Following specific diets is a great way to lose weight and keep healthy.
One of the more popular diets in recent years is the “keto diet”, which is short for the ketogenic diet, and aims to have the person reach a state of ketosis.
In order to do that, this is a diet that revolves around eating high amounts of fat, while also eating moderate amounts of proteins and low amounts of carbohydrates.
However, people on the diet will often use the term “macros” and talk about counting them. What are macros in keto?
To put it simply, macros is the term for the three categories of main nutrients that you eat. Short for “macronutrients”, it refers to fats, protein, and carbohydrates.
However, there is plenty more to learn about macros in regard to keto.
In our helpful article below, we’re going to tell you all about macros when it comes to keto, covering in greater detail what they are.
On top of that, we’ll explain how they’re calculated and tracked.
What Are Macros In Keto?
As we’ve touched upon, the term “macros” is short for “macronutrients”.
As you can guess, it refers to nutrients, more specifically the three categories of them that we eat the most and that provide us with the biggest portions of our energy.
These three categories are fats, proteins, and carbohydrates.
As you might have noticed, these are the three key nutrient groups that keto focuses on controlling the amounts of each that you have.
With keto, it looks at the optimal amounts of each of these nutrients that you should be getting, with all the calories that they bring.
The optimal amounts are measured in grams, so it’s the optimal amount of grams of fat, and then grams of proteins and carbohydrates.
When somebody counts the amount of macros that they’re getting, they are counting the grams of fats, proteins, and carbohydrates that they’re consuming each day.
This is going to be essential to success with the keto diet, because you need to make sure that you’re getting the right amounts of each: high, moderate, and low respectively.
If these are micronutrients, you might be wondering what micronutrients are. Micronutrients refer to minerals and vitamins.
How Do You Calculate Macros?
It’s important to note that the optimal amount of macros will differ from person to person. This is down to a whole series of different factors.
For example, a person’s age will affect the perfect amount of macros that they should be getting on the keto diet.
On top of that, other factors include how active a person is, their height, their body/weight composition, their body fat percentages (not the same as BMI), and their weight goals that they have..
On top of that, you must also know that family and gender can affect how your body will respond to certain macronutrients and whether they will actually help you reach ketosis.
Additionally, your own medical history can have some influence on it too.
For this reason, it’s best to check with a doctor or official dietitian who knows all your own health background and history before you start the keto diet.
On top of that, they should have a good idea of the diet itself, knowing whether it will be suitable for you and your own body.
Once you’ve done that, you can have a look at what the optimal amounts of the three macros should be, based on all the factors we mentioned at the start.
A particularly easy way to do this is to find a macro calculator online. There are plenty of them, and they’re all easy to use.
All you have to do is input the information (like age, weight, etc.) and it will use it all to determine the amount of calories best for you.
This amount will take into account getting you the optimal, high amount of fats, as well as the same for protein (though moderate amounts) and carbohydrates (low amounts).
These should be catered to your own goals, whether they’re focused on losing or gaining weight, or simply maintaining a steady and healthy weight.
Non-specifically, there is a general idea within keto that for somebody to lose weight they will want to keep your net carbohydrates to 20 grams or less every day.
For active people and athletes, though, it will be higher.
How Do You Track Macros?
Once you’ve got an idea of the optimum macros that you should be following in order to effectively do the keto diet, and get your body into a ketogenic state, then it’s simply a matter of tracking them.
If you don’t track the amount that you’re eating, then you won’t be able to stick to the correct amounts.
In order to do this, you’ll need to know the total amount of calories in everything you eat and drink every day, as well as the amount of fat, protein, and net carbohydrates.
Net carbohydrates, or “net carbs”, is the term given to the overall grams of carbohydrates in a piece of food, but with the grams of fiber and sugar alcohols subtracted from it.
This is going to take a lot of work, but should be worth it in order to reach ketosis.
You can use apps to help you note it all down and track it, but you’ll also need to study nutrition labels on everything you eat in order to get your figures.
On top of that, you’ll need to closely monitor your portion sizes.
When you track all this, it can be easy to lose your appetite over time – make sure to never reach dangerous levels of that.
Final Thoughts
Macros in keto are the optimum amounts of fats, proteins, and carbohydrates that you should be eating.
One of the most common things I talk to my clients about is calories, but so few of them actually know anything about them.
Calories is not a dirty word. If you remove emotion from it, it is simply a unit of energy.
We need calories to live and thrive, and knowing how many to consume is important to ensure that you’re living a healthy lifestyle.
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