Ep 78: Stress-Free Macro Tracking, Nerding Out on Metabolism, and Fitness Science with Greg Nuckols
Today I'm sitting down with Greg Nuckols to talk about lifting, MacroFactor, and science. You'll learn what he's been up to lately, his take on lifting and life, and all things MacroFactor. We'll also explore how to be consistent and maybe even enjoy tracking your nutrition, incorporating scientific research into your health and fitness routine, and other words of wisdom.
Greg Nuckols lifts weights, writes about lifting weights, and coaches people who want to get better at lifting weights.
With an MA in Exercise and Sports Science and three all-time powerlifting world records, he co-hosts the Stronger by Science Podcast. It's a must-listen for enthusiasts who love exploring cutting-edge research on lifting, nutrition, and more, delivered with a unique blend of humor and world-building.
Greg is, of course, the co-founder and Head of Content at Stronger by Science and the co-founder of MacroFactor, the food-logging app that I use personally and can’t stop talking about.
Finally, Greg has been a pivotal inspiration in my personal journey of health and this very podcast.
__________
Book a FREE 30-minute call with Philip here.
__________
Today you’ll learn all about:
[1:56] Balancing personal and professional life
[4:33] Current personal lifting routine and goals
[8:04] Bringing fun into life and fitness pursuits
[14:03] Update on the Feats of Strength
[16:00] Trends in powerlifting
[24:18] Listener stories and their impact on the MacroFactor team
[31:17] Progress toward achieving MacroFactor's vision
[33:52] Addressing common objections to tracking nutrition and weight
[40:45] One of the things that set MacroFactor apart from other tracking apps
[50:11] Tony shares what he likes about Philip and the Wits & Weights community
[50:56] Underrated features and usage tips for MacroFactor
[56:15] Personal experience with long-term fat loss using MacroFactor
[1:19:29] Selection process for topics on Stronger by Science
[1:21:14] Personal methods for staying updated with the latest research
[1:24:20] The value of the MacroFactor community
[1:35:35] Learn more about Greg
[1:37:46] Outro
Episode resources:
The MacroFactor app (use code WITSANDWEIGHTS to get 2 weeks free)
FREE 30-minute results breakthrough session with Philip ⬇️
https://witsandweights.com/free-call
Learn about 1-on-1 coaching ⬇️
https://witsandweights.com/coaching
Ask Philip anything ⬇️
IG: @witsandweights
Email: philip@witsandweights.com
Podcast: Q&A voicemail
🥩 Download Ultimate Macros Guide and 50 High-Protein Recipes here
🫙 Get high-quality 1st Phorm supplements here
👏 ENJOY THE SHOW?
Have you followed the podcast?
Get notified of new episodes. Use your favorite podcast platform or one of the buttons below. Then hit “Subscribe” or “Follow” and you’re good to go!
Transcript
Greg Nuckols 00:00
You do need some system to at least get a rough idea of how much energy you're burning per day in order to do that, because like if you're, you're going to be in a deficit. That's, that means eating fewer calories and you're burning it and you need to have a rough idea of how many calories you're burning.
Philip Pape 00:20
Welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast. I'm your host, Philip pape, and this twice a week podcast is dedicated to helping you achieve physical self mastery by getting stronger. Optimizing your nutrition and upgrading your body composition will uncover science backed strategies for movement, metabolism, muscle and mindset with a skeptical eye on the fitness industry. So you can look and feel your absolute best. Let's dive right in. Wits & Weights community Welcome to another episode of the Wits & Weights Podcast. Today I'm sitting down with Greg knuckles to talk about lifting macro factor and science. You'll learn what he's been up to lately, his take on lifting and life and all things macro factor. We'll explore how to be consistent maybe how to enjoy tracking your food, how to incorporate research into your health and fitness routine and other words of wisdom he might have for us. Greg knuckles, lifts weights, writes about lifting weights and coaches, people who want to get better at lifting weights. He has an MA in exercise and sports science and has held three all time world records in powerlifting. He also co hosts the stronger by science podcast, which you should absolutely have in your feed if you enjoy digging into the latest research on lifting nutrition and many other topics delivered with a unique blend of humor. And I'll say world building. Greg is of course the co founder and head of content at stronger by science and the co founder of macro factor, the food logging app that I use personally and can't stop talking about. And finally Greg has been a pivotal inspiration in my personal journey of health and this very podcast. So Greg, thank you very much for coming on the show. Thanks for having me. So first question really is how do you do it? All right, because you have a lot going on. You're very engaged online, you've spoken about the need to balance things. And I think that ties nicely with stress management, mindfulness. I know it's mental health awareness month and all those things. shed some light on how you balance everything right now. Oh, yeah. That
Greg Nuckols 02:16
that that maybe wasn't the best framing device for this question. The whole the whole mindfulness and mental health awareness. You'll know, I mean, I work a lot. I mean, there's a look, man,
Philip Pape 02:32
I ask these questions, because it's selfish for me to I'm like, What do you how do you do it? Because I need to figure it out. It's all good. Yeah.
Greg Nuckols 02:37
See, I mean, I work a lot, just a lot of hours. And yeah, I mean, I don't know. Like, so two things, just to kind of I wasn't gonna say did not necessarily like disabuse you of the notion that I get a lot done, but just like some, some considerations that make it a little bit easier. One is that, like, I, I pay people to do things that I used to do that are relatively time consuming, but aren't necessarily as like public facing. So you know, like, I externally got less done when I still responded to like, all of the support emails for the various businesses I run, but now we have people handling the support emails for us, like, you know, just little things like that, like, take, take some of the administrative tasks off my plate. Speaking of which, the person who does support emails for stronger by science and macro factor is Adam Fisher. And Adam is incredible. I can't can't speak highly, highly enough of Batum. Um, and yeah, I mean, I'm married, but no kids. And so, no, that's a large obligation that a lot of people have that I that I don't, which allows me to work more, get more done. But yeah, I mean, you know, so there's some, like, kind of like structural and lifestyle factors in play. And yeah, beyond that, I get a lot done because I work.
Philip Pape 04:30
I asked, I know there's a lot of like, entrepreneurs probably listen to this show, you know, guys who want to live but are super busy. And I get it, like, you've always been really responsive, even to me, early on, I remember asking you questions, whether it was macro factor lifting thing or whatever, I'm like, wow, Greg actually got back to me personally, you know, and which was kind of cool. So I and you had that phase of your business and now you're in a different phase. It just came to mind, you know, just just seeing everything you do. So what about what about your lifting right now? What does that routine look like? And are you going after specific goals for Uh,
Greg Nuckols 05:00
yeah, not not as much lifting these days, honestly, you know, still still hitting the upper body pretty hard. I had been having hip and back issues for a while. The back issues that was like an old freak injury happened when I was like, 16. Like, I know how to manage that work around it, like that was fine. But then maybe like, three years ago, I started having hip issues as well. And I think I can trace it back to when I started playing more basketball again. So I so I, before I got really into powerlifting, basketball was my primary sport. And I was I was quite good at it. But the last time I had played pretty seriously, I was like, 160 pounds and trying to play the same game at like, 250 is I did at 160. A little bit tougher on my body, because I played like a pretty a pretty, like, violent, like slashing, like offensive game, like a lot of change of directions. fast acceleration, deceleration, which, you know, like the forces you're you're putting on your body scale with the body mass you have and just the amount of force you're capable of developing. And so I was a lot heavier and a lot stronger. And I don't think my right hip labrum was was ready to deal with that. So, okay, yeah, I
Philip Pape 06:37
mean, I can relate, I can relate right hip, exact same thing.
Greg Nuckols 06:40
Yeah. So it's, it's unfortunate. It's, it's put my my lower body training, not unpause. But like, kind of on the backburner. I mean, I don't want to exacerbate it and make it worse. So I'm probably gonna have to get just like a little laparoscopic surgery this winter. Okay,
Philip Pape 07:01
so it's a torn labrum where they might have to like do the screen or whatever it is. Yeah,
Greg Nuckols 07:05
they did like a like a MRI arthrogram type of thing. And they said it looked like torn labrum maybe a little cyst on the head of of my femur. Maybe some FAI in the mix as well. So, yeah, like that hip, overall is just like kind of janky. So I'll, I'll probably get into lower body trading a bit more seriously again, after that, we'll get cleaned up. But yeah, I mean, upper body is still hitting it hard, but like pretty, pretty boring stuff. I guess. Like just sort of like bodybuilding type of stuff.
Philip Pape 07:46
Yeah, yeah, no, I get it having to work around these things. I am convinced that my hip issue came from hip thrusts because they were so new to me like this is like a couple years ago, after getting back from my own back surgery, and getting back into lifting and just hitting everything really hard again, which is always the best thing to do. But yeah, so basketball. Do you have a dog in the race for the finals? Or for the what's going on now? Man, I
Greg Nuckols 08:10
really hope the heat knock off the Celtics. Okay, all right. I would love either. Yo, get your Jimmy to get a title of the two. I don't know. So if I was like scripting the NBA, which currently no one is like the the writer strike is happening. And I guess they're just like actually playing the games these days. That's a joke. That's a joke. TV writers don't script the NBA. It is of course, the refs as we learned from Tim Donaghy. kind of joking about that as well. Although watching some of the playoff games, it's i It makes me skeptical. You know? Yeah,
Philip Pape 08:55
I'm with you, man. Especially when it doesn't go your way. You're just like some of those.
Greg Nuckols 09:00
Scott foster Chris Paul games are pretty pretty wacky. I think that's probably just like personal malice, instead of necessarily trying to like swing the bat in lines, but who knows? Who knows.
Philip Pape 09:12
So you like the heat or you want the Celtics to get knocked off?
Greg Nuckols 09:17
I want the Celtics to get knocked off. So that was a very long preamble of saying if if everything went right, I don't I don't have that much faith in the heats roster like I think I think they're, I think they're a good team, but I think that they just like perennially overperform and I think Erik Spoelstra is a really really great playoff coach, but I I'm just skeptical that they have the talent to keep going back to the finals year over year, but I think I think the nuggets have that. So I kind of want the heat to get through. So like in my perfect scenario, the heat give By the Celtics win the finals. And then I think I think Denver is building a juggernaut. So I think if the Heat won this year, the the nuggets have a championship, where there'll be contending for the next three or four years. So I want both of those teams to win a title. And for that to happen, I think the heat winning this this year would probably give it the the highest probability of both teams eventually winning one but in my non perfect scenario, I would want Denver to win this year just I just love yo kitch man, he's a pleasure to watch.
Philip Pape 10:35
Yeah, yeah. Well, before we started recording, you said, you know, if someone had a dog you'd like them more. Well, I grew up in South Florida so I've always been a heat fan. So that's that's the right answer. Greg.
Greg Nuckols 10:49
They got something special going down there. Erik Spoelstra might be the most underrated just like single person in the NBA. Like yeah, they're the the whole thing about the heat having like four undrafted players playing heavy minutes like I think that's that storylines a little bit overblown in the media but I mean they do man just just looking at at the talent that they have on their roster compared to certainly the Celtics who they're playing now. And when up three Oh on but also just the teams that have been eliminated to this point. Like I think I think that the undrafted players, they got word definitely like diamonds in the rough that had been underrated in that in the reason they went undrafted, like you know they're good players. But yeah, I just think the heat have in a general sense just less talent on their roster. Yeah, what a great teams they've been playing against, but they they just win like Spoelstra gets so much talent out of them. And I mean, this isn't even the most, like obscene ly bad roster he's been working with and getting production out of like, I remember after, after LeBron went back to Cleveland, in Wave retired, like, those are two incredibly valuable players that they got nothing back from, like LeBron just walked in free agency. And, and Wade retired. And Bosh was like starting to get some age on him, like he lost a snap as well. So like, if you have to star players like you have to, like supermax contract slots, and those players leave and you get nothing in return. That is the kiss of death for just about every franchise. You know, you're looking at a decade of purgatory before you come back for sure. And the heat had like one down year and then we're I think, man, my memory is hazy, but I think they were I think they I think like the second year after LeBron left, they they either had like a 51 win season or we're on a 50 win pace, before Vin Bosch had to retire because he was getting blood clots in his legs this randomly. But yeah, I mean that that was a roster of Scrubs that he either led to the playoffs or got very close to the playoffs. And then yeah, your third star player also just has to retire prematurely. You get nothing in return for that. And give it like another another two years and they're good again, like that's, that's wizardry, and I think like the GM in front office are very smart. But I think a lot of that is just Erik Spoelstra being an unbelievably good coach, and just being able to get wins out of any roster he's working with.
Philip Pape 13:42
Yeah, yeah, we'll see what happens, man. We'll see. I don't know when this show comes out, and probably still be in the finals. Few weeks from now. So we'll see how it goes. Greg.
Greg Nuckols 13:50
Also, I am very sensitive to the fact that this isn't a basketball pie. Oh, no, it's
Philip Pape 13:55
cool. You know, it sounds good. It
Greg Nuckols 13:56
sounds good tennis finals are coming up. I've been watching a lot of basketball. I'm very much in that headspace.
Philip Pape 14:03
Yeah, well, okay, so since we're talking about high performers out there, one of the segments I've been missing for a while on your show is the feats of strength and I was just curious if you knew any lately, that people should be aware of,
Greg Nuckols 14:15
um, man, the I don't have the numbers right on the tip of my tongue, but I think the nuttiest performance that I've seen in probably at least the last year maybe last two years was Hey Zeus, Allah viruses total that he put together at at the Sheffield. I mean, he he beat the total record pretty handily looked like he had more in the tank on certainly his deadlift. And I mean, he's, he's still young, and super heavies generally peak, like late When he's early 30s He's what like 24. Crazy. So that performance itself was freaking who's sorry, I cut you off. We're
Philip Pape 15:09
talking about his total. No, no, no, it's total 11 52.5. That was in March, right? Yeah. Yeah. And it was a big jump. Yeah. From, like, 4%. More. Yeah. Awesome.
Greg Nuckols 15:20
So that was, in and of itself a nutty performance and is just, I think, I think just like an in, like a, like an appetizer to what is to come from him. Like I just just putting together a total like that at his age is, is bonkers. And I expect, like, I wouldn't be surprised if he push the record another. I mean, at least 50 kilos. I mean, maybe 100 kilos over the next, like, eight years or so. Like, it's, it's like the number the numbers themselves are crazy. But then what?
Philip Pape 16:00
Yeah, what I mean, so what do you think explain Is it is it genetics is what explains this, when you have the step changes? I mean, just in general, in the history of mankind going with these huge, huge leaps? Yeah, I mean, I
Greg Nuckols 16:12
think it's, I think it's mostly genetics. So one of the one of the trends you see, one of the trends you're seeing in powerlifting. Now, and historically you see in, in various sports, is that I think that there's just kind of like an innate human desire to chalk things up to kind of like, like, accessible progress. And by that, I mean, the idea that, like you see records going up, and you're like, oh, that's because training practices have meaningfully improved nutrition has meaningfully improved. Recovery practices of meaningfully improved, whatever. And so, you know, like, we can can go figure out what that is. And then yeah, even if I'm not as gifted as the people who are winning World Championships, I can like benefit from those improvements. And, you know, that's, that's going to make me better, that's going to make the whole sport better. And like, I think there, I think there might be like, the tiniest little bit of truth to that, but I don't think that's most of it. In general, what happens is just records go up, because talent pools get broader and deeper. So if you compare powerlifting, like, like, performance in the sport of powerlifting, for like, the median, lifter, or even like the 80th 90th, percentile lift, or whatever, it like really hasn't changed. Like at all. So if you look at what like typical performances looked like in like, 2012 2013, compare them to what typical performances look like today. It's the same, but records have gone way, way up. And I think that's mostly just because the athlete pool has gotten way, way bigger. And when you're talking about records and champions, you're that's a game of outlier hunting, right?
Philip Pape 18:12
Yeah, I was gonna say it's like the tail, the normal curve, you're just pushing it out a little bit by having this wider pool.
Greg Nuckols 18:16
Yeah. So so if you have, if you have like 100 people in the sport, you'll you'll find people who are two standard deviations from the mean, you might even get lucky and find someone three standard deviations from the mean, then you get 10,000 people in a sport. And now like, there's a pretty decent chance you'll you'll have at least one or two people who are like four standard deviations from the mean. And as the population gets bigger and bigger, you just are able to find freakier and freakier. Freaks, because that that's who holds records. And yeah, the sport of powerlifting has exploded since like, 2014 or so. And so I think we're seeing now, yeah, just people who are bigger genetic outliers than the people who are winning a decade ago. So I think, I think that's part of it. And I think part of it is well is with the growth of the sport, you also see people getting into it younger. So like when when I first started competing in 2012, was it 2012 or 2013? Doesn't matter. One of those. Like, the there weren't many youth competitors in powerlifting like youth teenage It was basically a sport that people would get into when I mean like a lot of them were like ex athletes or whatever. So like I played football in high school didn't make a college squad or like I played like d3, college football. And now I like lifting weights. I want to excuse to keep lifting weights. I'm pretty strong. Hey, there's the sport powerlifting I'll give it a shot like that used to be the standard way people got into the sport. So now like you are seeing more more youth and teenage lifters, just competing, like getting into the sport, either directly or their school just has like a really good strength and conditioning program for basketball, football, whatever the coaches like maybe tell the kids about powerlifting. And they do some, like powerlifting style training in the offseason, like you'd like much more so than they would have done a decade ago. And so yeah, I mean, like, there are like, I think it like it takes it takes time to get really good in any sport, when there's also just kind of like, natural physiological ages when people should be the best at stuff. And I think if you went back 1520 years, like most powerlifters just got into the sport too late to ever hit their true peak. Like, you know, like most of the people who were the best in the sport were like in their mid 30s, which mid 30s is an old by any means, but like it's old for sports. And I think I think weightlifting, like Olympic weightlifting is a really good point of comparison, because it's, it's another sport where competitive success is largely determined by just like how strong you are. But it's also an older sport, and it's much bigger and much more competitive globally. So there's, I think, I think it's a good representation of where like a robust, very mature strength sport kind of ends up and the trends you should expect to see. And yeah, like, like weightlifters generally peak between like 24, and like 29. And like, you know, there might still be a couple people who are adding a couple kilos to their total as they get into their 30s. But usually, they add some kilos to their total, but also bump up a weight class and maybe wind up a little bit less competitive than they were before. But yeah, like that's, that's the trend you generally tend to see. So I think that for like the best of the best in powerlifting, like a decade ago, they just got into the sport a decade too late, and wound up really, really strong in their early to mid 30s, but not as strong as they would have ended up if they would have started training a decade prior and been able to kind of like, hit their prime and like their late 20s or so. Yeah. So I think I think that's a consideration. But yeah, I mean, I think it's, I think it's mostly just the talent pool thing. And like, like I mentioned before, you see that in like every sport. Like when, whenever the total pool of competitors increases, or whenever the sport like a sport can find a new particularly well suited pool of competitors. It tends to do a lot better.
Philip Pape 23:04
Yeah, no, I'm glad I asked that. Because this is this is like when you talk about science and correlations and all that just the idea that it's going to favor the best of the best. And so you widen it the that best kind of keeps, keeps pushing it even if people think there are other reasons behind it, you know, because I know in the running world when they were breaking all those records for decades, it was ascribed to things like shoes and technology and training. But at the end of the day, there's probably a lot of what you're saying behind that as well.
Greg Nuckols 23:32
Depending on the distance in the area you're talking about, yeah.
Philip Pape 23:36
Other drugs as well. Yeah, okay. Yeah, sure.
Greg Nuckols 23:39
There's a reason why there are a lot of like middle school records that are still on the books that have been there a long time or ones we're just now like, barely getting broken that were set in like the early 90s. But yeah,
Philip Pape 23:52
yeah, got it. You know, a lot of us wish we started lifting in our 20s. And like, for me, it wasn't until I did CrossFit for about 10 years, and that, you know, just tiny bit, moved the needle from from sedentary and then finally got into about 2020. So all right, you want to talk about macro factor. Can we do that? Yeah, let's alright. So just for those listening, who haven't heard me mentioned about 500 times on the show so far, because this is like, this is the episode 70 something here. You know, it's, it's something I use my clients use it. I'm an affiliate, just full disclosure, because I'm a fanboy anyway, so why not? And Greg gave me the opportunity. So I'm a little bit biased, but I use it personally. And I've tried tracking food over the years, probably for a decade or more, many times, many times, and many of us have done that. And every time I just hated it. It was tedious. It didn't work. The app sucked, you know, and it wasn't until macro factor came out. I think I heard you guys talking about it on the podcast and like, I've got to try that out. I did it and pretty quickly within days probably I was like this is different. You know, it's helping me not hate tracking. It's fast. It's easy. I don't have to think about it even and I got into very consistent routine that did change. changed my life. And I've talked about this on the podcast that just getting control over the food because I had already started to learn to lift properly. And I knew how to gain weight. But I didn't know how to control, you know, the ups and downs, and then logically led to being able to get healthier. And then logically to this moment talking to Greg knuckles on my podcast. So my first question for you is, how often do you hear stories like that? And and how do they make you feel being behind the team of macro factor?
Greg Nuckols 25:28
Yeah, we we hear stories like that all the time. And they, they make me feel very good. Yeah, so So to your point. So I think that with with food logging and nutrition tracking, I think that there are a lot of things that people know they should do, or maybe even just want to do. But the the likelihood of them doing it, and sticking with it scales nonlinearly with the amount of friction that they experienced doing it. And so like that, that may sound like mumbo jumbo. But so just to make it practical,
Philip Pape 26:11
and we're all nerds here, so are my listeners, self selected community.
Greg Nuckols 26:16
So, um, yeah, so like, let's say someone wants to start lifting weights. And let's say there's only one gym in their town, and they they currently live in a place where the gyms like a 15 minute drive for like a 15 minute walk or, or whatever, like they can, they can get to the gym, easily in a relatively short amount of time. Not very much friction, they start going to the gym, it's great. But then they, you know, like, let's say they move, like, their lease runs out, they just buy a new house, whatever, there's still just one gym in their town. But now it's like a, like a 40 minute drive, because they moved to the other side of town, their willingness to keep going to the gym, because the amount of friction to actually get there has increased pretty substantially. You know, their, their attendance for workouts might go from like, 90% to like 50%. And then they're like, Well, I'm already been inconsistent. And may, you know, the types of reasons that you can use to justify not going to the gym gets a gets a little longer, like you start with a consistent habit. And you're like, yeah, it's it's a longer drive, but I'll keep making it. And maybe that goes well for like a week or two. But then you're like, yeah, man, like, I've got some other thing going on tonight. Like, I'll just miss this one workout. And then, you know, a month down the line. It's like, I'm just tired after work. I don't feel like driving. It's like, fuck it. I'm not doing it.
Philip Pape 27:47
Like the balance of willpower and resistance has just shifted toward resistance.
Greg Nuckols 27:50
Yeah, yeah. So you know, if that drive went from, like, 15 minutes to 20 minutes, slight increase in friction, but like, you know, maybe not enough that it's really going to affect things. But then, at some point, it's like you almost like flip a switch, where the amount of friction required to do what you want to do goes from being a reasonable amount that you can definitely stomach and are totally fine with to as soon as it like, crosses that barrier. Now, it's like, it's too much like I'm not going to do it, or at least not as consistently. And so, when we were building macro factor, we had that general concept in mind when when thinking about the food lager. Because I do think that that is the sort of dynamic in play when it comes to consistently tracking your food for a lot of people. Like, yeah, I think that people like pretty consistently report is like, I don't like food logging. It's, it's annoying, like it takes time, like it adds a little bit of friction to every meal you eat, because you got to pull out your phone and take a little bit to track it. But we were very mindful about making macro factors food logger as efficient as possible and taking as few steps and as little time as possible to do like any login related behavior, just to reduce that friction a little bit. And so like, it may sound like a small thing, but you know, if you can pull out your phone and log your meal in 30 seconds, it's like, okay, like that's, that's pretty chill, you know, it is still a little friction, it would still be slightly easier just to just not log your food, but if it's like 30 seconds, or whatever. But then if it's like two minutes, that doesn't sound like that big of a deal. Much like a 15 minute versus 40 minute drive doesn't sound like that big of a deal. But then when it's like man, I'm putting something in my mouth four or five times per day. It takes time every time especially if you're on like a free version of a freemium app, and you've got to like X out of two ads every time you try to like add us snack? Yeah. You know, it's it's not like it's not like any of the food loggers out there are so inefficient that it takes like 10 minutes to log a meal. But like, there there is I think for a lot of people a palpable difference between like 30 seconds and a minute.
Philip Pape 30:15
It's a huge difference. I just tell you personally, it is a huge difference everybody I've worked with been like, Whoa, it's like, you know,
Greg Nuckols 30:22
it's, it sounds like it should be a very trivial thing. But I think that it's that it's very important, like, if you can, if you can shave off just like two or three steps, and like 10 seconds from the time it takes to log food. I think that that helps a lot of people get from the, the side of the barrier where it's so much friction, that it's just going to be onerous, and they're not going to stick with it to kind of the other side of that friction barrier, where, hey, like, now it's chill, and this is something I already want to do. And so like this, this little bit of friction I'm experiencing is something I'm totally willing to take on board, because of the benefits I get from this.
Philip Pape 31:02
Yeah, it's to the point where the community is so trained in this idea that when a new feature comes out, that is like an extra tap, you'll know about it pretty quickly. It'll say, wait a minute, the friction here is just tight is not that perfectly optimal, almost zero like we're used to. Now, because you you wrote about the vision for the app that you you want people to log in to to achieve their nutrition goals without hassle without stress, which is kind of tied into this. So continuing with this theme, how far along are you in that vision? I mean, what is there still some more big things that you're trying to solve to get there without revealing secrets? Of course?
Greg Nuckols 31:37
Yeah, I mean, there's, I don't know, like this. This is also something that's, that's nonlinear, I guess. So the, the amount of things that we want to do just the length of our roadmap. I don't like like, we're going to we're going to keep adding to it. Like currently, though, if we just said, Hey, nope, everything. It just take our current roadmap, we're never going to take another new feature request, we're just going to do the things we have planned now. I mean, it's probably five years of stuff we want to keep doing. But I think like, you know, we we prioritized our roadmap, and I think a not stupid way. And so you focus first on the things that have the largest impact. So in terms of how much the rest of the roadmap will affect, like user experience, and giving people like the the core features they want and delivering them and delivering on them? Well, you know, I think we're maybe like a fifth of the way through all of the things we want to do with the app, but probably 80% of the way through kind of like the kind of like marginal utility that will be delivered by like, increasing features and whatnot. So yeah, kind of like a kind of like a Pareto thing, you know?
Philip Pape 33:09
Yeah. Although you never know, right? Because there I can tell you as a as a coach, like a desktop or a coaching version that open up huge, you know, a huge market action. Oh, yeah.
Greg Nuckols 33:19
Yeah, yeah. So I'm thinking about just kind of like the typical user. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Like, we do want to, like add utility for, like coaches to manage their nutrition clients directly through macro factor. Which, you know, like, yeah, that will be like a huge thing for coaches. But that's kind of like what I was talking about where like when when we add that it will be huge for a a minority of our users. And fair enough, most of our users won't won't even know. That exists.
Philip Pape 33:53
Yeah. Okay. So, regarding the objections, people often have to tracking I wanted to touch on a few more, because we mentioned the time for it. In macro factor, there's also the way it flags your data, or I should say the lack the lack of any punishment, or shaming or whatever you want to call it, that's some apps have with red colors and things like that. There's that feature. And then there's also another one that comes up a lot is, is how often you have to weigh yourself. And and when even if the app didn't exist, you know, I think it's a good idea to do that. And now, I have more clarity behind that as to how the app does it with the moving trend, but talk about some of those other aspects.
Greg Nuckols 34:33
Yeah, so starting with our kind of, like, shame free UI approach. So with a lot of apps, you know, if you say, Hey, I have a goal of eating 2000 calories a day or whatever. If you go to like if you eat something and it puts you at like 2010 calories. Some apps will just like give a give a pop up where it's just like Hey, warning, you're gonna we're about to go over your calorie goal. And like most of them, it's kind of like the, maybe the font will change, certainly the color will change, it'll like turn red, kind of like a, a bright indicator of like, hey, you've, you've done something wrong, like you've, you've fucked up in some way. In we, we don't do that in macro factor. And that's, that's, like, partially a philosophical thing. But it's also like, partially, like an evidence based thing as well. So the philosophical thing is like, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't think it's good to like, be be dicks to people, I guess. Right.
Philip Pape 35:46
Like, I think there's a human element to it behind this. I agree. Yeah,
Greg Nuckols 35:50
like, if if something makes you feel bad, and it doesn't need to make you feel bad for it to help you accomplish whatever you're trying to accomplish. I think just your default posture should be hey, let's let's not make people feel bad unnecessarily. But then also from, like, the evidence based side of it, like shaming based approaches to well, like, like weight loss in particular, but just like behavior change, in general, just have a piss poor track record, like they, they don't work. Because like one of the big, one of the big barriers people face with with a lot of the seventh and like, I'm going to be speaking in like, a weight loss context. But really, just like any sort of, like lifestyle behavior change type of deal, one of the big hurdles you need to overcome is, is lack of self efficacy. Because like, most of this stuff is, like, it's not easy, but it's simple, you know, and if there's like a simple thing people can do to accomplish some sort of change that they want to see in their life. If they have pretty high self efficacy, like if they believe they can do it, and believe they can pull it off, and the steps laid out in front of them aren't, like, if you don't like unnecessarily complicate something that should be simple. That does set someone up on a pretty good path towards success. But like you do, you do have to clear that self efficacy barrier. And so like, shame based approaches to, like I said, weight loss in particular, but like, behavior change in general, tend to show that like approaches that take like a shame based orientation, like, ultimately do more harm than good. Because ultimately, what you're doing is you're validating someone's pre existing low self efficacy, right? Like, if if they are trying something that's that's new to them, that they already perceive will be a challenge. Or maybe they're they're attempting something that they've tried and failed at before. They're going into that with low self efficacy. And so if you just have like UI elements that like flag and scream at someone, like, Hey, you
Philip Pape 38:10
failed.
Greg Nuckols 38:13
We have low self efficacy, and you're just validating for them. Yeah, like, you suck at this. You're bad at this. Yeah. And that's a recipe for failure. And like I said, I don't just say that on a purely philosophical level, like they're like, there's, there's research on this, like, it just doesn't work. And so like, even independent of the app space, like that is something that that bugs me, just kind of like society wide, like in the media and the way people talk to each other. Like, there is I think, a lot of kind of, like shaming directed at people who are like trying to lose weight change their body composition. Like I mean, I don't know not to not to, like get to, I don't know, like, like, political or whatever, but like, like fat phobia is a very real thing. And I think if someone hasn't been fat, they haven't experienced it. And so they're like no like it it's not real or it doesn't matter it's like no you're you're full of shit. And so yeah, I think that there's I don't know I think a lot of people in the fitness industry think that like ooh no like the way we need to go about this is like with a with a tough love approach. Like say, hey, like, You're fat that's bad. It's because you're lazy and make bad choices. And it's gonna kill you and so like you need to lose weight like it's it's just purely negative framing. And yeah, like like shaming people for being in the position they're in and the choices they make and saying like i It's because you have like low willpower, you're a piece of shit whatever. Like, even if, even if the You're a piece of shit thing isn't stated like it's It's fella. Yeah, for sure. That's that's subtext. And yeah, it's like, I don't know, that's, that's what people have been. That's, that's the approach people have been taking to try to get people to lose weight since, like the 70s. And obesity rates keep going up. And so there's a bit of like, you know, definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. Like, we've we've tried shame based approaches to get people to lose weight and change their lifestyle for fucking decades now. And it's not working, but people still seem to think that it's going to work, which, yeah, yeah,
Philip Pape 40:42
you got no argument for me? Not for sure. I definitely take take that positive approach. And I wonder with some of these other apps, if I'm sure. It's not always intentional, I think there's like a gamification aspect of it. They're trying to induce with the, you know, just like the dopamine response on X apps, like, Are you addicted to a game or something? It's almost like the opposite of, you know, like you said, shaming, but not necessarily trying to do that. Right. And you've discovered that that's what happens. And I think a lot of people use macro factor will say, this is refreshing, because it's the first thing that doesn't seem to have done that. Well,
Greg Nuckols 41:16
I think, I think that there's a bit of a chicken and egg scenario, where I think that so I think that a lot of people download a nutrition app, because they feel like they need to keep their nutrition in check. They feel like I do have a tendency to overeat. And I want a tool that will either keep me from doing that, or like help me keep myself from doing that. And if if someone has already, like been kind of in the weight loss space, and has attempted diets before, they're there, I think, I think there's like a little bit of Stockholm Syndrome, like you've, since every, since everything you've like, consumed up to this point, is framed in a negative way of like, hey, like, you suck, but like, here's this thing you can do that will like make you better. Like, I think I think they've like already internalized that. And so they just like, expect that from the tools that they use. So, you know, in a general sense, it's, it's probably not good, it's probably not actually going to help them accomplish the goals they have. But it is behaving in the way that they expect it to behave. Because sure, like they do, like it anticipate and expect to be treated like that. And they think that that's how, how like that feedback should be delivered, because it has generally been delivered and kind of like a negative framing up to that point, you know. And so I think that I think that it's like, I certainly don't think it's malicious. Absolutely not. But I don't necessarily think it's gamification. I think it's, I think it's like meeting users expectations. But I think those expectations have been set by negative experiences, and maybe, like breaking user expectations would be the better way to go about it. Whereas, okay, you, you think that you want this app to shame you. But like, what if it did it? I think if you give the app not shaming you, it's a shot, you'll actually find that you prefer that. And it's actually helpful.
Philip Pape 43:42
Yeah. And it's, it's a selling point of it, but sometimes hard to get across until you use it, right? Because you're like, What do you mean? Oh, now I see what you mean, when it's all it's telling you is here's how much you're over under. But that's it just gives you data. And you know, there's nothing else to kind of beat you over the head. Your failures. Yeah.
Greg Nuckols 43:59
So that's one element of it. Another element of it is. I think that I think that, that that just being kind of like the default UI design fails to consider a lot of just kind of, like practical considerations, I guess. So it kind of it kind of sets it sets of binari, where it's like, Hey, if you're under your calorie target, or under this particular nutrient target, that's good. But if you if you go over, whether it's by like one calorie or 500, it's bad, like it kind of like draws that line and line in the sand. And just from like, a purely like practical perspective, that also just doesn't tend to make much sense. So, you know, if I'm, like, let's say someone's trying to lose weight and they're trying to lose a pound a week. That's a rate of weight loss. That's probably going to be Pretty, pretty tolerable, pretty reasonable for most folks, they're not going to be just too ravenously hungry, but they're not going to be making progress. So slowly, they get frustrated, like a like, whatever. Like, that's just what we'll kind of use as a point of reference. So if there's a warning indicator, and let's say that that comes out to this person, like a calorie target of 2000 calories a day, just to just to make the the example easier. So you know, if that's the scenario, and like, hey, 2000 calories a day, that's gonna help you lose a pound a week. But you're kind of putting a binary warning at 2000. So if that's if that's someone's goal, and they only like 1000 calories, that's like a 1500 calorie deficit. And like, yeah, they're going to lose weight pretty quickly, but they're also going to feel like shit all the time, and probably burn out pretty quickly. So like, if if you're, if you're going to be having a warning, why don't you just keep the number read until they eat enough calories that they're somewhat close to their calorie goal for the day? Like, you know, I think 1000 calories would be worse for their goal than 2001 calories, you
Philip Pape 46:15
know, you're saying a range around the target or so.
Greg Nuckols 46:18
Yeah. And then then on the flip side, like, yeah, if if 2000 calories is the perfect calorie goal for you? And we 2050 That's great. Like, that's, that's a great date. And that's now really close to calorie deficit, it's a 450 calorie deficit, and you know, how much the rate you'll lose weight at with a 450 calorie deficit? Pretty fucking close to a pound a week, you know, like, it's like that. That's still good, you know?
Philip Pape 46:48
Yeah. Not to mention the tolerance for even the accuracy of the numbers, which is, yeah,
Greg Nuckols 46:52
yeah. And so functionally, it's saying any number, like under your calorie target is equally good like that. It's not it's not explicitly saying that, but that is kind of like the implication of that UI element. And any number above your target is equally bad. And so yeah, like that, that doesn't make much sense. For a lot of the goals, people have, like, I do think that it's better to think of targets as a general range, where it's like, hey, if I'm one 200 calories under, that's great. If I'm one 200 calories over, that's also great. Like, you're, you're close, and as long as you're close, like you're, it's gonna be good enough for most goals to at least move you in the direction you're trying to move.
Philip Pape 47:39
Yeah, and on that point, and I'm sure you've seen a lot more data than I have. But I see individuals have their own level of variability in that range, right. So some people are very spot on. And some people vary by several 100 calories every day, but then they still hit the weekly number. It's just an individual thing. Yeah.
Greg Nuckols 47:56
Yeah. But then, like I said, so something else that we like, very, very frequently hear from from users is that those those like red numbers and negative UI elements, you know, much like they frame all like they passively communicate that all numbers below your goal are equally good. They tacitly communicate all numbers above your goal, or equally bad. So something we very, very frequently hear is it's like, oh, yeah, like, you know, the number turns red when I clear 2000 calories. So it's like, hey, this day is already a failure. So yeah, like, like, fuck it, I'm just gonna order a whole large pizza and down to six pack, you know? Whereas, like, if it went red, because they went from 2000 to 2050. Like, that's, that's good. And like, yeah, 2050 is a is a hell of a lot better than 6000 if your goal was 2000 calories a day to lose weight. But yeah, like, I think that, that just sort of like binary below is good over his bad framing, puts again, like, not everyone, and probably not even most people, but puts like a pretty significant minority of people in the mindspace of like, hey, if I went over the days already a failure, so like, fuck it. Like, I'm just gonna go completely off the rails, which I mean, that's, that's bad for your progress. Like,
Philip Pape 49:25
for sure, man. You know, what else tied into that? Yeah. And tied into that. Also, the idea that you when you do that, you sometimes cheat the numbers that you're entering? I've seen Yeah, too. You know, you're like, Well, I'm only gonna be 50 over so I'll just not log the 50. And I'll standard the number. Yeah.
Greg Nuckols 49:43
Yeah, like, yeah, so it also like incentivizes you to keep a bad data record for your CD, not yourself. Yeah. If you're trying to make decisions based on your data, it's probably good to have good data. Yeah, so Oh, yeah, we just wanted to avoid all of that for like philosophical reasons. But also just like practical reasons like it, it leads to better results to not shame people for the choices they make for sure.
50:12
My name is Tony, I'm a strength lift are my 40s Thank you to Phil and his Wits, & Weights community for helping me learn more about nutrition and how to implement better ideas into my strength training. Phil has a very, very good understanding of macros, and chemical compounds and hormones and all that and he's continuously learning. And that's what I like about Phil, he's got a great sense of humor, he's very relaxed, very easy to talk to one of the greatest things about Phil, in my view is that he practices what he preaches, he also works out with barbells, he trains heavy, not as heavy as me, but he trains heavy. So if you talk with him about getting in better shape, eating better, he's probably going to give you some good advice. And I would strongly recommend you talk with him, and he'll help you out. Thanks.
Philip Pape 50:56
Alright, so then the algorithms that are the expenditure algorithm, and then even the the weight trend, and it's public knowledge, how the weight trends calculated. But those two features, I think, are huge. Even the weight trend alone, which is just a simple, you know, equation, I haven't, I don't think I've seen it before macro factor consistently done in that way. And it's led to really kind of a healthy way to talk about weight when you talk about day to day fluctuations versus really what's happening in body over time, knowing that the fluctuations are going to be pretty variable along the way. And that's not what drives the fat loss. So maybe we talk about the weight side, and then these cool algorithms that help us understand our expenditure.
Greg Nuckols 51:40
Sure, yeah. So yeah, the weight, the weight turning algorithm is just a 21 or a 20 day exponentially weighted moving average, which does what we want it to. So yeah, so if, if, if someone were to ask you, like, hey, how much do you weigh? The the number on the scale today is a indicator with pretty high signal, but not like perfect signal. You know, like, if you've been, like, if you've been around 180 pounds just every day, and then you ate a lot of sodium last night, or whatever. So you wake up today, and you're 180 for the number on the scale is like reflective of how much you weigh, like 184 isn't like that much different than what 80 But it's not a perfect indicator. So yeah, like, you probably do want to consider historical information when answering that question. Because, yeah, for that individual for that example. Yeah, they're more 180 than they are 184. Like that the the number today is a bit of an outlier. But at the same time, like, trends do still matter. Like if, if you're your weight has been going up or whatever, you don't just want to take like a simple average of the last three weeks, because the trend is up. And if you just take a simple average, you're waiting older data just as heavily as you're waiting more recent data. And so you'd be like, Oh, no, like I'm I'm 181 When really like it was It has been like on on the ascent for a while, you know? So yeah, what exponential waiting does is it considers historical context, but it waits more recent data more heavily. And yeah, I think that's just a good a good logical approach to weight trending, both for answering that question of like, hey, about about how much do I weigh today, like you're you're trended weight, insofar as it differs from the number on the scale, like the trended number is probably closer to reality than just whatever the number on the scale says today. And then for the purpose of making nutrition adjustments, it does smooth out a lot of that like day to day variability, which which, which is pretty clutch. Because I think, mistake people make when they're trying to, like adjust their nutrition for themselves is weighing too infrequently. And when you do that, like your perception of your progress can be really, really heavily affected by just day to day measurement error. So like if someone just weighed once a week, say, and they weigh every Sunday, and that's just their thing. They weigh one week, they weigh the next week, they look at how much the number on the scale has changed between those two measurements and use that to say like, Hey, am I in an energy surplus deficit? Am I roughly at maintenance? And if I am in a surplus or deficit, how large is that surplus or deficit? Like there's going to be a lot of noise there. You know, like if, you know, if one week you were kind of coasting And along and you're around 181 Most days, and then you just happened to be light on Sunday, when you weighed in, you're like 179, like, two pounds. Variability like that's, that's a perfectly like normal degree of fluctuation. So yeah, you were around 181 For one week, but then the number on the scale says 179, then the next week, you're you're averaging around 180. But then when you step on the scale, you're just a little bit heavier than normal. So it's 181. So in real terms, yeah, you've probably lost about a pound week to week. But if you just compared to those single measurements, you'd say, Oh, shit, I gained a pound this week instead of kind of losing it. So yeah, like you do want to, like if you're, if you're using weight data to, like make make inferences about your nutrition approach, and how large of a surplus or deficit you're in. You do want to weigh more frequently, and you want to like, have an analytical approach that does consider all of the data instead of something that can be like pretty heavily influenced by just one or two, like aberrant, like, upwards or downwards fluctuates.
Philip Pape 56:16
Yeah, and I think weighing every day, too, if you just do it, it like anything else, you start forgetting about it, you just do it. And you can make it easier with like a smart scale or something like that. It's that's what I do. What about the other piece of that, then the algorithm, the expenditure algorithm is kind of a game changer. I think one of the adjustments come from also just being able to see that I mean, I've gone now through three or four phases I posted along, you know, stories about Reddit in the past, and just with the graphs, because it's so much fun to see that, hey, in a fat loss phase, you can lose 600 calories on your daily expenditure, even when your activity is the same, or at least you think it's the same, right? Yeah, tell us about that.
Greg Nuckols 56:53
Yeah, so the the expenditure algorithm itself is like, the the math behind it is like very complex and Harry, but the concept is very simple, which is that a given rate of weight gain or weight loss implies a calorie surplus or deficit of a particular magnitude. Because, you know, we have a pretty good idea of how much lean mass versus fat mass someone gains when they're in a surplus and lifting weights. And we have a pretty good idea of how much fat mass versus lean mass people lose, if they're in an in an energy deficit. We know the relative energy densities of fat tissue and lean tissue. And therefore if we observe a certain weight of rate of weight gain or weight loss, we can say, hey, this is about how much fat and lean tissue that corresponds to. And then here are the energy densities of those tissues. And therefore, we can get a pretty good idea of the relative size of your energy deficit or surplus. So that's step one. And you get that without any nutrition tracking whatsoever, if you just know the weight trending piece of it, you know, roughly how large of a surplus or deficit someone's in. And then if you also have nutrition data, you can just put those two pieces of information together, like, hey, based on my rate of weight loss, I see I'm in a deficit of about 300 calories a day. How much have I been eating over the last week to three, about 1600 calories per day? So eating 1600 I'm in a 300 calorie deficit. Oh, that must mean I'm burning around 1900 calories a day, you know. So that's, that's the basic concept. And like I said, the actual, like, mathematics and the implementation get gets pretty hairy. Because like, we've, we've got to do some stuff to make sure that like, numbers don't just get like, just like cuckoo and implausible when someone like eats way, way more or less than normal one day, or just like, doesn't log a day of eating or they eat way more or less than normal. Like there there are safeguards in place to guard against over corrections that would like necessarily happen if you just sort of like, naively accepted the numbers. And you didn't do any sort of like post data collection processing to share. It me, like make sure that things like correspond with with reality. Yeah, I mean, that's that's the basic concept. Yeah. Yeah, no, that's pretty cool. And like you said, I think it's, I think that it's very useful. Because ultimately, at the end of the day, gaining or losing weight does just come down to like being consistently in an energy deficit. surplus, and successfully gaining or losing weight, you know, so not like losing weight in a way that's going to just cause like a ton of muscle loss or just being so hungry and low energy, you feel like dogshit all the time and don't follow through, or like gaining weight at a rate that's like, you know, restrained and not just like dirty bulking and putting on three pounds of muscle and 30 pounds of fat. I think a lot of people do when they, when they try it. I certainly in its whole milk. Yeah. It's very fun. But then at the end of the process, it's like, well, maybe I should have gone about this differently. But, but yeah, so So you need to be in a surplus or deficit. And you need to have a way to know that not only is it a surplus or deficit, but it's like the magnitude of surplus or deficit that you want, and is likely to, like produce good results over the long term. And so ultimately, like, you do need some system to at least get a rough idea of how much energy you're burning per day in order to do that, because like, if you're, you're going to be in a deficit, that's, that means eating fewer calories than you're burning. So you need to have a rough idea of how many calories you're burning. And the approach macro factor uses is kind of like, like, like an individual level, like scientific inquiry, almost. So like science, science is basically a big fancy system of guessing check, where you say, Hey, I think this thing is going to happen. I'm going to design an experiment to see if this thing happens when you know, a certain intervention is imposed. And then did it happen or not? Oh, if it did cool, I confirm my hypothesis. Now let's push it further. If not, okay, cool back to the drawing board generate a new hypothesis, and just run another process of guessing check. And that's, that is the macro factor approach to determining energy expenditure and therefore calorie targets. So like, when you first download the app, it uses a just kind of like standard equation to estimate your BMR. And tack activity multiplier on top of it. really rough estimate of how many calories you're burning. And then it's like, Hey, you say you want to lose a pound a week? Cool? Well, we'll take about 500 calories off of what we think your expenditure is. And we think that we'll be good calorie targets to lose a pound a week. But if you've just downloaded the app, and the numbers you get, or the numbers you've got on startup, there's a pretty decent chance it's not actually going to be that good of a target. There's quite a bit of variability in metabolic rates. Activity multipliers are far from an exact science. See, yeah, that process, like pretty pretty routinely, like has the risk of generating errors that are like multiple hundreds of calories per day. So, you know, it might say, hey, 2500 calories a day? Like, why do we think you're burning 3000 calories a day, so to lose a pound a week 2500 is, is the target to shoot for. And you start eating 2500 calories per day, and, you know, maybe you're not losing any weight at all. That then suggests, like, again, kind of a guess and check process that guesses. 2500 is the number to lose a pound a week, you eat that that's sort of like you generated the hypothesis. Now, let's collect some data. Okay, now let's observe the results. Oh, you didn't lose any weight at all? Okay, well, that means that we probably overestimated your expenditure. So your calorie targets were too high. So your estimated expenditure is going to trend down your calorie targets are going to trend down. Based on your data, your data suggests that in order to meet your goals and lose weight at the rate, you want to you probably need to be eating a little bit less or the opposite like that things are burning 3000 calories a day, on setup, you start eating 2500 And you start losing two pounds a week. Again, like it's so it's not just like a binary guessing track. It's like it's a graded thing. So it's like, hey, we thought you were burning 3000 calories. So we thought 2500 would let you lose a pound a week. We're observing that when you eat 2500 You lose two pounds a week. So that necessarily means you're burning more than 3000 calories per day. So that means to lose a pound a week your calorie targets need to trend right. Yeah, like it's it's that process which you know, as as someone who's who's a proud empiricist and loves science that just appeals to me He's kind of on an intuitive level. But it's also I think, and like, I'm, I'm not just saying this because I have because I have skin in the game like it's, again, sort of like a chicken and egg scenario like, I'm not, I'm not singing the praises of macro factors system, because it's, you know, something I make money from. It's more like, I identified issues with other systems, which is why we have the system in macro factor. So yeah, like the alternative approaches to determining like, how much energy you're burning, and therefore what the appropriate calorie targets would be. Don't have that scientific process that kind of like guess and check mechanism built in. And that would be fine. If there were if there was a system that could like reliably produce very accurate and precise estimates of energy expenditure. But like, there, there isn't.
Philip Pape 1:06:07
Just like body fat. Yeah, we
Greg Nuckols 1:06:08
don't have it yet. And I don't I don't think a lot of people realize that. So like the, so I'm working on an article about the relative accuracy of BMR equations now. Which like, if someone's ever been to a website with like a TDE calculator, or BMR calculator, those are based on kind of like standard validated equations. Were the fun
Philip Pape 1:06:31
St. jeweler and some of the others. Yeah,
Greg Nuckols 1:06:33
here's Benedict. Cunningham. Like they're, they're a bunch. Oh, in Livingston, the FAO has one like there's caught, they're probably like 40 different formulas floating around out there. But yeah, so you know, you put in your relevant demographic and anthropometric information, depending on the formula, it might look for, like, age, sex, height, weight, maybe activity levels, or there are other ones that are just scaled to like lean mass or fat free mass, but whatever. Like Whichever approach they take, it takes sort of like, relative readily and fairly easily accessible information about you, and essentially just uses multiple regression to predict your BMR from that. And that's, that's really only a good approach for getting kind of like a rough ballpark estimate. But so like to get like a little bit nerdy about this. So if you're validating a BMR equation, what you're going to do is you're going to collect all of the data that would feed into the equation, you're also just going to measure people's BMRs, generally via indirect calorimetry. And then, once you you've either like created a new formula, or you've selected which formula you're going to use to kind of like see how close it gets to the measured values. You feed all of the subjects data into that formula, and you get a list of predicted BMR values. And then for those subjects, you also have a list of their actual BMR values that you measured. And then you construct what is called a bland Altman plot to see how well those two values Adam, and almond plot tells you what the, like average amount of disagreement between the measurement and your estimate is. And then it also tells you what's called your limits of agreement, which is basically the range in which 95% of your prediction errors should fall. And like, what you typically see is like the width of those limits of agreement for BMR formulas are like 800 calories. Usually, the average prediction error is pretty small. And I think people look at that a little bit too hard, where it's like, Ooh, yeah, so So Mifflin, st G, or, according to this study, overestimates BMR by 20 calories or whatever. So if I use Mifflin st ger, and it says my BMR is 1500 calories, that means it's actually 1480. But now the tip, the average error is not what you want to pay the most attention to, you want to pay the most attention to the limits of agreement tells you the plausible range of areas that people experience. And again, not talking about outliers, we're talking about where 95% of the data points are all. And so just based on like some pretty straightforward probability. If you have 14 people in a room, you have a better than 50% chance that one of them will have a BMR that would fall outside of those limits of agreement. Yeah, so limits of agreement are typically like 800 calories like around that. So if a if a BMR equation says your basal metabolic rate is 1500 calories per day, just probabilistically you know, it's much more likely to be Close to 1500, then close to, I don't know, 1200 or whatever. But there's, there's a pretty decent shot that it could be anywhere within that 800 calorie range. So if it says 1500 There's like a roughly two thirds chance that you'll be within one standard deviation of the mean. So sure, if the limits of agreement standard range of 800 calories, that means two times standard deviation was like 400 calories. So that means the standard deviations are out 200. Oh, God, this is I don't know why I talk about match. Okay,
Philip Pape 1:10:35
no, this is. So in summary, in summary, the BMR is already off by hundreds of calories. And then the TDE could be worse. If you don't even know the right activity level that's
Greg Nuckols 1:10:44
like, here's the basic. If you if you put your numbers into into like a BMR formula, just give it like plus or minus 400 calories like that's, that's what the 800 calorie limits of agreement imply. So if a BMR formula says, Hey, your BMR is 600 calories per day, that means that there's a 95% chance that it's somewhere between 12 102,000, which is a pretty fucking big range. Yeah. And then like I said, activity multipliers far from inexact science. And even if you pick the right activity multiplier, like even if you say, Hey, I am moderately active. And my definition of moderately active corresponds with whatever this set of multipliers conception of moderately active is like perfect one to one correspondence. And the multiplier there is 1.55. Even if that is the perfect multiplier, even if you are burning 55% more calories than BMR. If there was error in the initial BMR step, the multiplier just propagates the error. So, yeah, so functionally, if like the limits of agreement would span a range of like 800 calories, just for the BMR step. Once you put like a 1.5 times multiplier on it. Now the limits of agreement will functionally span a range of like 1200 calories. So in that same example, like if, yeah, like if a TDE calculator says, Hey, we think you're burning 3000 calories per day. That means you're probably burning somewhere between 2400 and like, 3600. Yeah, that's, that's a fucking huge range. And so you're going to need some sort of system, like, it doesn't have to be macro factor system, but you're going to need some sort of system to like, guess and check and validate. Is this a good guess? Is it not? Does it need to go up or down? So like, that's one approach people use. The other approach people use is like using wearable devices to like, monitor activity levels and estimate total daily energy expenditure. But that's, that's like basically the same process. So they will estimate your basal metabolic rate via the same sorts of equations that that anyone would use to estimate the EMR. And then from there, like they they estimate how many additional calories you're burning via exercise. But there's not there's not like an inbuilt system in those devices to validate whether the initial BMR guess was good or bad. Because it's not taking in like contextual information to like validate whether that estimate was good or bad. And then just like the estimate, the estimate of like energy expenditure itself, like during activity is also extremely rough. I don't think a lot of people realize this, but like there was there was a systematic review by Fuller in colleagues from like 2020 that was looking at, like what the typical error for, for wearable devices for measuring energy expenditure was comparing the the estimate from wearable devices to like the gold standard measure for estimating energy expenditure and free living humans, which is doubly labeled water. And the air is produced by wearable devices exceeded 10%, more than 80% of the time, like 10% is pretty big, like typical guy burns somewhere around 3000 calories per day. That means that, you know, if you burn 3000 calories per day, there's like an 80% chance that your wearable will say, you either burn fewer than 2700 or more than 3300. But like, like like 10% plus or minus. What's your, what's your TD is it's still like a pretty big range. And it's not like that. And again, that's not like the maximum error you can Get, it's like 80% of the time the error will be larger than that. Yeah. So yeah, like, there's, there's not a good way just out of the box to say, hey, without any sort of like scientific process on the individual level, without any sort of guessing check process, there's there is not a system in existence that can reliably produce accurate estimates of how much energy you're burning. Like, there needs to be some sort of process that takes into account how much you're eating, and how how much you're eating affects how your weight is changing. All right, in order to estimate it like that. If, if, if there is a better way to do it, I'm not aware of it. And so yeah, like we we, like, I'm not like denigrating the other methods of estimating energy expenditure. Because I'm a co owner of macro factor, like, I'm a co I'm a co owner of macro factor, because the other methods didn't work.
Philip Pape 1:16:08
That was your purpose. And the purpose led to everybody wants macro fat because it works. I'll promote it for you.
Greg Nuckols 1:16:18
The better approach, like onto the market, which Yeah, I mean, like you can, you can also like, do most of that stuff yourself, like you can, you can track your your calories in a free app, you can track your weight. And if you're like, fairly mathematically or statistically inclined, like it's, it's not that hard to put together like a set of formulas that will like roughly approximate what what macro factor does I mean, like that, that's, that's what I did.
Philip Pape 1:16:51
The you started with a spreadsheet? Yeah, yes.
Greg Nuckols 1:16:54
It started with a spreadsheet that I made an undergrad when I'd taken like one nutrition class, like, it's,
Philip Pape 1:16:59
it still goes back. It goes back to friction, though, right? Greg like to do that most people don't even I love spreadsheets, but I don't have the time for that. I'm not gonna do it.
Greg Nuckols 1:17:08
Yeah, yeah. So so like, you don't, you don't have to buy macro factor to use this general approach. And whether or not you by macro factor, I would strongly recommend using this general approach, but then like that, having it in like a slick app interface, where the food logging is very efficient, everything is good. And it's also doing this thing that would otherwise take additional manual effort for you to do yourself. It just like reduces the friction. And I don't know, like, it's good. Like,
Philip Pape 1:17:39
I don't know, it's good. And for people listening, going back to the BMR thing, or the td td calculation, the traditional approach, right is to try to maintain your calorie intake for like two weeks, and then measure your weight and kind of get it that way. With macro factor you can, it's super tolerable to however much you eat, it doesn't really matter. It's collecting the data either way, which I really like about it. Because I get I get kind of confusion from people on that, like, well, I miss my targets, or how's it going to know that well knows, because you've got the data, regardless of whether you're over or under. There are some interesting corner cases. I guess one is, I've noticed with clients is body recomp, when there are new lifters and they're really putting on muscle mass pretty quickly. And their weight kind of gets offset artificially from macro factors perspective, because it doesn't know your body composition, that would be ideal if we could just plug into you know, an accurate body fat measure which doesn't exist. Because what will happen is the weight will say, if there are maintenance a weight might slip to tick up because of the muscle mass and the manufacturer thinks your expenditures lower and then wants to cut the calories. So we had to have that conversation of like, well, maybe let's just keep the calories a little higher for a little bit, you know, knowing that this is happening. Alright, I know we're running long on time. Is there anything else you wanted to bring up? Or a question you wish I'd asked? Greg, if if you have
Greg Nuckols 1:18:55
more we can keep going. Like I I fully understand that when I'm on podcasts, they tend to run long so if there's if there's more you wanted to cover like I'm I'm chill like I know. I know you you carved out an hour in my schedule, I did not go into this the expectation that it would only be an hour like I yeah, I know what it's like when I start talking but like if you need to wrap up that's that's no no,
Philip Pape 1:19:20
I've been respectful of you because I've had you know, I've had guests that are like it's on the hour we got it we got to wrap up. If you if you have some more questions, we can keep going. I just wanted to get a little bit more into like the science side of things because that's a lot of what you do right? We're stronger by science with the podcast, the research, the research spotlights, which I really like because they're super digestible. Do you have the one recently about the bedtime protein and then well, not so long ago about training while you're pregnant and things like that? What what areas of lifting or nutrition science are you most into right now? Like I'm curious how you pick the studies that you even care about, and write about, but like what are you interested in? Is there anything surprising coming out anything you you know I really get to go on right now.
Greg Nuckols 1:20:02
Hmm. I don't have a great answer to that question. Honestly.
Greg Nuckols 1:20:09
I yeah, I don't know, it is just like kind of on a on a case by case basis like i. So back when back when I wrote for masks, like we had a journal sweep that we did every month, just like pulling out from like, close to 150 journals, just all of the all of the studies that just based on the title, we felt, this might be interesting. And then we'd go through the abstracts to kind of like filter further. And then from there just like pull up full text, just kind of skim on like, Hey, does it look like the study was done pretty well? Or is there or is maybe the abstract, like overselling it a little bit. And then, and then from there, just kind of, like narrow down what we wanted to write about. So like, we we still, like, I still have access to that journal sweep. So it's still like basically the same same process, like, I just go through what was published. And if something just kind of like, tickles my brain the right way. I'm like, Okay, that's interesting.
Philip Pape 1:21:15
Could you use AI for this now? I mean, it seems like a good use of, of AI to sift through that.
Greg Nuckols 1:21:21
Ah, you know, I think that's probably possible. I don't know. I mean, like, so we, we pay people to do the journal suite now. And I like until we have like, robust UBI. Or just like, I don't know, some sort of, like, more collectivist economic system. I don't necessarily want to be on the vanguard of replacing human jobs with AI.
Philip Pape 1:21:48
is asking, it comes up so often these days, but also
Greg Nuckols 1:21:51
curious. Yeah, that's, that's one consideration. And then another is like, I just like that process. Like it least at least, like once, once the list is put together, just like manually sifting through it, I like it, I think, I think it's meditative. And it also, even for the papers, I don't actually like sit down and read. I at least see a list of like, what is getting published? And like, what is getting research attention. So like, there might be a topic where, you know, for like, a year straight, like, every month or two, a new study will pop up on those particular topic. And I'm just not that interested in it. But then once I see it enough, I'm just like, Damn, why do people keep publishing about this? This just doesn't seem like it should be that interesting. But like, people, people keep publishing until like, maybe there's something here. And so yeah, like, I want to get that if I had like an AI program, kind of like sift through the list for me, I'm just gonna be like the curated list like I, I think that there's, I think that there's often a lot of value in inefficiency. I think that like, as, as a business owner, I see a lot of people who are in a similar position that are like very obsessed with increasing efficiency at all costs. Okay, anything that's, like not necessary, or kind of like a low level? Or like a low leverage thing? Can I get someone else to do it for me? Can I just stop doing it? What like, like, that type of deal? I don't know. I think a lot of the I think a lot of the good things that have happened, to me, at least in business, have been due to doing a bunch of stuff that on the surface look looks like it should be inefficient. So yeah, like I spend, probably like two or three hours per month just sifting through the journalists that I'm that I'm positive. I can automate or either you know that or just like hire someone to do it for me just be like, hey, look back at the stuff I've written before. Use that to kind of like calibrate what you think my general preferences and studies are. And then hey, here's a list. Just pull out the 15 studies, you think that I like? Like, I could do that. But then I would miss, you'd be disconnected. Yeah, I would miss a bunch of stuff that's getting published that I may have found interesting that my prior writings wouldn't have suggested that I would have found interesting. And I you know, just like Miss trends as they develop and whatnot. Another good example of that is just like, I do a ton of community engagement, like, with macro factor, like I'm in the groups all the time, like you said, like before we knew each other like you DM me and I responded and like I don't really respond to Instagram DMS anymore just Just because I hate Instagram, I don't like the platform. Actually, what it is, is I don't like typing on my phone. But if someone emails me or they send send me like a Facebook message where I can respond on Messenger, like, I respond 100% of the time. And that is like I do, I probably should do less of that. But I, even if I didn't respond to everyone, I would still want to respond to a lot and like, be in the groups a lot, because I think that, you know, that's another thing that's kind of like on its face and efficient, but a dynamic that I pretty frequently see with people who have content businesses and get pretty successful. And it goes from being more of like a, I am in this community, and maybe like kind of like the leader of the community, but kind of like a first among among equals type of deal. Like I'm still in it amongst the people and seeing what their concerns are and what they're talking about, then, then you you get some success, and you're like, Oh, well, that's, that's a lot of work, I'm going to hire someone to be my community manager, I'm not going to go in there at all, I'm not going to read the comments. And seeing that, in I don't, I built the success off of like my single brilliant vision that people have flocked to, like, so oftentimes, that's a lie. Like, oftentimes people do get popular because they're like, pretty plugged into their communities. And they understand what people care about and what they want. And then as they get more successful, they view it as a benefit that now they can put some distance between themselves or people, but they just end up like getting disconnected from kind of like, the source of what made them like relatable and able to make content that like well in their community actually wanted to consume because like they kind of like sever their connection to that. So yeah, like with with macro factor. For instance, like we're, we're like a very heavily community driven app, like all of us are, like reading the Facebook group reading the subreddit, we see what people are talking about, we see what concerns they have, we have a public roadmap, there's a feature submission portal there. Like we monitor all of that, like we, we know what people want, we know what problems people have with the current product. And we know what new features people want to see. And like, here's, here's a crazy concept like most people aren't idiots like they, most people know what they want. Most people will tell you what they want, if you ask them, or if you create a space where they feel comfortable, like expressing what they want. And then if and then if you give it to them, they tend to be very happy about that. And happy and loyal. Yeah. Oh my god, this, this is a great product. Turns out like, if you if you build the thing that I said I wanted, it turns out to be the thing I wanted. And I like it.
Philip Pape 1:28:11
It's so true. I tell people all the time. I'm like in in the macro factor community and these other apps are just these cold third party apps with some unnamed person. There's a big difference. So I'm glad you do that.
Greg Nuckols 1:28:24
Yeah. So like in a vacuum, each step of that process seems seems like it should be really inefficient, like, just purely from like a business operations perspective. If we closed down the roadmap and closed down the groups or just like never went in the groups ever again, for probably like three months, it would just be like a net benefit to the business because like, we would have more time to do other stuff. Like, you know, we're trimming off a day to day thing that like in a vacuum seems bad. Seems like it should be inefficient. And seems like there should be higher leverage stuff to do elsewhere. But then, like after that three month mark, I think like the the cracks would start to show and I think that the product that we would end up building wouldn't be as aligned with what users actually wanted, and, and therefore would just wind up being a worse product, you know. And so yeah, I think I think that, I don't know, like, I know, this started with you asking about like, I like where it went.
Philip Pape 1:29:33
I like what I want as a business owner and people listening. And also they want to use macro factor, knowing that there's this community behind it. And that's, and it's not just it's not just an app community. It's like a ton of people trying to do the same thing using the app and get results. So it's you learn a lot about fat loss and protein and the evidence and everything just by talking to people in the group. Yeah, but
Greg Nuckols 1:29:52
But yeah, like, just kind of my broad point is I think that I think that a lot of people get overly focused on efficiency. Like metrics and quantification. And I think that I think that there are a lot of things that like, if you look at them in a vacuum, and only focus on the things you can quantify, you would say this is this is bad. It's a poor use of time. I shouldn't do it, I should do things that like quantifiably, at least in the short term would give like a higher ROI. But then like, there's, there are just a lot of like, kind of like second order effects that are challenging to quantify or, or impossible to quantify. And that that oftentimes, like that sort of pursuit, an orientation gives you like short term gains, but kind of like stymies you in the long term. Here's another great example of this. So like, like, online marketing, shit, just drives me crazy. And the thing is, people with like, really like spammy? Like approaches to online marketing, and like email marketing in particular. I think, I think it's like the ultimate expression of how like it over emphasis on like, efficiency and quantification can make you look like you're making the right choice the whole time and end up like fucking you very badly. Because like, the thing is, like, really the so if you if you have like an inbox full of like your, your emails, gotten on a bunch of email lists, just every time you open one, it's just like, just hard sell tactics, like it's really kind of like spammy kind of scammy. very in your face, trying to like, push your emotional buttons and like, find the pain points in order to close the sale. People who go down that road, I understand why they do because for a single email, those emails work much better than anything else. Like, there's a fucking reason people do it. And it's because like, if you're trying to make as much money as possible from one email, you send your list, that is the type of email you want to send. Because like, you know, it's going to have some sort of, like clickbait subject line to get people to click in and read it. And then most people aren't going to buy from any sales email you send, but if you kind of like have you get your like emotional hooks and someone early on and then operate some sunk cost fallacy, make it really fucking long tell long stories, like, by the end, it's just like, Oh, God, I feel like I have to fucking buy something or I just wasted 15 minutes of my life reading all of this, you put some like, like false urgency on it to where they feel like, Ah, well, I have to buy now to get it to like get the deal. Eat just all of like the hard sell tactics, you see an email marketing for a single email. That's exactly what you want to do. Like that will make you more money than any other single email you can send like if a well, a well put together hard sell long form sales letter. Like there's a reason people. But the thing is like, you can quantify those first order effects, you can quantify, opens, you can quantify, click throughs you can quantify sales, you can't quantify. reputational damage. And so if you do that, once you make more money, and maybe if you don't do it again, people forget about it. But if you see how well it worked, and you say, hey, based on the metrics, I can quantify this shit, this is, this is what I need to do. Now the person I just paid for, like an online marketing course. They were spot on, like I took their advice, sent this email, man, it rocked, then then you start doing that. And you just like, alienate your whole audience. You know, and I, I've seen so many people go down that road. And as as they do it, I am 100% Sure. All of their metrics, all of the things they can quantify are telling them you are doing the right thing. But they are doing the exact wrong thing. And yeah, so that's, that's just kind of a lens that I like to look through everything through. So like I I do think that I probably I could probably use my time a little bit better and more efficiently. Like there is probably some fat that I could skim that wouldn't have like deleterious long term like second order negative effects. But I'm always careful about that because I do think that that is an incredibly easy and alluring trap to fall into. In in all aspects of life. Like there's no There's a lot of value in stopping to smell the roses. Not not always taking the fastest way between two points. Because oftentimes, like the stops along the way are, are where you learn like interesting shit that like, doesn't serve any value for you now, but like you tuck it away in the back of your mind and like who pull that out at some point in the future and it's, it unlocked something that wouldn't that that you wouldn't have been unable to unlock as if you would have just taken the most efficient path between A and B every time.
Philip Pape 06:31
That's where I think you're going with that to the idea of just getting your hands and all sorts of things being there being connected, and you never know what's going to happen. You never know who you're going to be. I mean, I've seen there's so many things I do or I don't make any money from them like podcasting, but man, I got to meet you and so many other great people and who knows what these, you know, educational opportunities and relationships will lead to and this is a good way I think to conclude here because we came full circle and we talked about balance and like how you work so hard but also you want to stay connected and things and not necessarily pull away from everything. So any last words or how about tell people where they can learn about you?
Greg Nuckols 07:07
Sure, so let's see I don't I don't have last words I don't Yeah, so if you want to check out macro factor check it out. What's What's your affiliate code if you're listening to this put in fella Wits. &
Philip Pape 07:25
Weights Wits & Weights Yeah, so
Greg Nuckols 07:27
go with Wits & Weights that'll extend your free trial for one week to to any you can get that on the App Store and Play Store. If you you're listening to this podcast, you like audio content, if you want to listen to another podcast check out the stronger by Science Podcast. You can find that wherever find podcasts are found. If you'd like written content, there's there's a bunch of good free content on shorter by science.com and macro factor app.com. Macro factor app.com Not just a sales page for a product like there's there there is a lot of good in depth content there. Yeah, social media. Probably the best thing to follow would be the stronger by science Instagram account. You can follow my personal Instagram account. It's just at Greg knuckles. I don't post there anymore, like ever. And that is the one place where I don't really respond to DMS. So yeah, don't still follow my personal account Follow Follow the stronger by science account if you want to see what we're up to on social media.
Philip Pape 08:36
And that's why Facebook messaged Greg before this call as a reminder, because I knew not to do that. Okay, great. Well, I'll throw all those links in the show notes, man, it was pretty epic. I appreciate you sticking around this, this this amount of time and talking about all a whole bunch of things I didn't think we'd get into which I love. So thank you so much.
Greg Nuckols 08:53
Thanks for having me on it was a blast.
Philip Pape 08:58
If you've been inspired by today's interview, and are ready to take action and build momentum on your health and fitness journey, just schedule a free 30 minute nutrition momentum call with me using the link in my show notes. I promise not to sell or pitch you on anything, but I will help you gain some perspective and guidance so we can get you on the right track toward looking and feeling your best
