Need total calories independent of fat, carbs, protein

sggbrown03

I use this app because I need to track macronutrients, but its frustrating to me that it assumes all calories are made up of carbs, fats or proteins. Not true - I am supposed to fill my plate with noncarb, nonfat, NONprotein veggies, but when I try to adjust (by gram) my dieticians guidelines for fats, carbs and protein it automatically adjust my total calories! e.g. I am prediabetic with stage 2 kidney disease and my total grams for protein, carbs and fat DO NOT comprise all my calories.

glassyo

The only thing left is alcohol so...

Lietchi

Well, sugar alcohols and fiber can skew things, in the US approach of counting them as carbs (while they have no or fewer calories). Which could be what's happening with high fiber vegetables. But how big is the difference?

Using net carbs might help, but it's a paying option.

AnnPT77

I can't think of any non-carb, non-fat, non-protein veggies. The closest would be things that are mostly water, such as cucumbers or celery.

Calories inherently come along with protein, fat, and carbs . . . and vice versa. A few other things have calories that don't technically come from macronutrients, such as alcohol and sugar alcohols.

What is it that you're eating that you're eating that does have calories, but not fat, carbs, or protein?

What I'd suggest for you is that you set your calorie goals on MFP, or set your macro goals, and simply try to come close. It would be best to talk with your treatment team, but IMU when it comes to either macros or calories, pretty close on average is good enough: It's not necessary to be exactly exact.

MacLowCarbing

I'm pretty sure with the exception of things like water or chemicals (artificial foods), all calories in real food (including veggies) are made up of the three macros in one combination or another. Veggies are low in the macros so you have to eat a lot of them to up your calories, but as you eat more of them, naturally the other things (mainly carbs) rises.

It can be a difficult balancing act, indeed, depending on how your macros are divided. There's only so high we can go in protein, but that's gonna raise the fat generally. If we lower the fat, it's gonna raise the carbs.

Talk to your nutritionist about net carbs maybe? People on a low carb diet subtract the fiber from the total carbs to arrive at the net carb number. We focus more on net carbs than total carbs. Like one serving of broccoli is 10 carbs, but 4 of that is fiber, so I only count it as 6 carbs.

Won't solve your problem but it might help you find more balance.