Tracking Macros

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Anthoula75
Anthoula75 Posts: 2 Member
in Food and Nutrition
Who tracks macros and what's the best way to calculate the right amount for weight loss?

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  • LyndaBSS
    LyndaBSS Posts: 6,964 Member
    edited November 2019
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    I focus on staying in a calorie deficit. I don’t pay much attention to the macros. I let mfp assign them.

    I’m halfway to my goal.
  • Jthanmyfitnesspal
    Jthanmyfitnesspal Posts: 3,521 Member
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    If you pay for premium you can track the macros more easily. I start with a percentage breakdown, find the number of calories for each macro, then divide by 4kcals/gram for carbs and protein, 9 kcals/gram for fat to get grams of each.

    Yes, you can lose weight at any macro breakdown, but you may find you have less hunger if you keep the fat percentage a bit higher. I will go as high as 50% when cutting in any day. But, I do not think this is a magic formula and you need to experiment to see what works for you. I don't think you need to be exact about it. I do think some fats are somewhat better than others (olive oil, nuts, avocado are very rich in micronutrients). I know that some people disagree and I'm OK with that.

    Example: My weight loss TDEE is 1500kcals. If I wanted to do 25% protein, 25% carb, and 50% fat, I'd eat 350kcals each of protein and carb, which is ~94 grams each, and 750kcals of fat, which is 83 grams.

    Best of luck!
  • devens1003
    devens1003 Posts: 2 Member
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    I target more of a body building type of breakdown since I'm lifting weights while I am in a calorie deficit. That means I'm at 40%/30%/30% of my calories from protein/carbs/fat respectively. I started out at 193lbs, so my calorie intake was 1800 or less to lose 1.5lbs/week (using the MFP calculator). I dont let my workouts allow me to add calories to my diet for what I burn, so I'm down to 172lbs already after 2 months, but I've also gained considerable muscle. I recently updated my weight so my calorie intake is now 1750 calories or less. It's important if you count macros that you occassionally update your calorie limit because as you lose, your body will require less calorie intake. My 40/30/30 for protein/carbs/fat comes out to 175g/131g/58g respectively per day. I find it very helpful to log my meals in MFP ahead of time (my entire day tomorrow is already planned) because it gives me time to mix and match foods while checking my nutrient intake for macros and micros to know if I'll hit my targets by end of day. I make the minor food weight adjustments the next day as needed but I'll at least be close and know ahead of time that I'll hit my goals instead of getting to dinner tomorrow and then wishing I hadn't eaten something earlier in the day. This doesn't mean I'm meal prepping everything, I just ballpark it (ex: i have logged that I'll be eating 8oz of chicken breast at dinner tomorrow). Also helpful to buy meat in bulk, weigh it and put in bags and write the weight on the bags so you dont need to weigh it come time to cook.
  • devens1003
    devens1003 Posts: 2 Member
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    lynn_glenmont wrote: »
    Jthanmyfitnesspal wrote: »
    If you pay for premium you can track the macros more easily. I start with a percentage breakdown, find the number of calories for each macro, then divide by 4kcals/gram for carbs and protein, 9 kcals/gram for fat to get grams of each.

    How is that easier than just selecting percentages in the free version and let it do all the math for you? I can see using premium if you had specific grams you wanted to use regardless of percentages, but if you're going to base your macros on percentages anyway ...

    Agree. The free app does this for you. I only use the free app and it calculates my target grams by percentages. 175x4 + 131×4 + 58x9 =1746 calories. Those are my targets and the app I think just rounds it up to 1750 calories, but it did it all for me.
  • Justin_7272
    Justin_7272 Posts: 341 Member
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    When I first started losing I did not track macros, only calories. I lost weight, but ended up skinny-fat. I've since bulked +15lbs and am now beginning my cut.

    In order to retain muscle during a cut you want around 1g protein per lean body mass (roughly .8g per total weight). I'm actually aiming for minimum 1g per total weight.

    Fat is important for brain and hormonal function; I've read 50g is the male minimum, and assume women's would be a slightly lower amount.

    It really depends on your goal. For only weight loss macros are moot. Keying in on your macros will produce better end results, but requires a lot of discipline. If it's your first time losing I'd start with the basics (calorie deficit) and then fine-tune (macro partitioning) once you've got that down.
  • Jthanmyfitnesspal
    Jthanmyfitnesspal Posts: 3,521 Member
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    lynn_glenmont wrote: »
    Jthanmyfitnesspal wrote: »
    If you pay for premium you can track the macros more easily. I start with a percentage breakdown, find the number of calories for each macro, then divide by 4kcals/gram for carbs and protein, 9 kcals/gram for fat to get grams of each.

    How is that easier than just selecting percentages in the free version and let it do all the math for you? I can see using premium if you had specific grams you wanted to use regardless of percentages, but if you're going to base your macros on percentages anyway ...

    Well, it might not be worth the $$ to you, but if you have premium it will display "macros remaining" in grams at the top of your diary.

    (I am not affiliated with MFP and not trying to up-sell you on premium, so don't go giving me shade.)
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,876 Member
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    Anthoula75 wrote: »
    Who tracks macros and what's the best way to calculate the right amount for weight loss?

    macros don't have anything to do with weight loss outside of medical issues...weight management is about calories
  • neugebauer52
    neugebauer52 Posts: 1,120 Member
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    Through MFP I learned about "trigger food " and "food stacking". My trigger food used to be bread, lots of it: 2 loaves over lunch and whatever else I could fit into and onto it. I am keeping my carbs on around 100 g per day: mainly vegetables, fruit, a little diary and sometimes a potato / rice / pasta but I am happy to stay away from low quality bread. Sometimes I do it rye bread though. Over the last 600 days I am averaging between (carbs / fat / protein) 25 % / 35 % / 40 % and 33 % / 33 % / 33 %. I see this as my long term food preference with a weight loss of 44 kg / 96 pounds to date and lots more weight to go. MFP has done all necessary calculations, I just have to chose my macros for a healthier meal plan.
  • strongwouldbenice
    strongwouldbenice Posts: 153 Member
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    Jthanmyfitnesspal wrote: »
    lynn_glenmont wrote: »
    Jthanmyfitnesspal wrote: »
    If you pay for premium you can track the macros more easily. I start with a percentage breakdown, find the number of calories for each macro, then divide by 4kcals/gram for carbs and protein, 9 kcals/gram for fat to get grams of each.

    How is that easier than just selecting percentages in the free version and let it do all the math for you? I can see using premium if you had specific grams you wanted to use regardless of percentages, but if you're going to base your macros on percentages anyway ...

    Well, it might not be worth the $$ to you, but if you have premium it will display "macros remaining" in grams at the top of your diary.

    (I am not affiliated with MFP and not trying to up-sell you on premium, so don't go giving me shade.)

    doesn't it do that anyway?
  • lynn_glenmont
    lynn_glenmont Posts: 9,961 Member
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    Jthanmyfitnesspal wrote: »
    lynn_glenmont wrote: »
    Jthanmyfitnesspal wrote: »
    If you pay for premium you can track the macros more easily. I start with a percentage breakdown, find the number of calories for each macro, then divide by 4kcals/gram for carbs and protein, 9 kcals/gram for fat to get grams of each.

    How is that easier than just selecting percentages in the free version and let it do all the math for you? I can see using premium if you had specific grams you wanted to use regardless of percentages, but if you're going to base your macros on percentages anyway ...

    Well, it might not be worth the $$ to you, but if you have premium it will display "macros remaining" in grams at the top of your diary.

    (I am not affiliated with MFP and not trying to up-sell you on premium, so don't go giving me shade.)

    But that was my point. If you want to know how many grams are remaining, why go through the rigamarole of starting with percentages? If you want to base your macro choices on a percentage split, the free version will do that for you, and it will also show you your remaining macros for the day in grams (albeit at the bottom of the diary page, but top versus bottom seems like a silly thing to spend money on.

    Personally, I use the approach described by AnnPT77 above -- decide on easy-to-remember round-up protein and fat goals based on body weight, set percentages to achieve that on rest days, and not worry about whether MFP thinks I'm hitting goals or not on any given day.
  • Jthanmyfitnesspal
    Jthanmyfitnesspal Posts: 3,521 Member
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    @lynn_glenmont : Awesome. Sounds like a plan.

    Viewing "grams remaining" is useful for (duh) hitting gram targets. Not really essential for weight loss. Some people don't track the calories at all and just track grams of carbs or protein, for example.

    (I'm just saying that some people do it, and you can't "disagree" with that! Or can you?)
  • lynn_glenmont
    lynn_glenmont Posts: 9,961 Member
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    Jthanmyfitnesspal wrote: »
    @lynn_glenmont : Awesome. Sounds like a plan.

    Viewing "grams remaining" is useful for (duh) hitting gram targets. Not really essential for weight loss. Some people don't track the calories at all and just track grams of carbs or protein, for example.

    (I'm just saying that some people do it, and you can't "disagree" with that! Or can you?)

    OK, but this started with your making a statement that the premium would let you track macros more easily (which I marginally agree with for someone who wants to actually set specific grams unrelated to percentages), but your backup for the statement seems to be (1) if you start with a percentage goal and do all the math, you can enter a grams goal (but the basic/free version of MFP will do all that for you if you're starting with a percentage goal and (2) the premium version shows you grams remaining at the top of the page (while the free version shows grams remaining at the bottom of the page -- albeit you will have to use landscape display to see this in the app).

    I'm sure there are things that some people do that the premium version is helpful for. But your specific points on macro grams do not accurately reflect the difference between basic and premium.

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