What Should My Macros Be? Grams by Weight and Calories

My macros at 75 kg and 2,000 kcal come to about 105 g of protein, 67 g of fat and 245 g of carbohydrate. What yours should be follows three rules. Set protein at 1.2–1.6 g per kilogram of body weight, give fat 20–35% of your calories, and let carbohydrate take the rest. The protein range is the one in the 2025–2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

What should my macros be?

The order matters, because each step works from what the one before left over. The shares come from the Guidelines’ Table A1-2.

1. Start with your calorie goal.
2. Protein: your weight in kilograms times 1.2 to 1.6 g. Multiply the grams by 4 to get calories.
3. Fat: 20% to 35% of your calories. Divide those calories by 9 to get grams.
4. Carbohydrate: whatever calories are left, divided by 4.

Take 75 kg and 2,000 kcal, with protein at 1.4 g/kg and fat at 30%. Protein is 75 × 1.4 = 105 g, or 420 kcal. Fat is 30% of 2,000. That’s 600 kcal, and 600 ÷ 9 gives 67 g. Carbohydrate gets what remains, 2,000 − 420 − 600 = 980 kcal, and 980 ÷ 4 gives 245 g. At 49% of calories, that’s inside the 45–65% range for adults.

The 4 and 9 are the Atwater energy factors per gram, listed by the FAO. The macro calculator skips the arithmetic. Put in your calorie goal and it returns grams of protein, fat and carbohydrate.

Bigger bodies and bigger appetites scale the grams, and the shares barely move. This table runs the same recipe for three people, with protein at 1.4 g/kg and fat at 30%.

Body weight	Calories	Protein	Fat	Carbs	Carb share
60 kg	1,600 kcal	84 g	53 g	196 g	49%
75 kg	2,000 kcal	105 g	67 g	245 g	49%
90 kg	2,600 kcal	126 g	87 g	329 g	51%

Weight drives the protein column and calories drive the fat column. At the same calories, a heavier person gets more protein and less carbohydrate. Check your own calories before you copy a row, because each row rests on a goal chosen for someone else.

How much protein should my macros include?

Pick a number between 1.2 and 1.6 g/kg, and start at 1.4. The Guidelines tie the choice to your calorie needs. My own reading: the lower end suits a desk job and a full plate, and the upper end suits lifting or eating less. That’s a rule of thumb, not a published equation. Here is the range at three body weights.

Body weight	1.2 g/kg	1.4 g/kg	1.6 g/kg
60 kg (132 lb)	72 g	84 g	96 g
75 kg (165 lb)	90 g	105 g	120 g
90 kg (198 lb)	108 g	126 g	144 g

If you lift weights or train hard, the range moves up. The International Society of Sports Nutrition says 1.4–2.0 g/kg a day is enough for most exercising people to build or keep muscle. That’s 105–150 g at 75 kg. The Guidelines range stops at 1.6, so a lifter sits at the top of it or above it.

Spread it over the day. For people who train, the same position stand suggests about 0.25 g per kg, or 20–40 g, in one serving. At 75 kg that is 19 g, so a 105 g day is five or six servings of that size, or three to five of 20–40 g.

The ceiling is a share of calories. The Guidelines list protein at 10–35% for adults, and 35% of 2,000 kcal is 175 g. Nothing in the table comes close.

Kidney disease changes how much protein is safe, so for you the target comes from your doctor and this table doesn’t apply.

How much fat and carbohydrate should my macros include?

Fat gets 20–35% of calories and carbohydrate gets 45–65%. Those are the Acceptable Macronutrient Distribution Ranges for adults in Table A1-2. Fat is the number you choose. Carbohydrate is what’s left, so it moves whenever protein or fat does. If those terms are new, what are macros comes first.

Here is the effect at 75 kg and 2,000 kcal, with fat held at 30%. As protein rises, carbohydrate falls.

Protein	Protein grams	Fat (30%)	Carbs left	Carb share
1.2 g/kg	90 g	67 g	260 g	52%
1.4 g/kg	105 g	67 g	245 g	49%
1.6 g/kg	120 g	67 g	230 g	46%
2.0 g/kg	150 g	67 g	200 g	40%

The last row drops below the 45% floor. When that happens, trim fat before protein. With fat at 25%, the same day is 150 g of protein, 56 g of fat and 225 g of carbohydrate, which lands on 45%.

Swapping fat and carbohydrate is plain arithmetic. Fat has 9 kcal a gram and carbohydrate has 4, a pair I checked on real foods in protein calories per gram. So 10 g of fat trades for 22.5 g of carbohydrate at the same calories.

Fat is the macro I misjudge most, because it sits in cooking oil, cheese and nuts where I don’t see it. About 67 g of it can look like this in a day, with the grams from USDA records.

Food	Fat
Atlantic salmon, farmed, raw, 120 g	15.7 g
Eggs, whole, large, 100.6 g (2 eggs)	10.0 g
Olive oil, 27 g (2 tablespoons)	27.0 g
Almonds, raw, 30 g	15.3 g
Total	68.0 g

Two tablespoons of oil are the biggest line, and the easiest to forget. Weigh the oil you cook with.

Age and sex don’t change the shares. The table lists one set of ranges for every adult group from 19 through 51 and over. What changes is the calorie level the table assumes, from 1,600 to 2,400 kcal a day.

The Recommended Dietary Allowance for protein does differ by sex, at 46 g a day for women and 56 g for men. Both sit below the 1.2–1.6 g/kg range for anyone over about 47 kg.

Is a 40/30/30 split right for me?

Two of its numbers fit published ranges. One doesn’t. Read 40/30/30 as 40% carbohydrate, 30% protein and 30% fat, in that order. At 2,000 kcal that’s 200 g of carbohydrate, 150 g of protein and 67 g of fat. The 40% carbohydrate is under the 45–65% range. For a 75 kg adult, 150 g of protein is 2.0 g/kg, the top of the sports range and above the Guidelines’ 1.2–1.6.

The weight-loss trials give no reason to rule it out. Two large ones tested diets near it. In a 2009 trial of 811 adults, one arm targeted 35% carbohydrate. Two-year loss was 2.9 kg on 65% carbohydrate against 3.4 kg on 35%. In the DIETFITS trial of 609 adults, the low-carbohydrate arm averaged 30% carbohydrate and lost 6.0 kg at 12 months against 5.3 kg on low-fat. Neither gap was significant.

So no split has beaten another in those trials. Pick the one you can live with, and keep protein in the range for your weight. When the goal is weight loss, how to count macros for weight loss puts the calorie goal first.

How do I check that my macros fit?

Run them for two weeks. Log your food in grams, the way how to count macros does for a full day, and compare your averages with the targets. Then adjust a single number per week. If protein runs short, a serving of Greek yogurt or chicken usually covers it, and if carbohydrate sits under the floor, the extra fat is what to trim. Changing all three at once hides which change helped.

Write the numbers on a card, then weigh your next meal against them.

In Calsa you can edit calories or macros, and the other one adjusts to match. Change fat from 30% to 25% and you see the carbohydrate it frees up.

These targets are written for healthy adults. Pregnancy, breastfeeding, being under 18 or a medical condition all call for targets set with your doctor.