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The macro diet: how one woman lost 23kg by counting nutrients, how her husband did the same, and why she can’t imagine eating any other way
- Kayla Pennington was the heaviest she had ever been at 92kg after the birth of her second child
- After other diets didn’t shift the weight, she started the macro diet, and both she and her husband have lost 23kg on it
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After her second son was born, Kayla Pennington knew she needed a full lifestyle change. She was the heaviest that she had ever been at 92kg, and the weight was not coming off easily. The 32-year-old from Memphis, in the US state of Tennessee, had tried almost every popular diet, from keto to Atkins and Weight Watchers, but none of them really stuck.
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She first heard of macro counting from her Peloton group, an online group cycling class. “I was intimidated at first. Macro counting sounded like it was for body builders and that’s not what I wanted to do. I didn’t want to fully commit my whole life around this.”
In March 2019, she joined a macro counting programme called Stronger U, with “every intention of backing out if it got too much”, she said. But she has stayed with it, and has lost 23kg.
“It’s not a diet any more. I can’t imagine ever not tracking macros in the future,” said Pennington, who works at a travel and hospitality company.
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With restrictive diets such as the keto diet, which severely limits carbohydrate intake, she craved them more than ever. But on the macro diet, she says: “Nothing is off limits. It’s easy for me to say no to junk food, because I could have it, but I’m able to see that I don’t really want it.”
It took her a year to coax her husband, Chris Pennington, 34, to try the diet. Since she finally convinced him to join her in January this year, he has been dining on her carefully prepared meals for eight months – and has also lost 23kg.
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