**** This content is for educational purposes only, and does not substitute professional medical advice or consultations with healthcare professionals.****
This is part 2 of my series on estimating your maintenance calories. By this point you should have a number on hand for how many calories you need to be eating per day. If you don’t, read this article and come back.
From here, we will move on to setting your individual macronutrients (protein, carbohydrates and fat) in as hassle free of a way I can offer. The only macronutrient target (or macro, for short) that I really want you to focus on hitting as well as possible is protein.
As an active individual, it is essential that you are getting in enough protein. Protein is essential for everyone, but your needs are even higher the more you push your body. The exact amount that you’ll need varies according to your training style, training intensity and whether or not you are in a surplus or caloric deficit, but I am going to make this really easy on you: Aim to eat 1g of protein per pound of your body weight. So if you weigh 150lbs, aim for 150g of protein. Easy, and no math. Everyone is happy.
However, if you’re sitting a little higher on the scale, that number might feel overwhelmingly high. I couldn’t hurt to try hitting it, but you’re really struggling with this number, aim for at least 1.6g kg of your total weight.
For the same 150lbs person, we’ll need to convert their weight to kg so multiply it by 2.2
150 x 2.2 = 68.2kg
68.2 x 1.6 = 109
109g of protein at a minimum for the 150lbs person. You can eat more, but try not to eat less unless you exercise at really, really low intensities or not at all.
As for your carbs and fat, at this point it can largely be up to preference. When keeping health in mind, your fat intake should not be under 0.5g/kg of your total weight for any long length of time. For the 150lbs person that is 34g (68.2 x 0.5). If you keep your fat intake above that minimum, and your protein intake within the ranges I outlined, you can let your carbs and fat fall where they will.
NOTE: If you are a high performance athlete, or want to be, you are going to need a more tailored approach and you are going to need to get serious about macronutrient timing, especially if you train more than once a day. However, the guidelines above are perfectly fine for the recreational athlete, someone just starting out or someone interested in a lower impact, more flexible approach to tracking their intake.
A note about carbs: I personally don’t feel that active women should have their carbs too far below 3g/kg of their total weight. For the 150lbs woman, that is at least 205g/day. However, some people manage just fine on lower carbs and I am not going to force this issue. If you want to go with lower carbs and higher fat, knock yourself out. If you’ve never tried the 3g/kg minimum I’d recommend giving it a shot for a few weeks to see how you feel, but if you end up choosing to eat less, at least you can say you gave it fair shot.
For fiber, try aiming for 14g per 1000 calories. So for someone needing 2200 cals for maintenance, that is about 31g. Not everyone does as well on high fiber so if that is you, aim to be as close to that number as you can without causing yourself GI distress. The same thing goes for someone with very high maintenance requirements. If you need to be getting in 4000cals a day, 56g of fiber may make it harder to stomach that amount comfortably so just get in what you can.
I’m not going to touch much on micronutrient requirements as that is going to overwhelm you at this point. So I’ll just say that when aiming to hit your targeted calories and macronutrients, try to include a variety of nutrient dense foods into your day like fruit, vegetables, whole grains, lean protein, fish and healthy fats like nuts, seeds and olive oil. If you’re plant based, same advice, minus the meat but you may want to closely monitor your micronutrient intake and supplement whatever you are not getting much of, like B12.
MACRO SUMMARY:
PROTEIN: 1g/lbs of total weight OR at least 1.6g/kg of total weight
FAT: No less than 0.5g/kg of total weight
CARBS: Preferably at least 3g/kg of total weight but do what you want.
FIBER: 14g per 1000 calories
There you have it. At this point you should have a calorie target as well as a goal for protein, fiber and some flexible carb and fat ranges to play within. You are now ready to start troubleshooting these numbers to see how well the estimations work for you! Part three of this series will cover that in more detail so stay tuned!
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