The Waistline Balancing Act

Balancing Protein, Carbohydrates & Fat

How many grams of protein, fat, and carbs you should you be eating in a day? How do the fitness gurus arrive at these numbers? Well first, lets put these macro-nutrients into a perspective that most of us already understand -- caloric value.

The "easy way" to remember the approximate caloric intake for each gram of each macro-nutrient is this simple rhyme that a 4 year old could memorize: "494 what am I counting for?" Carbohydrates have approximately 4 calories per gram, as does each gram of protein. Fat, of course, is the heavy hitter at a whopping approximate 9 calories per gram.

The way I aim my diet is based on protein, because most of the people I get my information from are light to medium weight body builders who eat high protein diets. I try to intake 0.8 grams of protein for each pound of lean bodyweight when I'm cutting the fat, but sometimes I dip into the neighborhood of 0.6 grams. Currently, this leads me to (160*0.8) 128g of protein per day.

To figure out the rest of your macro-nutrient intake using my method, you need to work out a 3 way ratio. For instance, my current dietary targets are tuned to me, but I started off by using a common bodybuilding ratio of 15% fat, 55% carbs, and 30% protien. Now, I know that my daily protein target from the previous paragraph is 128g, so to base the rest on it, I will derive it using this formula:

( gProtien / PROTIEN_PERCENT ) * PERCENTAGE_X = grams_X

So to discover my fat target using my example ratio, I plug in the 128g, as gProtien, 55 for protien_percent and 15 for Precentage_x as my desired percentage of fat. This gives me 64 which means my fat target (grams_X) is 64g per day.

I hope that this wasn't too convoluted, but this is how I balance my diet out. Thanks for giving it a read and tune in again later this week for tips on how I eat for a better body without losing out on flavor.