Chazzen Fitness
Chazzen Fitness
Enter your stats, pick your goal, and get your daily calorie target with a macro breakdown you can actually follow.
If provided, uses Katch-McArdle formula (based on lean body mass) for a more accurate BMR. Protein range also adjusts to lean mass.
Once you have your targets, the next step is knowing how to find the numbers on actual food. Nutrition labels are standardised, but they have a few gotchas that trip most people up at first. Here's what to look for.
This is the most important line on the label, and the most commonly ignored one. Every number below it — calories, protein, fat, carbs — is based on that serving size, not the whole packet.
The label shown here says 230 calories per serving. But there are 8 servings per container. Eat the whole thing and you're looking at 1,840 calories. Always check this line before reading anything else.
This is your anchor number. Each gram of protein or carbohydrate gives you 4 calories. Each gram of fat gives you 9. The label already does that maths for you.
Your job is to keep a rough running total through the day. You don't need to be precise to the calorie — consistently staying within 100–150 calories of your target is enough to see results over time.
The label shows 230 kcal per serving. Cross-checking by macro: 8g fat × 9 = 72 kcal, 37g carbs × 4 = 148 kcal, 3g protein × 4 = 12 kcal — that totals 232, which rounds to 230. Small differences like this are normal due to fibre adjustments and rounding on the label.
Track this closely, especially in a fat loss phase. Protein keeps you full, preserves muscle while you're in a deficit, and has a higher thermic effect than any other macronutrient, meaning your body burns more energy just digesting it.
High-protein foods to lean on: chicken breast, white fish, eggs, Greek yoghurt, cottage cheese, lean beef mince, and tinned tuna. These should form the base of most of your meals if hitting your protein target is a challenge.
This label has 3g of protein per serving — 3 × 4 = 12 kcal, just 5% of the 230 calorie total. This is not a high-protein food. You'd need to eat the entire container to get 24g of protein from it. This is exactly why checking the protein line matters before treating something as a "protein source."
The total carbohydrate line covers everything: starches, fibre, and sugars. This is the number you track for your carb target, not the sugar line on its own.
Dietary fibre sits underneath as a subcomponent. Some people subtract it to get "net carbs," which matters more on strict low-carb protocols. For a standard calorie-counted approach, tracking total carbs is fine.
Total carbs: 37g — 37 × 4 = 148 kcal, which is 148 ÷ 230 ≈ 64% of this food's calories. Of those 37g: 4g is fibre, 12g is sugar, leaving about 21g as starch. If you were calculating net carbs, you'd subtract the fibre: 37 − 4 = 33g net carbs.
Sugars are a subset of total carbohydrates, not a separate macro. 12g of sugar is still 12g of carbs at 4 calories per gram — it doesn't get its own category in your tracking.
Where it matters practically: high-sugar foods digest quickly, spike blood sugar, and tend to leave you hungry again sooner. Keeping sugars relatively low makes staying within your calorie target easier, but the calories are what drive fat loss, not the sugar content in isolation.
Total sugars: 12g, of which 10g are added. That means only 2g come from naturally occurring sources. All 12g still count as carbs — 12 × 4 = 48 kcal. They're already included in the 37g total carbs figure, not added on top.
Fat has more than double the calories per gram compared to protein or carbs (9 vs 4), so even small portions of high-fat foods add up fast. A tablespoon of olive oil is around 120 calories. A handful of mixed nuts can be 200.
Fat isn't the enemy. It's essential for hormones, brain function, and absorbing fat-soluble vitamins. But it's calorie-dense, so it needs to be accounted for when you're tracking. Foods that combine both fat and refined carbs — pastries, fried snacks, most fast food — tend to be where calorie targets get blown most easily.
Total fat: 8g — 8 × 9 = 72 kcal, which is 72 ÷ 230 ≈ 31% of total calories. Of that, only 1g is saturated and there's no trans fat. A relatively lean food. Compare this to something like peanut butter (16g fat per 32g serving — 144 kcal from fat alone) to see how quickly fat calories compound.
Ingredients are listed by weight, heaviest first. If sugar appears within the first three ingredients — under any of its names: cane sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, dextrose, maltose, fruit juice concentrate — the product is primarily sweetened. Same logic applies to refined oils.
This doesn't mean you avoid those products entirely. It means you know what you're actually eating when a label says "natural" or "wholesome" on the front.
The percentage figures on the right are calculated against a standard 2,000-calorie diet, which may have nothing to do with your personal target. They're a rough guide for things like sodium and fibre, but don't rely on them for calories, protein, or macros. Use the numbers from your calculator instead.
Not eating exactly one serving? Enter the per-serving values straight from any nutrition label, type in how much you're actually having, and get your real numbers instantly.
Enter in the same unit as the serving size above. The result updates as you type.