The core system: Log the primary ingredient by cooked weight, log cooking fat separately, and break every thali into its individual components. This covers 95% of Indian meals.

Step 1: Set Your Macro Targets First

You cannot track macros without knowing what you're tracking toward. Before logging a single meal, set your targets:

Calculate your TDEE — see our TDEE guide for Indians
Set protein: 1.6–2g per kg body weight (prioritize this)
Set fat: 25–30% of total calories
Fill remaining calories with carbs

Rozmac does all of this automatically when you set up your profile. If calculating manually, the Indian protein requirements guide has a ready-made calculator table by body weight.

Step 2: Master Cooked vs Raw Weights

This is the single most common mistake in Indian macro tracking. Dal, rice, and legumes absorb water during cooking and multiply in weight. If you log raw weight in a database that shows cooked values (or vice versa), your macros will be wildly wrong.

Food	Raw (100g)	Cooked weight	Protein per 100g cooked
Moong Dal	24g protein	~300g	8g protein
Toor Dal	22g protein	~280g	7g protein
Rajma	24g protein	~260g	9g protein
White Rice	7g protein	~300g	2.5g protein
Oats	17g protein	~250g	7g protein

Rule: Always log dal and rice by their cooked weight. When in doubt, choose the "cooked" entry in your tracking app.

Step 3: Log Homemade Food the Right Way

Most Indian cooking is homemade with no labels. The approach that works:

For dal (any type)

Log the dal type by cooked weight: "moong dal, cooked, 200g"
Log the tadka oil separately: "mustard oil, 1 tsp" (or divide pot oil by servings)
Ignore spice calories — cumin, turmeric, coriander add <5 calories per serving

For sabzi (vegetable dishes)

Log the main vegetable: "cauliflower, cooked, 150g"
Log oil used in cooking — typically 1–2 tsp per person per sabzi
If paneer is added: log paneer separately by weight

For roti / chapati

1 medium roti = 30g whole wheat atta. Log as "roti, 1 medium" or "whole wheat flour, 30g"
Log ghee separately: 1 tsp per roti = 45 calories, 5g fat
For paratha: the atta is 50–60g plus 1–2 tsp oil used in cooking

For rice

Use a cup measurement — 1 cup cooked rice ≈ 180g ≈ 240 calories
Log as "white rice, cooked, 180g"
For jeera rice or ghee rice: add 1 tsp ghee/oil per serving

Step 4: Solve the Thali Problem

A traditional Indian thali is the hardest meal to track — 8–12 items, all homemade, on one plate. The solution is simple: never log it as a single item. Log every component individually.

Example: Logging a standard home lunch thali (takes 90 seconds)

Roti, 2 medium160 kcal6g P / 30g C / 2g F
Toor dal, cooked, 200g140 kcal14g P / 20g C / 2g F
Aloo gobi sabzi, 150g110 kcal3g P / 14g C / 5g F
White rice, cooked, 90g120 kcal2.5g P / 26g C / 0g F
Dahi, 100g60 kcal4g P / 5g C / 2.5g F
Ghee (on roti), 2 tsp90 kcal0g P / 0g C / 10g F
Mustard oil (dal tadka), 1 tsp45 kcal0g P / 0g C / 5g F
Total725 kcal29.5g protein

Step 5: Track Restaurant & Delivery Meals

Restaurant and Zomato/Swiggy portions are consistently larger than home-cooked portions, and use more oil. Here's how to estimate:

Meal	Home estimate	Restaurant estimate
Dal tadka (1 portion)	150 kcal	220–280 kcal
Butter chicken (1 portion)	300 kcal	380–450 kcal
Paneer butter masala	280 kcal	380–500 kcal
Biryani (1 plate)	500 kcal	600–750 kcal
Naan (1 piece)	250 kcal	280–350 kcal
Rajma (1 portion)	200 kcal	260–320 kcal

When eating out, use the higher end of the restaurant estimate. It's better to slightly overestimate calories than underestimate. For a social dinner where you can't track precisely, log your best estimate and move on — one imprecise day won't derail your progress.

Step 6: Review Weekly and Adjust

After 2 weeks of consistent tracking, look at your weekly averages (not daily numbers — daily variation is normal):

Protein consistently low? Identify your lowest-protein meal and add one source: a cup of dal, 50g paneer, or 30g soya chunks
Calories too high? Check your oil and ghee logging — it's usually the culprit. Reduce by 1–2 tsp per day
Carbs too high? Reduce rice or roti by one serving and replace with a vegetable
Not losing weight? Reduce daily calories by 100–150 kcal and track for another 2 weeks before adjusting again

Quick Reference: Indian Portion Estimates

Food	Visual Estimate	Weight	Calories
Roti (medium)	Size of your palm	30g	80 kcal
Rice (1 cup)	Size of your fist	180g cooked	240 kcal
Dal (1 cup)	Standard katori	200ml	130–160 kcal
Paneer (small block)	2 matchboxes stacked	100g	265 kcal
Ghee (1 tsp)	Thumb tip	5g	45 kcal
Oil (1 tsp)	Thumb tip	5ml	45 kcal
Dahi (1 cup)	Standard katori	200g	120 kcal
Sabzi (1 cup)	Standard katori	150g	80–130 kcal

Key Takeaways

Set your TDEE and macro targets before you start tracking anything
Always log dal and rice by cooked weight — raw weight overcounts protein by 3x
Log cooking oil and ghee separately — it's the most under-reported macro in Indian meals
For thalis: log each item individually, not the whole thali as one entry
Restaurant meals are 1.3–1.5× the calories of the same home-cooked dish
Track for 2 weeks before adjusting targets — daily fluctuations are normal

Make Indian Macro Tracking Easy with Rozmac

Rozmac is the only macro tracker built specifically for Indian food — with a comprehensive database of dal, roti, paneer, regional dishes, and restaurant meals. Log your thali in 10 seconds, not 10 minutes.

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