crunching the numbers: navigating macro calculators and dietitian services 

Emily Field (00:00:03) – Welcome to Macros Made Easy, the podcast that takes the confusion out of tracking macros. I’m your host, Emily Field, a registered dietitian that specializes in a macros approach. In each episode, I help you learn how to eat in a way that supports your health, body composition, and athletic performance goals. We’ll cover the basics of macronutrients how to track for various goals, the role of macros in your health, and how to make sustainable changes to your habits. I’ve helped hundreds of people experience more food freedom and flexibility while navigating their nutrition. So whether you’ve tried macros and it just didn’t stick or you just heard the word macros yesterday, I can’t wait to help you to. Welcome back to the Macros Made Easy podcast. This is episode 11, and in this episode we’re going to be discussing the differences between using free online macro calculators and investing in a macro calculation service. I’m a real live human dietician. There are certainly advantages and limitations to each, but after this episode, my hope is that you’ll feel empowered and can make an informed decision about where to start.

Emily Field (00:01:07) – With that initial macro prescription, I’ll share my personal experience with some of the free online calculators. Review the implications of following targets that are not right for you, and offer some considerations for better tailoring a macro prescription to you. All right, so let’s first start by talking about the appeal of these free online macro calculators. And we’ll first start with how they work and what they do. So essentially a free online macro calculator is a digital tool. It’s designed to help you determine your daily macronutrient need. And that’s your carbohydrates your proteins and your fats. Taken together, you can learn what your calorie needs are as well. So usually this free online calculator is going to give you your calorie goals, your protein, your fat, and your carbohydrate targets. And this is based on your specific goals and specific characteristics that you put in to that calculator. They work by applying an established formula and principles to estimate the ideal macronutrient ratio for your objective. And that objective might be weight loss. It might be muscle gain, it might be maintenance.

Emily Field (00:02:13) – Now, the first thing that you’ll do when you come across a free online macro calculator or a generic macro calculator, as I’ll refer to in this podcast, is you’re going to put in your personal information. You’re going to include your age, your gender, your weight, your height, your typical activity level, and your goals. And usually your goals are really boiled down to do you want weight loss? Do you want weight gain, or do you want your weight to stay the same? So with these factors in mind, the calculator will do its thing and it will spit back out your caloric needs. The calculator will calculate your estimated daily caloric needs based on established equations that are already kind of built into that calculator, and they usually use a formula called the Harris Benedict formula, or maybe something like the Mifflin Saint Jour equation. So you might see these words within that calculator, but usually you don’t know exactly what’s going on behind the scenes. And this provides a baseline for your total daily calories. Okay.

Emily Field (00:03:14) – The next thing you’re going to see is the division of those calories across protein, fat and carbohydrates. Because as you remember, all your calories are made up of these macronutrients and they contribute calories. So your calorie distribution is essentially how much of those calories should be coming from protein, fat, or carbohydrates. And while each calculator is different, many will really put that distribution somewhere around 30% of those calories coming from protein, 30% of those calories coming from fat, maybe 40% of those calories coming from carbohydrates. And the calculator will do the work and it will show you your gram target for each. Now, all of this has happened behind the scenes, and it’s almost instantaneous for you, but at the end of this process, you’re going to see a display of your results. You’re going to see your protein, your fat, your carbohydrate gram targets for the day, and the associated calorie goal for you. Depending on the goal that you’ve decided that you want, you want to gain weight, you want to lose weight or you want to maintain weight.

Emily Field (00:04:16) – Now, if you have experience with a free online macro calculator, you are pretty familiar with how easy this process is. And this is one of the advantages of using a generic or a free online macro calculator, right? It’s super cost effective, i.e. free. It’s readily accessible. This cost effectiveness makes it a very attractive option for somebody who’s on a tight budget, or somebody who doesn’t want to invest in personalized nutrition guidance. It can be a very, very good start. It’s also highly convenient. These calculators are available online 24 over seven, allowing you to access them at any time, anywhere with an internet connection. And that convenience means that you can calculate your macros on your schedule without needing to make an appointment or a consultation with a health expert or nutrition expert. It’s also highly likely to provide you with some quick results, especially if you get started right away. Let’s just say you’re very motivated. You do the online calculator, you get your macronutrient targets and calorie goals, and you are off to the races you are running with it.

Emily Field (00:05:22) – You’re changing your nutrition habits. You’re forming your meals with a little bit more balance. You’re eating to your macronutrient needs, and you’re starting to see results right away. So if you’re somebody who is a go getter and you want to start this right away, you don’t want any challenges or barriers in your way to starting. This could be a great way for you to jump. Start that progress. A free online macro calculator can offer increased awareness for that user. Offers just a learning opportunity. Essentially, you’re going to get your macronutrient targets, your calorie goals, and you can hit the ground running by just slowly and steadily manipulating your typical meals to align to those needs that you found through the calculator. And that can be really empowering. You can start to see changes in the way that you look, feel and perform. Just a couple clicks of a button anywhere that has an internet connection, you can get this information. I’d say one last advantage to a macro calculator online is that there’s just simply no commitment.

Emily Field (00:06:20) – You can jump around from calculator to calculator. You can experiment with different macro ratios. You can adjust your targets based on what the calculator is serving to you and what progress you see over time. There’s no financial or contractual obligations here. So for somebody who is looking for the lowest barrier to entry, to changing their nutrition with a macros approach, I’d say this is a really great place to start. So yes, there are definitely advantages to a free online macro calculator. They’re quick and they’re convenient. They are low barrier to entry. If you are excited to start using a macros approach. However, there are some limitations, so let’s talk about those now. First of all, I would say that they rely on generic calculations that employ general formulas and equations that can’t always account for individual variations like metabolic rate, genetics, or medical conditions. And that can lead to pretty imprecise recommendations. They adopt a simplified approach, maybe simplifying too much. We know that dietary considerations sometimes overlook things like food allergies, intolerances, specific dietary preferences like being vegetarian or vegan that would be completely overlooked.

Emily Field (00:07:32) – With a free generic macro calculator. Macro calculators can sometimes impose rigid macronutrient ratios that don’t align with your unique goals or your dietary preferences, so it makes adherence a true challenge. Thinking about that in the context of somebody who really enjoys carbohydrates, for example, or somebody who really enjoys fat rich foods. If your generic macro calculator doesn’t account for those preferences, it’s going to be really difficult for you to change your typical eating habits to fit this macronutrient ratio that it spit out. And you might think you’re the problem. I would say that generic macro calculators can sometimes provide an incomplete picture, and it focuses so much on the macronutrients and might sideline those other vital nutrition aspects, like micronutrients or dietary fiber or overall dietary quality. And I would say that’s really on the user, that’s on the person who’s using these numbers to get enough fiber to ensure that their diet is more micronutrient rich, to make sure that they’re eating whole, real, quality foods over ultra processed foods. But at the end of the day, a generic macro calculator is simply spitting out numbers to you and not commenting on those other areas of your diet.

Emily Field (00:08:48) – Free online calculators have the potential to estimate your calorie needs. Wrong, and so I would say that that’s a common pitfall or a potential problem with using a free online macro calculator. You’re going to significantly impact your ability to lose or gain weight, or to have energy or not, potentially leading to frustrations about whether or not you’re shedding pounds as expected or feeling hungry or lousy due to under eating. This is all boiled down to the fact that the macro calculator did not appropriately estimate your needs, so the sum of these factors can absolutely culminate in feelings of frustration and abandonment. You’re going to completely ditch macro tracking altogether if you feel like the numbers weren’t right for you. They’re not producing the results that you think that you need. It’s too rigid to follow, etcetera, etcetera. And because you don’t have any commitment to a human person, that lack of accountability that comes from an online calculator, you’re really just opting in for this free numbers, you know, that really can’t compare to the invaluable guidance and supervision that could be provided by a registered dietitian or nutrition expert.

Emily Field (00:10:00) – That person can monitor progress, answer questions, manipulate your macros around your dietary preferences, and essentially ensure long term success. So if you’re sitting here thinking, why didn’t these numbers work for me, please feel validated. That’s a very common experience is very typical experience for somebody to come across the macros approach. Go find the nearest, fastest, easiest macro calculator they can find on the internet, download their numbers and try to start following them, but give up very easily because they didn’t feel that those numbers really were right for them for whatever reason. Maybe they’re just completely wrong. It didn’t result in anything that you were looking for, but I would also say the opposite. Is true. Many people will go find an online macro calculator, and they will find huge success in following those numbers. Because it is that simple. Because just by changing your eating habits to be closer to those targets, you can still see progress. And depending on how far away your typical habits were from those numbers and how you’ve been able to kind of migrate them back towards those targets, you could see a lot of success, whether that’s in fat loss or muscle gain or more energy or weight management, whatever your goals might be.

Emily Field (00:11:14) – So I don’t want to Pooh Pooh either of them. You know, opting in or opting out is really going to come down to your specific health situation and how much detail you feel like you need to give in order to get an accurate representation of those calorie and macro goals so you can get targets that actually fit you. So I think this is probably a good time to share some of the common issues that I see with the generic macro calculators, and maybe you can see yourself in one of these situations. I’ll cover three. So the number one thing and these are in no particular order. One of the main common things that I see is that there is no distinction between selecting weight loss or fat loss as a goal. So usually online calculators will ask you a really simple question of what is your goal. And there’s really only three radio button options gain weight, lose weight or maintain weight. Now let’s just say you’re savvier. You’ve been listening to the Macros Made Easy podcast. You’ve been following me on Instagram.

Emily Field (00:12:09) – You know that there is a difference between weight loss and fat loss. You know that they’re not the same thing. You want to be a little leaner, which probably means that you need to be in a slight deficit. So you select weight loss as the best option here. And I would say that’s probably true, right. You’re going to have less mass on. You probably need to eat a little less than what you need. So you’re looking for targets that will essentially give you less than what you need to produce some fat loss. Now, when you get your targets back and you know, maybe to the untrained eye you think they seem okay, but most often what I see is those targets are much too low for somebody who craves slow, steady, sustainable fat loss or people who are highly active and have a lot of muscle mass on their frame. Okay, so most often I see people who are pretty active people enjoy strength training, getting a calculation back that is far too low for their active lifestyle, which at best means you’re really hungry and you are struggling with low energy.

Emily Field (00:13:09) – But at worst it means that they lose fat as well as hard earned muscle. Because remember, the faster that you go with weight loss, the more muscle you’re going to lose. At the same time, we want to go slow and steady so that we can target fat, and not any of that hard earned muscle that we work for in the gym. So what I’m saying is, by being able to make the distinction between fat loss as a goal, muscle gain, a mix between the two goals, all that can make a huge difference in the prescription. And most online calculators, you’re not able to make that distinction. And again, that’s what leaves people being really frustrated, not seeing the results that they want left, wondering where they should go next. Another common issue that I see with the free generic macro calculators is that there’s no way of knowing body composition differences, which might result in targets being too high for someone carrying more body fat or too low in other circumstances. So, for example, let’s take two people who are each £200.

Emily Field (00:14:11) – Everyone can acknowledge that this £200 could look different for somebody with a high percent of body fat, or a high percent of lean body mass. Okay, so more muscle on one or more fat on the other. It might be appropriate for someone with a leaner physique, someone with a high amount of muscle on their frame to eat, let’s say 30% of their calories from protein. But it’s probably not as appropriate for someone with a higher percent of body fat to be doing the same thing. It might result in protein targets that are far too high to be enjoyable. They’re going to give up fairly quickly and never see the results they should. The calculator only knows of your £200 that you put in as your current weight. It has no idea about the differences in body composition, which could make all the difference for your macro targets or your macro ratios that make up the calorie goals that you’re getting out of that calculator. The last scenario that I’ll cover around generic macro calculators is that there’s just no personalization to account for health conditions, fitness goals, or food preferences.

Emily Field (00:15:16) – So like I pointed out here, there’s little to no personalization in generic macro calculators. Which means if you were prescribed 1800 calories and I was prescribed 2100 calories, ah, percent of calories coming from protein, fat and carb are going to be exactly the same. Okay, I’ll back up. We each fill out the same calculator. I am a different person than you and we’re going to get different macro goals. But. Are ratios of protein, fat and carbohydrate are probably going to be the same because that calculator only operates one formula, it always finds that same ratio no matter who you are. Now there are reasons why those percentages might need to vary. Let’s say you’re somebody who struggles with insulin resistance. Maybe you’re somebody who has a high activity level much higher than mine. Maybe you have a preference for carbohydrates in your diet or fats in your diet. There are several reasons I could list here. I’ll give you an even more targeted example. The person who cannot tolerate carbs because of a health condition like pre-diabetes or type two diabetes, might not do well with a high percent of calories coming from carbs, it might make it harder for them to manage their blood sugar levels.

Emily Field (00:16:29) – It might make it harder for them to lose weight. We don’t want that. Alternatively, if you’re somebody who eats a lot of plant based protein foods because you lean more vegetarian or vegan in your pattern, you might do just fine with a higher percent of calories coming from carbs. So that online macro calculator isn’t going to be able to grab that information and be able to assess or change how many calories or what ratio of calories should come from protein, fat, and carb. And that’s nuanced. And that might be important to have in order to see the results that you’re looking for. Okay, so we’ve just reviewed three common issues that I see as a registered dietitian, you know, from people who typically use those generic macro calculators, I’ll review, there’s usually no distinction between weight loss and fat loss. There’s really no way of knowing body composition differences of the user. And there’s really no personalization for health conditions, your food preferences, fitness goals, things like that. Okay, so those are the buckets that I see most of the issues kind of resulting from and why somebody might want to start seeking out a little bit more personalization.

Emily Field (00:17:34) – They may want to hire a registered dietitian or invest in a custom macro calculation from a dietitian team. Let’s have a little story time. Let’s go back to my early years of going to CrossFit. I’m really enjoying myself at the gym and making friends. I’m getting stronger. I’m doing all these new, fun things every week. This is like 2015, 2016. I have found structured strength training, competitiveness and a friendly environment for the first time in my adult life. And it was awesome. And all the coaches were talking about macros. And as a dietitian, I was obviously intrigued by this idea that you could eat whatever you want, as long as it added up to these totals by the end of the day. Now I’m seeing them eat, bringing their Tupperware. They’re eating their Cheetos or going out. I truthfully did not have a very good role model or a good model in general for the macros approach. In those early years, it was very much a mentality of eat whatever you want, as long as it adds up by the end of the day, which did not really sell the approach to me at all, because as a dietitian, I didn’t see how that could be healthy.

Emily Field (00:18:41) – It didn’t represent a well rounded, high quality diet to me. But despite all this, I decided to Google some free online macro calculators because I was curious about my actual calorie needs. So much had changed about my life. I was working out in a way that I had never done before. I had new goals for myself. I wanted to get stronger. I wanted to see the muscles on my frame. You know, I kind of cared about fat loss, but I really just wanted more energy so I could work out more like loved CrossFit. So I googled the free online macro calculators. I use the same information across all three calculators my height, my weight, my sex, my activity time. Each week, and my goals. And I got three completely different numbers. I couldn’t figure out what formulas these calculators were even using, but one was 1900 calories, one was 2500 calories, and the last one was somewhere between 2100 2200. So in the 2001 hundreds. Okay, I want to pause here.

Emily Field (00:19:36) – If I was really focused on weight loss, you can totally see how a 600 calorie difference would make a really tough to see change on my frame. My needs were really closer to 1900 calories, and I was eating 2500 calories. That would not help me reach my goals. To lose weight any faster, I would probably give up and abandon the approach really quickly. So this is what I mean about the generic macro calculators, because we don’t know what formulas they’re using, and maybe the way they frame questions is just slightly different. To elicit something different from you, you could get very different calorie needs and calorie numbers. And if you’re untrained, you might be following the wrong targets for you. Now, not only did the calories range so much between each calculator, but the macronutrient targets ranged a great deal as well in one, if I were to order my normal Chipotle order, I would have blown past those fat targets like before lunch, right? And in another, I would have probably had to majorly change the way I ate in order to get as many carbs as it recommended.

Emily Field (00:20:39) – So it was just all over the place and I was obviously frustrated. I did not know which one to believe, so I quickly realized that I could take matters into my own hands and apply the gold standard formulas for estimating calories that I already knew of through my dietitian training and through coaching clients. So from there, I could take what I know about protein, fat, and carbohydrate needs and finesse my best fit macro targets according to my preferences and what my goals were, and things like that. I ended up being able to do something largely the same with all my clients. We can simply massage macro targets to be a little bit more appropriate for specific health conditions or food preferences or body composition differences, and more. And that’s what was really missing from those generic macro calculators, and is what’s still missing from macro calculators. Because if you want the ease and the convenience of a quick calculation, you’re going to lose all that personalization. Now, if you can put that aside a little bit and decide to work with a real live human dietician, you will get that personalization out of it.

Emily Field (00:21:45) – You will have something much more unique and specific to you. Now, it might take a couple of days to get that calculation back. It will not be immediate and there may be a cost associated with it, but it’s a trade off you may be willing to make, depending on your circumstances. Following macros that are not tailored to your specific needs can have a cascade of implications affecting various aspects of your overall health and well-being. And while that has been implied through this entire podcast episode, I thought I’d be abundantly clear about what I mean here. I mean, first of all, you can see that following macros that are not right for you is going to lead to suboptimal results. You might not reach your fitness goals or your health goals. May it be weight loss, muscle gain, or enhanced athletic performance. Incorrect macros can absolutely be a roadblock to your progress there. We know that an imbalance in macronutrient intake can also result in physical discomfort. Maybe that’s digestive issues, bloating, fatigue, or other various discomforts.

Emily Field (00:22:51) – It can trigger mental distress. The constant struggle of trying to meet unrealistic macro targets can be super anxiety inducing, and that stress around food could possibly result in disordered eating patterns. And that’s not something we want at all. If you kind of think about it, we’re having these macro targets that feel so rigid or you have the outlook that I have to eat this way or else, and that can get you really wrapped up in the wrong arena. And we don’t want to go down that path. Your macros should fit you. You should not have to fit yourself around your macros. In more of an extreme case, we could see that misaligned macros can lead to inadequate nutrition. You might miss out on some essential nutrients, maybe lead to deficiencies. And while I haven’t really seen that come as a result of a generic macro prescription, it’s certainly possible to lose weight too quickly to have two drastic of a deficit and see muscle loss, which is going to impact your ability to have a high, healthy metabolism.

Emily Field (00:23:55) – We know that muscle mass drives your metabolism. If you’re losing weight too quickly, you’re losing fat and muscle at the same time. Taking all of this together, you can kind of hear frustration, right? Struggling to adhere to inappropriate macros may lead to that frustration, that stress. It’s going to cause you to abandon your nutrition plans altogether. And this is what I see most often. People think that they have, quote, tried a macros approach and it did not work for them, but most often it’s because they didn’t get a macro prescription that was right for them. Macros promises uniqueness. It promises personalization of the diet. But why are we using generic macro calculators when you are very unique and there’s nothing unique about a free online generic macro calculator? I’ll just leave you with that rhetorical question. So let’s say you’re just like me and you googled some free online macro calculators, and you put in all of your metrics your height, your weight, your sex, your age, your activity level, and your goals.

Emily Field (00:24:58) – And you get several different calorie goals and macronutrient prescriptions. How are you to know which one of these different prescriptions is right for you? Don’t you think it would be nice to have a few words exchanged before you hit that submit button? If you could kind of explain your health situation, you know, share what worked or didn’t work, maybe talk about what you like to eat or don’t like to eat. Don’t you think that you’re a nuanced eating? Habits and preferences should be a factor here? I certainly do, and that’s exactly why I created the custom macro calculation service. You’ll answer several questions about your health habits and your preferences, and then my team and I, using our human brains and our expertise, will customize targets for you. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again your macros should fit you. You shouldn’t have to fit around your macros, and that will make all the difference between whether or not you’re able to lose 50, 75, £100 because you have to be on this journey for a very long time, and you have to enjoy how you eat in order to get there.

Emily Field (00:26:05) – If your goals are to gain muscle, to lose a significant amount of fat, to totally change your fitness, to change your body composition and improve your body composition, that’s going to take time. And as dietitians, we know, the slow, sustainable, enjoyable route is how you get there. Giving up easily, changing directions, totally throwing in the towel is not going to get you there faster. And if your macro prescription feels like work, it’s not going to work for you. So that’s what I mean when I say your macros should fit you. You should not have to fit your life around your macros. And because you get to talk to or share information with a real live human person, we can get to the root of some macro targets and calorie goals that actually feel very realistic to you, and you can follow them with ease. So let me share a few details. The custom macro calculation service is an opportunity for. For you to share your personal health information with us. We’ll look at where you’ve come from, where you want to go.

Emily Field (00:27:07) – We’ll ask you 20 plus questions, actually, to get some of the best details that we can from you that might influence your macro targets. I want you to contrast that against the free generic macro calculators we’ve been talking about this episode. Height, weight, age, sex, activity level, and goal. That’s six questions that you might get asked in a generic macro calculator. We’re asking you 2225 questions to get some of those nitty gritty details that will absolutely influence your macro targets and probably be a better fit for you. For example, you’ll have the opportunity to tell us about your health history, your typical workout routine, your food preferences, what’s been working for you, what’s not been working for you to accomplish the goals that you have? And certainly much more than that. What results from that is macro targets that actually make sense for your lifestyle and feel easy to hit on a daily basis. Again, we know that enjoying how you eat is the first step to achieving results. Typically, our clients have big goals and they’re not afraid of the time, the attention or the work that it might take to get there, but it has to be enjoyable in order to be sustainable in order for you to actually reach those big, big goals.

Emily Field (00:28:20) – And it starts with macros that fit you. Lastly, one of the things I love about the custom macro calculation is that you get a peek behind the curtain about how your macros were calculated. I’m just like you. I’m curious right? I want to know what went into somebody formulating my macro goals, and I’ll be probably much more likely to follow through on those macro targets if I feel that it was certainly personalized to me. Okay. So in this calculation, in these recommendations that we send to you, we are going to share with you how we arrived at these macro goals, which could potentially be the difference for you, right? If you know that there is some heart behind it and there’s some expertise behind it, and we share the why, you’ll probably be more likely to follow through on those macro targets. In fact, one of the biggest compliments that we get after sending macros to a client is that they say they feel seen and heard in a way that they haven’t felt in the past. They know that we took the time.

Emily Field (00:29:17) – We read every single answer that they submitted. We use that information to formulate their protein, fat, carbohydrate targets and their calorie goals and shared with them a bigger health picture and recommendations to get them towards their goals. They simply feel calm about it. They feel seen and heard, which I love. That level of detail means that our email is quite long actually, so recipients who get custom macro calculations are usually impressed by the level of detail that we provide. It’s a multi paragraph written plan which includes a summary of what we see going on based on your answers, your actual macro recommendations, greater health recommendations and why your macros are set where they are and it’s yours for reference forever because it comes by email within a few business days of you submitting that health assessment. So there you have it. Today we have dissected the disparities between free online macro calculators and the benefits of a custom macro calculation service provided by a real, live human dietician. We’ve uncovered the pros and cons of both approaches, hopefully equipping you with the knowledge to make an informed decision regarding your initial macro prescription.

Emily Field (00:30:31) – So as we close the episode, I want you to remember that your macros should fit you, and you shouldn’t have to fit your total lifestyle around your macros and trying to hit them. So it feels like that it might be time to get a little bit more personalization in that prescription. It’s all about personalization and ensuring that your nutrition plan aligns seamlessly with your unique lifestyle and preferences. You’ve seen the potential pitfalls and inaccuracies associated with generic online calculators, and on the flip side, the advantages of a more tailored approach. So thank you for tuning in to episode 11 of the Macros Made Easy podcast. We’ll be back with more valuable insights to complement your macros journey in the next episode. Thank you so much for listening to the Macros Made Easy podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, take a screenshot of the one you’re listening to right now to share it on your Instagram Stories, and tag me at Emily Field so that more people can find this podcast and learn how to use a macros approach in a stress free way.

Emily Field (00:31:30) – If you love the podcast, head over to iTunes and leave me a rating and a review. Remember, you can always find more free health and nutrition content on Instagram and on my website at Emily Field. Thanks for listening and I’ll catch you on the next episode.