Episode 103- Macro Tracking for Every Workout: How to Pair Your Nutrition with Your Training for Better Results
Episode 103 Show Notes
If you’ve ever felt drained halfway through a workout, struggled to recover, or wondered why you’re not seeing results even though you’re tracking your macros, this episode is for you.
I’m breaking down the exact strategy I use to match nutrition with different types of workouts—so your body gets the fuel it needs, when it needs it, without wasting energy or stalling your progress.
You’ll learn:
Why your macros should shift depending on whether you’re doing strength training, HIIT, Pilates, yoga, or taking a rest day
How carbs, fats, and protein each play a role in performance and recovery
Simple example meals for every workout type (so you’re never guessing what to eat)
What happens when you mismatch your fuel with your training—and how to fix it fast
The role of adrenal health and cortisol in workout performance and fat loss
Whether you’re lifting heavy, going for a recovery walk, or taking a day off, I’ll show you how to eat smart, not just clean, so you can build muscle, burn fat, and feel strong without burning out.
Links & Resources:
Join the 5-Day Cortisol Reset Program → Starts today! Learn how to fuel for your workouts, balance hormones, and get lasting results. Sign up here or DM me “CORTISOL” on Instagram.
Past Episode: The Truth About Keto and Why Most People Do It Wrong
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Equip Protein - 15% off with code WICKES
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Hey mamas, welcome back to Strong Like Mother, the podcast for women who want to build muscle, lose fat and feel strong from the inside out. So today I'm going to break down a simple but game changing strategy, pairing your nutrition with your fitness. Okay, we do this in my program and I'm going to tell you a little bit more insider scoop on why we do it and how we do it. All right, if you've ever wondered why you feel sluggish during certain workouts or why you're not seeing the results, even though you're tracking your macros, this episode is for you.
All right, first off, not all workouts are going to be created equal. Okay, so let's start there. Different workouts place different demands on your body. So when you're weightlifting, you're breaking down muscle tissue like actively and you need protein to fuel and rebuild. When you're doing our Pilates or yoga segments, which is typically on Fridays or Sundays, that's a lower intensity sort of movement, more recovery focused. You don't need as many carbs to support that.
which is why we typically have a lower macro day on those two days. So when we're doing high intensity interval training, also known as HIT, you are torching the glycogen, which is stored in your liver. So quick energy that's stored in your liver and your muscles so that low carb might actually work against you unless you have plenty of storage to pull from. Okay.
So what happens when you mismatch your nutrition and your training? Well, A, you feel drained, you recover poorly, and you don't build the lean muscle that you're after, and muscle is what drives metabolism and fat loss. So here's how to match your fuel with your functionality. All right, a super simple guide that's going to pair your workouts with your meals slash macros. So when you're doing fitness that is on a lower intensity day, like Pilates, yoga, just
walking, stretching. The focus here is going to be recovery, mobility, and hormone balance. When you're hitting the HIIT stuff, that definitely pushes on your cortisol levels a little bit, which is fine. That's what it's supposed to do. It's supposed to spike it and then it's supposed to come down. When you're doing lower intensity days, that's not what's supposed to be happening. That's not the focus. Your macros could look like lower carbohydrates, maybe slightly fattier.
Tiffany Wickes (02:20.846)
and then keep your protein about where it always is. mean, I protein in terms of the macro is the one that doesn't really change a whole lot or shouldn't throughout your different fitness cycles. So it's the carbs and the fats that we can manipulate a little bit. All right. And the why behind this is you just don't really need a ton of fast burning fuel, which is what carbohydrates are for. You're supporting your home hormones, but you're not chasing performance. So when you're doing recovery stuff like Pilates, yoga, walking, don't make it
harder and then turn it into a cardio workout or I mean, besides like wearing a lighter, um, walking vest, like you don't need to turn it into a cardio session because that's not the point of it. And really cardio is anything that gets your heart beating above a resting, um, heart rate. So yeah, you don't need to throw on a 30 pound weight vest and then walk to the highest capacity that you can walk or be like, Oh, I'm going to hit every hill on the way around this block. Like,
Just walk dog, just walk. All right. So an example meal would be like eggs and avocado for breakfast. Maybe you'll have some Greek yogurt with chia seeds and berries for dinner lunch. You can have salmon with some salad greens, put some olive oil on there. A simple dinner is a grilled steak and maybe some asparagus. You know, it's kind of keto-ish. I say ish because people get keto wrong all the time.
They think if they just eliminate all the carbohydrates that puts you in a keto diet and that's not true either. I did a whole episode on what actually is a keto diet and why people do it wrong and why they think that hot dogs and cheese are it and that ain't it. That ain't it. All right, so let's go move on to strength training days. So the focus for these days is going to be muscle building and repair. The back rows for that day might look like a really balanced set of 40, 30, 30 or
higher carbohydrate, which is 30 % of your overall caloric value. 40 % is going to be carbohydrates, 30 is going to be fat, 30 is going to be protein. That's a percentage of the overall calories you have. So why? Well, because you're strength training, you need more protein to rebuild and the carbs will help fuel those lifts and help with recovery. You can lift weights with lower carbohydrates, you're just not going to lift very well and you're not going lift very heavy because you need that energy.
Tiffany Wickes (04:41.144)
So a great example meal for strength training days is going to look like chicken and sweet potatoes. You can have a protein smoothie that has oats and banana in it. That's a great recovery. So banana, my favorite recovery foods, in you're curious, for carbohydrate based really is bananas and blueberries. I think are fantastic. And if you've got ground beef, that's a really great recovery food. Moving on, ground turkey.
bowl with rice and vegetables. mean, these are all very common meals that we have in the faster way that are already programmed into your app. And they're already programmed to meet the particular lifting cycle or whatever we're doing for fitness, which I think makes it completely mindless. You don't have to consider like, should I eat today? You just look at your app and it's right there in front of you. Like could not literally could not be simpler.
All right. So when you're doing a hit day or a sprint day, you know, the focus is explosive energy, endurance, glycogen depletion. Like you are really wanting to work yourself out to the point of absolute exhaustion, but it's only those two days a week that you're going to do it. And you're not going to do it for any more than, you know, 20 minutes per session, no more than about 45 minutes, maybe an hour a week, not a day. Okay. Hit is supposed to be minimal and it's supposed to be really freaking intense. If you're doing a hit,
workout and it's been an hour, girl, you're not doing HIIT. You are doing a moderate intensity workout. You're no longer doing HIIT, right? You shouldn't be able to do HIIT for any more than 20 to 30 minutes because you were flat worn out. So macros on that one, you know, might, so here's, here's where it differs a little bit. So in the faster way, we really rely on stored glycogen.
for energy. But if you don't have a lot of energy storage or your adrenals are completely fragged out, we don't do low carb for you. We are not relying on your adrenals and your liver and your muscles to pull out glycogen because it's exhausted. can't do that. In fact, you're probably not going to do a lot of HIIT or sprint as it is. And we are going to put you on a regular macro cycle even for those workouts. But if you are a person
Tiffany Wickes (06:49.57)
who has some to store and your adrenals are healthy, then you can do a keto style on a sprint day and really dig into that stored fat. Otherwise, you know, you would want to use some higher carbohydrates, moderate protein and lower fat. So your body's going to burn through the glycogen really fast. Like I said, if you've got it to, if you've got it to share, then great. But carbs are going to help with the performance and the recovery. I don't work out fasted at all because I don't
like the way I feel trying to work out fasted. I walk fasted in the morning, but I don't do workouts fasted. So an example meal might be oatmeal and a protein shake or pre-workout, maybe some rice cakes with a little bit of almond butter. Post-workout, a turkey wrap on really any wrap. If you do find with gluten and you want a normal tortilla, feel free to have that. If you like brown rice tortillas or whatever that looks like for you. So a turkey wrap and some fruit, fantastic.
Alright, so let's talk about rest days. There are two different schools of thought with rest days. So the focus of a rest day is to repair, really, you know, soothe your hormone balance and work on digestion. Typically, we lower the amount of macros, like all of them are lowered on a rest day because you're not putting in a lot of physical effort.
So, similar to low intensity days, just lower carbohydrates, lower fat, all of it's just calorically lowered. The second school of thought on that is because people seem to either over or under extend themselves or miscount or over count with macros throughout the week, a rest day could be considered a refeed day. But you're going to have to know really well how well
you counted your macros, how are you feeling? If you're feeling like you are dragon A on rest days, then you probably need to use that as a refuel day. If you're like, I feel fantastic on my rest day, then go ahead and lower those macros and just let your body, you know, hum along and give it a break with digestion from all of those higher protein meals when you were lifting heavy weights throughout the week. But really like rest days is a day that you just really need to
Tiffany Wickes (09:05.806)
feel out your body, like are you super sore? Are you really tired? Do you have extra energy? And then see what you're doing with your macro cycle based off of that particular day. Now listen, I'm not telling you just blow it up like, hey, it's a rest day. I'm going to use this as a refeed day. It looks like it's McDonald's for breakfast and this restaurant for lunch. And we got three pizzas coming for dinner. Like don't blow it up, all right? You can't blow an entire deficit in a day.
Like hit any fast food joint. You can do that in a meal. All right. So let's just talk about why this matters, especially for moms. You're not just working out for fun. Okay. I love to work out. Maybe you love it too. Maybe you hate it, but you're doing this with a particular goal in mind. You want to feel strong. You want to get leaner. You want to feel energized, but you do not want to burn out, which again, my last episode was about
balancing out and reining in that cortisol. Well, this is why we strategically pair our nutrition with our fitness so that you don't burn out your adrenals or if your adrenals are already burnout because you spent way too many years doing the bootcamp with nothing but coffee before walking in there. I see you. I don't hate you for it. I get it. But like that was not good for you. I think you already know that. So if
that's where you're at, then this whole program is designed to soothe those adrenals, especially the cortisol reset program, which starts today. So if you haven't yet registered for that, you need to get into the show notes immediately and get into that group. But here's what happens when moms underfuel on trainee days or overfuel on rest days. Your hormones will get thrown off.
your fat loss will plateau, your cravings increase, your workouts feel way harder than they should. So instead, imagine this, you feel strong, you're focused during your lifts, you're not starving at night, your body composition starts shifting, less fluffy, more bustle definition, your cycles are full of energy and normalized. And the best part is you don't have to guess. Okay. This is the kind of personalized strategy I help.
Tiffany Wickes (11:16.974)
moms out with inside of my coaching program is to figure it out. So you're not just eating clean, but you're eating smart and you're eating for your certain activity. I heard somebody say last night in a podcast, you get your carbohydrates when you deserve it. And I was like, Hmm, let me think about that for a minute. And you know, I feel like that's true when you're not doing a whole lot, like your stored body fat should be able to handle that workload. When you are pushing your body,
like climbing mountains or I mean, even like breastfeeding babies, that takes a lot out of you physically. You do need more carbohydrates for that. So listen, if any of this clicked for you and you're ready to learn exactly how to eat for your workouts, your cycle, your lifestyle, then you need to join me inside the cortisol reset program and then check out what these customized meal plans look like. Check out our fitness cycles.
I'll show you how to stop winging it and then start syncing your workouts and your meals so that you can optimize your fat loss, optimize your strength and get real results. So head to the link in the show notes or DM me and you can DM me cortisol on Instagram or just reply, whatever. And like, let's just get that moving so that you can start feeling better and then stop guessing on how to finally make results for yourself. Okay. Thank you for being here. As always, I can't wait to talk to you next week.
Stay strong mamas and keep showing up. Bye.