What are macros – How to calculate for weight loss, bulking, and cutting

The importance of understanding and calculating macros is very underrated. Here’s a quick explanation why:

  • Protein repairs and helps the body recover. You need 1 gram per body weight if you are an athlete. Maybe more depending how many times a day you train and how long.
  • Fats play a major role in the hormonal balance your body maintains. However, people fear fat from food because they talk about them interchangeably as the fat stored in the body. They are not the same. If there is anything you grasp today, grasp this. Whether you eat salad, steak, fruits, or crackers if you eat too much of any your body will store excess as body fat.
  • Carbs are mostly a source of energy. Your body doesn’t really need it because it can create energy from fats and protein. With that said, vegetables, fruits, and other carbs are a source micronutrients. With that said, you can get micronutrietns from multivitamins but ensure that you eat fat for the fat soluble vitamins.

Without further ado let’s discuss the following topics about macros and microutrients:

Why are macronutrients important, and how can I measure them?

In order to keep things simple, there are four macros. Unless you don’t drink, the fourth macro, alcohol, doesn’t count. If you do drink, make sure you account for the fourth macro in your nutrition programming.

When you create a diet or as I prefer to call it, a nutrition program, the right amount of macronutrients must be accounted for which will also add up the amount of calories you eat per day. You can’t just eat 2000 calories worth of carbohydrates and expect to be healthy. Same as you can’t eat 2000 calories solely of any macros and expect to be healthy.

Remember, the phrase, “based on a 2000 calorie diet”, that you read on nutrition labels, does not mean you need to go into a 2000 calorie keto meal plan. The amount of calories you consume on any nutrition plan is based on your height, weight, body fat percentage, and what you desire your ideal body type to be.

What are micronutrients:

As important as macronutrients are, your body needs micronutrients. These are the smaller components of nutrition usually in the form of the periodic table. Micronutrients are the small particles. Vitamins and minerals. When you take multivitamin tablets, you are consuming micronutrients.

When you take creatine or potassium or citrulline, these are micronutrients. Macros are usually broken down by your body in order to separate and absorb these smaller particles. However, if you eat the required amount of calories you need to eat per day, more than likely, you will not get the required amount of micronutrients you need on a daily basis. Again, this is why multivitamins are recommended.

I also recommend mushroom powder for micronutrients.

Here’s a basic list and description of all four macros.

  • Carbs: Either provide glycogen or fiber. Have 4 calories per gram. 
  • Protein: There are complete vs incomplete. Meat, fish, poultry are the best source of complete proteins. Non-meat food sources must be combined to make up a complete protein. Proteins have approximately 4 calories per gram.
  • Fats: Fats can come from a variety of sources. Foods highest in fat are nuts, avocados, butters, high fat steaks, chicken sin, dark meat of chicken, etc. 1 gram of fats carries approximately 9 calories per gram.
  • Alcohol: The drinkable kind, carries around 7 calories per gram.

Nowadays, the basis behind more diets is the macronutrient content. Ketogenic diets are high fat dominant and are composed of moderate to low percentages of protein.

A paleo diet is a more balanced approach where carbs compose 50% of daily calories, fats 25%, and proteins 25%.

fat-cycling-diet-high-fat-low-carb
Fat Cycling Diet

I few years ago I created what I termed the Fat Cycling Method. In a nutshell, it was a fat cycling keto friendly system. It is my belief that fats are more important to cycle then carbs, although, if you keep protein consistent, you cycle both, carbs and fats.

As you can see, I have a higher carb phase and lower carb phase. My protein never changes because even though, a sedentary vs an active lifestyle, differ in the amount of proteins you need per day, a little extra protein is not unhealthy. 25% is a great number because if you’re sedentary, you eat less calories which brings the macro total down. If you are more active, your calorie intake should go up and the macro intake will go up. But 25% is a safe number regardless of how active or not active you are.

Even though to this day I don’t normally go into Phase 1, I very consistently hit macro percentages in the Phase 2 ranges.

More about macros:

Every meal you eat, whether it’s a burger, burrito, or a bowl of you name it, has macros. When kids eat candy, a big problem in our culture, they are mostly consuming sugar.

Sugar are categorized under carbohydrates.

When you eat greasy food, the term greasy, can be categorized under fats. When you eat chicken or steak, if you’re a carnivore, they can be categorized under protein (also depends on how lean the meat is).

Protein in foods

Fruits, grains, legumes, vegetables, and other big sources of carbohydrates, can also have protein. That protein however is not the same protein as meat. Meat has a complete profile of amino acids which is needed in the process of reparing and growing muscle. This is why bodybuilders and strength athletes rely so much on getting a complete amino acid profile in their meals. Can you be vegan and achieve a complete amino acid profile, yes. That’s about as deep as I want to get.

Red meat and poultry are composed of protein and fats.

Protein is usually dominant in the macro profile of these meats. The “leaner” we say a meat is, the higher the protein content and the lower the fat content. 

This is why tracking what you’re eating and weighing your food is so important. You may think you’re a little of food but it does not mean you aren’t eating a lot of calories. With that said, let’s discuss calories.

Macros all have calories.

A calorie is unit of energy. Without getting too complicated, the calorie content for each macro is as follow:

Carbs = 4 calories per gram, Protein = 4 calories per gram, Fats = 9 calories per gram, alcohol = 7 calories per gram

The per gram measuring unit is important to know because people don’t seem to grasp this part of nutrition programming. 

Per my experience, there’s only two unit of measurements you need to know when you weight your food. Grams and ounces. It doesn’t matter if your scale is in ounces or grams or milliliters (ml). They all yield the same thing.

Remember this conversion, 1 ounce = 28.8 grams.

You don’t really need to know this unless you absolutely need to perform a conversion. If you are going to eat an apple, for example, and it weights 5 ounces, and you use myfitnesspal to figure out how many calories this apple contains, you will search for it and you are going to see a list of different types of apples, brands, etc, with different serving sizes. Although serving sizes differ, the calories per the same serving size usually yields the same about of calories. 

Let’s say that you search for an apple and every single item either is in grams or in size of the apple. You can’t find in ounces. If you multiply 5 by 28.8, the answer is 144. This means that 5 ounces is the same as 144 grams. When you put how many grams in myfitnesspal you are going to consume, you will put 144 because it is the same as 5 ounces. Makes sense?

Now, just because it weighs 144 grams, it does not mean you will get 144 grams of carbs, protein, or fats. When you input 144 grams into myfitnesspal, it will tell you how many grams of carbs, protein, and fats this apple has. All the macros won’t add up to 144 grams. This is because the apple has a big portion of it’s weight coming from water. Water does not have any calories or macros. This goes for all food. Fiber also doesn’t add to your calorie count as it can’t be digested. 

I hate to bore you any further so let me tell you how to figure out your total macros per day as well as your total calories.

Use myfitnesspal.

You can either add food manually or by scanner code. Most foods nowadays have a breakdown per serving. You can see it in the nutrition label. Regardless whether it has a nutrition label or not, you can always just look it up by name and you can find an item with the macro and calorie breakdown per serving. Even if you can’t find an exact equivalent, you can find a very similar. You don’t need to be exact. For example, this will never happen, it’s just an example, but I sometimes do it for the sake of simplicity.

Let’s say I eat a traditional meal cooked by mother, and it’s an unknown fruit that I can’t find on myfitnesspal or any other calorie counter, and I also have rice and beans in my plate. Carbs and proteins both have 4 calories per gram. If I eat 100 grams of rice, and 50 grams of that unknown fruit, I’ll just put 150 grams of rice and take my chances.

If it’s a meat, that I can’t find, I’ll just find the closest description and add it. I actually look for a higher fat content substitution to make sure I don’t go over. I rather be a little bit under then over.

BONUS for the social drinkers:

How do I calculate the calories in a shot of whiskey or any alcohol drink for that matter?

Let’s say you take a half ounce shot of a 40% proof alcohol, any brand. It doesn’t make a difference. Remember, 1 ouce = 28.8 grams.

This shot then by math, has about 14 gram. The alcohol is 40% proof, so it means that this shot has 5.6 grams of alchohol. Multiply 5.6 x 7 and you get 39.2 calories. A ounce shot will have 78.4 calories. If you take 5 one ounce shots in one night, not only will you be trashed, you will have consumed an extra 392 calories not including the sugars if you are consuming coladas and sex on the beaches.

Keep that in mind when you are struggling to reach your goals!

How to calculate macros in 4 steps – Weight loss, bulking, keto, low carb, paleo

When it comes to nutrition, there are macronutrients (macros) and micronutrients.

One very important piece of information I want you to understand right now, the phrase “based on a 2000 calorie diet” that you see on nutrition labels, does not mean you need to be on a 2000 calorie ketogenic meal plan. And no a ketogenic diet is not a guaranteed weight loss strategy.

How many calorie you need to intake per day depends on how many calories you burn per day. It depends on what your ideal goal is. If you burn 4000 calories per day because you run 10 miles a day, you can’t eat 2000 calories. If you’re a 130 pound woman and you work at a desk and you’re lightly active, 2000 calories per day will eventually make you obese. Even if you do keto! Or paleo! Or vegan!

If you need advice on how many calories you need to eat and how many minutes you need to exercise per day to reach your ideal body, check out my consulting services.

Online personal trainer

Step 1: Start with calories burned per day (most important)

If you don’t have a fitness tracker, I high recommend that you get one. The most accurate calorie counter in my opinion is the Fitbit Charge 4. It calculates how many calories you burn per day based on a 24 hour tracking of your heart rate. It also syncs with myfitnesspal which is the app I recommend to track your food and get a complete macro breakdown. 

Once you know how many of each macro you need, you then compare your numbers with the results shown on myfitnesspal and you can see if you’re on track or not.

If you don’t want to buy yourself a good fitness tracker aka heart rate monitor, just start with a simple non-scientific formula. Multiply your ideal weight, by 11 if you’re a woman, and by 12 if you’re a man. This will give you a starting number of how many calories you should be eating per day.

Check out these videos on using apps and tools: (after you read this article fully)

You can also just workout with me on Youtube Live.

at home circuit training workout

Use this link to create a dotFIT app, get a customized supplemen program, get 20% off on supplements, 40% right now during pandemic. Free shipping on recurring orders. Register with dotFit

Step 2: Calculate your protein macros first

I am going to dedicate this to people who workout for at least an hour a day. I recommend getting 1 gram of protein per pound of ideal bodyweight. If you wish to be 130 pounds, then you’d strive to get 130 grams of protein per day. If you wish to be 200 pounds, then strive to eat 200 grams of protein per day.

If you don’t plan to train and instead you just do very low intesity workouts such as light yoga or brisk walks and jogs, then multiple your ideal weight by 75% and consume that many grams of protein.

Step 3: Calculate carb macros based on program.

If you are going low carb keeping your carbs at under 50 grams. If you’re going moderate stay within 50 grams to 1 gram per pound of body weight. If you’re going high aim for 1.5 – 2x’s your body weight.

Step 4: Calculate fat macros.:

Once you find your target amount of carbs then you finish your calculations by figuring out your fat macro amount.

How to calculate macros example:

If you’re a woman and your ideal weight is 130 lbs this is how many grams you’re also going to aim for. Multiply 130 x 4 and that will give you the amount of calories you will be consuming from protein. As I explained in the What are Macros article, 1 gram of protein equals 4 calories. This means that 520 of your total daily calories will come from protein. 

If your ideal weight is 130 pounds and you are a female, your total calories to eat per day is 130 x 11 = 1430 calories. Until you know whether you’re gain, maintainig, or losing weight consuming this many calories, do not eat more or less. Eat this number for at least 2 months. If you’re not exercising you will most likely maintain unless you weigh more and you’re goal is to lose weight. If you weight less and you are wanting to gain weight, you most likely will gain weight. 

How many calories are remaining to calculate carbs and fats? 1430 – 520 = 910 calories. 

Divide this number in half and you get 455 calories. You will divide this by 4 to get your grams of carbs and by 9 to get your grams of fats.

What are your final macro numbers for your ideal weight?

  • Protein = 130 grams
  • Carbs = 455/4 = 113 grams
  • Fats = 455/9 = 50 grams

I can’t make it any simpler than this. This will be a healthy balanced nutrition plan that will most definitely help you get to your ideal weight. It doesn’t matter if you’re trying to lose weight or gain weight.

You are making your body adapt over time to this calorie output which your body has to get to in order to burn this many calories. If you’re heavier, your body will lose weight because it’s using more calories then if you were 130 lbs. If you’re lighter, your body will gain weight because it’s currently burning less then if you were eating like a 130 lb person. I hope this makes sense. 

Thank you for reading. If you have questions, please follow me on social media and ask me in a post. 

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Step 2, find your body fat by using this how to calculate body fat percentage article (this will be used to calculate current body fat mass and current lean mass).

Learn to control your calories, hunger, and making nutrition a lifestyle by learning about intermittent fasting benefits, low carb diets such as ketogenic, get ideas through this keto snacks on the go and mix that up with carbs using the Fat Cycling Method.

Once your nutrition is programmed, then learn to workout. How should you be working out to get your ideal body type? How heavy? How many reps? How much rest? If you want to workout from home check out Gymming at Home – Essential Equipment to get my recommendations for tools, equipment, and workout schedule for my YouTube workouts. Make sure you check out my norditrack treadmill reviews if you are interested in starting off your journey by walking or jogging the weight off. I give you tips and guidelines to get the best results.

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One of the most important tools to help you on your journey are tools that will help you track your daily goals. Start with the best fitness tracker with heart rate monitor, whether it’s to monitor calories burned using a fitbit charge 4 or measure the stress levels of each workout and recovery using a whoop strap 3.0. After your workout, make sure you clean up. Check out the microfiber duster mop slippers.

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