The Best Macronutrient Meal Plan for You

If you lived in a bubble, sans emotions and #foodporn and processed foods, you’d find intuitive eating to be easy. But you live in the real world. And intuitive eating is not so simple. Which is why we turn to strategies, like macronutrient meal plans, to help us stay on track with our health and our fitness goals. My intention with this article is to give you the basics you need to create your own macronutrient meal plan that’s best for fat loss.

By the end you will know how to…

• Determine your overall caloric need.
• Breakdown your macronutrient split: proteins, carbs and fat.
• Transform calories, percentages and grams into a real food menu.
• Use advanced strategies to maximize protein synthesis and fat loss and increase adherence.

Important: the following information gives you the foundation for a macronutrient diet. Without knowing you personally, there is no way for me to personalize each step for you. Getting this meal plan dialed in will take practice, trial and error and awareness. If you are ready to take that on yourself then this is a great starting point! If you want a little help getting started or dialing it in, schedule a free strategy session here!

Macronutrient Basics

I won’t spend too much time on the why – I know you’re here for the action steps. But it’s important to understand a bit about why proteins, carbs and fats are so important. Each macronutrient is essential to your body and plays a major role in fat loss. Understanding the why behind what you’re doing is going to help motivate you when it’s time to build your plate.

There are three major nutrients that your body needs: protein, carbohydrates and fat. Your body breaks down macros to use for energy, to produce and release hormones, and to create chemical reactions. In short: every action you take, thought you think and emotion you feel is impacted by macronutrients.

Tracking macros is a nutrition strategy that can (and should) be personalized depending on your age, sex, activity level, body type, goals, and eating preferences. It’s a way to ensure that you are getting the right amount of each nutrient without having to track calories.

Proteins

What they are: break a protein down and you get amino acids – the building block of muscle, bone and cartilage, neurotransmitters, enzymes, hormones, immune system chemicals and more. Protein is in your DNA. There are 21 in your body but only 9 are essential. All 9 of those essential amino acids are found primarily in animal proteins: egg, chicken, turkey, beef, pork, fish. That said, you can combine vegetarian sources of protein like tofu, quinoa, beans, nuts and seeds to get all 9.

Why do you need to eat them for fat loss? It your goal is to lose fat, why is the building macro so important? Here’s why (besides the fact that you need protein to simply excel at being a human). Muscle is the most metabolically active tissue in your body. That means that the more muscle you have, the more energy your body spends maintaining it even while at rest. On top of that, protein fills you up, slows down digestion of other macros, and keeps you satiated between meals.

When your goal is fat loss, it’s important to include protein at every meal. Your body can’t store protein the way it can store carbs and fat so including it in every meal opportunity is the only way to get enough!

Carbohydrates

What they are: Carbohydrates are the sugars and starches found in foods like grains, rice, vegetables and fruit. These molecules are broken down into smaller and smaller pieces and all of them end up as glucose.

Complex carbs are classified as such because they come as a package deal with other micronutrients, phytonutrients, fiber and water. You’ll find them in whole food sources like grains, legumes, whole fruit and vegetables.

Simple carbs are processed in some way. They also come as a package deal but it’s a package you neither need nor want. Simple carbs come in the form of cookies, cake, candy and pastries – foods that are packed with added sugars, fats and additives.

Why do you need to eat carbs for fat loss? Every energy process that your body goes through, whether it’s to go for a walk, run a marathon, barbell squat or even get out of bed in the morning, requires glucose. Carbs fuel your muscles. They fuel your nervous system. And your brain, which uses about 130 grams of glucose a day, needs a continuous supply. And while your body can break down other macronutrients into glucose, carbs are it’s favorite source.

Think about the days that you aren’t properly fueled and don’t have the energy for a workout. You either a) skip it entirely or b) half-ass it. Either way, you’re not getting as much out of that workout as you could have had you had the energy.

Fats

What they are: Fats are organic molecules that are made up of fatty acids. Dietary fat comes from a variety of sources, some healthier than others. Healthy sources of dietary fat include nuts and seeds, avocados, egg yolks, coconut, fatty fish, wild game, and olives. The only fat you really want to stay away from at all costs: trans fats. Trans fats are a by product of food processing. They are chemically altered and linked to all sorts of bad news including cancer, increasing cholesterol and obesity.

Why do you need to eat fats for fat loss? Fats are the most energy dense nutrient you can find. They transport essential vitamins, make and balance hormones, keeps you warm, form cell membranes, your brain and your nervous system and give us fatty acids that we can’t make on our own: omega 3s and 6s.

Building Your Own Macronutrient Meal Plan for Fat Loss

On to the fun, actionable stuff! The steps I’m going to break down for you here are specifically geared towards fat loss. That said, you can manipulate these in ways that will help you create a meal plan for any goal!

Step #1: Determine your overall calorie goal

There is one universal truth about fat loss. In order to lose weight, you must be in a caloric deficit. Notice that I didn’t say “you can only eat 1200 calories” or “never eat carbs or fats again”. Depending on a wide range of factors, including how much you exercise, how intensely you exercise, how active your job is, your sex, age, height, weight, etc….this number is going to change. All that said, this is a good place to start…

Estimate your overall calorie goal by multiplying your current body weight (in pounds), by 10-12. That will give you the total calories that you’ll want to shoot for every day. If you are very active, you’ll want to hit the top number in the range. If you don’t exercise much and have a sedentary job, stick to the lower number in the range.

These numbers may have to be adjusted as time goes on. Your adjustments will be based on your progress – more on that later!

For example, a 140-pound active woman who wants to lose weight would set her starting caloric goal at the higher end of a 1400-1680 calorie goal range. The same woman, if she doesn’t exercise much and works long hours behind a des, would aim for 1400 calories to start.

Step #2: Break down your macronutrient split

Once you’ve determined your calorie goal, you’ll need to determine how much of each macronutrient you need and how that fits into your overall plan.

Protein comes first. For fat loss, set your protein goal at 1 gram per pound of body weight. If it sounds like a lot, that’s because most people don’t come anywhere near that amount on a daily basis. You’re no longer most people. You’re a woman on a mission. So if you are 140 pounds, you should aim to consume 140 grams of protein.

Carbohydrates and fats can be allotted a bit more to preference but for fat loss, the following numbers a are good place to start. Carbohydrates should make up about 30% of your overall calories. Fats will fill in the rest.

Step #3: Convert percentages into grams

When following a macronutrient oriented diet you count grams, not calories. Here’s how to break it down:

Every gram of protein contains roughly 4 calories.
Every gram of carbohydrate contains roughly 4 calories.
Every gram of fat contains roughly 9 calories.

Let’s do math.

Start with your total calorie goal. For the sake of example we’ll look at the breakdown for the active 140-pound babe from above. Her goal is 1680 calories.

Break out protein. She wants to eat 140 grams of protein daily. 140 grams x 4 calories = 560 calories.

To find out how much carbohydrate she’ll need to eat she will multiply 30% (0.3) x 1680 (total calorie goal). That’s 504 calories. 504 calories / 4 calories per gram = 126 grams.

The remaining calories determine her fat intake. 1680 (total calorie goal) – 560 (protein) – 504 (carbs) = 616 calories. 616 calories / 9 calories per gram = 68.4 grams.

Macro summary:

• Protein intake = about 140 grams (560 calories)
• Carbohydrate intake = about 126 grams (504 calories)
• Fat intake = 68.4 grams (616 calories)

Step #4: Convert grams and percentages into a menu

Macros and numbers are great but you don’t eat macros. You eat food. Here’s how to take the above breakdown and create a menu template. I’m going to use the same woman for this example.

First, determine how many meals you like to eat in a day. For the sake of simplicity, let’s say you eat breakfast, lunch and dinner and you drink a protein and carb shake after your daily workout. Here’s a suggested breakdown:

You’ll have to use a food database to determine the foods that fit your goals at each meal. Hand portion control works to give you a general idea of how much of each macro you are looking for, but I recommend tracking precisely at least until you have a good sense of what foods give you what macros.

Here’s an example of how you can turn grams into real food:

Strategies to Personalize Your Plan and Increase Adherence

The key to benefitting from a macronutrient plan is to adhere to it with consistency. These are tips and strategies that I give to all of my clients to increase compliance.

Strategy 1: Mix and Match Ingredients

Don’t let your plan fall apart because you get bored with the ingredients. Even in the sample above you could easily swap in bison for beef, tuna for chicken, lentils for black beans, green beans for zucchini and so on. The trick to making it simple is two-fold.

First, use a list like this one (Healthy Eating Grocery List) to categorize your favorite foods into proteins, carbs, fats and combos. Understanding the difference makes it ten times easier to substitute ingredients based on personal preference, cravings, sales and availability.

Second, create go-to meals that fit your macros and that you enjoy. Make them in big batches so that you can cook once and eat multiple times.

Strategy 2: Post-Workout Fuel

One of the easiest ways I’ve found to hit my protein goals AND maximize the benefits is to include a post-workout shake and simple carb. Since simple carbs are easy for your body to digest, the best time to eat them is immediately after your workout with some protein. The carbs are immediately used to replenish depleted energy stores. That leaves the protein to start the repair, recovery and muscle growth process that it’s meant to do!

*Don’t take this as an excuse to eat cake. Fruit, like the banana in the above menu example, is a great option. That said, if there has to be an opportunity to eat a cookie, this is it.

Strategy 3: Use an App to Track Real Time

Meal tracking apps are convenient, especially at the start of your macronutrient journey. Best practice is to track your meals as you eat them (or before, for accountability), so that you don’t forget anything. Meal tracking apps like MyFitnessPal and FitBit help you log meals, create “frequently eaten” lists and stay on target.