Free Macro Percentage Calculator

Now, based on the fact that we already have a calorie and macronutrient calculator, you may be wondering why we now also have a macronutrient percentage calculator (macro percentage calculator). Well, the reality is that the two different calculators actually do slightly different things. You see, the calorie and macronutrient calculator is based heavily on our comprehensive diet set up recommendations. It is designed to help you better set up your diet, with good nutrition principles in mind. It is great for getting an estimation of where your calories should be, and for getting the diet set up quickly with good nutrition principles in mind. 

This macro percentage calculator does something slightly different. It assumes you already know where your calories should be (perhaps you did the “average and adjust” method of figuring out your calories like we generally recommend) and you are just looking to set your own macronutrient targets. 

Some of you don’t necessarily want to just follow the guidelines we generally recommend and you want to be able to tailor the diet more specifically to your own preferences. For example, some of you may want to eat more or less protein than we generally recommend. Similarly, some of you may want to eat a low-carb or low-fat diet. This macro percentage calculator allows you to tailor the diet more to these types of setups, and to refine your diet like we would with coaching.

Similarly, we have a lot of coaches and nutritionists who read our content, and given that we also teach people to be nutrition coaches, we wanted to create a handy macro percentages calculator that coaches would be able to use to set targets for their clients and also to refine their client’s diets based on their preferences. I know lots of coaches use a calculator they made on Excel to help them with this process, but now that we have made this online macro percentages calculator, it can replace that Excel calculator. 

So, that is why we made this macro calculator, and you can play around with it below.

Macro Percentage Calculator 

How To Properly Use The Calculator

Now, there are some ground rules that need to be understood to really get the most out of this calculator. I presume that if you are using this macro percentage calculator, rather than our calorie and macro calculator, you already have a decent level of foundational nutrition knowledge. As a result, I won’t discuss much foundational nutrition knowledge here. If you don’t have a decent level of nutrition knowledge, you simply won’t be able to get a huge amount from this calculator, and you would be better off using the calorie and macronutrient calculator and/or reading more about nutrition and how to set up the diet. 

How It Works

This macro percentage calculator is pretty straightforward in that all you need to do is input your calorie target and the percentage of calories that you want to assign to each macronutrient, and the calculator will calculate your targets in grams for each macronutrient. 

We generally don’t actually recommend percentage-based macronutrient targets, as they aren’t as specific as they can be to your actual needs. This is especially true of protein. Your protein intake should ideally be set somewhere between 1.5-2.5g of protein per kilogram of body weight, and not just as a set percentage of your calories. For example, you could set your protein target to 30% and if you are someone who is quite small but very active (i.e. your body weight is low, but your calorie expenditure is high), you could end up with a much higher than necessary protein target. So using solely percentages to dictate your macro targets tends not to be optimal.

However, the benefit of percentage-based macro targets is that they offer a large degree of refinement. You can set your targets more specifically, and adjust things to your liking by just tweaking the percentages. This is especially helpful if you have specific preferences with your diet, such as potentially preferring higher or lower carb/fat intakes. When we discuss the priorities of the diet, generally, once you have your calories and protein appropriately set and you are making generally good food choices, you do actually have a lot of wiggle room in terms of whether you should be eating more or less carbs or fats. There are certainly better ways to structure a diet for a given goal and individual, but once you have a few key cornerstones in place, you can actually be quite flexible in your actual targets. So, being able to play around with the exact percentages for your macronutrients can be quite helpful in tailoring the diet to an individual and their specific goals. 

If you are using this macro calculator to set your targets and you have no idea where to set them, then you should go back and read our nutrition fundamentals article, because you can actually just set your targets very incorrectly. This is very often the case, and we see it all the time in our coaching practice. Someone will download myfitnesspal and get assigned calories and percentage-based macro targets, and they work diligently at hitting those, but they fail to actually get the results they hoped for because the targets themselves were just wrong. So if you don’t have an accurate assessment of your calories and you don’t know how to set your macros correctly, then you can end up putting in a lot of work, for very little return (or perhaps even seeing the opposite results of what you hoped for). 

So to use this macro calculator correctly, you do at least have to know how to accurately set your calories and roughly where your protein targets should be. Generally, we tend to work out protein targets in grams, rather than percentages and this means that when you use this calculator, you will have to set your protein target to a best-guess percentage and then refine it until you are closer to where you know your protein target should be in grams. Then, once you have the protein target dialled in, you can start playing around with the allocation of carbs and fats.

This macro calculator will also give you a fibre target, and this is set to 15g per 1,000 calories, with the lowest recommendation set to 25g per day. This is generally a good place to be with fibre, and you should generally always aim to consume at least 25g of fibre per day. However, this may be inappropriate if you are at either end of the calorie intake continuum. For example, if you need to consume a high-calorie intake, you may find it difficult to consume that many calories with the recommended fibre intake, as you may just be too full all the time. Conversely, if you are on very low calories, even with 25g of fibre as the minimum, you may find that you aren’t as satiated as you would like to be and increasing your fibre intake can really help here. So you should have some flexibility with your fibre intake, although most people drastically under-consume fibre, so for most people, aiming to consume 25g at the very least would be a very good start.

Our macro calculator will also give you a saturated fat target, so you can easily know where your recommended saturated fat intake should be. It is important to understand that this is a recommended maximum, and you don’t actually need to aim to eat that much, you just need to aim to eat less than that much. It is set to 10% of calories, although if you set your overall fat intake to low levels (i.e. less than 10% of your calories), it will just be set to less than 70% of your fat calorie targets. The research tends to suggest that less than 10% of calories as saturated fat is where we want our intake to be to help prevent heart disease. The 70% target is just the best guess at where saturated fat should be if you are eating very little fat overall, as you do need to have some room to get sufficient mono and polyunsaturated fat (especially the omega 3s).

Finally, our macro calculator also calculates your water intake, and this is based on your calorie intake. The general recommendation for water intake is to consume 1.5mL of water per calorie consumed. This should be seen as a rough starting point, and you will need to refine your intake based on how your body responds (the easiest way is to just refine your intake based on your urine colour).

How To Use The Macro Calculator Effectively

Probably the best way to use the macro calculator is to first build out a very solid understanding of where your calories should be. On our nutrition coaching course and in our online coaching practice, we tend to use the average and adjust method of determining calories (we discuss this more in the article on diet set-up), but you could also get a rough estimation of your calories using our calorie and macronutrient calculator. 

Once you have your calories, the next thing we recommend you do is work out your protein requirements. This can very quickly be done by simply multiplying your body weight in kilograms by 2, and this will give you a very rough idea of where your protein requirements should be. Then you can put your calorie target into the calculator and leave the preset percentages as they are. Then from this, you will be able to see what the calculator has calculated your protein target as, and you can then adjust the targets until you get the protein calculations closer to the 2g of protein per kilogram of body weight target. 

Once you have dialled in your protein, you can begin playing around with the rest of the macronutrient percentages. Perhaps you like a lower carbohydrate diet or perhaps a lower fat diet, either way, you can play around with the percentages until you have the diet dialled into your preferences.  

After that, it is just a matter of trying to actually create a diet pattern and diet habits that allow you to actually stick to those targets long term. Dietary change does take time, and you will rarely get the targets perfectly straight out of the gate. In our experience, it generally takes most people ~2 weeks to really settle into new dietary patterns.

Potential Issues With The Calculator

There are a few potential issues with this calculator, or rather, how you interact with the calculator. Being aware of these can be incredibly helpful ahead of time, so you don’t fall into the common traps.

This calculator will allow you to set whatever calorie targets you want, and it says nothing about how appropriate those targets actually are. So you have to actually have some baseline nutrition knowledge to use this calculator effectively. Most people are pretty terrible at accurately setting their calorie target, so this can lead to poor results from the macro percentage calculator. If you feed in the bad inputs, you will get the bad outputs. 

The calculator also allows you to set your own macro targets, which allows you a lot of flexibility and increased ability to refine the targets, but it does also mean you can set your targets completely inappropriately. This increased flexibility is really helpful if you already have a firm understanding of nutrition principles, but it can be downright dangerous when you don’t know what you are doing. For example, you may think that setting your protein target to 10% is perfectly fine because the calculator allows it, but someone with nutritional knowledge would very easily be able to identify that this intake is potentially very harmful to your long-term health. Similarly, you can set your fat or carbohydrate targets to zero, but this generally isn’t a healthy approach. So, it is your responsibility to use the calculator correctly, and just because you can set certain targets, doesn’t mean you should. 

Similarly, just because you set your macro targets, doesn’t mean that you will get the results you want. If you are looking for body composition change, health and performance, the way you set up the diet does actually influence this quite a bit (i.e. protein intake influences muscle size). So just because you control for calories and have chosen a macro target, that doesn’t mean it is actually optimal for you or that goal. You do have to have some fundamental understanding of how to set up a diet correctly to be able to use the macro percentage calculator correctly.

You could potentially set your targets to be 100% of one macronutrient, and while the calculator allows this (as I want to give you a lot of autonomy over the targets), this really is not a good practice. You ideally want to eat a balanced diet, and at least hit the bare minimum recommended intakes for all macros.

The macro percentage calculator will automatically set fibre targets based on best practices. However, these could be too high if you are trying to gain weight and potentially too low if you are trying to lose weight (as you may want extra fibre to help you feel fuller). So you do have to have a good idea of how to set up a diet correctly and how to adjust the diet based on individual needs (which we teach in our nutrition course).

The macro calculator also sets saturated fat targets based on the best available evidence. However, these could be too high for someone who really needs to be more wary of their saturated fat intake. While they are set to ≤10% of calories, for some people, even this may be too much. 

Our macro calculator also gives you water recommendations, and these can be too low if you live in a climate that is warmer or you are someone who sweats a lot. So the water recommendation will need to be adjusted based on your unique needs.

Macro Percentage Calculator Summary

Hopefully, this macro percentage calculator has given you a nice additional tool to help you to really dial in your diet, or the diet of your clients. Being able to play around with specific targets can be quite helpful, especially as you try to refine the diet based on individual preferences and goals. If you would like more help with your diet (or training), we do have online coaching spaces available. if you are interested in learning more about the diet and how to coach people to a better diet pattern, we also have an Online Nutrition Coaching Certification program that may be of interest to you. We also recommend reading our foundational nutrition article, along with our foundational articles on sleep and stress management, if you really want to learn more about how to optimise your lifestyle. You can also sign up for our newsletter and YouTube channel if you wish to stay up to date with our content. You can also subscribe to our podcast on Spotify if you prefer to listen to content.

Macro Percentage Calculator FAQs

What is a macro percentage calculator?

Unlike a regular calorie and macronutrient calculator, a macro percentage calculator is simply a calculator that allows you to set your macronutrient targets as a percentage of calories. 

How does a macro percentage calculator work?

This is fairly straightforward, as a macro percentage calculator simply allows you to allocate your calories to different macronutrients based on a percentage of your calories.

Why should I use a macro percentage calculator?

For most people, using a calorie and macro calculator is going to be preferable, but for some people (especially coaches) having access to a macro percentage calculator is actually quite helpful.

Can a macro percentage calculator help with weight loss?

Yes, you can use a macro percentage calculator to help with weight loss, however, you will need to have a solid understanding of how to set up your diet correctly if you actually want to get the results you desire.

How do I determine my macronutrient goals?

There are some good general guidelines for macronutrients that we generally recommend that people follow, and if you are really unsure of these, we recommend you read our foundational diet article and potentially use the calorie and macronutrient calculator instead of this one.

Are macro percentage calculators accurate?

They are only as accurate as the inputs. If you put in the wrong calories or you set the wrong macronutrient targets, then they aren’t going to be all that helpful or accurate. So if you intend to use the macro percentage calculator, it makes sense to familiarise yourself with good nutrition practices. 

Can athletes benefit from using a macro percentage calculator?

For sure, and for athletes, or for any individual that needs a greater ability to tailor their diet more specifically, a macro percentage calculator can be incredibly helpful. If you have very high-calorie requirements, you may simply want to have more control over where you allocate your calories, and this macro percentages calculator will allow you to do that. The only potential issue would be setting your protein intake based on percentages, as that may result in less than optimal intakes.

Are there different macro ratios for different goals?

Macro ratios do vary based on goals, although not as much as you may think. For weight loss, ratios might lean towards higher protein (as less calories are available, and protein requirements are relatively fixed). Similarly, muscle gain may emphasise a lower protein and fat percentage, as carbohydrates take up more of the calories. So, different goals will do better with different macro percentages.

Is the macro percentage calculator suitable for vegetarians/vegans?

Yes, macro percentage calculators are agnostic to your dietary food selection. In fact, the calculator may be a great help for plant-based dieters, as they need to dial in their intakes more to account for higher protein requirements and food options that generally also include fats and carbs.

Can I use a macro calculator for maintenance?

Yep, many people do this, and effectively just use the macro percentage calculator to really dial in their intake to optimise energy and performance.

Can a macro calculator help prevent muscle loss during weight loss?

Yes, by providing enough protein and distributing macros properly, you can potentially minimise muscle loss during weight loss.

Can I use a macro calculator for bulking?

Definitely. Adjust your macros to support muscle growth by ensuring you are eating enough calories, protein and carbohydrates. 

Can I use a macro calculator if I have dietary restrictions?

Absolutely, a macro percentage calculator can be customised to accommodate various dietary restrictions and preferences.

Can I adjust my macros for a ketogenic diet?

Yes, a macro percentage calculator can help you determine the appropriate macronutrient ratios for a ketogenic diet’s high-fat, low-carb approach. Generally, with ketogenic diets, you are going to have to keep carbs below 50g per day, and potentially also eat a low amount of protein too.

Should I adjust my macros on rest days?

Some people do like to adjust their diet day to day, based on activity levels, but for most people, this does actually just make the diet more difficult to stick to. So we generally don’t recommend it. However, you can use the macro percentage calculator to adjust your macros based on that days activity, while still staying within your calorie target.

How can I adjust macros for intermittent fasting?

You generally won’t need to adjust your macros for this, as intermittent fasting is more concerned about the distribution of your intake, rather than the quantity of your intake.

Is it okay to tweak macros based on cravings?

Potentially. There is a lot of wiggle room with the diet, once it falls within good general guidelines. So tweaking the percentages of the calories for each macro may allow you to accommodate cravings and have the diet better align with your preferences. However, some preferences and cravings are just going to be very difficult to accommodate (i.e. if you crave incredibly high-calorie foods, you are simply not going to easily fit them in the diet, unless you eat small portions of them).