How Much Do Daily Macros Matter?

If you’ve been hitting the gym more regularly and starting to think about what goals you hope to achieve with your fitness program, there’s a good chance you’re spending some time reading about nutrition.

In doing so, you’ve heard the term ‘macro percentage’ before, referring to how many grams of proteins, carbs, and dietary fats you should consume on a day to day basis.

What should your macro percentages look like? You’re likely wondering if you’re doing this right.

Before you get yourself all worked up over this and likely toss in the towel feeling confused and overwhelmed, there’s some things you should understand first.

Macros Do NOT Matter Until You Can Eat Right

Perhaps the biggest mistake you could make at this stage is to get overly concerned with macro ratios before you’ve figured out how to eat well.

If you base your macros around foods that do not support proper health and optimal body functioning, guess what?  You won’t like the end result anyways.

Sure, there is a group of people – the if it fits your macros concept who believe that as long as you eat ‘x’ number of calories per day and ‘y’ grams of proteins, carbs, and fats, that’s all that matters.  And it may be true. If you need to consume 1600 calories per day to lose weight and you eat one pizza and a cheeseburger, you may hit that 1600 calorie mark and see some weight loss.

But will you be healthy? Clearly not.  Will you lose fat?  Chances are you won’t. It’ll be muscle that you’re burning up instead.

If you desire a lean fit physique –as well as a youthful and healthy and body well into your 70’s and 80’s, you do not want to only focus on calories or macros.

Sure, they are important, but only after you have already trained yourself to eat proper foods.

My Recommended Starting Point

So what route should you go? For 30-60 days, you must focus on building good eating habits.  A habit takes some time to become ingrained in your behavior patterns, which is why I recommend 30-60 days.

For this time period, 90% of the time, you should be eating whole foods as close to nature as possible.

This means lean meats, plenty of fresh vegetables, fruits in moderation, some nuts and seeds along with a few safe starches such as sweet potatoes and white rice.  It’s also imperative you eliminate alcohol and sweets entirely. If you want to be healthy, these must go – no exceptions.

Do this for 60 days straight and once you’ve done this, now you can start focusing on your macro ratios. At this point, you’ll be building your diet off foods that do your body good and support lean muscle tissue and fat loss. Trust me, your results will be far more in line with what you were hoping for.

When you do start counting, realize that protein can fluctuate slightly from individual to individual, but should be set at around 1 gram/lb of body weight. This typically equates out to around 35-40% of your total caloric intake.

This now leaves about 60% of your intake to devote to carbs or dietary fats. Remember these are the energy providing nutrients, they offset each other.  You can consume more carbs but if you do, your fats should be lower.  If you eat more fats, your carbs will go down accordingly.

This is the concept I utilize is the carb cycling approach, which I firmly believe is the best way to get leaner, build more muscle mass, and improve your health both in the long and short term. It gives you the best of both worlds and soon, my book will  explain exactly how to set up a proper carb cycling diet. When you’re at the point of counting macros, this is the concept you will want to use. We even offer Custom Meal Plans, where we can help you get on track, so you don’t have to worry about what you should and shouldn’t be eating. We design every meal to the individual.

So… don’t rush out and start counting macros, fix your eating patterns first.  Start there and your results will show immediately, then once you do finally start counting macros MAGIC will happen — my promise!