Guide

Macro tracking for athletes

Fuel should follow load. How to set carbohydrate, protein and energy for hard training weeks.

What changes when you train hard

Endurance, team-sport and mixed training put more demand on energy and, above all, carbohydrate. Eating too little in a heavy training week is a common cause of poor sessions, slow recovery and illness. For athletes, tracking is less about restriction and more about checking that fuel matches load.

Carbohydrate follows training load

The joint position stand of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, Dietitians of Canada and the American College of Sports Medicine gives carbohydrate ranges by training load, expressed per kilogram of body weight per day: about 3 to 5 g/kg for low-intensity or skill-based activity, 5 to 7 g/kg for a moderate program of around an hour a day, 6 to 10 g/kg for one to three hours a day of moderate to high intensity exercise, and 8 to 12 g/kg for extreme commitments of more than four to five hours a day. It gives fat as roughly 20 to 35 percent of energy. These are ranges, not rules; your coach or sports dietitian can tailor them.

In practice, that means your targets should not be the same on every day. A rest day and a long-run day need different amounts of fuel.

Protein, and when you eat it

Athletes generally need more protein than sedentary adults. The International Society of Sports Nutrition position stand supports roughly 1.4 to 2.0 g/kg per day for exercising people. SnapMacro defaults to 2.2 g/kg for the training-hard situation, which sits at the upper end. The protein calculator shows the grams for your weight and splits them across meals. Spreading protein across the day, including after sessions, works better than a single large serving.

Set energy first

Use the TDEE calculator for a starting estimate, then adjust for the volume you actually train. Calculators struggle with athletes because training load varies so much from week to week. If your weight, mood, sleep or performance drift in the wrong direction over several weeks, your intake is probably the first thing to check.

Signs that you may be under-fuelling include persistent fatigue, repeated illness or injury, poor sleep, a drop in performance, and, for women, changes or loss of periods. If you notice these, speak to a doctor or sports dietitian rather than only adjusting your numbers.

Practical habits

• Fuel around sessions. A carbohydrate-containing meal or snack beforehand and a mixed meal afterwards cover most needs.
• Raise targets on hard days. Track against the day you had, not an average day.
• Use weekly averages to judge whether you are eating enough over a training block.
• Weigh on a schedule and look at the trend, not a single morning.
• Do not diet hard in the weeks before key events. A small, short deficit in a low-load phase is safer than a large one in a heavy one.

Photo logging and precision

Athletes often need to know grams of carbohydrate with some precision. Photos are rough: on lab-weighed meals our photo model's median calorie error was roughly 27 to 33 percent (see the accuracy page). That is useful for checking you are in the right region, but for the meals around key sessions, use the barcode for packaged food and weigh the staples such as rice, oats and pasta. Everything scanned is editable, and you can add the oil or sauce the camera cannot see.

How SnapMacro supports this

The training-hard situation uses five-ring tracking with exact gram targets for hard weeks, so you can see your numbers for hard weeks in a single view. Targets update as your weight trend arrives.

SnapMacro is a tracking tool, not a medical device, and this guide is general information rather than medical advice.

Source

1. Thomas DT, Erdman KA, Burke LM. Position of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, Dietitians of Canada, and the American College of Sports Medicine: Nutrition and Athletic Performance. J Acad Nutr Diet. 2016;116(3):501-528.
2. Jager R, Kerksick CM, Campbell BI, et al. International Society of Sports Nutrition Position Stand: protein and exercise. J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 2017;14:20.