Counting calories tells you how much you're eating. Counting macros tells you what that food is doing. Here's how to set your macros and hit them without turning every meal into a spreadsheet.
Start with calories, then split them
Macros live inside your calorie target, so set calories first (see our calorie guide). Then split:
- Protein — 1.6–2.2 g per kg bodyweight. Lock this first.
- Fat — at least 0.6–0.8 g per kg for hormones. Usually 20–35% of calories.
- Carbs — everything left over. Carbs fuel training, so give them the remainder.
The maths, once
Protein and carbs are 4 kcal/g; fat is 9 kcal/g. An 80 kg lifter on 2,400 kcal might run 160 g protein (640 kcal), 70 g fat (630 kcal), and the rest — about 280 g carbs (1,130 kcal). Set it once and reuse it.
Hitting them without obsessing
- Build meals around protein first — it's the hardest to hit and the easiest to forget.
- Use a barcode scanner — it removes the guessing that makes tracking feel like a chore.
- Repeat meals — 4–5 go-to meals you can log from memory covers most of your week.
- Aim for a range, not a decimal — within ~10 g of each macro is plenty accurate.
When to stop counting
Tracking is a skill you learn, not a sentence you serve. After a few months you'll eyeball portions well enough to stop logging every day and just check in when your progress stalls. The goal is to internalise the numbers, not to log forever.