How to count macros on fitness pal?

chilenagirl1990

I just started and I’m really interested in figuring out my macros and how to keep track of it on fitness pal? Any ideas? Tips? Tricks? Anything would help

deannalfisher

If you look at your diary you can see your protein, carb, fat macros - you can adjust them in your profile (5% increments unless you have premium)

Beaster_Bunny

Unless you are lifting and want more protein, or are doing something like keto or HCLF or one of the other numerous things people do, the macros that mfp gives you will do just fine.

Nice mustache, I am jealous!

cmriverside

Macro percentages here (GOALS)

https://www.myfitnesspal.com/account/my_goals

cmriverside

oh, and:


http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/819055/setting-your-calorie-and-macro-targets

livingleanlivingclean

VegHeadGettingFit wrote: »

Unless you are lifting and want more protein, or are doing something like keto or HCLF or one of the other numerous things people do, the macros that mfp gives you will do just fine.

Nice mustache, I am jealous!

I'd recommend most people in a deficit eat more than the protein goal mfp suggests - maintaining muscle requires more help in a deficit, eating sufficient protein will help.

Evelyn_Gorfram

You'll find your Daily Nutrition Goals under the "My Home" tab and "Goals."

The default is set to 50% Carbs, 30% Fats, 20% Protein; which is just fine for most people, especially those starting out. There's an "Edit" button at upper right for people who want to be more sophisticated about balancing their macros: feel free to ignore it.

Then under "Food Diary" on your "Food" tab, it's all set up for you. Click "Add Food," type in what you're looking for, select a match, and the values are automatically filled in for you. For an example of a filled-in food diary - if not an example of a perfect day's menu - this is a screenshot of my Food Diary from yesterday:



(Do not think this mean you should eat like I do - you probably shouldn't.)
(I'm not altogether sure that I should eat like I do. )

You can see immediately, in the totals at the bottom, that I was over on carbs even though I was okay on calories. I take that as something to notice, but not something to worry about in particular. (How did I come in at just 14 calories under my target? ...Pure dumb luck.)

I've gotten fancy and edited my macro target balance; and I've also edited the last two columns/nutrients tracked, and the names of my meals - those are both under "Settings" on the "Food" tab. (To explain a bit, "Fruit" and "Veggies" aren't actually separate meals - I just like to break them out to make it easier to be sure I've gotten enough of them.)

Hope this helps.

deannalfisher

Evelyn_Gorfram wrote: »

You'll find your Daily Nutrition Goals under the "My Home" tab and "Goals."

The default is set to 50% Carbs, 30% Fats, 20% Protein; which is just fine for most people, especially those starting out. There's an "Edit" button at upper right for people who want to be more sophisticated about balancing their macros: feel free to ignore it.

Then under "Food Diary" on your "Food" tab, it's all set up for you. Click "Add Food," type in what you're looking for, select a match, and the values are automatically filled in for you. For an example of a filled-in food diary - if not an example of a perfect day's menu - this is a screenshot of my Food Diary from yesterday:



(Do not think this mean you should eat like I do - you probably shouldn't.)
(I'm not altogether sure that I should eat like I do. )

You can see immediately, in the totals at the bottom, that I was over on carbs even though I was okay on calories. I take that as something to notice, but not something to worry about in particular. (How did I come in at just 14 calories under my target? ...Pure dumb luck.)

I've gotten fancy and edited my macro target balance; and I've also edited the last two columns/nutrients tracked, and the names of my meals - those are both under "Settings" on the "Food" tab. (To explain a bit, "Fruit" and "Veggies" aren't actually separate meals - I just like to break them out to make it easier to be sure I've gotten enough of them.)

Hope this helps.

FWIW - if you add up your carbs/fat/protein - your calories should have 2010 - so you might have a slightly bad entry somewhere

Evelyn_Gorfram

deannalfisher wrote: »

Evelyn_Gorfram wrote: »

You'll find your Daily Nutrition Goals under the "My Home" tab and "Goals."

The default is set to 50% Carbs, 30% Fats, 20% Protein; which is just fine for most people, especially those starting out. There's an "Edit" button at upper right for people who want to be more sophisticated about balancing their macros: feel free to ignore it.

Then under "Food Diary" on your "Food" tab, it's all set up for you. Click "Add Food," type in what you're looking for, select a match, and the values are automatically filled in for you. For an example of a filled-in food diary - if not an example of a perfect day's menu - this is a screenshot of my Food Diary from yesterday:



(Do not think this mean you should eat like I do - you probably shouldn't.)
(I'm not altogether sure that I should eat like I do. )

You can see immediately, in the totals at the bottom, that I was over on carbs even though I was okay on calories. I take that as something to notice, but not something to worry about in particular. (How did I come in at just 14 calories under my target? ...Pure dumb luck.)

I've gotten fancy and edited my macro target balance; and I've also edited the last two columns/nutrients tracked, and the names of my meals - those are both under "Settings" on the "Food" tab. (To explain a bit, "Fruit" and "Veggies" aren't actually separate meals - I just like to break them out to make it easier to be sure I've gotten enough of them.)

Hope this helps.

FWIW - if you add up your carbs/fat/protein - your calories should have 2010 - so you might have a slightly bad entry somewhere

Hunh. Do you mean -
total calories = (264 gm carbs*4 cal/gram) + (54 gm fats*9 cal/gram) + (117 gms protein*4 cal/gram) =
= 1056 + 486 + 468
= 2010

- which it turns out does not equal 1936?

Wow - I never checked MFP's math before. (At first I thought that something must be very wrong with the back end of MFP's software.) But your thought that at least one of my "Matching Foods" from the MFP database has the wrong number of calories recorded for one or more of its macros seems a lot more likely.

Yeah, I haven't been double-checking all my selections from the database to make sure they're accurate. (It's my first week tracking my food again after a long time, and I'm trying to ease myself in gradually.)

OP, please bear in mind - the information in the database is not always accurate. Humans make mistakes, and most of the database info was entered by MFP members. However, it's usually in the ballpark, and the ones with the little white checkmark on a green shield are even more likely to be correct.

What I have done in the past is to, at first, just choose whichever entry seemed to have the best info, verifying whenever I happened to have an item's nutrition info handy. Then, when I ran in a plateau, or wasn't losing weight at the rate I expected; I'd go through all the entries in my "favorites" list with a fine-toothed comb, and weed out those with discrepancies.

lynn_glenmont

Evelyn_Gorfram wrote: »

deannalfisher wrote: »

Evelyn_Gorfram wrote: »

You'll find your Daily Nutrition Goals under the "My Home" tab and "Goals."

The default is set to 50% Carbs, 30% Fats, 20% Protein; which is just fine for most people, especially those starting out. There's an "Edit" button at upper right for people who want to be more sophisticated about balancing their macros: feel free to ignore it.

Then under "Food Diary" on your "Food" tab, it's all set up for you. Click "Add Food," type in what you're looking for, select a match, and the values are automatically filled in for you. For an example of a filled-in food diary - if not an example of a perfect day's menu - this is a screenshot of my Food Diary from yesterday:



(Do not think this mean you should eat like I do - you probably shouldn't.)
(I'm not altogether sure that I should eat like I do. )

You can see immediately, in the totals at the bottom, that I was over on carbs even though I was okay on calories. I take that as something to notice, but not something to worry about in particular. (How did I come in at just 14 calories under my target? ...Pure dumb luck.)

I've gotten fancy and edited my macro target balance; and I've also edited the last two columns/nutrients tracked, and the names of my meals - those are both under "Settings" on the "Food" tab. (To explain a bit, "Fruit" and "Veggies" aren't actually separate meals - I just like to break them out to make it easier to be sure I've gotten enough of them.)

Hope this helps.

FWIW - if you add up your carbs/fat/protein - your calories should have 2010 - so you might have a slightly bad entry somewhere

Hunh. Do you mean -
total calories = (264 gm carbs*4 cal/gram) + (54 gm fats*9 cal/gram) + (117 gms protein*4 cal/gram) =
= 1056 + 486 + 468
= 2010

- which it turns out does not equal 1936?

Wow - I never checked MFP's math before. (At first I thought that something must be very wrong with the back end of MFP's software.) But your thought that at least one of my "Matching Foods" from the MFP database has the wrong number of calories recorded for one or more of its macros seems a lot more likely.

Yeah, I haven't been double-checking all my selections from the database to make sure they're accurate. (It's my first week tracking my food again after a long time, and I'm trying to ease myself in gradually.)

OP, please bear in mind - the information in the database is not always accurate. Humans make mistakes, and most of the database info was entered by MFP members. However, it's usually in the ballpark, and the ones with the little white checkmark on a green shield are even more likely to be correct.

What I have done in the past is to, at first, just choose whichever entry seemed to have the best info, verifying whenever I happened to have an item's nutrition info handy. Then, when I ran in a plateau, or wasn't losing weight at the rate I expected; I'd go through all the entries in my "favorites" list with a fine-toothed comb, and weed out those with discrepancies.

Bear in mind that a 74 calorie discrepancy on a 1936 is less than a 4% error. I'm not sure it's worth expending a lot of time or emotional energy on trying to find the discrepancy.