Making Macros Simple
[Disclaimer: This article is not intended as personal advice and any nutrition decisions you make should not be based on this article. You should contact a qualified professional for personalised advice based on your own situation.]
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard the phrase, “tracking macros” or even the overdone, “If it fits your macros/IIFYM”. As a body transformation coach, tracking macros can be an effective tool, when used for the right client in the right way, to get awesome physique results.
Whilst we’ve seen our fair share of clients pretty easily learn the skill, others really struggle, so the purpose of this article is to give you the 411 on tracking macros.
A caveat before we start — for the purposes of this article I am going to confine my discussion to the use of tracking macros with physique outcomes in mind.
What are macros?
Macros (or macronutrients) are protein, carbohydrates and fat. Alcohol is a macronutrient as well, but as it doesn’t have any nutritional value, nor assist us in reaching our physique or strength goals, it won’t be discussed in any detail.
Each of the macros has an assigned energy unit value which is called a calorie.
Carbohydrates are 4 calories per gram
Protein is 4 calories per gram
Alcohol is 7 calories per gram
Fat is 9 calories per gram
To help understand the maths, if we took 50 grams of carbs and multiplied it by its caloric value (4), we can establish that 50 grams of carbs = 200 calories.
We want to make sure it’s really clear that when we talk about grams of a particular macro we mean the macro itself and not a particular food that might be primarily one macro. For example 100 grams of chicken breast is not 100 grams of protein. 100 grams of chicken contains around 29 grams of protein.
Why track macros when it comes to physique outcomes?
To lose body fat we need to be in a calorie deficit and to be best placed to build muscle we need to be consuming at least maintenance calories if not a surplus of calories. However, for those who train and have the ultimate desire of being at least somewhat lean and a decent amount of muscle, it’s not just about calories, consideration of macro distribution is also critical.
The beauty of tracking macros lies in the ability to quantify our energy intake (more specifically than any other tool available right now), as well as manipulate our macro intake to support training, building muscle, recovery, vitality and ultimately create the physique we want. It’s like playing tetris for a physique outcome.
Why wouldn’t we track them?
It’s not all rainbows and butterflies, there are definitely some contraindications to tracking. Generally, it would be wise to be weary of this tool where there is any history of disordered eating behaviours, issues with obsessive behaviour and/or poor relationships with food.
Red flags to watch out for when tracking are obsessive tendencies in hitting exact numbers and the inability to go even a day without logging food. We want to use this as a tool to help us make decisions about our energy intake that support our goals and provide a little more flexibility rather than just implement another form of unnecessarily restricted eating.
Maintenance calories & macro ranges
Before we jump into macro ranges you’ll need to figure out your hypothetical maintenance daily calorie intake. You can short cut the process by using one of the many free macro calculators online, or do the maths yourself using your choice of equation.
We like to use the Harris-Benedict equation for estimating basal metabolic rate (BMR) and then from there add an activity multiplier to find your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE).
The Harris-Benedict equation is:
The relevant activity multipliers to find TDEE are:
We’ve provided an example below to illustrate how to do this in practice:
We’ll use a 54kg, 32 year old woman who is 154cm as an example (yours truly).
Once you have an estimate of your maintenance calorie intake, you can use the macro ranges below as a guide to work out how to distribute those calories depending on your goals.
Why do we start with maintenance? It’s alway helpful to start with your estimated maintenance intake and test it out for anywhere from 2-4 weeks, depending on how much time you have. From here we can determine whether that estimate is accurate for you or not. Remember you’re a human not a robot so an equation based estimate may be a little off, or your choice of activity multiplier might be under or over zealous compared to reality. Added to that is nutrition labelling discrepancies, and our general propensity to input data incorrectly (through no conscious fault of our own). The 2–4 week maintenance period will give you a decent timeframe to establish how accurate the estimate is for you and your lifestyle as well as gain consistency and momentum.
To tackle your macro split, start by figuring out your protein and fat intake first (because they have baseline targets that need to be met), then move onto carbs to fill out the rest of your maintenance calorie intake.
Using the same example as above, a reasonable maintenance macro split would be anywhere between:
Other things that matter
We know what it’s like to realise one can diet in a flexible manner and not have to cut out our favourite foods. Especially if you’ve been unnecessarily restricting your intake (or attempting to), it can feel like the floodgates have opened and you begin to eat like a hungry child whose parents aren’t watching. But! With great power comes great responsibility and there are some important considerations that we need to remember.
The first is fiber intake. At the moment the evidence suggests eating enough fiber is important for gut health so it’s critical that you consume adequate fiber on the daily which is anywhere from about 25–40 grams per day depending on individual needs. Your preference should be towards whole fibrous foods as opposed to supplemental fiber and fortified foods.
Food quality is the next important component. Yeah we can get you pretty lean on protein shakes and take-away but you won’t hit your fiber target and whilst you might, “look great” you’re going to feel terrible and workout performance will suffer, meaning gains will be left on the table. It’s worth acting like a responsible adult and keep most of your energy intake coming from foods that support you and keep the fun stuff moderated. Something fun every day is fine, just not only fun stuff. Generally if you aim to hit your fiber intake every day, you’ll be on the right track.
Tips and tricks
You’ve figured out your calories, got your macro split, now what? Time to get a food scale, download a tracking app and get tracking. We recommend to our clients that they input a few full days of food that they would actually like to eat and that meet their requirements in advance. This is to initially help with structure and certainty and to get them off and running yet still have some variety day to day. This will help minimise stress from on the fly thinking or end up with weird macro combinations at the days end.
You’ll find some helpful databases online that provide macros for whole foods which don’t come with nutrition labels attached to them, otherwise most packaged food will come with a nutrition label which will indicate the calories and macros per 100 gram as well as per serving. It pays to pay attention to serving sizes on the label and weigh them out as they may be far more or less than you expect.
Common issues and errors
Below we’ve set out a table with some common tracking issues, errors and their solutions.
These are the most common issues we see for beginners coming into tracking macros. Remember just like anything, tracking is a skill that takes practice to fine tune but is like riding a bike in that once you get the hang of it, it will become second nature.
The aim of this article was to give you a crash course in tracking to get you up and running with confidence. The best way to start (presuming no contraindications to doing so) is to get in there, roll your sleeves up and give it a go.
We’d love to hear how you go calculating your intake, tracking and any questions you might have as well.
