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How to Count Macros

It's always talked about by fitness enthusiasts, and it's a step up from just calorie-counting, but how do you do it?

By Maddie GreenPublished 6 years ago 3 min read
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A macro—short for macronutrient—is either protein, fat, or carbohydrate. They're the three key food groups we need to consume for our body to function. By counting macros (aka, counting how much you consume in a day of each food group), you can lose weight, build muscle or just get healthier without having to restrict yourself so much.

The other great thing about dieting by counting macros is it can be adjusted to suit what you need and what you want to gain from your diet.

Where Our Calories Come From

These three food groups (as well as alcohol) are the only sources of calories in our food. So, we start by working out how many calories we should be consuming in a day (according to weight, age, sex, activity level, etc.) and split that accordingly into fats, proteins, and carbohydrates.

How many calories do you need?

Use the calorie calculator linked below and input your age, sex, height, weight, and activity level. This will then calculate how many calories you should be having in a day to either maintain your weight, lose or gain certain amounts of weight per week (keep in mind that if you want to be gaining muscle, this will mean gaining weight, unless you are losing significantly more fat). Choose which you want to achieve, and note down the number of calories.

How much protein, fat and carbs do you need?

A good balance is to have 20 percent fat, 40 percent protein and 40 percent carbs out of your daily calories. However, if you're focused on gaining muscle you can always increase protein or carbs or adjust others accordingly depending on what exactly you want out of the diet.

Let's say you need 1500 calories in a day, so to work out how much that is for each food group it's a simple calculation.

  • Fat: 1500 x 0.20 = 300
  • Protein:1500 x 0.40 = 600
  • Carbohydrate: 1500 x0.40 = 600

So, you'd be eating 300 calories worth of fat and 600 calories worth of both protein and carbohydrate in a day.

Now, you convert these into weight (usually grams), as that's how it's usually expressed on nutrition labels.

There are nine calories per gram of fat, so 300 / 9 = 33.3. You'd aim eat around 33g of fat per day.

There are four calories per gram of protein, so 600 / 4 = 150. You'd aim eat around 150g of protein per day.

There are four calories per gram of carbohydrate, so 600 / 4 = 150. You'd aim eat around 150g of carbohydrate per day.

This way, you can get a more balanced diet where you're actually intaking the nutrients you need, rather than just consuming the amount you need (calorie counting) without considering what goes into what you eat.

Meal Prep vs. Junk Food

Now that you understand the rough amounts of how much you should be eating in a day, it's a good stepping stone to start some kind of meal prep or meal planning. Not only does it make counting macros easier (you'll know what you're going to eat in a day from the beginning), but it makes being healthier overall easier, and reduces the likelihood of you snacking or making a junk meal out of laziness when you either have a meal already planned, or even better, already made.

Not only this, but it means you can factor in if you want to eat a takeaway or some junk food, as you can adjust your other meals accordingly so you still keep within your healthy limits, as just because you're counting macros doesn't mean that's an excuse to eat junk food 24/7. Just because you're getting the right amount of protein, fat and carbohydrates, it doesn't mean what you're having is healthy. Heavily processed food is still bad for you, and it's still definitely a lot better to get your allotted protein from a freshly made chicken stir-fry than a McDonald's burger.

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