Can AI Replace All Of Your Macros Apps And Coaches?

Hey, Athletes! Can AI Replace All Of Your Macros Apps And Coaches? - Episode of The Garage Gym Athlete Podcast is up! 

• Can AI Replace All Of Your Macros Apps And Coaches?

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IN THIS 40-MINUTE EPISODE WE DISCUSS:

• Jerred and Joe are back!
• They gibe quick updates on their training and Joe's recovery
• Then they dive into their tests of using AI to track their macros
• And A LOT MORE!!

Diving Deeper…

If you want to go a little bit deeper on this episode, here is a link to the study for you: 

• No study this week

Garage Gym Athlete Workout of the Week 

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Can AI Replace All Of Your Macros Apps And Coaches?

Thanks for listening to the podcast, and if you have any questions be sure to add it to the comments below!

To becoming better!

- Jerred

Podcast Transcript

Jerred: [00:00:00] This is the Garage Gym Athlete Podcast, and we're here to build autonomous athletes and put phenomenal programming into every garage, basement, and spare bedroom out there. I'm Jerred Moon, and I'm with Joe Courtney. We are strength and conditioning coaches who have turned over 20,000 people into Garage Gym Athletes over the last decade.

And we're here to reduce the information overload that exists in the health and fitness industry today. We're going to do that by covering relevant science and give actionable takeaways, not only from the data, but from our years of experience. So let's dive in.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Garage Gym Athlete podcast, Jerred Moon here with Joe Courtney. What's up, Joe? How

Joe: you doing, man? Long time no see.

Jerred: Yeah, I'm doing pretty well. So today we're going to be hopping into AI, we're going to be talking about AI for nutrition, macro counting, this is something I've been experimenting with lately.[00:01:00]

I even posted something on our garage and math lead account that shared quite a bit on like just a quick, like utilization of AI for macro accounting. So this is for your nutrition and I've found it incredibly powerful and I want to talk more about it and the use of AI in fitness and nutrition. But before we get into that today, Joe, how's training?

Joe: I'm back to running. So I didn't, I think, I can't remember if I think the last time we recorded it like the day. before the day of getting my PRP injection. And so I took You know, two and a half, almost three weeks off of running because you just had to make sure everything was good there. It only hurt for a day.

I was told it was going to hurt for at least a week, but it only hurt for 24 hours and it felt fine. So I feel great. The pain is basically gone. One thing that I kept, I've been hesitant for the past three weeks that well, there's why I waited longer as well to take it easy because in that calf, I kept getting like kind of cramps, like more [00:02:00] cramps than usual.

And it was almost like if I were to flex my calf. I get that like pre sensation of what you get before you're about to get a cramp. Like it starts to feel like it starts to seize, but it doesn't fully. So it was scaring me a little bit, like something, I don't know I don't know why you need to dissipate more or not using it.

I don't know. But I ran yesterday and I did some stretching mobility, smashing of the cap before and everything felt fine. Not really much pain at all. So I'm just working my way back into it.

Jerred: That's awesome. And I would probably have to wait a little while, but thoughts on PRP so far.

Joe: So far, great.

Not very invasive. Two weeks, probably even less than two week time timeline for healing. I guess the real question will be if I need it again and how long until I need it again, because the heel spur is still there. It's not going anywhere. They can't, they basically, they essentially can't remove it without major surgery.

How long, yeah. How long until. that starts to hurt again. If it does, I [00:03:00] don't even know how long I've had it, but it only started hurting a year ago. And I had tendinitis my Achilles for 20 years. So who knows when it actually started to start to form and whatnot. So yeah I don't see a reason why if you're, if it's a treatment option for somebody that's it's provided.

And yeah, I'd say I'd recommend it because there's not, I don't think there's, I don't know what sort of drawback you have from it. It would just be, Oh, it didn't work. All right. Then we wanted the next thing.

Jerred: Nice. For me training's going well, enough. I, I'm training for high rocks in November, got really busy over the last couple of weeks.

So I'd say my. My training was still there, but not exactly what I should have been doing for high rocks, but at least I was consistent getting something in. And now I'm back to like regular scheduled programming for trying to get ready for that high rocks, power endurance training, all those kinds of things, getting ready.

But one thing [00:04:00] I added not too long ago is this little thing on my nose that you see.

Joe: Yeah.

Jerred: And what's funny is, so it's basically a nasal strip and I'm not paid by any company to wear one or to talk about this but the one thing that I've always struggled with is I have allergies, but they're not like debilitating and I don't even really take anything for my allergies, especially after we did that podcast on like how Regular use of allergy medication basically crushes your endurance gains.

I was like there's never using those again, whatever the hell happens And so if you didn't know Taking yeah long story short. I think yeah, I forgot it. They're called like n1 or Z I don't know there was like a letter. There's two versions. Anyway, if you take them regularly or both it really hurts your Endurance gains specifically.

And so I didn't want to take them anymore. And I took them even sparingly back then. So [00:05:00] now I don't take them at all. But my whole point in saying that is there's a time in the year, which is not when everyone else has allergies. Like everyone else, like it's allergies. I feel like in the springtime, like pollen coming, like all that stuff.

I get like fall heading into winter allergies. It's always strange because I'm like the only one I feel like, at least in my family. suffering with anything. But one thing that happens, I honestly like if I, I wish I could measure this easily, but like I feel like my nasal capacity drops by 70 percent when I have these allergies.

It's nothing like my eyes get a little bit itchy. I can use my drops periodically. But that's I feel like that's the major thing is like I just can't breathe out of my nose as well and so I'm like I've just always dealt with it. I'm just like yeah, that's what happens, And then I just feel like I can't breathe as well.

So anyway, I decided to try a nasal Strip the specific one I'm using is called I think intake breathing It has little [00:06:00] magnets That you put on your nose, and then this is magnetic. I was

Joe: wondering how you would apply it so much, because they're adhesive.

Jerred: Yeah, so it's like magnets that stick on the outside of your nose, and a little oh, whatever, like a little clear like sticker, like band aid like thing that goes on there has a magnet in it, and then the strip that goes over your nose is magnetic.

So anyway, again, not trying to promote a specific one, I'm sure lots of No nasal strips out there work, but I want to try this one specifically. I've just seen a lot of athletes using it. I have a buddy who's used it in triathlons. And so I was like, okay, I'm going to try one out. And dude, it's been amazing specifically for my allergies.

It's been absolutely incredible. I did a threshold run today. I was able to breathe out of my nose almost the entire time it got to a point where the threshold, this is a threshold run, right? This is yeah, that's rough, long duration, high heart rate. That's typically how you think of threshold.

So not like quick sprints or whatever. I held nasal breathing all through the warmup, which was about a nine minute mile pace [00:07:00] and then kicked it up to, I think it was like holding like a six 30 pace to six 45 for about eight minutes was the threshold duration. And I held it damn near the entire first threshold, the first interval, but then after that, I couldn't hold it for the second interval.

I had to start breathing out of my mouth, but I would have never been able to do that before. I would have been probably mouth breathing by the end of the warm up for sure. And I've also been noticed, I've been wearing it while I sleep, and those are the two big areas I've been using it during sleep and during training.

And I have to report back on the sleep, I sleep pretty well as is, but I did get I've got some like 97, 98 sleep scores with Garmin while wearing it, but I don't, it's not like my pulse ox is different, or my respirations per, like anything else I'm trying to track related to breathing, respirations per minute are different, they all seem about the same, so I don't know if it's actually helping with sleep, but I can just tell a difference in my training and how I breathe when I'm, Actually able to breathe [00:08:00] through my nose and I don't have to breathe through my mouth.

So yeah, it's been huge. I really enjoyed it. How long do the bangas last? I don't know. I've been taking them off because I don't want to keep them on for too long. You said

Joe: they re stick?

Jerred: No, they don't re stick. It's it comes with a 30 pack. So, that's what you, that's how they get you like that.

You keep buying them, right? Even with nasal strips, you'd have to keep buying a new nasal strip. So you have to buy, you don't have to buy the black thing. Like it comes with four sizes based off of your nose. And then you use the strip over and over again, but the magnets. Comes in a 30 pack. So one, one a day, I guess you're supposed to, you could do it, put it on the morning and then take it off the next day.

Just depends if how long you want to walk around with sticky things on your nose.

You could

Joe: just get your toes pierced and just have. A little place to screw in a small magnet and then just screw the magnet off and you just have a little hidden stud [00:09:00]

Jerred: and then you defeated the system. You're saving like 10 bucks a month.

Joe: Exactly. That's

Jerred: pretty good. Yeah. Yeah, it's not. It's not overly expensive either. But anyway, it's been cool. I'll report back because it honestly has. It's only been about like, For five days, but I've been really happy with it so far. I think it's awesome. And I'm actually because of it. I'm rereading the book breath by James Nestor that we have already read and talked about on the podcast.

But it's so funny. I'm like, You know what? I want to reread that. I know he talks about this stuff and the whole, I'm like in the beginning of the book and it's all about how absolutely terrible mouth breathing is for you and I'm like, gosh, yeah, I need to focus on this again. So that's where a lot of my focus is right now is on just breath in general and nasal breathing.

Joe: That's definitely been on my list for possible rereads in the past. Okay. I do have nasal strips. I keep them up in our up in our bathroom, but I've only used them at night because there are certain times of the year. Maybe it would have allergies or times where I just blow my nose a lot. And there's times where [00:10:00] even with your my nose isn't stuffy.

It's inflamed. And then like you would be allergies and getting to sleep with that is terrible. And then the more When I'm laying down, I'm thinking about how I can't breathe in my nose and I'm breathing through my mouth and it's just so obnoxious. So I got breathing strips for those rare times where that happens.

And I just keep them upstairs. I'm in the warm where I'm in bed, but yeah, I, and I haven't had didn't use them for workouts usually during the day. It's not that bad.

Jerred: Just try it out. It's a, yeah, in my opinion, it's one of those like low barrier to entry, like experiments, because I don't know what I spent.

I think the starter kit is maybe like in a 30, 40 range, something like that. It's well worth like the trial if anybody's interested, because I think it'll help a lot, even with like my strength workouts, I'll just only be breathing through my nose the entire time because it's something I just haven't paid attention to as much recently.

So it's something I'm paying attention to a lot more. One more currently not back on the mouth tape. [00:11:00] No, I might try it out. I feel like I can breathe so much better out of my nose. I think you could take my mouth shut right now and it wouldn't be a problem. I think I'd be fine.

But let's get into AI in macros. I find this really interesting because AI is evolving, it's getting smarter and smarter. We talked about how I was using a continuous glucose monitor for a little while and one of the coolest things, the one I was using specifically was NutriSense and the coolest thing I thought about their app was that I could take a picture of my food, right?

And they could estimate my macros. And I just thought that was phenomenal. And what I didn't realize that whole time is chat GPT can do that. And so I, I've started playing around with it and have been utilizing it off and on really just. In preparation for this podcast and content to try and help people out, maybe put a new tool in the toolbox.

But I wanna talk about how I'm [00:12:00] utilizing it and how you can specifically use it and some things to think about. But I did wanna see if you. Had any initial thoughts? You don't have to lay everything out right at the beginning on AI macro counting, have you experimented with this at all or, what's your stance right now?

Joe: Never thought to do it mostly because I just really haven't dipped into AI much, but I saw your post on Instagram and I did my own and I played with it a little bit. I gave it some I basically wrote. You're almost the same exact, but a little bit different. And then after it gave me some, I gave him a couple of other prompts okay, do it this way, but with this, do it this way with this.

So I have a couple of different versions of what I have, but it's pretty cool. And it's pretty quick because, whenever I count my macros, I like group source mine. I'm like I'll go to several different calculators and see what I get out. And then I find the median of those or just make a judgment place.

Okay. In my macro calculator, this is what it is, and then this is what I'll set it at, and I'll even play with the the percentages of fats and carbs, fats [00:13:00] so yeah, it's pretty cool and really easy to do with ChatGPT because all you do is type it in and then boom, it's there versus going to some people's website and seeing which ones make you put your email or do whatever, sign up stuff.

Jerred: Yeah, I think ChatGPT over time, I think it's going to kill all these nutrition apps, in my opinion. Yeah. Maybe, maybe some people will continue to use it, what's the,

Joe: we're not really daily tracking in those. Because like I'm doing it

Jerred: right now, so I'm going to talk about okay,

Joe: I haven't seen anything on chat you besides just like a text thing, like I said, I'm really no,

Jerred: It's a text, it's text, but like you can you can have it like come back and do whatever analysis you want, because all you're trying to do is meet your calorie and macro goals.

For the day, right? And then if you want to be like, how have I done this week? I can just tell you how you did this past week. And so we'll get into it, but I want to start with macros in general real quick, just for anyone who might be catching up, haven't done this. So macronutrients, carbs, fat, protein, alcohol is also a [00:14:00] macronutrient.

Fat is 9 calories per gram, protein and carbs are 4 calories per gram, alcohol is 7 calories per gram. Again, we don't talk about alcohol as much, so that'll be about the end of my conversation there, because it really shouldn't be a part of a good macro based plan. But just so you know how, like, where that comes from.

It's oh, where do the calories and alcohol come from? That's predominantly it, that and carbohydrates most of the time. Yeah. Now, when you're trying to set a good macro plan, our recommendation, and to be honest, the recommendation of most at this point, is to set your protein first and then you play with your carbs and fat from there.

Protein on the high end, and what some will recommend is about one gram per pound of body weight, so I'm 190 pounds, that'd be 190 grams of protein. Me, personally, I don't enjoy going that high. I feel like when I'm going that high, I'm having to do things that are weird. And I'm okay not hitting that protein goal.

I don't think it's a detriment to my long term health or longevity because what I am shooting for is more like 0. 8 to 0. 9 grams per pound of body weight. So somewhere closer to 170 grams of protein [00:15:00] per pound or 170 grams per day. For me, that's just me personally. Again, I'm not trying to, cause when I do try to hit that one 90, like I said, I'm like, I'm eating like four meat sticks in a day or something, or I'm having like two or three protein shakes.

I'm always doing something weird. That I don't enjoy doing. There might be some days where I can hit it perfectly, but when I'm in that 170 range, 160 to 170, I can do that without having to do anything weird. And that's the only thing I can like, the only way I can describe it. And you know what I'm talking about, Joe.

If you've done any macro counting, it's like, why am I eating this Flavorless yogurt or whatever at the end of the day, because it's just, cause you need like protein or something, it's just, I hate doing all that kind of weird stuff with macro counting. So I've just landed on 170 being a sweet spot.

Have you, do you have a sweet spot for protein when you're counting macros?

Joe: I just looked at my app and I'm at about 170, 175, 180. So yeah, but we're also, we're basically the same size.

Jerred: Yeah, so that's a good part. And now, without getting into the mathematics of it, because I really [00:16:00] don't want to.

My whole point of this podcast is to have AI do some of this for you. But AI is not going to know exactly What the absolute best protocol is, that's why I'm trying to start off with a good protocol, so you lock in your protein first. Another way to do this is if you have a lot of weight to lose is to do it off of your lean body mass.

So if you know your fat your body fat percentage, say you were 220 pounds and you had 150, 160 pounds of lean body mass, you might want to set your protein to that as opposed to trying to get, 220 grams of protein or whatever. So just another quick caveat there. So you lock in the protein.

And then after that, it's carbs and fat. It's like, how many carbs and fat do I want? Because you're locking in the protein first. And so then you can go this is where you get to play around with it. Everyone responds differently. You can go low carb, which is typically five to 10 percent of your total calories, in carbohydrates.

You could do 33 percent carb [00:17:00] you could do 50 to 60 percent carb if you want to go high carb. And you can just play with these things. Personally, I've landed at a moderate carbohydrate load. So my protein, after I lock it in, I don't know the exact percentage. I think it's probably around 35 percent of my diet is carbohydrates.

So again, A lot of apps will recommend like 50 percent of your calories come from carbohydrates, and I'm 35. So if I have my protein locked in and I'm 35 percent carb, that means the rest are just fats. And I try to make those healthy fats. And this is just giving you an idea of where my head's at.

I tried low carb for a while. It didn't seem sustainable. High carb, I feel very shitty on at all times. I just feel real bad on high carbohydrate. And so moderate carb with a good amount of protein and healthy fats that's where I've landed. I feel really good with something like that.

Have you found what works for you in the These broke breakdowns being low, moderate and high. [00:18:00]

Joe: Definitely not high high carb. I think the highest I usually go is 35%. So I'm going to do 30 and 35. So I'm pretty close to what you are. I think the only time I change it, sometimes I like to experiment to see how it goes, but I usually, I don't think I ever go above 40 percent in the carb wise.

It's the only, only the time where I'm like, I think I'm just getting too much fat. So I'll bump up my carbs some or also depending on what kind of workouts I'm doing.

Jerred: Yeah, time of year, even 50 to 60, which a lot of people do. And honestly, I just feel like absolute garbage. I just feel so bad when I do that.

It's much more

Joe: volume too.

Jerred: Yeah. It's easy to eat. It's easy to eat a lot of carbs. That's not a hard thing to do. I, I never. Really finish a day tracking macros. And I'm like, damn, how do I get more carbs? That's very rarely the case, but the reason I'm starting with all this before we get into like how easy this can be with AI is because that's the most important part of all of this is setting the appropriate, like macro targets for you, and you can now [00:19:00] go into chat GPT with everything we've just armed you with, and now you can start to prompt check chat GPT so you can go into chat GPT and you can be like.

And I'll just use me as a specific example. And again, if you go to the garage, you have the Instagram account. We did a short reel on like actually doing this again, but this is only, that was the whatever, 92nd version or less. This is going to be the more in depth version. So you can go in there and you can be like, Hey, chat, CPT.

I'm 190 pounds, I'm 10 percent body fat, I'm looking to maintain, or maybe you want to gain or lose, you can put in your goal. You can then say, I want to lock in my protein at about 0. 9 grams per pound of body weight, and I want to follow a moderate carb, no more than 30 35 percent carbohydrate diet.

Can you give me a good macro plan to follow? And then from there, it'll give you a really, cause like you just locked in so many parameters without it having to go really generic. That's where chat TPT can be a problem. If you go really generic with it. It might just give you run of [00:20:00] the mill yeah, 60 percent carb macro plan.

So anyway, and I'm not saying you have to be moderate carb I think everyone should play around and find out what, what works for them. But you can use all that to prompt ChatGPT and now you have a pretty good macro based macro based plan right there in ChatGPT. And so you played around with this, you said, and did you like what it gave you?

I, so I had to give it another

Joe: prompt, so the very first one it gave me, so my calories are at 2600, which it gave you a range, it just told me 2600, it did put me at 50 percent of my calories were from carbs. My protein was right at 190 and my weight is 190. So a bit high. I think I do remember my total calories for protein being like 27 28 because that puts it down to 175 180.

But anyway, so yeah, it put me way up at 50 percent of my calories are carbs and then only 20 are from fat. So when I did that, I went back to it. I said, okay, give me now balance out my [00:21:00] carbs and fat. I told to balance out my carbs and fat. All it did was drop my carbs to 46 percent but didn't add anything else to fats.

It says it's 24 percent but my calories are the same and my fat grams are still the same. So I'd have to go in there and be like no, raise my fats to X percent. If you ever really wanted to get picky and then I can see how it is.

Jerred: Yeah, and again, the reason we're spending so much time on this part is because I think ChatGPT is incredibly powerful, but if you screw up the first part of not really knowing where you should be, then the whole thing in my opinion is useless.

And yeah, you might have to play with it a little bit, but utilize everything that we just said. Pause, rewind, and go through it if you have to. But ultimately, lock in your protein, anywhere from 8 to 1 gram per pound, and then choose if you want to go low, moderate, or high carbohydrate, I already gave you the percentages, lock that in, have the fat to do the rest, and then, calories are, just a product of what your macros are, because like I said, there's a certain number of calories per gram of [00:22:00] macronutrients calories should be easy from there.

And now we get into the utilization of it can give you a meal plan, which is really cool, which is more like what I tested it with in that Instagram reel that we created. And it was, I just said Hey, after it gave me the breakdown, I was like, okay, I only want to eat four meals a day. I want one of them to be a snack.

And here are the things that I like to eat. And that's the most important part. Cause if you just say again, Tell me what to eat. It might be like, Oh a sauteed, like whatever fancy, like it. Yeah, I can't, I don't have time for that. So you can just say here are the things I have in my fridge or like that I like to eat regularly.

So I put in I like eggs, sourdough bread, shake, lean meats, healthy fats, some vegetables, fruits, those kinds of things. And then it can give you a pretty good. Meal plan. But what's crazy is you could actually just go into your fridge or your pantry and say, legitimately, here are the things I want and the things I want to eat, make a meal [00:23:00] plan based off of what I have.

I've even done that with a dinner before be like, Hey here are the ingredients I have, like. What could I make to hit my macro goals? So you can get, this is where I think it gets so much more powerful than a tracker app or an app. It's just what'd you eat? And, but you're still like shit, I don't know.

Like I gotta go make something or I gotta do something random, or you could even get to the end of the day and have 50 carbs left, 20 grams of protein, and you can just be like, give me four ideas of what I could eat right now. And it'll, it might give you some really great ideas.

That's where I think it's more like a coach, not completely like a coach. And I'll talk about that as well, but it's more, it's better because it's just it can answer these one off questions as opposed to just logging what you did in the past. That's where I think it's so far superior to all these apps.

And I think these apps will catch up. They'll add AI, but right now chat to PT so far ahead of them. I think people might abandon these apps for. Or chat GPT if they're looking for more help and assistance in the process of tracking and [00:24:00] because I feel like that's what every like every person who tracks a lot they just they don't realize how much of a game this is like you have to play the game you know I've played the game so much that we understand the game but if you're new to macro counting it's a huge pain in the ass it takes a lot of time out of your day to actually do it's not just oh log what you eat it's like Now I gotta play with all this crap to find out what to eat, what's left, what was too much, what was not enough, and so it's a massive game that takes up a lot of time, but I think ChattyPT can significantly reduce that learning curve.

Yeah, even when you first get started,

Joe: like every single time we first get started, but if you're very first time getting started, it can be pretty frustrating, and there's even times where, Man, like you go to get meat and it's okay, this is Chuck beef, Chuck roast. Okay. And you go to search in your tool okay, I have beef Chuck.

And then there's four different results and they all have different macros. And you're like, what the hell, which one is it? This one has a ton of fat. This one has moderate fat. Which one is it that I have? And you really just don't know. So you just have to make a, All right. Bye. A judgment call there.

I think times like that, ChatGPT [00:25:00] or the AI stuff will come in handy. The one reason why I wouldn't want to use it as much I think it would be good to use in conjunction. I'm a sucker for the visuals, so like, when I pull up the app, I like to see in the day okay, how, there's some sort of visual representation of how my macros are doing that day, whether it's a wheel thing, whether it's the color of the number get slowly from red to green as you get closer, whatever it may be, some sort of visual representation, and then certain recipes and things like that are saved.

Like I said, I've only used it as like a text. Chat format. I don't know. And then I feel like you would have to have an account to go back to okay, this is what I was talking about before. Tell me what's going on here. That's just me being new with specifically a chat GPT, but the visuals I think is something that I would still want to use an actual tracker app with.

Jerred: Yeah. So when you're in chat GPT, just say, Hey, can you visualize this data and it'll make a chart or graph for you? That's what, it's not going to be as pretty as what you're talking about though. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, is it changing [00:26:00] the color like for that dopamine hit, of I got to green, but like I said, I think the apps are better for what you're saying, like the user interface.

Let's just call it the user interface far superior in these apps. And I agree. It's okay, I got this much left or whatever. But the communication back and forth you can have with chat GPT is amazing. But now that we know like prompting it, it can create your macro plan. What I've been using on a daily basis is something called the, you can, it's called the food tracker and then in parentheses, calories and macros.

So if you're in chat GPT has bots. So if you actually log in, you can click on the left and it's called explore GPTs and you can just search macro and you should find food tracker, calories and macros. And that's the one I've been utilizing for now. I don't know if this will always be true and you can just use a standard chat GPT if you want to.

Cause as they update their their new versions of the GPTs, you might want to abandon this one, but that's the one I've been using specifically because. This bot has already been trained on tracking [00:27:00] calories and macros and a food tracker. So what's been really powerful about this is I have my macros now in this conversation, and it's just a long conversation I've been having, and I will literally just take pictures of food, or I'll take pictures of the nutrition label, and I'll send it, or just the box, not even the nutrition label.

I had some of these simple meals, Crackers, I think they're like almond crackers or something like that. I just took a picture of the front of the box and chat. GPT goes and finds that crap for me and then tells me how many calories are in it. I tested it to see if it was accurate and it was 100 percent accurate.

It's yeah, I know exactly what you're eating just from the label. And so that's, what's been really cool is I take a couple of pictures on my phone and I uploaded a chat to PT. I say, Hey, here's what I ate. And it'll give me the full macro breakdown. So it'll be like, Hey, that meal had. 58 grams of protein, 48 grams of carbohydrates, 15 grams of fat.

And then compared to what your goal is today, you have this much left and here [00:28:00] where your totals are at. And so that gives me like a snapshot in real time after every meal. And again, I'm just snapping pictures, but then there's that conversational piece, right? So I was at a restaurant, we went to a, an Asian restaurant.

Like two nights ago and I had like a chicken teriyaki bowl. It was just like rice, vegetables, and chicken with teriyaki sauce. And I took a picture of the menu. Cause it had a full description of what it is, as every menu will. And then I'm like, Hey. Here's what I'm thinking about eating for dinner.

Can you give me estimated macros on this? And then I was also like, Hey, can you ask me any questions before you give me the estimated macros? And then it was like is the bowl lightly sauced, heavily sauced, moderately sauce. What do you think? And I was like, lightly sauce. Can you estimate the amount of chicken?

I was like, I think it's going to be about six to eight ounces of chicken. And then they were like, ask me some questions about the vegetable. So I answered a couple of questions and then it just popped out with macros. And again, as someone who's been playing the game for a while, I already know what I think is in that bowl, like just having tracked so much food, [00:29:00] but it's It was very close to right.

If not, it's not gonna be a hundred percent accurate. No macro tracking is in my opinion, but it gave me like, I, I took a picture of the menu, it asked me, I told it to ask me a couple of questions and then it popped out with a very accurate macro breakdown from restaurant food, which I think is the most challenging part of macros is when you eat at restaurants is cause you don't really know what you got.

And so being able to either take a picture of your food or take a picture of what the menu says. And then getting, giving it estimates and then it's okay, is that what you ate for dinner? I'm like, yeah. And it's okay, cool. Let's add that to your totals. And so that's where I think it's becoming even more powerful.

Again, it's that conversational element of let's go back and forth to get the most accurate here, as opposed to use our food database, search something that's close, maybe it's accurate. Maybe it's not, that stuff has all annoyed me. And that's, what's been interesting to me. I don't know if it's because it's new and novel, but I normally hate tracking because of entering crap into the app, but I don't really have, I don't have to enter in anything with chat GBT.

I send a couple [00:30:00] pictures or I, I say, here's what I'm eating from, like maybe at a restaurant. And then it gives me a really good breakdown. And then at the end of the day, I just ask, I'm like, Hey, I'm done eating. Like, where did I land? And it'll tell me like what my updated totals were for the day.

And then I could say, hey, average this out for the week, average this out for the month, all these kind of things and have it keep track of all these things. And to your point about visualizations, I could, you could ask it to visualize the data hey do a graphic representation or visual representation on a graph of like my calories over the last seven days.

And it'll show you like, okay, here's what they've been at, here's your averages, all these kind of things. So anyway. That is me utilizing ChatGPT and hopefully you got something useful out of this and able to go use ChatGPT yourself in the creation of a macro plan. And then not only going from macro plan, which is having the actual plan, but then actually tracking your food accurately in ChatGPT.

And I think that is where it gets incredibly [00:31:00] powerful. And again, I've been having a lot of fun tracking inside this AI platform.

Joe: Yeah. But everybody else, I think some cool things of content. I'd love to see that interface. I did log into chat. UBT, there's nothing on my sidebar. So I had to play with that another time.

So I, it'd be really cool to see that because taking pictures would be such a game changer on what you're eating, even of your pantry or of your fridge. Hey, this is what I have. What should I have? Or there's even times in the day where it's like after I've eaten lunch, you'll see what you have macro wise and you could be like, all right, what should I eat for dinner?

What do you suggest for dinner to beat my macros instead of just as I make my dinner bowl, I'm like. really, um, just on the scale, going back and forth on, on what I should have. I would be, I think it would be cool, even though there's there's websites like nutritionix and some other ones that will have macro counter macro calculators for chain restaurants.

So I'd be interested for you to Use them side by side to see which ones because I've used for Chipotle [00:32:00] and like Subway and when I've been counting because those are that's decided if I'm going to eat out because it's okay, I'm counting right now. So I need to go somewhere where I can at least get my macros and there are restaurants.

A lot of restaurants that are that have those macros listed, but it's you have to like really search around, but at least those are they're fairly consistent. It's just, depending on who's scooping, but you can still get pretty close and I, it'd be interesting to see how a chat GPT bit gets close to it with their estimates or just a picture or something.

So that would be really cool. Just, pretty content wise and. I do like certain things about, so another thing I prompted with chat, GBT is as I was, because it gave you the meal plan not really, I wouldn't follow a meal plan. Cause I don't like taking orders from somebody else.

And some of the things that they said, I was just like, weird, but I did like to where if it'll say Six ounces of chicken, one medium sweet potato, something like that. I do all of my macro counting in grams. I just, I have a scale. I'm doing it in grams. I'm weighing it in grams.

I'm not changing units. So I did like that when it gave me something, I can be like, okay, now give [00:33:00] me everything in grams. So it could tell me what everything is in grams and then I log it that way. So that's cool. Just again, it's another one of those. It's so smart that it, like if you're on an app and you'd be like, no, I want, I just want it with this.

Yeah. It's not that you can actually do that. It's, it would be really cool to try out.

Jerred: I think it's a, it takes a lot of massaging and what I do think will happen and probably has already happened. And I'm sure some people will chime in is Oh, these apps have already added that in or whatever.

But what I like is the versatility of. With chat, CPT there, you have to learn prompting a little bit, but I don't have to go learn your app and I don't want to learn your app. I would rather just have a conversation with. Artificial intelligence on what I think the estimates are because I'm not like this isn't groundbreaking information, right?

Like all of these like food apps All they do is tie into some database where they have the best guess estimates and chat GPT already knows all those estimates So I don't think one app [00:34:00] is better than the other and we've had recommendations in the past, but I think That conversational piece is what I've always missed to macro counting is like, it's almost like having a nutrition coach with you full time.

And you can just, you can ask those questions, making those adjustments on the fly. Hey, what should I eat? Yeah. Here's what I have. What do you recommend? What do you think this restaurant food would be? And just taking your best guesses from there. So I think it's really powerful. Now does this completely replace nutrition coaching is where I want to end in and round things out.

I don't think so, and one thing I will forever think is true and believe to be true is people suck at doing things, you know what I'm saying that's everybody, that's me, that's you, that's everybody we all suck at doing something, there's something that we No, we should be doing, but we can't get ourselves to do or whatever it might be in different capacities or what, what have you, and a lot of people might be bad at nutrition.

So I don't think coaches are going [00:35:00] anywhere, but coaches who whose only value was providing a meal plan and providing a macro plan and telling people what to eat without actually being a good coach. You know what I'm saying? Like actually helping lead the person from point A to point B, if you don't actually have the act, the coaching skill set of helping another human being, you might be in trouble.

But for everyone who's helping people through that process, let's just say on the nutrition side, I think that it's incredibly powerful. Like I think you can help people and then this can just, Either help you help people faster, or you could teach them how to utilize it. And then you just pop in and help them make further adjustments because there's still there's a whole can of worms here that I'm not going to open on the nutrition coaching side, just because I've done that as well.

It's just what if someone's not losing weight? What if they start gaining weight? There's all these things, like even when you're following a macro plan, things aren't perfect. There are a lot of adjustments that. Need to be made. So hiring somebody with experience to be able to shortcut that process, I still think is a huge value add, but the whole like [00:36:00] nuts and bolts of tracking your food, I think AI is going to have handled within the next couple of years for sure.

Especially if it's this good, just starting out, that we'll have wearable glasses or whatever that can do this. Just take a look at our food and it'll like just pop up on the screen, like all those things I think will come in the near future. And this stuff will get so much easier.

Then, but doing it right, doing it's the hardest part. It's not just the tracking it and having the data.

Joe: Any lessening of barriers to the entry are helpful. And any little bit.

Jerred: Yeah. And I think this is it. So that's it. That's tracking. Macros to track chat, GPT, and then also using it as a food tracker.

But we will close this one out here for anyone who wants to be a garage gym athlete, you can go to garage, gym, athlete. com, sign up for a free trial. And we'd love to have you there for all of our athletes who are staying consistent, doing the workouts. Hey, tracking your food, go try this out. You might want to give it a shot.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask us in the community. And we'd love to help you out further if we [00:37:00] can. But that's it for this one. Remember if you don't kill comfort will kill you.