STOP making your clients count MACROS!

This post is for personal trainers who are coming to the conclusion that counting macros might not be the best way to manage food intake for their clients in a female body. So in this post, we'll discuss how hormones change the amount and type of macronutrients. We need the role of micronutrients for hormone balance and five key nutrients that you can incorporate into your client's food recommendations that can actually aid in hormone balance and fat loss.

My name is Omega Zumpano. I am the founder of the confident menstrual cycle coach academy, where I help my students optimize their client's hormones using our three step method. And this is one of our students Anastasia, who has been able to help her clients achieve weight loss, muscle gaining and endurance goals. Get this with more consistency using our three step method, and guess what? None of her clients counted a macro once. And if you want to know more about becoming a student of the confident menstrual cycle coaching academy, one of my students and empowering your clients to optimize their hormones, you can click the application link here. So let's dive in without further ado. 

Why would we ditch counting macros for our female clients, macros hate to break it to you? They're the next version of counting calories. I'm just gonna say it, it glorifies itself as if it's not, but it's not. It is the same thing and it's just in different clothes. It's packaged differently. 

So first off female weight management, let's just take weight management. It's not a simple math equation, like eat this many carbs fats and proteins. It's actually a chemistry equation involving hormones like insulin, estrogen and progesterone. And as I'll explain later, having balanced hormones can actually aid in fat loss and muscle gaining goals. So let's go over each of what each of those hormones do for us when it comes for using fat for energy during exercise. Okay. So if you've watched video on personal training basics for hormones health, you already know the four phases of the cycle and the predominant hormones with each phase. And if not, that's okay. I'll link it below so you can watch it. After this video,

According to the research (here & here), our estrogen actually increases fat utilization, meaning we use more fat when estrogen is highest and estrogen is highest in the middle of our cycle. But not only that estrogen also helps our muscle tissue recover from exercise two, making the ovulatory phase, the ideal phase for muscle building workouts. Now for progesterone, although this hormone doesn't have a direct impact on energy expenditure, progesterone is associated with a rise in basal metabolic rate, the calories we burn at rest. And interestingly, the rise in this hormone is also associated with a decrease in sports performance. Also, I'll explain why that is in a moment now for insulin insulin also plays a role in our everyday lives. As insulin helps shuttle the carbs we eat into the liver and the muscles to be saved for later use, you may know these carbs under the name glycogen when they're stored in the muscle and the liver.

And we actually use glycogen differently throughout our cycle. And that is the kicker. You heard that right? We have different sugar needs throughout our whole cycle and we use sugar and fat differently throughout our cycle. So before ovulation, we actually use glycogen carbs and sugar more efficiently for exercise. When we use sugar more efficiently for exercise, we can actually lift heavier sprint faster and work harder. We've all been there, but after ovulation in the Lal phase, we actually use more fat, more efficiently in general speaking. So decreasing the workload to put your clients in a fat loss range can actually be beneficial for overall goals. So knowing that we use fat and sugar differently throughout the cycle, why would we recommend using the same fat carb and protein amounts all month long? 

It just doesn't make sense. It's an archaic way of training our female clients, nay. It is a man's way of training our female clients and as hormone researcher and women's fitness pioneer, Stacey Sims says, women are not small men, so why are we training them like they are before you think? Well, I can just change the amount of fat and carbs my clients get throughout the cycle. Boom, stick to macros. No, we have to talk about micronutrients and their role in fat loss and hormone balance.

So there are five micronutrients that all coaches should prioritize for their female clients. And depending on the PMs symptoms, you or your client's experience, you might choose to get one micronutrient more than another. So I'm gonna break this down for you with each micronutrient out review. I'll also review the key PMs symptom at most efficiently targets. The first one is a micronutrient that is associated with a decrease in period pain and an increase in fat metabolism. You heard that, right? This micronutrients helps the body use fat more efficiently, and that is drum roll, please. Cruciferous vegetables. These are a hormone balancing superfood y'all cruciferous veggies include foods like broccoli, cauliflower, kale, cabbage, brussel sprouts, and so much more.

This food group supports hormone balance be via the compound, indo three carbon, all which helps decrease high estrogen. So when estrogen is high at UN ideal times in the cycle, like in the Lal phase, when it should be decreasing, our body has challenges using fat for fuel during exercise. So if your client is having trouble losing weight without a deficit, or can only lose weight, following her macro plan, high estrogen could be why not only that the simple fix of adding more micronutrients like brassicas could help your clients manage their PMS symptoms that come along with high estrogen symptoms of high estrogen include cyclical, mood changes, anxiety, depression, and cramps. So take this academy student who used the nutrient recommendations in the C menstrual cycle coaching academy and had zero period pain after having to use nine Motrin a day for most of her life foods are our medicine.

Y'all one of the recommendations this PT student used was my omega-3 recommendation as a means to decrease inflammation, to manage period pain. Omega-3 rich foods includes foods like salmon, flaxseed, avocado eggs, and they're all high. In fact, so for the client who does deal with period pain, restricting their fat intake to meet their macros could actually prove to be counterproductive, fly to their goals, because if they're laid out because of cramps, they can't exercise. And maybe they even miss out on sessions, which with you, which ultimately impact your bottom line. Okay? So let's dive into mood changes a little bit more mood changes are the most common PMs symptom. And before I dive into the nutrients that can help, I just wanna make a disclaimer that PMs and mood swings have been so tightly interwoven with each other in such a toxic way, mood swings.

I don't really like that word, but mood swings are not only a reflection of chemistry, but also the high expectations that have been placed on people with uterus as a whole. So if you have mood changes, there is nothing inherently wrong with you, but there are things that you can do to support your body, to serve you better support your body to serve you better. You are at the center of all this, and that is the micronutrients that helps best is magnesium is actually one of the first nutrients to be depleted from our body in times of stress. But magnesium is involved with hundreds of the body's chemical functions. Magnesium is an important mood regulator in the last half of our cycle and foods, rich and magnesium include foods like buck wheat, molasses, cashew almonds, and don't think I would forget dark chocolate. So those foods fulfill the carve and fat category of macros, but deliver so much mental health wellness.

Getting enough magnesium for me was a game changer in helping me focus and have an even keel mood throughout my Lal phase. Now, magnesium is a great micronutrient to get if you have mood oriented PMs, but if you have cyclical, anxiety or depression also consider getting vitamin D cyclical. Anxiety is related to a lack of progesterone progesterones here, and estrogen is here. So too much estrogen. So if you have too much estrogen when it's supposed to be dropping about a week or so before your period, your body thinks you don't have enough progesterone and progesterone is a feel good hormone that makes serotonin for us. It does estrogen's job in terms of neurochemistry. The good news is that this article showed us that vitamin D actually has progesterone like activity, which means that it can help create serotonin the foods for this list. The foods of vitamin D include salmon macro eggs, and to a greater extent, Cod liver oil, but we all know sunlight for vitamin D is best. Hey, so, so far we talked about the four nutrients that are good for PMs, but we have something else to talk about. What about before PMs? What micronutrients are good for hormone balance to help our clients have healthy pre ovulatory hormones.

Research has shown that ovulation is actually an inflammatory process. If you didn't know already ovulation includes the rupture of the follicle to release the egg. And here is a chart of the five immune cells that exist inside the ovary to help with this inflammatory process, this cyclical inflammatory process that happens each month. It's pretty wild. So with this pro inflammatory process, it's important for us to get antioxidants, to reduce the inflammation that occurs. And I have a theory that the ovulatory phase irritability, which is more common than you think is actually due to unmanaged inflammation, but that's just a theory. No, one's researched it.

And then in nutrition and in the nutrition guidelines I share with my academy students, I recommend that we get antioxidants both in our follicular and ovulatory phase to support reducing inflammation. Overall, some antioxidants on that list include foods like nettle tea or teas, avocados, berries, cilantro, and cherries. I myself have noticed a decrease in irritability during and following ovulation when I get nutrients like those and everyone is different. This next micronutrient is actually important for healthy ovulation to occur. And if you are a part of the menstrual cycle education world already, you know that a body that ovulates is a healthy body, as long as it's a body with a uterus, not all bodies ovulate, there's a micronutrient that supports ovulation to occur is a drum roll, please phyto estrogens, phytoestrogens, like their name says actually acts like estrogen in our body. So it helps get estrogen to that critical point to mature the egg and help with that rupture that I talked about earlier.

Good sources of phytoestrogen include foods like sprouted foods, garlic grains, flax seeds, and pumpkin seeds. Now there are stronger phytoestrogens too, that I recommend that you use with caution and only get organic sources of, and that includes soy Tempe and miso, anything made with soy. So if you want to empower your clients to optimize their hormones, using cyclical, health, nutrition, and fitness, and help them find a feminine approach to fitness in general, apply to be one of my students in the confident menstrual cycle coaching academy. This academy, it is application only, and you can find the application link in the description below. Thank you so much for watching this video. Make sure to share this post with one of your personal training friends!