Carb count seems high and protein seems low?

JC5272

Hello, I am new to the app and want to trust the macro percentages, however the carb count seems high to me at 150g per day and the protein count seems low at 60g if one of my goals is to build muscle. I'm nervous that I will put on weight eating so many carbs. Did anyone else find this? Did you trust and were you pleasantly surprised with results? I'm looking to lose about 15 pounds and am struggling to build muscle as well; I'm a 45 yr old female for comparison. Thanks!!

cmriverside

You can change your macros in your Goals settings. The default setting is 50% Carbs, 30% Fat, 20% Protein. I found the defaults to be fine for weight loss.

It's pretty hard to lose weight and gain muscle at the same time for a female unless you have a pretty disciplined Recomp plan. You might be able to do it - do you have a trainer who could help you with the weight lifting part? That's probably your best bet. Do you have much weight to lose?

Lietchi

You don't gain weight from carbs, you gain weight from eating too many calories.

For protein, I prefer an absolute number, not a percentage. I like this calculator: https://examine.com/guides/protein-intake/#protein-intake-calculator
60gr does sound quite low.

AnnPT77

JC5272 wrote: »

Hello, I am new to the app and want to trust the macro percentages, however the carb count seems high to me at 150g per day and the protein count seems low at 60g if one of my goals is to build muscle. I'm nervous that I will put on weight eating so many carbs. Did anyone else find this? Did you trust and were you pleasantly surprised with results? I'm looking to lose about 15 pounds and am struggling to build muscle as well; I'm a 45 yr old female for comparison. Thanks!!

Weight loss is directly about the calories, not the macros. A person could lose weight eating ONLY carbs, if they ate the right number of calories. (From a nutrition and health standpoint, that's not a good idea, obviously.)

I agree with others that gaining muscle while losing fat is a difficult thing, especially so for women, and especially so for those non-young. (I'm saying this as 68F who started getting routinely active at about your current age, including lifting back then.) Think about it: You're trying to increase one kind of body tissue (muscle) while decreasing another (body fat). The foundation for either of those is calories.

If you're looking to lose only 15 pounds, ask MFP to give you a half pound a week weight loss ( or consider the much slower route of recomposition (maintaining same weight, adding muscle, using body fat for part of the fuel)).

Yes, even half a pound a week fat loss is slow, but it will maximize your chances of at least holding onto your current muscle, and give you the best - still limited - odds of actually adding some. Please note, though: A weight loss rate that slow can take a number of weeks to show up clearly in scale weight, since our water and digestive contents fluctuations vary by several pounds from one day to the next, and even very fast fat loss (like 2 pounds a week) is only a tiny number of ounces per day. The water/digestive contents fluctuations will play peek-a-boo with fat loss on the scale for a surprisingly long time.

What's your calorie goal now? If you're at the MFP default percents Riverside mentioned, 150g carbs and 60g protein implies that your base calories are at 1200. Some women need to eat that little to lose weight, but that's literally the minimum calorie goal MFP will give any woman. A woman of average size is likely to lose at a pretty good clip at 1200. Generally, with few exceptions, at age 45 you'd need to be quite petite and very inactive to be able to optimize healthy loss at 1200 calories.

You're concerned that your protein goal is too low. I endorse the protein goal estimator Lietchi linked. But there's really no getting adequate nutrition if a person's calorie goal is too low because of shooting for too aggressively fast weight loss for their current circumstances. If you were able to go up to 1500, your default protein goal would go up to 75g, for example. That still might be less than you'd like, but it's a pretty big jump.

You ask about our experience. Personally, I lost weight fine eating close to 50% carbs, and still got at least close to 1g of protein per pound of lean body mass most of the way. I lost 50 pounds in a bit under year (at age 59-60), and am pretty confident that I didn't lose muscle along the way. (I'm a recreational athlete; I have performance benchmarks that suggest my strength didn't decline.) I don't know that I added muscle, but I didn't really put in the intense progressive lifting effort that would be needed to attempt that (because it wasn't a key goal for me at the time, as my muscle mass was already adequate for my purposes; plus weight loss was a clear priority for me as my weight was causing negative health markers).

I think you can find a sweet spot in there for macronutrients (not to mention energy level, health, and compliance) at an appropriate calorie level. You might still need to tweak the macro percents a little to get more protein, but proper calories are the foundation for health, muscle gain, energy level and more.

Best wishes!

BrightEyedAgain

I agree with you about the protein. When I was trying to build strength and lose weight at 50yrs, my trainer told me to stay in my calorie budget, eat back half tge exercise calories, and shoot for 100g protein. She said not to worry about the carbs and fats, but my percentages generally worked out 35% protein/35% fat/30% carbs. I lost 40 lbs and got stronger than I ever was before. But, I was new to weight lifting which made it easier. Newbies always experience faster gains. As for the calorie deficit, my trainer had me shooting for 1/2lb per week when I got down to where you are with only 15lbs left to lose. Everyone's experience is different, but hopefully this will help.