Let's talk about macros today.

Macros is short for "macronutrients" - protein, carbohydrates, and fats.

When clients come to me super motivated and wanting to shred fat (or build muscle as a "hard-gainer"), I'll have them hit one of the following:

1) Calorie Target + Protein Target

or

2) Macronutrient Targets (Fats, Carbs, Protein)

You’ve probably heard it a thousand times—“You are what you eat.” But let’s get a little more precise than that. That might be:

You are what you eat... and how much of it you eat. That’s where your macros come in.

Sure, calories are the bottom line when it comes to weight loss or gain. But your macronutrient Intake —protein, carbs, and fats, and your overall energy balance and training IQ —determines whether you’re losing fat, gaining muscle, or spinning your wheels.

Today, I want to give you a simple guide to understanding and calculating your macros so you can eat in a way that fuels your goals.

Step 1: Know Your Goal

Before you can determine your macro targets, you need to get clear on your primary goal:

• Fat Loss: The goal here is to maintain as much lean muscle mass as possible while cutting body fat.
• Muscle Gain: You want to build muscle but minimize unnecessary fat gain in the process.
• Maintenance/Recomposition: Maybe you're in the "skinny-fat", beginner, or "getting back into the gym" category.

Once you know your goal, let's do some simple math. Yes there are calculators out there, but yes there is something special about doing the math yourself and knowing what goes into it. Plus if this is too much work, you're probably f*cked.

There's dozens of ways to calculate your macros, the most important piece of the puzzle is application — action.

Here's a pretty damn accurate way to calculate your estimated calories/macros.

Step 2: Calculate Your Daily Calorie Needs

To find your macro split, we first need your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE), aka how many calories you burn each day.

Here’s a simple way to estimate it:

First, get your bodyweight in kilograms (KG), and your height in centimeters.

If you are 30 years old, 5'10" and weigh 185 lbs, to get that in KG, divide it by 2.2...

185 divided by 2.2 is 84 kg.

Then get your height in centimeters.

1. Find your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR)—this is how many calories your body burns at rest.
   You can use an online calculator or the Mifflin-St Jeor formula:
   • Men: (10 × weight in kg) + (6.25 × height in cm) – (5 × age) + 5
   • Women: (10 × weight in kg) + (6.25 × height in cm) – (5 × age) – 161
     • The 30 year old, 185 lb, 5'10" guy will do this:
       • (10 x 84) + (6.25 x 178) - (5 x 30) + 5 = 1,807.5 calories
2. Multiply your BMR by an activity factor to estimate your TDEE:
   • Sedentary (little or no exercise): BMR × 1.2
   • Lightly active (light exercise/sports 1-3 days/week): BMR × 1.375
   • Moderately active (moderate exercise/sports 3-5 days/week): BMR × 1.55
   • Very active (hard exercise/sports 6-7 days a week): BMR × 1.725
   • Extra active (very hard exercise, physical job, or training twice per day): BMR × 1.9

30 year old guy isn't exactly sure, so he picks "lightly active".

1808 x 1.375 = 2,486 calories for his TDEE

That basically means, his estimated calorie intake to maintain his bodyweight is probably around 2500 calories.

Now you have a rough estimate of how many calories you need to maintain your current weight.

• Want to lose fat? Aim for a 10-20% calorie deficit.
• Want to gain muscle? Aim for around 10% surplus.
• In the beginner and skinny-fat category? Aim for around maintenance calories.

Fat Loss lower end: 2500 x 0.1 = 250 calorie deficit = One Half pound per week lost

The person with a 2500 TDEE would eat around 2250 calories per day to lose 1/2 lb per week.

Fat Loss Upper end: 2500 x 0.2 = 500 calorie deficit = 1 lb per week lost

The person with a 2500 TDEE would eat around 2000 calories per day to lose 1 lb per week.

*Bonus, say you want to a short but aggressive fat loss period, you could go for the following:

Fat Loss "Mini-cut": 2500 x 0.3 = 750 calorie deficit = 1.5 lbs per week lost

The person with a 2500 TDEE would eat around 1750 calories per day to lose 1.5 lbs per week

Fat Loss "Mini-cut" 2500 x 0.4 = 1000 calorie deficit = 2 lbs per week lost

The person with a 2500 TDEE would eat around 1500 calories per day to lose 2 lbs per week

A mini-cut can be great for some people, blasting away body fat quickly for 4-6 weeks and then going back to maintenance calories or a calorie surplus for continued muscle gaining.

You just don't want to maintain that aggressive of a calorie deficit for a long period of time or if you're already lean.

How much of a surplus should you use for building muscle?

Your ideal calorie intake for gaining has some nuance. Some prefer faster weight gain, others prefer to gain muscle a little slower but stay a bit leaner in the process.

The newer you are to lifting, or the more potential for muscle gaining you have, the more okay it is to aim for a bigger calorie surplus and more weight gain.

Muscle Gain: 2500 x 0.1 = 250 calorie daily surplus (2 lbs per month)

The person with a 2500 TDEE would eat around 2750 calories per day to gain about 2 lbs per month, or 1/2 lb per week.

Skinny beginners to the gym could be fine aiming for a little bit higher than that, and very experienced lifters can aim for less than that.

There are many mistakes that beginners and intermediates make with gaining weight, and we'll cover that in a future email, for sure.

Step 3: Break Down Your Macros

Now for the fun part—allocating those calories into protein, carbs, and fats. Here’s a solid starting point based on evidence-based recommendations:

Protein:

• Goal: 0.8-1.0 grams per pound of body weight (or 1.6-2.2 g/kg). For some super lean competitive bodybuilders, we can go upwards of 1.2 to 1.3 grams per lb of bw.
  Protein is great for satiety and is the most essential macronutrient when it comes to maintaining muscle while cutting or building new muscle when gaining.

Fats:

• Goal: 0.25-0.4 grams per pound of body weight (or 0.5-0.9 g/kg), or 20-30% of your daily calories (30-40% is preferred for some people)
  Fats are crucial for hormone function, especially testosterone, which plays a key role in building muscle. Don’t go too low, but also don’t overdo it because you'll have less room for carbs —fats are calorie-dense.

Carbs:

• The rest of your calories come from carbs.
  After you’ve set your protein and fat intake, fill in the rest of your daily calories with carbs. Carbs are your primary energy source, particularly for high-intensity exercise like lifting weights.

Here’s a quick example of what that might look like for the 185 -pound man aiming for fat loss with a 2,000-calorie diet:

• Protein: 1g/lb = 185g = 736 calories
• Fats: 0.3g/lb = 54g = 486 calories
• Carbs: Remaining calories = 2,000 - 1,222 = 994 ÷ 4 = ~ 250 g carbs

Our example guy has a TDEE of 2,500 calories, and is aiming for a 500 calorie deficit (2,000 calorie daily intake).

His macro targets are: 55g of fat, 250g of carbs, and 185g of protein.

Step 4: Adjust Based on Results... but make sure you're doing it right.

This is the key part: Before you adjust your macros, you have to hit them and see what they do for you. That's the main part.

Using a nutrition tracking app, weighing your foods with a food scale. The more accurate and precise, the better. You don't have to track your macros for your entire life, but a solid foundation and beginning process can set you up for a life where you don't need to.

Assuming you did your math correctly, You want to test your starting macros for at least 2 weeks before making changes.

To get the best results, track your bodyweight daily, around the same time, after using the restroom and before eating or drinking.

I'd recommend just using the notes app to log your daily weight, but you can also try the "Happy Scale" App.

Every Saturday or Sunday, find out your weekly average bodyweight, and then each week compare your weekly average bodyweight with the previous week's. It will end up looking something like this:

Week 1:

4/28: 185.4

4/29: 182.3

4/30: 181.0

5/1: 181.4

5/2: 180.8

5/3: 181.4

5/4: 179.9

Average bodyweight of week 1: 181.74

Week 2:

5/5: 179.9

5/6: 179.5

5/7: 180.1

5/8: 181.7

5/9: 181.9

5/10: 179.9

5/11: 181.9

Average bodyweight of week 2: 180.7

Week 3:

5/12: 181.9

5/13: 178.8

5/14: 178.6

5/15: 179.2

5/16: 179.0

5/17: 179.0

5/18: 179.0

Average Bodyweight of week 3: 179.36

I think these were my actual numbers by the way lol, and they seem to match what could happen for our hypothetical 30 year old 5'10" 185 lb male.

You'll notice a big initial drop in bodyweight from reduced food intake, less food bulk, less water weight, less bowels in your system, etc. But after that, you can see how important it is to pay attention to weekly average bodyweight.

It doesn't matter what you weigh on any given day. That isn't helpful data. Only your average weekly bodyweight matters. And that's the only thing you factor in when it comes to changing your calories or macros.

In the example above, it looks like the "macro calculation" worked pretty well. We're seeing around 1 lb of weight loss per week. But over time, your body's BMR will adapt (decrease) as well as your NEAT (the calories you burn not exercising but just living daily life), and you'll eventually need to make a change to the macros/calories you're hitting day in and day out, and/or your energy output.

• Not losing fat? You can reduce calories by 50 or 100 by lowering carbs or fats.
• Wanting to but not gaining weight? Add 100-300 calories in the form of carbs and/or fats.
• Bodyweight moving in the direction you want at the rate you want? Don't change anything!

Remember, nutrition is both a science and an art. The numbers can provide structure and don't fool yourself, the calories/macros you swallow count towards your energy balance and body composition over time, whether you're tracking them in an app or not, weighing your foods or not, following a "name brand diet" or not.

Navigating the journey of actually hitting calorie/macro targets or ranges, weighing or not weighing your foods, and becoming skilled at controlling your muscle building and/or fat loss with minimal or zero weighing/tracking...

That's Art that will only come from experience.

You won't have any experience until you start hitting some macros.

For at least 2 weeks.

Take Action

Now that you’ve got the knowledge, it’s time to put it into practice. Calculate your macros. Grab a food scale and bodyweight scale from amazon. Plug your foods and meals into MyFitnessPal or another tracking app, start hitting those macro goals within 5 grams, and see how your body responds.

Be Patient, it's about those weekly average bodyweights. Your weekly averages tell you what your macros are doing. Don't jump ship after 1 or 2 days like you did when that girl didn't text you back for a few hours. Be Patient!

But now that you know how to calculate your macros...

Chances are you'll make some key mistakes in hitting your macros just like most other beginners. Don't let that hold you back from getting started.

Next time we chat about nutrition, we'll talk about 3 (or maybe 5) of the most common macro-tracking mistakes that hold people back.

Until tomorrow my guys,

"Do the Next Right Thing."

-Matt

PS: If you want my entire system on FAT LOSS – calculating your macros, hitting them like a pro, and shredding bodyfat and sustaining a leaner physique – check out my Six Pack Shredding Program.

Couple that with following the workouts in Ogusdaily, and you'll have pretty much everything you need 😎

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