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How should your calories be divided?

Macro Calculator

Calories decide whether your weight moves. Macros decide how you feel, train and hold on to muscle while it happens. Set your targets in grams, with the reasoning shown.

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After 14 days of tracking

A calculator gets you close; your real trend gets you exact. Compare your two-week result against this table:

What you observeWhat to change
You hit calories but miss protein most daysAnchor meals to a protein source first and build the rest around it. Protein is the macro with the clearest evidence behind it — prioritise it over carb and fat precision.
You're constantly hungry on your splitShift calories toward protein and fibrous carbs, which are the most satiating per calorie. Being hungry every day is a plan failing, not you failing.
Training feels flat and heavy sessions sufferCarbs are usually the lever. Move some calories from fat to carbs, especially around training, before concluding you need fewer calories overall.
You're hitting macros but weight isn't movingMacros don't override calories. Recheck the calorie target and logging accuracy first — a perfect split at the wrong total changes nothing.

Macros are easy to set and tedious to hit.

PocketChomp tracks protein, carbs and fat against your targets as you log — barcode scanning included, free — so you can see where the day landed without doing the arithmetic yourself.

How this calculator works

Macros are a division of a calorie budget, so the calculation runs in that order:

  1. Estimate maintenance calories from your stats using Mifflin-St Jeor plus an activity multiplier.
  2. Apply your goal — a deficit for fat loss, a surplus for gaining, or maintenance.
  3. Set protein from bodyweight, not from a percentage. Protein needs scale with the body you’re feeding, which is why a fixed percentage misleads at the extremes of body size.
  4. Set fat as a share of calories, keeping it above the level needed for hormonal health.
  5. Carbohydrate takes the remainder — it’s the most flexible macro and the one most worth adjusting around training.

The five splits, and who each suits

Balanced — roughly a quarter to a third of calories from fat, protein at 1.2–1.6 g/kg of bodyweight, carbs filling the rest. The sensible default for most people, most of the time. Enough carbohydrate to train properly, enough fat to feel satisfied.

High protein — raises protein to 1.6–2.0 g/kg and trims fat slightly. Worth choosing if you’re lifting seriously, in a meaningful deficit, or you simply find protein keeps you full. The strongest evidence base of the five, particularly for holding lean mass while losing fat.

Lower carb — pushes fat to around 40% of calories and cuts carbohydrate accordingly. Not ketogenic, just carb-reduced. Suits people whose appetite settles on higher fat, or who feel better with steadier blood sugar. Expect a fast early weight drop that is water, not fat, and expect high-intensity training to feel harder for a couple of weeks while you adapt.

Low fat — drops fat to about 20% of calories and lets carbohydrate take the room. Suits high-volume endurance training, and anyone who simply eats better with more carbs on the plate. Twenty percent is the floor here rather than a target to beat — fat below roughly 0.5 g/kg starts to interfere with hormone production and fat-soluble vitamin absorption.

Keto — carbohydrate capped near 30 g a day, fat taking almost everything left, protein held moderate rather than high (excess protein is gluconeogenic and works against ketosis). Note that this is the one split defined by an absolute gram ceiling instead of a percentage, because that is what actually determines whether you’re in ketosis — a “5% of calories” rule lands at 25 g on a small day and 44 g on a large one, which is only accidentally in range. Worth a genuine caution: it’s restrictive, it makes hard training feel worse for several weeks, and at matched calories and protein it does not beat the others for fat loss.

What actually matters, in order

Worth being blunt, because macro calculators tend to imply the split is the most important decision you’ll make. It isn’t:

  1. Calorie total. Decides the direction your weight moves. Nothing below this overrides it.
  2. Protein. Decides how much of any loss comes from fat rather than muscle.
  3. Consistency. A rough plan followed for months beats a precise one abandoned in three weeks.
  4. The carb-to-fat ratio. Genuinely matters for how you feel and train — and barely at all for whether fat loss happens, at matched calories and protein.

If you take one thing from this page: get calories roughly right, hit protein most days, and stop optimising the rest. The people who succeed at this aren’t the ones with the cleverest split.

A note on precision

The grams here come from an estimated calorie target, which comes from an estimated maintenance, which comes from a formula with a roughly 10% error bar. Stacking estimates doesn’t make them more exact — so treat these as a well-reasoned starting point and let two weeks of real tracking tell you where they actually sit. Your weight trend is the only measurement in this entire process; everything above it is a prediction.

Frequently asked questions

What are macros?

Macronutrients — protein, carbohydrate and fat, the three things in food that carry energy. Protein and carbs supply 4 kcal per gram, fat 9. Your calorie total is just the sum of the three, which is why the split is a division of a fixed budget rather than an independent set of goals.

What's the best macro split?

The one you'll actually stick to at the right calorie total. Research comparing diets at matched calories and matched protein finds remarkably small differences in fat loss between high-carb and low-carb approaches. Protein is the macro that reliably matters; beyond hitting it, carb and fat ratios are largely a question of preference, training style and what keeps you full.

How much protein do I actually need?

The Health Canada RDA is 0.8 g per kg of bodyweight, which is the floor for sedentary adults rather than a target. If you train, the Dietitians of Canada and ACSM joint position puts it at 1.2–2.0 g/kg, and a 2018 meta-analysis found no further muscle gain above about 1.6 g/kg. This calculator uses 1.2–1.6 g/kg by default and 1.6–2.0 for the high-protein split. Higher intakes aren't harmful for healthy kidneys — they're just increasingly unnecessary. The full numbers, with sources, are in our guide to how much protein, carbs, fat and fibre adults need.

Do I have to hit my macros exactly?

No. Treat them as targets with a sensible tolerance — being within roughly 10 g on protein and 15–20 g on carbs and fat is functionally hitting them. Chasing exact numbers turns a useful guide into an anxious daily maths problem, which is a much more common reason people quit than imprecise macros ever was.

Should I eat low carb to lose fat?

Only if you prefer eating that way. At matched calories and protein, low-carb diets don't produce meaningfully more fat loss — the rapid initial drop is largely glycogen and its associated water. Lower carb genuinely suits some people's appetite and energy; others feel flat and train badly on it. Both are valid, and neither is the mechanism behind fat loss.

Why did my macros change when I changed my goal?

Because carbs and fat are a share of your calorie target, and that target moves with your goal. Protein is set from your bodyweight in grams per kilo and stays the same whether you're cutting, maintaining or gaining — so in a deficit it takes a bigger percentage of a smaller budget. That's deliberate: holding protein steady while calories drop is what protects lean mass while you lose fat.

Not sure of your calorie total yet? Start with the TDEE calculator →