Here's another data point. I'm a 34 year old woman, have never been overweight (BMI is 20, have been within 5 pounds of the same weight since I was 18).
- Sleep: About 7 hours a night. I'm not consistent about this - sometimes it's 5 hours, sometimes it's 8.
- Exercise: I exercise pretty much every day, either running, swimming, biking, or hiking. I love it. A normal weekend will be about 15 miles of hiking. I used to lift weights but didn't stick to it as I find it a bit boring. I also take a walk every evening after dinner.
- Food: I love to eat and cook. Eating at restaurants is entertainment for me and I do it several times a week. I plan trips around food destinations and have dreams about specific dishes.
After reading about other's exemplary diets, I'm embarrassed to say mine is not great. (Not sure what a "macro" is.) I don't eat much red meat but I do eat tons of carbs (breadmaking is a hobby), cheese, and fried foods. I think my saving grace is that I have a hard time eating anything I'm not excited about, so the overall quantity I eat is usually small. If I'm full, I stop.
- Other: I don't smoke and the only thing I drink is water. I assume genetics are a factor because my mother is very similar. She's slim and active and can live on chocolate croissants.
ETA: My cholesterol/metabolic panels are excellent, so I guess my diet could be worse.
“Macro” stands for “macronutrient” and refers to the categories of carbohydrates, protein and fat.
As far as scientific reductionism goes, the concept indicates that one is talking about the major metabolic pathways, usually in the context of energy metabolism. Its usefulness in science is limited but the terms still serve well as part of a book or article title.
The public discourse, however, goes on and on using macronutrient terminology despite of being of limited use. The food industry has a vested interest to keep the general discussion centered on macronutrients because it helps maintain the myth of interchangeability of foods and food-like substances (engineered foods, also known as Frankenfoods, junk foods, etc.). Nutrition labels were originally introduced to help consumers to make informed decision about their diet. Inadvertently, these labels have raised the awareness of the public of the concept of macronutrients and the food industry uses it in its advertising (low fat, high protein etc.). As long as a discourse about how to eat well focuses on macronutrients instead of real foods, it likely has not left the sandbox set up and maintained by concerns which are not identical with the concerns of an indivdual who wants to learn how to eat well. You can search “nutritionism” to find out more about that and similar issues.
Macronutrients are distinct from food groups which are a different way to categorize food. The elements of the individual food groups are actual foods whereas the elements of macronutrient “groups” are categorized according to the major metabolic pathways used and that comes down to biochemistry. Macronutrient “groups” and food groups contain numerous different elements with the food groups showing a mind boggling variety.
Thinking in terms of macronutrients when dealing with one’s diet has severe limitations.
Even in the case of protein, which is the macronutrient for which it makes most sense to think about in these terms, one has to take a closer look because the biologic value of proteins from plant sources may vary between 0% and 100% depending on what other source protein was consumed concurrently. The reason for that are the essential amino acids contained in some proteins, especially from animal sources, in the absence of which the deficient protein is shunted to carbohydrate pathways via a process called gluconeogenesis.
This is all well and good in the right context, but it is ridiculous when all one wants to know is what to eat. Here, the correct answer is to eat your lentils with a bit of yoghurt, a piece of cheese or meat etc.
Scientific reductionism is extremely powerful in the right context and can be funny when applied in the inappropriate context.
Imagine a food company (FC) trying to sell someone (S) orange juice:
FC: “Drink this orange juice, it is good for you!”
S: “Really? How come?”
FC: “It contains the juice of six oranges. Oranges are good for you. Drink this orange juice, it is good for you!”
S: “I could never eat six oranges all at once!”
FC: “See! Oranges are good for you. Six oranges are even better for you. Drink this orange juice, it”s good for you!”
S: “Are you sure that eating oranges is really the same as drinking this orange juice?”
FC: “It’s exactly the same thing. Drink this orange juice, it’s good for you!”
S: “But how can you be sure that it’s the same thing?”
FC: “We have an expensive laboratory and we analyzed the orange juice to come up with the numbers we have to print on this label you see on the bottle of our healthy orange juice. We also analyzed six oranges and the results are exactly the same. Now drink this orange juice, it’s good for you!”
S: “Fascinating. How did you actually do the analysis on the six oranges? Sounds difficult!”
FC: “Too difficult for you to understand. Basically, we have this expensive machine and our scientists pour the sample in on one side and on the other side it prints out the nutrition label. Drink this orange juice, it’s good for you!”
S: “But how do you get the oranges into the machine?”
FC: “We got this little blender. Drink this orange juice, it’s good for you!”
S: “And how do you make your orange juice?”
FC: “We got this really big blender... Drink this orange juice, it’s good for you!”
(The first step in macronutrient analysis of a food typically involves homogenization (blending). Of course, the main difference between six oranges and the juice is that one cannot have six oranges in one sitting. The other difference is that sugars contained in the fruit are released by breaking up the oranges. These sugars are then free to be absorbed quickly. Fruit juice is a good example for how single step processing can transform a beneficial food into something physiologically not much different from soft drinks.)
What I’m trying to get at is that reductionism has its place and that it is not merely a theoretical abstraction but baked into any analysis.
In the case of the orange juice, all the differences between oranges and the juice are intentionally erased prior to making the comparison at the macronutrient level.
When one compares foods at the macronutrient level, one has to be aware that all other differences have been intentionally stripped away.
The absence of differences is not an artifact or mere oversight but by design.
Suggesting the interchangeability of foods based on macronutrient analysis should be called what it is: a willful deception. The same is true for the suggested interchangeability of calories. The food industry knows all this very well.