Macro Calculator

Protein comes first, because how much you need depends on your body weight, not on how many calories you eat. The presets aim for 1.6 g per kg of body weight a day (about 0.73 g per lb) when maintaining or gaining, and more when losing weight, when extra protein helps you keep muscle. Fat then gets a set share of your calories, never less than 0.5 g per kg, and carbohydrates fill the rest (the Low carb preset does the opposite: carbs get the set share and fat fills the rest). Grams come from the standard energy values — 4 kcal per gram for protein and carbohydrates and 9 kcal per gram for fat:

Protein grams = body weight × protein per kg

Carb or fat grams = remaining calories ÷ calories per gram

For example, a 75 kg person eating 2,600 kcal on the Balanced preset gets 120 g of protein (480 kcal), 87 g of fat (30%, or 780 kcal), and 335 g of carbohydrates from the remaining 1,340 kcal. If you choose Use my stats, your calorie target is estimated with the Mifflin-St Jeor equation and your activity level, then adjusted for your goal — the same method as the TDEE Calculator.

Either enter your sex, age, height, weight, activity level, and goal, or switch to I know my calories and enter your calorie target, weight, and goal. Then pick a macro split — Balanced, High protein, Low carb, Low fat, or Custom — and press Calculate macros to see grams per day for each macro.

The recommended minimum for adults is 0.8 g of protein per kg of body weight a day. For people who strength train, a 2018 meta-analysis found that muscle gains level off at around 1.6 g per kg, with little sign of extra benefit above about 2.2 g per kg. Balanced and Low fat use 1.6 g per kg; High protein and Low carb use 2.2 g per kg. Protein needs go up when you eat less: studies of dieting lifters support roughly 2.0–2.4 g per kg, so every preset raises protein when your goal is weight loss.

Protein needs follow muscle, not body fat. With stats entered, protein is based on your weight or, if your BMI is over 30, the weight at a BMI of 30 for your height, so extra body fat doesn't inflate the target. If you enter your calories yourself and carry a lot of body fat, enter your goal weight instead of your current weight. For protein on its own, with ranges for older adults and endurance training and grams per meal, use the Protein Intake Calculator.

With protein covered, the rest of your calories can come from carbohydrates or fat in whatever mix suits you — large trials find similar weight loss on low-carb and low-fat diets when calories are matched. Balanced gives 30% of calories to fat and Low fat 20%. Low carb sets carbohydrates at 20% of calories, under the 26% usually used to define a low-carb diet but well above the roughly 10% of a ketogenic diet, and pairs it with higher protein: reviews find that much of the benefit of low-carb diets comes from eating more protein rather than fewer carbs. Fat fills the remaining calories, so it makes up about half of them. US dietary guidance suggests 45–65% of calories from carbohydrates and 20–35% from fat, so Low carb deliberately goes outside those ranges. Custom lets you set your own percentages, and the calculator warns you if that puts your protein below the recommended minimum or far above what's useful.

Calorie estimates are population averages, and the best macro split is the one that fits your food preferences, training, and health, and that you can stick with. Use the numbers as a starting point, track your progress for a few weeks, and adjust. People who are pregnant, have diabetes, kidney disease, or another medical condition should get advice from a doctor or registered dietitian. See the Disclaimer for details.

The formulas and figures on this page come from these sources. Our Editorial Policy explains how they're chosen and checked.

• Protein RDA, calories per gram, and US macro ranges: Institute of Medicine. (2005). Dietary reference intakes for energy, carbohydrate, fiber, fat, fatty acids, cholesterol, protein, and amino acids. The National Academies Press. doi:10.17226/10490
• Protein for muscle gain (1.6–2.2 g/kg): Morton, R. W., Murphy, K. T., McKellar, S. R., Schoenfeld, B. J., Henselmans, M., Helms, E., Aragon, A. A., Devries, M. C., Banfield, L., Krieger, J. W., & Phillips, S. M. (2018). A systematic review, meta-analysis and meta-regression of the effect of protein supplementation on resistance training-induced gains in muscle mass and strength in healthy adults. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 52(6), 376–384. doi:10.1136/bjsports-2017-097608
• Higher protein in a calorie deficit: Longland, T. M., Oikawa, S. Y., Mitchell, C. J., Devries, M. C., & Phillips, S. M. (2016). Higher compared with lower dietary protein during an energy deficit combined with intense exercise promotes greater lean mass gain and fat mass loss: A randomized trial. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 103(3), 738–746. doi:10.3945/ajcn.115.119339
• Higher protein in a calorie deficit: Helms, E. R., Zinn, C., Rowlands, D. S., & Brown, S. R. (2014). A systematic review of dietary protein during caloric restriction in resistance trained lean athletes: A case for higher intakes. International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism, 24(2), 127–138. doi:10.1123/ijsnem.2013-0054
• Definition of a low-carb diet: Feinman, R. D., Pogozelski, W. K., Astrup, A., Bernstein, R. K., Fine, E. J., Westman, E. C., et al. (2015). Dietary carbohydrate restriction as the first approach in diabetes management: Critical review and evidence base. Nutrition, 31(1), 1–13. doi:10.1016/j.nut.2014.06.011
• Protein's role in low-carb diets: Aragon, A. A., Schoenfeld, B. J., Wildman, R., Kleiner, S., VanDusseldorp, T., Taylor, L., et al. (2017). International society of sports nutrition position stand: Diets and body composition. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 14, 16. doi:10.1186/s12970-017-0174-y
• Similar weight loss on calorie-matched diets: Sacks, F. M., Bray, G. A., Carey, V. J., Smith, S. R., Ryan, D. H., Anton, S. D., McManus, K., Champagne, C. M., Bishop, L. M., Laranjo, N., Leboff, M. S., Rood, J. C., de Jonge, L., Greenway, F. L., Loria, C. M., Obarzanek, E., & Williamson, D. A. (2009). Comparison of weight-loss diets with different compositions of fat, protein, and carbohydrates. The New England Journal of Medicine, 360(9), 859–873. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa0804748
• Similar weight loss on low-fat and low-carb diets: Gardner, C. D., Trepanowski, J. F., Del Gobbo, L. C., Hauser, M. E., Rigdon, J., Ioannidis, J. P. A., Desai, M., & King, A. C. (2018). Effect of low-fat vs low-carbohydrate diet on 12-month weight loss in overweight adults and the association with genotype pattern or insulin secretion: The DIETFITS randomized clinical trial. JAMA, 319(7), 667–679. doi:10.1001/jama.2018.0245
• Calorie estimate from your stats: Mifflin, M. D., St Jeor, S. T., Hill, L. A., Scott, B. J., Daugherty, S. A., & Koh, Y. O. (1990). A new predictive equation for resting energy expenditure in healthy individuals. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 51(2), 241–247. doi:10.1093/ajcn/51.2.241
• Activity levels and their typical PAL values (1.4, 1.6, 1.75, 2.05): National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. (2023). Dietary reference intakes for energy. The National Academies Press. doi:10.17226/26818