Chantel Ray: Hey guys, welcome to today's episode, and my voice is a little scratchy today, so I apologize. I was playing a lot of tennis and doing a lot of screaming and hooting and hollering. So I've lost my voice. But we still have a great episode for you. We have Eve Guzman, who's with us, and we are going to talk about macros. We're going to talk about carb cycling and so much more. So if welcome tell listeners a little bit about yourself.
Eve Guzman: Yeah. Thank you so much. I am a nutritionist who used to be a scientist and I ended up having my own journey of weight loss, losing half my body weight, which then kind of led me to get a lot of questioning from people. How did you do it? Can you help me? Is it possible for me to lose that kind of weight? And I ended up transitioning into a nutrition coach where I eventually build an academy for fat loss and weight loss with macros for women, and then eventually created a macro nutrition coaching certification through the National Academy of Sports Medicine to help certified coaches as macro coaches.
Chantel Ray: Awesome. Well, I would love for you to first just kind of explain what is macros number one and how do you count them. So give it to us as simple as possible.
Eve Guzman: All right. I'll break it down. So a lot of people get confused. They're like, oh, is macros like a new diet, a new trend? And I'm like, no, it's like a regular way of eating. So if you're eating, period, just existing living, breathing, you're eating macros. If you've ever counted Weight Watchers points or you've counted calories, you've counted macros. It's just looking at the calorie makeup of what you're eating in a more specific way. So macro is short for macronutrients and the three major macronutrients are proteins, carbohydrates and fats. And so even though there are three different categories, they all add up differently calorically. So your protein and carbohydrates, one gram of each of them just by themselves, one gram is going to be four calories. Your fat is going to be more calorically dense and one gram of fat is going to be nine calories. So if you've ever seen somebody showing, like, their macros on Instagram stories or something like that, the protein and carbs are typically going to be three digit numbers, the fat, because it's calorically dense, it's going to be a two digit number. So you may see somebody post one twenty five protein, one seventy five carbs and then sixty five fat. But the protein, fat and carbs make up all of the foods we eat. And you can definitely go about losing weight by just tracking and counting calories alone. Because the weight loss though a calorie deficit is going to stimulate the weight loss. But when you take it a step further and have more awareness of where your different food choices are coming from, if you're eating sixteen hundred calories a day, what percentage of that day is protein and carbs and fast you can eat sixteen hundred calories a day and still eat all fast food. Trust me, I know because I did it while I was trying to lose weight, just like squeak everything into that calorie goal. But the macros make you look at how many grams to eat each day of protein, how many grams of carbs and how many fats. That way it's a little bit evenly balanced for someone to have a healthier metabolism with macros. So tracking calories alone can really help you hit your fat loss goal or sorry, weight loss goal. But when you start to track macros, it can really start to affect your body composition. You start losing more inches. You keep a lot of the weight that you have on your body as muscle and you can really lose a lot of body fat by tracking macros. So the first step, if you're counting something, is typically calories, then cranking it up to be a little bit more exact and looking at the protein, carbs and fats that you're tracking in my fitness pal, for example, for your meals.
Chantel Ray: So let's talk about kind of for you. What would you say is the amount of macros you have and the amount of calories that you're eating approximately per day for?
Eve Guzman: Like me specifically right now, I am in a deficit which ends this week, thank God, because I like to have all my food back, but I am in a deficit right now. And so for me, my age, height, weight, body composition, metabolism and the amount of work outside do per week. Right now, in my lower days, I'm eating about one hundred and forty protein, about one hundred and fifty carbs, fifty five fat. And then on my higher days I'm eating one hundred forty protein. Two hundred and ten carbs per day and about the fifty five to sixty fat range, but those are definitely specific to me. So if someone went to try them on for size to try to initiate, like their own weight loss or fat loss program on those macros may not fit for them because they are specifically calculated for me down to the gram.
Chantel Ray: Wow.
Eve Guzman: And I'm also five feet tall, so I think I could do this. Also take in consideration. I do have a high muscle composition and I'm only five feet tall.
Chantel Ray: Wow. That is that is wild. So talk a little bit about, you know, one of the things I like to teach people is not to be obsessive compulsive. So I, I don't love the idea of people counting every calorie and counting every macro. But I do think for a short amount of time it's a great thing to do because it really kind of awakens you to kind of what am I eating? What am I putting in my body, how? You know, because I think one of the things I see people doing all the time is they're like, I'm not losing any weight, I'm not losing any weight.
Chantel Ray: And the number one thing that I'm seeing is they're eating too much fat and too many carbs and too many calories as a whole. They're just eating more food than their body is burning off. So talk about that for just a minute. Yeah, sure.
Eve Guzman: Some macros or even calorie tracking should not be something you do. Three hundred and sixty five days a year and then year after year after year, it's kind of like I was saying, I'm in a deficit right now and I cannot wait to get out of it because me, even as a coach with discipline and having lost one hundred and fifty pounds, you know, even though everything is like exactly measured for that amount of time to only achieve a goal, I can't wait to get out of it and then go back to either eating more calories with more flexibility or not tracking at all.
Eve Guzman: So in the beginning I was like a really strict tracker with calories and macros because I was just wanting to hit that goal. And once I got there, I'm like, I've been dieting all of my life. I'm not really in the place to want to do this forever. So then I started doing like intuitive macros and I got to the point where I was only tracking my protein goal for the day. And wherever the carbs and fats fell after I left, a cut made it so I was more flexible. So really looking at protein and then total calories. And then because I had been tracking three months or so at a time, I started to learn portions without having to track everything. So, you know, like you say, people can get to the point where they don't realize that they're overeating or their portions are too big or portions are too small. And when you track, then you bring that awareness back and you're like, oh, so this is what four ounces of chicken breast looks like? Or, oh, maybe I don't need seven ounces of rice and my plate, but maybe I can have four or five. This is what it looks like. So when I got to the point where I wasn't in a cut and I was reversing out, I could I the portions because I had been disciplined for that short period of time of tracking a lot. We have all of our clients go through seasons where there's no tracking, no food scale, no measurements, so that they're getting that balance back in and they're not obsessive over like exact concrete numbers.
Chantel Ray: So if you would say, I want you to kind of talk about that with the deficit of. So right now for you, are you training for anything? Are you training for a competition or anything like that? And what are some things if you were training for a competition, what are some things you would do a little bit differently?
Eve Guzman: Yeah, so I'm not training for a competition. Thank God I've done a lot of them.
Eve Guzman: They're hard because when you're in a deficit and you've got a family and a husband, it's really challenging because the calories are really low.
Eve Guzman: So I'm just in a deficit to try to lose about five to seven pounds of fat and that's it. I've actually been successful. I lost five pounds. I lost about seven inches. But this is actually the first deficit that I've been in since two thousand and eighteen.
Eve Guzman: So this is the first time that I'm actually tracking stricter for a goal to lose a little bit of weight, see how much muscle I've built over the past couple years. I also did a really long reverse diet because I was a competitor. So I got to really enjoy just eating intuitively, tracking whenever I was straying away. So this deficit for me is going I'm about 12 to 13 weeks and I'm going to raise my. Hillary's back up. If I was competing, my tracking and everything and carb cycling would be very similar to what I'm doing now, but the deficit would be more aggressive. It would probably definitely be anywhere to 10 to 15 percent lower in calories, depending on how far out I am from a show I have not competed in a little over two years. And the last show that I did, because it was a figure competition, I had to get down to 10 percent body fat.
Eve Guzman: But that's why those deficits have to be aggressive and they're not not fun at all.
Chantel Ray: So let's talk about just intuitively looking at things and kind of saying to yourself, OK, without having to weigh this or weigh that, show us. And if you're listening to this podcast, I really hope that you will watch it. But I'd like you to kind of say, like if you were kind of eyeing your food and kind of saying, OK, let's look at let's pretend that obviously this intermittent fasting. So let's just say that someone's really only eating two meals per day. And if they're only eating two meals per day and they kind of want to get the right number of macros, give us a sample meal that you could kind of just I maybe using your hands and saying, OK, this is how much I would eat of vegetables, here's how much I would eat.
Chantel Ray: Could you kind of go over that?
Eve Guzman: Yeah, definitely. So for most people, their portions are going to be relative to their body size and that's going to be typically with your hand, because even as you guys notice, if you lose or gain weight, your fingers get a little bit chubby, but your hand is really appropriate to what your natural body mass index would be. So if you're a petite person and you're just a little bit overweight, you're still going to have a petite hand. If you're a taller and leaner woman, you're going to have a longer, more slender hand. But when you're looking at your portions, protein should be the palm of your hand hand. When you're looking at your fat, it's going to be like the tip of your thumb or people kind of relate it to like a pair of dice. If you're starting to look at your hands when it comes to carbohydrates, like rice, potatoes, things like that, starchy carbs that aren't vegetables, it's going to be like your cup tan. And then for vegetables, it really should be like two cupped hands together. And so if you're someone that wasn't intermittent fasting, most women are going to need about four to five columns a day, four to five cups, four to five vegetable portions, and then four to five for fat. And that would be in like a waking day of like 16 hours. But if you're fasting, window is smaller, it's going to basically be double that. So if you're eating two meals or so in a fasting or a Fed state window up like eight to ten hours, which is pretty typical for fasters, each time you eat for those two meals and that spread, it's going to be like two hands off of protein. And then maybe four to five hours later, you'll have another two hands of protein for your carbs, which is one cup tan. You're going to want to have two of those with those two portions of protein. So like two cups worth for fat, if you're having like an added fat, like peanut butter and coconut oil, olive oil, things like that, it would be two tips of your thumbs. So it's almost going to end up being like four cups of vegetables when you're looking at it volume wise for carbohydrates, depending on the size of your hand, that can be one and a half to two cups of carbs, but that would be one meal in that like eight to ten hour Fed state.
Chantel Ray: So what would you say are the biggest mistakes that you see people make where you say if they wanted to do it intuitively and people are saying, you know how you hear people?
Chantel Ray: They're like, oh, yeah, I'm doing everything I'm supposed to, but I'm not losing weight. And then you and I both know there are some things that you think you're doing, but you're really not. And they're kind of excuses or lies that we kind of tell ourselves, oh, yeah, give me some of it.
Eve Guzman: So, yeah. So big things. Are people not paying attention to fiber? They're like fiber. Yeah, I eat pretty decently, but a lot of people don't scroll to like that section. If you're using my fitness pal to see your total fiber for the day, they're like, what's the big deal with fiber? Why do I have to have it as it's just a push for like a nutritionist to say you should eat more fruits and vegetables. But fiber is one thing that I can tweak with our clients and then they can start to see weight loss pick back up. And that's because fiber does help you to have more probiotic or like good bacteria cultures in your body because the fiber is like the food for probiotics and bacteria. So typically, when your gut health is better, women will lose weight quicker. Your your stomach is like your second brain. It's going to be giving your body a lot of yeses and noes or I don't want to do that. And so when your gut health is better, women tend to lose weight a little bit faster. Also, the one benefit of fiber is it binds to saturated fat, saturated saturated dietary fat and cholesterol. So when you eat more fiber, it's actually pulling it out of your body through your stool. So women who have a higher higher fiber account, sorry, higher daily fiber count, they actually end up having a lower body fat percentage because they're storing less of the fattier foods as fat. And so your fiber acts like a magnet that sticks to it and it's coming out versus getting absorbed and circulated through the body. And that's why having a higher fiber diet makes us bloated and makes us feel people like I go to the bathroom all the time. You're also helping get a lot of that extra fat out. Water is a big one. Hydration, if you're eating more protein because you're a macro tracker or you're just being really mindful of how much protein you're eating, every increase you have in protein, you also should be increasing water. Protein takes a lot of water to help digest it. And a lot of people start to slow down on water when protein goes up because they're full. And when we have that feeling of fullness, people like I don't drink any more water, I'm already full. I won't be able to hit my macros or get all my calories in. And then Neat Steps is a big one. I think a lot of people focus on how how many minutes of cardio, what kind of cardio, how many days a week. But then they sit all day constantly and a lot of people have a slower metabolism while exercising, staying there, doing all the things and tracking food and eating good choices. But they don't move enough. Getting ten thousand steps per day in is more important and more beneficial in the momentum of your weight loss and you doing twenty five minutes of just cardio a day. So the neat steps help to raise your metabolism. Cardio can actually bring your metabolism or the rate of it down.
Chantel Ray: Yeah, so it's funny because I was with a friend of mine and we went to a Mexican restaurant and she was getting one of those table side guacamole and I was looking at and they had the guy who was making the guacamole and she he was doing for. Avocados in the thing, and I was looking at it and I was like, you know, he made it and she ate almost the entire thing of the avocado. And she was like, I mean, the guacamole. She was like, I don't know why I'm not losing light. But but again, this and it's like, that's the kind of stuff I'm talking about that it's like and there in someone's mind, they go, avocados are healthy, they've got fiber, they're great healthy fats. They've got this, they've got that. But then without really even thinking about it, and it's really not hard to eat for avocados, to be honest. Right.
Eve Guzman: Because I could eat half at a time on my toast, easily.
Chantel Ray: Yeah. So, again, you know, one whole avocado is I think it's like twenty nine grams of fat or something. I mean something, something close to that and about three hundred and twenty two calories. So eating that one section if it was for that would be over twelve hundred calories and then four times thirty. That's over one hundred and twenty grams of fat. Yeah. And that they're hard to do.
Eve Guzman: Yeah. That's, that's the fat for women for two full days just in that. And I'm sure it was delicious. Like it's one of my favorite things. That's good. It's hard to say no but not every healthy food choice or item is something that you can always just have in just copious amounts of. You also have to be aware of what's in things like that.
Chantel Ray: Well, one third of an avocado is ten grams of fat and one hundred calories.
Chantel Ray: So really, if you're thinking about it and you're saying if you're looking at your macros, just give an average, let's just say someone's one hundred and fifty pounds, they want to get to one hundred and twenty pounds.
Chantel Ray: What what would you say is their fat content that you would suggest for someone like that?
Eve Guzman: Most of them would probably fall depending on if they have hypothyroidism or PCOS, but most of those women are probably going to fall in like the forty five to seventy grams per fat day. And so definitely that means an advocate. One avocado is knocking a huge chunk of that out.
Chantel Ray: Mhm. Yeah, that's great. So let's talk about carb cycling. So first of all what is it and how do you do it with the high carb days and low carb days and maybe even low carb days.
Eve Guzman: Yeah, so all of our clients carb cycle, when they come to us, we do their calculations for their macros with like a baseline week. So that means like every single day in the first week is going to be absolutely the same because we want to see, like, their learning curve. How much do they know about macros? How good are they at tracking? Is it their first time tracking ever or six months? And so we want to make sure they can reach the macros first before we add like all these special techniques and like throw a wrench in things. So we'll see how the very first week goes if they're in a deficit for weight loss and all seven days are the same. And then we'll decide, do they need another week just to get another week under their belt of getting used to tracking and measuring and getting all the bites, the licks, the taste. But usually by week two or three, we will get them into a carb cycle. And so our model that we teach our clients for carb cycling is one that takes a moderate and a high carb day type of approach. And so there are carbs for those days are not going to fall below one hundred and their first carb cycle is going to be six days where carbs are going to be lower and then the seventh day or that whatever day it ends up being Saturday, Sunday, if that's what they want to choose. Because the weekends are when people like to eat out that day, we'll have higher carbs. So we'll start them off on a six one six days, lower carbs, one day higher carbs. But it's going to be pretty equivalent to what they were eating carb wise as an average for the whole week as week number one. And then once we get through that carb cycle for about two weeks, then we go into a five to carb cycle where five days are a little bit lower and then two days are higher. Again, none of those going down to no carb or really low carb days. Most of our clients at all times are eating over one hundred grams of carbs every single day, even when they're carb cycling with us.
Chantel Ray: So I want you to talk a little bit more about body composition versus weight, because I think that people really get so absorbed with their weight and they're like, okay, let me get on the scale, you know, what is my weight and body composition is so much more descriptive than overall weight because it really reports what's making up that body weight. And so, you know, how much muscle do you have? And the most thing that we should be most concerned is how much that mass is on us. So can you talk about that and why macros are so important for body composition?
Eve Guzman: Yeah, absolutely. So that's why when I said my macros earlier, if someone hears it, someone's macros, you can't work backwards and figure out like their age and their height and their weight. And that's why I was like, I'm five feet tall. And that is a decent amount of food that I'm eating. But it relies are it's really based off their body composition. So the leaner someone is and they have a lower body fat percentage and then they have more muscle mass, your metabolism is going to be higher. It's definitely going to be faster. And then if you're someone who's body fat, percentage is higher of someone who's the same age, height and weight, your metabolism is actually going to be a little bit slower. People do really get caught up on the scale and our focus more in weight loss than fat loss. But if your fat loss is happening and you're maintaining your weight, it is a really good sign that you're keeping all of your muscle mass. And what you're mostly losing is fat because you can go on a diet, lose seven pounds in two weeks, but in the in the mirror, physically, not even look like you lost weight in your like. I know I lost seven pounds. I don't see it. No one's mentioning it. I'm not getting compliments. But it might be because you lost a lot of that weight as water and then muscle.
Eve Guzman: But someone else may lose seven inches and be that same kind of age, height, weight, and only lose two pounds. But you may be able to physically see it because that person may be losing more of their weight as fat and maintaining a whole bunch of that muscle. I think I went through a period in I think it was two thousand and fifteen. I was really upset because I wanted to lose weight and I started tracking mackerels a little bit more diligently. I changed my lifting routine. I got to the end of the year and a lot of people were like, man, how much weight are you going to continue to lose? And I'm like, I haven't lost any weight the entire year.
Eve Guzman: But I had lost 19 inches and I had dropped to whole clothing sizes because mostly fat was what I was losing. And it was the tracking the macros and focusing on lifting that was changing my body composition. So then I personally stopped, started to get away from, like, having this perfect number that I needed to be. And I focused more on my body composition, how much fat was on my body and how I looked in the mirror.
Chantel Ray: What have I not asked you yet that you want listeners to really be aware of that losing weight is extremely hard.
Eve Guzman: Know a lot of people look at me and they go, man, she's lost one hundred and fifty eight pounds and they assumed it just had to be so simple and so easy because they think, oh, a big number, that's huge success. They don't know that. It took me like twenty tries to get here. And my first diet was when I was 14 years old, when I was secretly dieting and working out in my bedroom. And a lot of people just have to try things and find something that is sustainable. But whatever it is, you just have to love it. You've got to be consistent with it. And then the weight loss is going to eventually happen. For me, it was macro tracking and weight lifting and then really focusing on having flexibility with my food. And that was the thing. But definitely just to let people know what it looks like, rainbows and sunshine, because I'm on the other side now, but I have went through a lot of what people went through and I just had to find that right thing that I could do.
Chantel Ray: Some will tell listeners where they can find you, where they can follow you.
Eve Guzman: Sure. So I'm on Instagram every day. I'm always on stories constantly. My Instagram handle is @eve_fitchick.
Chantel Ray: Awesome. Well, you guys stay tuned, we'll have another episode coming up in just a few. Bye bye for now.