How to count macros as a beginner: your numbers in four steps, then logging without losing your mind

Counting macros means tracking grams of protein, carbohydrate and fat rather than only calories, and it takes four numbers you can work out in about ten minutes: calories first, then protein, then fat, then carbs from whatever is left. After that the whole skill is logging honestly most days and judging yourself on the weekly average, not the daily score.

Below is the maths written out, two worked examples, and the logging habits that decide whether any of it works.

What are macros, in one paragraph?

Protein, carbohydrate and fat. They supply almost all of the energy in food, and they are not interchangeable. Protein builds and protects muscle and keeps you full. Carbohydrate fuels training. Fat carries flavour and a lot of calories in a small space. Food labels use general factors of 4 calories per gram for protein, 4 for carbohydrate and 9 for fat, which is why a splash of oil adds up faster than almost anything else in the pan. Calories decide what the scale does. Macros decide what the weight you lose or gain is made of, and how hungry you are while it happens.

Step 1: work out your calories

Start with your resting burn, then scale it by how much you actually move, then adjust for your goal.

Your resting burn comes from the Mifflin St Jeor equation, published in 1990 from measurements of 498 people: 10 times your weight in kilograms, plus 6.25 times your height in centimetres, minus 5 times your age, then plus 5 for men or minus 161 for women.

Your movement. Most calculators rely on a dropdown from "sedentary" to "extremely active", which is a guess, and a flattering one. The maths here uses two facts instead: your average daily steps, which your phone already knows, and how many days a week you train.

Average daily steps	Multiplier
Under 5,000	1.25
5,000 to 7,499	1.35
7,500 to 9,999	1.45
10,000 to 14,999	1.55
15,000 or more	1.65

Then add a little for training: your training days per week, divided by 7, times 0.15. Three sessions a week adds about 0.064 to the multiplier.

Your goal. Take the result, which is your maintenance, and adjust it:

Goal	Daily change
Lose up to 10 pounds	250 below maintenance, about half a pound a week
Lose more than 10 pounds	500 below maintenance, about a pound a week
Stay the same weight	No change
Gain up to 10 pounds	300 above maintenance
Gain more than 10 pounds	500 above maintenance

Worked example. A 30 year old man, 180 pounds (81.6 kg), 5 foot 10 (177.8 cm), 8,000 steps a day, lifting three times a week, aiming for 170 pounds.

• Resting burn: about 1,783 calories.
• Multiplier: 1.45 for his steps plus 0.064 for training, so 1.514.
• Maintenance: 1,783 times 1.514, about 2,700 calories.
• Goal: 10 pounds to lose, so 250 below. Target: 2,450 calories.

Step 2: set protein first

Protein comes first because it is the macro that protects muscle while you lose fat and builds it while you gain, and because at 1 gram per pound it is the target most beginners find hardest to reach.

The number: 1 gram per pound of bodyweight. For our example, 180 grams, which is 720 calories.

That is deliberately generous. A large meta analysis of people lifting weights found that total protein intakes beyond 1.62 grams per kilogram (about 0.73 grams per pound) produced no further gain in lean mass. The International Society of Sports Nutrition calls 1.4 to 2.0 grams per kilogram sufficient for most exercising people, and says trained lifters in a calorie deficit may need more. One gram per pound, about 2.2 grams per kilogram, gives you margin for the days you fall short, which, if you are human, will be several of them.

If 1 gram per pound looks enormous next to what you eat now, start where you are and add 20 to 30 grams a week. Our protein calculator shows what the number looks like per meal. And if you have kidney disease, ask your doctor, not a website.

Step 3: set a floor for fat

The number: 0.4 grams per pound of bodyweight. For our example, 72 grams, which is 648 calories.

Fat gets a floor rather than a target. You need some for your body to work properly and for food to be worth eating, and cutting it very low makes a diet miserable without making it work any better. Going above the floor is fine; it just comes out of your carbs.

Step 4: carbs get whatever is left

Subtract protein and fat calories from your target and divide by 4.

For our example: 2,450 minus 720 minus 648 leaves 1,082 calories, divided by 4 is about 271 grams of carbohydrate.

So his day is 2,450 calories: 180 g protein, 72 g fat, 271 g carbs. Rounding each macro to a whole gram lands the total within a couple of calories of the target, which nobody will ever notice.

Here is a second example, a 28 year old woman who weighs 150 pounds, stands 5 foot 5, averages 6,000 steps, trains four days a week and wants to reach 140.

	Example one	Example two
Maintenance	2,700	2,026
Goal	170 lb, so 250 below	140 lb, so 250 below
Target calories	2,450	1,776
Protein	180 g	150 g
Fat	72 g	60 g
Carbs	271 g	159 g

If your goal is to lose weight, our weight loss timeline calculator runs all four steps for you with exactly this method, so its numbers match what the BryksBuilt app sets when you sign up.

One check before you use these numbers

Protein and fat are set from your current bodyweight. If you have a lot to lose, or you are small and not very active, those two can use up most of your calories and leave carbs tiny, or even below zero. The four steps will happily print that number, and so will any calculator that runs them exactly, ours included. So check two things before you start.

• If your carbs come out under about 100 grams, work protein and fat out from your goal weight instead of your current weight, then give carbs what is left.
• If your calorie target lands under about 1,200, do not go lower on your own. Take the smaller 250 calorie deficit, add steps instead, or talk to a registered dietitian. That line is our rule of thumb rather than a law of nature, and it is there because a very low target is hard to keep and easy to get wrong.

How do I actually log it?

The numbers take ten minutes. Logging is the part that decides whether any of this works, and it is mostly about not fooling yourself.

Weigh your food for the first two weeks. In grams, on a cheap kitchen scale. Not forever, just long enough to learn what 150 grams of chicken and a level tablespoon of peanut butter actually look like. The tablespoon is smaller than you think. It is always smaller than you think.

Match raw to raw and cooked to cooked. It is an easy error to make, and a big one. USDA lists 100 grams of dry white rice at 365 calories and 100 grams of cooked white rice at 130, because cooking adds water. Weigh your cooked rice, log it against the dry entry, and you have logged roughly 2.8 times the rice you ate. The same trap runs the other way with meat, which loses water as it cooks. Weigh raw where you can, because raw weights do not depend on how long something was in the pan.

Log before you eat, or at the latest straight after. Memory is the least accurate scale in your kitchen.

Count the oil, the sauce and the bites. The cooking oil, the dressing, the handful of chips while you were making dinner. These are where honest logs quietly go wrong.

Repeat meals. Most people eat a small rotation of breakfasts and lunches. Once those are logged once, logging them again takes seconds, and the week gets much easier.

Do not chase the last few grams. Labels are allowed to be off. Under the Canadian Food Inspection Agency's compliance test, the calories and fat in a product can measure up to 120 percent of what the label says, and protein and carbohydrate must be at least 80 percent. The US rules use the same 20 percent idea. Being 5 grams short on carbs is inside the error of the label you read it from.

Judge the week, not the day

The daily score is noisy on both ends. Your weight moves with salt, carbs, sleep, stress and the menstrual cycle, so a single morning tells you almost nothing. Your intake moves with birthdays, travel and Tuesdays.

So judge two weekly numbers:

1. Protein: did you hit it on most days?
2. Weight: what is this week's average of your morning weigh ins, compared with last week's?

If protein was there most days and the average is moving in the right direction at roughly the right speed, the plan is working, whatever Thursday looked like.

When should you change your numbers?

Two triggers, and neither of them is a bad week.

• The weekly average has not moved for about three weeks while your intake genuinely stayed the same. Then change one thing by a small amount, such as 100 to 200 fewer calories a day or a couple of thousand more steps, and give it another two to three weeks.
• Every 15 to 20 pounds of change. A smaller body burns less, so the target that worked at 180 is a smaller deficit at 165. Run the numbers again.

Protein and fat are set from your bodyweight, so they move a little when your weight does. Carbs absorb the rest.

Who should not count macros

Counting is a tool, and it is not the right tool for everyone.

If you have a history of an eating disorder, or tracking food makes eating feel like a test you keep failing, do not start. Eat regular meals built around protein and vegetables and talk to your doctor or a registered dietitian. In Canada, the National Eating Disorder Information Centre runs a national toll free helpline at 1 866 633 4220. If you are under 18, pregnant or breastfeeding, have kidney disease, or have diabetes and take medication for it, get your numbers from your own care team rather than a formula. The resting burn equation was built from adults aged 19 to 78.

Doing it in BryksBuilt

Full disclosure, this is our app, and here is exactly what it does and what it charges for.

When you sign up, BryksBuilt asks for your age, sex, height, weight, daily steps, training days and goal weight, and sets your calorie, protein, fat and carb targets with the same four steps on this page. The Fuel tab shows your day as a calorie ring with protein, carbs, fat and water beside it. Logging food by searching the database or scanning a barcode is free, and the foods you log come back as recent foods, so the repeat breakfasts take seconds.

What costs money: logging a meal from a photo, scanning a nutrition label, and describing a meal in your own words for the AI to log are part of Pro.

You do not need an app to do any of this. A notebook, a kitchen scale and this page will get you there. An app just makes the logging part fast enough that you keep doing it.