Counting macros: What is it?

In a world of diets, health oriented eating and instagram fitness influencers, counting macros and counting calories are common procedures to track food intake and lose a few pounds. But, what are macros? Why are they counted? Should you be counting them?

What are macros?

“Macro” is short for macronutrient, which are the three categories of nutrients you eat the most and provide you with most of your energy: protein, carbohydrates and fats. Counting macros is simply registering the grams of proteins, carbs and fat that you’re consuming every day.

Relation to calories

There is a direct relationship between macros and calories due to the fact that the particular composition of carbs, protein and fats are what give food its specific caloric content.

For instance, 1 gram of fat has 9 calories, while 1 gram of protein or carbs has 4 calories. So, if you eat a meal that contains 20 g of protein, 5 g of fats, and 30g of carbs, you will be consuming 245cal.

However, in a calorie counting mindset, there is a culture of “the less calories the better”, causing anxiety when consuming high caloric foods (such as sweets or pasta) and often leading to disordered eating.

Instead, in the macros counting mind-set, the goal is to reach the determined (healthy and equilibrated) amount of carbs, proteins and fats, in order to fuel the body and reach your fitness and health goals through a balanced diet.

The recommended amounts of calories proceeding from each of these different macronutrients are usually referred to as macronutrient split. A good place to start is using the USDA recommendations:

• Carbohydrates: 45–65%
• Protein: 10–35%
• Fat: 20–35%

Nevertheless, if you are regularly training and have weight loss goals, it is a good idea to try to stay in the 25–35% range of the protein intake, which should roughly correspond to 1–2 g of ingested protein/kg of current weight. Keep in mind that even after you get your starting numbers, you’ll likely have to wiggle things around to find the ratios that work best for your body. Different bodies with different activity expenditure and exercising routines thrive at different macros distributions. And, if you experience weight changes, you’ll have to continue to adjust your macros based on your new body weight.

Macro counting and health

A balanced distribution of macros seems to be key for healthy living. However, are all proteins, carbs and fats created equal? Well, no.

The one blind-spot of macro counting is that it doesn’t take into consideration the origins of each class, and instead relies on you to make the tough work of consuming your macros grams through healthy options.

Now, you might be wondering: “but carbs are carbs, how are some healthier than others?”

Let’s review: macronutrients and their functions

Carbs:

Carbs, or carbohydrates, are sugar molecules that are broken down by the body into glucose. Glucose, also known as blood sugar, is the main source of energy for your body’s cells, tissues, and organs; and can be used immediately or stored in the liver and muscles for later use. Carbohydrates can be classified into simple or complex carbohydrates. Complex carbs are made of long chains of concatenated sugar molecules, which takes them longer to digest and provide sustained energy through the day.

Carbs can be additionally classified as:

• Sugars: Simple carbohydrates found in fruits, desserts and sodas. They also include the kinds of sugar that are found naturally in fruits, vegetables, and milk.
• Starches: They are complex carbohydrates, that include bread, cereal, and pasta. They also include certain vegetables, like potatoes, peas, and corn.
• Fiber: It is also a complex carbohydrate, but one that is particularly difficult to for our bodies to break down. Because of this, fiber does not give you energy, but it does help rid your body of waste and keeps your intestinal tract healthy. Additionally, eating foods with fiber can help prevent stomach or intestinal problems, such as constipation, and help lower cholesterol and blood sugar; as well as making you feel fuller and make you less likely to overeat. Fiber is found in many foods that come from plants, including fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, beans, and whole grains.

It is worth noting that complex carbs and starches tend to contain fiber unless they have been processed. Refined grains, or processed grains, have been stripped of its bran (outer coating) during processing, resulting in white bread, white pasta or white rice. While they are also complex carbohydrates, they have a lower nutritional value than whole-grain foods. These types of carbs become easier for your body to digest, and even though they are not sweet, they will release glucose quickly just like a simple carbohydrate.

Fats:

Fat is instrumental in energy storage, organ protection, hormone production, vitamin absorption and cell membrane integrity. Hence, a r amount of fat consumed from healthy sources is necessary in any balanced diet. However, not all fats are the same, ad you might know:

• Trans fats are unhealthy fats that form when vegetable oil goes through a process called hydrogenation. This leads the fat to harden and become solid at room temperature. They should be minimised and cut from the diet when possible, as they have been shown to be harmful for health, leading to increased LDL (bad) cholesterol and inflammation. Trans fats are the worst type of fat from a health-oriented standpoint.
• Saturated fats are also not the healthiest option. These fats, as the name states, are saturated in hydrogen molecules, and that is why they are naturally solid at room temperature (just like trans fats, that are added hydrogen molecules to keep them stable at room temp!). Foods with a lot of saturated fats are animal products, such as butter, cheese, whole milk, ice cream, cream, and fatty meats, as well as some vegetable oils that are solid at room temperature, such as coconut, palm, and palm kernel oil. Saturated fats raise the LDL (bad) cholesterol level, increasing the risk for heart attack, stroke, and other major health problems. Because of that, limitation of saturated fats to a 5–6% of your daily cals is recommended by The American Heart Association.
• Unsaturated fats are what are called ‘healthy fats’. They are usually found in a liquid state at room temperature because of the chemical structure that features at least one double bond in the chain, leading to a folding that impairs stacking and solidification. Unsaturated fats can be subclassified in mono-unsaturated fats (with one double bond) and poly-unsaturated fats (with more than one double bond). Mono-unsaturated fats are found in plant foods, such as nuts, avocados, and olive oil. Poly-unsaturated fats are found in plant and animal foods, such as salmon, sunflower oils, and some nuts and seeds. Eating moderate amounts of unsaturated fats in place of saturated and trans fats can benefit your health, lowering the LDL cholesterol.

Proteins:

Protein is extremely important to consume, as it allows your body to grow, build and repair tissues, and protect lean body mass (aka muscle mass). Protein is found throughout the body — in muscle, bone, skin, hair, and virtually every other body part or tissue. It makes up the enzymes that power many chemical reactions and the hemoglobin that carries oxygen in your blood. Proteins are composed of both non-essential amino acids, that can be created by your body; and essential amino acids, which need to be consumed through the diet. Essential amino acids can be consumed through meat, fish, egg and cheese, but also plant-based options such as beans, nuts or soy.

While we need to consume different types of protein to ingest all the essential amino acids that we need, there are no “bad” or “good” proteins. However, the package in which that protein comes in is what might make the strongest difference on your health and fitness goals, as protein is the one macro that is most often under consumed and disproportionate to the intake of carbs and fats.

Hence, eating your proteins through high protein foods that come in a package with low and/or healthy fats and minimum sugar is the best option (and one that will happily fit your macro goals too!).

Should you be counting macros?

Counting macros is an interesting exercise if you are wondering about how your diet fits the recommended proportions of carbs, fats and proteins; and one practise that I would recommend everyone to do at least once.

Counting macros gives you an overview of whether your habits are in line with your goals, and helps to evaluate whether the origin of your macros is healthy or has room for improvement. After these evaluation, you can make as small or big changes as you’d like, and see how you feel and how your body reacts when you fuel it with a more balanced option that is coming from cleaner, unprocessed ingredients.

With that said, no food is bad of good on its own, and all of them (including trans fats, fast food and processed sweets) can fit in moderation and within the macro goals in a healthy diet that doesn’t restrict. In fact, occasionally consuming this “unhealthy”foods might be the key to achieve weight loss and optimise the results of your gym efforts. This is because feeling good, motivated and able to eat your favourite foods (even if that is in moderation) is what will allow you to keep going in your health journey, keep you full and satisfied, and promote optimism for the lifestyle change that you are making.

To summarise

It is clear that a health oriented food consumption is, and will be, the best way to achieve any fitness and weight loss goals without compromising your mental and physical health. And, while macro counting might not reflect the healthiness of your meal, it serves as a bridge in understanding the proportions of a balanced meal and foods that fit best with the new healthier mindset. For many, this facilitates the reevaluation of the previous diet and food choices and how good they are at fueling the body, making way for new, more equilibrated meals that suit the journey to the individual’a fitness goals.