Macro Talk, Pt. 4, No Bars

I’ve been macro tracking for 6 weeks now. I never thought I would continue for this long, but it has become easy to do, and has been fun to play around with my nutrition. Two weeks ago I realized I was relying heavily on bars to hit my daily macronutrients. While there’s nothing particularly wrong about eating bars, it felt a bit excessive and I wondered, could I hit the same macros without a bars? How would I adjust? Here’s exactly what I did to eliminate one of these daily bars.

The first bar I was having each day was a Perfect Bar. They’re soft, peanut buttery and filling. An excellent companion to a mid morning coffee, sandwiched between first and second breakfast. First breakfast is at 7am, homemade egg muffins (think Starbucks egg bites) and second breakfast is oatmeal at the gym between 10-11am.

To eliminate this bar, I increased the size of my first breakfast and second breakfast. I upped the amount of oats by 15 grams and added a banana. I changed the recipe for my egg muffins to include more eggs and cottage cheese in order to make up the missing 20 grams of protein from the bar.

A couple weeks later this simple change is still going strong. The bigger issue I was having, and the reason for this bar in the first place, was that I was hungry after finishing my breakfast. Making my meals slightly bigger is having an impact on fueling for the rest of the day. It’s a simply change, without tracking and seeing the actual numbers, I wouldn’t have been able to make this adjustment.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain