Understanding Macronutrients vs Micronutrients

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Disclaimer: Not medical advice. The following information is for educational purposes only.

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: • Walking • Thinking • Breathing • Digesting food • 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 👉 https://tdeecalculator.net

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🥩 1g protein = 4 calories 🍞 1g carbohydrate = 4 calories 🥑 1g fat = 9 calories 🍺 1g alcohol = 7 calories

Over an extended period of time, if we:

Eat more calories than we burn → weight gain
Eat less calories than we burn → weight loss
Eat roughly the same calories that we burn → weight maintenance

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Note: although calories play a significant role in our body composition, hormones and metabolism also play important roles.

To manage weight, we can:

👉 Move and exercise more (burn more calories)

👉 Eat less foods, if the goal is weight loss (less calories in)

👉 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?

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 → keeps our eyes moist, skin smooth, immune system strong
Vitamin C → prevents hair graying, makes oxytocin, healthy skin, robust immune system
Iron → transports oxygen in the blood, supports muscle function
Magnesium → 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

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You can check your daily micronutrient levels here 👉 https://cronometer.com

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: