Hello, my name is Calvin — Welcome to my take on nutrition. Before we get started, here is a brief background about myself, and why you should give a shit about what I have to say.

During 2015 I was the co-owner of a meal prep company. I was responsible for all operations of the business. I oversaw a staff of 8 employees, including a head chef, 4 line cooks & 3 delivery drivers.

Some of my weekly responsibilities included:

Creating a new menu each week

Calculating the nutrition for each meal

Accurately calculate the shopping list to minimize food waste

Creating delivery routes for our drivers

And much more…

The goal of this article is to teach you the easiest way to calculate your daily macronutrients. However, you will be required to understand some basic math. So, if I’m already asking for too much, too fucking bad.

Before we get into the numbers, let’s get some terms straight.

Macronutrients consist of Proteins, Carbs & Fats. Proteins, Carbs & Fats consist of calories. Calories are what our body stores as energy.

The next step is to figure out our basal metabolic rate (BMR)

Our body burns a certain amount of energy (calories) each day. I like to look at it as an equation: Calories In vs Calories Out. If you eat more calories than you burn a day, you store the excess calories as fat. If you consume less calories than your body needs that day, you will (hopefully) burn fat (saved energy).

There are a ton of ways to calculate this (do a simple search in google and you’ll see). Throughout my experiences, the easiest way I’ve found to calculate your BMR is to multiply your bodyweight by 12.

So, for someone who weighs 200lbs, they would need to eat ~2,400 calories a day to stay exactly how they are.

Now I’m pretty sure if want to learn how to count your macros, it’s not because you want to stay the same. So, let’s figure out our goal calories.

For anyone like myself, who feels like they are gaining weight just by looking at carbs, we will be eating at a caloric deficit. If losing weight isn’t your problem, then you will most likely be eating at a caloric surplus.

The easiest way to calculate your goal calories is to either add or subtract 20% of your BMR. So, if our 200lb friend is trying to lose weight, their goal calories would be ~1,920 calories/day (2400 * .8 = 1920).

If our 200lb friend said ‘fuck it, it’s bulking season’, their goal calories would be ~2,880 calories/day (2400 * 1.2 = 2,880).

Ok great, we now know our daily caloric goal. Now it’s (almost) time to calculate our daily macros!

For this example, we will use our 200lb friend is who trying to lose weight. We know their daily caloric goal is ~1,920 calories. There is a TON of information online (google is your friend) about which ratio/macro split you should do. We will use a ratio of 40/40/20 (protein/carbs/fat).

What does this mean?

40% of our daily calories will come from protein

of our daily calories will come from 40% of our daily calories will come from carbs

of our daily calories will come from 20% of our daily calories will come from fats

More basic math time — Based off of these ratios, our 200lb friend’s daily caloric intake would like this:

~768 calories from protein (1920 * .4 = 768)

calories from (1920 * .4 = 768) ~768 calories from carbs (1920 * .4 = 768)

calories from (1920 * .4 = 768) ~384 calories from fats (1920 * .2 = 384)

Since we know how many calories go into each macronutrient, we can calculate our daily macros. Our 200lb friend’s daily macros to lose weight would be:

~192g protein/day (768 / 4 = 192)

(768 / 4 = 192) ~192g carbs/day (768 / 4 = 192)

(768 / 4 = 192) ~42.6g fats/day (384 / 9 = 42.6)

That’s it! You fucking did it! Let’s go over a quick recap on how we did this.

Calculate your BMR (bodyweight * 12) Calculate your Daily Caloric Goal (BMR * .8 or 1.2) Calculate your Daily Macro Split/Ratio (40/40/20 = goal * .4 / goal * .4 / goal * .2) Convert your Calories to Macros (Protein calories / 4, Carbs calories / 4, Fats calories / 9)

As you can see, calculating your daily macros can be as simple as 4 steps. However, just like anything in life, it takes some time and a little learning. Is this method the most accurate way to calculate your daily macros? Definitely not, but it is by far the easiest.

At the end of the day I look at it like this — I guarantee that over 95% of the people reading this article will NEVER become a professional bodybuilder. So why the fuck would you eat & track your diet like a professional bodybuilder?

Let’s be real, we all just want to look better with our clothes off. And guess what? This is possible without a super strict diet. However, there are still basic principles that apply, and you still need to put in the work — there are no shortcuts in nutrition. But if there was one thing I’ve learned over the years and years of following all these bullshit diets — The more you know about nutrition, the easier it gets.

I hope you enjoyed my article, as this is my first contribution back to the Meal Prep Community. If you would like to see more articles about meal prepping then please post in the comments below!