The benefits of this calorie, portion, and macro calculator

Some people naturally eat the appropriate amount of food and calories for their individual needs. They’re able to maintain stable body weight for years—even decades— without counting calories, or tracking macros, or ever measuring their portions.

Unfortunately, these “intuitive eaters” represent only a small segment of the human population. The rest of us typically need help with our eating, in the form of external structure and guidance, at least temporarily. This can help you:

• Eat the right amount of calories and macros for your goals
• Understand appropriate portion sizes
• Improve your food choices and eating habits

That’s why we created this calorie, portion, and macro calculator. It gives you a nutrition blueprint for achieving your goals and, at the same time, helps you develop the skills you need to eat well for life.

(For optimal results, it’s best to combine this nutrition plan with intuitive eating and self-regulation skills.)

https://www.macrocalculator.org/

The problem with only tracking calories

Most people know calories matter. If you eat more calories than your body needs, you gain weight. If you eat fewer calories than your body needs, you lose weight.

(Yes, this certainly sounds simple, but as you’ve likely experienced, there are many factors that make managing your calorie intake… not so simple. Learn more here.)

By tracking your calories, you can better know if you’re eating the right amount of food for your goals. There are, however, disadvantages to only tracking the total number of calories you eat daily.

Most notably: This method doesn’t ensure you’re getting an appropriate amount of macronutrients for your body, goals, and preferences. Depending on what you’re trying to achieve, this can negatively affect your appetite, hormones, energy levels, and nutrient consumption.

And that can make it harder to lose weight, gain muscle, eat healthier, and improve athletic performance.

Why tracking your macros gives you an advantage

Just in case you’re not sure, let’s start by defining what macros, or macronutrients, actually are.

There are three major macronutrients: Protein, carbohydrates, and fat. (The fourth macronutrient is alcohol.)

Your body breaks down the macronutrients you eat into compounds used to help create energy, build body structures, create chemical reactions, and stimulate the release of hormones. Which means they can impact how you feel, perform, and even behave.

When you track macros, you don’t need to count calories directly. Instead, you log how many grams of each macronutrient you eat every day.

That’s because each macronutrient provides a certain number of calories:

• 1 gram of protein = 4 calories
• 1 gram of carbohydrate = 4 calories
• 1 gram of fat = 9 calories
• (1 gram of alcohol = 7 calories)

As a result, tracking macros means you’re automatically tracking calories. It’s just that you’re ensuring a certain number of those calories come from protein, carbohydrates, and fat, respectively. This is known as your macronutrient ratio.

For example, let’s say you eat:

• 30% of your calories from protein
• 40% of your calories from carbohydrate
• 30% of your calories from fat

Your macronutrient ratio would then be 30:40:30.

By adjusting your macronutrient ratio based on your age, sex, activity levels, goals, and preferences, you can optimize your eating plan.

If you’re trying to lose weight, you might eat a higher proportion of protein, since it can help you feel satisfied longer after meals. Or if you’re a very active athlete, you might want a higher ratio of carbohydrates to meet your greater energy demands.

The good news: Our calorie, portion, and the macro calculator will figure all of this out for you.

Just enter your information and, within milliseconds, you’ll get a macro ratio that’s customized exactly for your body, goals, and preferences. (Plus, the Precision Nutrition Calculator gives you the option to further adjust these numbers, in case you want to try a different macronutrient ratio.)

Like calorie counting, though, conventional macro tracking has its downsides. Perhaps the biggest challenge: Because it requires careful food measuring and weighing, most people won’t stick to it for long.

Many say it feels cumbersome and even takes the joy out of eating. Which can limit its effectiveness to very short periods of time. That’s where the Precision Nutrition hand portion tracking system comes in.

Hand portions:

The easiest way to track calories and macros

When we created this calorie, macro, and portion calculator, we asked:

How can we help people eat the right amount of food, but without the burden of having to weigh and measure every morsel?

Our solution: to give personalized targets not just for daily calories and macros, but also hand portions. That way, you can use whichever method you prefer.

This hand portion system—developed by Precision Nutrition—allows you to use your own hand as a personalized, portable portioning tool. You’re not actually measuring your food, but rather using your hand to gauge portion size. It’s highly effective for food tracking because your hand is proportionate to your body, its size never changes, and it’s always with you.

Here’s a snapshot of how it works:

• Your palm determines your protein portions.
• Your fist determines your vegetable portions.
• Your cupped hand determines your carb portions.
• Your thumb determines your fat portions.

Based on the calorie, portion, and macro calculator’s output, all you have to do is eat the recommended number of each hand portion daily. (Again, we’ll show you how to put this method fully into practice once you’ve put your information into the Precision Nutrition Calculator and received your free report and eating guide.)

How effective are hand portions for tracking macros?

Our research shows hand portions are 95 percent as accurate (or better) as carefully weighing, measuring, and tracking. With substantially less effort and time involved.

Plus, our hand portion tracking system allows you to easily adjust your intake to further optimize your results.

Ready to get started? Go ahead and enter your information into the calorie, portion, and macro calculator above, and we’ll do the rest, providing you with a free nutrition plan customized just for you.

If you have more questions right now or want to understand the nutrition rules we used to design this calorie, portion, and macro calculator, see the Resources section for a full breakdown.