How are defining ‘enough’? I have looked at BMR calculators etc but really seem to struggle to hit a happy medium where I can lose a little body fat and maintain performance. I either seem to overeat and maintain/put on a little or undereat and feel like total garbage. Maybe it’s because I don’t have a huge amount to lose at 6 feet tall and 180lbs. Could I lose some? Sure but I’m not going to win anything and would rather have the energy to maintain training. I also know what I’m eating is healthy so I don’t lose too much sleep over it.

Your macros look sensible for someone pursuing a normal diet, but if you’re not feeling crap have you anything to worry about? Maybe if you’re trying to bulk up a little you might need to eat more then lean out but I’m sure someone else can give you some better advice than that.

I have been weighing and measuring everything I eat for over 2 years.

My general "feel good" macro ratio is about 50-30-20. Exactly what you stated in your post. If I go under 45% carbs I feel lousy. I'm a big volume guy at about 16,500 miles ridden to date.

Key foods for me:
Eggs
oats
buckwheat
greek yogurt
salmon
sweet potatoes
brown jasmine rice
chicken
red meat
Lots of veggies
Nuts and nut butter
I do try to limit my bread or gluten free mostly

I have found that reduction is better than elimination in almost every category that most folks fear. Therefore I eat a little candy, gluten, dairy / etc...etc...

I've come to where I can lose and gain weight in the blink of an eye. It's all about consistency. I'm 41 years old.

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24 Hour World TT Champs-American record holder
Fat Bike Worlds - Race Director
Insta: chris.s.apex

I'd say 20% protein is low and 50% carbs is high. Most of us don't eat enough protein..

As for "enough" food, just keep an eye on the scale. This will ensure you're maintaining the correct intake regardless of training volume.

The best way to figure out caloric intake requirements is to eat, track, and measure religiously to determine what your metabolic needs are. Track it over the long term, if you are trending down in weight, eat more, if trending up, eat less. This isn't day to day, but week over week averages.

The nutritionist my wife sees (and I chat with too) has us on 1/3 each carb protein fat. When I'm training, I'll bump that to 50%carb, 25/25% Protein / Fat. I will say, it's darn near impossible to hit 33% protein without feeling like I'm overconsuming the meats (I don't like shakes to hit macros, I'd rather eat real food). That's really the reason for upping the carb intake during training, just tough to add 500+kcal without using calorie dense foods.

With that said, I don't count the calories I eat during workouts toward that day's goal, nor do I give myself credit for the calories burned during the workouts. I do try to keep everything even throughout the week, so even on days where I run for 3 hours or ride for 4-5, I'm not gorging myself trying to get all the calories in, I'll make it up on my recovery days when I eat 15% or so more than I "need" for that day. Evening this out helps me stay on track and not feel starving on on days when I'm recovering.

Nutrition is very individual though, what works for me may not work for you. The only real hard and fast rule is if you eat junk, you'll get junk out.

Rather than ratio look at mimimum requirements. I do 240g pro, 240g carb, 80g fat minimum. Then for work outs I add 2g carb / 1g fat ratio until calorie needs are met

Where the hell did you come up with that ratio? 20% protein? WTF?

That's just too low. For me I try to do a ratio of P 45 C 35 F 20 when I'm cutting. When I'm trying to bulk up I got to P 40 C 35 F 25. I've like never been in the sweet spot of "maintenance", but for that I try to go straight balance at 1/3 for each macronutrient.

If you're wanting to maintain your lean mass you need to set protein at 1 gram/1lb of bodyweight and then build the rest around that. For the most part it's thermogenesis so where the energy comes from overall is really irrelevant if you got higher fat or not.

Then you build the diet really around whole foods of course that you cook yourself.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

The scientific standard is 1g/ kg not pound, for a normal person (none to basic exercise, little sport focus). 1.4-2g/ kg of body weight for athletes depending on the sport/goal. 20 % makes a lot more sense when using those standards.

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Matt Leu, M.S. Kinesiology
San Pedro Fit Works, Los Angeles, CA
Endurance Athlete and Coach
Consistency/time=results

If he's 150lbs and doing 4 hours of training/day...then I could somehow see protein lower on the totem pole because that only ends up being 600 KCals. It truly all depend on the goals for the person, I wouldn't tell someone to take 2g/pound if they're 150lbs of bodyweight.

Now...right now I'm 205ish...trying to preserve muscle mass on the cut down and I'm eating 170g of protein...yeah sure you can lose weight by lowering your protein but you shouldn't. Carbs and Fat are the energy source so play with those when it comes to total KCals at end of day. And, hell I'd love to be able to eat 300g of carbs/day.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

OP, as a fitness professional I can tell you that unless you are training many hours a day in raw exercise time there are 0 scientifically supported reasons to approach your body weight in grams of protein per pound of body weight. The scientific standard range is 1.4-1.6g/kg for most regularly active athletes, and up to 2g/kg. The more muscle you have and use, the more you need. Anything over that is reserved for pro and full time athletes that perform at a high level, usually in sports that involve having a lot more muscle than the average or even above average bear, or you risk kidney and liver problems from a long term perspective. From my experience with many clients, calorie counting apps are ok but only work when you are:

1. Completely accurate in your serving sizes, and enter everything
2. Measure your weight regularly; so the app says you're under your budget, but are you losing weight?
3. Set your basic activity (lifestyle) level to the lowest level, and add exercise manually. The estimates beyond the standard base can be very subjective. If it's too low you can adjust upwards; you'll know pretty quick hunger-wise, or your calories will be over all the time, and you'll lose weight.

I always highly recommend consulting at least once with a registered dietician or a reputable nutritionist with a degree in the field to really get a good idea of what and how much to eat for your needs. For most people, 15-30% protein works fine with the other ratios working around that. If you want a specific approach, your daily protein intake can start at 1 to 1.4g of protein per kilogram of body weight (divide your weight in lbs by 2.2) depending on your activity level, and consider a higher intake if you lose energy levels or strength easily in a workout or day to day. Because you surf, exposure to cooler water may require a higher amount of carb and fat calories (to stay warm) if you find you're not maintaining weight. Big picture, it's all about calories in vs calories out in order to gain, lose, or maintain weight.

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Matt Leu, M.S. Kinesiology
San Pedro Fit Works, Los Angeles, CA
Endurance Athlete and Coach
Consistency/time=results

The 'myth' about moderately high protein (eg 2g/kg+) leading to kidney/liver problems has long been debunked. The comment about aiming for 1g/lb of body weight is a really good starting point for individuals regularly exercising.

The best advice for getting your cal & macro intake correct for cutting/maintaining/bulking I can give is to just start tracking everything you eat. Track for about 2-3 weeks, then take the average cal and macro split per day for each week. At the same time monitor your body weight 3 times per week, same time and day each week usually morning just after you wake and haven't eaten or drank anything, and average that for the week also.

You should set protein first at 1g/lb of body weight, then look to set fats (I'm 5'10 and 185lb and set my fats at 70g/day), then for the rest of your cal needs use carbs. Obviously accounting for the fact that P=4cal, F=9cal, C=4cal.

Find your maintenance point, the point where you maintain weight at a certain cal level. Then if you want to cut start off by dropping your daily cal intake (by reducing carbs) by 250cal, for bulking increase by 250cal. Monitor your weight, once you start to plateau on your weight loss or gain, drop/increase cal by another 250 per day. Keep going until you reach the level of leanness you are seeking.

Dont look to set your weight loss cal/macro split by a formula first. Start tracking and measuring first to get a baseline, then adjust from there.

How confident are you that you're a few hundred calories short every day? If this was the case then all things being equal you'd be losing half a pound a week or so, if you're not losing weight and you're happy at the weight you are then you're probably getting enough calories in.

Plenty of healthy foods with lots of calories - avocado, nuts and seeds, beans, pulses, sweet potatoes, brown rice, oats, milk, meat and fish, dried fruit.

My approach on macros is to use carbs as fuel for longer/harder workouts. On days when I'm not exercising, or just doing short, easy training, I try to pretty much cut out carbs, and certainly try to avoid sugary or refined carbs. The more training I do in a day, the more carbs I take on. For medium training days I'll try to stick mostly to healthy carbs (things in the list above). The more epic the training, the less I worry about what I'm eating, I just need fuel. The days when I'm burning off >2000 calories on a long bike, brick, run or race, are the days when I can have a pizza, an ice cream, a slice of cake (or 3), etc.

Even on a low carb day I'm still eating veg and maybe some fruit, so still getting maybe 10-20% of calories from carbs. I don't worry too much about the fat:protein ratio - I try to get plenty of protein in to help muscle recovery, and most healthy, wholefood sources of protein tend to come with a good amount of healthy fats in there as well.

There isn't much of a myth about it, if you understand the context. Yes, there is less of an implication in people with no kidney problems; but even in an individual with elevated blood pressure it can absolutely affect kidney function. For example, dehydration affects kidney function, so if we exercise for long sessions on a daily basis where we sweat a lot affecting our chronic electrolyte levels, it can set us up for a higher risk to our kidneys. Same for liver function, someone who has no liver disease is generally safe for elevated protein levels, but other life factors may change the effects. The "myth" part for excess protein, in the scientific community, is based on consuming levels above .8 g/kg, the baseline for a person doing little to moderate training. Thats the baseline, and we can go well above that.

1g/lb is the body building rule of thumb/technique, with more for "cutting" (excess protein makes us shed water, not make more muscle), which has been in fact debunked by the scientific community by many studies and is accepted enough to be in several exercise physiology and training texts, finding excess protein is stored as carb and pro and have established guidelines (see below). 1g/lb rounds out to 2.2 g/kg, which is a little on the high side for 90% of the athletes out there before we just store it as fat and pee out the aminos. We don't store protein and only use what our body's can put to use at the time we consume it.

The National Strength and Conditioning Association suggests .8 to 1.4 g/kg for aerobic endurance athletes, and heavy resistance training athletes up to 1.7g/kg; since most serious athletes are never in one category the general recommendation of 1.5 to 2 g/kg, assuming that 65% of protein is of animal protein (high biological value), more if plant based protein diet. Again, the NSCA suggests the cap is around 4 g/kg with brief periods above that, but that is generally seen in high power, heavily muscled athletes. As much as we'd like to think we are all bad ass athletes, most of us are amateurs, whether we like it or not, and simply have no use for much protein beyond 2g/kg, to the point where we break the excess down into carbos and fat, and wash away ketoacids and nitrogen in our urine. Considering that protein is the most expensive part of our diet, it becomes a wasted opportunity to exchange for high quality carbs and fat sources that don't go through a conversion from protein, and come with nutrients that also help our development as athletes.

Otherwise, I completely agree that tracking a baseline is the way to go rather than following a base formula.

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Matt Leu, M.S. Kinesiology
San Pedro Fit Works, Los Angeles, CA
Endurance Athlete and Coach
Consistency/time=results

What makes people fat is carbohydrate. It's a long ass process for your body to store excess protein as fat...and it truly won't if you're exercising/training regularly unless you are just in a caloric surplus to no end.

ISSN recommends 1.4 to 2g protein/kg when it comes to muscle gain and maintenance. These are the leading sports nutritionists, most dietitians are on the back end of recommendations and dealing with science that is for the regular and mostly sedentary populace. Considering that the food pyramid is pure junk science as well.

Back to storing protein as fat, you actually don't. Your body only goes through Gluconeogenesis when you're out of carbohydrates to burn and it needs more fuel.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

I would argue eating too much carbs. Carbs themselves do not make you fat, it's just the excess of carb intake.

Take that one step further. Excess food makes you fat. Excess carbs themselves do not make you fat, its the excess food intake.

Looks like our protein recs are similar, so no issue there.

Don't confuse protein usage vs. the break down of muscle when there is a lack of glucose; that is generally true with regard to muscle catabolism, but doesn't explain how we utilized consumed protein. And, actually we do store excess protein as fat, just because it's a long ass process (the Krebs/citric acid cycle), doesn't mean our bodies resist doing it. Our bodies will use glycogen before protein as metabolic energy (energy we use "now"), but to store as fat for energy to use at a later date is absolutely not an issue for our bodies. Using fat (stored energy) as metabolic energy is a long ass process too, and our bodies do it every day as we need it, whether it for movement, hormones etc. Livestrong.com sums it up nicely: "Protein is first metabolized into amino acids and ammonia. The leftover carbon compound is converted into glucose, which your body uses for energy. If your cells have enough glucose, and there is no space left to store it as glycogen in your muscles or liver, the excess glucose is converted into fat and stored." They use plenty of hard science, as well as resources from NSCA, ACSM and ACE will back this up.

What makes people fat is over consuming any nutrient that can be used as an energy source, whether it is its primary function or not, can and will be stored as fat if it cannot be used within a biologically practical time frame. Protein doesn't just float around for days on end until we use it for muscle. We have to use or store it. And if we consume more than our bodies can use on a regular basis, we will convert protein to fat, and lose its amino acids for building muscle. Thats plain math, and ancient physiological science. There is little conclusive evidence out there that proves otherwise.


EDIT: with regard to registered dietitians only working with sedentary populace is pretty far off. They are in fact the very people who make these scientific recommendations in the first place. They are required to have a bachelors and/or master's in nutrition to be and RD, and are often involved in the research to find the best nutritional practices, not follow a stupid pyramid. Every RD I've worked with was fully competent in making effective programs for athletes, even if they are not sports nutritionists, so your claim is unfounded.

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Matt Leu, M.S. Kinesiology
San Pedro Fit Works, Los Angeles, CA
Endurance Athlete and Coach
Consistency/time=results

The body will only convert protein to fat an store it if it's in an extreme caloric surplus. The purpose for consuming approx 1g/lb while cutting is not for muscle building, it's for muscle retention. You need less protein when trying to build muscle if you're in a caloric surplus.

Hence why my main point was to start tracking to set a baseline. Then to cut set your protein at 1g/lb as a starting point, and set fats/carbs at 250cal less than maintenance. That is the optimum approach to maintain muscle mass while slowly and sustainably shedding fat.

If you are building muscle wouldn't it stand to reason that you need more protein, not less?

1g/lb: as I said before, short term excess protein as it is traded for Carbohydrates (which retains water) during cutting helps you shed water, not fat, due to reduced CHO storage, and reducing your overall weight in the process. Long term if the total calories is less than your need, yea, no kidding you'll burn fat.

The OP from what I can tell has no need to do any of that.

Let me be clear: There is no doubt that increased protein levels help increase and preserve muscle mass. I'm not even saying that it'll make you fat. Excess overall calories do that, and protein can be a part of that equation whether we like it or not.

There's a weight gain study that many websites plug to claim we don't convert protein to fat, only to plug their no-doubt proprietary protein supplements and store: the study shows a higher protein diet had higher weight gain, but higher muscle composition and all gained the same fat mass. It also shows in their statistics that increased protein levels predict lean muscle mass gain but not weight gain, only excess calories predict fat mass storage. They also found that to preserve muscle, the 15% group was adequate (100 ish grams per day), also some major trade offs for increased metabolism, blah blah blah... Show that increased protein (15 - 25% daily intake) is good for lean muscle, yes. If anything it even showed that we can eat more calories in general if our overall protein is higher, due to increased metabolism. Prove that we don't turn protein into fat on a daily basis if we overeat? NO.

As an exercise physiologist and human anatomy teacher I can tell you: our metabolic systems, cycles, processes, are always active, they shift up and down as we consume, whether over or under. We can consume and use A LOT of protein, depending on how we train. In extreme circumstances we can break down muscle fast and use as energy, when our CHO and/or fat stores get low. The protein absorbed that we don't use during overall excess consumption (no matter how little) gets converted to other useable macronutrients. If it doesn't get used either by protein synth or energy, it will become stored fat. Period. Thats the hallmark of our adaptability.

In the end, your muscles will still only use what they can use and need. If its 2.2g/kg, then great. Realistically, most recreational athletes just don't need that much, and are better off dialing enough protein (framework) to boost training, then focusing on having the right micronutrients (nuts and bolts) from fat and CHO intake for the rest of the balanced diet.

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Matt Leu, M.S. Kinesiology
San Pedro Fit Works, Los Angeles, CA
Endurance Athlete and Coach
Consistency/time=results