Methodology
How your numbers are worked out
No number in your plan is guessed by a chatbot. Targets come from published formulas, food values from a food table, and every plan is checked against fixed rules before you see it. Here is exactly what those are.
Calories
Resting energy: Mifflin-St Jeor
Men: 10 × weight (kg) + 6.25 × height (cm) − 5 × age + 5
Women: 10 × weight (kg) + 6.25 × height (cm) − 5 × age − 161
Daily energy: activity multipliers
| Activity | Multiplier |
|---|---|
| Sedentary | 1.2 |
| Lightly active | 1.375 |
| Moderately active | 1.55 |
| Very active | 1.725 |
| Extremely active | 1.9 |
Your goal
- Losing weight or fat: a deficit set by your pace, never more than 25% of your daily energy (15% if you've told us about a health condition).
- Building muscle or gaining weight: a surplus of about 400 kcal.
- Maintaining, or losing fat while building muscle: your maintenance calories.
- A floor that always applies: 1,200 kcal a day for women and 1,500 kcal for men, whatever the arithmetic says.
Pace and timeline
Paces lose roughly 0.35%, 0.6% or 0.9% of body weight a week, using about 7,000 kcal per kilogram. The faster pace is offered only from a BMI of 27 and with no health condition disclosed. A first goal is never more than 10% of your body weight, and the target never goes below a BMI of 20.
Learning your real maintenance
Formulas are population averages. After at least two weeks of weigh-ins with reasonable consistency, your plan compares what you were eating with how your weekly average weight moved, and uses that to judge progress — kept within 20% of the formula.
Macros
- Protein: 1.6 g per kg of body weight (Morton et al., 2018, British Journal of Sports Medicine), at least 15% of calories, and never above 2.2 g/kg. Keto and low-carb plans use 1.9 g/kg.
- Fat: 28% of calories on a standard plan.
- Carbohydrate: the remainder. Keto uses about 8% of calories and low-carb 20%.
- Training days: carbohydrate rises by 15% on training days and falls on rest days, paid for in fat, so calories and protein stay the same every day. Fat never goes below 0.5 g/kg.
- Fibre: at least 25 g a day (EFSA), or 14 g per 1,000 kcal (US Dietary Guidelines) if that is higher.
- Sodium: plans aim for under 2,000 mg a day (WHO), or 1,500 mg with a relevant health condition, by swapping saltier sides for similar ones.
Food values
- Plain ingredients — rice, eggs, chicken breast, fruit, oils — use USDA FoodData Central values.
- A growing number of dishes are calculated from a weighed ingredient list, including the oil and salt.
- Other dishes are estimates, labelled as such. Real values change with the recipe, the brand and the portion.
- Allergens are listed per food following typical recipes, conservatively. We can't see packaging or cross-contamination, so always read labels.
Which foods go in a plan
Each food is rated with an adapted Nutri-Score (the European front-of-pack system): points for energy, sugar, saturated fat and sodium, credit for fibre, protein and fruit, vegetables, legumes and nuts. Deep-fried food, processed meat, sweets and sugary drinks are treated as treats. Treats aren't served in regular meals — they belong in your weekly flex meal.
Checks before a plan is saved
- Every day within 10% of its calorie and macro targets.
- No declared allergen in any meal or alternative, and nothing that breaks your diet.
- Every workout fits your session length, uses only equipment you have, stays under a weekly volume ceiling for your level, and doesn't train the same major muscle hard two days running.
A plan that fails a check isn't shown to you.
Training
Splits
Chosen from how many days you train and your experience. Beginners train each muscle often, with full-body and upper/lower sessions; body-part splits are only offered at five or six days with some training history. Splits rotate in blocks of three to four weeks.
Sets, reps and rest
| Goal | Main lifts | Rest |
|---|---|---|
| Fat loss, fitness, maintenance | 3 × 8–15 (4 sets advanced) | 2½–3 min |
| Building muscle | 3 × 8–15 beginner, 6–15 intermediate | 2½–3 min |
| Strength | 3 × 5–8 beginner, 4 × 3–6 intermediate | 3–4 min |
| Endurance | 2–3 × 15–20 | 1 min |
Weekly working sets per muscle: 8–12 for beginners, 12–18 intermediate, 15–22 advanced. Sessions are trimmed to fit your time — shorter rest first, then fewer accessories — and the main lifts are kept.
Progression: double progression
Keep the weight until every working set reaches the top of its rep range, then add weight — about 1 kg on light lifts, 2.5 kg on most, 5 kg on the heaviest — and start again at the bottom of the range. Bodyweight exercises progress on reps. Training never gets harder just because a week has passed.
Lighter weeks
The last week of a block has one set fewer. A lighter week also comes early if at least two lifts, and at least 40% of the lifts you log, go backwards across consecutive sessions.
What we haven't done yet
These rules follow published guidance and common coaching practice, but they have not been reviewed by a registered dietitian or a certified coach. We're saying so plainly. If you think something here is wrong, tell us.