Last updated: 2026-11-05
A macro meal plan is an accounting problem wearing a cooking hat. You have numbers you want each day to land on — protein, carbs, fat, calories — and a week of meals that has to get close to them. The old way was a spreadsheet: plan the week by hand, look up every recipe's numbers, total each day, and rebuild the whole thing whenever life swapped a Tuesday for takeout. This guide is the momoChef version: set your targets once, plan the week like you normally would, and read each day against its numbers — with the app doing every bit of the arithmetic.
momoChef's meal planner has an editable set of daily nutrition targets: calories, protein, carbs, and fat, plus a fiber minimum and limits for sugar, sodium, saturated fat, and cholesterol. You don't have to know your split to start — pick a preset and the editor derives the macros from your calorie target:
| Preset | The split (carbs / protein / fat) | Who it fits |
|---|---|---|
| Balanced | 50 / 25 / 25 | The default, and a fine place to stay if "eating better" is the whole goal |
| High Protein | 40% protein | Keeping protein front and center without giving carbs a curfew |
| Low Carb | 25 / 35 / 40 | Days built around dishes that don't lean on bread, rice, or pasta |
| Custom | Everything editable | You already know your numbers — set them and go |
Where do the right numbers come from? Not from this guide. If a professional gave you targets, enter theirs. If you're working it out for yourself, the planner starts at balanced defaults — 2,100 kcal, 80 g protein, 260 g carbs, 70 g fat — which is a starting point to adjust from, not a prescription. The fiber minimum and the sugar, sodium, saturated fat, and cholesterol limits come filled in too, and every one of them bends to the editor.
Nothing about the planning changes. Import the recipes you actually cook — from any recipe URL, a TikTok or Instagram post, a photo, or typed text — and each import parses into ingredients, steps, timings, and nutrition, so the numbers arrive with the recipe. Drop meals onto the days the way you always do, from your recipes, your made-and-loved favorites, or the planner's auto-fill, which can fill days from your recipes with your targets in the weighing. A plan built from the food you already like beats a plan built from a stranger's shopping list — compliance is a taste problem before it's a math problem.
This is the part the spreadsheet could never do well. Each planned day gets a 0–100 nutrition score, and behind it every nutrient is judged against your numbers with a small dose of realism:
| Row | Judged as met when | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Calories, protein, carbs, fat | 85–110% of the target | A band, not a bullseye — 96% is a win, not a near-miss |
| Fiber | ≥ 85% of the minimum | It's a floor; more is never a miss |
| Sugar, sodium, saturated fat, cholesterol | Strictly under the limit | Under is under; there is no "close enough" upward |
| Everything | Partial credit between | Outside a band the credit slopes to zero, and the day's score is the average across rows |
Two design details worth knowing. The score grades the meals you actually planned, not an imaginary complete day — plan only dinners for a week and the dinners get judged as dinners, with each row scaled to its share of the day. And a nutrient a recipe doesn't report is skipped, never counted as zero, so one old recipe without sodium data can't sink a day.
No week survives contact with reality. The skill isn't building a perfect plan — it's fixing the day that went sideways without replanning the week:
One pass at this on Sunday and you know Wednesday needs a sturdier dinner — while the plan is still a plan, not a Wednesday-night surprise.
The week's shopping list builds from the plan, and it merges duplicate ingredients across recipes into single lines — the two ounces of tomato paste from Tuesday and the six from Saturday come home as one tube, not two. Between that and the list coming out sorted by supermarket aisle, the shopping side of a macro week runs itself.
Do I have to hit the numbers exactly? No. Targets count as met anywhere in an 85–110% band, fiber anywhere at or above 85%, limits count as met strictly under the line. The plan is meant to absorb real weeks.
What if a recipe has no nutrition information? The rows it would have fed are skipped for that day — never counted as zero. Imports parse nutrition whenever the source has it, so the gaps shrink as your library grows.
Can I change targets mid-week? Any time. The editor is right there in the planner, and every day re-reads against the new numbers immediately — the plan doesn't restart, the grading does.
I was given targets by a dietitian — does this work for that? That's exactly the shape it's built for: you bring the numbers from the person who knows your situation, and the planner treats them as the definition of a good day. momoChef does the accounting, not the medicine.
Does auto-fill decide my week for me? It fills days from your own recipes with your targets in the weighing — a first draft, not a verdict. You can reshuffle anything it picked; the score re-reads as you go.
Start small: open the planner, set the Balanced preset, plan three days of food you already like, and read one day's score. If a row is out of its band, swap one meal and watch it turn. momoChef is free to start and works in the web app or the iOS app.