Calculating your Ideal Macronutrient Requirements for your Fitness and Health Goals
Do you want to build muscle, lose fat, or simply maintain your physique? Whatever your fitness and health goals are, the way you train, sleep, and eat are crucial components in helping you achieve these goals. However, most of you know that more often than not what we eat will be the most important factor in helping us build muscle of lose that suborn fat! You have all heard of the saying “you cannot out-train a bad diet”, well, this concept is something I standby. But, how do you know how many calories, fats, carbohydrates, or protein that you need per day; Should you try low carb, keto, or a high carb diet; how many grams of protein should you eat to build muscle?
This is where things can get confusing and impact your goals, negatively!
If you have recently gotten into fitness or have been a in the game for a long-time, then you may have heard of the term ‘macros’. Catching the word “macros” in your local fitness club is not a surprise. Focusing on your daily macronutrient intake instead of your calorie intake has become the new norm in today’s health & fitness world. And quite frankly, we should all get on board with it. According to the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, you won’t reach your fitness goals without the essential macronutrients.
So, before I delve further on how to know your calorie and macronutrient requirements, it’s important you understand what macros are and how different diets have different macronutrient distributions.
What are macros?
“Macros” stands for macronutrients. “Macro” meaning large amounts and “Nutrients” meaning dietary requirements for survival. Macronutrients are dietary requirements we need in larger amounts for survival. When we eat food, our food contains more than just calories. Calories are our body’s way of receiving energy and this energy comes from our macronutrient sources in our food. This means that anything that contains a calorie, comes from one of our macronutrient sources. We have four macronutrients: protein, carbohydrates, fat, and alcohol, but for this article let’s not focus on alcohol, we will touch on this another time. Each of these macronutrients not only provides energy (or calories), but where they focus or prioritize their energy in our bodies is different based on the individual macro.
Macronutrients and diet
Certain diets have different macronutrient breakdowns. Let’s focus on at least 3 common ones and discuss each of them briefly.
Ketogenic Diet
The ketogenic diet is primarily made up of dietary fats, so it is no secret that the macro distribution will be skewed towards fats and not carbohydrates. About 70% of your calories will come from fats and 10% from carbohydrates, the remaining 20% are from protein.
The idea behind such a diet is that the ultimate fuel supply for your body becomes fat. This lowers your insulin volumes and intensifies your fat burning.
Zone diet
The zone diet focuses on a balanced approach, ensuring you are consuming enough nutrients from each key macro group. In this diet you will typically consume 40% of your calories from carbs, 30% from protein, while the other 30% from fats.
The Zone diet is intended to get and keep your body operating at peak efficiency and to lessen your odds of developing dangerous health conditions. It was developed by physicians who found great success using this diet due to its balanced and sustainable approach.
Low Fat/high carb
You can kind of think of this diet as the complete opposite of keto. This diet primarily focuses on carbs, whereby you get at least 60% of your calories from carbs, while only 15% from fats and the rest from protein.
The major drawback from this diet, while you can lose weight on it, for most individuals it is quite easy to overconsume carbohydrates leading to a surplus in calories. However, if you are an athlete or individual that trains multiple times a day then consuming more carbs may positively impact your performance due to the energy provided from the carbs.
How do we calculate our calorie and macro requirements?
Typically, your trainer would be providing you with a set number of calories you require to eat per day that will assist you to gain muscle, lose body fat or reach any of your other goals. Once I have given you this calorie amount, say 2000 calories you will then input that into the calculator. Or alternatively, you can find a calorie calculator online which will estimate the number of calories you require per day, however, do remember this is an estimate.
Use this tool: https://www.jasonkozma.com/free-fitness-calculators/caloriesperday/
Next, you will choose which common diet ratio you would like to go with, this could be Jason’s approach, keto, zone diet or even low fat. This will be up to you or whichever diet I believe is best suited for you. you will then choose how many meals you would like to eat per day, whether that be 3.4, 5 or 6.
Last, you will get the amount of protein, carbohydrates, and fats (per gram) that you should take in each day to achieve your goals – It’s that easy!
Overall, using my macro calculator can provide you with specific information that helps remove any confusion you may have and more importantly help ensure your nutrition is optimal so you can achieve your fitness, physique, and health goals.
