Here's an easy and effective way to calculate the daily allotted calories you need for your body. If you've followed my posts, you know you burn calories every single day, even if you didn't get off your butt that day. Your Basal Metabolic Rate or BMR, is the number of calories your body needs to accomplish basic life sustaining tasks all day. When you blink, digest, grow hair, talk, organ function, so many things your body does that you don't even know about...those all require calories!

Heres an easy way to breakdown your daily needs of protein, carbohydrates and fats. Yes, your body needs all three to function optimally. Carbs are not an enemy. 

For reference, each gram of macronutrient accounts for calories:

• 4 calories per gram of protein
• 4 calories per gram of carbs
• 9 calories per gram of fats

1.) Set grams of protein to desired body weight in lbs.

Ex: If you would like to weigh 180lbs, you should aim to consume 180g of protein each day.

2.) A good macronutrient ratio is a 40,30,30 split. 40% from carbs, 30% from protein, 30% from fats. If we already know our protein is 180g per day, we can calculate our total calories, carbs and fats based off of that number. 

Ex: 180g of protein per day

180 x 4 calories per gram of protein = 720 calories from protein

720 / .30 = 2,400 total calories/day

Carbs:

2,400 x .40 = 960 calories 

960 calories / 4 = 240g of carbs

Fats:

2,400 x .30 = 720 calories

720 calories / 9 = 80g of fats

Total daily:

2,400 calories

180g protein

240g carbohydrates

80g fats

If this is hard for you, reach out to me and I will break them down for you. My current clients, we can do this right in the studio. Depending on your activity level, goals and other factors, we may need adjust total daily calories. An example of that would be me. I weigh around 185lbs... based on the calculations above, my total daily calories would be around 2,500. Although, I'm super active and have a lot of muscle on my body, so I consume around 3,500-4,000 calories depending on the day.

And remember, most people want the "look" of an athlete (I think) so you need to eat like one of them. You cannot build muscle on 1,100 calories per day. Its science. 

So trust the science. Ask me questions. I'm here for ya ✌️.