I see people make this harder than it is. They get a macro target, miss carbs by 22 grams on Tuesday, and act like the whole day was a failure.
Meanwhile the bigger problem might be that they are eating 2,200 calories while trying to deadlift heavy, run intervals, and get through a long run on the weekend.
I care about that problem first.
Calories need to be somewhere close to reality. The TDEE calculator can get you in the neighborhood. After that, the scale trend and your training tell you whether the estimate was any good.
I keep protein pretty boring
For most people who lift, around 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of bodyweight per day is a good target. In one 16-week study of resistance-trained men, that intake supported lean-mass, strength, and aerobic improvements during resistance or concurrent training. Pushing protein to 3.2 g/kg did not create a huge extra payoff across the board.1
So if somebody weighs about 180 pounds, I am not losing sleep because they ate 150 grams instead of chasing 220.
Could they eat more? Sure. Plenty of people prefer it. I just would not steal a bunch of carbs and fat from the rest of the diet for protein they probably did not need in the first place.
During a cut, I am a little more protective of protein. That is also when hunger tends to make a higher-protein intake useful anyway.
Running is usually what makes carbs move
This is where two athletes with the same bodyweight can need very different diets.
Take a 190-pound lifter doing four gym sessions and two easy runs. Now take another 190-pound lifter who is also doing four gym sessions, but runs intervals on Wednesday and 10 miles on Sunday.
I would not feed those weeks the same way.
Endurance work gives carbohydrate a pretty obvious job. A crossover study found that a higher-carbohydrate meal before endurance exercise improved time to exhaustion compared with a lower-carbohydrate meal and fasting.2
But I also would not turn that into "more carbs always means a better workout." Resistance training is a good example. A 2025 study compared high-carb, low-carb, and low-calorie breakfasts before lifting and did not find a meaningful difference in total repetitions.3
So I put the extra food where the hard work is.
Long run Sunday? Eat for it. Hard intervals Thursday? I want carbs around that. Big lower-body day where you know the volume is going to be ugly? Same thing.
A 25-minute easy jog does not need a ceremonial bowl of pasta the night before.
A normal week is easier to manage than people think
Say the week is heavy lower on Monday, easy run Tuesday, upper Wednesday, intervals Thursday, another lift Friday, long run Sunday.
I would probably eat more carbs around Monday, Thursday, and Sunday. Not because those are magic days. They are just the days asking the most from you.
Protein barely needs to move. I would keep fat fairly normal too.
That leaves Saturday, for example. Maybe you are resting. Great. You do not have to starve because the training calendar is empty for 24 hours. You are still recovering from the week and getting ready to run long the next day.
The body does not reset at midnight because MyFitnessPal started a new page.
Cutting is where bad math shows up
I am much more suspicious of a calorie target when somebody tells me both sides of training suddenly feel terrible.
Their easy pace is slower at the same effort. Squats feel heavy before the working sets even get interesting. The long run turns into survival halfway through. And this has been going on for more than a couple bad days.
Maybe the program is too hard. Maybe recovery outside the gym is bad. But if they are also trying to lose two pounds a week while training six or seven times, the calorie target is going on my suspect list pretty quickly.
I would rather lose a little slower and keep the training worth doing.
The Mass in Motion macro calculator gives you a starting target. Use it. Then stop treating it like a contract.
Give the plan some time. Look at average bodyweight. Look at the gym. Look at the runs. If all three are doing what you want, there is nothing to fix.
That is usually when nutrition is going best anyway. It gets boring.
Research cited
- Bagheri R, et al. Effects of 16 weeks of two different high-protein diets with either resistance or concurrent training. 2023. PubMed.
- Aandahl MH, et al. Effect of carbohydrate content in a pre-event meal on endurance performance-determining factors. 2021. PubMed.
- King A, et al. Isoenergetic pre-exercise meals varying in carbohydrate similarly affect resistance training volume performance compared to placebo. 2025. PubMed.