Macronutrient Splits

Once we have determined what our daily Caloric usage is, the next step is to figure out how many Calories we should be consuming every day. Remember, it's all about energy balance, Calories in vs. Calories out. So, if our goal is to lose weight, Calories in should be lower and if we want to gain weight, Calories in should be higher.

As with most things with regard to nutrition, there is always a bit more when you get a little deeper. So we'll take this one step at a time.

While it should be clear that consuming fewer Calories than you burn throughout the day will result in weight loss, we need to be careful about this. If you cut your Calories too low, you can negatively impact your metabolism as your body will start to go into "starvation mode" and slow everything down until it "knows" that you are not in a famine.

A good target for your daily Caloric intake when trying to lose weight is about 75-80% of your daily Caloric usage. In the example we worked with last time, we have a 35 year old male whose daily Caloric usage was calculated to be about 2450 Calories. In order to do a 25% Caloric deficit, we would just find what 75% of that number is:

2450 x .75 = 1837.5

We can round that to about 1800 Calories per day. This will be low enough that we can effectively and safely reach our goals without going so low that it negatively impacts our metabolism.

Conversely, if your goal is to put on weight, you would target about 110% of your Daily Caloric Expenditure (DCE):

2450 x 1.1 = 2695

We can round this to about 2700 Calories per day. Much more than that will cause us to put on weight in the form of fat when we really want to put on that weight as muscle. In the same way, when we are looking to lose weight with our 25% Caloric deficit, we want to lost fat but keep the muscle.

For that reason, we return to our macros. Remember that our food can be broken down into our three macronutrients; protein, fat & carbohydrates. When you are trying to alter your body composition (lose fat or gain muscle), you will want to be aware of your macronutrient intake. To do this, we will need to know how these macros break down in terms of Calories.

One gram of protein works out to approximately 4 Calories. Similarly, one gram of carbohydrates is also about 4 Calories. A gram of fat, on the other hand, is around 9 Calories. We use these approximations to determine how we can ensure that the Calories we're taking in throughout the day contain the right amounts of macronutrients to help us reach our goals.

In order to lose fat and maintain lean muscle, most people will want to consume about 35% of their Calories each day in protein, about 20% in dietary fat and the rest will be carbohydrates. Let's look at our example to see how this would work out.

Our "test" subject, as we previously calculated, would focus on 1800 Calories per day to lose fat. How much protein would be needed, according to what we've discussed?

1800 x .35 = 630 (Calories from protein)

630 / 4 = 157.5 (Grams of protein)

Now, what about dietary fat?

1800 x .2 = 360 (Calories from fat)

360 / 9 = 40 (Grams of fat)

And now, carbs...

1800 - 630 - 360 = 810 (Calories from carbs)

810 / 4 = 202.5 (Grams of carbs.)

Hopefully, this doesn't sound too overly complicated. Keep in mind that this is a very generic breakdown and we'll get into some variations next time around. We'll take a look at how to modify this stuff based on your body composition and your body type.