Cash Flow for Calories
Episode notes
I was eating 2,800 calories a day and getting 30 grams of protein. I had no idea until I started weighing my food - and I'm someone who cares about fitness more than almost anything.
No doctor, no nutritionist here. Just a guy who's trained since he was 14, got a body scan that surprised him, and finally started paying attention to what he actually eats.
What you'll take away:
- Why a $60 DEXA scan tells you more than any bathroom scale - and what it revealed about "healthy" eating that a lifelong gym-goer never saw coming
- The "cash flow for calories" system: how to find your maintenance calories with nothing but a morning weigh-in
- Why hitting your protein number lets you still eat the Ben & Jerry's - and why that's less restrictive than any diet Jeff has tried
馃敆 Mentioned in this episode:
- BodySpec (the DEXA scan company)
- Tracking apps: MyFitnessPal, MacroFactor
- Tim Ferriss (where Jeff first read about DEXA scans)
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Transcript
Transcribed from the recording and lightly formatted for reading. Nothing has been reworded, so the occasional mis-hearing is left as spoken.
Jeff Albaum
What's going on, everybody? Welcome back to another episode of Curiosity Class. Today I want to talk about macros, macronutrients, nutrition. And obviously, I'm not a doctor. This is not medical advice. I don't play one on the internet. So, that being said, let's talk about medical stuff. Just kidding. no, I just wanted to share what I've been doing macro-wise, because I I for those of
You that I see in real life, you will be annoyed by this because I was probably talking your ear off in recent in-person stuff. But I've been on a bit of a macro kick and I know I'm about 20 years late to the game, but I consider myself someone who's pretty who cares about fitness a lot and who cares about like health and wellness a ton. And yet I've never really done, I've never really thought about what I ate in any deep sense. And so recently I've been for the last three months, coming up on four.
I've been tracking and weighing and measuring 90% of the food that I've been eating. and so I just want to give a quick breakdown of like what macros are, how they work, and like what I've been seeing as a result. So this all started because long time ago, actually, I read one of Tim Ferris's books and he he talked about this thing called a DEXA scan. And I actually don't know what DEXA stands for. It's D E X A. and it basically you go in and they have these clinics all over the country and it's about $60.
It's not covered by insurance, so you just pay cash. you and I I don't have an affiliation with this company, but the company that I that I use is called Body Spec. I'd love to get the founder on to Curiosity class, actually. So if you listen to this, you want to come on, can't wait. Love to love to have you. this company's called Body Spec. They have clinics all over the country. You make an appointment, it takes 12 minutes, you're in and out, super quick, and you go in and you lay down on this this machine, and there's a scanner that kind of scans your body from head to toe.
And it gives you a very comprehensive report of how much your bones weigh, how much fat you have, how much muscle you have, how much your organs weigh, what your bone density is. And it's considered a very in-depth, I think it's the most comprehensive way you can view your though those numbers, right? Like maybe you've seen one of the scales where you hold the the bar and has like electrodes that.
you know, send a current through y you nah that's probably not right. But it's does something with electricity and then it it's supposed to, you know, measure your body fat percentage. I think those are fairly inaccurate. So a DEXA scan is is one of the most accurate ways to understand how much muscle you have, what your total weight is, how much b body fat you have, what your bone density is, et cetera. So I read this in Tim Ferris's book like probably 10 years ago and I was always fascinated. And for some reason, I honestly don't know why,
I or maybe my wife found that they had DEXA scans like in Austin. And I was like, wait, that's really cool. I'd I'd love to do that. So she got me one as a gift. And I went and did it and it was fascinating. It was super, super fascinating. So I learned that I had I had low muscle mass relative to my body weight, right? So it resulted in a larger body fat percentage as a percentage, obviously not on a relative basis. So I was like, that's so interesting. Like I've worked out my entire life pretty much, like since I was 14 years old.
That doesn't really seem reasonable. That like that doesn't make sense. So then I started getting into like, okay, well, what am I eating? Like, how can I, how can it be that I work out, you know, five, six times a week, but I have low muscle mass? Like that's something's not working. and so going back full circle too, I've never really thought deeply about what I've been eating. I've kind of gone through phases where it's like, okay, I'm you know, I'm doing only whole foods or mostly vegetarian or
Show full transcript
Jeff Albaum
You know, trying the organic thing. And I never really did keto except in college. And I was like, I get to eat salami. but I never took any of those very seriously. And so I was like, okay, I'm gonna like my brain really likes having these like exact measures. So I kind of think of this as like bookkeeping for your food. Right. So it's like, how can I measure my cash flow but for my my calories? So my brain really enjoys this process. But basically, I've been taking all of the food that I eat.
And there's a lot of apps that help you do this. So it makes it pretty easy. My FitnessPal, Macro Factor, et cetera. you scan the barcode or scan the a code on the or the the the nutrition label on the food and then you weigh it. And so this is for everything. So it's the amount of oil that goes in your pan, it's the grams of blueberries that you have with breakfast, you know, whatever it is, but I'm just trying to weigh everything that I that I can in order to get an understanding of okay, how much protein am I actually consuming in a day?
And so the general rule of thumb is you wanna have between point eight and one point two grams of protein per body weight, right? So let's say you weigh two hundred pounds. I'm not gonna do public math here, so thank you, calculator. So point eight grams of protein times two hundred pounds of body mass is 160 grams of protein per day. Okay. For if you're gonna do the one point two grams of protein times two hundred pounds, that's two hundred and forty grams of protein per day.
So what I started out was I was going to, okay, I'm not going to change my diet at all. I'm just going to take a baseline of where I'm at. So what I did was I just, I didn't change anything about what I was eating. I just measured it. And so I realized a couple of things. One, I was eating a lot of calories throughout the day. Like I was eating close, I think 2,800 calories. and I was getting like 30 grams of protein, maybe 40 grams of protein. So I was like, wait, this is so interesting. So I realized that my protein was way low relative to the amount of calories I was eating.
just low in general actually, not even relative. 'Cause I was just I was eating non protein dense foods. So a lot of a lot of carbs, a lot of fat. you know, like a typical meal for me would be like a salad with zero protein. It'd be like roast roasted sweet potato and feta and olives and, you know, spinach and whatever. So I what I would think of as healthy, but not actually protein. There was like no protein in it, maybe a little in the feta. But it was really it was kinda eye opening to me. So
I was like, okay, I'm gonna really focus on protein. So I like worked with Claude to help me figure out like, okay, how many calories do I need to eat? what percentage, like how much protein should I have, et cetera. And so what we came up with was this plan to try to reduce body fat for about two months. And then so that would be in a calorie deficit, and then start to increase calories to put on muscle. So that would be a calorie surplus. So it's been really interesting because I've learned so much about.
food and macros and et cetera in this time. And so basically what the the question I had, which I think this is the another interesting part, is everyone talks about a calorie surplus or calorie deficit. Well, that's all based on something called your your maintenance calories. So essentially if you your body burns a certain amount of calories on a typical day, right? and there's not exactly a great way to calculate what that is. There's like if you go online and you do like your height and weight and like
your age, et cetera, it'll give you a a general baseline. but it doesn't go super deep. So the best way that I've found, and if anyone has a better way, please let me know. But the best way I found is to kind of like pick what you think is reasonable and then just track your weight every morning at the same time. And if you're going up, you're in a calorie surplus. If you're going down, you're in a calorie deficit. And if you're staying the same, that's probably your maintenance calories.
so I I kind of did that and found where my maintenance level was and then dropped it like a hundred calories to be in a slight calorie deficit. and then it's so fun because then I get to like figure out how to fit protein, fat, and carbs, which are the actual macronutrients, protein, fat, and carbs, into what I eat in a day. And it's been super fun because yeah, like I said, I get to kind of figure out it feels like bookkeeping, but for it's a cash flow for calories. I think that's what I'm gonna call this episode cash flow for calories.
but I get to figure out like, okay, how can I fit different things into the day? And the cool part is is you can eat anything you want, right? So like you can have Ben and Jerry's. That's totally fine as long as you hit your protein levels. and so it's really fun to like not feel, like I can't have that, or like I did no sugar for a while. and this feels much more or much less restrictive because as long as you're hitting your protein goals, you can eat whatever you want. well, I have celiac, so I can't have bread still, but
You can eat anything that you want to eat that you're not that your body is not allergic to. so yeah, so that's been super fun. So that's been what I've been doing for the past couple months. and then the the the coolest part is I got another DEXA scan two months in and you can see the results and the changes that like you've been doing. And so I didn't really change my workouts that much. I just changed my diet and there was a pretty substantial change in my DEXA results. so I'm really excited to go back in a couple months to to see what it is again.
Also, what a great business is this this DEXA scan company. Again, Body Spec. Would love to get you on the program. that'd be awesome. because it's such a it's a great model. It's like their their clinics are fairly small, so their rent must be relatively, you know, not a lot. the machine costs 10 grand. And I don't know how much it costs to to pay the operator, but I don't think they're they're doctors. I think they're people who are trained in, you know, specific DEXA.
Technology. They also have mobile vans, which is awesome. So they send these machines to like places that don't have a clinic. If they get enough interest, they'll send it to a more rural area. and so they have these all over the country. They're booked up like crazy. If you go on their website, they literally the appointments are 12 minutes and they book them every 12 minutes. And so I think at peak, if every slot is booked, they're seeing like 66 people a day or something. it's amazing. It's a really, really cool business.
so that being said, I am excited to get another deck scan in about a month here and I will let you know how the results go. And that is all for this week. I will see y'all next week. Bye everybody.