Erin Stern Shares 5-Step Plan to Figure Out Daily Calories & Macros

American bodybuilder Erin Stern has been a dominant force in the women’s Figure and Bikini division. Having been a part of the sport for over a decade, she amassed a plethora of knowledge about fitness. In a recent video uploaded on YouTube, Stern shared a simple five-step plan to figure out daily calories and macros.

Hailing from Tampa, Florida, Erin Stern comes from a family of athletes. She began competing in sports from a young age and developed a passion for weight training during her athletic days in college. After narrowly missing out on the qualification for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Stern turned her attention to bodybuilding and decided to pursue a career.

Stern’s potential was clear from the start as she emerged victorious in her debut contest at the 2008 NPC National Bodybuilding and Figure Championships. The win paved the way for her to participate in the IFBB Pro League.

Stern kicked off her career with several impressive performances, taking silver at the Arnold Classic in 2010 and 2011. She secured the coveted Figure Olympia title in 2010 and reclaimed it by exacting revenge on former champion Nicole Wilkins in a dominant showing in 2012. She also claimed two Valenti Classic Pro Figure wins.

The 43-year-old was at the height of her power between 2010 and 2013. She proved to be one of the most consistent and disciplined athletes in the sport, never placing below third in any contest during those three years. Following an outing at the 2014 Australia Pro Grand Prix XIV, Stern took to the sidelines for over six years.

In 2020, Erin Stern marked her return to action, but in the women’s Bikini division instead of Figure. She took silver to Daraja Hill at the 2021 Republic of Texas Pro and scored her first win in the category at the 2021 Tahoe Show.

Stern delivered a stunning season last year. She finished runner-up at the 2022 Miami Muscle Beach Pro and came out on top of the 2022 Republic of Texas Pro before concluding it with a strong showing at the Mr. Olympia show.

Erin Stern Shares 5-Step Plan to Figure Out Daily Calories & Macros

In a recent Youtube video, Erin Stern shared a straightforward 5-step plan to figure out daily calories and macros.

“A good diet can either help you along with your progress or it can seriously hinder it,” said Stern. “There’s so much information out there. Where do you turn? The more you learn, the more confusing things can be. I wanted to break it down into five simple ways to calculate your calories and macros.”

These five steps are:

1. Goal setting:

Looking at your starting point. Be really honest here. I want you to think about what your current body fat percentage is, how much muscle mass you’re carrying, and if you need to go get calipers or do body fat testing, really good idea. You can also get a DEXA scan if you’d like.

Take progress pictures, and measurements, then figure out what your goals are going to be for let’s say the next 90 days. It can be really helpful to focus on one goal such as building muscle or leaning down.

2. Calculate maintenance calories:

We’re going to calculate maintenance calories. There are several different ways you can do this. You’ve got some online calculators that can be pretty effective. You can also track your food for about two weeks, do a food log, keep track of your weights, and if things don’t change you’ve got maintenance calories. This is one of my favorite ways although it takes a little bit more time you know exactly what your maintenance calories are and therefore have an easier time adjusting from there. If you don’t want to wait… you can take your body weight, multiply it by a coefficient from 11 to 15.

So, if you’re highly active and want to gain muscle, maybe you’re on the leaner side of things and have a high metabolism, go for body weight times 14 or 15.

3. Calculate protein:

The reason I don’t do a ratio or percentage is because I want you to think about protein as the building block of muscle. This is a rather fixed number. The protein isn’t going to drastically increase or decrease. You’re typically going to be somewhere in that body weight times 0.8 to 1.2. Use our protein calculator.

4. Calculate fats:

Think about how you like to eat and your goals. You’re looking at your body weight multiplied by 0.2 to 0.6

If you enjoy low fat/higher carbs, choose somewhere around 0.2 – 0.3. If you like higher fats and lower carbs, choose somewhere around 0.5 – 0.6. Let’s go with 150 x 0.2 = 30g of fat. This gives us (30g x 9 calories per gram) 270 calories for fats.

The remaining calories are for carbs. So, 1,800 – 600 – 270 = 930 calories.

5. Calculate carbs:

We’re really just filling in those missing calories with carbs. Let’s get our grams of carbs, or (930 / 4 calories per gram), 232.5g of carbs So, we have: 1,800 calories 150g protein 30g fats 232.5g carbs.

“When making adjustments, think about making small changes every 1-2 weeks. This would be an increase or decrease of around 10% of your daily caloric intake or around 100-300 calories. Give your body 1-2 weeks to see how the adjustment works and then decide to stay at your current intake, or adjust intake again.”

Erin Stern gave fans a look into her customized high-intensity low-impact training to build muscle with minimal wear and tear on the body two weeks ago.

Her latest offering provides fans with an effective and simple way to calculate and track daily calories and macros to stay on track with their diet. It will certainly help many improve their results.

You can watch the full video below.

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