Why Do You Need a Keto Macro Calculator?

Do you want to shred fat? Put on lean muscle? Or just maintain a healthy body weight? Whatever your goals are, our keto macro calculator will help you work out the exact amount of fat, proteins, and carbs needed in your diet to achieve your weight goals.

Of course it’s possible to figure your macros using a notepad, and a complex series of calculations on your trusty calculator, but let’s face it – who’s really got time for that? Our keto diet macro calculator does the hard work for you, giving you an easier and more accurate way by crunching all the numbers automatically!

If you fill it out with your individual numbers step-by step, you’ll soon find out the amount of calories you need to meet your weight goals. Additionally, for you, keto nuts (us included), the calculator breaks down the exact macronutrient splits of fats, proteins, and carbs that you need to include in your keto diet as well as ensure you get the right nutrients your body needs during the ketosis stage.

This calculator will help you to:

  • Easily enter and stay in the ketosis state while on a keto diet
  • Work out your daily macros accurately
  • Know exactly what breakdown of macros you should eat and how much of it
  • Reach your weight loss/gain goals

With the right information, it’ll be easier to develop your keto meal plans (make sure you check out our 365 club for weekly keto meal plans) based on your individual needs.

By eliminating the guesswork, you’ll be more confident in the whole process since you’ll know the right amount of each macro for your specific situation.

How to Use the Keto Macro Calculator

Using the calculator is pretty straightforward if you’re familiar with keto and nutrition. But some of the steps may seem a little confusing, so we thought we’d do a little bit of explaining to help you input each step. 

Step 1: Enter Your Gender, Age, Height, and Weight

By entering your gender, age, height, and weight, the keto diet calculator can calculate your basal metabolic rate (BMR). Your BMR is the amount of energy you use up when your body is at rest just to maintain your body functions (including your energy-hungry brain).

The calculator uses the Mifflin-St. Jeor equation to calculate the BMR (an equation that is agreed by many experts to be the most accurate formula for calculating your BMR.

Here’s how each factor affects your BMR rate:

Gender

The BMR is averagely 5-10% lower in women than in men. This is because on average women have less muscle mass and more body fat than men of similar height.

Age

Due to the decrease in lean muscle mass during adulthood, there is often a decline in BMR, which usually occurs around the age of 30.(Although this can be reduced by regular strength training in adulthood.)

Higher BMR during adulthood can also be attributed to the increase in hormonal and neurological processes.

Height and Weight

BMR increases as height, weight, and surface area increases. So people with larger bodies have a higher BMR rate than those with smaller bodies. This is because larger bodies have larger organs and fluid volume to maintain.

Step 2: Choose Your Body Fat Percentage

The keto macro calculator uses your body fat percentage to determine your lean body mass. With this information, the calculator will determine how much protein you need to successfully lose weight, maintain weight, or gain muscle. Eating too much or too little protein during the keto process can lead to unwanted results.

Your body fat percentage will also contribute to a more accurate estimation of your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE).

If you don’t know your body fat percentage, you can easily find out at your home, nearest gym, or health facility. The following methods are available:

Skinfold Calipers

A skinfold caliper assesses your skinfold thickness to determine the total amount of body fat in your body. This method assumes that the skinfold is a measure of subcutaneous fat (fat under the skin) and that body fat is equally distributed all over the body.

A caliber works by pinching different areas of your skin that folds easily (such as biceps, triceps, belly, and back). The average measurement is then used in a formula to determine your body fat percentage.

Your coach or physician can help measure and teach you how to accurately read and calculate your body fat percentage.

Dual-Energy X-Ray Absorptiometry (DEXA) Scan

For more accurate results, you can go for a DEXA scan. This is an X-ray procedure that not only measures the fat mass but also detects the lean body mass and bone mineral density with great accuracy. However, they can only be done at healthcare facilities.

Guesstimate with a visual guide

Check out this article to help you guesstimate your body fat percentage

Step 3: Select Your Physical Activity Level (PAL)

Unlike the BMR, your Physical Activity Level measures the amount of energy you use daily when you’re active in order to have a better estimate of how many calories you burn in a day. The keto calculator combines your PAL and BMR to find your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE). This is the amount of calories you burn in a day. (Sorry I know that’s a lot of acronyms for one day)

In turn, the TDEE determines how many calories you need in your diet to achieve your desired weight goals.

Depending on your day-to-day activities, the activity level tab is divided into five sections: sedentary, lightly active, moderately active, very active, and athlete/bodybuilder. You can find out a little bit more about physcial activity levels here. Choose an activity level that best describes you on a daily basis.

Step 4: Choose Your Net Carbs

Net carbs are the carbohydrates in the food that you digest and use for energy.

To calculate your net carbs, simply subtract the fiber and sugar alcohols from your total carb intake.

Sugar alcohols like erythritol and xylitol are sweeteners, which are either partially or not digested. Fibers also can’t be digested – they pass through the intestinal tract intact. These carbs have no impact on your blood sugar or energy value, so for these reasons, sugar alcohols and fibers aren’t included in the carb count for keto purposes.

As a rule of thumb, stay at or below 20g net carbs per day when on the keto diet. The end goal of any keto diet is to stay in the ketosis state (starvation of carbohydrates). By limiting carbs, the body is forced to use fat for energy.

Step 5: Enter Your Protein Ratio Based on Your Activity Level

Protein ratio determines the amount of protein (measured in number of grams per kilogram of lean body weight) you need to be taking per day. Keep in mind that lean body weight doesn’t include fat.

If you’re on a keto weight loss journey, strive to meet your daily protein goal without exceeding it. Protein is an essential macronutrient for muscle retention and muscle building, but too much protein can keep you out of a ketosis state.

The amount of protein you should have depends on your activity levels, as athletes will need to increase their protein levels to assist with muscle recovery. 

Our handy calculator will automatically choose the protein ratio for you based on your activity level, so if you don’t know your preferred protein ratio, sit back and let the calculator do the work for you.

Step 6: Choose Your Weight Goals

The keto diet allows you to lose weight, maintain weight, or gain muscle. Put simply, if you eat more than your total daily energy expenditure you’ll increase weight, if you eat less you’ll lose weight. 

Weight Loss with Keto

Keto helps you lose weight through fat burning. When you slash your carb intake and fill up on healthy fats instead, your body will eventually start breaking down stored fat for energy (instead of sugar). Compared to other weight-loss regimes, this process can be much quicker. Our keto calculator for weight loss will provide you with the macros you need to target to achieve sustainable weight loss.

Weight maintenance

After achieving your weight loss through keto, you can maintain the weight by staying on the diet. Basically you need to make sure that your calorie intake is equal to your total daily energy expenditure. 

Muscle gain

Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need carbs to gain muscles. To build muscles without carbs through keto, ensure you consume more calories than your body burns. Caloric surplus (when combined with adequate protein levels) will help you achieve a more muscular physique in no time.

In our calculator you can select whether you want to lose weight, maintain your current weight or increase your weight.

Step 7: Select Goal Percentage Gain/Loss

Depending on your keto macro goals, select how quickly you want to lose or gain weight by reducing or increasing your calorie intake by this percentage. 

Please be careful with this percentage. You don’t want to reduce your calorie intake too much to try and drop weight very quickly, and risk not meeting your nutritional needs. Like the tortoise and the hare…slow and steady wins the race.

Generally nutritionists wouldn’t recommend a deficit of more than 20% below your total daily expenditure when you’re trying to lose weight, because of the risk of nutritional deficiencies and lack of energy. 

Also if you’re looking to gain muscle aim to keep your calorie intake to less than 10% above your TDEE, so that you don’t turn it into fat

Step 8: Your Optimal Total Daily Calories

This is the key to  meeting your weight goals. This is simply the amount of calories you should get from your food in a single day to meet your weight loss/gain goals. Of course if you want to follow the keto diet (which I have personally had a lot of success with), you’ll want to keep reading, because the macro breakdown is the key to getting into ketosis and burning away that stored fat.

Stay on Track with the Keto Macro Calculator

Based on all of your answers, the keto macro calculator will tell you how you should be splitting your macros – fats, proteins, and carbs.

Try to eat according to the macros given in your keto calculator, and spread out your meals throughout the day. Small fluctuations are okay. But you do really need to monitor the net carb intake closely to ensure you are actually staying in ketosis. So do your best, especially in the beginning, to calculate all of your macronutrient calories and stick to it.

If you’re just getting started with keto or want to learn more, check out this extensive guide.