How to Count Macros
How to Count Macros?
Adapted from Lindsey Mathews is the Head Trainer and Nutritionist at IdealFit.
To count macros you need to determine how much of each macronutrient you need daily, which is based on your individual body composition and fitness goals. Once determined, you go beyond just counting calories and track how many grams of carbs, fat, and protein a food will provide. You can then plan your macro diet around foods that will help you reach your daily macro targets.
By tracking your macros you really are tracking your calories, but instead of just skimming the surface you are going into more depth. In case you missed the graphic above, here are the conversions from grams to calories for carbs, fat, and protein.
CARBS: 1 gram of carbohydrates = 4 calories
FAT: 1 gram of fat = 9 calories
PROTEIN: 1 gram of protein = 4 calories
So if you had a food item that had 15g of carbs, 1g of fat and 20 grams of protein it would have approx 149 calories.
But if you are counting macros don’t worry about also hitting an exact calorie goal. Your calories will be where they need to be when you are hitting your macros.
Is Counting Macros Difficult?
Figuring out your macros really doesn’t have to be that hard! When looking at a nutrition label you just need to look at serving size, total fats, carbohydrates, and proteins.
This is a super easy example because IdealLean Chocolate Brownie Protein is low in carbs and free of fat! Thank you IdealLean! So in this example, we can see that there are 0g of fat, 3g of carbs and 20g of protein.
Fat= 0g
Carbohydrates= 3g
Protein= 20g
How to Calculate Macros
Calculating macros means to figure out how much of each macro you should be eating every day. Figuring out these figures isn’t exactly cut and dry, and depends in large measure upon your age, gender, activity level, and even your genetic makeup-some people just naturally burn more calories!
But the first step will be to determine how many calories you need each day. This is also not an exact science, but a simple calorie calculator you can find online can give you a general idea. You can simply plug your info into the boxes to get a rough estimate of how many calories you should be aiming for on a daily basis.
Once you know how many calories you should be getting each day, the next step in calculating your macros is to set a percentage for each macro. If you’re trying out a special low-carb, extra high-protein, or ketogenic diet, your percentages will be different than what I’m about to layout. You might also need to adjust based on other certain factors, like how your body handles carbs. But a general starting point for a macro percentage breakdown might look something like 40% carbs, 35% protein, 25% fat.
This means that, if your daily calorie need was 1800 calories, then 40% of those would come from carbs, 35% would come from protein, and 25% would come from fat. Then you would just need to plug in a little math! Here’s an example:
Carbs: 40% x 1800 calories = 720 calories from carbs
Fat: 25% x 1800 calories = 450 calories from fat
Protein: 35% x 1800 calories = 630 calories from protein
Once you know how many calories you’ll want from each macro, you’re almost there! Just one more step to figure out how many grams of each macro you’ll want to aim for. Using the numbers from the previous section, you could calculate the following:
Carbs: 720 calories ÷ 4 calories/gram = 180g carbs
Fat: 450 calories ÷ 9 calories/gram = 50g fat
Protein: 630 calories ÷ 4 calories/gram = 157g protein
Now that you know how many grams of each macro you’ll be aiming for each day, you can go ahead and plan out your meals to try and reach those numbers!
