Macros: The Last Thing You Want to Do Is Count Them by Benn Mudzi

When it comes to improving nutrition, the first thing most people think about is how much they’re eating. We’ve been trained by the food industry to hyper-fixate on how many calories each meal or snack contains.

But here’s the truth: this way of looking at food as just “fuel” is misleading. Food is not fuel - it’s information. (We’ll get into how and why in a moment.) Counting calories can be effective to a degree, but it’s a limited method for improving nutrition.

What a Calorie Actually Is

First, let’s get clear on the real definition of a calorie.

A calorie (cal) is the amount of heat energy required to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1°C. This is sometimes called a small calorie or gram calorie.

On food labels, when you see Calories with a capital “C,” it refers to a kilocalorie (kcal) — which equals 1,000 small calories. That’s the energy needed to heat 1 kilogram of water by 1°C.

This measurement comes from burning material in a chamber and seeing how much thermal energy it releases — measured by the rise in water temperature. Meaning: any physical object, when burned, releases thermal energy measured in calories.

So food itself doesn’t contain calories. Instead, it contains chemical energy stored in the bonds of carbs, fats, and proteins. Your body breaks those bonds during digestion and metabolism, releasing usable energy in the form of ATP for movement, heat, and cellular work.

Why Calories Became the Standard

Back in the 1800s, scientists needed a common way to measure energy in food. Since the calorie was already defined in physics as a measure of heat, they borrowed it for nutrition.

That’s how calories ended up on food labels. But again — calories don’t explain what food actually does inside your body.

Food as Information: The Role of Macros

When you eat carbs, proteins, and fats, your body breaks them down into glucose, amino acids, and fatty acids. These macros don’t just provide fuel — they give your body information that determines:

• How you regulate energy
  

• Whether you gain or lose weight
  

• How your hormones function
  

• How well you repair and grow new cells
  

This is why quality, ratio, and frequency of macros matter more than quantity (calories).

1. Quality Comes First

The quality of your macros largely determines the quality of your gut health. And gut health affects everything — your mood, hormones, immune system, and long-term resilience.

Poor-quality macros damage the gut. So if you’re obsessing over calories before addressing the quality of your macros, you’re focusing on the wrong lever.

2. Ratio & Frequency Drive Function

The ratio and timing of your macros impact many vital processes.

• Fuel use (fat vs glucose): If your macro balance heavily favors carbs, your body often gets stuck burning glucose and rarely taps into fat. This is called metabolic inflexibility (or a “rigid metabolism”). It’s one of the biggest reasons people struggle to burn body fat, and it has less to do with “calories in, calories out.”
  
  🔎 In fact, a 2019 Michigan study found that people who managed their blood sugar through the ratio and frequency of their macros lost more weight than those who only tracked calories.
  

• Inflammation & blood sugar: The wrong macro ratios spike blood sugar, leading to weight gain, acne, chronic inflammation, low energy, anxiety, and poor metabolic health. This doesn’t mean “low carb” fixes everything — you can still eat poor-quality macros and get poor results if your ratios are off.
  

The takeaway: it’s not about one magic macro ratio — it’s about consistency, quality, and balance.

3. Quantity (Calories) — the Icing on the Cake

Does the amount of food you eat matter? Of course. But it’s the third priority — after quality and ratio/frequency.

Think of calories as the icing on the cake. If all you have is icing, you don’t have a cake. And while you can eat just icing, it’s not very satisfying or sustainable.

The cake itself is built on:

1. Quality of macros
   

2. Ratio & frequency of macros

Once you’ve got the cake, then you can add icing — and remember, not all cakes even need icing.

The Bottom Line

Nutrition isn’t about obsessing over calorie numbers. Calories tell you almost nothing about how food informs your body.

Instead, focus on the quality, ratio, and frequency of your macros. That’s where the biggest wins are for gut health, hormones, energy, and sustainable weight management.

And if you’ve got that foundation — then feel free to pay attention to quantity. But until then, don’t mistake the icing for the cake