Macronutrient Basics: Understanding Carbs, Fats, and Protein

In order to have any understanding or confidence in your nutrition, have a base knowledge of the macronutrients is imperative. They are what will have the biggest impact on your body composition and performance. If you’ve ever heard the term macronutrients or “counting your macros” and felt confused as to what that meant, this article is for you. In the following, I will break down what you need to know about the macronutrients including calories, protein, carbohydrates, and fats.

Calories

As what ultimately dictates what will cause you to gain or lose weight, it is imperative to understand what a calorie is. So, what is it? A calorie is simply a unit of energy. Just like how an inch is used to measure distance, a calorie is used to measure energy.

We derive energy from the macronutrients, and that energy is measured in calories. Protein has 4 calories per gram, carbohydrates also have 4 calories per gram, and fats have 9 calories per gram. Also of note, alcohol has 7 calories per gram and also contributes to your daily calorie intake.

Throughout the course of a day, our bodies burn a number of calories to continue to function. This is done through working out, walking, breathing, your heart beating, etc. Any activity that keeps the lights on in your body is fueled by calories.

If in a given day you eat more calories than your body burns, then the excess calories are stored as body fat to be used as energy later; resulting in weight gained (calorie surplus). If on another day you eat less calories than your body requires in a day, then your body is forced to tap into its stored body fat to supply the extra energy it needs; resulting in weight lost (calorie deficit).

Generally, when the goal is weight gain we are talking about gaining weight in the form of muscle, and when the goal is weight loss we are talking about losing weight in the form of fat.

In between a calorie surplus and a calorie deficit is your maintenance calorie level. This is also commonly called your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE). Your maintenance calories are the number of calories you can eat to stay at the same body weight. This is normally best thought of as a range of calories, as your maintenance calorie level will be different from day to day depending on various factors such as how active you are in a day.

When you are trying to either gain weight or lose weight, you generally want a difference of 500 calories per day from your TDEE. For example, if you want to gain weight, it is best to eat around 500 calories above your TDEE. Conversely, if you want to lose weight, it is optimal to eat around 500 calories below your TDEE.

It’s generally hard to know exactly what your TDEE is. There are calculators online that can give you an idea, such as the one at tdeecalculator.net. However, for many people these may be slightly off.

If you are trying to figure out what your TDEE is, I would start by using a calculator such as the one noted previously. Try to eat at that number of calories for ~4-6 weeks and track your bodyweight each morning. If at the end of the trial period your weight is the same or very similar, then you likely have figured out your TDEE. If your weight has gone up then you know that your true TDEE is lower than what the calculator told you and vice versa.

So, we know that a calorie surplus will promote weight gain, a calorie deficit will promote weight loss, and maintenance calorie intake will keep us at the same body weight. Does this mean that you absolutely have track calories to be successful in your dietary ventures? Definitely not. It is just important to understand the circumstances that will bring you to your goals.

There are strategies you can utilize to effortlessly put yourself into a calorie deficit or surplus, without even trying. You can find more info on this in the links below:

Related: The Best Tips to Make Fat Loss Easier

Related: Easy, Muscle-Gaining Strategies for Hard Gainers

Now, let’s talk more about the nutrients that provide us calories: protein, carbs, and fats.

Protein

For most people, this will be the most important macronutrient to keep track of. There are a few reasons why that is which we will discuss now.

First off, as mentioned previously, protein has 4 calories per gram. So, if you ate 100 grams of protein in a day, then that means 400 calories from your daily intake came from protein.

Related: High Protein Diets and Kidneys: Dangerous or Safe?

What is protein?

Proteins are chains of smaller compounds called amino acids. These amino acids can link up in different orders and orientations to create a vast amount of different proteins in the body. Of these amino acids, 9 are considered “essential” because our body is unable to make them on its own. The other 11 are considered “non-essential” because our body is able to make them from other compounds found in food. This brings a total of 20 different amino acids.

When we eat protein and the protein enters our stomach and intestines, the protein chain is broken down into the individual amino acids that make it up. Once this happens, the individual amino acids are absorbed into our body and recreated into whatever protein chain our body needs to use them for.

When a food has all of the different kinds of amino acids, it is considered a complete protein. If a food is missing one or more of the amino acids, it is considered an incomplete protein. All animal protein sources are complete proteins and have all of the amino acids. Many plant proteins, however, are missing at least one of the amino acids and are therefore considered incomplete.

In diets that are made up of mostly incomplete proteins, such as vegan diets, you generally need to eat a bit more protein and focus on diversifying your protein sources more so than in a non-vegan diet.

What does protein do in the body?

Earlier, I mentioned that protein is arguably the most important macronutrient to focus on, and this section will for the most part explain why. Most people know that protein is used to build muscle. However, the list is actually much longer than just this. Here is a more in-depth idea of what protein does in the body:

1.     Promotes muscle building

2.     Adds structure to tendons, ligaments, cartilage, etc.

3.     Used to make hormones; such as insulin

4.     Used to make neurotransmitters; such as serotonin

5.     And much more

To make almost all of our body’s major functions to happen, a sufficient intake is required. Another helpful feature of protein is that it tends to be the most filling of the macronutrients per calorie. There are two main reasons for this.

The first reason is that it takes a longer relative time to digest overall, meaning it stays in your stomach and intestines longer than something like sugar does. The second is that it has a higher thermic effect than carbs or fats. This simply means that your body has to spend more energy to digest it than it does with carbs or fats.

If you are someone who is looking to lose fat, this satiating effect can be a big help. If you eat a lot of protein in a day, you are generally less likely to overeat on calories overall. In addition to that, a high protein intake will result in your body holding onto more muscle as you drop weight, ensuring that most of the weight you lose is in the form of fat.

If you are in a muscle gaining phase, the satiating effect of protein can be counterproductive. You of course should have a high protein intake whether you want to gain muscle or lose fat, however, it can be difficult to get enough protein in every day when you are in a surplus of calories. This is where something like protein powder can be helpful.

How much protein do you need per day?

This is a question that you will likely find a bunch of different answers to online. Most commonly, you will probably see people say to eat 1 gram of protein for every pound that you weigh. Although, you generally don’t need that much.

It is important to have a high protein intake; but after a certain amount is eaten in a day, eating more will tend to make no difference. For most people, this will be about 1.6 grams of protein for every kilogram that you weigh. To find this, simply divide your bodyweight in pounds by 2.2 (this will convert your bodyweight in pounds to kilograms), and then multiply that by 1.6.

For example, if you weighed 100 pounds, that means you weigh 45.45 kilograms. Multiply that by 1.6 will give you ~72. Therefore, a person weighing 100 pounds should eat at least 72 grams of protein per day to maximize muscle growth and retention, as well as be able to reap the benefits of protein’s other roles.

To most people’s surprise, you actually need to eat more protein in a calorie deficit than you do in a calorie surplus. This can sound counterintuitive, because you’d think you need more protein when you are trying to build muscle than you do when you are trying to lose fat. The reason being is that when you are in a calorie deficit, your body may end up using some protein for energy, meaning that all the protein that you eat isn’t being used the way it would in a calorie surplus. When you are in a calorie surplus, your body has plenty of energy readily available from carbs and fats, so it does not need to tap into your protein intake for energy.

Before we move onto carbs or fats, there’s something that I want to point out now that we’ve covered protein and calories. If your goals are body composition related (i.e. muscle gain or fat loss) the only numbers that you’d actually need to track are your protein intake and overall calorie intake. Your overall calorie intake will dictate whether you gain or lose weight, and your protein intake will dictate whether the weight you gain or lose is fat or muscle.

Your overall calorie intake is made up of your intake of protein, carbs, and fats. When you look at diet that are high carb, low fat versus diets that are low carb, high fat, there tends to be no difference in body composition if your overall protein and calorie intake are the same. This means that you have flexibility with your calorie sources apart from protein. If one day you want to eat high carb and the next day you want to eat high fat, then your goals will still be achievable.

Related: What’s the Best Type of Protein Powder?

Carbohydrates

These tend to be the most demonized macronutrient of the bunch, which is unfortunate because they tend to be the best-tasting. Having a good understanding of them can help ease this fear show you why they should be included in your diet.

Related: Carbs: to be Feared or Loved?

What are carbohydrates?

They are composed of small units called monosaccharides. They can be either just one unit of a monosaccharide or a longer chain of them. If the carbohydrate is just a single monosaccharide or two monosaccharides combined (a disaccharide) then the carbohydrate is a sugar. Some monosaccharides you might be familiar with are glucose and fructose. Some Disaccharides you might know are lactose and sucrose. All of these are examples of sugars. Examples of sugars would include bananas, table sugar, sugar cookies, etc.

Once you start talking about combinations of 3 or more monosaccharides (oligosaccharides) then we are talking about the more “complex” carbohydrates. This category would include starch, fiber, etc. These are often thought of as the “healthier” carbohydrates. This category would include whole wheat bread, oatmeal, etc.

Are the complex carbohydrates actually healthier than simple sugars, though? Well, if you had to only eat one or the other, you’d probably be better off eating more complex carbs, due to the associated fiber intake. However, if you are getting a sufficient intake of fiber and micronutrients for the day, then there are virtually no negative health effects from having some simple sugars.

Why would sugar get so demonized then? Well, it is true that it’s not that optimal for weight loss. The reason being is that sugar tends to have hardly any satiating effect. Think about comparing 300 calories of a sugar cookie to 300 calories of chicken breast. The 300 calories of chicken breast will likely leave you feeling full way longer than the sugar cookie for the same number of calories. As a result, it can be easy to overeat sugary foods and inadvertently add a lot more calories to your daily intake. However, if your calories are in control and you’ve gotten enough fiber for the day, then you really don’t need to stress about sugar.

Besides, it is pretty absurd to think fruit is bad for you.

What do carbs do in the body?

As with most things, carbohydrates have many roles in the body. Some of these include incorporation into DNA, incorporation into signaling molecules on the outside of cells, etc. However, the absolute most prominent role of carbohydrates is to be used for energy.

For all physical activity, carbohydrates are our bodies’ preferred source of fuel. Whether it’s something short and intense or longer and less intense, carbs are the way our bodies want to go. Further, our neurons (brain cells) are glucose dependent, meaning they can only get their energy from carbs.

Carbohydrates are stored in the form of glycogen in our muscles and our liver. The glycogen stored in our muscles serve as a very quick and convenient energy source during activity. One of the biggest signs of true physical fatigue is when the glycogen stores in our muscles become depleted.

This major role as an energy source is why carbohydrates are the most important component of a good pre-workout meal. For more on that, go here.

Fats

The last of the macronutrients that we will cover in this article. Weighing in at 9 calories per gram, they pack a bit more of a punch than the 4 calories per gram that protein and carbs deliver.

What are fats?

Fats are essentially just long chains of carbon atoms. There are two main types of fat: saturated and unsaturated. Unsaturated fat is known as the “healthy” fat and saturated fat may be known as the “unhealthy” fat. *Most animal foods that have fat contain saturated fat and *Most plant foods that have fat contain unsaturated fat.

One easy way to know if a fat is saturated or unsaturated is to look at what state it is in at room temperature. At room temperature, unsaturated fats are liquid and saturated fats are solid. For example, olive oil is an unsaturated fat and is liquid at room temperature, and butter is a saturated fat and is solid at room temperature.

To really dive into the difference between unsaturated and saturated fats would require some deeper biochemistry. For the purpose of this article, there’s really one important thing you should know. It is recommended that 10% or less of your daily calories come from saturated fat. Saturated fat intake is known to increase LDL (“bad” cholesterol) which is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease.

What do fats do in the body?

There is a plethora of things that fats play a part in within the body. One of them, like carbohydrates, is energy production. One of the biggest purposes that body fat plays is a storage form of energy. Like we talked about previously, when we have not eaten for a while, our body taps into our stored fat for energy.

There are a few differences between using fats for energy and using carbs for energy. One of the differences being that it takes our bodies a lot longer to derive energy from fats than it does from carbohydrates. As a result, if you do something such as a set of 10 reps on bench press or a 100-meter run, your body will choose to use carbs instead of fats for energy. On the flip side, if you are running a marathon for example, your body will get a greater percentage of energy from fats since it is slower, less intense, and your body has the time to get the energy. Further, when you are at rest, the energy that fuels your breathing, heartbeat, etc. tends to come from fats.

Another prominent role is hormone production. Many of the hormones in our body use fats as the building blocks. Steroid hormones, such as testosterone or estrogen, are examples of this. Apart from this, fats also make up the walls of our cells, insulate our bodies, and more.

Conclusion

With this article, it was my goal to provide you with a basic understanding of the macronutrients so that when you see “calories, carbs, fats, protein” on a nutrition label, you have a better idea of what that means and what it will do. It is my biggest hope that after reading this, you feel more confident about what you eat.