Macro Cookbook for Beginners – by Devika Sharma

Adjusting macros is one of the most time-tested ways to adjust our body composition (common goals being losing fat and/or gaining muscle), but it’s easy to mess up, and end up with the opposite results, or no discernible results at all.

This book aims to take away the complexity of macro calculations, while simultaneously doing away completely with other considerations, for a very simple dietary approach.

As a default starting approach, the author (a dietician) recommends 45% carbs, 30% protein, 25% fat. She then gives various modifications for different goals and, indeed, different starting points.

The “anything goes, if it fits in your macros” approach can of course lead to very unhealthy eating, if one’s daily diet then becomes 3 protein bars and 7 Mars bars, for example (“hey, it meets the macro ratio requirements”).

With that in mind, she does provide 100 recipes that are at least moderately healthy, insofar as they do contain a lot of nutrients. They also do contain a lot of things we wouldn’t recommend (e.g. added sugar in the desserts, unfermented dairy in various places, red meat in the mains, etc), but that’s for you to decide about.

The recipes are a little on the basic side for this reviewer’s tastes, but then, that is the main angle of this book: making things as basic as possible. So, perhaps there is merit to that too. There are no pictures, or rather, there are illustrations dotted throughout the book, but not actual pictures of meals next to the recipes for them, as one might expect.

Bottom line: if you’re looking for a basic basics for beginners diet book, this book is remarkably basic and can fulfil that need.

Click here to check out Macro Cookbook For Beginners, and get counting macros!