If you’ve spent any time in fitness spaces or scrolling through Instagram, you’ve probably heard the word “macros” thrown around like everyone already knows what it means. And if you’re sitting there thinking “okay but what actually are macros and why should I care?”… this post is for you. Consider this your beginner guide to tracking macros — written by someone who’s been in your shoes and came out the other side with a method that actually works.

I’m a Precision Nutrition certified nutrition coach with a specialization in macros, and I’ve worked with women from all over the globe on body recomposition using macro tracking. I’m also a mom of three, a homeschooler, and I’m currently navigating perimenopause myself, so I understand how frustrating it can be when your body stops responding the way it used to. This is the guide I wish someone had handed me when I was first starting out… with flexibility built in. When I first started tracking macros, influencers were very rigid about how close I needed to be in order to get results. That’s just not true. You can track macros with flexibility if you understand the math.

Here’s everything you need to know about macros, explained simply, with none of the science-textbook energy.

Let’s get into it.

Macronutrients are the three large groups of nutrients that are in every single food we eat. They are carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. Every food has at least one macronutrient, but many contain more than one (or even all three).

Each food has one dominant macronutrient that provides the majority of its energy, and that’s how foods get grouped.

For example, a serving of almonds has 6 grams of carbs, 6g of protein, and 14g of fat. So almonds are considered a fat because the majority of their calories come from fat.

A serving of brown rice has 43g of carbs, 5g of protein, and 3g of fat, which is why brown rice is considered a carb.

Each macronutrient provides a specific number of calories per gram:

• 1 gram of carbohydrate = 4 calories
• 1 gram of protein = 4 calories
• 1 gram of fat = 9 calories

When you track macros, you’re automatically tracking calories too (but more accurately). This is actually one of the biggest advantages of tracking macros over just counting calories… food companies are allowed to estimate calories on nutrition labels by up to 20%, so tracking by the gram is much more precise.

The bottom line? Adding up your macros by calories and adding them all together gives you the exact calories a serving size of food has. Once you understand that, you’re ready for the next step.

Each macronutrient performs specific jobs in the body, and understanding that is what makes macro tracking so much more useful than just counting calories.

Carbs provide quick energy for immediate use. They’re our main source of fuel, but we don’t store much of them.

Proteins are the body’s building blocks. They affect our muscle composition, help build and repair body tissue, and play a role in creating mood-regulating neurotransmitters.

Fats help form structures in our body like the brain, cell walls, and nervous system. They’re the most concentrated source of energy (because of those 9 calories per gram), they carry fat-soluble vitamins, and they provide raw materials for many hormones. If you’re in perimenopause or approaching it, this one matters even more because your body relies on dietary fat to support the hormones that are already shifting, so cutting fat too low can make symptoms worse.

Before we get into the how, it helps to understand the bigger picture of energy balance, because this is where it all starts.

Energy balance is the relationship between the energy we take in from food and drinks and the energy we use through metabolism and activity. The law of energy balance stands true regardless of what macro breakdown you have or what types of foods you eat.

Energy In = Energy Out (Maintenance): When the energy coming in matches what’s going out, you maintain weight.

Energy In > Energy Out (Surplus/Build): When you’re taking in more energy than you’re using, you gain weight.

Energy In < Energy Out (Deficit/Cut): When you’re taking in less energy than you’re using, you lose weight.

But here’s the important part… you may lose weight in a deficit, but we want more. The goal is to promote fat loss while maintaining muscle mass (if you’ve ever said you want to look “fit” or “lean” — this is what you meant). This is where macros can play a key role. Macros can also help us perform better, recover better, and honestly just feel better throughout the day.

And if you’re in your mid-to-late 30s or 40s and feeling like your body just isn’t responding the way it used to, it’s not in your head. Hormonal shifts during perimenopause affect how your body stores fat, builds muscle, and processes energy. Understanding energy balance and dialing in your macros is one of the most effective tools you have during this season. The scale might not always reflect what’s happening, but your body composition can still change in your favor.

Think of your nutrition as sitting on a spectrum. On one end is a calorie deficit (a cut), in the middle is maintenance, and on the other end is a calorie surplus (a bulk). The reverse diet is the space between a cut and maintenance, where you’re slowly lifting your calories back up.

Cut (Calorie Deficit): You must be in a calorie deficit to lose weight, and you can do that most effectively by eating less or a combination of eating less and increasing movement. But being in a deficit just means you’ll lose weight. Our goal should be to lose fat and preserve muscle, and we can do that by keeping protein high, pairing nutrition with hypertrophy training (lifting weights with progressive overload), and staying in a manageable deficit.

Maintenance: This is a lot more than just “maintaining weight” and waiting until your next cut. You can achieve body recomposition at maintenance, where over time the distribution between muscle and fat on your body changes. This takes many months to years, so be patient.

Reverse Diet: This is the phase that comes after a cut (what you may call a “diet”), when you strategically increase calories while being able to keep most of the fat loss off that you achieved during your cut. If you want to learn more about reverse dieting, I’ll have a dedicated post on that soon.

Bulk (Calorie Surplus): This is when you intentionally eat above maintenance alongside a high protein diet and hypertrophy training, with the goal of gaining mostly muscle. You will gain some fat along with it, but doing it this way (versus just eating above maintenance and gaining weight) minimizes fat gain and promotes muscle growth.

This is the question everyone asks after reading the basics, and it’s your next step. Understanding what macros are is key, but knowing YOUR numbers is what actually gets you moving.

There are a few ways to figure out your starting macros:

Online calculators are the quickest option. They’ll ask for your age, weight, height, activity level, and goal, and they’ll generate a set of numbers for you. They can be a decent starting point, but they’re working off of basic formulas that don’t know your metabolism, your history with dieting, your stress levels, or what’s going on hormonally. If you’ve been under-eating for a long time or you’re navigating perimenopause, a generic calculator is probably going to underestimate what you actually need. Use it as a rough starting point if you want to get going quickly, but know that those numbers will likely need adjusting.

Working with a coach is the more precise route. I offer a one-time custom macro count where I review your full picture — your goals, your lifestyle, your training, and your nutrition history — and deliver two personalized macro targets (one for a mild deficit and moderate deficit OR if you’re in maintenance, two within your likely range of maintenance calories).

You also get one adjustment within the first two weeks, because your starting numbers are exactly that — a starting point. Real data from your first couple weeks of tracking tells us what needs to shift. It’s $55 and you’ll have your numbers within 48 hours.

If you want even more context before you start, I’m updating my Macro Tracking Guide — a digital guide that walks you through the full process of understanding and applying your macros, from the basics covered in this post all the way through adjustments and real-life application. It’ll be available for purchase soon, and I’ll link it here when it’s live. This is for your first 30 days of tracking macros.

I want to be clear because I think this matters: macro tracking is a powerful tool, but it’s not the right tool for everyone.

If you have a history of disordered eating, restrictive eating patterns, or an unhealthy relationship with food, tracking macros could do more harm than good. Honestly, any diet could. But the structure of logging food and hitting numbers can trigger obsessive behaviors in some people, and no body composition goal is worth your mental health.

If you’re unsure whether macro tracking is a good fit for you, talk to your doctor or a therapist who specializes in disordered eating before you start. There’s no shame in that! It’s actually the smartest thing you can do.

For everyone else, macro tracking done with flexibility (not rigidity) can actually improve your relationship with food. It takes the mystery out of what you’re eating and puts you in control. That’s the approach this entire beginner guide to tracking macros is built on. It gives you structure with freedom.

The good news is that you don’t need much to start tracking macros. Here’s your starter list:

A tracking app. You’ll use this to log your food each day and see how your macros are adding up. A few popular options are MyFitnessPal and Macros First. I personally use MyFitnessPal because the food database is massive and most of my clients are already familiar with it. Macros First has some plus sides, too. My recommendation is to download both, play around with each for a couple of days and see which interface you like better.

A food scale. You’ll use this to weigh food as you learn serving sizes. You can pick one up at Walmart or Target for under $15, or order one online. Here’s the one I’ve had for years (super cheap, has held up with just replacing the 2032 battery every so often). I have one both in my camper and home.

Measuring by weight (grams, ounces) is more accurate than measuring by volume (cups and spoons), so whenever you can, use the scale… especially when you’re first starting out. That said, if measuring cups and spoons are your only option, that’s still better than eyeballing serving sizes.

A willingness to learn. Tracking macros has a bit of a learning curve in the first couple of weeks, but it gets easier pretty quickly. The first few days you’ll spend more time searching for foods in the app and figuring out portion sizes. By week three or four, you’ll have your regular meals saved and you’ll be logging in just a few minutes a day.

If you’re just beginning, I think pre-logging your day the night before can be really helpful. It takes the guesswork out of mealtimes and gives you a chance to adjust meals as needed before you’re standing in the kitchen hungry and making decisions on the fly.

Here are a few tips to set yourself up for success in the app:

Set your calorie goal to zero. If you don’t do this, the app will try to calculate calories for you based on their formula and it won’t match your real macro targets. Focus on hitting your personalized macro numbers in grams, not the calorie number the app generates.

Set your macros to zero in the app as well. In the free version of MFP, macros are set by percentage, which doesn’t always line up with specific gram targets. If you set everything to zero and just focus on your actual numbers, you’ll be more accurate. (If you have the premium version, you can set macros to specific gram amounts.)

Don’t add exercise into the app. If you log workouts, MFP will give you “extra” calories, which throws everything off. Your macro targets already account for your activity level.

Search with “grams” in the query for whole foods. For example, if you’re weighing baked sweet potato without the skin, search “sweet potato baked no skin grams.” You’ll get better and faster at finding the right entries over time.

Save your meals. Once you input an entire meal, save it in the app so you can quickly pull it up again without re-entering every ingredient. Go to the three dots next to your meal entry, select Save As Meal, and you’ll find it anytime under My Meals.

Check the Nutrients tab. In addition to macros, I use the Nutrients tab in MFP to track fiber, saturated fat, and sodium. These are easy to overlook but they matter, especially fiber (more on that below).

This is one of the first questions everyone asks, and I love it because the answer takes so much pressure off.

You do not need to hit your macros to the exact gram. Seriously. That’s not realistic and it’s not necessary.

Aim to fall within 5 to 10 grams of your carb and protein targets and within 3 to 5 grams of your fat target (since fats are more calorie dense). This is especially helpful during a fat loss phase where precision matters a bit more, but even then, getting close is the goal… not perfection.

And here’s the thing: no one hits their macros perfectly every single day. That’s a fool’s errand. Don’t waste your energy trying to get to the exact gram. Feel free to sub a few carbs for fats or fats for carbs. You can also sub some carbs for protein or vice versa. Just try not to substitute too much protein for the other macros, because we need enough protein to maintain muscle mass. Get close, stay within your overall calorie range, and call it a day.

Counting macros is not a meal plan that forces the same foods every day. This isn’t a typical diet where you have foods that are allowed and foods that are off limits. You can eat whatever you want. That’s the whole point of flexible eating.

However, you’ll want to remember that minimally processed, whole foods will give you more micronutrients (AKA vitamins and minerals) and fiber, which will help you feel full and satisfied. And your body also absorbs more energy from whole foods than from processed foods, so more of that energy is actually available to you. (Just a little nerdy nutrition coach tidbit you can keep in your back pocket.)

Here’s a quick reference to get you started.

Most foods contain more than one macro, but they’re grouped by their dominant one:

Carbohydrates: oats, potatoes, rice, bread, wraps, beans, pasta, berries, fruit, quinoa, lentils, corn, popcorn (unless you buy the buttery kind, then it might be fat).

Proteins: eggs, egg whites, chicken, beef, pork, cottage cheese, tofu, Greek yogurt, skim milk, turkey, fish, shrimp, protein powder.

Fats: avocado, olive oil, coconut oil, almond butter, peanut butter, almonds, cashews, chia seeds, pumpkin seeds, cheese, butter.

When you’re in a calorie deficit, you’ll naturally want to lean toward some of your diet being high volume, low calorie foods that fill you up without eating through all of your calories early in the day. Think cauliflower rice instead of brown rice, egg whites instead of whole eggs, popcorn instead of chips, Greek yogurt instead of full-fat yogurt. This isn’t a hard and fast rule, but swapping some of your day’s ingredients will help you stay in calorie range. When you’re in a reverse diet or a bulk, you can flip that a bit… you want more calorie-dense foods to actually hit your higher targets without feeling stuffed all day.

Fiber deserves its own mention because it’s one of those things that makes a huge difference and most people aren’t getting enough of it. Fiber helps you feel full and satisfied, aids digestion, and lowers the risk for developing many diseases including hypertension, diabetes, obesity, and stroke.

The general recommendation is at least 14g of fiber per 1,000 calories from whole foods. As a minimum, women should aim for at least 25 grams per day. But if you’re healthy and active, 35+ grams of fiber a day is really useful.

Some of my favorite high fiber foods include whole grains (brown rice, whole wheat bread and pasta), beans, broccoli, berries, apples, popcorn, edamame, chickpeas, carrots, and dark leafy vegetables. You can track fiber in the Nutrients tab in MyFitnessPal alongside your macros.

You can browse all my high fiber recipes on my site anytime here.

This trips people up all the time so I think it’s worth giving a quick shout out. You can log food either raw or cooked, but you need to make sure the entry you select in the app matches how you weighed it.

If you weigh chicken raw before cooking, search for the brand and type of raw chicken. If you weigh it after cooking, search for grilled or cooked chicken. The nutrition will be different because meats and potatoes lose weight during cooking (water evaporates), while pasta and rice gain weight (they absorb water).

Here’s a quick reference:

• 8oz raw chicken = approximately 6oz cooked
• 16oz raw ground beef = approximately 12oz cooked
• 2oz raw brown rice = approximately 4oz cooked
• 2oz raw pasta = approximately 4.5oz cooked

Nutrition labels for meat are always based on raw weight unless otherwise specified. Once you get used to this, it becomes second nature. For example, I know if I weigh my chicken breast raw, it’s 4oz and if I weigh it grilled, it’s about 3oz.

After working with clients for years, I see the same handful of mistakes come up over and over again:

Trying to be perfect. Getting within a few grams is the goal. Obsessing over hitting the exact number every day will burn you out faster than anything else and this will become like every other diet.

Ignoring food quality. Just because something fits your macros doesn’t mean it should be a daily staple. Prioritize whole foods and then enjoy the flexibility of fitting in treats when you want them.

Not tracking cooking oils and condiments. This one is the sneakiest. One tablespoon of olive oil is 14 grams of fat and 120 calories. They’re all unsaturated fats (those healthy ones that can increase your HDL levels — a great goal!), but still will make you go over calories if you’re not tracking properly. A drizzle here, a squirt of ranch there, an extra splash of creamer in your coffee… those add up quick and they’re easy to forget because they don’t feel like “food.” If you’re cooking with oil, measure it. If you’re adding sauce, log it. These are usually the hidden calories people can’t figure out when their numbers aren’t adding up.

Not pre-logging. The worst thing you can do is get to the point of hunger and have nothing planned. Pre-logging the night before (or even just knowing your next meal) saves you from making impulsive decisions that throw off your whole day.

Piling all your protein at the end of the day. It’s best to spread protein throughout the day across all meals and snacks rather than trying to cram it all into dinner. Your body is constantly breaking down and building up new proteins, so spreading it out helps maintain that process. This is especially true if you’re in perimenopause — your body becomes less efficient at utilizing protein as hormones shift, so distributing it across 3 to 4 meals gives your muscles more opportunities to use it.

Skipping rest day nutrition. Rest days are when the real muscle changes happen… your body is recovering from the stimulus you put it under during training. You need just as much nutrition on rest days as training days. Hit your macros every day, regardless of whether you worked out.

Reacting to one bad day. If you go over your macros one day, eat normally the next day. Please don’t punish yourself, or under-eat or add extra cardio. Use the next day to look at where things went off track so you can learn from it, and plan accordingly for next time.

Alcohol is technically the 4th macronutrient, but it’s nonessential (meaning we don’t need it to sustain life). It’s also calorie dense at 7 calories per gram.

To track alcohol, you can use either carbs or fats (or a combination of both). You never want to use protein grams for calculating alcohol calories. If you’re using a mixer, track that separately first, then calculate the alcohol portion.

For one shot of tequila at 97 calories, for example: you could log it as 24g carbs (97 divided by 4) or 11g fat (97 divided by 9) or split it between the two.

And I’d be remiss as a coach not to mention this… if you have serious body composition goals, alcohol is going to work against you. It affects the liver, adrenal glands, hormones, thyroid, blood sugar, gut, and sleep. All of these are already disrupted in perimenopause as well, so this can make symptoms even worse. An occasional drink is fine, but it’s worth evaluating what role it plays in your life if you’re trying to make significant changes to your body. It may be the thing holding you back.

If this beginner guide to tracking macros was helpful and you want to keep learning, I’ll be publishing more posts that go deeper on the individual topics covered here… everything from how to set your macros for fat loss, to reverse dieting, to how to track macros while traveling. Each one will build on what you learned here.

If you want everything in one place, my Macro Tracking Guide walks you through the full process — from understanding the basics to applying your macros in real life. I’m updating it this week and it’ll be available for purchase soon. I’ll link it here when it’s live.

And if you’re at the point where you’d rather skip the guesswork and have someone calculate your numbers for you, I offer a one-time custom macro count where I review your information, run your numbers based on your goals and lifestyle, and deliver two personalized macro targets with one adjustment within the first two weeks. It’s $55 and you’ll have your numbers within 48 hours.

Already tracking and want more hands-on support? I also offer 1:1 monthly coaching with custom macros, a tracking spreadsheet, movement recommendations, and biweekly check-ins. It’s month-to-month with no contracts and I only take a handful of clients at a time. You can learn more about both options on my coaching page.

Recipes That Help