In this instructional video, Eric Roberts explains how macronutrients (protein, carbohydrates, fats) translate into total daily calories (4 kcal/g for protein and carbs, 9 kcal/g for fat) and then examines three common body‑composition goals—fat loss, muscle gain, and body recomposition/maintenance. For fat loss he recommends tracking overall calories and protein, citing studies that show calorie balance drives fat loss while protein supports thermic effect, satiety, and muscle preservation. He provides a simple protein‑target formula (0.7–1 g per pound of goal body weight) and points viewers to a free calorie calculator. For muscle gain he advises a calorie surplus combined with macro tracking: high protein, higher carbs, lower fat to maximize muscle while limiting fat gain. He outlines scenarios where beginners or those returning after a break can still build muscle in a deficit. For body recomposition/maintenance he suggests a hybrid approach: calorie deficit for those with excess belly fat, maintenance calories for “skinny‑fat” individuals, always tracking protein, and optionally tracking full macros to fine‑tune results. Throughout he emphasizes simplicity, adherence, and provides links to calculators and related videos, ending with calls to action for likes, subscriptions, questions, and coaching services.
Chapters
Macros, protein, carbs, and fats. Your macros make up your overall calories. For every 1 gram of protein, there's 4 calories. For every 1 gram of carb, there's 4 calories. And for every 1 gram of dietary fat, there is 9 calories. So through the protein, carbs, and fats that you eat throughout the day, that's how you then build up to your overall calories for that day. Now the question is, should you be counting just your overall calories? Should you be counting just your overall macros? Or should you be counting both? Well, it kind of depends on what your specific goal is right now. So let's talk about the 3 main scenarios. If you're somebody who wants to lose weight, if you're somebody who wants to gain muscle, and if you're somebody who wants to just maintain your weight, or what we call body Recomp, where you're kind of losing fat and building muscle at the same time. Let's first talk about if your goal is to lose weight. I would recommend that you start counting your calories and your protein because countless studies have shown if your calories are equated for, which just means that they're the same, and your protein intake is equated for, Your carbs and your fats can be variable and you will still see the same amount of fat loss progress. This really makes the keto people pretty mad. This is because fat loss doesn't come from your carbs or your fats. Your fat loss comes from your overall calories. And so as long as you're in that overall calorie deficit, you, my friend, will lose weight. And we also track our protein intake because of 3 main reasons. Number one, protein has the highest TEF, which just means your thermic effect of food, which just means your body has to burn more calories in order to digest protein, which if you're trying to lose weight, you typically want to have more calorie burning going on. Number two, protein is the most satiating macronutrient. This just means it keeps you fullest for the longest, which again also helps you stay stay in that overall calorie deficit that you are looking for. Because if you're more full, less hungry, you usually eat less calories. And then number 3, protein is the only macronutrient that helps you build and retain lean muscle mass. This helps keep your metabolism high as well as it avoids you getting to that skinny fat look where maybe you do lose weight, but then you're like, what the hell? This is not what I expected to look like at 140 pounds. Now, if you want to know how many calories you should be eating to lose weight, I'm gonna link a totally free calorie calculator here below in the description of this video. So please feel free to go check that out. Then if you want to know how much protein you should be having to make sure you ensure fat loss, you are going to take your goal body weight in pounds. So if you have to do a conversion, do a conversion. But take your goal body weight in pounds, multiply that between 0.7 and 1. So let's say for example, you're going to be— you want to weigh 150 pounds. You're going to take 150 pounds, multiply it by 0.8, and you get 120 grams. That means you should be trying to get around 120 grams of protein per day. We have used this method with a lot of our clients who come to us for fat loss because Honestly, it just simplifies things. As opposed to counting calories, protein, carbs, fats— 4 different things you have to track— you can now just track 2 things: your overall calories and your overall protein. This makes the process simpler, which then makes it easier to stick to, which then if you can stick to it more, you're going to see more progress from it. Now, the second scenario: if your goal is to gain more muscle And go into a calorie surplus. So a calorie deficit is where you're eating less calories than what your body burns. A calorie surplus is where you're eating more calories than what your body burns in order to try and facilitate muscle growth. Now you might want to ask me, well, Eric, my goal is to lose fat and gain muscle. So here's what I will say to that. That is possible. Yes. If you are one of a few scenarios. Number one, if you are a complete beginner to following a real strength training program— I don't mean Beachbody, I don't mean Orange Theory, I don't mean doing HIIT boot camps with weight. Nothing inherently against those things, they're just not a real strength training program. So if you are in the first 6 to 12 months of you following a real strength training program, you will be able to eat in a calorie deficit and Eat high protein like we talked about, and then you will be able to still build muscle because you're so new to following that real strength training program. The second scenario is if you've taken an extended period of time off from lifting weights, let's say whether just because of an injury, whether life got crazy, whatever the case may be. If you've taken 2, 3, 4+ months off of following that program, you will be able to come back eat in the calorie deficit, eat high protein, and still be able to build muscle. Or number 3, if you're just somebody who has a lot of body fat to lose, if you have 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 pounds to lose, you will be able to lose fat and build muscle at the same time. Now, if you're not one of those scenarios and you're starting to get out of that beginner stage, you are somebody who, if you want to optimize your muscle growth, you are going to have to go into a calorie surplus in order to give your body the fuel and nutrients that it needs in order to process that muscle growth. Now, when you go into this calorie surplus, because you are inherently eating a little bit more calories than what your body is burning, you are going to store some extra body fat along the way. Now, the goal here is to minimize the amount of fat gain and maximize the amount of muscle gain. The way you're going to do this is by counting your macros and setting up your macros in a specific way. I talk exactly how to do that in this video above. I will also link it in the description of this video below. But essentially what you are going to do is have a moderate to higher protein, higher carbohydrate, and a lower fat diet. And the reason being is because remember, when you're in a calorie surplus, you're already going to gain some extra body fat along the way, right? Protein is damn near impossible to store as body fat. Not only is it going to help you build muscle, but it's also almost every function inside of your body runs also off of protein. So protein, almost impossible to store as body fat. Carbohydrates, also very hard to store as body fat, Especially when you are doing strength training and weightlifting, because it's either number one, going to get used as fuel for your workout because carbohydrates, glycogen is the main source of fuel for your workouts. Glycogen comes from carbohydrates. And so glycogen will get used as fuel, which is carbs, or your carbs are going to store as muscle glycogen, right? So if the carbs you eat aren't getting stored right now, That's okay because they're going to get stored as muscle glycogen, which will get used later on. So carbs, protein, both very hard to store as fat. Dietary fat doesn't really— once you have enough of a baseline, which again, I talk about how much to have in that video, but once you have the baseline, it doesn't really do anything else. And so if you have a very high dietary fat diet, then you are usually going to store a little bit more body fat along the way. way because it has nothing else to do like protein and carbs do. So if this is your goal, I would count all of your macros as well as make sure you are hitting your overall calories to make sure you're in a calorie surplus. And again, if you want to know your calorie surplus, I will just drop the free calorie calculator below in the description of this video. And the third goal is going to be if you're somebody who wants to just maintain your weight or do what we call the body recomposition. So we already briefly touched on the body recomposition. If you're looking to lose fat and build muscle at the same time, you're probably going to fall in that calorie deficit category. If you are somebody who has, you know, more body fat that you would like to lose, you will be able to fall into that, you know, lose fat, build muscle category if you do what we talked about earlier. Now let's say you're somebody who is more of like that skinny fat where maybe you don't have a ton of weight. to lose on the scale, but you don't look the way you want to look. This usually breaks up into 2 categories. Number one, if you're somebody who has a belly that you are trying to lose, and I don't mean like a little bit of like pinchy love handles, I mean like if you have a belly that you're trying to lose, you are going to probably want to fall in the calorie deficit range for the overall calories. If you're somebody who like you don't have like a belly to lose, you just don't look the way you want to look. You are probably going to fall into the maintenance calorie range. So again, belly to lose, calorie deficit. No belly to lose, just want to change the way you look, probably more towards your maintenance calories. And then you're going to want to make sure you track and count your protein intake. And for this specific scenario, if you're more of that like skinny fat trying to body recomp, you're going to want to take your current body weight in pounds and multiply that between 0.8 and 1. So again, if you roughly weigh 150 pounds, try to get around 150 grams of protein per day. So again, if you want to just like maintain where you're at, or if you're that skinny fat, count your calories and count your protein. I will say this, if you're somebody who wants to maximize and optimize your body composition, the way you look, as much as possible, and you don't mind tracking all of your macros and trying to hit a range for all of your macros, then I would say tracking macros might be a little bit beneficial if you are trying to body recomp. Because again, having that higher carbohydrate, a little bit lower dietary fat diet will probably help facilitate the body composition you are looking for. And then again, I would just set up those macros in the same way I talked about earlier in that video where I go through the calorie surplus macros. It's the same thing if you want to optimize your body recomposition around your maintenance calories. You don't truly need to focus on your carbs and fats if you're eating at maintenance because again, you're not in a surplus and so you're not going to gain a bunch of body fat. But if you want to optimize it, you have the option of tracking macros and calories. Otherwise, just track calories and protein. I hope this video helped you. If it did, please feel free to give it a thumbs up, subscribe to the channel, and drop below if you have any questions. Questions I can help with. On top of that, if you are interested in coaching with myself and my team, I will drop the information for coaching here below in the description of this video. And last but not least, if you want to learn more about this kind of stuff, I will link a video right here above. Hope it helped, and we will chat soon.
