If you want to learn some quick and easy tips on how to truly get a grip on your diet you should start paying attention to your macros. You may be wondering, what are macros and how can they help me with achieving my goal weight? Well, when talking about diets we use the term macros and are referring to macronutrients. Macronutrient is a term we use to encompass the three categories of food that should be making up a large part of your diet. The three foods are fat, protein, and carbohydrates. In this blog post, I want to help you understand why you should focus on these things and how you can use them to your advantage.
Weight Loss
If your goal is to be losing weight then a good rule to go by is keeping yourself in a caloric deficit. This means consuming less calories than you burn on a daily basis. This will force your body to burn fat that is already stored once all the calories you consumed have been burned. The acceptable macronutrient range recommends that people get 45-65% of their calories from carbs, 20-35% of their calories from fats, and 10-35% of their calories from proteins. To lose weight your goal should be to consume about 10-30% from carbs, 40-50% from protein, and 30-40% from fats. The main reason this ratio will help you shed pounds is because you’re consuming a lot of protein which boosts your metabolism and makes you feel more full for longer periods of time.
Maintaining Weight
To maintain the weight you are at your goal should be to keep the amount of calories you burn equal to the amount of calories you consume. This will ensure that you won’t be losing or gaining any weight. A good macro ratio to follow would be 25-35% protein, 25-35% fat, and 30-50% carbs. The reason this ratio will work for maintenance is because normally we get most of our energy from carbs and the goal of this is to be similar to the normal ratio.
Gaining Weight
To bulk up or gain weight you should aim to be in a caloric surplus. This means you would be consuming more calories than you burn on a daily basis. You should also try to keep your ratio around 40-60% carbs, 25-35% protein, and 15-25% fat. Carbs are less lean than protein so eating more carbs would help you stay in a caloric surplus.
Ultimately diet and exercise are a great starting point for slimming down. The goal of this post was to give you some insight to how controlling your macronutrients can affect your appearance and body composition. I encourage you to try one of these ratios based on what your fitness goals are. However, you should ultimately choose a ratio that works for you. Diets commonly fail when individuals can’t stick to them so I think there’s more value in being consistent. Use this information to become the happiest, healthiest version of yourself! 🙂
Happy, Healthy Beauty 