This is not medical advice
MyPlate provides general nutrition information for self-tracking. It is not medical advice, a diagnosis, or a treatment plan.
Your calorie and macronutrient targets are estimates produced by published formulas — not a prescription written for you.
Talk to a doctor or a registered dietitian before you use MyPlate if any of these apply to you:
- You are under 18.
- You are pregnant or breastfeeding.
- You have, or have ever had, an eating disorder or a difficult relationship with food.
- You are managing a medical condition — including diabetes, heart, kidney or liver disease, or a thyroid disorder.
- You take medication that depends on what you eat, or when you eat it.
- A clinician has put you on a specific diet, or told you to gain or lose weight.
Your daily calorie target
We estimate your basal metabolic rate from your sex, age, height and weight using the Mifflin-St Jeor equation, then multiply it by an activity factor between 1.375 and 1.9 for the workload you described. You can run the same arithmetic yourself on our calorie calculator.
Mifflin MD, St Jeor ST, Hill LA, Scott BJ, Daugherty SA, Koh YO (1990). A new predictive equation for resting energy expenditure in healthy individuals.
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 51(2):241–247. Read on PubMed →
Frankenfield D, Roth-Yousey L, Compher C (2005). Comparison of predictive equations for resting metabolic rate in healthy nonobese and obese adults.
Journal of the American Dietetic Association, 105(5):775–789. Read on PubMed →
Institute of Medicine (2005). Dietary Reference Intakes for Energy, Carbohydrate, Fiber, Fat, Fatty Acids, Cholesterol, Protein, and Amino Acids — physical activity levels.
The National Academies Press. Read the report →
Losing or gaining weight
A weight-loss goal lowers that target by 15% and a weight-gain goal raises it by 10%, which keeps the change within the gradual range health authorities recommend rather than producing a crash deficit.
Whatever the arithmetic produces, your target never drops below 1,200 calories a day if you are female or 1,500 if you are male. Eating under that belongs with a clinician, not an app.
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, NIH (1998). Clinical Guidelines on the Identification, Evaluation, and Treatment of Overweight and Obesity in Adults.
NIH Publication 98-4083. Read the guidelines →
Jensen MD, Ryan DH, Apovian CM, et al. (2013). AHA/ACC/TOS Guideline for the Management of Overweight and Obesity in Adults.
Circulation, 129(25 Suppl 2):S102–S138. Read on PubMed →
Your protein, carb and fat targets
Your macronutrients are shares of your calorie target, set inside the Acceptable Macronutrient Distribution Ranges — protein 10–35%, carbohydrate 45–65% and fat 20–35% of energy. Grams come from the Atwater factors: 4 kcal per gram of protein and of carbohydrate, 9 per gram of fat.
Institute of Medicine (2005). Acceptable Macronutrient Distribution Ranges, in Dietary Reference Intakes for Energy, Carbohydrate, Fiber, Fat, Fatty Acids, Cholesterol, Protein, and Amino Acids.
The National Academies Press. Read the report →
US Departments of Health and Human Services and Agriculture. Dietary Guidelines for Americans.
Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. Read the guidelines →
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (2003). Food energy — methods of analysis and conversion factors.
FAO Food and Nutrition Paper 77. Read the paper →
Calories and macros in your meals
Photo and description estimates are produced by an AI model and are approximations — portion size, preparation and hidden ingredients all move the number. Treat a scan as a guide, not a measurement. A packaged food's own label stays the accurate source for anything that carries one.
US Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. FoodData Central — reference composition data for foods.
fdc.nal.usda.gov. Open FoodData Central →
Questions about a number?
If a target in the app doesn't look right to you, tell us and we'll explain how it was reached.
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