Macros and MagicKitchen

The good news is that “macros” does not refer to macroeconomics…unless you’re into that, then it’s bad news, but who’s into macroeconomics…honestly.  “Macros” in this instance refers to macronutrients, or the things you eat and in this case the things you eat are broken into three major categories: fats, carbohydrates and proteins.  It seems that for the health conscious, just counting calories is passé.  To truly control your diet, counting macros is also essential for achieving your health goals as we begin a new year and decade.

Many people are now tailoring their macro intake to help achieve their overall health goals.  In other words, they’re controlling or altering their intake of fats, protein and carbs by assigning a percentage to each.  For example, those on a Keto diet value healthy fat above the other two.  Therefore, their daily food intake consists of something like 70% of their calories from fat, 25% from protein, and 5% from carbs.  On the other hand, someone looking to pack on more muscle in the new year might get 60% of their daily calories from protein, 25% from fat, and 15% from carbs.  Lastly, an endurance athlete would derive 50% of their calories from carbs, 30% from protein and 20% from fat.  Your goals determine your macro consumption breakdown.

Your optimal macro intake depends on various factors such as age, gender, weight, body mass index, activity level and future health goals.  One important factor is figuring out your specific daily caloric needs which depends upon your resting energy expenditure (REE) and non-resting energy expenditure (NREE).  Once you figure those out, you add them together to attain your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE) or calories burned over the course of a normal day in your life.  We constantly hear about nutrition requirements based on consuming 2,000 calories per day.  But what if your TDEE is above or below 2,000 calories per day?  Your macro intake would then have to be adjusted accordingly.  So, in order to determine your TDEE, go here for the formula.

The tough part comes in tracking your macro intake in order to tailor your food consumption to meet your health goals.  It obviously helps to know what foods are high (or low) in fat, protein and carbs.  So, in order to track, not only your calories, but your macros too, you could keep a food journal, weigh your produce prior to eating, and then plug everything you eat into a food app, or you could use MagicKitchen.com.

We provide all the macro info you’ll need prior to ordering your meals which are delivered right to your door.  You can shop for your macro needs by looking at each meal’s webpage which provides you with its nutritional information.  The nutritional information we provide for each meal includes serving size, total calories, calories from fat, total fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, total carbs, protein and vitamins and minerals.  Thus, you can order the meals from MagicKitchen.com that meet your macro-nutritional needs.  All you need to do is record their fat, protein and carb content in a food journal or food app (such as MyFitnessPal, Lose it!, or My Macros +.  You can then determine what percentage of your caloric intake is derived from protein, fat and carbs and then adjust it to meet your specific needs.

So, if you’re looking to lose some weight, go paleo or keto, add some muscle while losing excess fat, or just generally eat healthier this new year, start tracking those macros with the help of MagicKitchen.com!