iStockphoto / tortoon/Cass Anderson/BroBible
Welcome back, everyone. This is the third installment in a weekly feature which was borne out of my weight loss journey this year using the MacroFactor App. In the first two weeks, I spent a lot of time discussing what led me to wanting to lose weight and today I’ll talk more about the actual nuts and bolts of my process.
For starters, going back to January 30th I was very overweight for my frame at 195 pounds and knew I needed to lose weight. This morning, I weighed in at 160.6 pounds.
Throughout the process, I’ve also been lifting weights/resistance training 4x a week, doing cardio 4x a week, but ultimately I’ve achieved the weight loss through the simple calories in/calories out method of tracking what I eat through the MacroFactor app which, you can use the promo code ‘brobible’ if you sign up for it and you will get an extra free week on your free 2-week trial. But don’t do that unless you find the information here worthwhile. I’m truly not trying to sell anyone on an app, I am sharing my story and what worked for me. This is all genuine.
The Simple Science Of Weight Loss Made Easy With MacroFactor
Cass Anderson / BroBible
My weekly weight loss goal is 1 pound of fat per week. In order to lose 1 pound of fat, the simplest and healthiest method is a daily caloric deficit.
1 pound of fat is 3,500 calories. With 7 days in a week, you need to be in a daily caloric deficit of 500 calories to lose 1 pound of fat each week. Simple, right? Pretty simple, but it’s not that straight-forward…
Your TDEE, or Total Daily Energy Expenditure, is the measure of the total number of calories that you burn in a given day, on average. This number will swing based on workouts or if you drastically increase your daily steps, but over the course of a week the measure is pretty reliable because with the MacroFactor App, the other information you are tracking provides the app’s algorithm with a detailed look at your Total Daily Energy Expenditure.
Download the MacroFactor App For iPhone or Android – use code ‘brobible’
MacroFactor’s tagline reads “confidently control your nutrition with the macro tracker that adapts to your metabolism.” What does that mean exactly? Well, at its core MacroFactor is a food/calorie tracking app with an advanced algorithm that is responsive to your weight, height, diet, and exercises.
First thing in the morning, you get up and pee and then weigh yourself and input that weight into the app. Then, throughout the day, you track what you’ve been eating. If you don’t want to type in what it is you can simply take a picture of the food (even at a restaurant) and it estimates the macros (fat/carbs/protein/total calories) using its advanced AI search.
Now that the app knows your weight and what you’ve been eating, it can determine your Total Daily Energy Expenditure based on your average weight loss rate. From there, it can tell you how many calories to eat each day and which macros to hit.
Think Of Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) Like A Weighted Body Suit
Cass Anderson / BroBible
At this point, I have seen more explanations of what TDEE is than I’d like to admit. And at least once a day in the MacroFactor Facebook Group or on thee r/MacroFactor Sub Reddit I see people asking why their TDEE keeps going down even though they are more active than ever.
As someone who is quite acting myself, I wondered this once and the best explanation for TDEE I’ve seen is to think of it similar to wearing a backpack full of weights. The weights represent your body fat.
When that backpack is loaded up with weights your body is obviously working harder and thus burning more calories each day keeping up. But as you lost body fat, and the hypothetical weights get removed from the backpack, your body doesn’t have to work as hard with less overall weight on your frame. If you are working out with a 50 pounds on your back versus working out with no backpack, which is going to be harder? Obviously, no backpack full of weights.
Could you track this on your own? Possibly. I assume so. But I haven’t the slightest idea of where to begin with that. I just put my daily weight into the MacroFactor App, track what I eat, and each day it tells me my current weight, how many calories to eat, how many grans of protein/fat/carbohydrates to eat so I don’t lose muscle, and then each Monday morning the app updates based on my data to tell me the current daily calories + fat/carbs/protein macros to eat for that week.
Download the MacroFactor App For iPhone or Android – use code ‘brobible’
What A Typical Day Looks Like For Me In The MacroFactor App
First thing in the morning I get up, weigh myself, lift weights, then have a protein shake that includes: 1 scoop 100% Grass Fed Milk Chocolate Whey Protein Isolate (Transparent Labs, 120kcal), 1 scoop Creatine HMB Unflavored (Transparent Labs), 0.75 cup Frozen Mixed Berries (Strawberries/Blueberries/Raspberries, 60kcal), 1 pod of Cometeer coffee (11kcal), and 2 tablespoons of PBfit Peanut Butter by Betterbody Foods (60kcal).
That recipe breaks out to a total of 251 calories, 37 grams of protein, 2 grams of fat, and 23 grams of carbs. Currently, my daily recommended calories on MacroFactor are 1847 (when I started at 195 pounds my daily calories were 3151kcal a day…we’ve come a long way since then!). My daily recommended macros are 163 grams of protein, 61 grams of fat, and 159 grams of carbohydrates. These are my numbers, yours will look very different based on your goals, weight, age, body type, and TDEE.
I’ve never been a breakfast person so on a typical weekday I will only eat a snack between my morning protein shake and lunch, then I’ll have 1-2 snacks before dinner, and after dinner I will have (healthy) homemade ice cream that I make in Ninja Creami.
There are SO MANY DIFFERENT WAYS to reach your daily macros and nutrition goals. I’m not suggesting you mirror my approach at all. But I wanted to include screenshots of my typical days so you can get a sense of what it looks like along the way… Here’s Monday:
Cass Anderson / BroBible
My meals on Tuesday:
Cass Anderson / BroBible
And yesterday/Wednesday:
Cass Anderson / BroBible
I should note that my weekends look a lot different. I tend to not drink any alcohol Monday through Thursday or Sunday through Thursday, so I often come in under my daily recommended calories Monday-Thursday or Sunday through Thursday in order to ‘bank’ some extra calories that I can devote to drinking with friends on the weekend because I still enjoy whiskey/beer/wine as much as anyone.
This weight loss journey for me hasn’t been strictly about losing fat. I never wanted to be what some people call ‘skinny fat’ and skinny without any muscle. So I lift weights in the morning on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday. And I do 45-60 minutes of cardio on the bike (Peloton and CycleBar) on Tuesday/Thursday night and Saturday/Sunday morning.
Do you need to do that in order to lose weight? Absolutely not. But that’s been how I’ve built up muscle while losing fat. Next week, I’ll discuss more about lifting weights and gaining muscle while dieting and living in a daily caloric deficit.
The writers over at MacroFactor have a brilliant article titled ‘Tips for Exercising When in a Calorie Deficit‘ that is worth reading regardless of whether you have been lifting weights regularly for years and are extremely informed or if this is your first foray into dieting and fitness. There is some really fantastic surface level and in-depth information in that article.
For now, if you found any of this information this helpful and would like to sign up for the MacroFactor App you can use the promo code ‘brobible’ and you will get 1 free week added to your free trial (2 total weeks).
Circling back to the top of this article, I mentioned ‘calories in-calories out’ as being the simple science of weight loss. Which it is. But where the MacroFactor App absolutely destroys the competition in the weight loss / food tracker space is its algorithm that is constantly, constantly, constantly updating based on the data you feed it (food intake, daily weight). It removes any guesswork from the process and for that, I’ve been super thankful as I’m currently the fittest I’ve been since college.