Macro Counting for Fat Loss: What to Set, What to Fix, and What Does Not Matter
Your macro targets, whether going over on fat actually matters, how accurate tracking apps really are, and the six errors that quietly stall fat loss for women in their 40s and 50s.
Why Macro Tracking Stops Working
Have you been logging your food every day, hitting your numbers, but the scale is not moving and your energy is flat? Wondering if your metabolism is broken or just stalled out? The truth is, it’s probably not your metabolism that is the issue at all! After 20 years of working with women around the world there is a common error that even the most diligent and experienced women make when tracking their macros.
The problem is most often inaccuracies in portion measurements, not an error with the macro split itself. I see women agonize over whether their carbs are too high or their fat percentage is wrong. Meanwhile the real gap is that they are either underestimating or even not tracking extras like cooking oil, cheese, and mindless handfuls.
Study after study finds this same gap. In one well known study of women who said they could not lose weight despite reporting very low intake, the results showed that while they believed their food logs were complete, they were actually underreporting their total caloric intake by 47 percent! Their metabolisms were normal. One of the biggest things holding them back was an error in their food logs.
Why does that happen to careful, motivated women? Most women that log their food are pretty good with remembering to put in the food they see on their plates. But, it is what I call ‘hidden calories’ that tend to cause the most problems. Extras like a splash of oil in the pan to cook with, the extra tasting bites while you are cooking, the doubled serving of dressing you did not measure. The sneaky calories do not feel like you are truly eating more but they can really add up quickly.
Women spend months adjusting their macro ratios when the thing standing between them and results is a food scale they used for two days and put in a drawer.
Julie LohreWhat Should My Macros Be?
When determining what your overall macros should be, the best thing to do is set your protein first, then split what is left. Protein is the macro that protects your muscle, especially when you are eating in a calorie deficit, so it should get the first claim on your calories. Everything else is negotiable around it.
Wanting to make a body recomposition or aiming to hold on to your lean mass as you lose bodyfat? Protein is even more important!
| Your goal | Protein | Carbohydrate | Fat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fat loss, protecting muscle | 35 to 40% | 30 to 35% | 25 to 30% |
| Body recomposition | 30 to 35% | 35 to 40% | 25 to 30% |
| Maintenance | 30% | 40% | 30% |
| Reverse dieting | 30% | 40 to 45% | 25 to 30% |
In grams, protein should ideally land between 0.8 and 1.2 per pound of goal body weight depending on what your specific goals are, your activity level, and your metabolism. When determining your protein intake, anchor the percentages to your goal weight, not current weight, especially if you have substantial body fat to lose.
Consider these percentages as starting points, not hard and fast laws. Your individual intake can vary not just for you but over time based on things like your training intensity and duration, your age, and how much muscle you are already carrying.
And the specific macro split matters less than most women think. Within a reasonable range, calories drive fat loss and protein drives what you keep. The rest is preference and most importantly, what you can stick with. That said, variety helps too. Changing your macro breakdown periodically based on how your body is responding will help keep you seeing changes.
If macro tracking is new to you, my guide to macros for beginners walks through setting this up. If your goal is losing fat while adding lean muscle rather than simply weighing less, start with body recomposition for women.
Does it matter if I go over on the Fat Macros?
This one comes up a lot with women tracking macros. You can put it down.
If you go over your fat macros but stay under your calorie target, you will still lose fat. Total calorie balance is what drives the result, not which macro the calories arrived in.
The best evidence here is a two year trial. Researchers put 811 adults on four diets with very different fat, protein, and carb splits. All four groups lost about the same amount of weight. The gap between them came to about a pound.
The split was not the deciding factor. The calorie deficit was.
The two things that do matter
- Fat is calorie dense, so going over usually means going over on calories too. Fat carries MORE THAN DOUBLE the calories per gram that protein and carbs do, nine versus four. If you exceed your fat target by 20 grams without pulling something else down, that is 180 calories you did not plan for. The problem is not the fat itself. It is the arithmetic.
- If fat is crowding out protein, that is worth fixing. Coming in over on fat and under on protein, repeatedly, will cost you lean muscle over time. That is the one version of this that actually matters, and it is a protein problem wearing a fat costume.
Where the extra fat is actually coming from
So where is it actually coming from? When a client keeps going over, it is nearly always the same five things, in this order:
- Cooking oil. One tablespoon of olive oil is about 14 grams of fat and vanishes into a pan without feeling like food.
- Nuts and nut butter. A heaping spoonful of peanut butter is routinely two measured tablespoons.
- Cheese. Shredded cheese is very hard to eyeball and adds up quickly across a day.
- Salad dressing. A poured serving is often three times the label serving.
- Avocado. Nutritious, and one whole avocado carries around 30 grams of fat.
Measure cooking oil into a bowl, toss your food in it, then transfer to the pan. You get better coverage from far less oil than pouring straight in, and you get an accurate number to log. This one change is usually worth 10 to 15 grams of fat a day.
So the short version: stop losing sleep over the fat number. Watch your calories, protect your protein, and let the carbohydrate and fat split flex around your real life.
How Accurate Are Macro Tracking Apps?
Women ask me whether FatSecret is accurate, whether Cronometer is better than MyFitnessPal, which tracker is the most reliable. The honest answer is that the app is rarely what is limiting you.
Every major tracking app draws on a database that is partly user-submitted, so accuracy depends on the individual entry you selected, not the brand on the icon. That is true of FatSecret, MyFitnessPal, Cronometer, Lose It, and the rest.
Why are the entries so inconsistent? Because a large share of them were typed in by other users rather than pulled from a label, and nobody checked the math before it went into the database.
Researchers checked MyFitnessPal against a national food database. When people were trained and stuck to verified entries, the numbers held up well. Fat was off by under two percent, carbs by about six, protein by about eight.
When untrained users picked entries however they liked, the accuracy fell apart. A separate study compared five popular apps and every one of them was off, most often underestimating fat and protein.
| What you are tracking | How much to trust the app | What to do about it |
|---|---|---|
| Total calories | Good, with verified entries | This is the number that matters most, so protect its accuracy |
| Protein, carbs, fat | Good verified, poor otherwise | Use green checkmark entries or barcode scans only |
| Fiber | Consistently underestimated | Assume you are getting less than the app says |
| Sodium and cholesterol | Poor, in every app studied | Do not make decisions from these numbers |
| Restaurant and homemade meals | Weakest area by a wide margin | Build your own recipe entry from the raw ingredients |
Four habits that fix app accuracy
- Choose entries with a verified or green checkmark label, every time.
- Use the barcode scanner for anything packaged, since that pulls from the manufacturer label.
- Cross-check any new entry against the nutrition label the first time you log it.
- Save your regular foods and meals so you are reusing a known-good entry instead of re-choosing from a list.
Do those four things and any of the major apps will serve you. Skip them and the most expensive tracker on the market will not help.
Six Macro Tracking Mistakes and the Fixes
These are the six I find most often when I audit a stalled log, in the order they cost women the most.
-
1
Underestimating portion sizes
Half a cup of rice becomes a full cup in the bowl. A tablespoon of peanut butter becomes two. Weigh everything for one full week and you will find the gap. Weigh protein raw and oatmeal dry, since cooking changes water content and not calories. If weighing raw is not possible, weigh it cooked and round down about an ounce. Even as a fitness pro, I still pull the food scale back out every month or two to check myself.
-
2
Not logging the small things
Bites while cooking, creamer in your coffee, the last two bites off your kid’s plate, a handful of nuts between meetings. None of it feels like a meal and all of it counts. If you are going to spend the effort tracking, log the oils, sauces, condiments, and tastes. Honesty in the log is worth more than precision in the ratio.
-
3
Using unverified app entries
I have seen chicken thighs logged with zero grams of fat and oatmeal logged with 20 grams of protein. Verified entries and barcode scans only, cross-checked against the label the first time, then saved for reuse.
-
4
Eating clean but not balanced
A smoothie, a salad, and a bowl of fruit are all nutritious and all light on protein. Clean and balanced are two different things. Ask three questions of every meal. Where is the protein? Is there a reasonable carbohydrate? Did I include some fat? When all three are present, hunger and energy stabilize on their own and the whole day gets easier!
-
5
Fearing carbs or fat
Cutting an entire macronutrient almost always backfires. Carbohydrates fuel your brain and your training. Fat supports hormone production, and as a woman moving through perimenopause and menopause, that matters more than it did in your thirties, not less. If you are moody, tired, and hungry all the time, low fat is worth checking.
-
6
Never adjusting the numbers
Targets that worked at the start of a phase will not keep working through it. Your metabolism responds to your current body composition, activity, and stress. Staying on identical numbers for months is one of the most common reasons a log that looks perfect stops producing results.
When to Change Your Macros
Now that your numbers are set and your logging is honest, the last piece is knowing when to leave them alone and when to move them.
Reassess every two weeks. Change something only when a pattern shows up, never in response to a single reading.
That is the difference between coaching and reacting. One high scale morning after a salty dinner is not information. Three weeks of flat measurements alongside falling strength is.
| What you are seeing | What it usually means | What to change |
|---|---|---|
| Photos tightening, scale flat | Recomposition is happening | Nothing, keep going and stop weighing daily |
| Everything flat for 3 weeks | Adherence or a stale target | Audit the log first, adjust only if it is clean |
| Losing fast, strength dropping | Deficit is too aggressive | Raise calories, raise protein first |
| Constant hunger and low mood | Fat is likely too low | Move fat toward 30% before touching calories |
| Measurements creeping up | Intake has drifted above target | Re-weigh everything for one week before changing numbers |
Track it with something more reliable than the scale. Here is how I have clients take progress photos and take body measurements so the data is actually comparable from one check-in to the next. Add strength numbers on your main lifts and you have four signals instead of one.
Audit the log before you lower the target. If tracking has drifted, cutting calories on top of an inaccurate log just puts you in a deeper deficit than you think you are in. Tighten the measurement first, then decide whether anything actually needs to change.
Macro Counting FAQ
The questions women over 40 ask me most about tracking macros for fat loss.
What should my macros be for fat loss?
Start with protein, then split the rest. For most women over 40 losing fat, that means roughly 35 to 40 percent of calories from protein, 30 to 35 percent from carbohydrates, and 25 to 30 percent from fat, with protein landing somewhere between 0.8 and 1.2 grams per pound of goal body weight. Set protein first because it is the macro that protects lean muscle in a deficit, then divide the remaining calories between carbohydrates and fat based on what actually keeps you full and energetic. There is no single correct split, and the ratio matters far less than hitting your calorie target consistently.
Is it bad to go over your fat macros?
Going over your fat macros is not bad on its own, and it is one of the most over-worried questions in macro tracking. What determines fat loss is total calorie balance, not which macro the calories came from. In a two year trial, 811 adults were put on four diets with very different fat, protein, and carb splits. They all lost about the same amount of weight. The one caveat is that fat is calorie dense at nine calories per gram, so going over on fat usually means going over on calories too unless you deliberately pulled carbohydrates down to make room.
What happens if I go over my fat macros but stay under my calories?
Almost nothing happens, and you can stop worrying about it. If your total calories are still in a deficit, you will still lose fat, because calorie balance is what drives the result. The exception worth watching is protein. If going over on fat repeatedly means you are coming up short on protein, that will cost you lean muscle over time, and that is the thing actually worth correcting. Hit protein first, keep calories where they belong, and treat the carbohydrate and fat split as flexible.
Why do I keep going over my fat macros?
It is almost always cooking oil, nuts, nut butter, cheese, and salad dressing, in that order. Fat is the easiest macro to underestimate because it is calorie dense and most of it arrives in small volumes you do not think of as food. A tablespoon of olive oil is about 14 grams of fat and disappears into a pan without registering as a meal component. Measure your cooking oil into the bowl rather than pouring it into the pan, weigh nuts and nut butter instead of eyeballing them, and log dressing separately.
Is FatSecret accurate?
The accuracy question is less about which app you choose and more about whether the specific entry you selected has been verified. Every major tracking app including FatSecret, MyFitnessPal, Cronometer, and Lose It draws on databases that are partly user-submitted, which means individual entries range from precise to badly wrong. When researchers checked MyFitnessPal against a national food database, the calorie and macro numbers held up well as long as people were trained and stuck to verified entries. When untrained users picked entries however they liked, the accuracy fell apart. Choose verified or barcode-scanned entries, cross-check against the label, and save your regular foods so you reuse a known-good entry.
Which macro tracking app is the most accurate?
No app is meaningfully more accurate than the others once you control for entry quality, so pick the one you will actually open every day. Researchers compared five popular tracking apps and every one of them was off, most often underestimating fat and protein. Apps are reliable for total calories and the three macros when you use verified entries, and unreliable for fiber, sodium, and cholesterol regardless of which one you use. The app is not what is limiting your results.
Should I weigh food raw or cooked when counting macros?
Weigh protein raw and uncooked, and weigh carbohydrates like oatmeal dry before you add water. Cooking changes water content, not calories, so a chicken breast that weighs six ounces raw might weigh four and a half ounces cooked while containing exactly the same protein. If weighing raw is not possible, weigh it cooked and round down about an ounce rather than skipping the measurement entirely. Pick one method and stay consistent, because switching back and forth is what actually introduces error.
Why is macro tracking not working for me?
In the large majority of cases it is portion estimation rather than the macro split. Study after study finds a big gap between what people report eating and what they actually eat. In one well known study of adults who could not lose weight despite reporting very low intake, they were underreporting by 47 percent on average. Weigh everything for one full week and you will usually find the gap. If your logging is truly tight and you still are not progressing, the next thing to look at is whether your targets have been the same for too long.
How often should I adjust my macros?
Reassess every two weeks, and change something only when the data shows a pattern rather than a single bad reading. Your metabolism responds to your current body composition, activity, and stress, so targets that worked three months ago will not necessarily work now. In my coaching I review photos, tape measurements, strength numbers, hunger, and recovery every two weeks and make small adjustments from there. Staying on identical numbers for months is one of the most common reasons progress stalls.
Let Me Set Your Macros For You
I’m Julie Lohre, an IFBB Fitness Pro, Certified Personal Trainer, and Certified Nutrition Specialist. For 20+ years I’ve built personalized macro-based nutrition and training plans for women over 40 through my FITBODY Recomposition System™, reviewing photos, measurements, strength, and biofeedback every two weeks and adjusting from there. No calculators, no guessing, no staying stuck on the same numbers for months.
- Sacks, Frank M., et al. “Comparison of Weight-Loss Diets with Different Compositions of Fat, Protein, and Carbohydrates.” The New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 360, no. 9, Feb. 2009, pp. 859-873.
- Lichtman, Steven W., et al. “Discrepancy between Self-Reported and Actual Caloric Intake and Exercise in Obese Subjects.” The New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 327, no. 27, Dec. 1992, pp. 1893-1898.
- Evenepoel, Charlotte, et al. “Accuracy of Nutrient Calculations Using the Consumer-Focused Online App MyFitnessPal: Validation Study.” Journal of Medical Internet Research, vol. 22, no. 10, Oct. 2020, e18237.
- Griffiths, Caroline, et al. “Assessment of the Accuracy of Nutrient Calculations of Five Popular Nutrition Tracking Applications.” Public Health Nutrition, vol. 21, no. 8, June 2018, pp. 1495-1502.
- Jäger, Ralf, et al. “International Society of Sports Nutrition Position Stand: Protein and Exercise.” Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, vol. 14, no. 20, June 2017.
Macro Counting for Fat Loss: What to Set, What to Fix, and What Does Not Matter
Your macro targets, whether going over on fat actually matters, how accurate tracking apps really are, and the six errors that quietly stall fat loss for women in their 40s and 50s.
Why Macro Tracking Stops Working
Have you been logging your food every day, hitting your numbers, but the scale is not moving and your energy is flat? Wondering if your metabolism is broken or just stalled out? The truth is, it’s probably not your metabolism that is the issue at all! After 20 years of working with women around the world there is a common error that even the most diligent and experienced women make when tracking their macros.
The problem is most often inaccuracies in portion measurements, not an error with the macro split itself. I see women agonize over whether their carbs are too high or their fat percentage is wrong. Meanwhile the real gap is that they are either underestimating or even not tracking extras like cooking oil, cheese, and mindless handfuls.
Study after study finds this same gap. In one well known study of women who said they could not lose weight despite reporting very low intake, the results showed that while they believed their food logs were complete, they were actually underreporting their total caloric intake by 47 percent! Their metabolisms were normal. One of the biggest things holding them back was an error in their food logs.
Why does that happen to careful, motivated women? Most women that log their food are pretty good with remembering to put in the food they see on their plates. But, it is what I call ‘hidden calories’ that tend to cause the most problems. Extras like a splash of oil in the pan to cook with, the extra tasting bites while you are cooking, the doubled serving of dressing you did not measure. The sneaky calories do not feel like you are truly eating more but they can really add up quickly.
Women spend months adjusting their macro ratios when the thing standing between them and results is a food scale they used for two days and put in a drawer.
Julie LohreWhat Should My Macros Be?
When determining what your overall macros should be, the best thing to do is set your protein first, then split what is left. Protein is the macro that protects your muscle, especially when you are eating in a calorie deficit, so it should get the first claim on your calories. Everything else is negotiable around it.
Wanting to make a body recomposition or aiming to hold on to your lean mass as you lose bodyfat? Protein is even more important!
| Your goal | Protein | Carbohydrate | Fat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fat loss, protecting muscle | 35 to 40% | 30 to 35% | 25 to 30% |
| Body recomposition | 30 to 35% | 35 to 40% | 25 to 30% |
| Maintenance | 30% | 40% | 30% |
| Reverse dieting | 30% | 40 to 45% | 25 to 30% |
In grams, protein should ideally land between 0.8 and 1.2 per pound of goal body weight depending on what your specific goals are, your activity level, and your metabolism. When determining your protein intake, anchor the percentages to your goal weight, not current weight, especially if you have substantial body fat to lose.
Consider these percentages as starting points, not hard and fast laws. Your individual intake can vary not just for you but over time based on things like your training intensity and duration, your age, and how much muscle you are already carrying.
And the specific macro split matters less than most women think. Within a reasonable range, calories drive fat loss and protein drives what you keep. The rest is preference and most importantly, what you can stick with. That said, variety helps too. Changing your macro breakdown periodically based on how your body is responding will help keep you seeing changes.
If macro tracking is new to you, my guide to macros for beginners walks through setting this up. If your goal is losing fat while adding lean muscle rather than simply weighing less, start with body recomposition for women.
Does it matter if I go over on the Fat Macros?
This one comes up a lot with women tracking macros. You can put it down.
If you go over your fat macros but stay under your calorie target, you will still lose fat. Total calorie balance is what drives the result, not which macro the calories arrived in.
The best evidence here is a two year trial. Researchers put 811 adults on four diets with very different fat, protein, and carb splits. All four groups lost about the same amount of weight. The gap between them came to about a pound.
The split was not the deciding factor. The calorie deficit was.
The two things that do matter
- Fat is calorie dense, so going over usually means going over on calories too. Fat carries MORE THAN DOUBLE the calories per gram that protein and carbs do, nine versus four. If you exceed your fat target by 20 grams without pulling something else down, that is 180 calories you did not plan for. The problem is not the fat itself. It is the arithmetic.
- If fat is crowding out protein, that is worth fixing. Coming in over on fat and under on protein, repeatedly, will cost you lean muscle over time. That is the one version of this that actually matters, and it is a protein problem wearing a fat costume.
Where the extra fat is actually coming from
So where is it actually coming from? When a client keeps going over, it is nearly always the same five things, in this order:
- Cooking oil. One tablespoon of olive oil is about 14 grams of fat and vanishes into a pan without feeling like food.
- Nuts and nut butter. A heaping spoonful of peanut butter is routinely two measured tablespoons.
- Cheese. Shredded cheese is very hard to eyeball and adds up quickly across a day.
- Salad dressing. A poured serving is often three times the label serving.
- Avocado. Nutritious, and one whole avocado carries around 30 grams of fat.
Measure cooking oil into a bowl, toss your food in it, then transfer to the pan. You get better coverage from far less oil than pouring straight in, and you get an accurate number to log. This one change is usually worth 10 to 15 grams of fat a day.
So the short version: stop losing sleep over the fat number. Watch your calories, protect your protein, and let the carbohydrate and fat split flex around your real life.
How Accurate Are Macro Tracking Apps?
Women ask me whether FatSecret is accurate, whether Cronometer is better than MyFitnessPal, which tracker is the most reliable. The honest answer is that the app is rarely what is limiting you.
Every major tracking app draws on a database that is partly user-submitted, so accuracy depends on the individual entry you selected, not the brand on the icon. That is true of FatSecret, MyFitnessPal, Cronometer, Lose It, and the rest.
Why are the entries so inconsistent? Because a large share of them were typed in by other users rather than pulled from a label, and nobody checked the math before it went into the database.
Researchers checked MyFitnessPal against a national food database. When people were trained and stuck to verified entries, the numbers held up well. Fat was off by under two percent, carbs by about six, protein by about eight.
When untrained users picked entries however they liked, the accuracy fell apart. A separate study compared five popular apps and every one of them was off, most often underestimating fat and protein.
| What you are tracking | How much to trust the app | What to do about it |
|---|---|---|
| Total calories | Good, with verified entries | This is the number that matters most, so protect its accuracy |
| Protein, carbs, fat | Good verified, poor otherwise | Use green checkmark entries or barcode scans only |
| Fiber | Consistently underestimated | Assume you are getting less than the app says |
| Sodium and cholesterol | Poor, in every app studied | Do not make decisions from these numbers |
| Restaurant and homemade meals | Weakest area by a wide margin | Build your own recipe entry from the raw ingredients |
Four habits that fix app accuracy
- Choose entries with a verified or green checkmark label, every time.
- Use the barcode scanner for anything packaged, since that pulls from the manufacturer label.
- Cross-check any new entry against the nutrition label the first time you log it.
- Save your regular foods and meals so you are reusing a known-good entry instead of re-choosing from a list.
Do those four things and any of the major apps will serve you. Skip them and the most expensive tracker on the market will not help.
Six Macro Tracking Mistakes and the Fixes
These are the six I find most often when I audit a stalled log, in the order they cost women the most.
-
1
Underestimating portion sizes
Half a cup of rice becomes a full cup in the bowl. A tablespoon of peanut butter becomes two. Weigh everything for one full week and you will find the gap. Weigh protein raw and oatmeal dry, since cooking changes water content and not calories. If weighing raw is not possible, weigh it cooked and round down about an ounce. Even as a fitness pro, I still pull the food scale back out every month or two to check myself.
-
2
Not logging the small things
Bites while cooking, creamer in your coffee, the last two bites off your kid’s plate, a handful of nuts between meetings. None of it feels like a meal and all of it counts. If you are going to spend the effort tracking, log the oils, sauces, condiments, and tastes. Honesty in the log is worth more than precision in the ratio.
-
3
Using unverified app entries
I have seen chicken thighs logged with zero grams of fat and oatmeal logged with 20 grams of protein. Verified entries and barcode scans only, cross-checked against the label the first time, then saved for reuse.
-
4
Eating clean but not balanced
A smoothie, a salad, and a bowl of fruit are all nutritious and all light on protein. Clean and balanced are two different things. Ask three questions of every meal. Where is the protein? Is there a reasonable carbohydrate? Did I include some fat? When all three are present, hunger and energy stabilize on their own and the whole day gets easier!
-
5
Fearing carbs or fat
Cutting an entire macronutrient almost always backfires. Carbohydrates fuel your brain and your training. Fat supports hormone production, and as a woman moving through perimenopause and menopause, that matters more than it did in your thirties, not less. If you are moody, tired, and hungry all the time, low fat is worth checking.
-
6
Never adjusting the numbers
Targets that worked at the start of a phase will not keep working through it. Your metabolism responds to your current body composition, activity, and stress. Staying on identical numbers for months is one of the most common reasons a log that looks perfect stops producing results.
When to Change Your Macros
Now that your numbers are set and your logging is honest, the last piece is knowing when to leave them alone and when to move them.
Reassess every two weeks. Change something only when a pattern shows up, never in response to a single reading.
That is the difference between coaching and reacting. One high scale morning after a salty dinner is not information. Three weeks of flat measurements alongside falling strength is.
| What you are seeing | What it usually means | What to change |
|---|---|---|
| Photos tightening, scale flat | Recomposition is happening | Nothing, keep going and stop weighing daily |
| Everything flat for 3 weeks | Adherence or a stale target | Audit the log first, adjust only if it is clean |
| Losing fast, strength dropping | Deficit is too aggressive | Raise calories, raise protein first |
| Constant hunger and low mood | Fat is likely too low | Move fat toward 30% before touching calories |
| Measurements creeping up | Intake has drifted above target | Re-weigh everything for one week before changing numbers |
Track it with something more reliable than the scale. Here is how I have clients take progress photos and take body measurements so the data is actually comparable from one check-in to the next. Add strength numbers on your main lifts and you have four signals instead of one.
Audit the log before you lower the target. If tracking has drifted, cutting calories on top of an inaccurate log just puts you in a deeper deficit than you think you are in. Tighten the measurement first, then decide whether anything actually needs to change.
Macro Counting FAQ
The questions women over 40 ask me most about tracking macros for fat loss.
What should my macros be for fat loss?
Start with protein, then split the rest. For most women over 40 losing fat, that means roughly 35 to 40 percent of calories from protein, 30 to 35 percent from carbohydrates, and 25 to 30 percent from fat, with protein landing somewhere between 0.8 and 1.2 grams per pound of goal body weight. Set protein first because it is the macro that protects lean muscle in a deficit, then divide the remaining calories between carbohydrates and fat based on what actually keeps you full and energetic. There is no single correct split, and the ratio matters far less than hitting your calorie target consistently.
Is it bad to go over your fat macros?
Going over your fat macros is not bad on its own, and it is one of the most over-worried questions in macro tracking. What determines fat loss is total calorie balance, not which macro the calories came from. In a two year trial, 811 adults were put on four diets with very different fat, protein, and carb splits. They all lost about the same amount of weight. The one caveat is that fat is calorie dense at nine calories per gram, so going over on fat usually means going over on calories too unless you deliberately pulled carbohydrates down to make room.
What happens if I go over my fat macros but stay under my calories?
Almost nothing happens, and you can stop worrying about it. If your total calories are still in a deficit, you will still lose fat, because calorie balance is what drives the result. The exception worth watching is protein. If going over on fat repeatedly means you are coming up short on protein, that will cost you lean muscle over time, and that is the thing actually worth correcting. Hit protein first, keep calories where they belong, and treat the carbohydrate and fat split as flexible.
Why do I keep going over my fat macros?
It is almost always cooking oil, nuts, nut butter, cheese, and salad dressing, in that order. Fat is the easiest macro to underestimate because it is calorie dense and most of it arrives in small volumes you do not think of as food. A tablespoon of olive oil is about 14 grams of fat and disappears into a pan without registering as a meal component. Measure your cooking oil into the bowl rather than pouring it into the pan, weigh nuts and nut butter instead of eyeballing them, and log dressing separately.
Is FatSecret accurate?
The accuracy question is less about which app you choose and more about whether the specific entry you selected has been verified. Every major tracking app including FatSecret, MyFitnessPal, Cronometer, and Lose It draws on databases that are partly user-submitted, which means individual entries range from precise to badly wrong. When researchers checked MyFitnessPal against a national food database, the calorie and macro numbers held up well as long as people were trained and stuck to verified entries. When untrained users picked entries however they liked, the accuracy fell apart. Choose verified or barcode-scanned entries, cross-check against the label, and save your regular foods so you reuse a known-good entry.
Which macro tracking app is the most accurate?
No app is meaningfully more accurate than the others once you control for entry quality, so pick the one you will actually open every day. Researchers compared five popular tracking apps and every one of them was off, most often underestimating fat and protein. Apps are reliable for total calories and the three macros when you use verified entries, and unreliable for fiber, sodium, and cholesterol regardless of which one you use. The app is not what is limiting your results.
Should I weigh food raw or cooked when counting macros?
Weigh protein raw and uncooked, and weigh carbohydrates like oatmeal dry before you add water. Cooking changes water content, not calories, so a chicken breast that weighs six ounces raw might weigh four and a half ounces cooked while containing exactly the same protein. If weighing raw is not possible, weigh it cooked and round down about an ounce rather than skipping the measurement entirely. Pick one method and stay consistent, because switching back and forth is what actually introduces error.
Why is macro tracking not working for me?
In the large majority of cases it is portion estimation rather than the macro split. Study after study finds a big gap between what people report eating and what they actually eat. In one well known study of adults who could not lose weight despite reporting very low intake, they were underreporting by 47 percent on average. Weigh everything for one full week and you will usually find the gap. If your logging is truly tight and you still are not progressing, the next thing to look at is whether your targets have been the same for too long.
How often should I adjust my macros?
Reassess every two weeks, and change something only when the data shows a pattern rather than a single bad reading. Your metabolism responds to your current body composition, activity, and stress, so targets that worked three months ago will not necessarily work now. In my coaching I review photos, tape measurements, strength numbers, hunger, and recovery every two weeks and make small adjustments from there. Staying on identical numbers for months is one of the most common reasons progress stalls.
Let Me Set Your Macros For You
I’m Julie Lohre, an IFBB Fitness Pro, Certified Personal Trainer, and Certified Nutrition Specialist. For 20+ years I’ve built personalized macro-based nutrition and training plans for women over 40 through my FITBODY Recomposition System™, reviewing photos, measurements, strength, and biofeedback every two weeks and adjusting from there. No calculators, no guessing, no staying stuck on the same numbers for months.
- Sacks, Frank M., et al. “Comparison of Weight-Loss Diets with Different Compositions of Fat, Protein, and Carbohydrates.” The New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 360, no. 9, Feb. 2009, pp. 859-873.
- Lichtman, Steven W., et al. “Discrepancy between Self-Reported and Actual Caloric Intake and Exercise in Obese Subjects.” The New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 327, no. 27, Dec. 1992, pp. 1893-1898.
- Evenepoel, Charlotte, et al. “Accuracy of Nutrient Calculations Using the Consumer-Focused Online App MyFitnessPal: Validation Study.” Journal of Medical Internet Research, vol. 22, no. 10, Oct. 2020, e18237.
- Griffiths, Caroline, et al. “Assessment of the Accuracy of Nutrient Calculations of Five Popular Nutrition Tracking Applications.” Public Health Nutrition, vol. 21, no. 8, June 2018, pp. 1495-1502.
- Jäger, Ralf, et al. “International Society of Sports Nutrition Position Stand: Protein and Exercise.” Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, vol. 14, no. 20, June 2017.