Nutrition Q&A: Your Questions Answered!
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If you have been following me on Instagram, you’ll notice that almost every Sunday I post a question box in my Instagram stories where you can literally ask me anything! In this episode, I pull some of your nutrition questions and give you a more in-depth answer here on the podcast.
Questions answered:
Question 1: What is my favorite low-carb snack? - 3:00
Question 2: What is my favorite protein powder? - 6:30
Question 3: How do I deal with cravings? - 10:00
Question 4: How important is tracking macros to get results? - 15:00
Question 5: How do I know what my macro and calorie breakdown should be? - 18:00
Links mentioned in this episode:
https://www.juliealedbetter.com/free-ebook
www.macrocountingmadesimple.com
Episode 41: 5 Steps to Dominate Your Cravings
Episode 16: 3 Things Your Food Cravings Are Trying to Tell You
TRANSCRIPT:
Hey there beautiful human. You're listening to Embrace Your Real with me, Julie Ledbetter, a podcast where I empower you to just be you. With each episode I dish you a dose of real talk and actionable advice for building your confidence, honoring your body, and unconditionally loving your authentic self. Stay tuned if you're ready to embrace your real. Let's get it. Let's go.
Hello, hello and welcome back to another episode of The Embrace Your Real Podcast. I'm so grateful that you are here spending some time with me today, wherever you're attending, and we have listeners all over the world. And I'm so thankful that you are here. If you've been following me on Instagram you have probably noticed every weekend, so either Saturday or Sunday, I've been posting a question box in my Instagram stories where you can literally ask me anything. I go from talking about dog breeds to relationships to fitness to nutrition to my faith journey to college to all things, anything in between, you can ask me anything. And I'm going to start pulling some of your questions from my Instagram and start giving you a more in-depth answer here on my podcast, especially the ones that are very frequently asked. So today I thought I would dive into some of the nutrition questions that have been asked by many of you guys.
But before I dive in, I wanted to share this super sweet review. It comes from [EGardner76 00:01:33]. She says, don't change a thing. I'm so happy I found your podcast. I'm 44 and wish that you were around when I was in my 20s. Your transparency and your journey, knowledge in health and fitness, and freely sharing your faith is a breath of fresh air. I look forward to driving in the car so I can listen. Please stay your sweet, genuine self. God bless. Thank you so much for the review. I appreciate every single one of your reviews. I read every single one of them. If you haven't already, scootch over to Apple Podcasts, click that rate and review. It really does help the growth of the podcast. And if you do leave a review, all you have to do is screenshot it and then send it to me in a DM and I will personally respond back with a voice memo. I love connecting with you guys.
Okay. So let's dive into some of these nutrition questions. Question number one. What is my favorite low carb snack? I get this question all the time. So before I share what my favorite low carb snacks are, I first want to make it very clear to you that carbs are great. I love carbs, I eat carbs, and I need carbs to function optimally. And so do you. The only reason why I personally eat low carb snacks sometimes is if I'm saving my carb allotment for a different meal that day, not because I'm simply trying to eat low carbs. So I wanted to first put that disclaimer out there. I do not eat a low carb diet. Sometimes however it is very helpful to have like low fat snacks, low carb snacks, high protein snacks, all of those things so that when you're piecing together your day you're able to hit your protein, your carbs, and your fat allotment.
So my favorite low carb snack that I have been loving recently is rice cakes. I literally buy them in all the flavors. I have so many flavors and I actually get all of them at Super Target fun fact. So if you have a Super Target, that might be where to get them because my Kroger, my Walmart, and my other local grocery stores, Safeway and Sprouts, they typically don't have all of the rice cakes that I love. So the ones that I typically buy on a weekly basis are the chocolate, the apple cinnamon, the lightly salted, and the tomato and basil. I believe they also have an everything and a caramel one as well. There's so many delicious ones. But recently I have been having the tomato and basil rice cakes and they're around 35 calories give or take, between seven to ten grams of carbs. Sometimes they're one gram of fat.
They are so delicious and you can eat them on your own, but I also love spicing them up. So lately I have been taking Laughing Cow cheese and I'll spread one wedge of Laughing Cow cheese on two rice cakes. And I'll almost make like a sandwich. So you can do Laughing Cow cheese and then you can do deli meat. And you can even do lettuce and tomatoes. It's so freaking good. You can also do the Laughing Cow cheese and top it with tomato or cucumbers or you can do hummus and top it with cucumbers. I also love the chocolate rice cakes for peanut butter and bananas and then honey on top. It's so good. And I almost use the chocolate rice cake almost as a substitute for toast simply because it's a lot lower in carbs. I will have toast with peanut butter, banana, and honey, but if I'm wanting a lower carb version I'll do a rice cake and I'll do peanut butter, banana, and honey. And it's delicious. There's so many different variations. I could go on and on. I think that I might just make an e-book of all of my creations on rice cakes because I feel like so many people are always wanting new ideas, myself included, and that could be really helpful. So be on the lookout for that.
But another low carb snack that I do is a protein shake. I personally like my protein shakes almost like a Wendy's Frosty, the type of consistency where it's extra thick and creamy and I add a bunch of things to it. So typically what I'll do is I'll blend ice and then I'll do milk and [Truvia 00:05:43] protein powder and spinach. And then I'll blend it up. Sometimes I'll add flax seeds or chia seeds. But I will tell you, the secret ingredient to make your protein shake extra thick and creamy, sounds weird so just be warned, it sounds weird, but you can definitely have it, is the carton, egg whites. So on your food scale, if you add like 20 grams of liquid egg whites to your protein shake, I'm telling you, it makes it a whole nother level of creamy. It literally tastes like a Wendy's Frosty and it's delicious and it's very low carb, high protein, low fat. I love them so, so much.
So speaking of protein shakes, that brings me to my next question that I get a lot is what is my favorite protein powder. So if you've been following me on Instagram for a while you probably have heard me talk about PEScience. I have been using PEScience products for the last three plus years. I found them on Instagram. I love them. I fell in love with their scientific approach to creating proteins and supplements in general. Not only do I love the taste of their products, but I love the people and I love the mission of their company.
So before I dive into my favorite PEScience protein powders, I do want to note that I always recommend that you get your protein, the majority of your protein intake, from actual food and not solely depend on protein supplements as your main source of protein. Reason number one why I say that is you will miss out on some very valuable vitamins and micronutrients and two, real food, higher volume food, is always going to keep you fuller longer. And me personally, if I have any more than a scoop or two of protein, I personally, my stomach just doesn't feel the best. So just keep that in mind. I always tell people you can absolutely have protein supplements. I don't think there's anything personally wrong with them, I just always say, try to get as much of your nutrients from solid foods first and use it to fill in the gaps.
So typically I have my protein shake midday and my favorite flavors are the chocolate mint cookie. It tastes like a thin mint. It's delicious. I love it so much. I also love the gourmet vanilla. It's a very basic protein flavor that you can mix in anything. So if you want it like vanilla and strawberry, vanilla and blueberry, it's so good. You can mix that with so many different things and you can also cook and bake with that, which is amazing. And then my other favorite flavor is cake pop. So those are my three top favorite flavors. I love them all for different reasons. I personally have a very big sweet tooth. I am just that type of gal. And so having the chocolate mint cookie or the cake pop or even the vanilla, the vanilla I would say is the least sweet out of all of them, but they're all so good. They don't have a weird aftertaste. They don't make my stomach all funky. Some whey proteins can really mess up my stomach. They don't do that. Like I said, I've been taking PEScience for the last eight years. Love them.
They also have vegan options. Now I am not a vegan, but I do sometimes have their vegan protein powder. And I have to say out of all the vegan protein powders that I've tried, this one is pretty dang good. It doesn't have a chalky, weird aftertaste and the macros on it are pretty good. I've seen some vegan proteins that are just so high in carbs it's almost silly to call it a protein powder because the carbs are almost higher than the protein intake. But the PEScience one, I want to say that the carb intake is like four to six grams of carbs and you still get about 20 grams of protein with pretty moderate fat. I want to say like one or two grams of fat per scoop, which is very, very good. So if you guys are interested in checking out PEScience, I actually have a code with them. This is not sponsored, but I do have a promo code and I do earn a small commission from every purchase of people using that code. So if you do choose to use it, I want to say thank you in advance. You directly support myself and Joshua, but you can use code Julie and that will get you 15% off.
The next question that I got a lot is how do I deal with cravings? So this might be different from what you hear a lot of, I'm kind of using air quotes, like quote fitness influencers talk about, but I personally always give into my cravings. I never fight them because I believe when you fight your cravings, it makes that food control you more and more and it strengthens that unhealthy relationship with food even more. I also think that the more that you allow yourself to eat whatever food you're craving, the less you'll actually crave it and the less of it you'll need to eat to actually satisfy the craving. That might be something that you've never heard of before, but think about it like this. If you're craving a pizza, but won't allow yourself to eat it, you'll only be fighting that craving for so long.
Let's say you're craving [inaudible 00:10:54] on Tuesday and you don't let yourself eat a pizza on Wednesday, that craving will be bigger, on Thursday it will be bigger. And by Friday you likely won't be able to handle it and you'll just go get a whole entire pizza and eat that pizza. But if you would've just had a slice of pizza or two slices of pizza on Tuesday when you first had the craving, the two slices likely would have satisfied you and you could have fit it into your macros and you would feel great after eating it. Just remember that restriction always leads to overconsumption. So when you allow yourself to eat whatever you want, whenever you want, you'll be able to finally embrace moderation. But this is also why I love counting macros because I can see what fits into my macros and I can easily make that pizza fit into my macros so that I'm addressing my craving and still working towards my goals. It's basically a win win.
I know for me personally I love to have something sweet at night. So what I will do is I will plan my sweet treat at the first thing in my day. So in my Macros+, which is the macro tracking app that I use, I always put in whatever it is that I'm going to have at night first and then I'll work backwards. So I always encourage you to do that. If you're craving something and you're wanting something, fit it in first and then make the rest of your meals and snacks fit around that. And I also do that if I'm going out to eat. So we always typically have Texas Roadhouse at least once a week.
I'm a huge Texas Roadhouse person. And that's actually saying a lot because I worked at Texas Roadhouse twice in my life, once when I was 14, I had to get a work permit. Funny fact. I couldn't even work yet so I had to get the work permit, I think it was from our governor. And I was a hostess then. So that was in high school. I didn't even have my driver's license. I had to drive with my best friend [Todd 00:12:45] at the time and we drove down 35 minutes every day to work when I was in high school. And then when I was in college I was a waitress at Texas Roadhouse. So me eating there like once a week or a few times a month is saying a lot because when you work at a place, you see the behind the scenes.
So anyways, with that being said, on Fridays, typically when we have Texas Roadhouse, I will fit that into my macros first and then I'll work the rest of my day around that. So I will typically have high protein, lower carb, not low, low carb because I still need carbs for my workouts and just to feel satiated throughout the day, and then lower fat meals and snacks. So that way I know when Texas Roadhouse comes I can have that bread and butter. Sometimes I'll get a steak with a sweet potato, other times they'll get the grilled chicken salad and I love the grilled chicken salad. It's so good. It's so filling. And let's just talk about those rolls and the honey cinnamon butter. Okay. They're fricking delicious. But that is how I typically fit in something like a craving.
Another piece of advice that I would encourage you with cravings is pizza. There's so many lower carb options for pizzas. For example, the Joseph's lavash, lavash, however you say it, those are perfect for crusts. Or I even found a crust at Sprouts a few weeks ago called Kontos, it's K O N T O S. And they almost look like pitas. They're perfect. They're like 40 grams of carbs for the entire thing. It's delicious. So finding lower carb options or just other options that will fill you and give you the sense of eating pizza. But one thing to note about that and one thing that I want to talk about is I feel like sometimes people try to substitute lower calorie foods in for their craving and it just doesn't work. So they have that and yet they're still craving the other thing. And then they find themselves having the first meal and then still giving into the second craving. So sometimes it's better to just go in, get the actual thing that you're craving, and learn how to eat that in moderation. I actually talk a lot more about helping with cravings in episode 41, 5 Steps to Dominate Your Cravings, and also in episode 16, Three Things Your Food Cravings Are Trying To Tell You. I will link those both in the show notes below so you can easily go listen. But that's kind of my 2 cents on food cravings.
The next question is how important is tracking macros to get results? I will be completely frank with you. You don't need to macro count to see results. It is absolutely not required. You can totally build the body that you want without ever having to count a single macro. And I have said that from day one and I will continue to say that. However, with that being said, I believe that macro counting can help simplify the process because you're no longer guessing, instead you're giving your body exactly what it needs, which can help you see results oftentimes faster and more efficiently because like I said, you're not second guessing yourself. When you don't know how much your body needs to function optimally and you don't really have the education around food, you just kind of look at food as off limits and on limits. That can be extremely stressful. And there's so much guessing involved.
Macro counting also helps keep you consistent. I truly believe that consistency is the most important thing that you can do when building the body that you want. I see so many people eating quote unquote clean or healthy for a few days and then they fall off track. But macro counting actually helps you avoid doing this. Not only are you more likely to stick to your plan when you're macro counting, but it also helps to improve your workout performance. It's backed by science and it makes you feel more confident in your nutrition choices. And it can oftentimes heal your relationship with food simply because you're no longer looking at foods as good or bad. And I am just speaking all of this, not only from experience, but over the last eight years we've worked with tens of thousands of women to help them transform their body through macro counting alone. So that's kind of my 2 cents on macro counting.
Like I said, you absolutely don't have to count macros to see results. However, macro counting for me really did help heal my relationship with food simply because I was educating myself. And when I was educating myself about food it made me feel more empowered around food, which was my biggest struggle. I felt so insecure around food. I kept telling myself, well I didn't study this in school, this is not my degree, how am I supposed to know this? And the fact of the matter is, unless you grew up with your mom teaching you about nutrients and teaching you about macros, you're not really going to probably know a whole lot about macros like protein, carbs, and fats. I used to think that peanut butter was a protein dominant food. It's not. It's a fat dominant food. I used to think that protein itself would make me bulky and carbs would make me fat. The more that I learned about it, the more I felt empowered around it. And that's what really helped lead the way on healing my relationship with food.
The last question that I have been getting a lot about nutrition is how do I know what my macro and calorie breakdown should be? So if you have goals and you are interested in learning more about how to properly fuel your body, because remember, macro counting is completely customized to your body. It is not a cookie cutter diet. So it's not a meal plan. You're not just going to get a meal plan and say meal one is a shake, meal two is this. I've seen that so many times and I think that many people are confused and they think that macro counting is that. Macro counting is different for every single person because every single person has a different age, weight, high, activity level, their body is different, their goals are different. And so that's why macro counting can be so helpful and effective because it's completely custom to your body. I get this question a lot.
And so I actually put together a free macro counting guide to help you get started. And inside that guide I give you a formula for you to figure it out. So if you want to learn how to properly fuel your body, you want to learn a little bit more about macros, I also share about my macro counting journey in there and then I give you a step-by-step breakdown as to how to calculate your maintenance macros. I will link that in the show notes below. So you can go ahead and click that or you can go to www.julieadbetter.com/free-ebook. Again, that's www.julieadbetter.com/free-ebook. Make sure you have the dash in between free and ebook. And right there all you have to do is spell out your name, your email address, and then make sure you confirm your email address or you will not be sent the free ebook. I just want to make sure that there's no spam or robots or anything, anybody signing up for there. So just make sure that you check your email right after you sign up so you can confirm it. And then within 5 to 15 minutes you will get that sent directly to your inbox.
If you don't want to figure out your macro breakdown yourself or you find it too confusing, you can always head over to my Macro Counting Made Simple online academy. And inside that academy we actually calculate your customized macros for you. And so it's kind of a done for you type of program. You'll fill out a questionnaire form. We calculate them for you. And then we teach you step by step. I still believe in the power of education and empowering you just because I've seen so many coaches, they just continue to have people come back to them only because they're being secretive with what they do. So they're not being fully transparent with the calculations that they use and whatnot. We believe the exact opposite. We believe that if you can see what we do, so we calculate your macros, we show you step-by-step how he did it, it will empower you in the future. Because we don't want you to feel like you have to hold a coach's hand for the rest of your life. That's not sustainable. And inside this Macro Counting Made Simple online academy we are all about helping you to create a sustainable lifelong lifestyle that you can stick with.
So again, you can go to macrocountingmadesimple.com and you can learn all about there. I will also link that in the show notes. But the two episodes that I talked about earlier, episode 41, 5 Steps To Dominate Your Cravings, and episode 16, Three Things Your Food Cravings Are Trying To Tell You, are also linked in the show notes below.
I hope that you found this nutrition Q and A helpful. I would love to know what some other questions you have. You can feel free to DM them to me at the Embrace Your Real account or the Julie A Ledbetter Instagram account. We're always looking for new topics and ways to serve you better. So you can definitely do that. You can also always go to my website and click the contact page and that will send a direct email to me and my team. And we'll be sure it to get back to you. So I hope that you found this episode helpful. I hope that there was something in here that maybe you got from it. Maybe it was the rice cake snack idea, maybe it was my talk about macro counting or how to deal with cravings. If you have somebody in your life that you feel like would really benefit from this episode, I just ask that you share it out with them. You can copy the link, send it to them in a text message. You can screenshot this, post it up on your Instagram story. Be sure to tag me and Embrace Your Real accounts so that we can connect with you. I love you guys so much and I will talk to you guys in the next episode.
All right sister. That's all I got for you today, but I have two things that I need you to do. First thing, if you're not already following me on the gram, be sure to do so juliealedbetter, yes it's with an A in the middle, for that daily post-workout real talk, healthy tips and tricks, and honest accountability to keep your mind and heart in check. The second thing, be sure to subscribe to Apple Podcasts to never miss an episode. Thank you so much for joining me. It means the absolute world and I'm going to leave you with one last thought. The most beautiful women that I have met in my life are the ones who are completely confident and secure in being authentically themselves. Remember that beauty goes so much deeper than the surface. So go out there and embrace your real because you're worth it.