Episode 106: Marrying Macros with Mindful Eating with Katie Garces
If you’ve ever tried macros eating and/or mindful, intuitive eating, then you know that these two approaches are on opposite ends of the spectrum. And to most of us, they don’t typically go together.
That is unless you’re Katie Garces.
Katie is a Nurse Practitioner and Certified Nutritional Therapy Practitioner who focuses on a “real foods framework” to maximize health. Katie blends her professional background in traditional healthcare, wellness, and nutrition, with her passion for the healing power of spiritual wholeness to provide customized advice and life balance solutions for women.
She also believes that macros and mindful eating can be blended together and offers this service in her practice.
In this episode, we examine how she brings these two vastly different approaches together simply and sensibly. We discuss how slight tweaks to your macros can have profound effects and the role and impact that body wisdom, curiosity, and even nutrient density can play.
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“It’s possible to bring mindfulness and some of that women’s intuition and body intuition into we’re eating and what we’re tracking without going overboard, without getting unhealthy. And it’s possible to marry the two and maybe even have greater success in all of those realms than we’ve ever had before.”
Read the Episode Transcript...
Naomi Nakamura: Hello my friends and welcome back to the Live FAB Life Podcast. I am your host Naomi Nakamura and I am very excited to share today's episode with you because it is not a topic, well, it's actually on two topics that are complete opposite ends of the spectrum and yet my guests brings them together in a very intriguing way that actually works. So please join me in welcoming back to the show, my good friend Katie Garces. Katie is a Nurse Practitioner and a certified Nutritional Therapy Practitioner, focusing on a real foods framework to maximize health. Katie examines in her work how spiritual and emotional barriers have a direct effect on our relationship with food. Very fascinating, isn't it?
Katie blends her professional background in traditional healthcare, wellness, and nutrition with her passion for the healing power of spiritual wholeness to provide customized advice and life balanced solutions to women of all ages, all over the world. So a few months ago in Katie's Instagram stories, she shared how she has recently started offering macros coaching to her clients. When I heard this, like I said, I was intrigued and it made me lean in a little closer. That's because the last time Katie was on this show back in Episode 047, 047 we talked about what happens when you stop obsessing about food and we talked all about intuitive and mindful eating. By the way, that episode is one of the top downloaded episodes of the show to date.
So knowing that Katie specializes in mindful and intuitive eating, I was fascinated that she's now offering macros coaching again, because like I said, these two approaches very rarely intersect. Am I right? Now, I've personally had tried both approaches at very different times in my life and I know that when someone is very intently focused on macros, intuitive eating is not on your mind. Likewise when someone is in a state of mind or in a time in their life when they are practicing intuitive and mindful eating, macros is definitely not a part of the equation.
So at that time, that I watched Katie's Instagram stories, which we recorded this episode a little while ago, so that was maybe about one or two months ago. I was also at a crossroads. I was feeling stuck and quite honestly I was tired and I was exhausted in trying to make different tweaks in my own diet to address some recent things that had recently become uncovered at that time in my own health. So I reached out to Katie because number one, I wanted her to tell me how in the world she was marrying macros and mindful eating together and two, I asked her to lift some of the burdens off of my shoulders and create a plan for me. And that's what we're talking about in this episode.
So you're going to hear us talk about things like body wisdom and being curious and how she not only combines these two wildly different approaches, but she also continues to incorporate real food nutrition. She does all of these things you'll hear in a very simplistic and in a very sensible way. So if you know Katie, then you know what a very cool and very calming and lovable but also very sharp minded presence she has, which is what I just so adore about her. So like I said, I'm so excited to share this episode with you. So let's just get to the show. Hi Katie, welcome back to the show.
Katie Garces: Hey Naomi, great to be back.
Naomi Nakamura: I'm so excited for the conversation that we're about to have today. Now you are a returning guest on this show and we'll get into what we talked about the last time you were on. But for those who maybe didn't hear about you the first time around, why don't you just introduce yourself and tell us who you are and what it is that you do.
Katie Garces: Yeah, absolutely. So I'm Katie Garces of katiegarces.com. I am a Nurse Practitioner and also a certified nutritionist. I have been coaching nutrition and general wellness, health, personal development, spirituality, the whole gamut primarily for women for the last five or so years. So my coaching and my, I guess content and what I'm passionate about has really evolved as my own health journey has evolved and that of my clients and my counterparts and my colleagues. As we've gotten into our forties things have changed and it's led just some other interesting paths, so it's an ongoing evolution of self-inquiry and self-learning. So it's been quite a ride. Very fun.
Naomi Nakamura: Well you were on the show last summer and it was Episode 047 and we talked a lot about how you transitioned from obsessing about food, to really moving into approaching food in a mindful intuitive way. So what have you been doing since then?
Katie Garces: I've had quite a year. I actually took a self-imposed sabbatical at the beginning of this year, so January 2019. Just because I felt like I had hit up against just a lot of internal friction with my work, and what I was doing, and what's it all about. I don't know if it was like a mini midlife crisis or what when it came to my work. But it was just time for me to really pull back go inward, do a lot of self-reflection, a lot of quiet time. Sometimes I feel like it's hard for us to gain that inner clarity when we still are surrounded by all this stuff going on around us, social media, business, all that stuff.
So, really took some hard and fast time down and that was much needed. It was a huge time of growth for me personally, internally and I came back really just energized and ready to come back to this work that I'm passionate about. I really dove back in with Beautycounter because at the time it felt like the most easeful and fun thing for me to step back into, which it has proven to be so. Then resumed my coaching, and my book clubs, and some of the stuff we're going to talk about today. So it's been a really nice sort of re-entry and it's been a big year, a full year, but much needed.
Naomi Nakamura: Those things, they really go nicely together, don't they?
Katie Garces: They sure do. Yeah, they really compliment each other.
Naomi Nakamura: So a few, I think it was a few months ago on your Instagram stories and I love your stories by the way. You had mentioned something that was really intriguing to me and it was something that I really didn't know I was looking for at the time. You talked about how you had started doing some macros coaching. For those who aren't familiar with macros, it's tracking your carbs, proteins and fats. Personally how you just said, there was a lot of things going on in your own health.
I have a lot of things going on in my own health, it's has been an ongoing journey. Which is, I think those of us who do this kind of work, we do it because we all have our own journeys. I was at this point where I didn't know what else to do and I had done macros before. Knowing that you were very much into intuitive eating and mindful eating to hear you bring up macros made me go, "Huh." Tell me more, because I feel like those two approaches are two very opposite ends of the spectrum.
Katie Garces: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Absolutely.
Naomi Nakamura: What I mean by that is that, I counted macros for many, many years and I feel like I'm familiar with it, but yet I'm not. Where as when I was in that period, everything to me was about how many calories I was eating. I was measuring all of my meals, every single food that I ate, and so it was a lot easier for me to eat out because a lot of those restaurant menus are already preloaded into these apps that we use as opposed to trying to count those things from a home cooked meal. I was very much focused on the fats, the carbs and the proteins, but only in terms of percentages, right?
I would read a lot of the literature that says, "Well you should be, 20% protein and 30% fat and 50 to 60% carbs." I was marathon training at the time, so it was all very much about tracking miles, tracking pace, tracking calories in and out. Then you have on the other side of the spectrum, intuitive mindful eating, which is very much not about those tracking and because of feelings that might come up with that. So tell me how did you come doing these things together?
Katie Garces: No, I mean, you really nailed it. Tracking and calorie counting on all of those things, on the surface is really the polar opposite of intuitive eating. Which I consider myself an expert on and I consider a very important part of my practice, my own life and what I do with my clients. So yeah, it doesn't make sense. If I'm coaching intuitive eating on one corner that says, "Don't waste your energy tracking calories." Then, how is it that you're talking about tracking again?
The thing is, this is something that I've come to realize with everything in life, is there's a time and place for everything. And when I came to intuitive eating, it was because I was, and I think I talked about this somewhere last time [inaudible 00:09:24], I was addicted to diets, and tracking, and detoxes, and challenges. I had no personal internal wisdom or knowledge about how to just eat and live outside of one of those things.
So I had to step away from all of that fully and stepped fully into intuitive eating, really learn to trust my body, really learned to listen to my body, listen to my body's cues, be curious and say, "Okay, if I'm going to eat this way today, how's it going to make me feel?" All of it was like data points and just like getting really curious with my body and eating and how that affected my energy levels, my weight, all of that stuff for a good couple of years.
Now I have that wisdom. Now I have that body wisdom, I can tap back in really quickly and know exactly where I'm at, what I need, how I'm feeling. So it's interesting that, yeah, come full circle. Because when you first start, nutrition and the whole diet world obviously calorie counting and macro calorie counting is a big piece of that. So I got curious again about the macros just because I wanted to just see where I was at. Okay. I'm feeling pretty good, my weight's been stable, I'm digging this intuitive eating thing. Got back to the gym was lifting, I'm like, "I want to know what I'm eating." Just out of curiosity because constantly, I just want like data on myself.
Because I'm constantly tweaking and trying to, improve and figure all these things out. So I realized, because I'm not so obsessive, because I'm not defining my outcomes, defining my worth even by the number on the scale or if I met my calories or macros for the day, that I'm able to do that from a very mindful and very neutral position. Again, it's just data, it's just information for me. Then being able to tweak that a little bit. Like if I'm doing a weight strength training program and I would like to see a little bit more, muscle or whatever, I can do that.
It was really tapping back into some of nutrition 101 for me from when I was back in school back in 2012. I reminded myself, I'm like, "You know what, I actually really like doing these plans. I'm pretty darn good at them. It's the foundation of my nutrition education. So I think there's a way that I can incorporate this for clients, for people out there who are looking to not be obsessive and not be crazy about their calories and eating less than like a three year old. But still meet some health goals, maybe meet some weight goals and training goals with this extra information."
So yeah, that's what I think, why you reached out is because you and I talked about offline, the mindful piece of it and that it's possible to bring some of that mindfulness and some of that women's intuition and body intuition into we're eating and what we're tracking without going overboard, without getting unhealthy. And it's possible to marry the two and maybe even have greater success in all of those realms than we've ever had before.
Naomi Nakamura: That's exactly what working with you has taught me in the past few weeks that we've been doing this. Because, I feel like all of my, I don't want to say bad habits, but challenging times in hindsight, looking back between probably 2005 to 2012 maybe, those were the years I was really deep into tracking. There was no mindfulness or intuitiveness in that at all. It was all about the numbers, it was all about either limiting myself or like you said, stuffing your face with hard-boiled eggs before bed so you get to your numbers especially.
Especially when you're doing something like athletic training, right? So there was no mindfulness, intuitiveness there. Then when I realized, I was in adrenal fatigue and doing all these things, I realized that I really needed to learn how to listen to my body and I didn't know how to do that. So went to the opposite end of the spectrum and really trying to get away from the tracking because those were triggering things for me, [inaudible 00:13:04] into the mindfulness intuitive space of it. It was a growth period for me where I really learned how to figure out what works for my body and what doesn't.
But as I'm dealing with things like unexplained weight gain, resistant weight loss, hormonal imbalances, I know the science part of it where I'm like, "This nutrition stuff, it can't be discounted." Which I feel tends to happen in the people who are really into the intuitive eating space, that can't be discounted. What I learned from the first few weeks working with you is that number one, I probably could have stood to eat a little bit more calories every day. I always knew that there was benefit there and not just tracking calories to see if you might be overeating, but also if you're under eating, cause that's a huge problem for women.
Katie Garces: Yeah. Especially if you're struggling with any sort of hormonal imbalances.
Naomi Nakamura: Exactly. Then I realized that I was nowhere close to my protein intake every day, and that's what really helps our bodies rejuvenate themselves. I couldn't even stand to eat a little bit more carbs, which was also shocking to me because I feel like everybody does love this carbs.
Katie Garces: Right, right. Well, carbs have been demonized, right? Some people are staying away from the carbs when in fact, and I know I've shared this in other venues before, it wasn't until I added carbs back into my diet after my adrenal fatigue and my weight gain and everything that I actually started losing weight because my body was so desperate for the carbohydrates just to start to heal and just to get, you know, my hormones balanced.
Your body is not going to go into an easy homeostasis if you're not giving it the energy. So we can read all the books and saying, "Eat this way, eat the high, fat eat the low carb." But at the end of the day, it's an [inaudible 00:14:44] of one and that is you. You have to figure out what's going to help. You know what, you need a few extra carbs for a few weeks just to see how you feel, you might find that that was the thing you needed to start losing some later, to get your energy up to the point where you can make it to the gym that you've been planning to go to for six months but it hasn't happened. So, that's what I mean, it's all just sort of a curiosity and just sort of almost like a bio-hack. How can we play with the things that we know we have at our dispense to do and just track it a little bit and see what happens.
Naomi Nakamura: I think something you said earlier, and I wrote these three words down and it's curiosity, trust and listen. I think when I was really into that tracking activities, I didn't have the skills to trust myself or know how to listen to my body. It wasn't until I ventured into the, let's let go of all those things, let's just try and eat intuitively. Sometimes the intuitive messages probably I didn't hear the writing messages. But that's where you learn to build those skills of trust and really understand what your body is saying. Do you think that people really need to go to both those ends to then come together in the middle to find a balance that way?
Katie Garces: Right. I don't think everybody has to necessarily go to the extremes that maybe I've found myself at or maybe you have. But I do think it's worth considering if you are somebody who maybe has religiously tracked in the past or continue to track and you feel like you're chained to that. I think that's a red flag, something to pay attention to. If you feel like some book blog or tracking app is going to tell you more about your body than you are, then you need to look at that I think. I always say, "We don't need any more facts, what we need is body wisdom."
So I know you and me, and I'm sure many of your listeners are very well versed in nutrition and all of the many resources that are out of disposal. But at some point we have to say, "Okay, I know I've read it all, I'm quite well versed, I'm pretty knowledgeable. Now I got to tap in and see what my body has to teach me and tap into my body's wisdom, make friends with my body, let's figure that out. And then, okay, if I want to tweak a little bit, get a little more curious then yes, let's add the tracking back." But it's when it's just, it becomes addictive, it becomes obsessive. I mean people will be over one or two calories and they freak out, I mean, come on, right?
Naomi Nakamura: No, that was me. It's like, if I was a little bit over, I would be out the door going for a run for a second workout of the day. It was so important to stay within a certain range. I remember one Thanksgiving, a friend and I, we literally spent three hours on Thanksgiving morning at the gym in anticipation of the Thanksgiving meal that we were coming three hours.
Katie Garces: Wow. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean if you think about behaviors like that, I'm not judging because I think we've all been there, done that, some stuff like that in the past. So stuff like that, obsessively tracking, think about the amount of time sometimes that it does take to track, that is all very stressful. It might not feel like, "Oh my God, I have a deadline." Stressful. But it is a stressor and on some level you are having low grade cortisol being constantly released into your bloodstream because you're holding on to your macros or your calories with a death grip. And that is a stressor.
So even now, I feel like how I utilize, tracking for myself now is, if I feel like maybe some of my eating feels a little bit, I want to say out of control, but maybe I've gotten too back into my chips. I love tortilla chips and so maybe I'm like, "Okay, I need to reign that in or I want to check my protein and just see where I'm at." I'll do it for a week or two. But the second it starts to feel a little obsessive or a little controlling, I know to immediately step away from it. Whereas before I would be really scared to step away from it even if I knew I needed to. Because God forbid I gain 50 pounds overnight, which isn't going to happen.
It was such a crutch in a way that I was so scared to walk away from it, yet sometimes pulling away from it for a couple of weeks is one of the best things we can do because it almost feels like, and you know it's the right decision when it does feel like a bit of a release, that is just trying to step away from it for a little bit and that's okay too. Getting back to your initial question, there's a time and a place for all of this. Sometimes I feel like it's helpful to have somebody do a plan for you and again, knowing that that plan is not to the gram or to the calorie, it is a general guide. Nothing in our life, nothing in our physical body or our spirit is to the T. We're not black and white, none of this is.
But having a general framework to start from, sometimes can help us just feel a little bit more control, maybe even tap back into our body. Because you mentioned the hard boiled egg thing and that's what I tell everybody. We have this protein goals. Sometimes the protein goals put by gyms and stuff and trainers are so high, and yeah I remember back in my twenties into the night, not even remotely hungry, 9:30 at night eating hard boiled eggs and turkey slices because I hadn't hit my protein. I know for a fact that probably made me gain weight. I did not need to eat, my body was not hungry. Yet here I am force feeding my protein. I'm like, "This is a problem peple."
What do we need to do is say, "Okay, I don't need to eat anymore tonight so I'm 20 grams underneath. Let's see how I feel tomorrow. Maybe I have a protein shake tomorrow or maybe I don't." But it's all just, again, not curiosity and just tapping back into our body. Our body is going to tell us more in the tracking app. The tracking app is a great place to start and get a really good idea of where we're at.
Naomi Nakamura: I will say I was a little bit, I don't want to say frightened or scared, but first of all, let me back up a little bit. I asked you to help me with the plan. I mean, I know how to do macros, but it's the same reason we work out with personal trainers. It's just like, "I know how to work out." But having you do that for me took away the self doubt, it spared me the brain space, take the thinking out of it for me, to have you do that for me. Then also have a second opinion to validate the things that I already had going on in my head before we even spoke.
That being said, I was a little bit nervous about tracking again because I had not had my fitness pal on my phone for years. But I will say, I was a lot proud of myself because I knew it was important to track pretty religiously, at least for the first couple of weeks just to get an idea of where I truly was and not just one day here or there because those might be outliers, anomalies.
So I did that and then we actually went to Denver for a Beautycounter event, saw you there and I didn't track it all that weekend, nor did I even feel guilt or anything about, "Am I off plan this week, am I over my count, am I not having enough of this?" Then when I came back, I took a few days to get back into the routine, but it was nice not to have the guilt.
Katie Garces: Yes, yes. I think that's beautiful that you did that. You're on vacation or work meeting whatever and you're not stuck to your phone or you know, keeping yourself away from things because you're worried about it. That's the perfect balance. 70%, 80% of the time I can do this and know where I'm at and then the rest of the time I can go relax and not have that stress hanging over me.
Naomi Nakamura: These are just tools to collect data. So what I want to lead to now is that, doing that led me to... Before we started recording, I was telling you how I recently started seeing a new integrative doctor who's really more of a functional medicine doctor. Because I'm still having a whole bunch of health issues and she looked at some past lab work in a way that had not been looked at before. Where she really traced it back to my cycle. I'm more and more coming to realize that for women, everything about our health is all about the cycle.
That tracking led me to pay more attention to my cycle into how I was feeling during certain phases of a cycle. If you're not familiar with women's cycle, there's actually like four different phases. There's different things that we should come to expect of our bodies during those phases and tracking macros and things that closely helped me to identify things that I was feeling during certain phases that I was not aware of before.
For example, in the luteal phase, I was having a lot of sugar cravings, which I would never have thought of before. And those were not things that I felt at other times of the month. So, and we talked about how I didn't have my cycle for 10 years. I've talked about that in other episodes, but I just never was one to really pick up an obvious PMS symptoms because I didn't know when that was for me.
Katie Garces: Right, right. Yeah, no, I mean I think it is. It's highly incorporated and for me, my sugar cravings come towards the end of my cycle. So that PMS time and where I used to be really... I'd really beat myself up for that and hate that I was having those cravings or that I would get into them. Now, I'm able to say, "Okay, I know what's going on. I'm going to give myself a little grace, a little compassion because this is just time in my cycle that this happens. This doesn't define me and this isn't every single day of my life." And even letting myself have some of those things without guilt.
Again, if we make one decision that we don't think is perfectly in plan, or on plan, or on track or whatever, like the idea is not to spiral and the idea is to again, have that compassion for yourself and understand why and be like, "Okay." And then move on. The next day maybe it's more greens and lemon juice, who knows? Or lemon water. But yeah, I think it's so important that we, not just another aspect of getting in touch with our bodies, being familiar with those different cyclical parts of our month and how things are different. So it's all interconnected.
Naomi Nakamura: I think what you just said really leans, again brings together the whole nutrition science macros part of it with the compassion part of it. Because when you understand the science between what's going on with a woman's cycle and how that really impacts your health and what to expect of your body at that time. Then these other maybe cravings or other things that might be going on, you realize that, oh, it's not you being bad or you being weak, it's the chemistry of your body.
Katie Garces: Mm-hmm (affirmative). It's the physiology. Yep. And things that are changing, things change obviously, especially with women. Men are just a little easier in that way because, God bless them, but it's the same all the time. So it's no wonder that men can latch onto a macros program or some sort of diet structure and do really, really well. First of all, they're built that way, they're more black and white anyway, don't have these hormonal fluctuations.
I think we underestimate the power of these fluctuations and we just need to honor them and honor ourselves. I think when, again, we may start to make friends with all of these things that are going on with our bodies as opposed to fighting them, we just have a much more successful or a much higher chance of being successful and just being more at peace and happy. And at the end of the day that's really what's most important.
Naomi Nakamura: Absolutely. And what I appreciate about this experience that I'm in right now is because I don't think I had it in either end of the spectrums, was that you still bring the element of nutrient density to both spectrums. The first time I was counting macros, I can tell you paid zero attention to sugar grams. Because I grew up in the '80s and '90s, it was all about fat grams.
Never paid attention to, like I said, I only looked at percentages, not actually what I was eating or the micronutrients. How much iron am I getting, how much B vitamin am I getting, how much vitamin C am I getting, vitamin A? I think at the other end of the spectrum, when we're practicing intuitive and mindful eating, those things can get lost in the shuffle as well. So I appreciate how you marry all those things together. It's like a trifecta.
Katie Garces: Yep. Maybe somebody's been tracking macros, just the carb protein fat, and then they're like, "Why am I still having a lot of sugar cravings, even if I'm within my carbs?" But then we look at the sugar grams they're eating and they're through the roof, even though they might be within their macro, their carb macro, their sugar at the end of the day is really high. And I always say we play, but we eat. So if we're eating tons of sugar, maybe we're not even aware of how many sugar grams, that's something to look for. That's important data.
Same thing with fiber, that people are like, "I know I'm eating what you're recommending, but I'm feeling hungry all the time. I never feel full." And we look at their fiber or they're constipated. It's like we look at their fiber, it's like five brands. It's like, "Okay, well let's focus on that." There really is a reason all of these things exist and that we need all of them and we need them all at the right balance. I don't look at every single tiny little thing. I mean, we certainly can't, but those are some of those biggies that I think, like you mentioned, are often overlooked.
Naomi Nakamura: Yeah, and I know nutrition and all of this can sound so complicated, but it's really not. I think it's just a lot of, it's just being misunderstood because it's things that, sensibly you would expect that we were taught when we were in our formative years and just never really was.
Katie Garces: Right. Or I mean it's not uncommon now to have eight different diet experts in your ear on social media or whatever. So it's easy to get very confused. You're like, "Well, I thought I was supposed to be eating 20% carbs," or "Well I thought I'm supposed to be eating 60." And so it's very confusing. So I have a general foundation I like to start at, but then based on the intake that I do with my clients, I adjust that accordingly and then we are in touch for the next couple of weeks as much as we need to tweak that.
So I don't just say, "Okay, here's your plan, good luck. Adios." I respect and understand that as a woman, as an individual, you're going to need some tweaking and that things are going to... I mean I do my best to guess, but I also like to be able to flow with that and adjust as needed.
Naomi Nakamura: Yeah. That bio-individuality is really the key to everything. That's where the trust and the listening to your body comes in because you are going to be the best expert on yourself.
Katie Garces: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. It's fun. It's like a little bit of a puzzle or like an investigative experiment for me and I love it and I love seeing people get excited about it and knowledgeable and learn about their bodies and be like, "Oh my gosh, I added carbs and I feel amazing." "Oh my gosh, I had a carbs and I'm actually sleeping better."
Naomi Nakamura: That's what happened to me is, I have been struggling with sleeping, I feel like my whole life, but really for the most part of this year and just us experimenting and adding in a little bit of carbs, I find them getting an extra hour of sleep at night. So I'm not waking up at 3:00 AM anymore, I'm waking up at four, which is a lot better. Then maybe next month that'll be another hour.
Katie Garces: That's huge. That really is huge. Yeah.
Naomi Nakamura: It is. So tell us about your macros coaching. I mean, it really was so helpful. It is so helpful in leading me to now, I mean we talked about this with the flow app to track my cycle. I just used to use it to track, when I was getting my period, now I'm using it to track everything. So tracking in a different way that is not so triggering. But that was the-
Katie Garces: More observational, yeah.
Naomi Nakamura: Exactly. And that was the lead way to it. So tell us, how do you offer your macros coaching or what does that look like?
Katie Garces: Yeah, it's really simple. It's not this big three months coaching deep dive, which I've done for years. I would just, reach out to me and I'll obviously give you my email and information. But I just have a questionnaire for people to fill out with some information, just some hard data like age, weight, height, goals, activity levels, sleep, we talk about that. Then I even ask the question, "Is there something that you can't live without?" Because I am not ever going to be in the position of taking something that you love away from you forever. I don't believe that has to be the case for us to still be happy, healthy and reach our goals.
So just a relatively short but informative intake and then I together a plan for you. We have email contact for two weeks afterwards with option to go on after that for tweaking and questions and follow ups and pretty starring straight forward, so yeah. I love doing it and I love seeing people, like I said, just sort of really get back in touch with their body, what they're eating, paying attention. We talked about this mindfulness piece and sometimes just tracking brings so much awareness to what we are eating, whether it's like you said under eating, overeating, the fact that you're like, "Oh my gosh, I was so under my protein, I had no idea." That alone can be so eye-opening.
Naomi Nakamura: Yeah. Also into corresponding it to the type of exercise I was doing that maybe there were some things that could be tweaked there as well. So the work I did with you, I also shared with my trainer. I needed with my acupuncturist and it was really helpful for them to hear those things as well in approaching how they work with me.
Katie Garces: Oh, interesting. That's cool. Yeah. I do give numbers but I also give a little bit of a range. And so for like to your point about the exercise, if it's a day that you're not exercising, maybe that's going to be a slightly less lower carb day in the range in our agreed range. You hit exercise or a really intense day or you have an extra stress in your life and you are through the roof with stress, that actually might be slightly higher carb day and to be okay with that.
And you know what if you do go over to be okay with that, so that's a huge piece of it too. It's not just about the numbers, it's about all the mindfulness that goes into it and being aware that our [inaudible 00:31:17] is going to change, our exercise activity levels are going to change, our stress level, our cycle, like we talked about. There's so many factors than just, "Here's your numbers, good luck, see you later." So that's what I like to bring into that.
Naomi Nakamura: It's fun too because you can see, if this happens, then this happens. If I don't do this, then this may not happen. You see you might think it's a one off thing, but then now you have the skills to experiment some more to see if like it is really actually a cause and effect or an anomaly.
Katie Garces: Exactly. I think as we get older, we're a little bit more sensitive to these things in general. How it affects our sleep or our mood. I feel like, I don't know, just get away with anything in our early 20. It's just like, "Oh, I ate crap all weekend, I guess I don't feel so good, I'm going to go for an extra mile run." We just don't think about it that much. And so it really is kind of coming into our own and just again, learning more about what our body needs and like you said, "Oh well, I did that and look what happened." Or, "You didn't do that and..." That's all just like you said, it's fascinating and fun.
Naomi Nakamura: Yeah. Sometimes I wonder if it's just us because we geek out about this, but I really love doing stuff like this.
Katie Garces: Yeah, well for some people it's like the Wild Wild West, right? I've had some people I've done that macros for who have never tracked a calorie in their life. Which was mind blowing for me, I'm like, I don't know any woman who's never counted calorie in their life." But some people have talked to me and so it's a totally eyeopening thing and they're like, "Oh my gosh." So they had some pretty good success right off the bat because they just had no idea what they were consuming. So it's just like, ", okay, look at that." And it's really easy to make some, even small tweaks as we know, can make huge difference over time.
Naomi Nakamura: Absolutely. So how can people get in touch with you?
Katie Garces: So you can find me on my website, katiegarces.com, there's a contact form there, or you can email me, my email is katie@katiegarces.com. I'm also on Instagram and Facebook, Katie Garces, so yeah, just reach out to me. And even if you want to shoot me an email with the subject line, macros and just let me know that you're interested, I'd be happy to send you my questionnaire and some more information. I think even this time of year is probably a good time. [inaudible 00:33:22] almost to get ahead of the holiday for lack of a better debacle that can happen with diets and even it's just have a little bit of a framework in place, heading into the holidays or even heading into the new year can be really helpful too.
Naomi Nakamura: I was going to say, especially heading into the new year.
Katie Garces: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah.
Naomi Nakamura: Yeah. Well thank you so much. Like I said, it was still helpful to me because I feel like it opened up the doors for me to look at so many things that were right in front of me that I wasn't necessarily looking at in this context and it really opened my eyes at a time where I felt stuck.
Katie Garces: Yeah. I'm so glad. I think to your point earlier too about just having somebody else do a plan for you, like you know, I know. I always say the best coaches have coaches. Even if it's something you consider yourself an expert in, sometimes it's nice to just have an outside set of eyes, a neutral set of eyes on it giving their opinion, can just be a breath of fresh air, can be kind of exciting for you to get going in it. And just even have that accountability or that person to be like, "Hey, I lost two pounds." Or, "Oh my gosh, look what happened when I did this over the weekend." Or whatever. Just like you said, it's fun and it should be. It really should be.
Naomi Nakamura: Yeah, I spent so much time thinking about it. It's like, "Let somebody else think about it for a change."
Katie Garces: Right. Right, right.
Naomi Nakamura: Well thank you so much for your time.
Katie Garces: Thanks for having me back on.
Naomi Nakamura is a Functional Nutrition Health Coach. She helps passionate, ambitious high-achievers who are being dragged down by fatigue, burnout, sugar cravings, poor sleep, unexplained weight issues, and hormonal challenges optimize health, find balance, and upgrade their energy so they can do big things in this world.
Through her weekly show, The Live FAB Live Podcast, programs, coaching, and services, she teaches women how to optimize their diet, support their gut health, reduce their toxic load, and improve their productivity, bringing work + wellness together.
Naomi resides in the San Francisco Bay Area and can often be found exploring the area with her puppy girl, Coco Pop!
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