Understanding Macro Nutrients

In our last article we discussed food types and calories. Here we will break down a little further some foundations to base your dietary plans on.

So having established the roles protein, carbohydrates and fats have in our diet and their functions we will now look to try and determine how much of each you should be aiming for to achieve your physique goals as it is arguably the most important factor.

You will not gain size of note without a calorie surplus and losing weight is 95% diet, exercise is good for cardio health but has very little to do with fat loss, even HIT interval cardio.

Bulking

When looking to increase size you will be presumably training hard and trying to break down muscle tissue and putting an overall strain on your body for repair.

Sufficient protein is required to ensure you can build this muscle, carbohydrates in the right amount to provide the energy necessary and spare the protein from being used in any other way and fat for optimal health.

Assuming you want quality gains then you want to keep the added weight as lean as possible. With this in mind it is advisable to start out on maintenance calories and begin adding from there by 200-300 calories a week, simply by bumping tiny portion increases to 2-3 meals in the day, it will barely be noticeable in terms of visual food.

A rather crude but simple starting point to determine your base calorie needs can be calculated here: https://www.healthstatus.com/calculate/basal-metabolic-rate

Now a good macro nutrient split to provide all the desired intake you need would be to have your calories each day comprise of 30% protein, 40% carbohydrates and 30% fat. We will not got back over good sources and choices again here.