Put in the amount of carbs, protein, and fat (all in grams) of all the foods you eat in a single day. Then click the calculate butten! This will automatically calculate how many calories you are taking in day from each macronutrient as well as the percentage of calories that they make up in your diet. Make sense? NO? Just put in numbers and click!
The first two fields (food & amount) don't really do anything, they are just there for your convenience to type stuff into so you can keep track of what is going on. Also you can't save it so if you close the window you'll have to start over. It seems to work pretty well but a few numbers may be slightly off do to the rounding of the decimals, but it's so small it doesn't make that much difference.
See below calculator for guidelines on how many calories you should have in a day and how the macronutrients should be distributed.
Guidelines:
Foundation/Base/Summer: Carbs: 65% Protein: 13% Fat: 22%
2.5-3g/lb .5-.6g/lb .35-.65g/lb
Preperation//InSeason: Carbs: 65% Protein: 13% Fat: 22%
3.0-3.5g/lb .6-.7g/lb .55-.65g/lb
Specialization/Taper: Carbs: 70% Protein: 14% Fat: 16%
4.0-4.5g/lb .8-.9g/lb .45-.65g/lb
Transition/Recovery: Carbs: 60% Protein: 18% Fat: 22%
2.0-2.5g/lb .6-.7g/lb .3-.35g/lb
This calculator will give you an estimate of how many calories you burn a day, so obviously you don't want to go over this number unless trying to gain weight. Probably the easiest thing to do if you want to go crazy and start counting calories is to add up how many calories you think will burn each day, and then add them all up for the week. Then divide by 7 to get a daily average. Then divide by 7 again. Then when you eat, don't go over this number of calories, and eat up to 7x/day (about every 2 hours you are awake).
Obviously if you aren't going to have time or whatever to eat 7x/day then divide by how ever many times you are planning to eat, and do it that way. I'll usually eat 4x/day or try for 5x/day if I double. Sometimes I'm running so much though that I just don't have time to eat that much.
Don't stuff yourself though to try to get in as many calories as it says to, the numbers are probably going to be higher than they should be. Picture your stomach being 1/3 full of food, 1/3 full of liquid, and 1/3 empty and stop eating when you get to that point. Stuffing yourself is fun but shouldn't be done very often.
Sources:
Chris Carmichael's Fitness Cookbook by Chris Carmichael
