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Macro Calculator

Get your daily protein, carb and fat targets based on your real calorie needs

Type at least 2 characters to search from our UK foods database

What Are Macros?

“Macros” is short for macronutrients: the three nutrients that supply the calories in food, protein, carbohydrates and fat. Every real calorie you eat comes from one of these three (alcohol is technically a fourth, but it’s not a target most people plan around). Knowing your calorie target tells you how much to eat; knowing your macro targets tells you roughly what to eat it as, which matters for things like building or preserving muscle, staying full on fewer calories, or simply eating in a way you can actually stick to.

How This Calculator Works

This calculator uses the same real Mifflin-St Jeor equation and activity-level scaling as our TDEE Calculator to work out your real daily calorie target for Lose, Maintain or Gain. It then splits that exact number of calories into grams of protein, carbohydrate and fat, using standard energy values of 4 calories per gram of protein and carbohydrate, and 9 calories per gram of fat, the same conversion used throughout nutrition science and food labelling.

Enter your biological sex, age, height and weight, choose your activity level and goal, then pick a macro split below and click Calculate.

The Three Macro Splits Explained

Balanced (UK Guideline), the default, uses the UK Government’s own official dietary energy split: roughly 50% of calories from carbohydrate and 35% from fat, both figures from the Government Dietary Recommendations report (Public Health England, drawing on SACN’s Carbohydrate and Health, 2015), with the remaining roughly 15% from protein. This is a genuine, sourced government reference point for the general adult population, not a fitness-industry invention.

Higher Protein works differently: instead of a fixed percentage, it sets your protein target directly from your real bodyweight, at 1.6g of protein per kilogram. That figure sits within the 1.4 to 2.0g/kg range that the International Society of Sports Nutrition’s 2017 position stand states is sufficient for most exercising individuals to build or maintain muscle. Whatever calories are left after that real protein target are then split evenly between carbs and fat.

Lower Carb uses a commonly used lower-carbohydrate style ratio (around 20% carb, 40% fat, 40% protein). Unlike the two splits above, this one isn’t tied to a specific official guideline or study, it’s simply a widely used style some eating plans follow, presented here as one option among several, not a recommendation.

Do I Have to Hit My Macros Exactly?

No. These targets are a useful guide, not a rule to hit to the gram every day. Real food doesn’t divide neatly into whole numbers, and day-to-day variation is completely normal. What matters more is the general pattern over a week, not any single day’s exact totals.

Frequently Asked Questions

What’s a good macro split for beginners?

The Balanced (UK Guideline) split is a sensible, evidence-based starting point for most people, since it’s based on the UK Government’s own official dietary energy recommendations rather than a specific diet trend. You can always switch splits later once you know how a particular ratio feels for you.

Why does the Higher Protein split use my bodyweight instead of a percentage?

Protein needs scale more closely with real bodyweight than with total calorie intake, which is why sports nutrition guidance (including the ISSN’s own position stand) is usually expressed in grams per kilogram of bodyweight, not as a fixed share of your total calories. Using a bodyweight-based figure here is the more accurate, defensible approach for that specific split.

Do these targets change if I switch my goal from Maintain to Lose or Gain?

Yes. Your macro targets are calculated from your real, goal-adjusted calorie number (the same one shown at the top of your result), so switching between Lose, Maintain and Gain will recalculate your protein, carb and fat grams to match.

Is more protein always better?

Not necessarily. The ISSN’s own position stand notes that higher intakes (above roughly 2.3g/kg) may help preserve muscle specifically during a calorie deficit, and that intakes above 3.0g/kg show some early evidence of helping body composition in resistance-trained individuals, but there’s no evidence that piling on protein indefinitely keeps adding benefit for most people. 1.6g/kg, the figure this calculator’s Higher Protein split uses, sits comfortably in the middle of the range the ISSN says is sufficient for most exercising individuals.

Can I use grams from this calculator with your food search?

Yes. Once you have your daily protein, carb and fat targets, search any food in our food calorie calculator to see its own real macros per portion, and build a meal against your targets using the Meal Builder.

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