of MACROS 101, so I'm not teaching it here. But in general, just think about how can you take that process and break it down into maybe more incremental steps, something that feels light and easy. And this will always depend on where you're currently at in your journey and where you want to go in your journey and what could be a step that moves you in that direction that is light and easy? That's the question that I want you to take away. 

 

The amount of energy and attention that you apply to this part of your life is going to be dependent on what's happening elsewhere  35:18

Okay, so the last thing that I want to say about overwhelm, is that none of us live in a vacuum. Okay, we all have life going on outside of fitness, tracking macros, and your physical goals, right? I have to assume. Most of us have lives, we have jobs, we have kids, we have parents and husbands and communities and friends and like, we have other things that are going on outside. And I think there's this tendency to feel the pressure, that fitness, weight goals, body have to be a priority, all the time. And so I had somebody recently ask me, she was saying, she's like, I am a single mom, I'm homeschooling my kids. I'm like, super busy, and I'm feeling super overwhelmed but I want to learn how to count macros. And my response back to her was, you know what, this may not be the best time. If you're feeling completely overwhelmed in other areas of your life, relationships, school, work, right, and you're dealing with a lot of overwhelm in other areas of your life. Probably not the best time to layer on macro counting. Now, don't take that, and use it as an excuse, right? And use it as a rationalization of like, well, Amber said that it has like, you have to have no overwhelm in any area of your life if you want to start counting macros. That's not what I'm saying, friend, don't use that as an excuse. Okay? That doesn't mean that you don't start. I'm not saying you can't start on a goal. I'm not saying that you can't take an action towards the physical goals that you have, even if you feel overwhelmed. But I'm saying the amount of energy and attention that you apply to this part of your life is going to be dependent on what's happening elsewhere. And if you're like, Yeah, I have nothing else that I'm really like focusing on right now, I'm not really stressed in either my life, maybe you can jump into macro counting a little bit faster and with both feet, and you can start tracking all three macros, and you can hit all of your numbers right away, and that's not a big deal for you. If you're someone who you're like I am limited with time, I have a lot of overwhelm in other areas of my life, doesn't mean you can't start counting macros, but it's going to look a little different than somebody else. And maybe you need to start a little slower. And maybe the first thing that you're doing is you're just simply tracking your breakfast. You know, like you're not that's it, you're just tracking your breakfast. So what I don't want you to do is hear that, oh, if I feel overwhelmed by others in my life I can't track macros at all. What I do want you to hear is if you are overwhelmed by others in your life and you want to get started on a fitness goal, how can you make it a small minute of two or three or four on the scale of like, how hard is this to be able to do and break it down into smaller chunks, smaller pieces so that you're moving forward but you're not getting overwhelmed enough that you end up quitting and sabotaging yourself and your goals. 

 

Takeaway  38:23

Okay, so hopefully, at this point, you're feeling a little bit more like you know how to defeat the bad guy, the big bad guy of overwhelming. I mean, it's kind of like when you are you meet the Bowser Boss. And every Bowser Boss has like an Achilles heel it has the thing that you have to do to be able to be the boss. Well, now you know this boss of overwhelm, you know how to defeat it, the question to ask yourself, and then the next step is taking action and moving in that direction, building that momentum, rewarding yourself for the action that you are taking, and slowly working your way towards the changes that you want to make in your life. 

 

Confidence In Your Numbers  39:03

I hope that this was helpful. If you want more help in setting and learning how to adjust your macros, I highly recommend coming to Confidence In Your Numbers on Thursday. It's a live class where I will teach you step-by-step I'll walk you through we'll do it together, how to set your macros for you and your personal goals and your personal body. And then also how to adjust them because you can't just set your macros once. It's not how it works, can just set your macros and like follow them to eternity and be like oh, I got my macros I'm just gonna go and get all the results. Now, no. Macro counting, takes adjustment and takes tweaking and it takes zeroing in on what's going to be most effective for you and your body and I teach that process inside of Confidence In Your Numbers. So we're running out a sale on it. It's a $99 class you can get in by going to bicepsafterbabies.com/confidence and come and join me in Confidence In Your Numbers. That wraps up this 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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