Category Archives: My Fitness Pal

HOW TO LOG ALCOHOL FOR IIFYM

Alcohol tends to confuse so many people when it comes to IIFYM.  How the heck do you log it?  When you look-up alcoholic beverages in My Fitness Pal or My Macros+ it will pull-up an entry with calories, but no fat, very few (if any) carbs, and no protein…awesome…we can have virtually unlimited amounts, right?  Wrong.

You all know better than to think alcohol washes through our bodies like water.  While it would be MUCH easier to reach your goals without drinking, that just isn’t realistic for most people.  A big part of IIFYM and what I teach my clients is how to live a normal life while at the same time reaching / maintaining their goal body and most people like to drink from time to time.

There are a few different options when it comes to logging alcohol and fitting it into your day.  You have the choice to either log it as carbohydrate, fat, or a mixture of the two.  I recommend you take a few minutes and sit down with your food app so you can manually add in the alcohol you typically like to drink.  Once you have done that you will already have it available to you to just pull-up and log when making plans for your night out.  Yes, I do recommend you PRE-PLAN how many drinks you will be having because we all know that once you start drinking your judgement can go out the window and having a plan ahead of time is a much better way to ensure you successfully stick to your macros.

The macros you have available to you will determine whether you log your drinks as carbs, fats, or a mixture of the two and in order to be ready for that I recommend you manually add all three options for each alcohol you typically drink…that way each time you go out you can easily select drinks and fit them in based upon the macros you have available to you that particular day.  For example, if you plan on having a steak that night you probably will not want to log your drink as fats (the steak will be using those), but if you plan on eating fish you will probably have extra room in your fats and can log your alcohol as fats.

Now for the actual calculations:

Your body treats alcohol like fats (9 cals) and carbs (4 cals).  To reiterate, when recording alcohol in MFP or My Macros+you have the choice of recording it as fats, carbs, or a mixture of both.  Here are some examples:

Red Wine – 5 oz.

  • 5oz. red wine = 129 calories
  • 129 / 4 = 32g carb
  • 129 / 9 = 14g fat
  • You could decide to record it ½ and ½ as 16g carb and 7g fat

White Wine – 5 oz.

  • 5oz. white wine = 121 calories
  • 121 / 4 = 30g carb
  • 121 / 9 = 13g fat
  • You could decide to record it ½ and ½ as 15g carb and 6.5g fat

Champagne – 5oz.

  • 5oz. champagne – 98cal
  • 98 / 4 = 24.5g carb
  • 98 / 9 = 11g fat
  • You could decide to record it ½ and ½ as 12g carb and 5.5g fat

Vodka – 90 proof 1.5 oz.

  • 1 shot = 110 cals
  • 110 / 4 = 28g carb
  • 110 / 9 = 12g fat
  • You could decide to record it ½ and ½ as 14g carb and 6g fat

Tequila – Petron 1.5 oz.

  • 1 shot = 105 cals
  • 105 / 4 = 26g carb
  • 105 / 9 = 11.7g fat
  • You could decide to record it ½ and ½ as 13g carb and 5.8g fat

Bud Light – 12 oz.

  • 1 beer = 110 cals
  • 110 / 4 = 28g carb
  • 110 / 9 = 12g fat
  • You could decide to record it ½ and ½ as 14g carb and 6g fat

Hopefully that helps clear-up the “how” when it comes to logging alcohol.  Now that you know the formula you can apply it to all different types of alcoholic drinks.  You will quickly figure out your go-tos as there are some drinks that are clearly a lot more macro friendly than others.

I’ll leave you with a link to a macro friendly margarita that the Ledbetter Team has made popular and may become your go-to…click HERE for that recipe (It’s the second recipe).

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Filed under Alcohol, Education, IIFYM and Macros, My Fitness Pal, Nutrition, Weight Issues

How to Enter Your Specific Macro Goals into My Fitness Pal For IIFYM

I know the world of IIFYM (if it fits your macros) aka Flexible Dieting can be information overload for someone who is just starting out.  It was for me, and I have been working in nutrition for years.  There is no getting around the steep learning curve, but I thought I’d try and write a few posts detailing the “hows” of IIFYM.

I want to tackle how to track your macros in My Fitness Pal (MFP) and my first post in this series will detail how to set your particular macros in MFP so you can more accurately track them.  How you do this will differ depending upon which level of MFP you have; the free version or Premium ($49.99/year).  I personally have Premium because I wanted the ease of use, the extra features, and because it is an app I am in multiple times a day.

In an attempt to give my clients more options when it comes to tracking I did recently download My Macros+ (it’s only $2.99) and plan on posting tutorials for that app as well in the future.

FREE VERSION OF MyFitnessPal

9.1 Home Screen and More MFP

The image (above left) is of the MFP homescreen.  At the bottom you will see where I arrowed in red to the “MORE” area.  Click on that and it will take you to the “More” screen (above right).  Once in the More screen click on the “Goals” section.

9.3 Goals to Cals and Macros

Once in the “Goals” section click on the “Calories & Macronutrient Goals” area which will take you to the “Calories & Macros” screen (above right).  You will see that MFP provides you with a “Default Goal” based on the questions it asked you when you first logged in.

9.4 Change Calories MFP

When you work with me (Click HERE to learn more) I provide you with prescribed macros.  If you would like to attempt to set your own macros you can go to sites like BodyBuilding.com for their Macro Calculator.

Once you have your macros you will need to amend the calories (above left).  Click on the calories (1) and a number screen will pop-up.  (2) Delete the “Default Goal” calories and (3) enter in the calories you should be eating.  This is literally the ONLY time you should ever worry about calories because from here on out all you need to do is hit those daily carb, protein, and fat macros regardless of whether that puts you OVER or UNDER your calorie goal…it does not matter…MACROS, MACROS, MACROS.

9.5 Calories changed MFP

Once you have entered the appropriate calories hit the “check mark” to save them.  Now click on either “Carbohydrates 203 g”, “Protein 81 g”, or “Fat 54 g” and the screen below left will pop-up.

9.6 Get Macros Close MFP 140C130P60F

Scroll through the “Carbs” percentages until it is NEAR what your prescribed carbs should be.  Remember, this is not Premium, so you can’t get exact on the grams.  Do that for “Protein” and “Fat” as well and remember that the “% Total” (bottom right of the screen) must equal 100%.

In this example, my client has prescribed macros of 1620 calories 140C/130P/60F.  This means that our “Close Enough” ended-up being 1623 calories 142C/122P/63F.  Does that mean my client will eat the “Close Enough” macros???  NO.  She will just have to remember what the macros that I gave her are…this is the downfall of the Free MFP service, but you all are more than smart enough to remember your macros.

PREMIUM VERSION OF MyFitnessPal

10.1 Home Screen and More MFP

For the Premium version of MFP, to set your macros go to the Homescreen, click the “More” button on the bottom right (left screen above) and then click on the “Premium” button (top right screen above).

10.2 Premiun to Macros by Gram MFP

Once you are in the “Premium” screen (left screen above) click on the “Premium Features” tab and it will bring you to the “Premium Features” page (right screen above).  Once there click on the “Macronutrients by Gram” tab.

10.3 Cals Macros gram or percentage MFP

This will bring you to the “Calories & Macros” page.  Set your calories as described above in the FREE MFP Tutorial.  Then, click on (1) “Carbohydrates 32%” tab which will pop-up the image in the above right screen.  (2) Make sure to click the “Grams” button so you are able to set your macros in specific grams.  Once you have clicked the grams button (3) scroll through each macro and set your particular macros exactly as they were prescribed.  Remember to (4) click the check mark to save your macros.

10.4 Diff Goals by Day MFP Premium

Premium MFP has another neat feature which is great if you are carb-cycling.  Carb cycling means that your macros are different on different days usually in relation to the level of training you will be doing that day.  For example, my highest carb day is on my heaviest leg day (weight lifting).  The “Different Goals by Day” feature above allows me to pre-set those macros for those days that are different than my normal days and I do not have to remember to switch them in MFP on those days because they automatically pop-up (nice run-on sentence, huh?).

To set the macros for those days that do not fit your default days, click the “Add Daily Goal” button (above right  screen).

10.5 Diff Goals By Day Detail MFP Premium

And that my friends is how you set your daily macro goals in My Fitness Pal.

My next tutorial will detail how I go about planning my macros for the day food-wise and how I am able to hit them usually dead-on or within 2 grams either way.

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Filed under Education, IIFYM and Macros, My Fitness Pal, Nutrition