How To Calculate Your Macros For Weight Gain
What are macros and how the hell do you calculate your macros for weight gain?
Today I’m going to show you how to calculate your own calorie and macro targets. Calculating your macros is really not that difficult.
If you eat less calories than you burn, you will likely lose weight. But counting calories can only tell you so much; if you’re not careful and don’t eat the right calories, you’ll likely lose muscle too.
LETS BEGIN
All of the foods we eat are made up of three “macros” (macronutrients). These macros are carbohydrate (carbs), protein, and fat.
If you’re trying to gain weight, then there’s a good chance that you’ve heard people talking about macros and trying to calculate their macros.
Macro counting is extremely powerful, and can free you from binge eating and viewing foods as either good foods or bad foods.
In this article we’ll cover exactly what macros are and then how to calculate your macros for weight gain.
WHAT ARE MACROS?
Macros is short for macronutrients. Macro means “big” so these are the foods we need to make up the majority of our diet. There are four macronutrients: protein, carbohydrates, fat and alcohol (alcohol is for another time).
Protein and carbohydrates have 4 calories per gram and fat has 9 calories per gram, so that’s why you need to be a little more careful on the fats.
HOW TO CALCULATE CALORIES FOR FAT LOSS
Before we jump the gun and get into the nitty gritty of macro ratios for flexible dieting (that’s where you can eat how you like within reason and still lose fat like all my clients) we first need to understand your energy needs and calculate you calories.
Remember your calorie target is an estimation, not an exact number, no matter where it comes from. You must test it to see if it works before jumping head first and expecting results.
Tweaks and changes will always be needed, even if you do everything 100% there is no guarantee it will work straight away (that’s one of the main advantages of having a online coach, I can do the tweaking for you. Find out more here)
Now, I like a bit of science so we are going to do this properly and use a more complex but more accurate method to work out your calories.
Putting It all together - Calculating BMR
BMR or Basal Metabolic Rate is the amount of calories you need each day to simply live - so basically if you were in a coma or addicted to Netflix (same thing) this is all you will need in a day.
There are a variety of formulas, all of which produce a guess at best, so don’t worry about trying to calculate things perfectly because we’ll adjust our intake based on how we progress.
We’ll use the Mifflin-St Jeor formula to estimate your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR - this is the amount of energy expended per day before we add in activity levels).
The Mifflin-St Jeor method - Here it is:
Men: 10 x weight (kg) + 6.25 x height (cm) – 5 x age (y) + 5
Women: 10 x weight (kg) + 6.25 x height (cm) – 5 x age (y) – 161.
Let’s use me as an example: 33 year old male, weighing 82kg at 177cm. My BMR would roughly be: (10 x 82)+(6.25 x 177) – (5 x 33) + 5 = 1766.
Now Add Your Physical Activity Ratio
Now that we’ve worked out your BMR, we need to multiply it by a Physical Activity Ratio (the estimated caloric cost of activity you do per day).
You need to add an ‘activity multiplier’ (x1.2~x1.9) to your BMR depending on your lifestyle/training.
Sedentary (little or no exercise): BMR x 1.2
Lightly active (training/sports 2-3 days/week): BMR x 1.375
Moderately active (training/sports 4-5 days/week): BMR x 1.55
Very active (training/sports 6-7 days a week): BMR x 1.725
Extremely active (twice per day, extra heavy workouts): BMR x 1.9
Back to the example.
I train 5 times per week so we’ll multiply my BMR (1766) by 1.5. This gives me an estimated TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure): 2649.
A calorie surplus is required for weight/muscle gain, so we need to have a calorie intake over our TDEE (which we just worked out).
A 10% surplus is a good starting point. With my clients, I may go higher or lower depending on their starting body fat levels, their goals and energy requirements.
My based on this my calorie target to build muscle would be: 2913 calories per day.
See that was pretty easy!
Now we can calculate our macro splits.
CALCULATING YOUR PROTEIN INTAKE
There are fairly strict guidelines for protein setting, there are looser guidelines for fat and carbohydrates balance setting.
Let’s start with protein. A higher protein diet can be a great tool for muscle growth and no, your kidneys won’t explode. It helps preserve valuable muscle tissue and is highly satiating (keeps you fuller for longer).
The classic figure is around 2g per kg of bodyweight to maintain as much muscle and strength as possible while building muscle.
For me at 82kg, that would be around 164g of protein.
Struggling to hit your daily protein goals? This is my favourite protein powder (all the favours are insane).
CALCULATING YOUR FAT INTAKE
Consumption of dietary fat is important for hormonal regulation, especially testosterone production. It should never be eliminated from a diet. Fat has a host of other important functions in the body. Fats are essential for cell growth, repair and brain function amongst other things
Fat gets a bad rep and is feared and reviled by dieters and ‘gurus’ the world over but it should never be eliminated from a diet. It is in fact vital to keep you alive.
Aiming for a fat intake between 0.7g – 1.2g per kg of bodyweight is a good jumping off point.
In our example, I would start at 1g per kg so that would be 82 g of fat for me, plenty as I prefer carbs.
Speaking of…
CALCULATING YOUR CARBOHYDRATE INTAKE
At this point we’ve worked my total calorie target: 2385 calories.
My protein target is 164g
And my fat target is 82g
Now we can workout our carbohydrate requirements.
Remember back at the start I told you how many calories there were in protein, carbs and fat? Now we can see how many calorie we have assigned to protein and fat to find out whats left for carbs.
Reminder:
4 calories per gram of protein
9 calories per gram of fat
For our example we have assigned me 1394 calories so far (164×4)+(82×9).
If we subtract 1394 from my calorie target (2913) I’m left with 1519 calories remaining for tasty carbohydrates.
Divide the number of calories left by 4 (4 calories per g of carbohydrate) then my carb target is 379g.
There you have it. My daily macros to gain weight/muscle would be:
2319 kcal = 164g protein, 82g fat and 379g carbohydrate.
Easy right?
WHATS NEXT?
I’ve shown you how to calculate macros, to start flexible dieting you need to go and start tracking your intake and aim to hit those targets! A good tool to track your macros would be My Fitness Pal.
How and what you eat is up to you. However, I strongly advocate the 80/20 rule with flexible dieting. 80% wholesome, minimally processed foods full of vitamins, micronutrients and fibre and 20% junk food and alcohol.
Flexible dieting or IIFYM (If It Fits Your Macros) is not an excuse to eat like an asshole and survive on pop tarts and donuts just because you can make them fit. It’s about eating a balanced, healthy but unrestricted diet that puts the fun back into muscle growth.
Follow the guidelines above and adjust as needed by testing out your results and you will begin to see growth sooner than you think.
Hi, I’m Aaron Schiavone, owner of Mind Muscle Personal Training. Over the past 5+ years I have helped women increase their self confidence, improve their relationship with food, improve their health, become stronger, fitter and happier.