Macronutrients for Athletes | How to Guide
Jan 31, 2025
By: Danielle Abel
When it comes to optimizing performance, recovery, and overall health, understanding and tracking macronutrients is essential for athletes and strength coaches alike. This guide will take you through the basics of macronutrients, how to get started with tracking, and practical tips for making macros work for a variety of goals.
What Are Macronutrients?
Macronutrients, or “macros,” are the nutrients your body needs in large quantities for energy and function.
The three main macros are:
- Protein: 4 calories per gram; essential for muscle repair and growth
- Carbohydrates: 4 calories per gram; your body’s primary energy source
- Fats: 9 calories per gram; important for hormone production and energy storage
Understanding these macros helps you tailor your nutrition to meet your training and performance needs.
Getting Started with Macro Tracking
Why Track Macros?
Tracking macros educates you about the nutritional content of your food and helps you align your diet with your performance goals. Even if you don’t track forever, starting with a solid foundation is crucial.
Tools You’ll Need:
- A food tracking app
- Recommended: Cronometer (includes micronutrients), MyFitnessPal, or apps that coach you, like Carbon Diet Coach or MacroFactor.
- A food scale
- Weighing food in grams or ounces ensures accuracy, especially during dieting phases.
- Nutrition label knowledge
- Know the key elements of a nutrition label:
- Serving Size
- Number of Servings
- Calories per ser Serving
- Total Fat per Serving
- Total Carbs per Serving
- Total Protein per Serving
- Total Fiber per Serving
- Know the key elements of a nutrition label:
Best Practices:
- Pretrack your meals: Log planned meals ahead of time; this is especially important to avoid having to eat & drink random things to "hit your macros" near the end of the day
- Consistency is key: If you’re new to tracking, aim to do so for at least 6 months to build habits & learn more about nutrition, feel free to take some days or weeks off in there too though
- Portion education: Tracking helps you learn the portion sizes needed for your body and your goals, and how to eventually eat more intuitively & have periods of time where you aren't tracking your intake
Meals Vs. Snacks
Ideally, as much of the foods you consume daily as possible should be in the form of meals. Snacks are perfectly fine, but having at least 3-4 meals daily will help keep you full and satisfied, often eliminating the need for snacks.
- A balanced meal consists of:
- Protein source
- Fiber carbohydrate source
- Starchy carbohydrate source
- Fat source
When it comes to fueling your body for athletic performance, prioritizing well-balanced meals over constant snacking can make a significant difference. While snacks can be a convenient option for filling small gaps, relying on them throughout the day often leads to inconsistent energy levels, less satisfaction, and potential challenges in hitting your macro goals.
The Benefits of Focusing on Meals
- Steady Energy Levels - Larger, balanced meals provide a steady release of energy over time, supporting sustained performance during training sessions and daily activities. Grazing on small snacks, especially those high in simple carbs, can lead to energy spikes and crashes that may leave you feeling drained or sluggish
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Improved Satiety - Meals that include protein, fiber, and healthy fats keep you fuller for longer, reducing the temptation to overeat or graze mindlessly throughout the day. This is particularly helpful during dieting phases when hunger management is key
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Better Nutrient Balance - Meals allow you to include all macronutrients in appropriate proportions, making it easier to hit your daily targets for protein, carbohydrates, fats, and fiber. Snacks, on the other hand, are often limited in variety and may lack essential nutrients
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Simplified Tracking -Tracking a few well-planned meals is more straightforward than logging dozens of small snacks. Planning your meals in advance also helps reduce decision fatigue and ensures your choices align with your goals
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Supports Digestive Health - Eating meals at regular intervals gives your digestive system a chance to process food fully between meals. Constant grazing can overload your digestive system, potentially leading to discomfort or bloating
We like to refer to the concept of balancing your meals throughout the day as "meal segmentation." Basically, it's just spreading your macros evenly across meals to maintain steady energy and digestion throughout the day. For example, if your daily goal is 150g of protein, aim for about 30-40g per meal across 4-5 meals.
How to Transition from Grazing to Meals
If you’re used to snacking frequently, transitioning to larger meals may take some adjustment. Here are practical tips to help:
- Start with Three Balanced Meals
- Aim for at least three meals per day, with a focus on balance:
- Protein for muscle repair and recovery.
- Fiber-rich carbs for slow energy release and digestive health.
- Healthy fats for satiety and hormone support.
- Aim for at least three meals per day, with a focus on balance:
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Plan Your Meals in Advance - Pretrack your meals to ensure they meet your macro targets and provide the nutrients you need. Think of snacks as supplemental rather than the main source of calories. (See below for more on meal planning)
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Use Snacks Strategically - Snacks can still play a role, especially if they’re high-protein or nutrient-dense. Use them to bridge gaps between meals or before/after workouts, but don’t rely on them as your primary fuel source
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Eat to Fullness, Not Overstuffed - A well-balanced meal should leave you comfortably full and energized without the need to reach for a snack an hour later. Pay attention to hunger and fullness cues to guide portion sizes
Mastering Meal Planning
Think of meal planning as balancing a budget. Just as you check your bank account, meal planning gives you a framework to manage your calorie and macro “spending” effectively. It reduces stress, saves time, and supports consistency. Meal planning is a nutritional best practice, but if planning a week at a time gives you a headache, consider just planning one day at a time and build from there.
Tips for Success:
- Use reusable meal plans: Save your meal plans! Don't throw away all the time & energy you spent creating them; go back 10-12 weeks, adjust and reuse
- Pretrack your day: Log your meals in your app before eating if possible; having a start of day routine where you sketch out what you'll eat for the day is a good approach, as you move through the day adjust your tracking as needed
- Balance your meals: Aim for meals with a protein source, fiber-rich carbs, starchy carbs, and healthy fats
Tracking Accuracy & Common Mistakes
Accurate tracking is important, especially during calorie deficit phases: Here’s how to refine your approach:
Key Areas to Focus On:
- Use verified app entries: Avoid incomplete or user-generated entries without macro details
- Track food consistently: Be mindful of whether you're tracking raw or cooked food; there are differences in the nutrients
- Account for everything: Don’t forget oils, condiments, and small bites—they do add up and become more important to account for during calorie deficit phases, when accuracy is very important
- Turn off exercise calories: Apps often overestimate calories burned; for this reason, it's not recommended to eat back exercise calories, include your activity in your total daily energy expenditure calculation, or rely on your coach’s calculations. If you're interested in learning more about this, check out this blog article about calculating calories.
Avoid these pitfalls to maximize your progress:
- Guesstimating too often: Use a food scale whenever possible, especially during calorie deficit phases, you may be able to get away with more estimating during maintenance and calorie surplus phases
- Misreading serving sizes: Pay attention to the listed serving size on nutrition labels
- Rounding errors on the nutrition label: Nutrition labels are rounded to the nearest 5 calories (less than or equal to 50 calories per serving) or 10 calories (>50 calories per serving), so this is just something to be mindful of. We recommend focusing on hitting your macros, and your calories should be close to your goal.
- Incorrect alcohol tracking: Convert alcohol calories to carbs or fats for accurate macro tracking.
- For a 100-calorie light beer, track it as: Carbs: 100 ÷ 4 = 25g carbs or Fats: 100 ÷ 9 ≈ 11g fats
Advanced Tracking Tips
Tracking Dining Out:
- Deconstruct your plate: Estimate components like bread, protein, and sides separately
- For example if you had a filet mignon, mashed potatoes with butter, and a garden side salad with ranch, track each of these foods individually
- Use similar entries: For complex dishes, find a close match in your app
- For example if you ordered a soup and it's difficult to identify exactly what's in it, try to find something similar in your tracking app and use that
Tracking Mixed Recipes:
- Recipes are a bit more difficult to weigh, here’s what we recommend:
- For example, for soup, you would weigh the soup and subtract the container that the soup is housed in, and indicate that the recipe makes, say, 2000g. When you get ready to eat your serving of the soup, place your bowl on the scale, tare it, and then weigh the serving of soup you consume and log that amount in grams
- A slightly less accurate way to track mixed food recipes is total portions:
- For example, if you have a dish that can easily be portioned into servings, say lasagna in a 13x9" pan, you can cut it into 15 servings and indicate that the recipe makes 15 servings.
- If you have 2 servings of the lasagna, you would track it as 2 servings
Net Carbs & Fiber:
- Nutrition labeling laws in the United States allow for insoluble fiber to be deducted from total carbohydrates to calculate total calories.
- However, that fiber will still show in the total carbohydrates. E.g., if an item had 15 grams of fiber, with 5 of that being insoluble fiber, only 10 grams (40 calories) would count towards the total calories for the nutrition label.
- For calorie & macro tracking, track total carbs for the most precision
Transitioning to Portions and Intuitive Eating
As you become more experienced with tracking macros, there may come a time when you want to step away from detailed tracking while still maintaining your performance, body composition, and health. The good news is that it’s entirely possible to transition away from tracking your intake, usually for at least a period of time, without losing progress.
Keep What Works
Instead of eliminating all forms of tracking, keep focusing on other key metrics to ensure consistency:
- Training data: Log your resistance training and conditioning sessions.
- Body weight, measurements, and/or progress photos: Track changes over time.
- Hydration: Monitor your water intake to stay well-hydrated.
- Steps: Keep an eye on your daily activity levels.
- Biofeedback: Track factors like sleep quality, energy levels, and recovery readiness.
Using Portions for Less Precision
Portions are a simplified alternative to tracking macros and work well during times when you want less structure. We can help convert your macro goals into portion-based guidelines for protein, fiber, carbs, and fats.
While portions are not as precise as macro tracking, they provide enough structure to help you stay mindful of what you’re eating. Be prepared for slight fluctuations in performance, body weight, or other metrics when using this method.
Transitioning to Intuitive Eating
Eventually, you may reach a point where you want to eliminate numbers from your nutrition altogether. This is when an intuitive eating approach becomes valuable.
Intuitive eating is rooted in the habits you’ve developed through macro tracking, focusing on mindful and intentional food choices without relying on measurements or calorie counts. Some of the key principles include:
- Balanced meals: Including a protein source and fiber-rich carb with each meal.
- Regular meal timing: Eating every 3-4 hours to maintain steady energy levels.
- Hunger and fullness cues: Adjusting your intake based on how your body feels.
- Non-food coping strategies: Managing emotions and stress without turning to food for comfort.
Even when eating intuitively, you’ll still benefit from tracking other factors like training data, steps, and biofeedback. These metrics allow you to monitor your progress and make adjustments when needed.
Transitioning from strict macro tracking to portions or intuitive eating is a natural progression for many athletes. It gives you the flexibility to maintain your goals while building a sustainable and mindful relationship with food. Whether you’re focused on hitting specific performance milestones or just want to feel your best, this approach allows you to stay aligned with your goals while embracing a balanced, adaptable nutrition strategy.
Nutrition Support Available
Our Hybrid Athlete Team, available on the Train Heroic app, is a great place to get support with your nutrition & training, no matter what season you're in or goals you have. Backed by our over 10 years of experience, we can help you reach your goals and become even more athletic. You can get more info or join our Hybrid Athlete Team here.
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