Macro Recaculation

So I’m a little behind this month because my freelancing kind of took over my life and I was so damn tired of writing I needed to give my brain (and fingers) a break. But I wanted to give an update on my macros!

I recently adjusted my macros per the suggestion that you should recalculate them every time you lose another 10 pounds. Well...I had lost 20 pounds and hadn’t changed them at all. I was getting a little frustrated with my weight loss because I could not for the life of me seem to break past 193.

It was maddening.

I reconfirmed the whole 10 pounds thing and decided I needed to recalculate. Like I said before, I use the Ketogains Macro calculator. I do two different calculations, one for lifting days and one for non-lifting days. Now in the past when I had tried to recalculate my macros I could not for the life of me figure out what my weight lifting day macros should be. So because macros can be a little scary for some people and macro calculators can be frustrating as hell, I want to walk through how I did it.

First things first. You have to put in your body composition. (I’m going to try to recreate what I did to get my new macros, but no promises it’ll be exact).

This is what I was looking at for body composition.

One thing that people seem to struggle with the most is the body fat percentage. Ketogains actually has a pretty good visual body fat estimator, so that was really helpful for me. If you are the type of person who wants BMR, TEF and all of that fun stuff, it calculates it here for you. I don’t use it but a lot of people find it helpful.

Then you have to input your daily activity. Don’t fool yourself here. If you have a desk job, you are sedentary. Don’t take it as a slight on your lifestyle. This selection has nothing to do with how often you work out as that is input later. Just be honest with how much you move during the day, it’ll help you reach your goals better.

Moving right along.

Now we get to daily calories. As you can see there is a “calories without exercise” and a “calories with exercise” (Now you understand the sedentary thing, right?) The calories change depending on your goal. Mine is to lose fat so I eat at a calories deficit. There are options for both maintaining and gaining weight here too. It is not recommended to do any more than a 25%

calories deficit. We want you to stay healthy, so don’t go crazy.

Now you can input your exercise. Again, be honest with yourself. If you only lift for 30 minutes, put it in. If you do 20 minutes of HITT, put it in. You won’t do yourself any favors by overestimating.

Finally, we get to the macros part. You don’t have to, but I selected the “Ketogains” calculation. I want to gain muscle and lose weight, so that ups my protein levels. The calculation that it automatically spits out is your non-exercise macros. Use those on days you don’t workout.

In order to get your exercise macros, scroll back up to the “calories with exercise” box in the Daily Calories section. Then you just adjust your fat calories until you hit the right “total calories” in the Daily Macros section. So on these days I have more macros to play around with. (AKA: All the avocados!!)

Because the recalculation thing can get incredibly irritating, below is a little guide to help you visualize that. As you up the fat macros, your calories go up. DO NOT CHANGE YOUR CARBS. It’s not worth it to kick yourself out of ketosis.

So at the moment, my Macros on a non-lifting day are 109p, 25c, 96f and on a lifting day are 138p, 25c, 109f. I know it isn’t the same as what I just did. I tried. I really did. But at any rate. Recalculating worked! And I’m back to consistently losing weight again. (190.8 this morning! WOOO!!) Also, my muscle tone is really starting to show. I was doing my hair in my tank top nightgown and kept getting distracted by all the muscles I can see now. It’s super cool!

But I hope this helped anyone who was curious about macros. As always, I am here to help and answer any questions anyone has!