[00:00:00] Emily Field: Welcome back to the Macros Made Easy podcast. This is episode 56, and today we're tackling a belief that so many women hold onto the idea that eating more food will automatically cause weight gain. If that thought makes you defensive, I get it. You've probably been taught maybe for decades that less food equals better results.

[00:00:20] Emily Field: You've counted calories, cut carbs, skipped meals, or tried to earn your food through exercise. So, of course the idea of eating more feels completely backwards, like the exact opposite of what you should be doing. You might even think you're one of those people with a slow metabolism. Maybe you've said things like, I just gain weight so easily, I can't eat as much as other people.

[00:00:42] Emily Field: I've always had to watch what I eat, or the scale jumps up overnight. If I go over 1200 or 1400 calories, I just start gaining. And so you've been living in this cycle of restriction, white, knuckling it through the week, trying to be good and keep calories as low as possible, and then feeling frustrated when the scale doesn't move or worse when it moves in the wrong direction.

[00:01:04] Emily Field: But here's the truth, for most women I work with, the problem isn't that you're eating too much overall. It's that you're eating too little most of the time. Then unintentionally overcompensating. You're under fueling during the week, missing key nutrients like protein, maybe not accounting for alcohol or small bites here and there, and all of that creates a perfect storm for very inconsistent results, constant cravings and burnout.

[00:01:28] Emily Field: Today's episode is going to challenge a belief you've probably held for a long time. I'm gonna show you why eating more strategically might be the key to finally seeing the body composition changes you've been chasing, improving your energy, workouts, and recovery, and breaking free from that exhausting, restrict, overeat, start over cycle.

[00:01:48] Emily Field: And by the end of the episode, you'll know exactly how to start figuring out your true maintenance calories so you can stop second guessing, stop fearing food, and start fueling your life. Welcome to Macros Made Easy, the podcast that takes the confusion out of tracking macros. I'm your host, Emily Field, a registered dietician that specializes in a macros approach.

[00:02:08] Emily Field: In each episode, I help you learn how to eat in a way that supports your health, body composition, and athletic performance goals. We'll cover the basics of macronutrients, how to track for various goals, the role of macros in your health, and how to make sustainable changes to your habits. I've helped hundreds of people experience more food freedom and flexibility while navigating their nutrition.

[00:02:27] Emily Field: So whether you've tried macros and it just didn't stick, or you just heard the word macros yesterday, I can't wait to help you too. Let's be real. Most of you listening have been told your whole life that the key to looking and feeling better is to eat. And if you're nodding along right now, I want you to hear me on this.

[00:02:45] Emily Field: That's half the story and it's the half that's keeping you very trapped. When you chronically under fuel your body, a few things happen. Your metabolism slows down because your body thinks food is scarce. It becomes more efficient at running on fewer calories, which sounds good in theory, but actually means you burn less all day during workouts, during rest, even while sleeping.

[00:03:08] Emily Field: Your hormones shift to prioritize survival, not performance, and that can mess with your sleep, your mood, your menstrual cycles, thyroid function and appetite regulation. You start to lose muscle mass, not just fat, which makes it harder to keep your metabolism high and your body composition where you want it.

[00:03:25] Emily Field: Hunger and cravings get louder. Not because you're weak, but because your body is biologically wired to get you to eat. When fuel is low in workouts, they start to feel harder. You're lifting less, running slower, recovering poorly, all because the gas tank is on e. The kicker here is that most people don't realize that the fear of eating more is what actually is holding them back.

[00:03:49] Emily Field: It keeps you stuck in this frustrating cycle, one over restrict during the week to feel quote in control. Two, overcompensate on the weekends, eating out, having more snacks, maybe indulging in alcohol because your body is starving for fuel. And then three, you start over on Monday feeling bloated, frustrated, and convinced that you've quote ruined everything.

[00:04:11] Emily Field: But here's the truth. Your true maintenance calories, the amount your body can handle without gaining or losing significant weight are often hundreds of calories higher than you think. For many women, that difference is an entire extra meal or two a day. And when you learn how to eat at that true maintenance level, you stop living in fear of food, you feel your workouts, you preserve muscle, you balance hormones, and you stop that binge restrict cycle for good.

[00:04:39] Emily Field: Okay. But if that's true, if your body can actually handle more food without gaining weight, why does it actually feel that way? Why do so many women swear they're overeating when really they're not even close to their true maintenance? Well, it usually comes down to a handful of really common patterns.

[00:04:57] Emily Field: These are the sneaky culprits that make you think you're eating too much, when in reality you're either under fueling during the week, miscounting things or missing nutrients that would help keep you satisfied. Let's break these down because once you see them clearly, it's a lot easier to understand why you've been feeling stuck and how to move forward.

[00:05:16] Emily Field: Okay. Let's start with one of the most common patterns I see the weekday weekend pendulum. Here's what it looks like from Monday through Friday. You're being good. You might skip breakfast, have a really small salad for lunch, cut carbs wherever you can, and aim for the lowest calories possible, maybe 1300 to 1400 a day.

[00:05:36] Emily Field: You feel disciplined like you've been putting in the work. But then Saturday and Sunday roll around. You go out for dinner, you have a couple of cocktails, you grab dessert. Maybe you snack a little bit more loosely at home. You probably don't track these days as carefully or at all because it feels overwhelming or you want a break.

[00:05:54] Emily Field: But here's the problem. When you zoom out and look at your entire week, your average intake actually ends up closer to maintenance or even above maintenance. Because of those higher calorie days, and even though it feels like you're being really strict and disciplined, most of the time, you're not creating the consistent calorie deficit you think you are.

[00:06:12] Emily Field: What happens then? You stay stuck in this cycle. You feel deprived all week. You overindulge on the weekends and you feel guilty about it, and then you start over on Monday, rinse and repeat. I'll give you an example. I had a client who did eat that 1300 to 1400 calories Monday through Thursday. Let's just say.

[00:06:31] Emily Field: Because really the weekend really feels like it starts on Friday. She was super disciplined in those four days, but every weekend she went out three times, had cocktails with friends, enjoyed desserts, maybe a couple appetizers. By the time we looked at her weekly average, she was actually closer to eating 2100 calories per day, right around her.

[00:06:51] Emily Field: True maintenance. No fat loss was happening, but there was a lot of stress, guilt, and frustration. So here's the coaching takeaway. The issue wasn't that she was eating too much all the time. The issue was there was a mismatch between her low fuel days during the week and her higher calorie weekends. That pendulum kept her stuck mentally and physically.

[00:07:12] Emily Field: Another really common culprit is alcohol. And here's the thing, most people either don't track it at all, or they underestimate it without realizing it. Here's what that looks like. You pour yourself a glass of wine into one of those really big stemless glasses, and you call it one serving. In reality, that's probably closer to two or three servings, or maybe you're counting the liquor in your cocktail, but you're not counting the juice, soda, or syrups.

[00:07:37] Emily Field: That also went into it, and honestly, a lot of people just don't log alcohol at all because it. It doesn't feel like a food, so it somehow doesn't count. But here's the problem. Alcohol absolutely contains calories, seven calories per gram, and unlike protein, carbs, or fat, those calories don't give you nutrients or help muscle recovery.

[00:07:59] Emily Field: They're basically just extra energy that can add up very quickly. It's easy to rack up 500 to a thousand calories in a week just from a few drinks. And that's not even accounting for the food. That tends to come with the alcohol because let's be real, alcohol lowers your inhibitions. It makes you more likely to grab a late night snack, order extra fries, or say yes to pizza after a night out.

[00:08:22] Emily Field: Let me give you an example. Two glasses of wine at dinner on Friday, three cocktails on Saturday night, and a beer with Sunday brunch. That alone adds up to a thousand calories, and that's before we even count the extra food that usually tags along. So your coaching takeaway here is that you don't have to cut out alcohol completely.

[00:08:41] Emily Field: I don't tell my clients they can never drink again, but you do need to count it toward your intake if you want accuracy. Because when you ignore it, you create this blind spot in your tracking and it makes you feel like you're doing everything right, when really you're missing a big chunk of your intake.

[00:08:57] Emily Field: Another sneaky culprit that makes people think they're overeating is simply not eating enough protein. Here's what it looks like. Your meals are centered around carbs and fats. Maybe it's avocado toast for breakfast, pasta with olive oil for lunch, or granola with almond milk as a snack. None of those foods are bad, but notice what's missing.

[00:09:18] Emily Field: Protein, and here's why that's such a big problem. Protein is the most filling, most satisfying macronutrient. When you eat enough of it, you stay fuller for longer. Your blood sugar stays more stable, and you're much less likely to graze or snack your way through the afternoon. But when protein is low, the exact opposite, you eat and then an hour later, you're hungry again.

[00:09:39] Emily Field: You find yourself reaching for more snacks, grabbing a sweet treat, or standing in front of the pantry, wondering why you're never satisfied. But here's something most people don't realize. Protein is also a driver of your metabolism. It has the highest thermic effect of food, which means your body burns more calories just to digest and process it compared to carbs or fats.

[00:10:01] Emily Field: So by eating more protein, you not only feel more satisfied, but you also increase your calorie burn slightly throughout the day. I had a client who was eating about 50 grams of protein a day. That's total the whole day, and for reference, that's less than half of what most active women need. She was convinced she was overeating because she always felt hungry and she was constantly snacking.

[00:10:23] Emily Field: But once we bumped up her protein to about a hundred, 120 grams and spread it across. Her day into all of her meals, her cravings went down. She snacked less, and she was better able to eat closer to her 1800 calorie a day maintenance without gaining fat. Here's the coaching takeaway for you. A lot of times the issue isn't that you're overeating at all.

[00:10:45] Emily Field: It's that you're undereating the right things. When protein is missing, you don't feel satisfied, and your metabolism is running slightly lower than it could be. Fixing the protein gap often solves both problems almost overnight. The last culprit I wanna talk about is what I call mindless extras. Here's what that looks like.

[00:11:03] Emily Field: You're cooking dinner and you take a few tastes straight from the pan. You grab a handful of chips from your kids' plate, or eat the crust of their sandwich without even thinking. You swing by the office kitchen and snag a cookie, but you don't log it. Or maybe you tell yourself you're just putting a splash of cream in your coffee, but if we measured it, it's more like two to three tablespoons.

[00:11:22] Emily Field: Now, none of these things feel like a big deal in the moment, right? They're small. They don't even really register as part of a meal. But here's the problem. Those small bites do have calories, and over the course of a day or a week, they add up sometimes an extra 200 to 400 calories every single day. And because they feel insignificant, they rarely get logged or remembered.

[00:11:45] Emily Field: That creates this false sense of, I hardly ate anything today, so why am I not losing weight? The reality is those little handfuls and tastes might be exactly what's keeping you at maintenance. So, let me give you an example. I had a client who logged one tablespoon of peanut butter every night with her snack, but when we actually weighed or measured it, it was consistently closer to two or three tablespoons.

[00:12:08] Emily Field: That difference just from peanut butter alone, was 700 to a thousand extra calories each week. Again, not a bad food, but the big gap between what she thought she was eating and what she was actually consuming was the problem. Now, here's the important coaching takeaway. I am not saying that you need to track every single crumb that passes through your lips.

[00:12:30] Emily Field: In fact, I don't even recommend tracking non-starchy vegetables like spinach, cucumbers, broccoli, or lettuce. Those are nutrient dense, low calorie foods, and trying to log them can create more stress than benefit. So if you're someone who feels overwhelmed by the idea of tracking every little bite. Here's a tip.

[00:12:48] Emily Field: Do not bother with those veggies. Do not bother with those non-starchy vegetables, but do get honest about the extras. The handful of nuts, the spoonful of peanut butter, the cream in your coffee. Those are things that can make meaningful change to your intake. When fat loss is the goal, awareness really does matter.

[00:13:07] Emily Field: It doesn't mean you can never have these extras. It just means you need to account for them or balance them elsewhere so you're not unintentionally overshooting your calorie needs. So now you know the most common culprits that can trip you up and make you feel like you're overeating. But here's the flip side.

[00:13:25] Emily Field: There are also some really clear signals your body gives you. That your actual maintenance needs are higher than you've been led to believe. And once you start spotting these signs, it can be a lot easier to let go of that fear and trust that eating more might actually be the thing your body's been waiting for.

[00:13:42] Emily Field: So let me share a few of the big ones. Sign number one, you can eat more on vacation and not gain weight. Think about the last time you went on vacation. Maybe you were at an all-inclusive resort, or just traveling and eating out at restaurants. More than usual, you probably weren't logging every bite into MyFitnessPal, and you definitely were eating more than your Monday through Friday Normal.

[00:14:03] Emily Field: And yet what happened when you got home? Maybe your weight was the same as before you left. Maybe it was up a pound or two, but within a few days of being back to your routine, it settled right back down. Or sometimes you step on the scale and realize you actually came back lighter. That's a huge clue. It tells you that your body can handle more fuel than you've been giving it credit for.

[00:14:23] Emily Field: Yes. Sometimes there's water retention from saltier foods, different cuisine, and a couple of extra cocktails. But the fact that you didn't balloon up and maybe even lost weight shows your true maintenance is probably higher than your typical weekday intake. So why does this happen? There are a few reasons.

[00:14:40] Emily Field: Maybe there's more movement on vacation. You might be walking through airports, sightseeing, swimming, or just being on your feet more than usual, and that adds up. There is lower stress on vacation when you're not juggling work deadlines, kids' schedules, and everyday stressors. Cortisol often drops lower.

[00:14:56] Emily Field: Cortisol can reduce water retention and even make fat loss easier. You are also more consistent at eating, maybe ironically, eating more regularly, especially balanced meals with enough carbs and protein can calm your metabolism, your hunger signals, instead of being stuck in the stress of undereating all week.

[00:15:16] Emily Field: Your body finally feels safe, so it burns through the fuel efficiently. So when you come back from vacation and your weight is stable or even down, that's your body saying loudly. See, I can actually do better when you feed me. Stop starving me. Sign number two, short-term calorie increases. Improve your energy, mood, and workouts without scale jumps.

[00:15:38] Emily Field: So here's another one I see with clients all the time. They've been living on a 1300 calorie to 1500 calorie a day eating pattern. Their workouts feel sluggish, they're tired by three. They can't stop thinking about food, and they feel like they need more discipline. Then we increase calories sometimes just by 200 or 300 a day, and everything changes within a week.

[00:15:59] Emily Field: Workouts suddenly feel amazing. They're lifting more weight. Maybe they're hitting some new prs or running faster. Their energy skyrockets. No more afternoon slump or constant yawns. Their mood stabilizes less irritability, less hangry, more patience, and the scale, it barely moves. Or if it does, it's just temporary water weight.

[00:16:20] Emily Field: This is one of the clearest signs that your maintenance is higher than you think. Because if eating a little more improves everything without causing fat gain, it means your body was under fueled before. Think about it this way. If you were truly eating above your maintenance, those extra calories would show up as steady fat gain over time.

[00:16:39] Emily Field: But when the opposite happens, when you feel and perform better and the scale doesn't move, that's your body saying, thank you for giving me what I need. Now I can actually function. Sign number three, you maintain your weight despite imperfect tracking or frequently going over. This one might hit home for a lot of you.

[00:16:58] Emily Field: You probably thought, oh, I blew it this weekend. I went way over my calories. You expect the scale to punish you on Monday, and yet by Wednesday your weight is right back where Started. If your true maintenance was as low as you think, say 1300 to 1400 calories a day, those off days would cause real lasting fat gain.

[00:17:18] Emily Field: But if your weight stabilizes week to week, despite those imperfect days, that's a strong sign. Your actual maintenance is higher. Here's why we've talked about this before, but your metabolism is adaptive. On higher calorie days, you naturally move more, fidget more, train harder. That extra energy gets burned instead of stored.

[00:17:38] Emily Field: Your weekly averages matter. Even if you go over one or two days, the rest of your week may be low enough that your overall average intake is still around your maintenance calories. And lastly, consistency matters more than perfection. So if you're maintaining without perfect tracking, your body is showing you, it can handle more than you believe.

[00:17:58] Emily Field: So if you regularly go quote over on the weekends or you have days where you don't track perfectly and yet your weight is stable, that is not failure. That's just data, and it's your body proving to you that your maintenance is higher than you thought. So here's the big takeaway. If you can eat more on vacation and not gain weight, if short-term calorie increases make you feel better without weight gain, and if you maintain your weight despite imperfect tracking, then you are probably underestimating how much food your body truly needs to maintain its weight.

[00:18:29] Emily Field: And the faster you can accept that truth, the faster you'll get out of this restriction overcompensation cycle and into a way of eating that actually supports your energy, your workouts, your hormones, and your results. Now, it's one thing to hear me explain these culprits and some of these signs in theory, but I wanna make it real for you.

[00:18:49] Emily Field: Let me share a few examples of women I've worked with. Or women who might sound a lot like you. These are the kinds of patterns I see all the time, and chances are you'll recognize yourself in one of these stories. Alright, first, let's talk about a woman. I'll call her Sarah. She's in her mid forties.

[00:19:05] Emily Field: She's five six, and she's about 150 pounds. She works out three to four times a week. She walks every day and on paper she's doing a lot, right, but she's convinced that she eats too much. She loves food. She goes out with her husband on the weekends. She enjoys social events, and she just thought, there's no way I could eat more without gaining weight.

[00:19:24] Emily Field: So we had her track, honestly for a week. And guess what? She wasn't overeating at all. She was actually closer to averaging only about 1650 calories a day, hundreds below where her maintenance really was. Which is closer to maybe like 2000 or more once we added more protein during her week and built her meals, so she felt fuller.

[00:19:43] Emily Field: She naturally stopped that weekend, overdoing it, her weight held steady, her energy improved, and she finally realized, oh, I'm not broken. I was just under fueling myself. Then there's someone like Linda, she's 200 pounds and she's been dieting on and off for decades. Her whole life, she believed that 1200 calories was her magic number, and yes, when she went down to 1200 calories, the scale moved, but she was exhausted.

[00:20:09] Emily Field: Her cravings were out of control, and she could never maintain it for more than a few weeks. For her, the real breakthrough came when we bumped up, not down. We set her at about 1700 to 1800 calories added in more protein, and how to focus on strength training instead of endless cardio. And here's the kicker.

[00:20:26] Emily Field: She still lost fat, but this time she actually felt good. She wasn't hungry all the time. She had energy for her workouts, and she finally believed that this could be sustainable for her long term. And then there's the woman I like to think of as the cardio queen. Let's call her Jen. She's five four, a hundred thirty five pounds, and she runs 20 miles a week, plus does some spin classes on top of that.

[00:20:47] Emily Field: She was convinced that eating more than 1400 calories a day would make her gain weight. But what her routine looked like would be she would skip some breakfast, she would eat a super late lunch, and then by evening she was starving. And that's when the overeating happened. Snacking while making dinner, extra servings at dinner, and then adding on a dessert because her body was just trying to make up for the deficit.

[00:21:08] Emily Field: When we moved her up to about 1900 calories a day with balanced macros, everything changed. She stopped binging at night. She finally had energy for her runs and her body composition improved, meaning she looked fitter and leaner even though she was eating way more than she thought she could get away with.

[00:21:25] Emily Field: So whether you see yourself in Sarah, Linda, or Jen, or maybe a mix of all three, the pattern is the same. It's not that these women were overeating all the time, it's that they were under fueling during the day or during the week, and then either overcompensating or white knuckling their way through. Once they learned what their true maintenance calories actually were, everything shifted.

[00:21:48] Emily Field: They could eat more, feel better, and finally see progress. Now I wanna pause here and be really clear about something. Maintenance is the key to body change. It is not the deficit. It's not spending month after month trying to eat less. The truth is your body thrives in maintenance. That's where your metabolism runs best.

[00:22:09] Emily Field: Your hormones stay balanced. Your strength and performance improve, and your energy actually supports your life. Sure, there's a time and a place for a deficit. If fat loss is truly your goal, but you should be spending the majority of your year or honestly your years in maintenance, that's where the real magic happens.

[00:22:28] Emily Field: Chronically underfueling maintenance, whether you're doing it on purpose or just because you're underestimating your needs is going to keep you stuck. So the big question becomes how do you actually find your maintenance? And how do you start trusting it when every instinct is telling you to keep eating less?

[00:22:45] Emily Field: That's exactly what I will walk you through Next, we'll talk about some simple ways to figure out your true maintenance calories, how to approach them without fear, and why this mindset shift is one of the most important things you can do for your long-term success. First, I'll share some practical steps for finding your maintenance calories, like tracking, honestly, looking at your weekly averages, prioritizing protein, and slowly increasing calories.

[00:23:08] Emily Field: If you've been undereating, then we'll talk about the mindset side of it all, because I know the numbers is just one thing, but learning to actually trust that more food can equal better results. That's another. And finally, I'll wrap it all up with clear action steps you can take right now to stop second guessing, stop fearing food and start fueling your body the way that it deserves.

[00:23:29] Emily Field: So let's dive into the how to actually find your maintenance piece. All right. So step number one is to track honestly for seven to 10. The very first thing I recommend is tracking your food intake, honestly, for at least a week, ideally 10 days. And when I say honestly, I mean everything, not just the meals you're proud of.

[00:23:49] Emily Field: That includes weekdays and weekends, the snacks, the bites, while cooking, and yes, the alcohol. This isn't about judging yourself or trying to hit a target. This is simply creating a clear picture of how you're eating right now. And for most women, this step alone is really eye-opening. They realize, oh wow, I'm eating way less than I thought during the week, but way more than I thought on the weekends.

[00:24:12] Emily Field: That's valuable data we can work with. Next is step two, assess your weekly average, not just daily lows. So next I want you to take a step back and look at your weekly average, not just your lowest calorie days. A lot of people will say, well, I only ate 1300 calories on Mondays and Tuesday. Why am I not losing weight?

[00:24:32] Emily Field: The truth is, your body doesn't reset every morning. It responds to the overall trend. So even if you have really low days during the week, if your weekends bump you back up. Your weekly average might land right at maintenance. That's why nothing is changing, even though it feels like you're working so hard.

[00:24:49] Emily Field: Monday through Friday, when you take the weekly view, you get a real picture. Here's where I might say this is like step two and a half. You're gonna compare your average to an estimate. So now, once you have your weekly average, the next question is, how do you even know if that number is really close to your true maintenance?

[00:25:09] Emily Field: This is where using a calculated estimate can be really helpful. You can grab my free DIY macros guide. It's linked in the show notes to plug in your stats and get a starting estimate for your maintenance calorie. From there, compare your actual weekly average to the estimate. So for example, if your estimate says your maintenance should be around 2000 calories, but your logged average is only 1500, that's a sign that you've been chronically undereating, even if it feels like a lot of food to you.

[00:25:37] Emily Field: So what do you do with that information? The goal isn't to instantly jump from 1500 to 2000 calories. Instead, you start by gently moving closer, bringing your daily intake up to match that weekly average consistently. And then slowly nudging it higher until you're fueling at your true maintenance. This way you're not guessing, and you're not just eating randomly.

[00:25:58] Emily Field: You're using both your actual intake data and a calculated target to meet in the middle. That's where you'll find your sweet spot. Step three is to prioritize protein. Another key piece right here again, is protein. A good target for most active women is somewhere between 0.7 0.8 and one gram of protein per pound of body weight spread across your meals throughout the day.

[00:26:23] Emily Field: Now, if you are someone in a bigger body, you have 30, 40, 50 plus pounds to lose. You can lean a little lower on that scale. Even getting away with 0.6 grams of protein per pound of body weight, again, ideally spread across the whole day throughout all of your meals. Why? Because protein keeps you fuller. It supports muscle mass and it gives your metabolism a little boost since it has the highest thermic effect of food.

[00:26:52] Emily Field: So if you're constantly hungry or feeling like you're overeating, it's very possible that you're not eating enough protein. Getting this piece right can totally change how satisfied you feel and how well your body handles the calories you give it. Step four is to increase calories gradually. If you've been chronically undereating, don't be afraid to start increasing your calories gradually.

[00:27:14] Emily Field: I recommend adding about a hundred to 200 calories per day, often from protein or quality carbs, and then monitoring how you feel. Pay attention to your energy, your strength in the gym. Your recovery, your mood, and of course your body composition Over time, if those things are improving and the scale isn't climbing steadily, that's a strong sign that you're moving closer to your true maintenance.

[00:27:37] Emily Field: Remember, your maintenance calories aren't a fixed one size fits all number. They'll shift depending on your activity, your muscle mass, even your stress levels, but by going through this process, tracking, honestly, looking at your averages, comparing them to an estimate. And adjusting with intention, you can get a really good idea of where your body actually wants to be fueled.

[00:27:59] Emily Field: Now, let's talk about the mindset side of this, because I know that's where this gets really uncomfortable. If you're afraid of eating more, I see you. I understand why you feel that way. Diet culture has drilled into us that less is always better, and if you just cut harder, you push more, or you find that magical calorie number, the results will come.

[00:28:21] Emily Field: And if they don't, well then it must be your fault. So, of course the idea of adding food feels terrifying. You spent years training your brain to think, if I eat more, I'll gain weight. But here's the truth. And I say this with so much love, what you're doing right now is not working. And if you're honest with yourself, it's never really worked in the long term.

[00:28:43] Emily Field: The undereating, the constant restriction, the chasing of a lower scale number is only leaving you feeling stuck, frustrated, and exhausted. So I wanna challenge you with this. What could change if I let go of the scale, wait for a while, and focused instead on eating enough? Maybe your energy would finally come back.

[00:29:03] Emily Field: Maybe your workouts would feel strong instead of like a grind. Maybe you'd see your body composition change, more muscle, less fat. Even if the number on the scale stayed exactly the same, maybe you'd stop feeling so food obsessed, so out of control. So all or nothing around eating. The reality is fueling your body well is what drives results.

[00:29:24] Emily Field: Undereating doesn't speed things up. It sabotages you. It slows your metabolism. It wrecks your recovery. It makes your hormones go haywire. Eating enough or eating at maintenance is what restores your metabolism, balances your hormones, and lets you actually feel and look the way that you want. So if you're listening right now, nodding your head and thinking, that's me.

[00:29:45] Emily Field: I've been scared to eat more, I want you to know this. You are not broken. Your body is just waiting for you to give it what it needs. And when you do the results you've been chasing, often show up more easily than you thought possible. That said, I also know that this step can feel overwhelming to figure out on your own.

[00:30:03] Emily Field: Knowing your numbers is one thing, but actually trusting them and following through is a totally other. That's when having a coach in your corner can make all of the difference. Someone to give you the right targets, walk you through the process, and nudge you when that fear of eating more kicks in. You do not have to muscle through this alone.

[00:30:21] Emily Field: So consider coaching. Coaching with our team. If that feels like you. Alright, let's bring this all together. Here's what I want you to take away from today. If you've been stuck in that cycle of undereating during the week, overdoing it on the weekends, and feeling like you're constantly spinning your wheels, chances are your true maintenance calories are higher than you think.

[00:30:40] Emily Field: You don't have to be afraid of that number because maintenance is where your body thrives, where your energy, hormones, strength, and metabolism, all work together to support the results you want. The signs are there. If you can eat more on vacation without gaining, if you feel better when you increase your calories, if you maintain your weight, even when you quote go over, your body is telling you it can handle more.

[00:31:04] Emily Field: So what are your next steps? First, prove it to yourself with data instead of fear. Track honestly for seven to 10 days include weekdays, weekends, alcohol, and all the little bites. That gives you a really great picture of how you're eating right now. Second, don't just look at your daily lows. Look at your weekly average.

[00:31:24] Emily Field: This is the number that really matters. Third, compare that average to what your body actually needs. You can use my free DIY macros guide for this. It'll give you a calculated estimate of your maintenance calories based on your stats. Then hold those two numbers side by side if your average intake is way below your estimated maintenance.

[00:31:44] Emily Field: Fourth is to make sure protein is in place. This one shift alone can completely change how satisfied you feel and how well your body uses the food you're giving it. And fifth, if you've been undereating, start nudging your intake up gradually, a hundred to 200 calories a day. Monitor how your energy feels, your workouts, and your body composition.

[00:32:04] Emily Field: See how that responds. Chances are you'll feel better long before the scale tells you anything. If you're ready to put this into practice, make sure to grab my free DIY macros guide in the show notes. It'll help you see exactly how your intake stacks up against what your body really needs. And if you want me to do the heavy lifting for you, my custom macro calculation will give you your exact numbers plus a little bit of coaching to help support you to actually use them.

[00:32:30] Emily Field: Remember, maintenance isn't the enemy. It's the key. Fuel your body and it will finally start working for you. Thank you so much for listening to the Macros Made Easy podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, take a screenshot of the one you're listening to right now to share it on your Instagram stories and tag me at Emily Field rds so that more people can find this podcast and learn how to use a macros approach in a stress-free way.

[00:32:54] Emily Field: If you love the podcast, head over to iTunes and leave me a rating and a review. Remember, you can always find more free health and nutrition content on Instagram and on my website@emilyfieldrd.com. Thanks for listening, and I'll catch you on the next episode.