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.

However, despite our best efforts to explain why calories can differ from macros consumed we still receive complaints like this one every now and then where folks believe they've encountered a bug in MacrosFirst:

One of our core principles at MacrosFirst is to empower our community to take control over their nutrition and we do this by meeting our users where they're at and delivering tools that build confidence and lead towards positive change.

For this reason we're excited to introduce Macro Math as a new setting in MacrosFirst where you can control how calories are calculated and reported upon throughout MacrosFirst. For more on Macro Math and the new Calorie Report setting, checkout this help center article.