What Are Macros and Calories?

< Full Episode

Transcript: What Are Macros and Calories?

Season 7, Episode 16  | November 28, 2023

 

Jamie Martin:

Welcome to Life Time Talks, the podcast that’s aimed at helping you achieve your health, fitness, and life goals. I’m Jamie Martin, Editor in Chief of Experience Life, Life Time’s whole-life health and fitness magazine.

 

David Freeman:

And I’m David Freeman, Director of Alpha, one of Life Time’s signature group training programs. We’re all in different places along our health and fitness journey, but no matter what we’re working towards, there are some essential things we can do to keep moving in the direction of a healthy purpose-driven life.

 

Jamie Martin:

In each episode we bring down various elements of healthy living, including fitness and nutrition, mindset and community, and health issues. We’ll also share real inspiring stories of transformation.

 

David Freeman:

And we’ll be talking to experts from Life Time and beyond who will share their insights and knowledge so, you have the tools and information you need to take charge of your next steps. Here we go.

 

Welcome back to another episode of Life Time Talks. I’m David Freeman…

 

Jamie Martin:

And I’m Jamie Martin, and in this episode we are talking about calories and macronutrients. You know what we’re talking about, protein, carbs, fat, with Paul Kriegler.

 

David Freeman:

Yes. Paul Kriegler is our registered dietician and personal trainer, and is a Director of our Nutritional Product Development for Life Time. Welcome back, Paul.

 

Paul Kriegler:

Thanks for having me back.

 

Jamie Martin:

You’ve been here a few times now. Does it feel like old hat to you these days?

 

Paul Kriegler:

Yeah. It’s kind of a normal rhythm now.

 

Jamie Martin:

Well, you can come back as often as you want, we like having you. All right. So, I mentioned at the top, we’re talking about calories and macronutrients, and there’s a lot of times with both of those, there’s lots of shoulds and shouldn’ts and what we should do and all of that thing. So, there’s a lot of confusion. So, let’s start by just really getting grounded. What are calories and what are macronutrients?

 

Paul Kriegler:

Sure. Calories is a measure of energy, and calories in food that can be measured in a lab. It’s really describing how much potential energy is stored in the chemical bonds of the food, right? So, when our body ingests or when we ingest food, our body breaks down that food into kind of its most basic constituents.

 

And the major nutrients are called macronutrients and they happen to supply different amounts of calories based on the macronutrient class that they belong to. Carbohydrates, things like, starches and sugars so, like, potatoes and fruit, supply most of their calories as carbohydrates. We get about four calories per gram from carbohydrates, the digestible carbohydrates. There’s an asterisk there. Fiber is also classified chemically as a carbohydrate but it doesn’t necessarily directly give us calories when we eat it because it’s indigestible.

 

The next macronutrient to pay attention to is fat and that supplies about nine calories per gram on average, and then protein is another major nutrient, macronutrient that supplies about four calories per gram. And then there’s a fourth one that people should be aware of, adults anyway, alcohol supplies about seven calories per gram so, significant.

 

Jamie Martin:

I always find that really interesting because I think we had, maybe it was Cliff Edberg on here at one time, and he mentioned alcohol as kind of a fourth macronutrient. When did that become more common in terms of like, kind of referring to it that way, or thinking about alcohol as that?

 

Paul Kriegler:

Well, it’s energy dense so, it’s always had energy, right? It’s always given us energy. I think…I can’t speak to the history of it but alcohol, it can be a significant source or calories for somebody who, you know, drinks frequently or drinks really strong drinks, you know, a little more alcohol in something the more energy you’re getting from it, and then the more that disrupts the energy from the other macronutrients.

 

Jamie Martin:

Got it. Okay.

 

David Freeman:

The great man with this quote, “calorie management is imperfect at its best,” I think his name is Paul Kriegler. Can you explain what you meant by that?

 

Paul Kriegler:

Yeah. The calories we see on food labels, you know, by law foods with a package have to have nutrition information and calories kind of run the headline of those labels. That’s imperfect, and then there’s a couple of reasons why I say that, because even if you practice calorie counting or try to consciously control calories, it almost never behaves predictably. And what I mean by that is if somebody needs to gain weight and they just eat and they’re tallying up all the calories they’re eating, it never equates to the amount of weight they’re going to gain. You know, you’re trying to get to a calorie excess from some arbitrary number, or maybe you know something about your basal metabolism so, it’s the number of calories you’re shooting for, and so, you’re trying to exceed that to gain weight, right?

 

It’s never a linear like, perfect equation. You’ve eaten this many calories in this timeframe and now you’ve gained this much weight. Similarly on the weight loss side of the equation, it never behaves predictably. You could put a hundred people on a perfectly balanced 500-calorie-a-day deficit plan individualized to the person, and they won’t all lose one pound a week, right?

 

So, that’s why I say it’s super unpredictable, extremely frustrating, not only for practitioners, trainers, dieticians, but even more so for the client. You know, it’s literally a puzzle no one can solve because there are so many other factors that play into it. Some of them that I think are just funny to point out, food labels are allowed a 20 percent variance so, you could have a hundred calories worth of an item but really in the package it can be 80 to 120 calories, and even if it’s somewhere within that range, no one’s verified that. Like, literally no one has verified it, and if they fall outside of that range, no one’s going to get that company in trouble for it.

 

So, it’s a mystery that no one’s been able to solve, right? So, the labels are inaccurate, not purposefully but just by nature of how the labels are made and how the regulatory framework is set up. It’s not perfect. You can’t take that as truth.

 

What you can measure in the lab from a food in terms of its energy content is not the same that combusts once you ingest it into your body, and that has to do with how completely it breaks down, what your gut barrier looks like, how much of the food has been digested or processed by your microbiome, that sort of thing. So, like, everyone has individual differences there.

 

And then if we back up a little bit, the different macronutrients have different metabolic stimuli when we eat them, too. So, you might know exactly where the hundred calories you’ve just eaten, or let’s take it as a whole meal, the 500 calories you’ve just eaten, but if you have a meal that has a higher proportion of that 500 calories as protein versus a meal that has a higher proportion of those same 500 calories as carbohydrate, the effect metabolically on your whole body and the way your body partitions that energy and manages that energy intake changes completely.

 

So, that’s why I say calorie counting is imperfect. It’s really difficult to solve. I think at best we can influence it with some like, educated guessing, and there’s a ton of research on the topic. I also want to caution like, that doesn’t mean calories don’t matter. You know, just because they’re a little mysterious and confusing doesn’t mean they don’t matter. We still need to find ways to properly manage our energy intake relative to our goals.

 

Jamie Martin:

Right. One other thing you noted, too, is a lot of people use calorie tracking apps and like, can you speak a little bit to those and how like, the information like, when you’re tracking, that you’re inputting oh, I had this, you know, this meal?

 

Paul Kriegler:

Yeah. Most of them are crowd sourced so, like, any user is basically a developer for the app. You’re allowed to create custom foods, enter your own information. Sometimes that information is complete, most of the time it’s just Googled information from someone else who previously entered that same information so, you’re kind of blindly trusting someone else.

 

You know, probably one of the most widely-used platforms, MyFitnessPal, that’s crowd sourced and if you’re a company and you want your verified information in there, you can’t get it verified. The way something gets verified on their platform is, you know…in the grouping of let’s say deli turkey, you search deli turkey. Well, the most commonly-used deli turkey selections in the app become the verified pieces of information or data points in the app.

 

Jamie Martin:

Interesting.

 

Paul Kriegler:

So, you can’t like, petition to say like, hey, Life Time, with all the café meals in MyFitnessPal as verified like, submitted by the company doesn’t look like that.

 

Jamie Martin:

Oh, interesting.

 

Paul Kriegler:

Yeah.

 

Jamie Martin:

Yeah. Oh, okay.

 

Paul Kriegler:

It makes it really frustrating because people are trying, they’re investing time and energy in like, tracking their food and building awareness which I think is a good, you know, good practice if you’re trying to learn about how food affects you, but the tool is just not perfect.

 

Jamie Martin:

Right. Right. So, kind of going on there is that also the tools aren’t perfect, calorie management isn’t perfect, but also like, calories are not all created equal. So, let’s talk about kind of quality versus quantity and what matters there.

 

Paul Kriegler:

Yeah. You know, you can look at the macronutrient sources as being either essential or nonessential, meaning essential is we have to have these to maintain good health, and nonessential meaning we don’t need to intake them from our diet because our body can make them, or we just don’t need them for any, you know, positive thing.

 

So, when you look at it from that lens, protein and fat are essential in the diet. We don’t have the capacity to build protein _____ 00:10:22 in there. We can rebuild proteins by breaking down other proteins that we have in our body already. And fat, we can make fats in our body but not all the fats. So, some of them are essential, we covered that on other podcasts on the omega-3s, but we need relatively consistent intake of protein and fat to maintain good health.

 

Carbohydrates? You could argue they’re not essential because our liver can make carbohydrates from the glycerol backbones of fatty acids and certain amino acids. So, really, we can generate internally from our liver enough carbohydrates to stay alive. Maybe it’s not the right amount of carbohydrates so, like, do all the things you want to do activity wise, or lifting, or you know, working out or competing, but they’re not essential. So, we can make enough of them to survive, and even you could argue thrive in some circumstances.

 

Alcohol we don’t need so, that energy, you know, a lot of times the reason it’s left out of the conversation is because it’s not essential and it’s not beneficial. Right? So, two of the four macronutrients are essential and two are not.

 

Jamie Martin:

It’s so interesting because you don’t often hear that about carbs, you know, you hear like, you need the carbs, and we do I’m sure, to a degree, but…

 

Paul Kriegler:

Yeah. I mean, your body uses carbs very, very efficiently. It’s a very clean energy source. What gets messy is when you have more carbs than you need in your diet and they displace other things that you do need in your diet, and then that’s when health starts to suffer.

 

David Freeman:

Well, you had a great quote that we shared earlier. You know, I’m also a person who loves analogies, right? And you said, “macros build the car, micronutrients determine how it’s tuned to perform and operate.” So, I mean, first things first, Aristotle, watch out. But can you share with us what you meant by that?

 

Paul Kriegler:

I think that quote is actually, I stole it from Sam McKinney.

 

David Freeman:

Oh, I thought it was Aristotle.

 

Paul Kriegler:

Yeah. I’m here to publicly thank Some for giving me that wisdom.

 

Jamie Martin:

Oh, I love that you’re giving credit.

 

Paul Kriegler:

But it’s a helpful framework for people to understand like, if you want to build a very sturdy body, you need to make sure that you don’t miss on protein and the right types of fats because that’s what helps you build the most efficient structures and the most efficient communication systems in your body so, that all those structures can work together.

 

The micronutrients, which we kind of got into on the supplements episode a little while back, that entails the vital or the essential vitamins and minerals that our body uses as co-factors to help manage the energy for the calories and the macronutrients that we’re taking in. If we eat a diet that is highly processed like, I want to say 60 percent of the calories in the US today that are consumed come from ultra-processed foods.

 

Jamie Martin:

I feel like I just read that stat somewhere else. Yeah.

 

Paul Kriegler:

Yeah. So, now we’re living in the scenario where most of the calories that are available to people in North America come from ultra-processed foods, which means, you know, whatever is being eaten is an edible substance that’s far removed from whatever made it.

 

Jamie Martin:

Yeah, from its natural form…

 

Paul Kriegler:

From it’s natural form, yeah.

 

Jamie Martin:

…however it came out of the ground.

 

Paul Kriegler:

And all the steps involved in that processing ultimately change what micronutrients or vitamins and minerals were in it in the first place, and sometimes they’re put back in or the hope is they’re put back in through some kind of fortification program, but that’s not perfect, either. That’s us arbitrarily deciding like, oh, you know, people drink orange juice so, let’s throw some calcium in there, or let’s throw some vitamin D in there, even though the calcium used is not great, the vitamin D probably won’t be absorbed unless they’re eating or drinking that orange juice with a meal that has fat added because vitamin D is a fat-soluble nutrient.

 

So, you know, all this to say, if you want to build a study vehicle, sturdy structures, and have it operating as well as it can, you know, like, very finely tuned and you know, set up to run as efficiently as possible, then most of your nutrients should come from food that is very minimally processed.

 

Jamie Martin:

Great. Well, and that’s getting into the whole idea, and we can talk about this, but bioavailability, right? It’s never about just one thing in isolation, right? It’s how do all these things support each other, right? And conflict, we don’t know what’s all happening as a result of them being eaten in combination necessarily.

 

Paul Kriegler:

Right. Right. So, the most nutrient-dense foods happen to be sources of high-quality proteins and high-quality fats. You know, when you run whatever nutrient per calorie or whatever nutrient per gram, time and time again what you’re going to come across is there’s a pretty short list of food items that appear to be nature’s multivitamins.

 

Jamie Martin:

Right. So, okay. Can you give us a couple examples of what they might be?

 

Paul Kriegler:

Yeah. It’s going to shock some people, it’s like, beef liver, egg yolks, oysters, fatty fish like, salmon, wild-caught salmon, sardines. You know, it’s a lot of the I’d say like, heritage cuts of meat from grazing animals, which are totally not in vogue right now but you know, I think we’ve gone too far away from our dietary heritage in terms of like, what our ancestors three, four, five generations ago knew to consume from whatever their environment provided them, and that includes, you know, excluding whole categories of very highly-nutritious food because of whatever reason, whether it’s high in saturated fat or we think it’s bad for the environment or something like that.

 

But the fact of the matter is, what sustains us and makes us feel as much energy as we want to feel from within us, you know, not just to consume calories from the outside but actually be able to use the energy we carry around on us, too, comes from eating foods that are rich in protein and fatty acids, and sometimes foods that are really high in fiber that the fiber hasn’t been stripped away, and they’re also rich in water.

 

Those are the things that make us feel full for a long time after a really nourishing meal is protein, fat, fiber, and water. But so much of our food today is dehydrated, de-fiberized, deproteinized, and has artificial fats in it, right? So, makes us feel sluggish and clogged up.

 

Jamie Martin:

Right. Right. Okay. So, we talked a little bit about all calories are not created equal, but a calorie is not just a calorie once we eat it and so, there’s something that you referred to…again, we keep going back to these references that you have, this thermic effect of eating. What does that mean?

 

Paul Kriegler:

Yeah. So, if we think about the process of breaking down food from how it exists in our environment or on our plate, to how it ends up getting across our digestive barrier into our blood stream where it can actually nourish ourselves. That takes energy to break it down. Some of it’s mechanical energy. Hopefully we’re chewing our food, mixing it with our saliva, and the enzymes in our saliva start to break apart some of those chemical bonds to start the digestion process.

 

While we’re chewing that food, at the same time our pancreas and stomach are starting to secrete other digestive enzymes and substances that help us basically assimilate all the food that we are eating and chewing up into the liquid medium of our stomach acid, and that’s where it can be, you know, mixed into a softer group of nutrients and then passed along into the small intestine.

 

Well, all those things require energy so, we’re burning calories to digest our food, and the foods that take the most energy to digest and absorb happen to be protein. So, when we eat protein think about it this way. Every hundred calories of protein you eat, your body is going to spend 25 to 30 calories just breaking it down. So, the net calorie intake of that hundred calories of protein is, you know, 75 to 70 calories. That’s a tough food to break down.

 

Carbohydrates? So, a hundred calories worth of carbohydrates, depending on the source again like, if there’s less fiber in it you don’t have to chew it as much, you know, very simple sugars, they’re very easy to digest and absorb. That thermic effect is about 6 to 8 percent of the food. Carbohydrate thermic effect is 6 to 8 percent of calories eaten, fat is zero to 3, protein is 25 to 30, and alcohol is 22 percent. So, alcohol is a high thermic effect, however, when we consume alcohol it basically halts the metabolism of all other macronutrients within the body until you burn off the alcohol.

 

So, it’ll make you look like a better fat burner if you’re doing a metabolic test after alcohol, but we’re picking up an exhaust of that alcohol burn that looks like fat to that system.

 

David Freeman:

Oh, wow.

 

Paul Kriegler:

Yeah. Yeah. But and I think it’s important to cover this, too, the different macronutrients are generally tied to different hormonal responses when we eat them. So, carbohydrates when we eat them, both complex and simple, require insulin to be shuttled to wherever our body can fit those carbohydrates, and the larger the dose of carbohydrates eaten or the larger of the total across the day or the week or the month, the more insulin your body has to produce to handle those carbohydrates, right?

 

And if your body doesn’t have room to store carbs as glycogen in your muscle tissue, which is another reason to have a lot of muscle tissue is you have a large sink for glucose, or in your liver as glycogen, which are very finite stores like, the capacity to store carbohydrates is pretty small. If you don’t have room for the carbs you just ate, then your body is very good at turning carbohydrates, extra carbohydrates into fat with the influence of insulin.

 

So, insulin drives energy storage. We want to store it as carbs but if we don’t have room for it, we will convert it to fat right away and you’ll see that as like, triglyceride counts go up in your blood stream and then you’ll store more as body fat, too.

 

Jamie Martin:

Is that where insulin resistance comes into play?

 

Paul Kriegler:

It does. Yeah, insulin resistance develops the longer someone stays in that excess carbohydrate scenario. Yeah, because then you’re constantly pumping out tons and tons of insulin and your body, your muscle cells and your liver cells start to decrease its sensitivity to insulin, and then your body has to compensate by producing even more insulin then. So, yeah. It’s kind of a wicked spiral. Yeah.

 

Jamie Martin:

There’s so much in this.

 

David Freeman:

It’s all good. It’s all good.

 

Paul Kriegler:

Fat, when we eat fat…I’m going to keep going because…

 

Jamie Martin:

Keep going.

 

Paul Kriegler:

…I’m not as tired as you guys.

 

Jamie Martin:

_____ 00:22:09 fat, protein, and alcohol. Oh, look at his energy level.

 

Paul Kriegler:

It’s my first podcast of the day. Fat has a pretty potent appetite-suppressing effect. There’s no insulin response to fat when we eat it, but it helps us feel full. So, it triggers the release of other hormones like, leptin and cholecystokinin. We don’t have to get into that biochemistry lesson, but basically fat is very satiating. It tells the brain like, hey, we’ve got a good dose of energy here and it’s really steady energy. We can be less hungry now.

 

Protein does stimulate a mild insulin response, particularly some of the specific amino acids are responsible for that insulin response, but it’s not enough to like, induce insulin resistance. So, somebody who eats a high-protein diet that’s pretty low in carbs, it’s very unlikely that they would develop insulin resistance from that type of eating pattern. It’s a really tiny amount of insulin.

 

Alcohol does stimulate insulin production and it decreases carbohydrate release from the liver. So, what that can do is actually if you don’t eat something when you’re drinking alcohol, you will experience a low blood sugar sometime in the next several hours because your body basically shuts down its ability to maintain proper blood sugars so, you’re going to probably get hungry or you’re going to wake up halfway through the night maybe hungry, maybe not, but you’re going to have disrupted sleep from it. But alcohol does have a pretty strong insulin response as well.

 

Jamie Martin:

Yeah. And that makes sense. I mean, you think about alcohol, they often say when it comes to sleep you’re not really sleeping in the sleep mode that you need to be in.

 

Paul Kriegler:

You’re sedated.

 

Jamie Martin:

Yeah. Yeah. It’s more like you’re unconscious versus actually like, getting the recovery and all the things you need…

 

Paul Kriegler:

Yeah.

 

Jamie Martin:

…from that sleep.

 

Paul Kriegler:

Yeah. Exactly.

 

David Freeman:

This next one I feel like, it could potentially be a mic drop moment because it’s so many times as far as individuals who have body composition goals and anything around weight loss, it automatically go to all right, calories in versus calories out, pretty simple formula. I don’t eat as much here. Naturally I should be losing weight, and even if weight loss is taking place, they don’t know where that weight loss is coming from. So, what I would love for you to dive into is typically these individuals probably need to be eating more based off of their own exerting energy, working out, so, can you kind of dive into, I don’t want to debunk the myth because I feel like we’ve probably heard calories in versus calories out for so long, but just speaking to the value of understanding why consuming a good amount of calories, especially if you’re active, why that would benefit in helping with body composition goals.

 

Paul Kriegler:

Yeah. I like the way you phrase that question. It is less about, and this is not my quote again, you know, a lot of people think about managing their weight or their health as it’s a process of dieting and exercise so, you’re trying to create like, this double whammy calorie deficit on the weight loss side of the journey where you’re exercising to burn off calories and then you’re dieting to restrict calories.

 

I think flipping that on its head and instead training to build strength and lean muscle tissue and vigor, and then also eating to recover from that training. So, it’s almost like, you need to eat and train rather than diet and exercise. And I’m sure you’ve covered it in other topics, I’m not the expert to ask about this, but there’s a major difference between exercise and training. Exercise it is, you’re just being active. Training is you’re acquiring specific skills and movement patterns and efficiencies and lean tissue mass and strength to weight ratios and like, you were following a systematic approach.

 

And that’s I think the framework that more and more people are catching onto thankfully is if we want to feel like athletes and move like athletes, we need to eat like athletes and train like athletes, and everyone can do that. Most people can do that. Everyone can do something closer to that which I think is exciting, we can empower people in that way.

 

You know, eating, rather than looking at it simply as calories in and calories out, because that does matter, but if people don’t want to count calories…I hate counting calories. I hate making clients count calories. I think logging food is a simple learning exercise. It’s an awareness-building exercise. It’s not turning someone into an accountant. That’s the only way you can put someone on a path towards like, actually building and creating health for themselves as they age, whereas counting calories and just being married to macros is like, you’re just asking for an eating disorder in that scenario.

 

You’re reducing food and nutrients and nourishment to some arbitrary value on paper or in an app and I think that’s just, that’s the wrong mental exercise for so many people.

 

Jamie Martin:

Well, and this goes back to another conversation we had around like, food is fuel, yes, but it’s also a source of pleasure and ritual and joy and like, if we lose all that, if we’re just focused on the calorie aspect of food, again to your point like, what does that do to us from like, a mental health standpoint in terms of just that we have to eat to survive, right? But if we lose the joy that’s within it, then oh, what are we doing three to four times a day when we have food in front of us?

 

Paul Kriegler:

Yeah. I think, you know, reframing our mindset around nutrition and nourishment means we purposefully put our strategies and energies towards giving the things we know we need on a regular basis, and we covered that in detail on the protein episode. Getting enough protein, and every time I’ve asked somebody to track their food, what I’m looking for is whether or not they’re getting protein adequacy and total energy adequacy because if they are trying to consciously eat in a calorie deficit, they’re for sure missing on their protein needs, before we make any corrections.

 

Even if they’re not trying to eat in a calorie deficit, 99 times out of 100 people that I’ve worked with are also missing their protein target and they’re over eating other stuff because of it.

 

Jamie Martin:

Yeah. So, that’s where the whole grazing comes in. I mean, these are some of the conversations we continue to have are on the importance of protein, which that in mind, there is something called the protein leverage hypothesis or theory. Do you want to speak to what that is and why it matters in like, in the conversation we’re having?

 

Paul Kriegler:

Yeah. In animal agriculture this is very well known, this is how they manage herds. They titrate the percentage of protein in the feed that the animals are getting to pretty tightly control how they’re gaining weight and basically getting ready to be harvested. You know, if you dilute the amount of protein or you reduce the protein percentage in the animal’s feed, you will make them overeat calories so, you’ll make them gain weight. And it’s pretty remarkable. It’s like, if you take protein from 14 percent of calories consumed to 12 and a half, you’ll make that animal overeat by 14 percent. So, it’s not a two and a half percent swing in energy consumption compensation, it’s like, a seven-fold increase in total energy consumed to make up for that protein gap.

 

So, the hypothesis is in that setting, and I would be floored if this doesn’t also apply to humans. You know, there aren’t great human studies on this, but I would be floored if it didn’t apply to humans as well. The theory is, the animal will just continue eating anything until they meet their amino acid or protein needs. It makes total sense. Protein is essential and if we don’t get enough we don’t have health, we can’t reproduce, we can’t do what we want to do and thrive.

 

So, that theory I think carries a lot of weight and we can learn a lot from it in applying some of those, you know, the so what’s to human nutrition, too. So, rather than count calories why don’t we all just tally up and make sure that we’re getting enough protein, or like, you know, your first strategy of your first meal of the day is getting a third of your protein in, whatever your target is, and we’ve talked about targets on other podcasts.

 

I think it simplifies the process quite a bit. You know, we can still say eat a variety of foods but make sure you get some high-quality proteins on your plate every meal, especially at your first meal. I mean, there’s a great human study showing the metabolic impact of having enough protein at your first meal totally changes how your metabolism operates the rest of the day.

 

Jamie Martin:

Yeah. There’s so much there. I mean, I just feel like, that’s such an important message right there. I mean, and we’ve talked about this over and over the course of the podcast, you know, the importance of protein. But even just hearing that said about animals, you know, drop their protein intake by what did you say, two and a half percent?

 

Paul Kriegler:

Yeah. Two and a half percent and they overeat calories by 14 percent. In the US, you know, our average protein intake, and these numbers are not perfect, either, it’s from observational data. Since the late ‘70s, mid ‘70s our protein percentage of calories has gone from about 13 percent to 12 percent so, it’s gone down about a 1 percent. However, our total calorie intake has gone way up because we’ve gotten more simple carbs and more highly-processed fats into our foods. So, our total calories available per capita has gone up dramatically. Our protein, you could argue it’s flat, flat to down, but as a percentage of the calories available it’s down pretty dramatically.

 

And what we have there is kind of a perfect storm. We’re hungry but not nourished, we’re fed but not starving, right? Like, we have plenty of calories, we have you could argue, plenty of nutrients because we’re getting a lot of total calories, even if they’re highly-processed foods. So, like, it’s this whole mysterious mixture of like, no wonder we have a weight problem. We’re giving our body a lot of low-quality nutrition and it’s eating more and more of it because we aren’t giving it essentially what it needs, which is enough protein and the right types of fatty acids and fiber, right?

 

So, if we could address those things on a person-by-person, meal-by-meal basis, what we would end up with is people that aren’t hamstrung by their hunger or their cravings. They’re not experiencing blood sugar roller coasters like, we see today. They have an easy time maybe skipping a meal if they have to or, you know, eating a smaller portion because they feel satisfied.

 

David Freeman:

I mean, yeah. This is something I’m super passionate about just being able to engage with so many different individuals, and the one thing is when I sit down and we go through like a onboarding session if you will, I go first to the why like, I want to tap into the emotion of understanding why. And it usually speaks to something that might be aesthetic, but then it comes back to an emotion that says why they want to get back to wherever it was in college or high school and whatever nostalgic vibe comes from that.

 

But I’ve seen it a lot of times, too, when it is restricting these calories. They see the number change so, therefore they associate that to the success. Like I said before, we’re not knowing what went away, and 9 times out of 10 they probably lost lean muscle mass if you will, right? And the reason why that’s a negative effect is because if you have less lean muscle mass, ideally your body fat percentage is going up, and then it’s a cycle of now you’re trying to correct. But if you keep doing this damage to your body, it makes it that much harder when you try to correct it.

 

So, that’s why I just wanted you to kind of…that’s why I said it was more that mic drop moment of just once again speaking to the amount of calories like you just said, I love what you said there as far as when you break it down. I believe it was eat and train like, I love that, knowing how you’re fueling your body to go back toward that next day as far as, you know, in the weight room or doing cardio, whatever it may be. So, I just love that. I don’t want to double-down on it but I just think it’s something that needs to be, you know, spoken on more of understanding that eating less is not ideal for the big picture versus in that short term result, yeah, you lost your five pounds. But you also went up probably in your body fat which doesn’t set you up for success when we talk about metabolic issues and stuff.

 

So, I don’t know if you want to…

 

Paul Kriegler:

Yeah. I mean, it comes down to like, what you’re talking about working one-on-one with clients is I’ve had that same conversation many times, and I’ve even taken, you know, 24-hour diet recalls and I stopped doing that. I’d rather just, you know, rather than sit across from someone and say, tell me what you had to eat yesterday, because 9 times out of 10 they say, oh, yesterday wasn’t a typical day.

 

Jamie Martin:

This isn’t my normal.

 

Paul Kriegler:

Yesterday was yesterday. Whatever you did was typical, right? Like, it probably was because right now you don’t have a strategy. Now we have to reset that strategy. I’m going to tell you instead by asking a question like, are you getting at least a gram of protein per pound of fat-free body mass per day? And if they’re like, I don’t know. Okay, then our strategy now is to track that. We’re going to track that. That’s what I want to know now because you’re telling me you want to be lighter but leaner. I’m going to make you leaner first so, that you can be lighter eventually, right?

 

So, that’s the conversation I think we can all appreciate. If people don’t want to just be lighter at the expense of becoming weaker or squishier, or however you want to phrase it. People want to feel strong and energetic because that’s what we’re naturally programmed to be.

 

Jamie Martin:

Right. So, what you’re really referring to is like, what you were talking about, David. It’s like, the yo-yo, right? It’s easy like, we can lose a few pounds and then we pop back up and come back down. But what you’re referring like, what we’re getting to is like, this is a sustainable way to approach eating, right? If we really think about let’s focus…not to say that you can ignore calories altogether, it’s not what we’re saying. But we’re saying like, focus on this other thing instead like, protein. It’s probably an easier thing for people to pay attention to. Is that easier? What do you think?

 

Paul Kriegler:

I think it is. I do think it is because then you’re focusing the energy on seeking out something to add to most people’s diets. People like to begin a process of change by adding something new, not necessarily restricting. And on this topic most people that are trying to manage their weight or body composition for better health or better energy or better, you know, aging process, they’ve already tried the restricting part. They’ve already tried taking things out. I’m not going to be the next person in line to tell them what next to take away, I want to be the one that tells them what they can add, right? Or use to display something that they aren’t proud of in their cabinet or whatever.

 

So, what it comes down to is yeah, calories matter a lot. However, if we address the calorie balance issue by harnessing your body’s natural ability to manage that piece for you, and we do that by getting enough nourishing, satiating food on your plate, then what I’m saying is if you make calories less of a focus and you make quality and balance and appropriateness of the nutrition choices you’re making more of the focus, your body’s a smart machine, it’s going to figure it out. It might not be as fast as you want it to be but it’s going to figure it out.

 

You know, if somebody listening to this is still like, adamant about counting calories, I would offer them this advice. Understand what your current intake is to the most accurate ability you can today, and then whatever adjustment you decide to make, don’t make more than a 10 or 15 percent adjustment from there each week along that process. So, if you’re looking at reducing calories still, calorie intake that is, don’t make more than like, a 10 to 15 percent adjustment before you decide what the next adjustment is, and give it at least a week’s runway of that consistent small change.

 

That’s painstakingly slow but that’s what’s necessary for you to learn if it’s actually the right thing. So, if you drop your calories down again by 10 or 15 percent and then you feel like junk, your energy sucks, you know, your motivation is terrible, you’re not sleeping well, you’re not recovering from your workouts or you’re not doing your workouts, that’s a terrible scenario to put yourself in. But we have coaches and dieticians probably doing that unknowingly, and that’s not how people want to feel.

 

But instead if you say like, keep your calories the same, let’s just change up what macros are making up those calories like, let’s notch down your carbohydrates a little bit and amp up your protein a little bit and see how you feel, and then we’ll make the next adjustment once we meet again and talk about how that first adjustment’s going. People would be surprised that they can start to see their body’s leaning out, recovering, and feeling more energetic without necessarily putting themselves in a calorie deficit because what I’ve seen happen is left without a good coach managing those elements of your nutrition strategy, people will succumb to what the apps recommend which is more dramatic calorie reductions than that.

 

You know, it’s pretty common to see women plug in their weight goals into an app and it’s recommended to them that they consume a thousand to 12 hundred calories a day, plus go work out more than you have been. Well, that’s just signing yourself up for really bad energy, poor recovery, potentially hair loss, nutrient deficiencies, lower body temperature, loss of fertility like, who’s signing up for that? Nobody.

 

Jamie Martin:

Right. I mean, I think it’s so often and unfortunate, you know, in many cases like, often like, there’s this aesthetic that we’re still too often chasing, right? And I will say like, I can be guilty of that, too, like, not guilty but like, that’s just culture, right? Like, we’re chasing in some cases this thing that’s been set out there as an ideal, right? And so, it’s like, what is it going to take to get me there. But if we can shift the thinking, right? Like, I am who I am like, today, and I’m different than that. My body type isn’t that way or whatever. I just think there’s an opportunity we have to shift that thinking to be less about chasing, more about like, being who we are and nourishing ourselves as we are.

 

Paul Kriegler:

Yeah.

 

Jamie Martin:

So, I don’t know. It’s a whole cultural thing, too, I think.

 

Paul Kriegler:

It is. It is, and you know, we didn’t touch on this here but I know you’ve covered it in other podcasts, we don’t need to be fed with like, taking in energy more than 12 hours a day. Our 1-2-12 system is built on hey, for 12 hours a day just give your body a break. Let it figure out where to get energy from, and some people thrive on 16 hours a day of fasting, right? So, they’re eating all their calories within an eight-hour window.

 

I think that’s super beneficial for people to go through, to learn how to manage their nutrition intake in a controlled timeframe. That can be a very helpful tool, provided they’re getting enough protein within that timeframe, they’re seeking out the very nourishing types of fats, the olive oils, the avocado oils, the cold-water fish, those types of things, egg yolks.

 

I think if people gave themselves 30 or 60 or 90 days of just, you know, put down the calorie tracker app, eat two meals and a shake or maybe just three high-protein meals a day that are relatively moderate or low in carbohydrates, unless you’re training for something super intense or super long, and just watch your body transform.

 

Jamie Martin:

All right, Paul. I want to ask like, if you like, when it comes to your breakfast, what do you at in the morning?

 

Paul Kriegler:

Most of my mornings I’ll have like, three or four eggs with a slice of cheese on it. Sometimes I’ll grab some fruit like, half a banana, some pineapple, berry season it’s, you know, a couple strawberries. And then that’s on top of I do a black coffee, black Americano with unflavored collagen and creatine.

 

Jamie Martin:

Look at that. His breakfast is pretty good.

 

David Freeman:

Well, I mean, breakfast of champions?

 

Jamie Martin:

You get that protein in.

 

David Freeman:

Yeah.

 

Jamie Martin:

Right away in the morning.

 

David Freeman:

First thing.

 

Paul Kriegler:

Yeah.

 

Jamie Martin:

I love it.

 

Paul Kriegler:

And usually…so, that’s around, you know, 8, 9 o’clock. I don’t get hungry again until 1 or 2, you know, and I can work out in there.

 

Jamie Martin:

You just have, you’re kind of setting yourself up for like, you’re eating a meal, and then I think we talked about this with Sam and Annika in a separate podcast but like, kind of a four-hour break between eating to give your body a chance to break it down, absorb what it can from it, right?

 

Paul Kriegler:

Yeah.

 

Jamie Martin:

Get those energy stores.

 

Paul Kriegler:

Yeah.

 

Jamie Martin:

Good to go.

 

David Freeman:

Put you on the spot, what do you eat first thing in the morning?

 

Jamie Martin:

It depends. I have…

 

David Freeman:

Oh, oh. Hit me with Sam McKinney quote.

 

Jamie Martin:

…a couple…oh, there’s like, that’s the favorite Sam McKinney…no, lately…it depends on the season because I go in spurts, right? Like, right now I’m all about a protein smoothie in the morning, usually after a workout because I work out first thing in the morning. So, lately it’s been…oh, is it the black forest smoothie that’s in the detox program? It’s one of my favorites. It’s like, a nut milk, nut butter, cherries, protein powder, a little bit of almond extract, and I’ll throw a handful of greens in there, typically in the morning.

 

David Freeman:

You should have Jamie doing…

 

Jamie Martin:

Yeah, no. Not so much, but otherwise I have omelettes. I actually posted a photo of my breakfast not too long ago, it was like, an omelette that my kid helped me make, right? Like, an omelette with a little bit of cheese and ham, and a little side salad sometimes. You like greens for breakfast? I like that.

 

Paul Kriegler:

Yeah. I’m all a about nontraditional breakfast food for breakfast.

 

Jamie Martin:

Yeah.

 

Paul Kriegler:

Yeah. So, if it’s leftover, you know, leftover steak or leftover salmon, I don’t care.

 

Jamie Martin:

Yeah. Throw that on top of some eggs or like, get in the eggs.

 

David Freeman:

Remember, protein in the morning.

 

Paul Kriegler:

Whatever’s quick and protein rich, I know it’s going to set me on the right path.

 

Jamie Martin:

Yeah. I think that’s probably been one of the biggest lessons for me and I’m still probably am not getting enough protein, but I think just starting with protein is so essential for starting the day, you know? You think about what I grew up eating, it was not protein-rich stuff. It was…

 

David Freeman:

It was Captain Crunch?

 

Jamie Martin:

…Fruit Loops.

 

David Freeman:

Yeah, I knew you were going to. Yeah.

 

Paul Kriegler:

Well, I mean, that illustrates how powerful it is to have a good strategy the first meal of the day. You know, especially our listeners, you know, they’re probably busy professionals like, 70 plus percent of America doesn’t know what they’re having for dinner at 3 p.m.. I hope…

 

Jamie Martin:

I’m part of that strategy.

 

Paul Kriegler:

I hope they find something high in protein for breakfast or sort of their first meal of the day, whenever that was, because that’s a recipe for disaster. First, you’re going to over spend on whatever you are going to consume for dinner because it’s going to be down to the last minute. So, economically you’re going to be, you know, experience a nightmare there. Nutritionally it’s probably worse.

 

Jamie Martin:

Right, than being planful.

 

Paul Kriegler:

Yeah.

 

Jamie Martin:

Oh, and a lot of this comes down to even with this like, the the focus on protein. I mean, you do have to plan for it, right? Like, and be mindful and planful around this and that, you know, it’s all part of like, your healthy living strategy as a whole, you know?

 

Paul Kriegler:

Yeah. Yeah, and that’s, you use that term, nutrition strategy. It’s not a diet, it’s not a meal plan, it is your nutritional lifestyle strategy.

 

David Freeman:

I love it.

 

Paul Kriegler:

It’s a framework with how you move and act and think about nutrition and how it impacts your health.

 

Jamie Martin:

Love it. All right, Paul. You’ve been here before. Do we have any other final questions, David?

 

David Freeman:

No. Just let everybody know where they can find you at on Instagram, or I know you got plenty of articles on Experience Life so, throw your handle out there for our listeners.

 

Paul Kriegler:

I think I’m probably the most boring follow on Instagram. It’s _cafe pk.

 

Jamie Martin:

On Instagram.

 

Paul Kriegler:

On Instagram.

 

Jamie Martin:

We’ll link to it in the show notes if anybody needs to find you. All right, Paul.

 

Paul Kriegler:

Yeah. There’s mostly just pictures of my food and my daughter.

 

Jamie Martin:

Well, they’re like, two awesome things.

 

David Freeman:

Two essential things, right?

 

Paul Kriegler:

Two of the best things.

 

Jamie Martin:

Yes. Exactly. All right, Paul. Thank you so much.

 

Paul Kriegler:

Thank you, guys.

 

David Freeman:

See you next time.

 

Thanks for joining us for this episode. As always, we’d love to hear your thoughts on our conversation today, and how you approach this aspect of healthy living in your own life.

 

Jamie Martin:

And if you have topics for future episodes you can share those with us, too. Email us at lttalks@lifetime.life, or reach out to us on Instagram @lifetime.life, @jamiemartinel and @freezy30, and use the hashtag #lifetimetalks. You can also learn more about the podcast at experiencelife.lifetime.life/podcasts.

 

David Freeman:

And if you’re enjoying Life Time Talks, please subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Google podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you like what you’re hearing we invite you to rate and review the podcast and share it on your social channels, too.

 

Jamie Martin:

Thanks for listening. We’ll talk to you next time on Life Time Talks.

 

Life Time Talks is a production of Life Time healthy way of life. It is produced by Molly Kopischke and Sara Ellingsworth, with audio engineering by Peter Perkins, video production and editing by Kevin Dixon, sound and video consulting by Coy Larson, and support from George Norman and the rest of the team at Life Time Motion

 

David Freeman:

A big thank you to everyone who helps create each episode and provides feedback.