How to Calculate Your Macros

I’ve always wanted this blog to have a healthy lifestyle focus in addition to the ‘all things pretty’ topics like hair, makeup and fashion.  But I must admit that in the last year, I have been very disappointed in where I’ve ended up in my own health journey.  I weigh almost 20lbs more than I did in March of last year.  20lbs in a year?!

The frustration of knowing that while I’m not in the gym all day everyday, but I’m eating clean and healthy foods more than not, but still gaining weight – well it sucks.  Point. Blank. Period.  But I refuse to spend a dime on anything outside of the gym membership I already pay for.  I thought, I just need to sit down and figure this out.  Come up with a plan, and execute using the resources I have.

One of those resources is a friend of the family who’s a certified personal trainer.  I just so happened to run into him one day, and we were actually talking about my website (and how cute all my natural hair girlfriends are) when I mentioned my dilemma.  “Why am I not losing weight Rodney? I’m doing X Y Z, but clearly I’m missing something. Help a sister out!”

His answer – macros.  Macros are the percentage of fats, proteins and carbohydrates consumed in a day.  In short, calories are not created equal.  Its not just about staying within a certain calorie range, but determining what percentage of fats, protein and carbs should make up those calories.  If you are just trying to maintain a healthy weight, this may not be that much of a focus for you.  But as for me, I’m trying to ‘get her done’ so monitoring my calorie and macro intake is key to get faster results.

In doing some research on calculating macros, I was lead to IIFYM.com, which has a macros calculator.  You plug in your info and how aggressive you want to be, and it tells you how many calories you should be eating, as well as the amount of carbs, protein, fat and fiber that should make up those calories.  I was then able to adjust my goals on myfitnesspal, and then I completed a test day by entering different foods I normally eat.

I found that I was eating way too much carbs and sugar, and not enough protein and fat.  This is likely contributing to my slow but steady weight gain.  Especially if I’m not actively burning a ton of calories with exercise. I adjusted the foods on the tracker until I got as close as possible to reaching my macro goals. For example, I’ll be eating more chicken because its cheap.  But I plan to swap out that protein for fatty fish like salmon when I can.  I’ll be eating less fruit as well, sticking with blueberries which have less sugar.

Now I have a sample meal plan that I can test out.  I would share it, but I wouldn’t want you all to just do what I’m doing because you need to calculate macros based on YOU. So I encourage you to do your own research and go to the macros calculator yourself. IIFYM recommends trying out the recommended macros for 4 weeks, and to only consider adjusting the macros amounts if weight loss stalls for 10 days.  A stall would be no change in physical appearance, not drop in pounds.

In order to monitor this, I will take pictures and measure my waist weekly to track changes.  I will also weight myself at the end of the 4 weeks just to see how that correlates.  I will share results if I see them each week, and if not, I’ll just report out at the end of the 4 weeks.

Have you tried to macro? What were your results? Leave a comment!