What Are Macros? Food Examples and How to Budget

There are 3 macronutrients (macros) that give food its calories. Protein, carbs and fat. Each one plays a unique role in your body.

For instance, proteins are the main structural components of cells and tissues, providing strength and structure. They also act as enzymes, which are molecules that catalyze chemical reactions.

Carbohydrates are the body's main source of energy. They provide fuel for the central nervous system and are necessary for the metabolism of proteins and fats. Carbohydrates also play an important role in digestion, as they help to break down food into smaller molecules that can be absorbed by the body. Additionally, carbohydrates are important for the formation of certain hormones and for the regulation of blood sugar levels.

Fats play a number of important roles in the body, including:

1. Providing energy: Fats are a concentrated source of energy, providing more than twice the amount of energy per gram than carbohydrates and proteins.

2. Insulating and cushioning organs: Fats help to insulate and cushion organs, such as the kidneys, and provide protection from physical shock.

3. Absorbing fat-soluble vitamins.

While hitting your overall daily calories during diet will determine your body weight, paying attention to the macros will help you achieve the body composition you want. No one wants to be skinny fat. All of my clients want to look athletic with good muscle tone. In order to achieve that you have to pay attention to your macros. Getting them right will help you to stay full while dieting, hold onto muscle, while improving how you look and feel.

As you track your macros it will become your second nature to look at foods and see macros inside. But in the meantime here are some examples of where you’ll find each one.

When you hear ’protein’ think of things like meat, cheese, dairy and eggs, and protein powder to supplement. These are all great sources. For carbs think of vegetables and fruits. As well as grains and starches, like rice, breads, pasta. Beans are in this group as well. Fats are usually mixed with other macronutrients and found in full fat dairy, fatty cuts of meat, plants like nuts and avocado. But in their purest form they are oils, like olive or coconut oil. And don’t feel overwhelmed if this is all new to you, guys. The learning curve is not as steep as you may imagine.

Now that you have an idea of what types of food contain which macros, let’s go ahead and see how you may budget your food choices to hit your daily macros.

So, we’re going to imagine you have a set amount of ‘macro $$$ money’ to spend on protein, carbs and fats. You get to decide how you want to spend it, but you’ll need to make smart and conscious food choices along the way. Without manipulating serving sizes and picking the right foods it’s going to be hard to hit your macros. Let me show you what I mean.

Let’s pretend I have 1,700 total daily calories with 146g of protein, 173g of carbs and 47g of fat. That’s my budget. Now let’s say I eat a slice of cheesecake after lunch. That’s a really expensive choice. This one slice of cheesecake  just slashed my fat macros by more that 50%, took a big chunk out of my carbs and didn’t provide too much protein. So now I find myself in a bit of a bind. I’ll have to eat veggies like a rabbit for the rest of the day, while trying to catch up on protein.

That doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy expensive foods like cheesecake as long as I plan ahead. For instance if I know I’m going to have some cheesecake for dessert I can choose to save up on fats and carbs throughout the day. This might mean that I’ll have a cheaper meal for lunch, like low carb low fat salad with a whole bunch of chicken. That way I’ll hit my protein needs early, and I will have plenty of carbs and fats to play with and fit my delicious cheesecake after dinner. And this brings up an important point.

You want to hit your protein early in the day, because for most people it’s the easiest to neglect. Let’s be honest. Most don’t think of protein as fun food. Bit it’s actually protein that keeps us fuller longer. And we definitely want that while dieting. In the beginning as you learn to navigate all this you’ll probably have a whole lot of protein left at the end of the day as you run out of carbs and fats. And that’s ok. Tracking and recognizing macros in foods is a skill like so many other skills we acquire during our lives. But it’s so worth it. Especially when your goal is fat loss and body recomposition. Think of the time you as a teenager learned to drive your first car. It took time and effort to get that skill, but once you got it, it brought so much freedom. Freedom to go wherever you wanted. It’s the same with tracking what you eat. Once you know caloric values of foods you don’t have to restrict or demonize foods anymore. You’ll be able to enjoy your favorite foods without fear or guilt.

At this point you are probably wondering how many calories do I need to have for weight loss and what macros? I’m glad you asked.

There are several ways to go about it. You are probably aware of many online calculator. But if you've used them before you know the results are far from optimal. What I do with my clients works much better. As I've mentioned in the previous episode I ask them to use a food tracking app and track what they eat for 2 weeks without adjusting their diets. I just tell them: "Whatever you eat or drink that has calories...punch it into the app". We need a baseline. Once we get that baseline daily calories, we then create a deficit. Anywhere between 300-500 kilocalories. Now they have a new daily calorie goal to hit. Right, you say. But what about protein, fat and carb split? Protein or prōteios in the original Greek means "first" , "primary". And for a good reason. Having adequate protein plays a huge role in successful fat loss. So we are going to establish our protein needs first. I like to start at 1g of protein per 1 pound of their LBM (Lean Body Mass) a day. But what if you don't know your LBM? It's pretty easy to find your Lean Body Mass by plugging your body weight and your body fat percentage into an online LBM calculator. If you don't know the percentage of your body fat, there are 2 approaches I'd use. Hey, grab something to write on and something to write with. We are going to do some math. Nothing complicated, I promise:)

The numbers are not going to be perfect, but close enough to start. Remember, that's for dieting down, and not for maintenance.

To find your starting total daily kilocalories take your desired bodyweight (be realistic) and multiply by 11. For example, if I wanted together down to my lean and healthy 140 lbs weight I’d multiply 140 X 11= 1,540 kilocal. So, 1,540 kilocalories would be my total daily budget.

Then let’s determine our protein needs for the day.

When you are in caloric deficit chances are you'll probably be taking less carbs, that have muscle sparing effect. So you'll need more protein during this time.

I like to start by setting protein requirements this way - multiply your goal weight x 1. So, in my case I’ll need 140g of protein/day. Now let's convert that to kilocalories by multiplying that number by 4. (Because there are 4 kilocalories in 1 gram of protein). 140g X 4 = 560 kcal.

Now we set fat. With fat intake, I recommend 30% of total kilocalories for most people while dieting. The goal is adherence to diet, right? I like fat to be around 30% not only for the health reason (especially for women), but it will be easier to adhere to a diet with adequate fat. If I was dieting on 1,540 kilocalories, 30% of that would be 462 kilocalories. We're going to convert that into grams by dividing it by 9 (since there are 9 kilocalories in 1 g of fat). My fat intake in grams comes out to 51g.

The rest of your calories are carbs. Take your protein and fat in kilocalories, add them together and then subtract the sum from your total daily kilocalories to get your carbs. My protein and fat kilocalories added together equal 1,022 kilocalories. 1,022 subtracted from 1,540 is 518 kcal. Knowing that there are 4 kilocalories in 1 g of carbs I can easily find out my carbohydrates in grams. 518 kcal divided by 4 equals 130g (rounded up).

That was a little envolved, but at least now you know exactly what macros to shoot for.

Hope that was helpful. Any questions? I’ll happy to answer.

Next time we will get to the practical part of planning your meals based on your macros. What should be my proteins, carbs and fats? Does it matter how many meals I have? Can I eat late at night?  How to make things easier?