Macronutrients

Macronutrients, usually shortened to macros, are the three components of food that carry energy: protein, carbohydrate and fat. Protein and carbohydrate carry four calories per gram and fat carries nine, which is the arithmetic that turns a calorie target into grams.

Tracking them is a step more detailed than tracking calories alone, and it is worth doing for one reason more than any other: protein. Getting enough protein is what lets you hold on to muscle while losing fat, and it is the macro people most often fall short on without noticing.

A split is usually written as three percentages of total energy, such as 30/40/30 for protein, carbohydrate and fat. Which split suits you depends mostly on what you train for: endurance athletes generally do better with more carbohydrate, and people who struggle with hunger often do better with more protein and fat.

What it is not

The split matters far less than the calorie total it came from. Two people eating the same calories on different splits see similar changes in weight; what the split changes is how training feels and how easily muscle is kept. Alcohol is also a fourth source of energy at seven calories a gram, and it belongs to none of the three.

Where you see it in FitnessSyncer

Protein, carbohydrate and fat arrive with every nutrition entry from a connected service or from the Notebook, are charted on your Dashboard, and can each carry a daily goal. Our macro split calculator turns a calorie target into grams.