How do you determine ratio of carbs, proteins and fats?

You calculate the percentage g of glucides/total g etc...

You need to know your calorie goal first. There are a number of of calorie calculators available online that will help you determine what this should be. If you're trying to lose weight it's important to burn more calories than you eat. If you are a woman do not set your calorie goal below 1,200 a day. Once you have your calorie goal, CM will calculate your macros for you. But if you'd like to know how that works here's a quick and dirty explanation.

Fat is 9 calories per gram. Carbs and protein are 4 calories per gram. The standard keto formula is 5% carbs, 25% protein, 70% fat, commonly described as 5/25/70. There are other formulas , but that's the basic one. So to calculate your macros follow these steps.

Multiply your daily calorie goal by .05. That's the ratio of carbs. Multiply the resulting number by 4 and that is your maximum grams of carbs per day.

Multiply your daily calorie goal by .25.  That's the ratio of protein. Multiply the resulting number by 4 and that's your targeted number of protein grams per day.

Multiply your daily calorie goal by .7. That's the ratio of fat.  Multiply the resulting number by 9 and that's your targeted number of fat grams per day.

Check your math by multiplying your fat grams by 9 and your protein and carbs grams by 4. The results should be very close to your daily calorie goal.

For example, I am set for 1,200 calories per day. My carb limit is 15 net carbs. My protein goal is 75 grams and my fat goal is 93 grams. If you multiply 15 + 75= 90x4= 360.  93x 9= 837.  360+837= 1,197.

Carbs are a limit. Do not exceed them and try to stay as far below as comfortable. Protein is both a goal and a limit, try to hit it as close as possible every day. Fat is a goal, and a soft limit. Try to hit it every day and you can exceed it a little especially to make up calories from carbs you didn't eat. You don't have to be perfect every single day, but the closer you are able to get to perfect the closer you will be to your goal weight and your health goals.

Moondrake said:
Multiply your daily calorie goal by .05.

 1200×0,05 = 60.

Any reason you go 4 times lower ? You preach 5/25/70 and do 1/25/74. I'm asking because people religiously gravitate towards 0 carbs totally ignoring the fact that you often see 5% being norm. If my intake is 2400 I'm giving up 120-15, that is over 100 g carbs which I could still have if the formula is correct.

To me this is just confusing.

CHDevil Dang, I said multiply in step 2 where I should have said divide!  See corrected formula below.  Sorry about that!

So if your daily calorie goal is 2,400, then your calories from carbs will be 2,400 x .05= 120 calories from carbs.  Then divide 120 calories by 4 calories per gram of carbohydrate = 30 net carbs cap.  Your calories from protein will be 2,400 x .25 = 600 calories from protein.  600 calories divided by 4 calories per protein gram =150g protein.  Your calories from fat will be 2,400 x .7 = 1,680.  Divide 1,680 calories from fat by 9 calories per gram of fat = 187g fat. 

30g carb x 4 cal= 120.  150g protein x 4cal = 600.  187g fat x 9cal = 1,683.  120+600+1,684=2,403 calories.  

Standard keto for 2,400 calories is 30g net carbs, 150g protein, 187g fat.

The standard keto formula is 5% carbs, 25% protein, 70% fat, commonly described as 5/25/70. There are other formulas , but that's the basic one. So to calculate your macros follow these steps.

Multiply your daily calorie goal by .05. That's the calorie ratio of carbs. Carbs are 4 calories per gram. Divide the resulting number by 4 and that is your maximum grams of carbs per day.

Multiply your daily calorie goal by .25.  That's the caloric ratio of protein.  Protein is 4 calories per gram. Divide the resulting number by 4 and that's your targeted number of protein grams per day.

Multiply your daily calorie goal by .7. That's the caloric ratio of fat.  Fat is 9 calories per gram.  Divide the resulting number by 9 and that's your targeted number of fat grams per day.

Check your math by multiplying your fat grams by 9 and your protein and carbs grams by 4. The results should be very close to your daily calorie goal.

For example, I am set for 1,200 calories per day. My carb limit is 15 net carbs. My protein goal is 75 grams and my fat goal is 93 grams. If you multiply 15 + 75= 90x4= 360.  93x 9= 837.  360+837= 1,197.

I don't tell people to eat zero carbs.  I am a big fan of veggies.  I believe they are necessary to good health, although I admit there is some evidence suggesting people can live just fine without them.  Just ask Josh.  But I tell people to stay below 5%, eating as few carbs as they comfortably can.  

Well thank you so much for chewing it through for me. That's some pretty simple math, once you know how to convert calories to carbs, protein and fat.

I more or less was fooled by other things I read somewhere else, rather than your "divide" oopsie.  The thing is, you also see people advocating for 10% - as you said... there are other formulas. Now, I pretty much hate this part because the more I read the more there is for carbs. I won't give names, but some pretty respectable people, or at least one of them, advocates for 50g as the general rule. So ending up with a number like 60, still makes sense. Yet you aimed for 20.

Now if you - with your 1200 kcal that is, 15 g carbs diet - come across nothing else but this source and sources quoting it - you'd now be eating 3 times as much carbs and if he's not just plain and simply giving bad advice, which I very much doubt - you'd still be in ketosis. 

• If 50 grams work for you at 1200, I, with my 2400, might be still be in ketosis on 100g carbs.
• Let's be pessimistic and take the 10% formula - it still ads up to 60 and not 30.
• Let's be optimistic - with some cyclical keto and correct timing, together with some HIIT, I might be still in ketosis at 150g or more.

Which means I could really really use a trusty formula, given that 15 is really not the same as 150.  Better yet, would be understanding what role insulin plays.

You see, I've been pondering how low glycemic carbs ought to be counted.

 Onemight just burn them on the go, with a constant help from minute amounts of insulin,  that never amounts to a reason for the cells to stop burning ketones - or quite the contrary, any amount of insulin floating around triggers a temporary halt of ketosis, therefore a spike from pure sugar is doing potentially less harm, given that it's one  short stop and not a continuous seeping. Which can't be the case because we are in ketosis while having 20-50 grams of carbs, so there's something always seeping, there is insulin present and yet we're still in ketosis. To flip things once more, I've read syrups being a thing with cyclical keto. Can someone help me understand this?

I'm armed with keto strips and a glucometer and am gonna try to test my limits - the problem is that whatever ketones floats around in urine or blood is the unused, superfluous part and once I'm fat adapted I can totally forget about measuring ketones as a sign of anything. So it comes down to maybe we should be measuring glucagon levels.

So I'm trying to understand how carbs influence insulin and what that does to ketosis and I haven't yet been able to find anything to help me.

Maybe all I need to do is read some more into cyclical ketosis...?

I let the app do the math for me. In settings, go through each section and fill in the details of your weight, goals, activity level, etc.  Then, on the macros tab select the diet you want to follow  from the drop down menu, and it'll give you your numbers and it will use them on the daily log pages to help map out your days.

Good luck with your research. What my research has told me is that there's no money in serious scientific study to get the answers to these questions. Finding a natural non-pharmaceutical dietary solution to problems like diabetes, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, inflammatory disease would actually cost billions of dollars to the medical industry. While there are companies trying to capitalize on keto by selling exogenous ketones and other keto labeled products, none of these are necessary. People can adopt a Keto dietary plan without paying anybody anything, there's no profit in studying the effects of Keto.   So what you have is a whole lot of different people theorizing and extrapolating on what we know.  And they come to many different answers, sometimes completely opposing answers. In the end I don't think anyone actually knows , they are just giving you their best guess based on their experience and beliefs. The basic 1200 calorie 5/25/70 Keto Plan has worked for me so far. I switch things up from time-to-time, shift my macros around on a day-to-day basis, IF, etc., but on the whole I stick with the basic plan. I feel better, more energetic, happier. In 7mos I've lost a lot of weight, had to "retire" three-quarters of my clothing, half my shoes, lots of my rings. I don't need someone else to tell me that this method works, I can see it for myself everytime I look in the mirror.

Moondrake said:
there's no money in serious scientific study to get the answers to these questions.

 That is why going near close 0 carbs sounds so crazy to me.  I've been in ketosis for 3-4 weeks and upped my carbs little by little. Depending on how long ketones still show up on your urine strips after you actually stopped being in ketosis, I either got a late response to having knocked myself out of ketosis... or I was actually doing fine at around 100g.

I'll have to repeat the experiment. Why doesn't everybody just up their carbs though and test ? Why is it that people prefer going close to no carbs, despite it being difficult, without knowing if there's any added benefits feasting on 5g rather than 50?

Moondrake said:
People can adopt a Keto dietary plan without paying anybody anything, there's no profit in studying the effects of Keto. 

 I find I kinda have to pay 3-4 times as much for food as before. I don't know about you but olive oil is 8 times the sunflower oil. Cheese is still low on fat compared to butter so you have to up the dose. Peanuts aren't good, walnuts are X times pricier. Smoked salmon is around 30$ per kg ?

The closer you try to hit to 0g, the worse it gets.

Moondrake said:
The basic 1200 calorie 5/25/70 Keto Plan has worked for me so far. I switch things up from time-to-time, shift my macros around on a day-to-day basis, IF, etc., but on the whole I stick with the basic plan. I feel better, more energetic, happier. In 7mos I've lost a lot of weight

 I believe you. Although, I ended up gaining weight, about 6 lbs, in my short experiment - despite a lot of OMAD and 4 days fasting in 3 weeks. I felt different. I'll do it again.

With a BMI of 25, I guess there's not a lot of weight to loose and was relatively lighter to begin with - so I just went back to my "normal" weight.

Which either happened cause I was plusing on the carbs or because I didn't stay long enough on keto to change a thing. The initial lower numbers might have been just less water in my body, less food in my belly while weighing the first time.

Or on the flip side, I indeed had too much insulin floating around. Or there was just somewhat of a rebound at the end. Or I just didn't measure right. Or there wasn't enough time for a change. Or there's not enough surplus weight to see a change.

Bottom line: I'm glad for you things are working out for you in a tangible manner.

CHDevil  "Why doesn't everybody just up their carbs though and test ? Why is it that people prefer going close to no carbs, despite it being difficult"

With practice it becomes less difficult. I expect most folks don't want to have to start over once they are having success.

Moondrake Thank you for posting this.  I am just on day three, and was rather anxious about how much protein I had had. My ratios were set at 22g CBH : 58g Protein  : 91g Fat (also on 1200 cals).  Can now see that my CBH is too high, my protein is too low, but the fat is pretty bang on. 

I've finished eating for today and my macro is  cbh 15g, Prot 82g, fat 116g.    If I change it to the ratios you came up with everything is fine - and it means I won't feel guilty about having roast lamb