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Understanding Macronutrients vs Micronutrients
- Macronutrients determine how you look (weight-wise)
- Micronutrients determine how you feel & function
Today we'll be exploring the basics of nutrition: macronutrients and micronutrients.
What are Macronutrients?
Macronutrients are key nutrients that fuel our basic daily activities, intense exercise, support growth, and maintain vital bodily functions such as digestion, muscle repair, and energy levels. Macronutrients include proteins, fats, and carbohydrates. Alcohol is sometimes referred to as a 4th macronutrient, since it contains calories. Examples of the basic daily activities fueled by macronutrients: ā¢ Walking ā¢ Thinking ā¢ Breathing ā¢ Digesting food ā¢ Regulating body temperature
Our bodies require a certain amount of calories each day to sustain our basic daily activities, including movement, digestion, temperature regulation, etc. This is known as TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure) You can check yours here š https://tdeecalculator.net
Over an extended period of time, if we:
- Eat more calories than we burn ā weight gain
- Eat less calories than we burn ā weight loss
- Eat roughly the same calories that we burn ā weight maintenance
To manage weight, we can:
š Move and exercise more (burn more calories)
š Eat less foods, if the goal is weight loss (less calories in)
š Eat more foods, if the goal is weight gain (more calories in)
Processed foods are hyper-palatable, meaning they're made to taste irresistible (crunchy, sweet, bursting with flavour, etc), often leading to over-consumption of calories.
A standard bag of Lay's chips contains 4 - 5 potatoes, while a large bag contains 10 - 12 potatoes. It's very difficult to consume that many cooked potatoes naturally, but in a hyper-palatable, processed form, it's easy. We find these calorie dense, processed foods everywhere from starbucks coffees, pizzas, burgers, donuts, etc. This constant over-consumption of calories is a major contributor to obesity.
What are Micronutrients?
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Micronutrients fuel countless processes & functions in our body:
- Brain function & cognitive health
- Bone health & structure
- Immune system
- Muscle function & movement
- Skin, hair, nail, eye health
- Converting food into energy
- Heal & repair the body
- Repair damaged cells
- and much more...
Examples of how micronutrients support our bodily processes & health:
- Vitamin A ā keeps our eyes moist, skin smooth, immune system strong
- Vitamin C ā prevents hair graying, makes oxytocin, healthy skin, robust immune system
- Iron ā transports oxygen in the blood, supports muscle function
- Magnesium ā needed to make proteins and utilize energy (everything in our body requires energy)
Being deficient in micronutrients leads to certain functions and processes within our body not operating optimally, resulting in health issues over time.
Nowadays, most people are consuming far too many macronutrients, yet far too little micronutrients. You may have heard of the term "nutrient-dense foods", this means foods that have a lot of micronutrients in them. Here's a list of several nutrient dense foods:
Proteins:
- Shellfish: oysters, mussels, clams, scallop
- Liver / organ meats
- Eggs
- Fish: salmon / mackerel / sardines
- Other seafoods: shrimps, squid, crab
- Red meats: beef, lamb, venison, etc
- Poultry
- Raw milk
- Kefir
- Yogurt
- Bone broth
Carbohydrates:
- Potatoes & sweet potatoes
- White rice
- Sourdough bread
- Chickpeas
- Lentils
- Seaweed
- Eggplant
- Carrots
- Asparagus
- Mushrooms
- Blueberries
- Pomegranate
- Pineapple
- Bananas
- Mangos
Fats:
- Coconuts
- Avocados
- Butter
- Ghee
- Tallow
- Red palm oil
- Olive Oil
- Coconut Oil
Others:
- Nutritional yeast
- Cacao
- Coconut water
Intuitive eating rarely ever works if we're unaware of what's in the foods we eat. For most people, I recommend simply tracking for 3 - 7 days, to get an idea of what you're usually deficient in. From there, make informed adjustments to your diet and then you can go with intuitive eating. Example: My diet was generally lacking in certain nutrients. Nowadays I rarely track, and intentionally make sure I have foods rich in those micronutrients daily:
- B1 (Thiamine) ā nutritional yeast, salmon, potatoes
- Potassium ā potatoes, coconut water, bananas
- Vitamin C ā fresh seasonal citrus fruits
- Calcium ā kefir, yogurt, raw milk
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