Can anyone recommend a macros calculator?
As my fitness and strength has improved I’ve been increasing the weights, slowly.
Now I need/want to gain about a stone in weight, obviously looking for muscle gain, but I keep getting various recommendations for the % split of Carbs, Proteins & Fats.
I have calculated my Total Calories as 3130
Just need to get the optimum split for ‘healthy’ gains.
Any knowledgeable people have any opinions/advice.
Thanks
Gaz
Alright Gaz, interesting post. I’m fascinated by this subject as well. At the moment I use a healthy eating plate I bought off Amazon which splits the amount of each food group per meal. However, this is for maintenance & health more than muscle gain. Saying that I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s more advanced options available that use the visualization plate methodology with the actual scientific rationale in terms of muscle gain.
I've always struggled to gain weight, hence why I started weight training in my early 20's, I went from 9st to 12st over a few years, then maintained at 12st(ish).
Post SCA & OHS i dropped nearly 3st, so was about 9st 3lb. Now i'm up to 10st 6lb and stuck here!
Like I said I am pushing the weights up, now at around 60-65% of what I was lifting pre event, i'm not after pushing the weights to what i used to, but think the only way to gain 'good' weight is to push it to 70-75%, so hoping to gain a stone.
Before I would have eaten pretty much what I wanted, mostly healthy, but now i am a bit more conscious of the carbs/fats, so a little stuck as to how to split the calories.
This is what I have at the moment -
I really struggled with this.
After a bypass I firstly focussed on losing a couple of stone and general fitness. Once that was sorted I started to ramp up resistance training and added back more calories. I'm no stranger to any of this as I played rugby at a senior level for many years. But the problems came with my heart health metrics, such as lipids, blood sugar, blood pressure, HbA1c, cortisol levels, etc. Some of these began to move adversely, to the point where I was thinking of abandoning weight training/muscle gain.
Eventually I used a relatively new system called Freestyle Libre and over a few weeks monitored blood sugar in real time. What I discovered (which to be fair has been suggested by a range of medical authorities) was that how we metabolise food is a very personal and individual experience, for example neither home baked bread nor potatoes caused a spike in my blood sugars, but both beer and carbonated drinks caused a substantial spike. Other people have reported the reverse of this, or other unique profiles, like they're sensitive to root vegetables and white rice, but not to brown rice or pasta.
Long story short, sure there are broad generalities for diet and exercise that good starting points, but in the final analysis it's an intensely personal issue and there are no guarantees that what works for one person will work for everyone. It's made me very sceptical about "one size fits all" solutions. All I can suggest is keep an open mind, monitor your metrics closely, and when you find something that works for you then build on it but keep experimenting around that broad solution.
Good luck!
Thanks for the reply.
I 100% agree about ‘one size fits all’.
I think it’s the starting point that I’m really looking for, the calculators I’ve found vary dramatically,
e.g. bobybuilding.com suggests
Carbs 40%
Protein 30%
Fat 30%
Guess I am looking for a steer towards which may be more of the heart healthy option that will allow the gains I’m after.
I work in grams rather than percentages, I aim for about 3000 calories a day ( I exercise five times a week) and try to keep below 130g of carbs per day (but will allow that to climb to 180g on some days provided fibre increases commensurately), a minimum of 30g of fibre per day, a minimum of 100g of protein per day, and a maximum of 60g of sugar per day. Fat falls where it may provided there's zero processed meats and zero trans fats.
I'm holding my target weight, all my heart metrics are well within safe parameters, and I can comfortably run 10k and complete 100 press ups within 3 1/2 minutes. I'm unlikely to ever play first team rugby again, but at 64 years old I'll settle for those results!
Good luck!
Wow only 130g of carbs, you must be getting a lot of calories from fats, like ~2000!
Or have I missed something?
Sugar is my major downfall, I have cut down but not enough as of yet, having said that my bloods are all well within normal ranges.
And yep well done, those are good results, you obviously have found what works 'for you'.
130g carbs is a target, but it's often 180g, sometimes higher.
The problem I find is if I have too many carbs, or carbs without fibre, or the wrong type of carbs, then it quickly shows up in my blood sugar/HbA1c scores, and as incipient insulin resistance was probably the key reason for my atherosclerosis, that's something I personally need to control. But other people, maybe for example with more severe long term blood pressure problems, might be able to go far higher on carbs but need to be stricter on salt. It's really about our individual route into our heart problems.
Another thing I've found, because I don't eat between meals, and only have two meals a day at lunch and dinner, I often struggle to eat enough calories and find my weight trending down. Like you sugar is then a killer, its the easy solution to more calories but in today's world it's so easy for it to take over.
All the best.
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