In general, 1g of protein contains 4 calories, 1g of carbohydrates contains 4 calories, and 1g of fat contains 9 calories. However, you may have noticed on food nutrition labels or when tracking in MacrosFirst, or any other app for that matter, that calories do not always perfectly match the macros as you may expect them to.
There are many good reasons for this including the differing caloric content of fiber vs. regular carbs, calories from alcohol, and nutrition label rounding and margin of error and so we wrote a whole article on the subject which you can checkout here:
Why don’t my macros add up to my calories?
Lots of reasons: fiber, alcohol, nutrition label rounding and margin of error
We also understand that some people just want everything add up and so we've added Macro Math as a setting in MacrosFirst where you can control how calories are calculated and reported upon throughout MacrosFirst.
By default MacrosFirst uses the calories from the nutrition labels of the foods you log as the data source from which calories are reported upon throughout the app.
When Macro Math is enabled, instead of relying upon food nutrition labels, MacrosFirst will calculate calories from the macros where:
1g Protein = 4 calories
1g Carbs = 4 calories
1g Fat = 9 calories
If Net Carbs and Macro Math are both enabled, then only Net Carbs (Total Carbs - Fiber - Sugar Alcohol) will be considered when calculating calories where 1 NC = 4 calories.
To enable Macro Math:
Go to More (⚙️ icon)
Tap Display
Select the Macro Math option
The Calorie Reporting setting controls how calories are displayed on the following screens:
Daily log
Food detail page of logged foods
In this example you can see how the Calorie Reporting setting changes how calories are reported for the same food in three different scenarios.
The difference in calories is due to how the fiber content of the food is handled in each of the three settings.
The Calorie Reporting setting has no impact on the following screens and features. Instead, calories on these pages will always use the food's nutrition label as the data source for displayed calories.
Food search results
Food detail page of foods that are not logged to your day.
Food create: When creating a new food, always enter the real nutrition information from the label.
All integrations: Google Sheets, Apple Health, and coaching platforms
Calorie Reporting does not impact how your nutrition data is saved in the database, only how it is displayed in the app. This means that you can switch between either Calorie Reporting option, Nutrition Label or Macro Math, at any time and that will not effect how your nutrition data is saved.
