Macros not adding up

CoreyB1206

Hi! My macros are 120 protein, 65 fat and 138 carb. Today I have 57 grabs of protein left to eat but it says I only have 24 calories. Why is this?

AnnPT77

I can think of two possibilities. One will be quick to rule out, if it doesn't apply.

Did you consume any alcohol? Alcohol has 7 calories per gram, but isn't protein, carbs or fats. If we have some, and select accurate entries from the database, we'll reach our calorie goal but not all our nutritional goals.

Not that?

Look at your individual logged foods, line by line. There can be some minor rounding errors, but essentially, for each food, (carb grams x 4) + (protein grams x 4) + (fat grams x 9) should add up to the number of calories for that food (if there's no alcohol in play ).

The MFP food database is crowd-sourced. Not everyone enters food accurately, and on top of that, labeling regulations differ by country, as do product formulations (for products with the same name, even). When you first log a food, check the label against the database entry you choose, and find one to log that's accurate, if you want things to add up (or at least come close).

You don't need to check every time, because once you log a food it will be in your recent/frequent foods as long as you log it semi-frequently, and show up first when you're logging. Investing a little time at first in finding accurate database items is helpful in the long run.

Final words: So what? It's not essential to be exactly exact on every nutrient every day. Reasonably close on average over a few days to a week is close enough. Yeah, it's not great to be persistently way under protein goal, and 57 grams is a lot to be under. But if it's not an every day or frequent thing, it's not a huge issue.

Best wishes!