Calculating Your Macros

FORMULAS

There are sooooo many formulas out there but these are the ones that I generally like to use. It’s pretty much an “educated guess” when it comes to finding your Basal Metabolic Rate. The best thing to do is calculate this number, which is the number of calories your body needs to “keep the lights on.” If you’re sitting on the couch not doing a thing, essentially being a vegetable, this is how many calories you’d burn.

Males: BMR = 10 x weight(kg) + 6.25 x height(cm) - 5 x age(y) + 5 (man)

Females: BMR = 10 x weight(kg) + 6.25 x height(cm) - 5 x age(y) - 161 (woman)

After this is calculated, you’re not done just yet. You need to find your total daily energy expenditure, or TDEE. Your TDEE is the sum of all the different ways you burn calories, such as your BMR (about 65%), Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis, or NEAT (about 20%), Exercise Activity Thermogenesis, or EAT (about 10%), and the Thermic Effect of Food, or TEF (about 5%). To calculate that number, you essentially add a multiplier to your BMR based on your activity level:

Sedentary (little to no exercise + work a desk job): 1.2

Lightly Active (light exercise 1-3 days/week): 1.375

Moderately Active (moderate exercise 3-5 days/week): 1.55

Very Active (heavy exercice 6-7 days/week): 1.725

Extremely Active (very heavy exercise, hard labor job, training 2x a day, etc.): 1.9

Once you have that number, that’s a ballpark estimate of about how many calories you burn in a day. Then, it’s up to you to decide what your goals are: Do you want to build muscle/put on weight or are you trying to lose weight/drop the body fat. Putting on size requires a calorie surplus while dropping body fat %, in MAJORITY of cases (before I start getting emails of the certain exceptions including new lifters, steroid users, and people with freakishly-good genetics), then you need to be in a calorie deficit. I usually recommend a 500-750 swing in one direction or the other and then make adjustments week to week until you find the sweet spot of about 1-2 lbs per week.

HOW TO DISTRIBUTE CALORIES

My initial breakdown for macros with my clients is:

Protein: 0.8g - 1.2g per pound of lean body mass. If your body fat % in on the higher side, then shoot for the lower end of the range because your body still has fat to use for fuel. As your body becomes much leaner and you’re in a calorie deficit for a longer period of time, it’s important to increase your protein to hold onto that lean body mass.

Fat: 0.3 - 0.4 x total calories, aka, 30%-40% of total calories for the day. I usually shoot for the 30%-35% range, but some people just enjoy having higher fats to help with satiation (staying full). It’s important to keep your fats at a moderate range to protect the joints as well as help with hormone regulation.

Carbs: Whatever is left over. Carbs will most likely be your largest number, and it should be. As you hit plateaus, carbs will be what tapers down as those walls come. If you’re 300 pounds and start out at 1500 calories, not only will you not have the calories for your body to function properly, but you also won’t have much wiggle room to drop your calories even more once you get stuck. Because, no matter how hard you try, you will get stuck. Keeping those carbs elevated allows you to simply drop 20g or so and keep on losing until it’s time to reverse diet for a while, which is a whole different topic.

WHEN TO ADJUST

This part is very much a case by case. In most cases, don’t adjust until you plateau. There are SO MANY FACTORS in play that after one day of not losing any weight, most people freak out and either get discouraged and binge eat or they begin to become impatient and starve themselves. Trust. The. Process. I’d be more than happy to walk you through that process every step of the way!