What are Macros?
You may have heard the term “macros” before. “Macros” is just a shortened version of the word “macronutrients”. Macronutrients are nutrients that you need a lot of. While we won’t be covering it in this blog post, micronutrients are things your body needs in small amounts (like vitamins and minerals).
There are 3 main macronutrients: protein, carbohydrates, and fat. Each has a different role in your diet and does different things for your body. You can also use macronutrients to calculate your calories (we’ll get to that). For now, let’s discuss each macro a little more.
Hopefully, for each macronutrient, this blog post can teach you: what it does in your body, why you need it in your diet, how it can help when losing weight, and how many calories it contains.
Protein
Protein is like really freaking important. For real. It’s likely that you know that protein is good for you and/or you should be eating more of it. This is very true.
When it comes to your body, protein is all over the place. Proteins are long chains of small building blocks called amino acids. There are only 20 amino acids, but each specific combination of them, and the order of that combination, determines what function they serve. Proteins are signaling molecules, they make up hormones, and they help build muscle. Given PREAM (Proteins Rule Everything Around Me - Wu-Tang!), hopefully, it is pretty obvious why you need to consume protein.
The Recommended Daily Allowance, or RDA, of protein is 0.8g/kg of body weight. An RDA is the minimum amount someone would want to eat to avoid deficiency. However, if you’re like me, this is a giant WTF. Who in America uses the metric system? Here’s a LB to KG converter for you. As an example, I weigh 182 lb, which is 82.55 kg. This means my RDA is 0.8 x 82.55 = 66g of protein per day.
If we’re working together, I’m going to recommend that you eat significantly more than the RDA for your weight. I usually aim for 1g/lb of body weight. So for me, that would mean about 180g of protein per day. Unless you have a specific medical condition (like kidney disease), eating protein in this quantity is very safe.
What gives? Well, for starters, protein is very satisfying. There’s a fancy scale called a satiety index which is a rating scale of how satisfied a given food will leave you. Proteins generally rank pretty highly on the satiety index. Translation - eat protein and you will feel fuller compared to other food.
Next, protein has the highest thermic effect of food, or TEF, of all the macronutrients. Ok, I know this isn’t a science blog. TEF is the amount of calories your body uses to digest food. So your body uses more calories just to digest protein compared to carbs and fats.
Your practical takeaway should be:
Protein = you feel full + you burn some extra calories by eating it
Protein also has 4 calories per gram. So when you are looking at a nutrition label and you see that it has 20g of protein in a serving, this means that 80 calories are coming from protein.
Carbohydrates
Carbs are fantastic when it comes to energy. Your body needs energy to do everything from taking a walk to brushing your teeth to lifting weights. Your body uses the sugar from carbohydrates to create the stuff that powers your movements and daily life (ATP - nerd alert!).
The RDA for carbohydrates is 130g per day, which I find really weird. Protein is based on how much you weigh, but the carbohydrate amount is just one flat number. The reason is because this is what scientists have learned is the amount your brain needs each day. Your brain really wants the sugar in carbohydrates (glucose) to, you know, like keep you alive and function properly. If you don’t eat that many carbs per day, do not panic. Our bodies are wizards when it comes to prioritizing fuel for our brain, and there are magic ways that your body can use the fuel from fats (or even protein in extreme situations) to power things.
If we’re working together, the amount of carbs you are eating may be: (1) variable and (2) fluctuate. This is because people have different needs for carbs based on their activity level and/or a preference for them (compared to fats). Carb intake will also likely decrease if you’re trying to lose weight. This will help with the energy deficit we’re trying to create.
Carbs can really help when it comes to energy for workouts. You may feel better before or after a workout if you eat some carbohydrates 60-120 minutes before. If you’re not doing this, that’s ok, but it might be something worth experimenting with.
When it comes to TEF (calories used for digestion), carbs rank in between protein (highest) and fats (lowest). There’s nothing notable about the TEF of carbohydrates like there is for protein. I know, total bummer.
Finally, carbohydrates have 4 calories per gram. So when you are looking at a nutrition label and you see that it has 30g of carbs in a serving, this means that 120 calories are coming from carbs.
Fats
I wish this macronutrient had a different name. Fats inherently do not make you fat. Neither do carbs. Neither does protein. Eating more calories than you burn is how anyone accumulates body fat.
Now that we have my distaste for the name for this macronutrient out of the way, let’s dive in. Fats, like proteins, serve many functions in the body. They are an energy source like carbs, and they also do things for the cells in the body (like make cell membranes - nerd alert!). In short, you need some fat in your diet. If that just blew your mind, keep reading to learn more about dietary fat.
The RDA for fat in the diet is 20-30%. You gotta love the people that came up with the RDAs. They’re like, “let’s make protein based on weight, just give everyone one number for carbs, and the fats can be a percentage. Genius!”.
Here’s the deal with fats in your diet. You just need to watch the quantity of them. Fats have 9 calories per gram. If you’ve been keeping score, that’s more than 2x the amount of protein and carbs (4 calories per gram each). Fats also have the lowest TEF of the macronutrients, so your body doesn’t use many calories to digest them.
The bitch about this is that fats taste fantastic…but you likely need to limit them to some extent. If your goal is weight loss, fats are likely the first macronutrient to see a decrease. You can definitely get away with eating a little less for a short amount of time (not forever).
Macro Math
The focus on macros is a way to help put some focus on calories. To review:
Calories = (grams of protein x 4) + (grams of carbs x 4) + (grams of fat x 9)
So if you are eating a suggested amount of protein, carbs, and fats, by default you’ll be eating a certain number of calories. This is how macros fit into your diet and your caloric intake. Boom.