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Figuring Out Your Macronutrients

Figuring Out Your Caloric Intake

Use Katy Hearn's calculator to figure out my caloric intake.

What You Need to Know Before

There are only three things you're going to need to track and that's:

Protein 
Carbohydrates
Total Fats

For those of you who do not know basic nutrition:
Each gram of protein equals 4 calories
Each gram of carbohydrate equals 4 calories
Each gram of fat equals 9 calories

Example

Ok so say my caloric intake to maintain my weight is 3,000 calories

Typically when breaking down my numbers I like to take care of my protein first. When you're trying to lose body fat you want to eat at least 1.25g of protein per pound of body weight. So if I weigh 190lbs then I should have 230ish grams of protein.

The remaining calories are going to come from carbs and fats and honestly, it all comes down to what you prefer more.

For this example, we're just going to say 60% of the remaining calories are going to be carbs and the other 40% will be fat.

Doing the Math

This is how we find out what are macros are
Total calories = 2,500
Protein = 190 * 1.25 = 237.5 (going to round to 240)
2,500 - 240 * 4 (because every gram of protein has 4 calories)
Remaining Calories: 1,540
60% of 1,540 calories = 924 calories
924 / 4 (because every gram of carb has 4 calories)
40% of 1,540 calories = 616 calories
616 / 9 (because every gram of fat has 9 calories)

Our Numbers

240 GRAMS OF PROTEIN
231 GRAMS OF CARBS
68 GRAMS OF FATS

Basically at the end of the day, your numbers should match these in order to maintain your body weight.

(You can be 1-3 grams off your protein, carbs, or fat but, seriously try your best to hit your numbers.)

Adjusting Our Numbers

What I would do is stick to your maintenance numbers for a couple of days to get used to the amount of food your eating, then adjust your numbers.

Adjusting your numbers is pretty simple. Let's use the example above, say I have to eat 2,500 calories in order to maintain my current physique, but I want to lose some body fat. What I would do is slowly decrease my calories or include cardio. So instead of eating 2,500 calories, I'll eat 2,400 or I'd incorporate some cardio (I prefer steady-state cardio like incline walk on a 3.5-4 speed). Once I did that for a couple of days, I'd adjust my numbers again as needed.