If you’re gearing up to give someone a lecture on “proper nutrition” while physically having to reach over your stomach to get to the keyboard…you’ve got some homework to do first. That’s not a shame statement, it’s a reality check. Good nutrition starts with being able to remove excess body fat from your own body. Massive adiposity is the single biggest risk factor for all-cause mortality. Until you’ve at least started addressing that, you’re not in a position to claim you’ve “mastered” nutrition.
This episode of Bacon Bibles and Barbells was all about stripping nutrition down to the studs—calories, macros, fats, carbs, and how to actually put this into practice without turning into a full-time MyFitnessPal accountant.
Step One: Calories and Macros in Plain English
At the highest level, nutrition comes down to energy balance (calories) and how you divide that energy between protein, carbs, and fats (macros). There are a ton of exceptions—bodybuilders in prep, aggressive cuts or bulks, serious medical issues, food intolerances—but most people can start with some simple guardrails.
For women who are generally healthy and not wildly active, a decent maintenance estimate is about 10× bodyweight in calories (using a non-obese weight). So a 150-lb woman will often maintain around 1,500 calories if she’s not doing tons of cardio or heavy labor.
For men, maintenance is usually closer to 10–15× bodyweight, depending on leanness, muscle mass, and activity. A fairly average 200-lb guy might sit somewhere around 2,200–2,600 calories for maintenance, more if he’s very active or very muscular.
From there, macros get simple:
- Protein: around 1 gram per pound of ideal bodyweight. Think “where I’d be at 15% body fat (men) or 18–20% (women).”
- Fats: about half your protein in grams. If you’re at 150 grams of protein, then roughly 75 grams of fat.
- Carbs: fill in the rest of your calories. That often ends up around 1.5× bodyweight in carbs for women, and 1.5–2× bodyweight for men, adjusted based on whether you want to gain, lose, or maintain.
Is this perfect? No. Is it a solid starting point for a metabolically healthy person? Yes.
Why Fats Matter (And Why “High-Fat Fixes Everything” Is Nonsense)
You absolutely need fats. Zero-fat diets are a bad idea; “rabbit starvation” is the old survival term for what happens when you eat only ultra-lean meat and no fat—you get sick fast. Fats serve crucial roles:
They’re used in brain, organ, and blood health, and they’re heavily mobilized at night while you sleep to support repair and restoration. They’re also essential for cell structure: every cell in your body is surrounded by a fatty membrane. They’re needed for fat-soluble vitamins like A, D, E, and K, which is why it’s perfectly reasonable to put a little fat on your vegetables or see vitamin D in an oily gel cap.
What you don’t need is 90 grams of butter in your coffee because “hormones.” People love to say you must eat some huge minimum of fat “for hormone health,” but your body only produces milligrams of hormones per day. If you’re carrying plenty of body fat, you are not short on raw material. Too little fat long-term is a problem, but so is pretending you need to mainline bacon grease to keep your brain from falling out.
A major issue with chronically high-fat diets (keto, carnivore, etc., run long and hard) is that they slow digestion and keep glucose and fats floating around in the bloodstream longer than they should. Your insulin system is built like a sprinter: it wants quick spikes and quick returns to baseline. When you drown the system in slow digestion, you lose that capacity. People go low-carb for a while, then eat some pasta and feel terrible, and decide “carbs are toxic.” In reality, their ability to handle carbs has atrophied. That’s not health—that’s fragility.
Long-term, chronically high-fat diets are strongly associated with worsening insulin sensitivity, weird bloodwork (elevated triglycerides even with low carbs), gallbladder issues, thyroid problems, and in some people, higher risk of neurological disease. Your body was not designed to live on permanent emergency rations.
Carbs Are Not the Enemy
Carbs get blamed for everything from belly fat to world hunger. But most of the “carb problems” people complain about are junk-fat-plus-junk-carb problems: fries fried in rancid oil, fast food cooked in the same grease all day, sugar bombs paired with massive fat loads, and so on.
Carbs are your body’s preferred fuel for performance and training, a major driver of growth hormone and other anabolic (building) processes, and crucial for thyroid function and overall metabolic health
When people say “I feel awful when I eat carbs,” it’s often because their insulin system is deconditioned from long-term ultra-high-fat, ultra-low-carb eating. Or they’re confusing “carbs” with “a large order of fries cooked in death oil and washed down with soda.”
Fruit especially gets unfairly demonized. Fruit is carbs, fiber, water, and micronutrients in a convenient package. A big bowl of wild blueberries might be ~100 calories and does more for digestion, regularity, and health than half the “functional foods” on Instagram.
Excess Body Fat: The Elephant in the Room
You can argue about seed oils and grass-fed beef all day, but here’s the cold reality: excess body fat is the biggest single risk factor for disease and death. Not “BMI is a bit high.” We’re talking actual obesity—significant adipose tissue that your body is hauling around and stuffing in and around your organs.
Fat doesn’t just “sit there.” It:
- Crowds and compresses organs
- Interferes with blood flow and nutrient delivery
- Drives chronic inflammation and hormonal disruption
- Pairs beautifully with high blood pressure and blood sugar to wreck your arteries
That’s why obesity by itself was listed as a comorbidity during COVID—even before you add diabetes, high blood pressure, or high cholesterol on top.
Here’s the uncomfortable but necessary point:
If you’re carrying a lot of extra fat and have not yet successfully started removing it, you haven’t mastered “good nutrition,” no matter how many podcasts or documentaries you’ve watched. Good nutrition for you, right now, means a sane, balanced, sustainable approach to losing body fat while preserving muscle and health.
So What Does “Good Nutrition” Actually Look Like?
Stripped down, a solid baseline diet for most healthy adults looks like this:
- Around 1 gram of protein per pound of (ideal) bodyweight from complete, lean protein sources: meat, fish, eggs, Greek yogurt, whey, etc.
- Roughly 1.5–2 grams of carbs per pound for men, about 1.5× or less for women, adjusted up or down depending on whether you’re gaining or losing. Prioritize rice, potatoes, oats (if they agree with you), fruits, and other minimally processed carbs.
- 0.3–0.5 grams of fat per pound from a mix of saturated and unsaturated fats: some butter, some olive oil (used cold, not fried to death), avocado, nuts, quality animal fats like beef tallow, etc.
On top of the numbers, there are two simple rules that carry a ton of health:
- Get at least two servings of vegetables per day.
- Get at least two servings of fruit per day.
If you do that, keep protein high, fats moderate, carbs appropriate for your goal, and total calories where they should be, you will be generally metabolically healthy and can push your bodyweight up, down, or hold steady as needed.
How to Actually Start: Two Practical On-Ramps
Knowing the theory is nice. Implementing it without losing your mind is the trick. There are two primary ways to start.
Option 1: Start with the baseline and track.
Use those macro guidelines, plug in some food choices, and track what you eat for a couple weeks. Watch what your weight does. If it stays flat, that’s maintenance. Want to lose? Trim some carbs and/or fats. Want to gain? Add carbs. Keep protein steady.
Option 2: Track what you’re already eating first.
For a week or two, log honestly without trying to “be good.” Then look at the numbers. Nine times out of ten, here’s what you’ll see:
- Protein is too low.
- Fats are too high.
- Carbs from real food (rice, potatoes, fruit) are usually fine, and the problem is the extra sweets and high-fat junk layered on top.
From there, you adjust: raise protein, lower fats, reduce junk carbs, and keep or slightly adjust your “normal” carb sources.
From Training Wheels to Autopilot
Nobody wants to track macros forever. Nor should you. But you probably do need a season of precision.
Think of tracking as training wheels for eating like an adult. For a while, you weigh your rice, your chicken, your peanut butter. You eat mostly the same foods. You see what 30 grams of protein actually looks like on a plate. You stop chasing novelty and start seeing food as fuel instead of entertainment.
Over time, you can move through stages:
- Precise tracking with a scale and app.
- Portion estimates using hand, fist, and thumb measurements.
- Autoregulation where you eyeball portions, then adjust based on feedback from the scale, mirror, clothes, and how you feel.
Most people who stay consistent for 1–3 years reach a point where they can feel when they’re overeating or under-fueling. If they gain a few pounds over the holidays, they can pull back for a few weeks without panic, without spreadsheets, and without crashing into another binge.
That emotional detachment—being able to say, “Yeah, I overate this weekend, no big deal, I’ll tighten things up”—is a sign you’ve actually built a healthy relationship with food.
When You Need More Than a Podcast
All this stuff sounds straightforward on paper. In real life, you’ve got a job, kids, stress, hormones, old diet baggage, social events, and holidays.
That’s why coaches exist. Not because macros are mystical, but because implementing all this in your specific life, with your habits, history, and headspace, is way more complicated than “eat 150 grams of protein.”
If you need training wheels, accountability, and a plan built around your actual schedule and equipment, that’s exactly the kind of work we do at High Calling Fitness. Book your own free consultation below.
But whether you do that with us, someone else, or on your own, the nuts and bolts of nutrition don’t change:
High protein. Moderate fats. Smart carbs. Plenty of fruits and veggies. Steady calories aligned with your goal.
Lose the excess body fat. Build some muscle. Let your bloodwork, energy, and strength be the scoreboard.