Macro Tracking

Food tracking is not something that is new to the fitness and health world. People looking to improve their health, diet, and general well-being have long been encouraged to track what they eat. Whether that is by making sure that you get your recommended amount of veggie servings in or the more popular calorie tracking.

For keto, we are encouraged to track our macronutrients or macros. Macros aren’t anything new to the fitness world, especially for bodybuilders, powerlifters, and people focused on gaining muscle.

Tracking macros on keto is especially important because you need to make sure that you are getting in the necessary amount of proteins and fats while keeping your carbs minimal.

So what even is a macro?

Macros are most easily described as the grams of protein, fat, and carbs in a given food. For example, an egg has 6 proteins, 5 fats, and 0 carbs. This is information that is very easily found on the nutritional label of any food and is typically calculated by using the food’s weight.

In order to find out your macros, they are a variety of macro calculators out there. I use the Ketogains one because the way I am follow keto requires me to. Basically you input your weight, body fat percentage, if you want to lose/maintain/gain weight, what calorie deficit you want to be at if you are losing weight, and any exercise you do on a daily basis.

If you are not doing keto, your carbs will be over 25 obviously, but the Ketogains calculator is set at a default 25 for carbs which ups your fat and protein intake.

For people who follow keto and lift, like me, I have two calculations: lifting day and non-lifting day. The big difference is fat intake. On lifting days my macros are 147p/115f/25c and non-lifting days are 147p/85f/25c.

Tracking your macros isn’t really any different than tracking your calories, but the one major difference is that you really should use a food scale to measure the weight of things (in grams preferably) for the most accurate macro count.

While most foods have nutritional labels to help with the macros per gram count, sometimes veggies and proteins are hard to find. Whenever I can’t find a food, I use the USDA food database. It is far and away the most accurate nutritional guide.

I use an app called My Macros+ which cost me like $4 to download. It has a pretty accurate search function for common foods and has the option to add multiple days (lifting and non-lifting) as well as a bar code scanner to automatically import the macros for a food.

I’ve included some screenshots of what my Macro intake looked like yesterday so you can get an idea. (Yes, I forgot to track for dinner. But I can tell you I hit my protein goal with a protein shake and a turkey burger. For those of you wondering, I like Myprotein USA for protein. I get the unflavored because the artificial sugar in the shakes doesn’t agree with me but NAte loves their Chocolate Brownie flavor. He even makes keto pancakes with it!).

While macro tracking can be a drag sometimes and can quickly become a nightmare at restaurants, it is honestly a great way to stick to keto. It really gives you a more holistic picture of what you are eating and when. I would recommend it for anyone who wants to track their food intake, keto or not!