This post is brought to you by a STSL sponsor!
It seems these days, I’ve been coming across all sorts of info on blogs, social media, and even from friends, about macros. I’m sure you’ve heard of them being discussed lately in one form or another?
Well that isn’t the topic of this post, per se, but I will say that that is one thing that has always been incredibly interesting to me, yet not quite as easy to carry out or follow through with.
As a very brief, surface level summary on macros and what I’ve come across, it seems that there are three main areas that people tend to focus on most:
- Carbohydrates
- Fat
- Protein
The idea is to balance each of these three things throughout your daily food intake to ensure optimal health. And I’m not even going to attempt on going any further into explaining it because I’m sure I’ll get something wrong and I know that I am definitely no expert.
But that didn’t stop me from dabbling into things a little bit more earlier this summer. Honestly, I was just super curious to see just where my normal, daily food intake would fall within those three categories and whether or not I’d be close to the approximate “goal” at what I should apparently be at for my height/weight/activity level.
So I used a free app to give me an approximate idea of how many macros I should be “allowed” per day, and I used the MyFitnessPal app to track my food intake for about a week.
FYI: I don’t think I ever fully tracked everything I ate and I was always bad about tracking my dinners…I don’t know how people do this daily?!
As for the very basic results? They were about what I expected…
- I have no problem reaching my carb allotment
- I struggle with getting enough protein throughout the day
- Fats are usually pretty average/on track
The subject of macros and supplementing with the correct type and amount of nutrients is something that I actually find incredibly fascinating. I’d often thought about giving one of those nutrition test kits from home a try, just to get an idea of what I’m lacking in. I mean, sure, I can clearly see if/when I’m not eating enough protein, but I’ve always wondered if there were certain vitamins, etc. that I should be taking to help with things like fatigue, hair loss, and things like that.
Although, let’s be real…I think we really know the true culprit of those…
Joking aside, I did recently come across an opportunity to try out an at-home blood testing kit from Balanced Body Labs, and I was so excited to see the results.
The mission of Balanced Body Labs is to provide knowledge of your body’s health, since they believe that measuring (and knowing) your body’s nutritional makeup can allow you to reach optimal nutrition and peak physical performance.
As for the test itself, it was actually super easy. And Balanced Body Labs has three different kits:
- Balanced Weight Control – for those trying to reach their goal weight
- Balanced Perform – for those training for a competition
- Balanced Pro – for endurance athletes
My kit arrived (I received the Balanced Pro kit, for the sake of this review), and I was easily able to follow the step by step instructions to complete it.
They give you everything you’ll need, plus extra!
Once I was able to collect all of the blood samples, I set it aside for a few hours to dry completely.
Then I sealed it up in the biohazard bag, packaged it back up in the box it came, put the prepaid shipping label on there, and shipped it back. Easy peasy!
A few weeks later, I received my results in a report via email, and I’ll definitely say that it’s made me look a little deeper into things when trying to make informed decisions in the future. It covered everything from essential vitamins, amino acids, fatty acids and hormones.
In addition to your personal results, Balanced Body Labs also adds a bar that shows your standing in comparison to the average male/female population, which I thought was interesting.
The one thing I’ll say I was a little disappointed in was the fact that the results don’t give you any sort of feedback in terms of, “Since you’re lacking in X, you can supplement that by doing “Y.” I think that would be incredibly helpful, especially for those (including myself) who are not quite as immersed in the fields of nutrition and supplementation as, say, an endurance athlete.
Overall though, I was really impressed with the kit (again, I love getting to see personalized results on things that you can’t actually “see”!) and it’s been pretty eye opening to see some areas that I could definitely improve in.
Balanced Body Labs Kit GIVEAWAY
Want to try a kit out for yourself? Well Balanced Body Labs has offered to give away (1) kit to a lucky STSL reader! To enter, leave a comment on this post sharing what you’d be most interested in learning more about! I’ll choose a random winner on Friday, August 4th!
Disclaimer: This post is sponsored by Balanced Body Labs. All opinions, as always, are my own! Thank you for continued support surrounding sponsored content on STSL <3
Comments