Building macros: the scenarios

The planner calculates from their stats and fills all three phases at once. Goal weight decides which bodyweight protein and fat scale off. The per-phase editor hand-tunes one phase three ways: per pound, percent, or straight manual entry. The anchor moves a target from an estimate to their measured burn.

Use them in that order. Stats and goal weight first, planner second, then leave it alone while they log and weigh in. Around two weeks in the engine reads their real burn, and the anchor replaces the estimate. Hand-tune last, when you have a reason.

One rule holds through all of it: calories never come from goal weight. Calories come from what their body is spending, which is their TDEE estimate at first and their measured burn as soon as there is one. Goal weight only decides the weight protein and fat scale off.

A 34 year old man, 5 foot 10, 185 lb, training four days a week. No goal weight worth setting: he is close to where he wants to be and wants to look and perform better. Run the planner and the estimate lands at 2767 calories.

Fuel comes out 2767 kcal with 185P 361C 65F. Cut is 2214 with 204P 224C 56F. Build is 3044 with 185P 450C 56F. Protein sits at a gram per pound, a touch higher on the cut, and carbs absorb the phase change.

The work here is not the math, it is leaving it alone. Those numbers are an estimate from a formula that has never met him. Get him logging and weighing in, and in about two weeks you will have his real burn and a target worth trusting. Coaches lose more clients to fiddling in week one than to a target being 100 calories off.

A 41 year old woman, 5 foot 5, 172 lb, goal 145, lightly active. Set the goal weight first. Her estimated burn is 1988, so Cut lands at 1590 kcal with 160P 139C 44F.

Without the goal weight on file the same cut would read 189P 92C 52F. Same calories, but nearly a hundred grams of protein more and a third of the carbs. The second version is technically defensible and practically miserable, and a miserable cut gets abandoned.

Watch the rate, not the day. The adaptive band for a cut is half a pound to a pound and a half a week. Inside it, do nothing. When a cut stalls, check logging first: days logged, days on plan, weekend gaps. Most stalls are an adherence question wearing a math costume, and the Macro review card on their page will tell you which one you are looking at.

A 24 year old man, 5 foot 11, 158 lb, training hard six days a week, goal 175. His estimated burn is 2982, so Build lands at 3280 kcal with 158P 556C 47F.

Notice protein scaled off 158, not 175. A goal above current weight is weight to grow into, not weight to eat for. Recording it still matters: it names the target, it frames every check-in, and it flips the conversation from a number on a scale to a job being done.

The band for a build is a quarter to three quarters of a pound a week. Faster than that is mostly not muscle. The hard part with this client is volume: 3280 calories is a lot of food for someone who is not used to eating, so treat the eating itself as the skill. Carbs are where the surplus lives, and they are the easiest part to add.

A 46 year old man, 5 foot 11, 320 lb, goal 220, lightly active. Run the plain formula with no goal weight and his cut reads 2589 kcal with 352P 79C 96F. Nobody eats 352 grams of protein. Nobody trains on 79 grams of carbs. That is not a strict plan, it is a plan with no chance.

Set his goal weight to 220 and the same 2589 calories become 242P 257C 66F. Protein is still high for the food he is actually eating, carbs are enough to train on, and the calorie number did not move, because the calorie number was never the problem.

Two more things matter at this size. First, formulas are least reliable at the ends of the range, so his estimated burn is the roughest number in the plan. Get him logging and weighing in early and let the measured burn replace it, then anchor. Second, a percentage deficit gives a bigger client a bigger absolute gap, which is fine, but the editor warns you below roughly eight calories per pound of goal weight. Below that you are trading muscle and adherence for speed.

The first win here is not precision, it is consistency. A client who logs six days a week on a slightly wrong target beats a client who quits on a perfect one. And when a client has medical factors in play, that is a conversation for their physician or a registered dietitian, not for a macro calculator.

Four reasons to change a target. The engine just measured their burn for the first time, or measured it again on a full window. Their weight has moved enough that the old stats are stale. They are moving into a new phase. Or the trend has sat outside its band for two or three weeks with the logging to back it up.

That is the whole list. Opening a client and adjusting because it has been a while is how a plan stops meaning anything. The Macro review card leads their page when a change is genuinely due, and it separates the two problems that look alike: a target that no longer matches their burn, and a client who is not eating the target they already have. It also watches the scale: a cut that has stopped losing, a build that has stopped gaining, or a hold phase drifting shows up there and on your Clients page.

The Plan tab keeps the record. Change history lists every target this client has ever had, dated, with who changed it, what moved, and why, tagged by where it came from: anchor, adaptive, planner, or by hand. A year in, that list is how you see your own coaching, not just today's number.

It also watches your pace. Open a phase you changed a few days ago and it says so, because nothing has come back from that change yet. Three changes in a month gets a louder note. Neither one stops you, because sometimes you typed the wrong number yesterday. They just make sure the churn is a decision.

Change one thing at a time and give it a week or two. If you move calories, let protein hold: that is what Per pound in the phase editor does for you, and it is why it is the default. Update the goal weight as they get closer to it, and the reference follows them down.