I’ve been hearing there are some questions about this whole “macros tracking” thing people keep hearing about, so I thought I’d clear up some of the confusion!
The term “macros” is short for “macronutrients”. There are three macronutrients: proteins, carbohydrates and fats. Every food we eat can be broken down into amounts of these macronutrients. Often, people will refer to the macronutrient that mostly makes up a certain food, even though that food is not 100% solely comprised of only one macronutrient. As an example, animal meat, such as a fillet of fish or ground beef, are generally referred to as proteins–they are mostly made up of protein. Foods like sweet potatoes and white rice are generally made up of carbohydrates.
Typically, when people are tracking their macronutrients, they have a set goal of total calories in which they aim to eat a certain ratio of the three macronutrients. These ratios and caloric amounts vary widely depending on an individual’s goals.
Macronutrients are tracked within a caloric total because it is easy to convert grams of macronutrients to calories:
- 1 gram of protein = 4 calories
- 1 gram of carbohydrates = 4 calories
- 1 gram of fat = 9 calories
You’ll see above that while protein and carbohydrates both have 4 calories per gram, fats have 9 calories. This means they are more calorically dense. This is one of the reasons why fats have been demonized in decades past, because it is easier to eat more calories from fattier foods (there is less total volume to the food) than from foods in which the highest macronutrient is either protein or carbohydrate. If someone is aiming to eat a certain number of calories per day in order to achieve a goal, then understanding that more calories come from smaller amounts of fats than proteins or carbohydrates is integral to understand.
If you’ve been following my writing for awhile, you know that I’m not a fan of only tracking total daily calories when looking to complete a body composition or strength goal (also, you don’t need to track this stuff for a long time in many cases)–just like the bodyweight number on the scale can only give you one measure (total body weight), it leaves out other important information–what is that weight comprised of? Are you muscular? Are you dehydrated? Do you have to poop? The scale number can’t tell you these things, it can only allude to some of them. In a similar vein, only counting total daily calories doesn’t tell you much, and counting macronutrients is the next step above simply tracking calories. How much protein makes up that calorie goal? What kind of protein is it? How much fat is coming in, and is that fat more or less processed? How is the quality of the foods being consumed affecting your hormonal profile, which, in turn, will affect your body composition?
So, if you hear people talking about their “macros”, now you know what’s up. All they’re doing is being aware of how many carbohydrates, proteins and fats they’re consuming, and they likely have a certain amount they’re trying to eat on the regular. How do people track this? There are plenty of tools online to help with tracking, one that many people use is MyFitnessPal.com, which provides a large database of foods and their macronutrient break down, which you can add to your own personalized daily food intake journal. If you’re interested in learning more about macros, first just play around with entering the foods you currently eat into an app like that. See where the numbers fall. It may be eye opening!