How to hit your macros each day by planning, not counting
Counting tells you at 9 pm what the day added up to. Planning sets it before breakfast. Here is one real day from Susten's planner, meal by meal, against its targets.
Key takeaways
- To hit your macros every day, plan the meals to your targets first. Then the sums are done before you eat, and nothing needs logging.
- Day 1 of a planned week comes to 2,031 kcal, 148 g protein, 200 g carbs and 63 g fat, against targets of 2,000, 150, 200 and 67.
- Plan protein first, and give every meal a share of it. Each meal that day has at least 26 g.
- The portion size does the fine tuning. The planner picks Small, Medium or Large for each meal, so the same recipes fit other targets.
To hit your macros every day, plan the day's meals to your targets before you eat them. Then the sums are done before breakfast, and you only need to eat what you planned. Below is one real day from Susten's planner that adds up, meal by meal. Then come five steps to plan your own.
Counting and planning, side by side
Both start from the same targets: calories, protein, carbs and fat. The difference is when the sums happen.
| Counting | Planning | |
|---|---|---|
| When you do the sums | As you eat, through the day | Once, before the week starts |
| What you weigh | Each food, at each meal | The recipe's amounts, when you cook |
| What you log | Every meal and snack | Nothing, if you eat the plan |
| At the end of the day | You find the gap and fill it | The day already adds up |
| The shopping | Separate from the numbers | The list comes from the same meals |
Counting tells you what happened. So a day short on protein shows up at 9 pm, when the only fix is a snack. Planning moves that work to the start, when you can still change the meals.
One day that adds up
Susten's planner made this week on 21 October 2026 for one person. The targets were 2,000 kcal, 150 g of protein, 200 g of carbs and 67 g of fat. We locked the lunches, and the planner chose every other meal and its portion size. Here is day 1:
Day 1, meal by meal
- Breakfast
- Lunch
- Dinner
- Snack
- Calories2,031 kcal of 2,000 kcal582474767
- Protein148 g of 150 g26355928
- Carbs200 g of 200 g583599
- Fat63 g of 67 g252114
Each black line is the day's target. The numbers are for one portion of each meal.
The day comes to 2,031 kcal, 148 g of protein, 200 g of carbs and 63 g of fat. That is four meals:
- Breakfast: Peanut Butter on Toast, 582 kcal and 26 g of protein.
- Lunch: Pesto Chicken & Sun-Dried Tomato Wrap, 474 kcal and 35 g.
- Dinner: Chicken Balti with Peppers, 767 kcal and 59 g.
- Snack: two packs of Hapi dry roasted edamame, 208 kcal and 28 g.
No meal on its own matches the targets' split. The breakfast carries the most fat, and the dinner the most carbs. Instead, the day works because the meals balance each other.
1. Work out your targets
Start with calories, then protein. Susten's macro calculator works out both from your body, your goal and how active you are. It sets protein by body weight first. Then fat takes 30% of the calories, and carbs take the rest.
Each gram of protein or carbohydrate counts as 4 kcal, and each gram of fat as 9 kcal. That is the rule UK food labels use. So a target of 150 g of protein is 600 kcal of your day.
2. Give every meal a share of the protein
Plan protein before the other numbers, because the calculator sets it first and the rest follow from it. Then give each meal a share, so no single meal has to carry the day. In the day above, no meal has less than 26 g, and dinner carries the most.
The British Nutrition Foundation also advises people who exercise to spread their protein across the day.
3. Pick meals by their numbers per portion
Each meal needs its calories and macros per portion before you can plan with it. Food labels give them per 100 g, and only sometimes per portion. The NHS also warns that "the manufacturer's idea of a portion may be different from yours". So a recipe that lists its own numbers per portion saves you the sums.
To compare recipes this way, browse Susten's recipes: each one shows a portion's calories, protein and Tesco cost.
4. Close the gap with the portion size
Once the meals are close, change how much you eat, not what you eat. A large portion of a dinner adds calories and protein together. For this week, the planner picked Small, Medium or Large for each recipe. Day 1's breakfast and dinner are both Large, for example, and the lunch is Medium.
5. Plan the week, not one day
A day that adds up is useful. Seven of them are better, because then the shopping list covers them too. Here is the whole week against its targets:
| Day | Calories | Protein | Carbs | Fat |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Day 1 | 2,031 kcal | 148 g | 200 g | 63 g |
| Day 2 | 2,056 kcal | 148 g | 195 g | 68 g |
| Day 3 | 2,086 kcal | 147 g | 204 g | 68 g |
| Day 4 | 2,062 kcal | 151 g | 196 g | 69 g |
| Day 5 | 2,012 kcal | 145 g | 192 g | 68 g |
| Day 6 | 2,008 kcal | 148 g | 196 g | 64 g |
| Day 7 | 2,008 kcal | 148 g | 196 g | 64 g |
| Average | 2,038 kcal | 148 g | 197 g | 66 g |
| Target | 2,000 kcal | 150 g | 200 g | 67 g |
Every day lands between 2,008 and 2,086 kcal, and between 145 and 151 g of protein. For the full week, its photos and its Tesco list, see the 2,000 calorie high-protein meal plan.
When counting still helps
Planning sets the day, but you still have to eat it. If you swap a meal for a takeaway, the plan's numbers no longer hold for that day. So count on the days you leave the plan, if you want to know where they landed. On the other days, the plan has done the sums.
Is a reference intake your target?
No. Food labels compare each food with one set of figures for an adult: 2,000 kcal, 70 g of fat, 260 g of carbohydrate and 50 g of protein. The NHS says an average man needs 2,500 kcal a day and an average woman 2,000 kcal. Your own needs depend on your body, your goal and how active you are.
Questions people ask
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