FAQ

Your macronutrient targets are calculated after first determining your calorie requirements, which means if you hit your macros you’ll automatically hit your calories.

The reverse however, isn't always true. If you're looking to take close control over your body composition, then you'll do far better by tracking your macros, so that you can be sure you're getting enough of each specific macronutrient. If your body composition isn't overly important or you don't have the time or energy to track your macros, tracking your calories will give you the best opportunity to ensure you're eating enough to manipulate your body weight in line with your goals, without necessarily giving you the opportunity to build muscle or lose fat as effectively as possible.

Something to keep in mind...

Due to rounding on food labels, the macros and calories when tracking food on your app may not always line up. To eliminate confusion, if you're interested in manipulating your body composition (building muscle and losing fat etc) focus solely on your macros and hitting your calories will take care of itself.

One final thing to note, is that there are lots of user-generated entires in food-tracking applications like MyFitnessPal, which means some of them might be incorrect, or have macronutrient information that doesn't correspond with the calorie count.