Different calorie targets
The problem is arithmetic, and almost every meal planner refuses to do it. You need around 2,200 calories a day. Your partner is eating 1,500. You want to cook one dinner, sit down together, and not run two kitchens — so the plan has to portion the same dish two different ways.
The honest answer is a ratio. If a chicken traybake comes out at 620 calories a serving and dinner is 40% of the day, you want roughly 1.4 servings and they want roughly 0.9 — same tray, same twenty minutes, two different plates. Below is a full week built exactly that way, with both numbers on every meal and one shopping list that already accounts for the total.
No account, no card. Your first week is free.
AI can make mistakes. Not medical advice — check allergens yourself. Learn more
Generated by 7cal for two adults at different targets, then reviewed. Every meal shows what each person is served — the dish is the same, the portion is not.
Every ingredient from the plan above, combined and grouped by aisle. In the app it’s scaled to your household and you check items off as you shop.
Nearly every planner has one calorie setting, because it was built for one person. Feed it a couple and you get one number, and then somebody is eating the wrong amount every night. The workaround the industry actually recommends is telling you to set the generator to 3,700 calories and split the meals yourself — which is to say, do the division at the table.
That works, roughly, right up until a dish does not divide. Three sausages between two people at a 1.5:1 ratio is not a portion, it is a negotiation. The useful version of this tool has to know the difference between a curry, which pours to any amount, and a stuffed pepper, which does not.
Start from the day, not the meal. Each person’s daily target divides across breakfast, lunch and dinner, so dinner is a share of a bigger number rather than a target on its own — missing dinner by ten per cent and lunch by eight the other way is a completely normal day, and a plan that chases per-meal precision is lying about how eating works.
Then keep the multiplier sane. Anything under about half a serving stops being a portion and becomes a garnish; anything over about double is a different meal. When the ratio pushes past that, the answer is not a stranger number — it is the same plate plus something named: a cup of rice, two slices of bread, a spoon of yoghurt. That is what people already do, and it beats a fake-precise 2.4x.
And when the dish only comes in whole units, say so. Two portions of tacos are two portions of tacos; the honest line is "same amount each, and one of you is 270 calories short" rather than a decimal nobody can serve.
If you just want to see the split, there is a free calculator that does this one thing: enter both targets, pick a dinner, and it shows you both portions and the amount to cook. No account, nothing to install — it is the same solver the plans above are built on, running on the page.
The week is what happens when you point it at seven dinners at once: the meals get chosen with both targets in mind, every meal carries both portions, and the shopping list is scaled to what the two of you together will actually eat.
No — that is the entire point. You cook one dish and serve it in two amounts. 7cal works out how much of it each of you gets from your own calorie target, and tells you how much to cook in total so there is enough for both without leftovers you did not plan.
They do not have to. One person sets both targets when the plan is created, and after that nobody logs anything — the portion is simply what is on the plate. 7cal is a planner, not a tracker; there is no daily logging on either side.
It rounds to whole units and says so, rather than inventing a 1.4-taco portion. Where that leaves someone short, the plan names an extra — a side of rice, an extra slice of bread — instead of quietly getting the numbers wrong. Dishes that portion cleanly are favoured in the first place.
Yes. Each person has their own diet, allergies and disliked ingredients alongside their target, and every generated meal respects all of them. The plan looks for dinners that work for everyone at the table rather than cooking around one person.
The person in a deficit is eating less — that is what a deficit is — but the meals are chosen to be filling at their size: protein and vegetables first, so a smaller plate still finishes the meal. And because you are eating the same dinner, nobody is sitting there with diet food while the other has a proper dinner.
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Tailored to how you actually eat. Review it, swap what doesn’t fit, and shop with one clear list.