The main principle of counting your macros is to be able to meet your macronutrient daily intake goals every day. The macronutrients are protein, fat, and carbs. Once you start macro-counting, it becomes one of the most important part of your fitness journey. Macronutrient counting is typically followed by people following strength training workouts.
What’s The MacroNutrient Breakdown Meant to Look like?
Most people tend to follow a breakdown around about 40% protein, 35% carbohydrates and 25% fat, but these figures tend to vary depending on a particular person’s activity level, metabolism, general health, and lifestyle. For this reason, it is not uncommon for people who are very serious about fitness to employ a sports nutritionist who works out a specific macronutrient diet for them.
Here’s What You Can Do To Make Counting Macros Easier:
Use an App
To take out all of the guesswork and to avoid having to learn calculations and math all on your own (gasp!), you could actually simply use one of the highest-rated free apps that have done most of the work for you. All you need to do is then plug in your basic information and you are good to go! The advantage of using an app is that there is usually a social element to it, helping you connect to other like-minded people who are on a similar fitness journey as you are. The app works by processing your food inputs and giving you your macros in percentage, allowing you to adjust your serving as required!
Familiarize Yourself With Your Most Common Food items
We all have a couple of food items that we eat regularly, whether it is our breakfast, snack, lunch or our dinner. Have a food diary and write down the foods that you most commonly and frequently eat. From there, learn the macros and the nutritional content of these foods and learn your servings. By breaking down the foods you regularly consume, the next time you serve a portion you know exactly how much of each macro you are getting. It’s a great starting point to build from.
Use Your Hands as a Guide
Using your hands to help you work out the correct portion size per meal is an easy way to get into the habit of counting macros. This is a looser way of keeping track of macros, though quite effective. Besides, fretting over getting the exact macros on your plate will increase cortisol levels and only make stubborn fat even more stubborn. The idea here is that the protein on your plate should be about the size of your palm, and your carbohydrate serving about the size of your fist. The nail of your thumb is the portion size for your fat serving, which can be butter, olive oil or peanut butter.
Mix Your Meals Up
Don’t fall victim to preparing the very same meals day in and day out! This is going to be a good way to grow tired of even the meals you love the most. If you are really struggling to keep up with counting macros, perhaps it may be best to have a meal rotation for each week of the month, so that you don’t become tired of chicken breast and boiled potatoes, for example. You still have to enjoy food, because you don’t want to develop a bad relationship with food – or worse, go on a junk food binge. Also, your body requires different foods to acquire all the various nutrients it needs for performing all its different functions, so variety is important.
Eating the correct combination of fats, carbohydrates and proteins is important to maintain satiety and to be energized, keeping you on your journey to achieving your fitness goals. This is not always easy, but with enough understanding of macronutrients you can certainly figure out the right diet for yourself. A little bit of math, some planning, and some recording is all you need to get going! The best news is that if you are focussing on weight loss and you absolutely don’t get the hang of counting your macronutrients, you can relax over your fat and carb count so long as you make sure you get your correct portion of protein for the day, coupled with a calorie deficit – this is a sure-fire recipe for weight loss!
