Macros not equal to calories

some of the entries you are using might be off. When they are user added, they can be wrong. Look at the individual entries and see if the macros add up to the calories.

It's probably a combo of rounding errors and bad data - nutritional info is all estimates, when it comes down to it, so I wouldn't stress too badly. It is good to make sure you're using as complete of entries as possible, though.

Not addressing the data entry errors, but related to rounding: https://www.bodyrecomposition.com/nutrition/calories-not-matching-macros-qa.html/

Well there are 2 possibilities:

1. The entries you used are off. Since entries are user-generated, sometimes they are incorrect. The person may have put the calories but doesn't care about certain macros/micros and didn't enter them or input them incorrectly by accident.

2. If you drank any alcohol, MFP does not include that as a macro, even though it's about 7cal/g (of pure ethanol). So it appears you had "empty" calories. A 5 ounce glass of red wine is about 120 calories, but MFP only shows ~4g carbs. So should it only be 16 calories (I wish!)?

You're only 120 calories off. Rounding errors can account for that, depending on how many different foods you ate and how many servings. Macros are given more or less exactly on nutrition labels, but listed calories are rounded to the nearest 10 if they total more than 50. So they're not going to match correctly even on a legally conforming nutrition label, never mind daily totals.

For instance, I'm looking at a box of Nature Valley Pecan Crunch granola bars. It tells me there are 190 calories for a 2-bar serving -- but a 1-bar serving isn't 85 calories; it's 100. Adding up the 8g of fat, 28g of carbs, and 3g of protein gives 196 calories -- but the label only lists 190. If the macros are exactly correct they should be rounding up to 200, but they're rounded to the nearest gram themselves and you'd probably end up with fewer than 195 if you used the exact figures.

Note that this 6 calorie difference amounts to about 3% off the listed value. Your 120 calorie difference (cumulative across many different foods) comes to about 6%. So you're in the ballpark. This is all rounded and approximate. Don't sweat it.

Rayson1 wrote: »

Not to beat a dead horse but all the numbers were generated by fp I would think there math would equal out. I entered the macros I wanted to hit and fp did the math and it came up with the right amount of calories based on the macros. The problem is now there math is off. It's not based on anything I entered or didn't enter fp generated the numbers

As @Alatariel75 said, MFP users are the ones who create the entries in the database. Many people will enter them with incorrect numbers. That is where the issue lies. You have to double-check the entries you chose against the food label or the USDA's nutrition database to ensure they are correct.

Only the foods with green arrows have actually been verified by MFP and if you click on the green arrow MFP explains that occasionally even some of those slip by and need corrected. However, more than that is what others said about food labels being "confusing" because of rounding and reporting standards. If you scan an item, or read the label, and do the math most times it will not add up correctly. I went through my list of foods scanned and verified from nutrition labels and had a hard time finding any that came close to grams of macros multiplying out to match the total calories.

OP did you have any alcohol that you logged that day? Alcohol is 7 cal per gram and is not accounted for in carb/prot/fat. If you had a couple of drinks the alcohol content could account for the missing 100+ calories.