Why busy mamas shouldn’t increase their macros if they workout extra one day

When Rebekah first started her health and weight loss journey, she knew that to lose weight, she needed to burn more calories than she ate, so she started tracking her calories. She entered all her meals into MyFitnessPal and used another app to track how many calories she burned working out to ensure she was in a deficit.

According to the apps, anytime she worked out extra, she could eat extra. So whenever she was going to go out for dinner or wanted more dessert, she’d just fit in another workout. It seemed like a great trade-off! However, after months of tracking her food and her workouts, she wasn’t making a lot of progress.

She was frustrated because she was working out so much, eating so little, and still didn’t look or feel the way she wanted to.

When Rebekah started working with me, this workout more, eat more ideology, often called calorie or carb cycling, was one of the first changes we made.

The theory behind calorie cycling is that by occasionally increasing or decreasing your calories or carbs it can speed up weight loss.

But most of us are doing it wrong! Just like Rebekah, we think we can and should change our daily calorie intake. There’s a place for carb cycling, but this constant adjusting isn’t it. Plus, it doesn’t help with fat loss, so I don’t use it with my clients.

Instead, I teach my clients to use these tools to burn fat and enjoy their food!

Set your calories and macros by your average energy expenditure

The reason that I don’t have my clients changing their calorie intake every day based on how many calories they burn is that it usually doesn’t make enough of a difference to put in the extra work!

We all burn calories in two ways: actively and passively. Active calorie burns come from workouts, where we’re moving our bodies to purposefully increase calorie burn. Passive calorie burning comes from day-to-day activities like walking, breathing, maintaining body temperature, and even digesting our food.

Most people place a big emphasis on active calorie burning, but 60-75% of our daily calorie burn comes from the passive things we do!

This is why I don’t see a big difference in calorie cycling! Unless you’re running a marathon or doing a huge workout, your passive calorie burn stays the same, so you don’t need to adjust your macros or calories to lose body fat.

Another big reason I don’t recommend calorie cycling is because more often than not it creates an unhealthy relationship with working out.

When Rebekah was fitting in extra workouts to “be able to” eat out, she was focused on using the gym to “undo” any bad eating. And when you view the gym like that for too long you start to resent it!

Exercise should be used for your growth! You should work out to build muscle, feel stronger, and feel happier or more energized. (We all know that “exercise gives you endorphins, endorphins make you happy and happy people just don’t shoot their husbands,” thanks Elle Woods,)

Instead, I like to set my clients up to create healthy relationships with food, the gym and themselves!

When I start working with clients, the first thing I have them do is track a normal week’s worth of eating and exercising. I want to see what kind of calorie deficit or surplus they’re already in.

Then, I’ll set their macros based on those numbers. This is a really important step that most programs and coaches don’t do because when people start a new program they want to make changes! They’re motivated to cut calories or start working out.

But after working with hundreds of women, I’ve seen that slow and steady beats a single sprint every single time.

By starting my Macros Made Easy Mamas where they’re at and making gradual changes they lose more fat and keep the habits they learn in the program. It’s the opposite of traditional programs where you make huge changes that only last a few weeks.

Use refeeds to boost weight and fat loss

After I get my Macros Made Easy mamas eating a consistent amount of food, then we can use carb cycling strategically to help overcome any plateaus that might come up during the process.

During a weight loss journey, you will hit points when fat loss and weight loss slow down. A lot of people believe that if their weight doesn’t go down consistently, then they’ve hit a plateau.

A real plateau happens when your weight does not go up or down for 4-6 weeks. You may see some slight variations during that time, but your average weight shouldn’t move if you’re in a real plateau.

Don’t try carb cycling if your weight stays at the same point for a week or two! Only use this when you know that you’ve been stuck and you need to kickstart your metabolism again.

When I want to help my clients overcome a real plateau I’ll give them a refeed day. In a refeed, we increase carbs to help give the metabolism a little push to rev up again.

There are a few differences between a refeed and traditional carb cycling.

First, a refeed, it’s a one-time increase in carbs. Whereas with carb cycling your carb or calorie intake could change every day. The body craves consistency, so when you’re carb cycling you’re confusing your metabolism by not telling it how much it’s going to get each day.

Whereas, with a refeed, your metabolism is used to getting a certain amount of carbs, but then you increase it for a day and it realizes that it has too much energy and starts to burn off the excess again.

Once your refeed is over, you go right back to your regular calories or carbs and the metabolism keeps burning from the refeed.

Second, you don’t increase exercise during a refeed. The point of the refeed is to boost the metabolism and if you’re putting extra strain on your body it’s going to want to use the extra carbs you’re eating to fuel that workout.

The overall lesson with carb cycling is that it’s more work than it’s worth! When Rebekah started eating a consistent amount of food, exercising 4-6 times a week and working on her mindset around food and nutrition she finally started seeing the results she was looking for!

Not only has she lost almost 20 lbs, but she’s also been able to increase the amount of food she eats every day because she’s more focused on building muscle in the gym than working for her food!

If you’re tired of trying to figure out all the ins and outs of nutrition on your own and you want to start seeing real results, then let’s chat!

I help busy mamas create nutritional plans that fit their needs without having to restrict their food or spend all their free time at the gym. Schedule a Healthy Mama Blueprint call to get your individualized nutritional plan!

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