My Fitness Pal vs. Personalized Coaching

Nutrition is complicated.

There are a few ways that macronutrient levels are determined in the world of nutrition. Applications like My Fitness Pal use factors such as your age, weight, height, gender, and normal daily activity level to calculate your calorie level per day. They also ask how much weight you would like to lose or gain per week in order to determine what type of calorie deficit or increase your total calories should reflect. This is not an indicator of how much you should expect to lose each week, since everyone is different and your calorie intake does not take into account different factors like exercise type, nutrient timing, food quality, etc. My Fitness Pal also asks for your goal weight, solely for the purpose of sending you reminders regarding how much weight you gain lost/gained. Spoiler alert: everyone gets the same macro ratios through MFP. The only thing that changes to personalize it to you is an increase of decrease in calories. 

Other popular macronutrient calculations incorporate your lean body mass to determine your protein intake first and foremost. Following this, carbs and fats are calculated to fill in the remaining caloric intake. 

At Always Growing, your macronutrient profile is based off several factors, including your current weight, goals, body fat percentage, body type, genetics, activity levels, and the type of training your doing. Everyone is unique when it comes to the proper nutrients their body needs to perform optimally as we all metabolize foods differently. For instance, someone who is tall and slender will metabolize their food at a different rate than someone who is short and curvy. Likewise, men and women tend to metabolize nutrients differently, which leads to storing body fat in different parts of the body. Someone who works out more often will have different energy needs than someone who is just starting out and working out less often.

Needless to say, there are A LOT of factors outside of your weight and your lean body mass. 

This means that there is not a one-size-fits-all macro plan. There is no ratio designed for everyone and what works for one person will not always work for everyone. Often times, tweaking a macronutrient profile is necessary to find the perfect combination of nutrients for you. Furthermore, different types of athletes have difference carbohydrate needs - ultra runners need different fueling than powerlifters. 

In addition to this, where you store fat on your body and how to lose it can give clues to hormonal imbalances resulting from poor or inadequate nutrition. When your nutrition does not fuel you and compliment your unique needs, it can lead to hormonal imbalances in not only cortisol (the hormone responsible for your response to exercise) but also more serious imbalances in sex hormones like testosterone and estrogen.

When it comes to your nutrition, getting coaching from someone who knows the in’s and out’s of human physiology becomes detrimental to not only your success but your long-term health.

In addition to years of experience, Deidre holds various certifications in nutrition as a trainer and health coach. She studied at the Institute of Integrative Nutrition to become a holistic health coach to provide overall nutrition guidance to athletes, while also acknowledging that everyone is different and has different needs. Here she studied not only the importance of a whole foods diet, but also alternatives diets such as veganism/vegetarianism, ketogenesis, and paleo. She also studied through Precision Nutrition to develop her coaching to be more scientifically based and customizable for each athlete.

Always Growing offers a wide range of nutrition plans to achieve your goals - whether that’s to perform better in the gym or just look good naked. Coaching makes all the difference.