Macros are the three nutrients your body needs in large amounts: protein, carbohydrate and fat. Counting them is one step more detailed than counting calories, and for some goals it is worth the extra effort.
This guide covers what each macro does, how many calories each one carries, how to calculate your own targets in grams, and how to track them without it taking over your life. If you would rather skip to your own numbers, our free macro calculator works them out in three steps.
Macros, meaning. A macro, short for macronutrient, is one of the three nutrients that supply energy: protein, carbohydrate or fat. When people say "my macros" they mean their daily target for each of the three, in grams.
Key points
- Three macros: protein, carbohydrate, fat.
- Protein and carbs carry 4 calories per gram. Fat carries 9.
- Total calories decide your weight. Macros shape the result.
- Set protein first, then fat, then fill the rest with carbohydrate.
- Work in grams, not percentages. Percentages of an unknown total tell you nothing.
- Weigh your food rather than eyeballing it. This is the main reason tracking fails.
What are macronutrients?
Macros is short for macronutrients, the three nutrients you need in large amounts. Each does a different job, and none of them is optional.
Protein
Builds and repairs tissue, including muscle. It is the most satiating of the three, which means it keeps you fuller for longer on the same calories. It is also the one most people under-eat.
Carbohydrate
Your body's preferred fuel, particularly for harder training. It is also where most of your dietary fibre comes from, which is a reason to be careful about cutting it too far.
Fat
Hormone production, absorption of vitamins A, D, E and K, and cell structure. Not optional, despite decades of messaging to the contrary.
What about alcohol?
Alcohol is sometimes called the fourth macro. It provides 7 calories per gram and fills no nutritional requirement, which is worth knowing if you track and you drink.
How many calories are in each macro?
- Protein: 4 calories per gram
- Carbohydrate: 4 calories per gram
- Fat: 9 calories per gram
- Alcohol: 7 calories per gram
Fat carrying more than twice what protein and carbohydrate do is the single most useful thing on this page. It is why small changes to cooking oil, nut butter or cheese move your total more than you expect, and why "just a drizzle" is rarely just a drizzle.
It is also why fat is a poor place to make deep cuts. A little goes a long way in both directions.
How do you calculate your macros?
Four steps, in this order. The order matters, because two of the three macros have genuine minimums and the third is the one that should absorb the adjustment.
Step 1. Set your calorie target
Everything else is a division of this number, so it comes first. An estimate is a starting point rather than a fact, and you should expect to adjust it once you have two or three weeks of real data. Our free calorie calculator gives you a working range for your goal.
Some people prefer a rough starting point before they calculate anything. Maintenance for most adults lands somewhere near 30 calories per kilogram of bodyweight, which is a crude figure and useful only as a sanity check on whatever number you end up with.
Step 2. Set protein
Around 1.6 to 2.2 grams per kilogram of bodyweight a day if you train. Higher within that range when you are in a calorie deficit, because protein is what protects muscle while you lose fat.
Step 3. Set fat
Around 0.8 grams per kilogram of bodyweight is a sensible working figure. The Australian Nutrient Reference Values put the healthy range for total fat at 20 to 35 per cent of energy, and cutting well below that tends to make food markedly less satisfying, which ends the diet rather than the fat.
Step 4. Carbohydrate takes the remainder
Whatever calories are left after protein and fat. This is your fuel, and it is the number to move up or down as your training load changes.
A worked example
An 80 kg person on a 2,400 calorie target, training four times a week:
- Protein: 80 kg x 2.0 g = 160 g, which is 640 calories
- Fat: 80 kg x 0.8 g = 64 g, which is 576 calories
- Running total: 1,216 calories, leaving 1,184
- Carbohydrate: 1,184 divided by 4 = 296 g
So 160 g protein, 296 g carbohydrate, 64 g fat. Expressed as percentages that is roughly 27 / 49 / 24.
Our macro calculator follows this same order and shows each step, so you can see where your numbers come from rather than being handed a result. It sets protein between 1.8 and 2.2 grams per kilogram depending on your goal, and fat at the higher of 0.8 grams per kilogram or 22 per cent of your calories.
What should my macro ratios be?
Ratios are the wrong starting point, and this is where most macro advice goes astray. A percentage of an unknown total tells you nothing useful: 30 per cent protein is a very different amount of food at 1,800 calories than at 3,000.
The 40-40-20 rule
You will see 40 per cent carbohydrate, 40 per cent protein, 20 per cent fat quoted as a standard split. It is a reasonable shape for some people and a poor fit for others, and it has the same flaw as every fixed ratio: it sets protein from your calorie intake rather than from your body. Someone eating 1,600 calories and someone eating 3,200 do not need the same protein just because they share a percentage.
Set the grams first. Read the percentages afterwards if you are curious.
What macros should I eat for fat loss or muscle gain?
The macros barely change between the two. The calories do.
| Goal | Calories | Protein | Fat | Carbohydrate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fat loss | Moderate deficit | High, at the top of the range | At the working figure | Reduced |
| Maintenance | At maintenance | Middle of the range | Comfortable | Moderate |
| Muscle gain | Modest surplus | Unchanged | Comfortable | Increased |
People expect the answer to be a dramatically different ratio. In practice protein stays roughly constant, fat stays within a sensible band, and carbohydrate does almost all of the moving.
How do you count macros day to day?
The calculation is the easy part. Doing it consistently is the part that decides whether it works.
Weigh your food, at least at the start
Not forever, but for the first few weeks. Kitchen scales are the single biggest improvement most people can make to their tracking accuracy, and the gap between a weighed portion and an estimated one is usually larger than the deficit they are trying to hold.
Build a library of your regular meals
Most people eat the same fifteen or twenty meals on rotation. Log each one properly once and the whole exercise drops to about a minute a day after the first week. Scanning barcodes where you can helps.
Track everything, including the small things
Oil, sauces, milk in coffee, tastes while cooking. See the next section for why.
Give it two weeks before you change anything
Bodyweight fluctuates daily for reasons that have nothing to do with fat: water, sodium, fibre, where you are in your cycle. Two weeks of data tells you something. Two days tells you nothing.
Why do most people get their macros wrong?
Almost always underestimating, and almost always the same handful of things.
- Cooking oil. A tablespoon of olive oil is around 120 calories. Most people pour two or three and log one.
- Nut butter. A "spoonful" is routinely double a measured tablespoon.
- Sauces and dressings. Easy to add 200 calories to a salad without noticing.
- Drinks. Coffee with milk, juice, alcohol. Frequently untracked entirely.
- Tastes while cooking. Genuinely adds up.
- Weekends. Five tracked days and two untracked ones is not tracking.
If your numbers say one thing and the scale says another over several weeks, the numbers are usually the problem.
Is counting macros good for weight loss?
It works, and it is not the only thing that works.
Any approach that produces a sustained calorie deficit will cause fat loss. Macro tracking is effective because it is precise, and because the act of logging makes you aware of what you are actually eating, which is often the real intervention.
The downsides are worth naming. It is tedious, it requires a phone at every meal, and for some people a preoccupation with numbers is genuinely unhelpful.
If you have a history of disordered eating, tracking is worth discussing with a doctor or an Accredited Practising Dietitian before you start. If you are pregnant or breastfeeding, or you have a condition that affects your diet, your targets should be set with a health professional rather than from a general calculator.
Simpler approaches work too. A protein source at every meal, half the plate vegetables, and honest attention to portion sizes will get many people most of the way there without an app.
Which foods are highest in each macro?
| Macro | Everyday sources |
|---|---|
| Protein | Chicken, beef, fish, eggs, Greek yoghurt, cottage cheese, tofu, legumes, protein powder |
| Carbohydrate | Rice, oats, potato, bread, pasta, fruit, legumes |
| Fat | Olive oil, nuts, nut butter, avocado, cheese, oily fish |
Most whole foods contain more than one. Legumes are both protein and carbohydrate, oily fish is protein and fat, nuts are fat with some protein. Only a few foods, such as oil and sugar, are essentially a single macro.
If hitting your protein target from food alone is the sticking point, a protein powder is a straightforward way to close the gap, and our protein calculator will tell you how big that gap is.
How do the Australian guidelines compare?
The Australian Nutrient Reference Values set the Recommended Dietary Intake for protein at 0.84 g per kg of bodyweight a day for men aged 19 to 70, and 0.75 g per kg for women in the same range. For adults over 70 both rise, to 1.07 g per kg for men and 0.94 g per kg for women.
Those figures are lower than the 1.6 to 2.2 g per kg used above, and both can be correct at once. The RDI is the amount that prevents deficiency across the population. It is a floor, not a performance target, and it was never intended to describe what someone training four times a week should aim for.
The practical reading: treat the RDI as the level below which you have a problem, and the higher range as what to aim for if you train and want to hold onto muscle.
Do carbs cause belly fat?
None, and this is worth being direct about because the question is asked constantly.
No specific carbohydrate causes fat to be stored in a particular part of your body. Where you store fat is largely genetics and hormones. Spot reduction is not a thing, and no food targets your midsection.
What is fair to say: refined carbohydrates such as soft drink, lollies and white bread are easy to overeat because they are low in fibre and not very filling. That makes a calorie surplus more likely, and a surplus is what adds fat. The mechanism is calories and satiety, not the carbohydrate doing something to your stomach.
Do you have to count macros forever?
No, and most people should not.
Tracking is best understood as a calibration exercise. You do it properly for a few weeks, you learn what 30 grams of protein and 40 grams of carbohydrate actually look like on a plate, and after that you can eat reasonably well without an app. Plenty of people track during a deliberate fat loss or muscle gain phase and stop in between.
The skill you are buying is portion awareness. Once you have it, the app becomes optional.
Where to go next
- Get your own numbers with the macro calculator, or start with the calorie calculator if you want the total first.
- Read how much protein per day for the reasoning behind the protein range.
- Read calorie deficit and macros explained if fat loss is the goal.
- Browse protein powder if food alone is not getting you to your protein target.
Every member of our team, online and in all our stores, is a certified nutritionist, so if you would rather talk it through than read about it, that advice is free.
