Counting Macros
If you read, watch or listen to anything fitness related, I’m pretty sure you’ve heard the term “macros”. It’s shorthand for macronutrients, but what does it mean?
Macronutrients are the three types of food: Carbohydrates (Carbs), Protein, and Fat. They provide our bodies with nutrition in the the form of calories.
Calories are just units of energy contained in food. Carbs and protein each contain 4 calories per gram. Fat has 9 calories per gram. It doesn’t mean that carbs and protein are healthier than fat, just that the latter is more calorie dense. All three macros are part of a healthy diet.
Some examples of carbs are fruits, and starchy foods like pasta and bread. Carbs are the body’s preferred energy source. These foods convert very easily to usable energy for the body.
Common sources of protein are meat, fish, poultry and eggs. Protein helps the body repair, maintain and build tissues, including muscle.
A few examples of fats are foods like butter, cooking oils, nuts, and eggs. Fats are important for proper organ function and hormone production.
How many calories do you need?
The calories we eat allow our bodies to perform the processes we need to survive and grow. We burn energy just by being alive. Digestion, thinking, moving, and even eating use up calories. We burn calories in our sleep. The amount of calories we need just to maintain our necessary body functions even if we just lay on the couch doing absolutely nothing is called the Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). This is the bare minimum we need to take in.
Usually we eat more than that. If you’re particularly active, you may eat far more, in fact. BMR is largely driven by body size. The bigger you are, the higher it’s going to be.
The amount of calories we burn (the BMR plus the energy we use in all our daily tasks) is known as the Total Daily Energy Expenditure (or TDEE).
Now we move on to something called energy balance. If your calorie consumption is equal to your TDEE you will stay the same weight. That makes sense, right? You’re just burning exactly what you’re taking in. If you’ll forgive an imperfect analogy: if you spend every dollar you make you won’t accumulate any money.
If you eat more calories than your TDEE then you’re in what’s called a calorie surplus. If this happens consistently you will gain weight. Humans evolved the ability to store some of that as fat. This helps us survive in times when food is scarce. Kind of like a savings account.
If you eat less than your TDEE that puts you in a calorie deficit. If you’re in a deficit consistently you will lose weight. Your body will burn some of that stored fat as fuel to meet the energy demands. This is like dipping into your savings.
You can figure out your TDEE over time by tracking your food intake, your activity and the scale. Keep count of your food intake and see how the scale moves, or more specifically, how it doesn’t. If the scale isn’t trending up or down, you’re eating is approximately the same as your TDEE.
Please note your TDEE will vary. It’s helpful to think of it more as an average, or a range instead of a set number. If you’re really active one day your TDEE will be higher than if you spent the day watching movies on your couch. The trends are more important than any one data point.
You should know that keeping an exact count of calories is impossible. You can estimate with fair accuracy but you won’t be perfect. Try your best and don’t stress about it too much. It’s harder to track the calories you burn. The activity trackers and apps can give you an estimate but their accuracy is questionable. That’s okay though. You don’t need to know that exactly.
How many calories should you eat?
If you’re looking to remain the same weight you’ll want to set your calories to maintenance. If you want to build muscle, you’ll need to eat at a surplus. If you want to lose fat, you’ll set your intake to be in a calorie deficit.
(How much of each macro? What’s the proper ratio of Carbs to Protein to Fats? It depends on your goals.)
Eating at a Deficit
If you’re in a deficit protein is important in order to preserve lean muscle tissue. Maintaining muscle is calorically expensive, meaning it takes more energy for the body to hang on to muscle than it does to hang on to fat. This is why resistance training is so important when it comes to body recomposition. You will look better if you drop fat and maintain your muscle tissue, which is a lot of words to describe being lean.
If you want an additional reason to build muscle besides being stronger and looking better, think of the flipside of it being calorically expensive. As you add lean tissue, a greater percentage of your total body composition will be muscle. You will be able to eat more without gaining weight. That’s right, your BMR will be higher. Now it’s not like you’ll suddenly be able to eat thousands more calories per day, but it’s definitely a win for those of us who enjoy food.
A good rule of thumb is to eat .8g to 1g of protein per pound of bodyweight. This isn’t a hard and fast rule. Start at this point, try it for several weeks and then adjust as necessary. There’s more flexibility when it comes to filling the remainder of your calories with carbs and fat. Because of the importance of each macro, I don’t recommend going below 20% of either fats or carbs. Some of us feel better when we eat a higher portion of carbs. Others do better when eating a higher amount of fat. Basically, hit your protein target daily and fill in the rest of you calories with a ratio of carbs and fats that leaves you feeling best (both in and out of the gym).
You don’t want to set too large a deficit for several reasons. It’s hard to stick to a really low calorie diet. Adherence is the key to long term success. Limiting your intake so much will negatively impact your training and recovery. Your mood and even cognitive function may decline. As you can see, it’s not fun. Further, a large deficit can give you early wins on the scale scoreboard but that doesn’t last long. Once the progress stalls, it’s not like you can keep drastically cutting your calories since they’re so low to start.
A moderate deficit of 10-25% is enough to keep the scale moving in the direction you want in a sustainable way without all the negative effects. And when the progress starts to stall, you still have the flexibility to gradually increase the deficit.
(Example macros?) What would this look like? (Warning: math, dead ahead!)
Take a 200 lb. guy who’s looking to drop some fat and his TDEE is 2500 calories/day. A 10% deficit would have him eating 2250 cal/day. His protein target would be 1 g/lb of bodyweight, so 200g/day. (Note, there are some people who advocate eating 1g of protein per lb. of lean body mass, rather than total bodyweight, especially for people who are very overweight or obese.) 200g of protein equates to 800 calories. This leaves him 1450 calories per day to split between carbs and fats. He should meet these calories in whichever ratio of carbs to fats that’s most enjoyable to him.
TDEE x (1 - Deficit Expressed as a decimal) = Deficit calories
2500 calories x (1 - .10) = 2250 deficit calories per day
1g protein per 1lb per bodyweight per day x 4 calories of protein per gram = calories of protein per day
200g x 4 calories = 800 calories of protein per day
Deficit calories per day - protein calories per day = remaining calories per day
2250 calories - 800 protein calories = 1450 calories
Similarly, a 25% deficit would look like this:
2500 cal x .75 = 1875 deficit cal
1875 - 800 = 1075 remaining cal
For Extra Credit Only: Continuing this example, say he wanted to eat 40% of his intake from carbs. To be clear, that’s 40% of the total deficit calories.
1875 deficit cal x .40 = 750 carbs cal
750 carbs cal / 4 cal/g carbs = 187.5 grams of carbs/day (which we’ll round up to 190 g to make calculations simpler. 190g = 760 cal, so we’re left with 315 calories of fats)
187.5g → 190g
190g x 4 cal/g = 760
1075 - 760 = 315 fat cal
315 cal / 9 cal/g = 35g fat
His calories and macros for this would look like this:
800 calories per day protein (or 200g protein)
760 calories per day carbs (or 190g carbs)
315 calories per day fat (or 35g fat)
1865 total calories per day
Yeah, he’s eating 10 fewer calories, but that’s a negligible difference.
You don’t have to take it this far. This just shows an example what it would look like.
Know your total daily calorie target, hit your daily protein intake, fill in the rest with carbs and fats as desired. That’s all you have to do. That’s it.
Eating at Maintenance
When you’re eating at maintenance, it’s still important to get enough protein, for the same reasons as when you’re in a deficit. However, in this case you’re far less likely to experience muscle depletion. You’ll have no problem maintaining muscle at maintenance. In fact, you should be able to make gradual gains. You can stick to the .8-1.0 grams/lb of bodyweight per day.
You don’t have to be as fastidious about checking the scale as you would when trying to drop fat, but you should still keep tabs on your weight. The number on the scale will still fluctuate day to day, for various reasons. I can’t emphasize enough that the important thing is the trend. If you’re truly at maintenance, the average weight over time will hold steady.
You still should fill the remainder of your calories with fats and carbs that suit you best. The formula is still the same. This time, let’s say we’re talking about a 140lb. woman whose maintenance calories are 1850:
Daily calories = 1850 cal
.8-1g/lb. bodyweight protein = 112-140g
112-140g/day = 448-560 protein calories per day
Remaining mix of carbs & fats = 1290-1402 calories per day
Eating at a Surplus
For a long time the advice when it came to bulking was to eat like crazy. It works. If you eat 4000 calories a day, no doubt you’ll gain weight. The problem is, a lot of it will be body fat. If you care about staying fairly lean, you want to stick to a moderate surplus. Of course, you’re doing resistance training a few times a week that’s getting you stronger, right?
While eating more calories allows for hypertrophy, the rate of muscle growth is slow. It’s not like eating 3 times the food will triple your muscle growth. (If only this were the case!) A moderate surplus of only 10-20% above maintenance allows you to build muscle without putting on too much fat.
Understand that if you put on weight, some of that is going to be fat. It’s just a fact. Don’t sweat it. If remaining lean matters to you then you want to put on as little fat as necessary along with your increased muscle mass. While packing on lean mass takes time, putting on fat can happen relatively quickly. Eating at a moderate surplus allows you to remain in a bulking phase for a long time.
Here we’ll take a woman who weighs 100lbs. Her maintenance calories are 1200 per day. She wants to put on some muscle. What might her targets look like at a 10% surplus?
TDEE x (1 + surplus expressed as a decimal) = total daily surplus calories
1200 x (1 + .10) = 1320 cal
You might think you need a ton more protein in order to build muscle. It’s certainly reasonable, but not the case. Even though it’s the building block of muscle, eating it beyond a certain point won’t make it grow faster. So, again, she’ll only need around 1g of protein per lb. of bodyweight.
100g protein/day
100g x 4 cal/g = 400 cal protein per day
This leaves her with 920 cal per day to split between fats and carbs as she pleases.
How to count macros?
Well, how do you actually count them? Apps are handy and convenient. Mike's Macros or https://www.myfitnesspal.com/ both work well (I’m not affiliated with either and have no stake in which, if either, you choose). You type in the food and the amounts and they’ll tally the calories and macros for you.
Look at food labels on the sides of food packaging and you’ll see the calories and macros are listed. You can figure out the macros and calories for your meals on your own. It’s not really that complicated and with a little practice you’ll have it down. Just remember to pay attention to the serving sizes. Also, the numbers are an estimate so you’ll never be exactly accurate, so don’t spend too much time overthinking. Five or ten calories isn’t going to make or break you in the long term.
Does food timing matter?
The short answer is no, not really. As long as you hit your calorie and protein targets daily, you’re good.
The longer answer is, when you eat does have some effect. You should eat in whatever way fits your lifestyle, schedule and preferences. Whether that’s 1 meal a day or 8 is up to you. Forcing yourself to eat on a schedule that’s not in line with those factors will cause you friction. And it’s likely to fail in the long term.
Check this out:
1 meal of 2000 cals = 2000 cals
3 meals of 400, 1000, and 600 cals = 2000 cals
8 meals of 250 cals = 2000 cals
You get my point.
The most important factor in whether you hit your goals (bulking, cutting, whatever) is going to be adherence. If you don’t hit your daily targets consistently over a longer period of time, you’re going to miss your goals. So, you want to make it as easy and enjoyable as possible to stick to the program.
If that’s 3 meals, 12 meals, it doesn’t matter unless you can do it day in and day out. There are benefits and drawbacks to any eating schedule so there’s no need to focus on them. Just hit your numbers in the best way that works for you.
The Big Takeaways:
If you want to drop fat, now you know how to figure out your macros for a moderate deficit.
If you want to build muscle, you know how to design your macro targets for a moderate surplus.
Hit your calorie and protein targets in the most enjoyable and sustainable way you can.
Either of these goals will take time to achieve.
Thanks for reading! Please feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions or comments.
Email: jquinn.fitness@gmail.com Instagram: @jason.quinn.21
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