Counting Macros seems like a confusing, daunting task, but once you understand the process it gives you the power to make gradual, intentional changes to your diet to help you lose fat, gain muscle, and improve your overall aesthetics.
What Are Macronutrients?
The foods we eat are made up of Proteins, Carbohydrates, and Fats. These are known as Macronutrients and make up the total calories in our food. The human body requires these in large amounts to support life, activity, and cellular processes. Micronutrients are known as vitamins and minerals, which are required in much smaller amounts by the human body.
Each macronutrient contains a certain amount of calories per gram, so focusing on counting macros serves a secondary purpose of controlling and tracking calories.
1 gram of protein = 4 calories
1 gram of carbohydrate = 4 calories
1 gram of fat = 9 calories
1 gram of alcohol = 7 calories
Let’s deep dive into each macronutrient to understand their importance.
Protein
When it comes to building muscle or maintaining muscle mass on a fat loss diet, this is the Macronutrient we think of. Protein is responsible for many functions in the body, but we will focus mostly on how it helps us repair muscle tissue that’s been broken down by progressive resistance training.
While protein is important for muscle gain, maintenance, and repair, eating above and beyond recommendations for daily intake will not magically make your muscles grow faster nor will it aid in faster fat loss. More is not always better when it comes to protein, it is more important that your total protein for the day is distributed evenly over your 3 to 5 meals with one of those meals falling within that two hour post workout window.
Quality Protein Sources:
Carbohydrates
When it comes to health, performance, and improved body composition, this Macronutrient is absolutely necessary. While it may be widely debated how many carbohydrates are necessary, there are a few things that we know for certain.
Carbohydrates are stored in your liver and in your muscles. These stored carbohydrates are known as glycogen, and this is the primary fuel source for your high-intensity activities like weight training, sprints, etc. Carbohydrates are important for muscle building because they are protein sparing, which means the body looks to the stored glycogen (carbs) for energy instead of breaking down muscle tissue for energy during intense training.
When it comes to Carbohydrate distribution, it makes sense that a disproportionate amount of carbs should be consumed pre and post workout. The pre-workout carbohydrates contribute to ensuring sufficient energy for training and tops of those muscle glycogen stores, and the post-workout carbohydrates facilitate amino acid uptake into the muscle cells after training to aid in growth and repair while also replenishing muscle glycogen stores that you just used up.
I prefer to train in the afternoon, so I consume 30% of my carbs in a large pre-training meal, 40% of my carbs in my post-workout meal, and the other 30% I will distribute however I choose to.
Popular Question: Should fiber be counted toward or subtracted from my carb totals? Do I count total carbs or net carbs?
Answer: The term NET CARBOHYDRATES has been a dirty little secret in the food marketing industry for a long time with big corporations using misleading terms like this to sell more products and swindle customers. For example if a protein bar contains 20 grams of carbohydrates, but 17 of them are from a form of fiber, and since fiber is not fully digestible, companies will market this as "only 3 net carbs". The idea that non-impact carbs are negligible is ridiculous. If a food has 20 grams of carbs, it has 20 grams of carbs, even if 17 “don’t count” according to the manufacturer.
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FAT
This Macronutrient is an essential nutrient that we must have as it helps with the absorption of our fat-soluble vitamins (D, K, E, A). Fat is also the energy source that is burned at rest and during low-intensity activity like walking, etc. Fat also contributes to hormone production (testosterone, progesterone, etc) so a diet too low in fat could be detrimental to your hormone health.
Fat intake is often ignored by people when it comes to nutrient timing. A common practice in the bodybuilding world suggests minimizing fat consumption at high-carb meals. The idea behind this is that if a meal is high in carbohydrates, insulin will be spiked, and this will drive fatty acids into your fat cells to be stored.
While there may be truth to this, we need to think in terms of a full 24 hour day. If someone consumes a meal that has a high amount of carbohydrates and a high amount of fat at breakfast, even if it was half of their allotted daily intake of both, they will absolutely store more fat than if they just consumed a meal that was high in carbohydrates only, however, because they ate such a large amount of carbs and fats at one time, they will be ingesting significantly lower amounts of each throughout the rest of the day. Therefore, they will end up burning more fat throughout the remainder of the 24 hour cycle because their intake of fat during that time will be reduced.
So I suggest distributing your healthy fats evenly throughout your meals, perhaps eating slightly lower fat during those pre and post workout meals but in the end it's not going to have that much of an effect on fat loss as it's the total energy balance that makes the big difference.
Quality Fat Sources:
Free Exchanges Sources:
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