What are the macronutrients & why are they important?

Macronutrients are the foundations of the food you eat and the nutrients your body needs to sustain itself. They consist of carbohydrates, proteins and fats and they all have specific roles in your body to keep it healthy.

Carbohydrates 🥔🥐🍎🥨
Carbohydrates (or carbs) are the body’s primary and preferred source of fuel. The process of converting carbs into glucose, usable energy for the body, is a lot faster than protein or fat. After conversion, the glucose then enters the bloodstream and can be immediately used as a source of energy of can be stored in the body’s cells to be used another time. Some carbs are considered simple or complex depending on how many sugar units are present.

Protein 🥩🥓🧀🍤
Protein provides the body with amino acids which are essential for muscle growth, metabolic processes, cell maintenance, etc. There are 20 total amino acids but your body can make 11 of those. The rest 9 amino acids (aka “essential amino acids”) need to be consumed through your diet. Complete protein sources provide all the amino acids that your body needs (i.e., meat, poultry, seafood, eggs, milk) while incomplete proteins provide some but not all (i.e., many plant based proteins are incomplete proteins).

Fats 🍰🍫🥜🎂
Although a lot of people try to avoids fats, they are essential for many body functions such as hormone health, energy, proper cell function, etc. There are 3 main types of fat: trans fat, saturated fat, and unsaturated fat. Trans fat (ie baked goods, fried foods) are the ones you should be cutting out of your diet as much as possible. But saturated and unsaturated fat should be part of your daily diet. Saturated fat comes mostly from meat and dairy sources, while unsaturated fats are known as the healthy fats and originate from plant sources such as avocados, nuts, seeds, olives and oil. Aim for increasing unsaturated fat and lowering saturated fat.

Hope this was helpful, will be talking about tracking macros in my next post.