For the last two years, I have been pumping my legs on a 20-pound swing. Every few weeks, fueled by an unflattering tag on social media, I’ll buckle down, shape up for 20 days and drop as many as 10 pounds, before finding some cookies and coasting back in the other direction. The older I get, the appeal of this yoyo becomes less and less sexy. So, I decided to try something brand new. I decided to work with a nutrition coach and get real about my macros.
I have known Hollie for nearly 15 years. We both dated and eventually married Wabash College men. Just as the guys at the all-male school had a special bond, so too did the partners of those men, so I always had an eye on what was happening with Hollie. After leaving her post as a teacher to stay home with her kids and pursue her passion for fitness, she turned her blog, Muscles and Munchkins, into a full scale health coaching hustle. Naturally, I subscribed to her newsletter.
So it seemed like divine intervention when one morning, my button digging into the old man’s neck pouch of regret just south of my belly button, an email from Hollie materialized at the top of my inbox. It was a beacon of sorts. Maybe because I really needed a beacon that day, or maybe because the universe isn’t really as random as some would think.
This particular newsletter was a testimonial from a client who, through implementing strict macronutrient counting, had lost a significant amount of weight, even with the addition of more food. I’d tried calculating my macro goals on my own using the ole’ trusty internet a few weeks before, but the results varied by site, which made it all seem a little vague and unreliable. Which is hard to believe, because I thought everything on the Internet was true. Huh.
I emailed Hollie a few days later, asking for the details on the coaching program. A word about pride here … While I feel entirely comfortable being self deprecating (my favorite medieval defense mechanism) about my weight and food issues, it is monumentally humbling to ask for help with it. Particularly from a friend. Maybe that’s just me. I worried that the initial conversation might be awkward given our history, demoralizing at the very least. But of course, it wasn’t.
Hollie sent me an intake form with questions about my lifestyle and fitness level so she could get to work in the days to come. We set a start date for the third week of June, and the next day I hopped into the car to head to the Outer Banks with my crew.
Twelve days and nine pounds later, Hollie and I had our official kickoff call. The timing could not have been better. I felt blissfully, regretfully bloated and foggy from the fruits of my raging sugar bender; A carb-rich rampage I was still smack dab in the middle of, mind you. I came clean right away.
“My starting weight is a little higher than what I gave you last week,” I said.
“That’s OK,” she offered.
“Is it?” I countered.
“Yeah, I’m not going to adjust your macro goals, because a lot of that is probably water weight,” she said. (I doubted her professional opinion a tad, based on the daily 4pm cinnamon rolls I’d treated myself to at the beach house.)
Hollie walked me through my macro goals and answered each of my questions, including such gems as, “How can I lose weight when I love donuts?” She took my unique goals into consideration; I’m trying to reduce my intake of animal products and I’d like to slay my ravenous sugar dragon.
Last Thursday marked the halfway point of our six weeks of work, which includes texts and weekly calls. I’ve learned some important things, some of which I’d like to share with you here (without giving all of Hollie’s secrets away) to meet you wherever you find yourself in your weight war.
Fat is no one’s friend.
While I’ve been tracking my food in MyFitnessPal off and on for some time, I was only looking at one number: my calories. The other numbers were just like fine print at the bottom of a movie poster. The possible side effects in a prescription drug commercial. But Hollie was quick to point out that, while I hit my calorie goal a good number of days, I was over by quite a bit on my fat. Like, 20-30g over at times.
Think of the most delicious things you can put into your mouth – peanut butter, chips and guacamole, cake, cheese, ice cream – and then just picture an atomic fat bomb exploding in your human plumbing. I lust after these treats like a Kardashian after a lens. I adore them even though I know they are ruining me, controlling me. It’s all very Ike and Tina.
So these days I’m factoring fat into the equation. And protein and carbs as well, but really I’m focusing on controlling myself around the good stuff. A little less chocolate and a few more chickpeas. A lighter pour on the ole’ EVOO. It’s a battle I’m waging one meal at a time.
You have to want it more than beer. Or brownies.
Hollie can download her entire database of knowledge into my brain, but at the end of the day, it’s me holding the fork in my hand. It’s me deciding whether I should pull the trigger.
We spent six days camping over the Fourth of July, and I was able to reign myself in for the most part. I only had ice cream once! But just two days later, Hank and I found ourselves at the Dave Matthews Band concert and I decided to eat, drink and be a bit too merry. All that merriment, it turned out, could be tabulated up to 3 pounds exactly, in a 48 hour time period. I made the choices. They were mine.
When I focus on my future self, I can see definition in my arms and my pre-baby clothes, which currently sit stacked on my closet shelves mocking me. It’s my current self who can’t seem to get with the program. In fact she’s a real turd. Every meal, every right after the meal, every dinner out with friends, every work carry-in, I have to decide whether I want to be kind to my future self or indulge my current self. I have to want it more than the wine, more than the pizza and more than the brownie. And friggin-A brownies are good.
Tracking is the ticket.
I really do try my best not to be one of those assholes with a crick in her neck from staring into my smartphone all day long. That being said, MyFitnessPal has, as the name would imply, become one of my dearest confidants as of late. We’ve been spending a lot of time together; Going grocery shopping and having late night chats about what’s really going on in my protein bars.
The tricky thing about food is that, you think you have a general idea of how “naughty” or “natural” something is, but a calorie tracking app is the truth serum. It’s like feeding a suitcase of food through an x-ray machine at the airport. The app unpacks the compartments of your day – My that’s an excessive amount of fat to be carrying on this time of year – and lays it all out before you on a screen.
I’ve often skinny dipped in the pool of ignorance, and my gosh it was bliss, but now that I’m tabulating every tic tac, I can’t help but wonder just how many grams of carbs, fat and sugar I was taking in on a typical pre-tracking day. I was pounding the beers and the dark chocolate covered almonds like they were born of the nectar of negative calories.
A case study, if you will: A cheeseburger with ketchup, mayo and lettuce like I would order from our family’s favorite fast food restaurant, has 43g of fat. But you don’t have a cheeseburger alone unless you’re a total loser, right? So I make it a combo, add a side of honey mustard for the taters, and tack on another 24g. When all is said and done, I’m pulling out of the drive thru toting a 67g F-bomb. My daily goal, on a rest day, is 50g of fat.
One might argue that life is far too short to sacrifice pleasure for the sake of some simple math, and I can respect that. But I choose to look at it like a game: How can I make this meal still taste satisfying without demolishing my day? I can get away with just one bun. I can skip the mayo and give mustard another chance. Maybe he’s changed. I might even get crazy and ditch the cheese. I’ll probably have to factor out the fries, though our love affair was so hot while it lasted. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle and every day I’m just trying to get all the pieces to come together.
So, that’s what’s going down on my scale these days. I’ll keep you posted on the progress. If you’d like to learn more about Hollie’s hustle, you can check her out here.