Nowadays, people make it a point of duty to evaluate the number of calories that they are consuming. If you aim to lose some weight, then measuring the volume of calories in your meals might be very beneficial.

This doesn’t mean you can just decide to chop off certain nutrients from your meal consumption. In reducing the number of calories to achieve weight loss, you must ensure that you are eating meals with balanced nutritional composition.

If you are looking for answers on how to calculate and balance your daily consumed macronutrients, this article will help you find the appropriate responses.

Among other things, you will get to understand how to evaluate the amount of suitable calorie for consumption as well as how your age, weight, height, and activity can influence the achievement of your goals of losing and gaining weight.

Macronutrients: What are they?

When you talk about macronutrients, you are referring to certain nutrients present in your meals that supply the body with energy.

In discussing nutrients, it is essential to understand the different elements found in the various classes of food consumed.

These substances are necessary for certain growth and metabolic functioning of the body systems. The nutrients that perform the functions of providing energy for the body to carry out its daily activities are required in large quantities, hence the term “Macronutrients”.

Of all the nutrients that may be present in your food, three of them are needed in large quantities by your body for proper functioning. They are namely:

– Fats
– Protein
– Carbohydrate

One gram of carbohydrate will supply the body with four calories, and the same goes for a gram of protein. A gram of fat, on the other hand, will give the body nine calories which are more than the combination of calories obtained from consuming a gram each of protein and carbohydrates.

Eating a healthy amount of protein, fats, and carbohydrates are very critical, whether you are looking to lose or gain weight.

How does the Macro Calculator work?

The macro calculator makes use of results obtained from the calculation of your total daily energy expenditure. TDEE, as it is normally referred to, can be calculated by evaluating the amount of energy you make use of doing something or nothing.

The energy expended when the body is doing nothing is usually referred to as the resting energy expenditure (REE). To calculate the REE, the formula you will use will depend on whether you are male or female.

For women, the formula will be,
REE = 10 x weight (kg) + 6.25 x height (cm) – 5 x age (y) – 161

For men,
REE = 10 x weight (kg) + 6.25 x height (cm) – 5 x age (y) + 5

To calculate the energy you need when engaging in physical activities, you will need to understand that there are different levels of activities that you engage in daily.

The energy expended when talking will be different from the energy used up when you are running to catch your bus or when you are lifting a heavyweight. Basically, the physical activities that you engage in can be sedentary, light, moderate, or high.

Sedentary

To calculate the amount of energy when engaged in sedentary activities, such as walking to get a cup of coffee from the coffee maker and returning to your desk, that would be TDEE = REE X 1.2

Light activities

Activities such as dancing for some minutes and running up and down a stairway consume more energy than sedentary activities.

In fact, these activities top up energy expended during sedentary activities by 200-400 calories for females and 250-500 calories for males. To get the energy used up during these light activities, it would be calculated as…
 
Continue reading the article and learn more about nutritional requirements on Daisy Linden’s blog.