Each anniversary, we publish the MacroFactor Annual Report. Here are our prior reports: 2022, 2023, and 2024. 

The purpose of the Annual Report is to document the changes and improvements we’ve made in the app and as a business in the last year, as well as to give you a peek behind the curtain at our plans for the future. 

As with our public roadmap, MacroFactor Monthly newsletter, and groups on Facebook and Reddit, the MacroFactor Annual Report is designed with our values of transparency and community in mind. 

We are so grateful for the support of MacroFactor users, and are excited to review and reflect on Year 4 with you. 

So let’s get into it! 

Looking Back: A Brief Review of the Year 

This past year, our focus has been on providing smarter, more personal tech that puts you in the driver’s seat of your fitness journey. We’ve implemented more powerful customization tools, science-based updates to our core algorithms, and intelligent food-logging features that save you time. With our rebrand, which went live earlier this week, we’ve also updated key aspects of our design and branding to create a more cohesive and modern ecosystem.

The result is an app that works for you in ways that are more intuitive, more intelligent, and more integrated than ever before.

Building a platform that moves with you

We started by giving you the power to create a more personal experience from scratch. With the customizable dashboard, you can build a MacroFactor dashboard tailored to your unique goals and data priorities.

We also streamlined the MacroFactor experience on other devices, delivering updated Android widgets with stronger shortcuts and more informative layouts.

Most recently, we built a powerful MacroFactor experience for Apple Watch, bringing fast food logging, at‑a‑glance nutrition, and weight tracking to the place you check most often, so you can stay consistent without even opening your phone.

Leveraging data for a smarter you

Our commitment to personalization goes deeper than the user interface, though. We are continuously monitoring relevant research topics and working on algorithm improvements to provide smarter, more personalized recommendations.

This year, we delivered significant expenditure algorithm updates that made our system more responsive to your body’s unique signals and more resilient to missing data.

We also updated our bulking recommendations. After a thorough review of the research, we deemed that there’s now sufficient evidence to conclude that beginner and intermediate lifters can achieve faster rates of muscle growth, while still minimizing fat gain.

Intelligent features to save you time

This year, our focus on building smarter, more personal tech also led us to our first application of artificial intelligence within the app. We developed AI-powered photo logging as a tool that makes food tracking more accessible and streamlined than ever before. Unlike other solutions, our AI prioritizes real, lab-analyzed food data, provides full transparency into the ingredients, and gives you full control to edit and modify the results.

This intelligence extends to our recipe importer, a feature that automatically populates all the details of your favorite web recipes, including ingredients and preparation steps. Paired with our Favorite Foods feature, which saves your staples with exact serving sizes, we’ve created a system of smart tools for food logging in every situation. Whether it’s a home-cooked meal, a new recipe from a blog, or a favorite snack on the go, our app is built to work for you.

In the rest of this “Looking Back” section of the Annual Report, we’ll go into more detail on each of these big updates (and more). We’ve organized it by season (Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer). Please note that this isn’t a full accounting of every single update and feature we’ve shipped; if you want more details, browse the MacroFactor Monthly archive or the Release Notes. 

Fall

In Fall 2024, we delivered powerful customizable tools for making the MacroFactor dashboard your own, an updated and improved version of our expenditure algorithm, and updates to our bulking recommendations in the app. We also published 10 new in-depth articles and 2 new case studies.

Customizable dashboard

Released in November, MacroFactor’s customizable dashboard release introduced powerful customization tools, steps tracking, body metrics comparison, and more.

The customizable dashboard lets you prioritize, arrange, and explore insights that matter most to you!

Learn more:

• Knowledge Base: How to Customize Your Dashboard
• Announcement Article: Welcome Home, Data: Dashboard Customization Comes to MacroFactor

Expenditure algorithm updates based on new breakthroughs

The expenditure algorithm is at the heart of the MacroFactor coaching system. It’s what allows the app to adjust your weekly Calorie and macronutrient targets to keep you on track toward your goals.

We are always working to improve our algorithms and recommendations, and version 3 of our expenditure algorithm delivered several improvements for even more accurate and stable calculations.

For example, Expenditure V3 is more responsive to meaningful changes in your expenditure, while also being more stable when faced with transient fluctuations in weight.

In addition, Expenditure V3 is more resilient to missing data, requiring only 3 days of consistent tracking to unpause after a period of inactivity. It performs better, even when it has less data.

Nearly one year after Expenditure V3 was released, we’re excited to say that we’ll have even more improvements to share with you soon.

Learn more:

• Announcement Article: An In-Depth Look at MacroFactor’s New V3 Expenditure Algorithm
• Knowledge Base: Expenditure, How Does MacroFactor Make Adjustments For a Weight Gain or Weight Loss Goal?

Bulking recommendation updates based on the latest science

In addition to the expenditure algorithm update, we also updated our bulking recommendations in the app in accordance with our recent review of literature on muscle gain. 

These recommended rates of weight gain (specifically for beginner and intermediate lifters) are considerably faster than our prior recommendations. The main reason for this change is that the amount of research on bulking has increased by 150% since we were initially formulating our recommendations.

We continuously monitor the research to ensure that our recommendations reflect the best available evidence, and we deemed that there was sufficient evidence to conclude that beginner and intermediate lifters can achieve faster rates of muscle growth, while still minimizing fat gain, with rates of weight gain that are a fair bit faster than our prior recommendations.

Learn more:

• Article: How Fast Should You Gain Weight When Bulking?

Articles, Case Studies, and Resources

Exploring Bulking and Cutting Series

To coincide with our team’s review of recent research on bulking rates, we published a series of articles on optimal rates for losing fat and gaining muscle.

These articles also contained new resources.

Should I Bulk or Cut? includes a short quiz you can take to help you decide.

How Fast Should You Gain Weight When Bulking? includes a helpful calculator for deciding the rate of weight gain that works for you and your body.

How Fast Should You Lose Weight When Cutting? also includes a handy calculator for deciding the rate of weight loss that will help you reach your goal without sacrificing muscle mass.

Should I Bulk or Cut?

Plus, a “Bulk or Cut” quiz to help you decide!

Read the article

How Fast Should You Gain Weight When Bulking?

This article and bulking calculator will help guide your decision making.

Read the article

How Fast Should You Lose Weight When Cutting?

This article and cutting calculator will help guide your decision making.

Read the article

Nutrition Fundamentals Series

We also published several new articles in our Nutrition Fundamentals series.

These articles cover a range of topics, from daily intake guidelines for macronutrients to food sources and their potential impact on health. This series is great for those new to nutrition and enthusiasts seeking the latest guidelines.

Is There a Max Amount of Protein Intake Per Meal? Per Day?

This article examines the debate around protein limits and whether higher amounts are wasteful, beneficial, or harmful.

Read the article

Are Low-Carb and Keto Diets Good for Fat Loss?

There’s no question that low carbohydrate and keto diets are popular choices, but are they good for fat loss?

Read the article

Does Fiber Have Calories?

What are short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) and what do they have to do with fiber?

Read the article

Do I Need to Worry About Carbohydrate Timing?

This article examines the impact of carbohydrate timing on various training styles, sleep, and performance.

Read the article

Supplement Series

Ever wonder which supplements are actually worth your time and money?

Our team did a full review of the research and reported which supplements are good for performance, body composition, and health.

What Supplements Are Good for Performance?

In part 1, we examine performance and what we know about the supplements that have the most supportive evidence.

Read the article

Good Supplements for Body Composition

In part 2, we look at body composition and investigate which supplements are worth adding to your routine.

Read the article

What are Good Supplements for Health?

We take a look at health supplements and examine which ones might be worth considering.

Read the article

Article: Should I Track My Food on Vacation?

One of the most common questions we see from MacroFactor users is: Should I track my food on vacation?

Our team put together an article with guidance on how decide your vacation strategy, and tips and ideas for stress-free tracking if you decide that you want to take MacroFactor on vacation with you.

Should I Track My Food on Vacation?

Most people like to relax during their vacations, but some find not tracking more stressful. This article dives into some tips and ideas if you’ve decided to track.

Read the article

Case Study: How Sergio Used MacroFactor to Lose 92lb and Find Sustainable Success

Sergio dropped 92lb by using MacroFactor to fine-tune his food tracking. He has transformed his life and health over the past two years, balancing weight loss while maintaining — and even gaining — muscle mass. 

“I was obese my whole life,” he said. “Losing weight was just one (big) part of my journey, but so was muscle growth and tracking other health aspects. Obviously, I could say my biggest win was losing 150lb (and I am very proud of that), but I think the bigger win is how MacroFactor helped me permanently turn my life around for the better.”

Check out his case study to see how he stayed motivated throughout the process and his plans for maintaining his results.

Case Study: How Pascal Lost 52lb and Found Peace of Mind

Pascal, a 31-year-old GIS advisor and specialist from the Netherlands, used MacroFactor to find new motivation, lose weight, and trust the process. 

“Peace of mind. Words cannot express how important this is in life in general,” Pascal said. “One of the most challenging and time-consuming parts of working out is figuring out how much to eat and tracking your weight gain or loss based on your intake. The stress of losing weight too slowly, plateauing, or gaining weight too quickly is no longer an issue for me because I can just look at MacroFactor and trust that it will adjust if needed.”

Check out his case study to learn more about Pascal’s success and how he mastered his logging flow with MacroFactor.

Winter

In Winter 2024-2025, we overhauled the available MacroFactor widgets for Android users and redesigned the “More” page in the app to make it more organized and easier to navigate.

Updated Android widgets

MacroFactor users on Android asked for more space-efficient and informative widgets with stronger shortcut integrations, and we delivered on those requests in early December.

Whether you’re an iPhone or Android user, you can create dense layouts of nutrient information, showcase macro- and micronutrient targets and intake, configure shortcuts, and more.

Learn more:

• Release Notes: Version 4.1.0

“More” page redesign

We also updated the “More” tab in the app, making this important page more organized and easier to navigate.

The More tab contains important settings for your account and integrations, as well as settings for customizations you can make to personalize your MacroFactor experience. For example, you can customize what shows on your Dashboard, edit the look and feel of your Food Log, change your Check-In Day, and more. 

If you ever have a question or need help using the app, you can also find all of our support options – the MF AI chatbot, our in-house support staff, and more – from the More tab.

Articles, Case Studies, and Resources

Article: Should You Take a Multivitamin?

Multivitamins are a source of much debate.

Some believe a basic multivitamin is the bare minimum needed to optimize health, while others argue it offers no real benefits and could even cause harm. With numerous studies and analyses on the topic, is there a middle ground?

Should You Take a Multivitamin?

This article examines multivitamin research and whether you should take them or skip them altogether.

Read the article

Nutrition Fundamentals Series

In January and February, people often work on establishing new healthy nutrition habits, such as counting their macros and meal prepping.

Our content team released two articles that go over both of those topics in depth. The tips in these articles are helpful any time of the year!

Counting Macros: How to Log Your Food and Track Your Calories

In this beginner’s guide, you’ll learn tips and techniques for tracking your food and counting calories and macros.

Read the article

Meal Prep Tips for Various Budgets and Time

This article covers meal prep tips, including food safety, budgeting strategies, and approaches for organizing by macronutrient.

Read the article

Articles: Protein Timing and Distribution

Once you know how much protein to eat to support your goals, you may find yourself wondering if it matters when you get your protein and if spreading out your protein intake throughout the day would give better results.

These are extremely common questions in both research and fitness communities, so our content team dove in and delivered two great articles on the topic.

Do We Need to Worry About Protein Timing? 

This article discusses whether you need to worry about anabolic windows or if it’s as simple as getting your overall protein.

Read the article

Do We Need to Worry About Protein Distribution? 

This article explores whether the timing and distribution of protein throughout the day make a difference or if total daily protein intake is the only factor that matters.

Read the article

Article: Tips For Sticking With Your Transformation Journey

The path to any significant transformation is rarely as smooth as we’d like. It’s not unusual to feel overwhelmed.

In this article, we’ll cover practical tips to help you stick with your goals, navigate the rough patches, and maybe find ways to enjoy the process.

Tips For Sticking With Your Transformation Journey

Transformation journeys are often hardest when the initial excitement fades and motivation dips. This article gives you tools to keep going.

Read the article

Case Study: How Julie Broke Records And Found Success With MacroFactor

Julie, a 55-year-old physical therapist and professor from Montana, used MacroFactor to unlock her strength and dive into the world of powerlifting after years of facing challenges with activity and nutrition.

“My biggest win since starting MacroFactor has been the ability to change my relationship with food,” Julie said. “Instead of seeing foods as ‘good’ or ‘bad’, or feeling like I had to completely eliminate types of foods or food groups, I felt like I had more conscious control over my decisions by reviewing all of the tracking data in the MF app.”

Check out her case study to learn more about Julie’s success and how she broke records with MacroFactor.

Case Study: How Mike Lost 75 Pounds (and Ditched the Headaches) with MacroFactor

Mike, a 37-year-old IT sales professional with a love for tater-tot hotdish and pizza, used MacroFactor to transform his health and lifestyle. 

Starting at 268 pounds on March 1, Mike set an initial goal of getting under 200 pounds. When things went smoothly, he adjusted his goal to go even further.

“After losing 2–3, and sometimes more, pounds per week, I set a second goal of 185 in my head a few months in,” Mike said. “I liked the simplicity of letting MacroFactor do the hard work. It tracks your real energy expenditure and adjusts your goals automatically. That was a game-changer for me.” 

Check out the full case study here.

Spring

In Spring 2025, we released AI-powered photo logging – an extremely popular feature, designed to be smarter and more transparent than versions you’ll find in any other app. We also launched a Favorites feature, which allows users to “Favorite” foods for easier access during food logging. In addition to new features, we announced the winners of our first-ever MacroFactor transformation challenge, and shared several great new articles and case studies.

AI-powered photo logging

Released in April 2025, MacroFactor’s AI-powered food logging feature allows you to log your foods simply by snapping a photo.

With the excitement surrounding AI, hundreds of apps have flooded the market with LLM-based food loggers. These apps almost universally lack the depth and functionality necessary to be complete solutions for the dedicated user.

MacroFactor offers a more serious alternative with intentional application of AI. The result is a feature that saves veteran users time by automating the bulk search process for complex dishes and removes barriers to entry for those who are new to food logging. 

How MacroFactor AI differs from other AI food logging apps

• High quality results. MacroFactor AI does not rely on LLMs to generate all food entries. Instead, we prioritize real, lab-analyzed results with complete nutrition data. MacroFactor AI will only generate a food entry when it is necessary or otherwise optimal, and its generation will be grounded in real life foods.
• Result transparency. MacroFactor AI will break down your meal into individual ingredients instead of giving you a single opaque result. Because we build each result from individual food entries, our output is fully inspectable.
• Integrated control: The plate is a unified interface for interacting with the AI result and human-added foods. AI is not perfect and can make mistakes, and we give users the control to edit and modify its results.
• Streamlined experience: MacroFactor AI will do its best to group foods logically, using recipes and single foods, so it is easy for you to reason about your nutrition. Our AI interface has no fluff, no performative chat interface – just streamlined results. 

Learn more:

• Announcement Article: AI-Powered Food Logging Comes to MacroFactor
• Knowledge Base: AI Food Logging

Favorite foods

MacroFactor’s Favorites feature is a convenient way to save and organize your staples, complete with your preferred serving sizes. 

To favorite any food, simply find it using search and tap the heart icon on its Food Detail page. The next time you need to log that item, it will be ready to go in your Favorites Bar—with the exact serving size you chose alongside it. No more fiddling with portion sizes each time. Your favorite foods remember how you like them.

Heart Your Favorites: Find your favorite food in Search, and then tap the ❤️ icon on the Food Detail page to favorite it. Your chosen serving size is saved with it.

Multiple Presets: Need different sizes? No problem. Favorite the same food multiple times with different quantities (e.g., 16oz latte in the AM, 12oz in the PM).

Quick Access: Your Favorites will appear in a bar above your smart Go-To Picks and Latest foods in Search.

Reorder with Ease: Customize your Favorites Bar by heading to Library → Favorites and using the Reorder icon.

Learn more:

• Announcement Article: Favorite Foods: Your Staples Within Reach
• Knowledge Base: Favorite Foods

More in-app enhancements

The Favorite Foods update also came with several other design and interface enhancements.

Comfort Food Tiles: There’s a “Comfort” tile option for the food tiles in your log, featuring larger fonts, more spacious design, and a three-line layout for easier reading.

Plate Banner: The plate banner automatically adapts to your screen size to fit the most important information—no more manual tweaking needed.

Expandable Recipes: You can expand recipes in your plate without exploding them. As you adjust ingredients in the recipe, the recipe’s calories and macros will change as well. On the flip side, as you adjust the quantity of the recipe, the quantity of the ingredients will also adjust to match. 

Winners of the MacroFactor Transformation Challenge

For 100 days between January and April, more than 20,000 people competed in the first-ever MacroFactor Transformation Challenge. 

In April, we announced the winners of the challenge: One grand prize winner of $50,000 and 100 more winners of $500 each. 

This challenge was about more than just physical transformation – though there were definitely some jaw-dropping before-and-after photos. It was also about using MacroFactor as a tool to transform unseen areas of your health and life. Our winners represent a great combination of the two. 

Thank you to everyone who participated in the challenge. It was an honor and privilege to have been a part of these transformation journeys. 

Grand-prize winner: Kendell Graham

Kendell Graham is a 25-year-old software engineer living in California. He’s the type of guy that helps his girlfriend throw birthday parties for their dogs, is a solid gamer, and is working to progress in his new hobby of bouldering. He was also the winner of our first-ever 100-day transformation challenge.

With MacroFactor and the 100-day challenge, Kendell lost over 40 pounds, hit new PRs, and found a system he can stick with for good.

Make sure to check out our Case Study article about Kendell for all the details on his transformation. We think you’ll be just as inspired by his story as we are. 

100 more winners

You can see the Before and After photos of all of the MacroFactor Transformation Challenge winners here.

Articles, Case Studies, and Resources

Whether you’re looking for advice on how to more effectively reach your body composition goals or you want to learn more about nutrition, our Summer 2025 articles have you covered.

Article: Tips for Hitting Body Comp Goals When You Have a Bad Schedule

It can be frustrating when you’re working hard toward body composition goals and come up against an unforgiving schedule. In this article, we will dive into practical tips for progressing with your body composition goals, even when your schedule isn’t on your side.

Tips for Hitting Body Comp Goals When You Have a Bad Schedule

Sometimes, we want to tackle our goals and dreams, even when everything isn’t quite lining up.

Read the article

Article: What Are Set Points (and Are They Holding You Back)?

“Set point theory” suggests that each person’s body tends to settle within a preferred range of body weight (even more specifically, body fat). While there’s a kernel of truth here, discussions around set points sometimes make it sound like we’re completely at the mercy of our biology, but that’s not quite right either.

In this article, we will break down what set point theories actually say, and how you might be able to work with (or around) them to support your goals.

What Are Set Points (and Are They Holding You Back)?

This article explains the concept and ideas surrounding set point theory and how it can affect your body composition goals.

Read the article

Article: Tips for Exercising When in a Calorie Deficit

While Calorie deficits are made easier with the aid of exercise, they can also take a toll on your body. So while this article can help you “accelerate fat loss” it can also help you protect yourself and set you up for long-term success.

In this article, we cover strategies to sustain fat loss while also protecting muscle and overall health, so you can balance performance, recovery, and your fat loss goals effectively.

Tips for Exercising When in a Calorie Deficit

Whether you’re just starting out or already training hard, this advice will help you get the best out of your efforts (and not sabotage your fat loss journey).

Read the article

Article: Can We Spot Reduce Body Fat?

Spot reduction is usually written off as a myth in health and fitness circles, but there is still no shortage of products claiming to help you with spot reduction and to “melt fat away.”

Is there a middle ground between myths and truth? Dig in to this article to learn more!

Can We Spot Reduce Body Fat?

Is spot reduction of body fat possible, or is it a well-disproven myth? We dive into the nuances that make this topic more interesting than most people think.

Read the article

Article: How Sugar Substitutes Can Help With Weight Loss

Whether it is health warnings by the WHO or Saccharin bans, sugar substitutes are polarizing, and it’s understandable why sugar substitutes face so much scrutiny. However, as overall food consumption has increased, so has a need to satisfy our desire for sweetness without calories — hence the increasing use of sugar substitutes.

In this article, we cover whether using sugar substitutes for weight loss is helpful and what to look out for when utilizing them as part of weight management. 

How Sugar Substitutes Can Help With Weight Loss

This article examines the research on whether sugar substitutes can be an effective tool for managing Calories.

Read the article

Article: Understanding Nutrition Data: Why It’s Not Perfect, But Still Useful

Questions about nutrition accuracy, food labels, and how to actually estimate food energy come up a lot for people trying to track and log their intake. While precise Calorie counts might seem ideal, the real question is: How much does this actually impact results?

In this article, we will explain how to determine nutrition data, the variables that affect its accuracy, and why most of the time, the biggest thing to worry about is your consistency. 

Understanding Nutrition Data: Why It’s Not Perfect, But Still Useful

People often worry that inaccurate nutrition labels make Calorie tracking pointless — but do these errors matter as much as you think?

Read the article

Article: Should We Supplement With Collagen?

About 10 years ago, the collagen supplement market started to boom, and now you can get everything from collagen coffee to super dose collagen bone broth. The marketing certainly works, and we all know that we have collagen in our bodies, but does eating collagen translate into building collagen? Building muscle? Repairing our skin?

This article goes into these questions and gives you a better idea of whether you should consider collagen in your supplement routine. 

Should We Supplement With Collagen?

Is collagen supplementation all hype or is there something to it? This article explores the nuances, current research, and practical advice.

Read the article

Article: Fiber: Types, Benefits, and the Importance of Variety

Fiber gets talked about a lot in health and nutrition, and most people agree it’s “good.” But beyond that, the details are fuzzy. There’s still confusion about what fiber actually is, the different types, and how each one works in the body.

In this article, we cover the types of fiber, how they interact in your body, and how to consider fiber intake based on your goals.

Fiber: Types, Benefits, and the Importance of Variety

Fiber is a bit more complicated than it might seem. We break down the different types, like soluble and insoluble fiber, and cover what they actually do for your body.

Read the article

Case Study: How Dave Dropped Fat and Learned To Stop Waiting

Dave is a 36-year-old who has been lifting on and off since he was 16, always hoping that consistent gym work could make up for a more sporadic approach to nutrition. Over time, though, he realized that without a system to manage both sides of the equation, he’d always be fighting for what he felt was mediocre progress. 

“Reaching my first goal felt surreal,” Dave said. “It happened so slowly, so gradually, that I didn’t even notice the difference in the mirror myself. It wasn’t until I saw pictures of myself that I realized how far I’d come.” 

Check out the full case study to learn more about how Dave reached his goals with MacroFactor.

Case Study: From Guessing to Knowing: How Paris Found a System That Worked

After dedicating time to mastering different styles of lifting, Paris decided he would stop guessing and finally conquer his nutrition. With MacroFactor as his guide, he found a system that made it easy to simply focus on the results. 

“I used to constantly stress about feeling too skinny or not looking lean enough,” Paris said. “But staying consistent with MacroFactor has helped me build a body I’m proud of — and it’s made a huge difference in my career as both a trainer and a content creator.”

Check out the full case study to learn more about Paris’s system that made it easy to simply focus on the results. 

Summer

In Summer 2025, we released our recipe importer feature, which allows you to create a recipe in the app from a web link, and we rolled out MacroFactor on Apple Watch!

MacroFactor on Apple Watch

In early September, MacroFactor’s powerful tools for smart food logging became available on Apple Watch.

On the watch, MacroFactor surfaces the essentials at a glance: calories, macros, and key micronutrients. A scrollable timeline lets you review what you ate throughout the day, so you can efficiently add foods to their proper place and gain insight into your day. 

Designed for approachability and precision, MacroFactor pairs a clean, glanceable interface with deep nutritional details when you want them. Voice logging, haptics, and complications – all from your wrist!

Here’s a brief overview of the features available from your Apple Watch:

• An interactive timeline of your food intake
• Ability to log foods with your voice
• Quick access to log your go-to foods, favorites, custom foods and recipes, and recently logged items
• Access to your Nutrition Overview analytics: You can see macros, vitamins, minerals, and more, and swap between Current and Remaining analytics
• Super fast and easy weight tracking
• Use gauges or progress rings for nutrients like carbs, protein, and fiber to keep them top of mind

Learn more:

• Announcement Article: MacroFactor is coming to Apple Watch

Recipe importer

The recipe importer feature in MacroFactor allows you to import recipe details and macros from web links!

Import a recipe from a link to automatically populate its name, serving size, ingredients, preparation steps, and more.

MacroFactor supports popular machine readable recipe formats that many recipe websites use. If a website does not use a standard format, MacroFactor AI will do a best effort to parse out the recipe, so you can import from more places. 

In addition, the design of the recipe wizard was updated with a brand new look and the following features:

• You can re-order the foods within a recipe.
• You can customize recipe icons.
• You can add URLs to recipes to remember where you found them.
• You can toggle between Recipe and Serving when viewing the macro and micronutrient nutrition summary.
• You can re-order steps and manage them more easily.

Learn more:

• Knowledge Base: Import Recipes
• Release Notes: Version 5.2.2 Release Notes

Articles, Case Studies, and Resources

Article: How to Maintain Weight Loss

When people hit their weight loss goals, it’s easy to assume the hardest part is behind them. However, maintaining that progress is a skill with its own set of challenges. In fact, sometimes, people are more prepared for the initial grind of weight loss than for the long-term effort required for maintenance.

This article aims to provide a collection of skills to manage maintenance more effectively while hopefully making it feel sustainable.

How to Maintain Weight Loss

Have you found yourself struggling more with maintaining your weight than losing it in the first place? You’re not alone, and this article shares a few tips to help make it easier.

Read the article

Article: The Connections Between Sleep, Weight, and Exercise

Sleep plays a key role in both body composition and performance, but its importance is often slept on, despite it being a free and available aid.

In this article, we cover how sleep affects hunger and performance, and how training and nutrition, in turn, affect sleep. If you’re trying to optimize this part of your life, take a moment for this one. You might pick up a helpful tip or two.

The Connections Between Sleep, Weight, and Exercise

This article examines the role of sleep not only in how it affects your weight loss or performance, but also in how your nutrition and training behaviors can affect sleep.

Read the article

Article: How Menopause Impacts Body Composition, Strength, and Performance

Menopause is a topic that brings strong reactions and confusion, and the information online can leave people feeling more overwhelmed or worried than informed. Additionally, menopause is not a single event that occurs over a short period; it unfolds gradually over many years, so this can make it hard to separate the effects of menopause from those of aging.

In this article, we’ll look at what to expect with aging in general, how menopause can add its own effects, and what this all means regarding body composition, strength, and performance.

How Menopause Impacts Body Composition, Strength, and Performance

How much does menopause itself play a role in the changes to your body composition, strength, and performance versus just aging? What role does hormone replacement therapy play?

Read the article

Case Study: How Brandon Lost 40lb and Overcame a Rut

Brandon, a 35-year-old professional and father, faced a tough stretch with injuries and two skin cancer surgeries. He hit a low point, frustrated by not being able to play basketball or do the activities that once brought him so much joy.

When Brandon started using MacroFactor, he committed to giving his body and transformation serious attention. Brandon got up early, never missed his steps, and built habits that not only fueled his progress but also gave him skills he could carry far beyond this cut.

“I’ve strengthened my muscle to do hard things, and I truly believe this will carry on after this challenge, not just in fitness but in other areas of my life as a husband, father, and professional,” he said. “If you deny yourself some instant gratification for something greater, you can do something insane that you never thought possible.”

Check out the full case study to learn more about how Brandon reached his goal.

Case Study: How Molly Rebuilt Her Relationship With Progress

Molly is a 34-year-old who travels often for work. For years, she battled lifestyle and health problems, and was diagnosed with androgenetic alopecia after slowly losing her hair for years. She had cycled through countless apps, challenges, and restrictive eating plans, and was ready for change. The problem? She still hadn’t found a system that allowed her to make progress without feeling miserable in the process. 

Looking for a better way forward, Molly signed up for MacroFactor and decided to participate in the 2025 transformation challenge. It marked the beginning of a shift in her relationship with food and her body image. 

“This challenge didn’t just transform my body, it helped me rebuild trust in myself,” she said. “I let go of the belief that weight loss has to come with suffering.”

Check out the full case study to learn more about how Molly reached her goal.

Case Study: How Ryan Built a Routine and Brought His Family With Him

Ryan, a 35-year-old father of three, knows what it means to put in a day’s hard work. He regularly juggles the demands of three jobs while trying to be present for his wife and kids. That leaves him with very little time to focus on his health or nutrition. Trying to find the balance, Ryan decided to use the 100-Day Challenge and found the structure he’d been missing.

“I’ve never tracked macros before. Now I feel lost without the data,” he said. “After reviewing the data trends, I learned a lot. Being able to keep track and dissect trends, expenditures, macros, progress, and even the breakdown of each macro helped me see where I was, what I have done, and where I needed to go.”

Check out the full case study to learn more about how Ryan reached his goal.

Case Study: Hannah’s Sustainable Journey

After devoting her time to caring for her new baby, 25-year-old Hannah decided to tackle a cut and not only hit her goals but also gained a whole new outlook on the process.

“I don’t have to guess what my expenditure is or how much I should be eating based on a random calculator online that doesn’t account for personal variability,” she added. “Whether I become more or less active because of illness, vacation, or picking up a new hobby, I know the app will continue to adjust with me so I can both reach and maintain the goals I’ve set.”

Check out the full case study to learn more about how Hannah reached her goal.

Case Study: How a Birthday Promise and MacroFactor Helped JT Moore Find Consistency

JT Moore, a 37-year-old husband, father, and public health professional, knows firsthand how important it is to take care of your health, but it wasn’t until his 36th birthday that he decided to get serious about his own.

“I was beyond thrilled when I hit my target. I looked and felt better than I had in many years, and this gave me a level of confidence I hadn’t experienced in my entire life,” he said. “I then transitioned to a maintenance goal and have continued to add muscle while losing fat for a year, all while enjoying more food!”

Read the full case study to learn more about how JT reached his goal.

Team, Business, and Community

User Growth 

We are excited to say that MacroFactor has grown to more than 400,000 users. Here’s a quick breakdown on how that growth has looked over the last several years:

• September 2022: 35,000 users
• September 2023: 90,000 users
• September 2024: 185,000 users
• September 2025: 400,000 users

A huge part of this remarkable growth is due to word-of-mouth from MacroFactor users like you. Many of you have told your friends and family about the app and contributed enormously to the sense of community and excitement we see in our Facebook group, subreddit, and support channels every day.

Thank you! We are blown away and so grateful.

MacroFactor wins Google Play Best of 2024 award

At the end of 2024, we were so excited to learn that MacroFactor was the winner of Google Play’s “Best Everyday Essential” category in the Google Play Best Of awards. 🏆

You can read more about the award ​here​.

New Team Members

We welcomed four new members to the MacroFactor team this year. 

Kirill Meshkov is an Animator and Developer, and he has designed the beautiful and delightful illustrations and animations you see in the app during check-ins, onboarding, when you reach your goals, and more.

Cam Gill is our Head of Exercise Education, and he has been building an extremely thorough exercise database for our forthcoming MacroFactor Workouts app.

Olga Tochilin is our Senior Product Designer, and she designs screens and workflows for the apps. She also is a master at design systems, and works to improve consistency and adherence to the MacroFactor Design System in the apps.

Katie Nemargut is our Growth Marketing Manager, and she develops and implements strategies to find new users and better serve our current users. She is also instrumental in preparing for our forthcoming launch of MacroFactor Workouts.

Looking Forward: What’s Next for MacroFactor

From Day 1, we have embraced a philosophy of continuous improvement at MacroFactor. We are always working to create new features, craft smarter algorithms, and design more intuitive workflows. Our commitment to making the app smarter and more intuitive is as strong as ever, and we have several exciting features for MacroFactor scheduled for the next 12 months.

Our current focus and the primary highlight of this Annual Report, though, is our forthcoming new app, MacroFactor Workouts.

MacroFactor Nutrition and MacroFactor Workouts will be a strong duo, teaming up to create a larger MacroFactor ecosystem. Imagine your nutrition and workout data working together, creating comprehensive, unparalleled insights into every aspect of your fitness journey.

Get ready, because we’re about to embark on an exciting new era for MacroFactor.

MacroFactor Workouts

In last year’s annual report, we publicly announced that we were building a second app.

Today, we are just months away from releasing MacroFactor Workouts, and are excited to share some new details on what you can expect, along with a preview of what the app looks like.

The MacroFactor Workouts app will embody the same data-driven approach and intuitive experience you value in your nutrition tracking with MacroFactor.

When you sign up for MacroFactor Workouts, the app will craft a personalized resistance training workout program for you based on your goals, experience, the equipment you have access to, and more.

As you start tracking your workouts, the app then uses progressive overload to dynamically adjust your program based on your progress, helping you break through plateaus and consistently progress toward your strength and muscle-building goals.

Like MacroFactor Nutrition, MacroFactor Workouts takes all the guesswork out of reaching your goals and will have a user-friendly interface that makes tracking your workouts easy and enjoyable.

You bring the drive, and MacroFactor Workouts will provide cutting-edge, science-driven tools that adapt to your body and empower your mind.

The beta for MacroFactor Workouts is tentatively set to begin in early October. We’ll select beta participants from our list of folks who filled out the MacroFactor Workouts Survey we shared a few months ago. In addition, we will have a first-come, first-served call for beta participants on our subreddit and Facebook group later in the beta period.

The app will be available to everyone in early January 2026.

We’ll have many more exciting details about the app to share in the coming months. Make sure you’re subscribed to the MacroFactor Monthly newsletter and following our Facebook group, subreddit, and Instagram so you don’t miss anything.

How to get involved and stay updated 

First, join our communities or subscribe to our newsletter to stay updated.

Communities: Folks in our Facebook group, subreddit, and Instagram communities are the first to hear about new releases and what we’re working on. The groups are also a great place to ask and answer questions and connect with a like-minded and supportive community. 

Newsletter: Another way to stay updated is the MacroFactor Monthly Newsletter. On the last Monday of each month, we send a brief newsletter that includes sections on new features in the app, content recommendations, and a sneak peek at features in development. 

Second, you can submit and vote on new features using our public roadmap. 

We maintain a public roadmap that shows our short- to medium-term plans for new features and improvements. You can vote on the upcoming features that are the highest priority to you, which will help guide our development priorities. 

Third, leave a 5-star rating on the App Store or Google Play. 

If you’re enjoying MacroFactor, please consider leaving a 5-star rating or review on the​ App Store​ or​ Google Play​. Positive reviews of MacroFactor really help with discoverability for folks looking for an app like ours.

Thank you

We’ll end this fourth Annual Report the same way we’ve ended it the last three years: by taking the opportunity to say thank you one more time. 

There is no MacroFactor without you. You support us, inspire us, and motivate us to keep building and improving. We are so grateful for our MFer community, and so excited to continue working on this product that we love.  

The post The 2025 MacroFactor Annual Report appeared first on MacroFactor.

As we prepare to launch the new MacroFactor Workouts app, we’ve updated key aspects of our design and branding to create a more cohesive and modern ecosystem that’s ready to support every stage of your fitness journey.

Our new look is more than just a fresh coat of paint – it’s a foundation for everything we’re building next.

To help us create a brand that embodies our mission, we partnered with the world-class design consultancy Pentagram (the same team behind Reddit’s recent rebrand!). With their help, we’ve honed our visual identity to better reflect the scientific rigor and supportive coaching at the heart of both MacroFactor and MacroFactor Workouts.

It’s a brand built for MFers, and we’re thrilled to see it come to life.

Designed for clarity and confidence

A new logo

We’ve retired our old logo in favor of bold, precise new marks. Engineered to be instantly recognizable, these stand as beacons for the MacroFactor experience.

A font made for MacroFactor

Macro Sans, our new custom-designed typeface, can be seen in our new logo and word mark. Its powerful, clear aesthetic will also be used for key headlines and important messages, helping our most significant insights stand out with authority and confidence.

A fresh look for your favorite foods

You’ll also notice new food icons in the app. These were designed to be clearer and more consistent, making it easier to log your meals at a glance. You’ll also notice improved icon mapping in the app – meaning the foods you search should have more appropriately matched icons. We believe these updates will make your daily tracking smoother.

A universe of your own

We’ve also brought our new look to life with a suite of fresh in-app illustrations and animations. You’ll notice these new visuals throughout the app – from our onboarding experience to the weekly check-in screens. Using an adventurous, space-themed aesthetic, these illustrations simplify complex ideas and add a touch of delight to your journey.

What’s next?

This new look is just the beginning. It’s the first of many steps we’re taking as we prepare to launch the MacroFactor Workouts app, a tool we think you’re going to love.

We’re excited to share more details about MacroFactor Workouts in our 2025 Annual Report, which is coming soon. In the meantime, though, you can get your very first look at the new app in the screenshots below.

First look at MacroFactor Workouts

The post A new look for a new chapter appeared first on MacroFactor.

On the watch, MacroFactor surfaces the essentials at a glance: calories, macros, and key micronutrients. A scrollable timeline lets you review what you ate throughout the day, so you can efficiently add foods to their proper place and gain insight into your day. 

Designed for approachability and precision, MacroFactor pairs a clean, glanceable interface with deep nutritional details when you want them. Voice logging, haptics, and complications – all coming to your wrist with this release. Let’s dive in!

An interactive timeline of your food intake

The main screen shows a timeline of your day’s food intake, centered on the current time. Tap + to log a food in the current hour, or scroll up/down to pre‑log or retro‑log meals. The timeline updates instantly as you log.

Log foods with AI — or one of seven other watch‑optimized methods

Logging with MacroFactor on watch is designed for in-the-moment speed. 

To log new foods on the go, you can speak naturally, for example “coffee with a croissant” or “chicken breast.” You’ll get an editable suggestion you can confirm in a tap.

If you’ve been with MacroFactor for a while, you likely have a rich food history to lean on, and favorite go-to foods that you have previously curated in your library. You can access those from the watch logging interface and choose between your custom foods, recipes, favorites and recently logged items. Once you select a food to log, you can use our food editor to adjust the serving and quantity. 

On the phone, MacroFactor is known for its fast and streamlined food logging workflows, and now we have brought that same spirit to the watch. 

Inspired by the calculator, our serving and quantity selector offers rich editing in a compact interface. There is no context-switching required. One tap to change the serving, two taps to log with macros, and a direct in-line number pad to change quantity. 

Delicious analytics for the current moment

Nutrient surfers unite! 🏄 MacroFactor is bringing its Nutrition Overview to the watch as well. You can see macros, vitamins, minerals, and more, and swap between Current and Remaining analytics from the top right shortcut.

It’s perfect for quick checks while planning a meal — or just something satisfying to swipe through while you wait for the bus.

Track your weight from the gym

On the phone, MacroFactor lets you track detailed body metrics. On the watch, it’s about the core utilities. If you are at the gym weighing in, or stepping on a scale in the doctor’s office, you can quickly log your weight from the Weight experience on the watch. 

Here, you can switch between scale and trend weight views, easily see your current weight, and scroll through time, observing how your weight changed over the year.

Complications that keep you on track

Bring MacroFactor utilities to your watch face with our nutrition‑focused complications for always‑visible context. Designed for seamless integration into your life, these complications transform your watch face into a dynamic nutritional dashboard. 

You can use gauges or progress rings for nutrients like carbs, protein, and fiber, and keep them top of mind. This isn’t just about tracking; it’s about making informed choices in the moment. Glanceable cues help you decide what to eat next and when.

Watching out for the watch?

Show us your watchface design in the MacroFactor app community on Facebook and the MacroFactor subreddit. 

If you are ready to get started with MacroFactor, you can download the app now from the App Store or Google Play. 

You can also learn more about macro tracking, nutrition, and physiology by reading our in-depth articles or browsing our extensive knowledge base. 

The post MacroFactor is coming to Apple Watch appeared first on MacroFactor.

Keep in mind that the Beta feature is a work in progress. The next generation of MacroFactor AI is already underway and outperforming the Beta in every capacity. 

MacroFactor is focused on intentional AI

With the excitement surrounding AI, hundreds of apps have flooded the market with LLM-based food loggers. These apps almost universally lack the depth and functionality necessary to be complete solutions for the dedicated user.

MacroFactor offers a more serious alternative with intentional application of AI. Our focus is on:

• High quality results. MacroFactor AI does not rely on LLMs to generate all food entries. Instead, we prioritize real, lab-analyzed results with complete nutrition data. MacroFactor AI will only generate a food entry when it is necessary or otherwise optimal, and its generation will be grounded in real life foods.
• Result transparency. MacroFactor AI will break down your meal into individual ingredients instead of giving you a single opaque result. Because we build each result from individual food entries, our output is fully inspectable.
• Integrated control: The plate is a unified interface for interacting with the AI result and human-added foods. AI is not perfect and can make mistakes, and we give users the control to edit and modify its results.
• Streamlined experience: MacroFactor AI will do its best to group foods logically, using recipes and single foods, so it is easy for you to reason about your nutrition. Our AI interface has no fluff, no performative chat interface – just streamlined results. 

Our intention is that AI makes you more powerful and consistent in your logging habits. In turn, MacroFactor’s advanced analytics and diet coaching work better when you are more consistent. MacroFactor analyzes your metabolism, guides you through your goals like a macro coach would, and gives you a complete picture of your nutrition – calories, macros, and micros. Photo-based logging is one of seven food-logging workflows in MacroFactor that was designed carefully, so you can log foods faster and take better advantage of our analytics and coaching guidance. 

Our near-term goal is that MacroFactor AI will:

• Save veteran users time by automating the bulk search process for complex dishes. 
• Perform better than an untrained human, removing barriers to entry for those who are new to food logging. 
• Bridge the experiential gap for those who live in regions where food and/or branded product data is not as readily available.

Our long-term goal is that MacroFactor AI will be an ecosystem of utilities that will nearly eliminate food logging effort for even the most experienced MFer, without compromising on results, transparency, or end-user control.

How to use photo-based AI to log foods in MacroFactor

Navigate to “AI” from MacroFactor’s food logger. For the fastest workflow, simply snap a photo. If you’d like to add more context, choose the “Photo & Text” option and add a quick description of your meal alongside the photo.

From here, AI will go to work. Behind the scenes, several LLM prompts will work in tandem to break down your meal into individual ingredients and recipes, querying our database to retrieve real foods.

Once your meal is fully analyzed, foods will stream into your plate. Results might be served as individual foods or be intelligently grouped into recipes as shown in the example below.

From here, you can inspect any result produced by the MacroFactor AI. Your plate has an in-context editor for each food, including recipe ingredients, so you can tweak AI’s result and make it perfect prior to logging. 

If AI misses something, tap on one of the utilities on the bottom of your plate. You can continue scanning, searching, and even using AI again to add more foods. The advantage of MacroFactor’s unified food logging interface is that you can work collaboratively with AI, taking advantage of AI for speed without sacrificing control.

Using AI without sacrificing accuracy

If you are new to food logging, AI might perform with greater accuracy than you at logging certain meals, especially once MacroFactor AI is out of Beta. For example, when logging restaurant meals or foods prepared outside the home, it’s perfectly normal for beginners to forget to account for sauces and have a harder time estimating portions. Even when AI makes mistakes, it will enable you to log consistently and ramp up quickly. Food logging is a skill and takes logging reps to develop.

However, we know that many veteran food loggers value accuracy above all else — and some may be skeptical that an AI will meet their standards. For example, your burger might have a perfectly hidden layer of sauce under its bun. Sometimes, AI may not have enough context or might make unintended mistakes.

We have full confidence that by the end of the year, MacroFactor AI will reach a level of performance that even veterans will readily rely on. But even now, MacroFactor AI isn’t about trading precision for convenience. It’s designed to save you time without taking away your control. AI can reduce the effort of searching and selecting ingredients — especially in complex meals with lots of components.

For example, a dish might contain as many as 11 ingredients and be made of 3 or more constituent recipes. Previously, logging this meal would require 11 unique scans or searches and advanced use of recipe features. Now, AI might eliminate most of that work. Moreover, AI will intelligently group results for you, so you do not need to create recipes to have the benefit of a tidy food logging result. 

You can still review, adjust, and confirm every entry before logging, taking advantage of AI as a speedy collaborator rather than the primary decision maker. In fact, we recommend that everyone reviews their AI results before logging.

Remember, MacroFactor does not just adapt to your metabolism, but also to your food logging habits. Its algorithms can gracefully subsume food logging errors and still guide you to your goals.

4 real examples of MacroFactor AI at work 

1. Logging a plate of assorted branded products.

When scanning a single branded product, using a barcode scanner is often faster.  But if you are eating a few foods at once, AI can speed up your workflow by doing the searches for you. MacroFactor AI will identify the branded products in your meal and search our product database. In this case, instead of prioritizing micronutrient-rich common foods, AI will look for products that match the brand on display. 

Take a look at the example above. Usually, logging this yogurt, drink, and protein bar would require three consecutive barcode scans or manual searches. MacroFactor AI can save you time and perform these operations for you.

Using the photo of the three products, MacroFactor AI correctly identified a Coca-Cola drink and that it is the zero sugar variant, and it saw that Fage is a full-fat yogurt at 5%. It also found the Power Crunch bar. 

2. Logging a waffle after an Uber Eats delivery.

MacroFactor AI can also identify multiple foods from your deliveries, even if they are not explicitly branded. In this case, MacroFactor AI will prioritize building your result from research-grade, micronutrient-rich food entries.

Taking a look at the waffle dish below, AI added a Waffle, a Fruit Salad, and Chocolate Syrup to the plate.

The identification of foods is in line with expectation, but when logging, you might prefer to transfer the fruits to the waffle and treat them as individual toppings rather than an aggregated Fruit Salad.

You can split the recipe into individual foods by swiping on the Fruit Salad card and tapping the Explode icon. This action will extract Strawberries, Bananas, and Blueberries from the recipe and put them directly into your plate. 

Now you can log the meal to commit it to your timeline!

AI helps you identify the foods and reason about servings, but you have control to make the result your own.

3. Logging a homemade brunch.

When you cook at home, you have the opportunity to log your meals with excellent detail. You know the ingredients you used, the spices you sprinkled, and the cooking fat you added. However, logging your home-cooked meals can also present the greatest challenge due to the sheer number of ingredients involved. For example, even a simple brunch plate below contains 10 ingredients: bread, eggs, cheese, three kinds of sweet potato, broccoli, olive oil, salt, and pepper.

MacroFactor AI broke down this dish into three distinct recipes: fried egg sandwich, steamed broccoli, and roasted root vegetables. Each of these recipes contains the ingredients you see in the image. Let’s inspect the star of the dish, the fried egg sandwich, further.

At first, there is a red flag: AI only detected one sandwich. Fortunately, upon further inspection, you can see that AI actually recognized the correct ingredients, simply bundling them under one recipe. 2x white bread, 1x cheese slice, 2x egg, salt, and pepper were all detected with correct serving sizes. 

One advantage of using MacroFactor AI is that it can often take into account little details that a human would usually not bother to log, such as salt. While salt does not move your calories, it contributes to the micronutrient reporting you can access in MacroFactor’s Nutrient Explorer.

4. Logging a complex meal from a hibachi restaurant.

Eating out often presents a significant challenge for food loggers. Unlike with homemade dishes, it is difficult to know the precise amount of cooking fat used, the serving sizes for ingredients, and the impact of the sauces on your caloric totals.

If you are eating out in a social setting, it can also be challenging to fully account for your meal without detracting from the experience. MacroFactor AI can leverage its knowledge of different cuisines and help you log your meal quickly.

The dish in the above photo is Hibachi Chicken from a restaurant in North Carolina. MacroFactor AI identified three major components of the plate: Chicken Teriyaki, White Rice, and Steamed Broccoli. When inspecting the Chicken Teriyaki, you can see that AI was detailed in its analysis, accounting for the protein, sauce, sesame oil, and seasonings often used in this dish.

A seasoned operator might notice that the serving for rice seems larger than identified. AI is not perfect and can make mistakes, but fortunately, in this case MacroFactor identified the foods and the serving units correctly, so you can adjust the quantity of the rice from 1 cup to 2 cups using an inline plate editor.

Now you can log your meal and get back to the conversion.

10 tips to become an AI food logging pro

1. Light it up. Good lighting means better results. Snap your meal in bright, even light to help the AI clearly see what’s on your plate.

2. Make sure ingredients are fully in view. Angle your camera such that ingredients on your plate are fully visible. Usually, this means taking a photo top down. 

3. Keep it tidy. The clearer the plate layout, the better. Spread your foods out so they’re not stacked or hidden — it helps the AI recognize each item correctly.

4. You can add a quick description. A short meal description (“chicken curry with rice and naan”) can boost accuracy, especially for complex or regional dishes.

5. Double-check and adjust. AI can significantly speed up your search by identifying all visible ingredients, but you’re the expert on what’s actually on your plate. Quickly inspect the entries, tweak portions if needed, and log. Even if AI does not get you 100% of the way there, it will save you many taps.

6. Know your use case. If you’re having a protein bar, packaged snack, or branded product, it may be faster to log it with the barcode scanner. AI is most efficient with mixed meals, plates, and homemade dishes.

7. Include your fist for scale. You can include your fist or a common object for scale to help MacroFactor AI estimate portions.

8. You can use an actual scale. If you are weighing out your food, take a photo with the scale in view. This can help AI reference the total weight of your meal.

9. Watch out for updates. MacroFactor AI will continue evolving. We expect the next generation model to provide a significant boost to both ingredient and serving size estimations.

10. Join the MacroFactor Reddit and Facebook communities. See how others leverage AI and get advice from experienced users and the MacroFactor team.

What will you log?

Show us your meals in the MacroFactor app community on Facebook and the MacroFactor subreddit. 

If you are ready to get started with MacroFactor, you can download the app now from the App Store or Google Play. 

You can also learn more about macro tracking, nutrition, and physiology by reading our in-depth articles or browsing our extensive knowledge base. 

The post AI-Powered Food Logging Comes to MacroFactor appeared first on MacroFactor.

Multiple Presets

Do you enjoy the same food or drink in different quantities throughout the day? No problem. MacroFactor’s Favorites let you save multiple presets for the same food.

For example, you might save a 16oz latte as a favorite for your morning coffee. You could then add a 12oz latte as another favorite for the afternoon. Each preset appears as its own entry in your Favorites Bar. This means whether it’s a half-portion snack or a full meal, you can log it with a single tap — no manual adjustments required. By supporting multiple presets for one food, MacroFactor adapts to the realities of your routine and eliminates repetitive steps in tracking.

Quick Access

Above your smart Hourly Picks and Latest foods in Search, you’ll now find your personal Favorites Bar prominently displayed. This bar provides quick access to all the foods you’ve “hearted” so far. Instead of typing in search or scrolling through history for your everyday items, just tap the item’s tile from the Favorites Bar. It’s instantly added to your plate, complete with the saved serving size you’ve set. 

The Favorites Bar is positioned at the top of your search results, so your most important foods are always the first options you see. In short, your logging is faster and smoother because the foods you log most often are exactly where you need them, when you need them.

Reorder with Ease

MacroFactor gives you control over the order of your Favorites. To customize the order:

1. Go to your Library and navigate to Favorites.
2. Tap the Reorder icon in the top right corner.
3. Drag and drop your favorite food entries up or down to arrange them in your preferred sequence.

Organizing your favorites means that the items you use most can be placed front and center. For example, if certain snacks are your top priority, you might drag those to the top of the list. This way, your Favorites Bar is arranged exactly how you want it.

A Faster, More Personalized Logging Experience

With the new Favorites feature, MacroFactor continues to improve how you track your nutrition. By allowing you to save foods (and specific portions), recall them instantly, and organize them your way, this update saves valuable time and effort each day. 

This feature is available now in the latest update of MacroFactor on both iOS and Android. We’re excited to see how the Favorites feature helps you in your journey, and we remain committed to bringing you tools that make diet tracking easier and more efficient. Happy logging!

Ways to get started with MacroFactor

Show us your favorite foods in the MacroFactor app community on Facebook and the MacroFactor subreddit. 

If you are ready to get started with MacroFactor, you can download the app now from the App Store or Google Play. 

You can also learn more about macro tracking, nutrition, and physiology by reading our in-depth articles or browsing our extensive knowledge base. 

The post Favorite Foods: Your Staples Within Reach appeared first on MacroFactor.

MacroFactor’s algorithms adapt intelligently to your metabolism, and with release 4.0.0, the Dashboard now adapts to all your data needs. Led by Senior Engineer Jake Boychenko, this update introduces powerful customization tools, steps tracking, body metrics comparison, and more.

Your new Dashboard could look like this:

Or this:

And there are many other options. Let’s walk through the customizations MacroFactor has to offer.

Customize Everything

With the Customizable Dashboard, you can make MacroFactor truly yours. Want instant access to your favorite metrics? No problem. Prefer a streamlined view to focus only on essentials? Done. You can now toggle any Dashboard tile on or off and arrange sections based on your personal priorities.

For example, you can move Habits up or down, prioritizing this information over Insights & Analytics or deprioritizing it relative to the Nutrition section. Tiles within each section can also be re-arranged. Weight Trend could be above Expenditure or below it, and nutrients can appear in any order on your Dashboard.

Each Dashboard section houses more information than what’s shown in the default dashboard view. For example, the Nutrition section starts out by showing the Calorie, Protein, Fat, and Carb intake, but it can also show you vitamins, minerals, and the detailed breakdown of your Protein, Fat, and Carb consumption.

Likewise, the Dashboard will initially start out by displaying your Scale Weight and Visual Body Fat, but you can expand the set of Body Metrics displayed on the Dashboard to include Progress Photos and tape measurements such as Neck, Shoulders, Waist, Hips, and more.

You can even customize your Dashboard Hat and choose its primary focus. 

You can set your Dashboard Hat to showcase Weekly Nutrition, Daily Nutrition, or Energy Balance insights—or turn them all off for a minimalist look. MacroFactor adapts to you, putting the metrics that matter most right at your fingertips.

Enjoy an Optimized Dashboard Layout

As part of bringing these new, rich customization features, we had to rethink how the Dashboard works. Our goal was to preserve the look and feel of the MacroFactor Dashboard, while applying better organizational principles and giving you more power over your data.

You love data, we love data, and so we decided one Dashboard was simply not enough. In addition to the primary landing page, MacroFactor now has five inner Dashboards.

Here is how your new Dashboards work together. The primary dashboard is an at-a-glance view and launch point for your essential and chosen metrics. Each section—like Nutrition or Insights & Analytics—has its own dedicated page that expands on the metrics within that category. 

For example, when you tap “See All” in the Nutrition section, you’ll enter an inner dashboard where you can view detailed breakdowns of your macro and micronutrients, track your daily intake against your targets, and explore specific data points for Fiber, Vitamin D, Iron, and so on.

Similarly, the Insights & Analytics section’s inner dashboard offers a closer look at trends like Energy Balance and Goal Progress. From the inner dashboard, you can monitor progress in each of these key areas without cluttering your main dashboard with all four insights, if you usually only reference two of them. This modular approach gives you the flexibility to prioritize what you want to see front and center while still having easy access to more in-depth information.

Get More Out of Your Charts

The new Dashboard comes with a host of new features and improvements. Among them, more powerful charts. We added temporal aggregation — daily, weekly, and monthly options, so you can zoom in on the details or step back to see the bigger picture.

This flexibility makes it easy to analyze patterns over time, whether you’re assessing calorie intake, weight trends, or nutrient consumption. Track progress at a granular level or take a broader view to identify trends.

Count your Steps and Analyze your Energy Balance

With the 4.0.0 release, MacroFactor delivered two new activity-related insights. One of them topped the list of the most requested Planned Features on our Public Roadmap with 5720 upvotes — Steps Import.

You can now sync Steps with Apple Health or Health Connect to keep all your step data in one place. Steps will show up on your Dashboard under “General.”

The second new addition to the 4.0.0 analytics is the expanded Energy Balance insight. Once limited to a 30-day view, Energy Balance lets you track intake vs. expenditure over any interval, making it easier to analyze and adjust based on your goals. 

Track Your Progress Better with Full Body Comparison Tools

We have also reimagined how you view and track body metrics, transforming what was once a single page into a dedicated, multi-layered inner dashboard. This new Body Metrics layout allows you to see multiple metrics at a glance, with each metric having its own dedicated tile.

The new Full Body tile leads to a page that brings all your body measurements together. This Full Body page houses two brand new tools for navigating your tape measurements. One of them lets you quickly swipe between days to access your measurements for all metrics like Neck, Shoulders, Waist, and Hips in a comprehensive snapshot. The other tool is called “Compare All Metrics.” 

This brand-new feature allows you to select any two dates and compare all your body measurements side-by-side. You can see how measurements — like Waist, Hips, or Arms — have changed between the two snapshots, with differences clearly displayed. No more navigating back and forth to track progress. This tool brings a streamlined comparison experience, making it easier than ever to analyze and celebrate your progress.

Your Data, Your Way: MacroFactor’s Most Customizable Experience Yet

The 4.0.0 release introduces powerful customization options, letting you build a dashboard tailored to your unique data priorities. From flexible layouts and inner dashboards for each main section to an upgraded Full Body experience and a powerful Compare All Metrics tool, MacroFactor empowers you to view and organize your fitness and nutrition insights like never before. With additions like Step Tracking and enhanced chart aggregation, this update doesn’t just improve navigation—it transforms how you interact with your data. 

What Will You Build?

Show us your best Dashboard build in the MacroFactor app community on Facebook and the MacroFactor subreddit. 

If you are ready to get started with MacroFactor, you can download the app now from the App Store or Google Play. 

You can also learn more about macro tracking, nutrition, and physiology by reading our in-depth articles or browsing our extensive knowledge base. 

The post Welcome Home, Data: Dashboard Customization Comes to MacroFactor appeared first on MacroFactor.

Since its launch in 2021, MacroFactor has continually improved and evolved by releasing new, innovative feature sets and actively listening to and engaging with their user base via dedicated communities and a public roadmap. The app has grown to more than 200,000 paying users, and the company is poised to launch its second app – a workout app – in early 2026. 

MacroFactor is a smart macro tracker and nutrition coach. Users track their weight and the foods they eat, and the app’s smart metabolic algorithms adjust their calorie and macro targets to keep them on track toward their stated goals. In 2024, MacroFactor introduced features that improved both of these utilities for users – such as a label scanner for faster food logging, a data pipeline for users to submit new barcodes and foods to the database, and nutrition coaching updates that help users better understand their nutrition and resolve challenges they are facing.

“MacroFactor’s success is really a testament to how far you can get by having a singular focus on solving problems for users,” said Greg Nuckols, one of MacroFactor’s co-founders and an expert in human physiology. “Whether that’s developing unique algorithms to help users better determine appropriate energy intake targets for their goals, delivering best-in-class analytics for users that want a better understanding of what they eat, or developing innovative food logging workflows that dramatically reduce the friction and increase the convenience of food logging, we understand that people use our app with specific goals in mind, and we understand what we can do to help them achieve those goals. Ultimately, I think that is what has allowed us to stand out in a crowded market.”

You can try the MacroFactor app free for 7 days via Google Play or the App Store.

About MacroFactor

MacroFactor is the macro tracker that adapts to your metabolism. In addition to having the fastest food-logging workflows of any app of its kind, MacroFactor’s smart nutrition coaching provides the levels of personalization, flexibility, and attentiveness one would expect from a high-quality human coach. The company is fully bootstrapped and is co-owned by Cory Davis, Rebecca Kekelishvili, Jeff Nippard, Greg Nuckols, and Lyndsey Nuckols. It is based out of Raleigh, North Carolina.

The post MacroFactor Wins Google Play Best of 2024 Award appeared first on MacroFactor.

The expenditure algorithm is at the heart of the MacroFactor coaching system. It’s what allows the app to adjust your weekly Calorie and macronutrient targets to keep you on track toward your goals. Its power comes from the fact that it relies on solid physiological principles to be inherently self-correcting, unlike energy expenditure estimates coming from static calculations or wearable devices. If you eat 2500 Calories per day and maintain your weight, that means you burn around 2500 Calories per day. If you gain weight while eating 2500 Calories per day, that means you burn less than 2500 Calories; if you lose weight, that means you burn more than 2500 Calories. And, if you lose weight slowly, that means you only burn slightly more than 2500 Calories; whereas if you lose weight very rapidly, that means you burn way more than 2500 Calories.

This is a simple concept that’s easy to grasp, but it gets a lot messier when you actually need to analyze data and estimate the energy expenditure of a given individual, based on their weight and nutrition information.

Signal and noise – stability and responsiveness

The main problem is that nutrition and especially weight data are noisy. In other words, they contain trends that can be used to accurately estimate your energy expenditure, but they also contain a lot of messiness that conceals those trends.

A basic principle of trend analysis is that you can’t simultaneously maximize both stability and responsiveness. If you zoom way out, you can generate very stable predictions about the previous behavior of the noisy system. For example, if MacroFactor used an entire year of back-looking weight and nutrition data to estimate your expenditure, each new day of data would have relatively little impact on the analysis, resulting in an expenditure calculation that didn’t change much, thus providing very stable nutrition recommendations week to week. However, if your expenditure did change considerably – if you started a new weight loss goal, if you switched from losing weight to intentionally bulking, or if your exercise and activity levels experienced a large shift – the app would be far too slow to adapt appropriately.

On the flip side, analyzing just one week of data would result in a very choppy experience due to the noisiness of the underlying data. For example, you might maintain a consistent lifestyle and eat 2500 Calories per day in back-to-back weeks, but in one week, you randomly gain two pounds, and in the next week, you lose those two pounds again. If you treated those two weeks as self-contained units, a naive analysis of your weight and nutrition data would suggest that you were burning about 1500 Calories per day in the first week, and about 3500 Calories per day in the second week. Clearly that’s absurd. But, if your actual energy expenditure did change rapidly, this weekly analysis would adapt far more quickly than a yearly analysis.

So, that’s the basic push and pull. I’m sure you don’t want your calorie targets increasing or decreasing by 500+ calories every week, but you also don’t want the app to take six months to adapt to a change in your diet or activity levels. However, analytical approaches that increase stability tend to decrease responsiveness, and analytical approaches that increase responsiveness tend to decrease stability. So, major algorithmic improvements – improvements that enhance stability without compromising responsiveness (like the jump from V1 and V2), that enhance responsiveness without compromising stability, or that simultaneously improve both responsiveness and stability – are surprisingly difficult. 

The first breakthrough: mitigating false signals

A challenge when dealing with weight data is that forward-looking predictions and back-looking calculations are often at odds.

Here’s what I mean:

If I told you that someone was previously weight-stable, and they started losing two pounds per week, would you predict that:

1. Their energy expenditure will decrease
2. Their energy expenditure won’t change
3. Their energy expenditure will increase

You’d probably choose A: their energy expenditure will decrease. It’s well-understood that energy expenditure tends to decrease during weight loss, due to metabolic adaptations, decreases in non-exercise physical activity, and the simple fact that you’re now fueling a smaller body.

However, what if I told you instead that someone was previously weight-stable, they decreased their energy intake by just 250 Calories per day, and they started losing two pounds per week?

That would imply that their energy expenditure was increasing. Losing two pounds per week requires a pretty large energy deficit – certainly much more than 250 Calories per day. So, their rate of weight loss, in combination with their nutrition data, would suggest that their energy expenditure was rising, rather than falling.

In a vacuum, you’d expect energy expenditure to increase with weight gain and decrease with weight loss, and you’d expect more rapid rates of weight gain to result in more rapid increases in energy expenditure, and more rapid rates of weight weight loss to result in more rapid decreases in energy expenditure. However, at any given level of energy intake, faster rates of weight gain imply lower total energy expenditures, and faster rates of weight loss imply higher total energy expenditures.

The time when this tension is felt most acutely is when starting a new weight gain or weight loss phase. When you shift from losing weight to gaining weight, it’s not uncommon to gain 5+ pounds basically overnight. It’s not “real” weight gain – your body is just storing more glycogen (and associated water), and you have an increased amount of food (and associated water) in your digestive tract. The opposite occurs when you shift from gaining to losing weight – you might lose 5+ pounds within the first week or two, but again, that’s not 5 pounds of “real” weight loss (i.e. your body isn’t metabolizing 5 pounds of stored body fat) – it’s mostly water weight.

So, in these scenarios, your actual energy expenditure is likely to move in concert with your weight – increasing as you gain weight, and decreasing as you lose weight. But, when these large shifts in weight are analyzed in the context of more modest increases or decreases in energy intake, that would (erroneously) lead you to conclude that people initially experience a large decrease in energy expenditure when they start gaining weight, and a large increase in energy expenditure when they start losing weight.

This is a challenge we’re well-aware of, and V2 of the expenditure algorithm used some clever tricks to mitigate the counterintuitive and frustrating impact of these large, short-term weight shifts on users’ calculated expenditure. But, we knew this was an area where we had room for improvement, and it seemed like an instance where we might be able to “beat” the typical stability versus responsiveness tradeoff, since we understood the exact way and the typical degree to which naive calculations would depart from physiological reality.

Ultimately, this is where the breakthrough originated. To avoid giving away our “secret sauce,” I don’t think I should divulge any more details, because they would necessarily hint at some of the novel techniques we developed. But, we soon realized that our solution to this limited problem generalized to other common and frustrating scenarios that dieters and athletes often face. From there, we found that these new techniques also performed better than expenditure V2 on synthetic datasets and our own data exports, and we finally realized we were dealing with a pretty significant leap forward. The techniques we developed allow V3 of the expenditure algorithm to be slightly more responsive than V2 (picking up on upward or downward trends that prove to be real and durable 1-5 days sooner than V2), while also being considerably more stable: day-to-day expenditure updates are generally about 35% smaller.

To illustrate, here’s about 2 years of my expenditure data with both the V2 and V3 algorithms.

Early on, my expenditure decreased quite a bit as I lost about 50 pounds. As you can see, both V2 and V3 picked up on the same long-term trend, but V3 did so with fewer and smaller bumps and detours along the way. V3 also wasn’t was impacted by this early weight loss plateau and subsequent “whoosh” of water weight:

Then, for about a year, I maintained my weight and maintained a pretty consistent lifestyle. V2 doesn’t do a bad job of reflecting this fact – it never deviated by more than about 8-10% above or below the long-term trend. But, V3 did a better job of maintaining a more stable calculated expenditure during this period when, in hindsight, I know my energy expenditure was actually very stable. As you can see, the peaks aren’t as high and the valleys aren’t as low with V3.

Finally, any time there were significant trend reversals, V3 picked up on them about three days sooner than V2.

Overall, the situations where V2 and V3 differ the most are situations where short-term weight fluctuations would lead to inferences about expenditure changes that differ from more reliable trends. So, the following scenarios will have a smaller impact on your estimated expenditure with V3 of the expenditure algorithm:

1. Momentary fluid retention from a carb- and salt-rich meal
2. An increase in fluid retention from starting creatine supplementation
3. Momentary fluid retention associated with ovulation or menses
4. Momentary fluid losses from reducing carb intake
5. Getting a big water weight “whoosh” after a weight stall
6. Shedding water weight that was previously retained during ovulation or menses

The second breakthrough: handling missing data

After recognizing that we were dealing with an entirely new version of the expenditure algorithm, the boring work began. Eureka moments are exciting, but they’re followed by months of fine-tuning, prodding at edge cases, and meticulously testing the limits of data quality and completeness the algorithm can handle before it starts behaving in non-ideal ways.

But, during this process, we happened to stumble across an unforeseen benefit of one of the analytical techniques we developed for V3 of the expenditure algorithm: with a small tweak, it could be adapted to allow the algorithm to be far more tolerant of missing data.

When doing robustness testing on V2 of the expenditure algorithm, we found that we needed about 80-85% nutrition data completeness for the algorithm to still perform well and produce accurate updates. If the algorithm continued trying to update with more than one day of missing nutrition data per week, its performance would start dropping rapidly. So, with two or more days of missing nutrition data per seven-day period, we found it was simply better to pause updates until data completeness returned to an acceptable level (i.e., until the most recent seven-day period included at least six days of nutrition data).

However, V3 can still perform admirably with about three times as much missing data. Below, you can see the result of using a random number generator to delete half of my nutrition data at random (basically just a fancy automated coinflip, where I keep a day of nutrition data if it lands on heads, and delete it if it lands on tails). I performed the procedure 10 times, and you can see how my expenditure calculation would look each time, compared to my “real” calculation with 100% nutrition data completeness. 

As you can see, it still does quite well. With half of my nutrition data missing, the algorithm may be slightly more conservative with adjustments during periods when my expenditure was increasing or decreasing fairly quickly, but it never deviated too far from the “real” calculation, and it never behaved erratically by increasing or decreasing way more than it “should” have. And keep in mind, with this “coinflip” approach to deleting data, there would be instances where the “coin” landed on “tails” for 5+ days in a row, so there are plenty of weeks with two or fewer days of nutrition data in these simulations.

Now, to be clear, I ran this test using the “raw” version of the algorithm with no guardrails whatsoever. In practice, we found that pausing updates could still be helpful in certain contexts. But, with expenditure V3, updates will only pause if you have more than three days of missing nutrition data in a seven-day period.

Though V3 of the expenditure algorithm is more tolerant of missing data, we do still generally recommend trying to log or estimate your intake whenever possible. But, V3 of the expenditure algorithm is able to handle missing data better because it can make reasonably accurate inferences about your energy intake on days you don’t log. We can compare its behind-the-scenes calorie predictions (how much it would estimate people ate if they didn’t log their food for the day) against people’s actual intake on the days they did log, and we find that its energy intake estimates are generally within about 15-20% of the actual values (which is why expenditure V3 can still provide accurate expenditure updates with significant amounts of missing nutrition data).

So, if there are some occasional days where you currently log your food but you really would prefer not to –  when you’re on vacation, on holidays, when you plan to have a big night out with friends, etc. – V3 of the expenditure algorithm will better accommodate you. It’ll know if you ate a bit more or a bit less than normal, and it’ll have a pretty good idea of how much more or less than normal you ate on days you don’t log. This allows MacroFactor to more accurately calculate your expenditure, and pause your expenditure updates less frequently during periods when you don’t log your food every day. Though, you do still need to be mindful to avoid partial logging.

Your estimated expenditure will probably be a bit lower (and that’s a good thing)

We caught and corrected a small bug that was present in previous versions of the expenditure algorithm.

To explain how it got there, I first need to explain a little bit about the energy surpluses and deficits required to gain or lose weight.

You may have heard of the “3500 Calorie rule” – the idea that a total deficit of 3500 Calories is required to lose 1 pound, and a total surplus of 3500 Calories is required to gain one pound.

The 3500 Calorie rule is a decent general heuristic, but it’s not strictly true in all cases. Fat has an energy density of about 39.5MJ/kg (or about 4282 Calories per pound), and lean tissue has an energy density of about 7.6MJ/kg (or about 824 Calories per pound). So, the “3500 Calorie rule” tacitly assumes that, when you gain or lose weight, about 78% of the weight you gain or lose is fat tissue, and about 22% of the weight you gain or lose is lean tissue.

Those aren’t bad assumptions in many situations, but there are also situations where they can deviate from reality. For example, if you start lifting weights and gain a pound of muscle without gaining any fat, gaining that pound only required a total energy surplus of about 824 Calories, not 3500. You could even gain two pounds of muscle, lose a pound of fat, and wind up gaining a pound of body weight while being in a net energy deficit of 2643 Calories.

So, we tried to apply that information to be a bit clever. Most people who use MacroFactor with a weight gain goal are actively exercising, and exercising has a dramatic impact on the composition of the weight you gain. At most reasonable rates of weight gain, instead of predominantly gaining fat as you gain weight, you predominantly gain muscle as you gain weight. So, that was baked into the assumptions of V1 and V2 of our algorithms: the surplus implied by gaining X pounds per week was smaller than the deficit implied by losing X pounds per week.

However, we realized that this set of assumptions – while technically correct in a vacuum – could have some unintended consequences. Namely, it led to small but consistent overestimates in users’ calculated expenditures as a result of weight fluctuations. Just to illustrate, if your energy intake is stable and your weight is relatively stable, but you lose 0.5lbs in a week, that suggests that you may be burning a bit more energy than you’re consuming, so your estimated expenditure needs to increase a bit. If you regain that same 0.5lbs the next week, that suggests that you may be burning a bit less energy than you’re consuming, so your estimated expenditure needs to decrease a bit. But, if we assume that the energy expenditure implied by a given rate of weight loss is larger than the surplus implied by a given rate of weight gain, the estimated expenditure increase in week 1 would be a bit larger than the estimated expenditure decrease in week 2. Extrapolate that out over time, and you wind up with a slight upward bias.

I ran a quick simulation to illustrate this effect. In this simulation, the individual has a constant energy expenditure of 2500 Calories per day, they eat 2500 Calories per day, and they’re as weight-stable as anyone could ever hope to be: they weigh 200lbs, and experience totally normal, totally random weight fluctuations with a standard deviation of ±1 pound (in other words, their scale weight is between 199 and 201lbs about 2/3rds of the time, and between 198 and 202lbs about 95% of the time). Here are the results:

As you can see, assuming that the energy surplus implied by gaining weight at a given rate is smaller than the energy deficit implied by losing weight at the same rate (blue line) leads to a small but consistent overestimate of energy expenditure. The effect is small (about 80 Calories), but it’s persistent. However, assuming that the energy surplus implied by gaining weight is equivalent to the energy deficit implied by losing weight (red line) leads to an estimate of energy expenditure that never strays too far from the truth (2500 Calories per day).

With larger typical weight fluctuations, the resulting overestimate is larger, and with smaller weight fluctuations, the effect is smaller. Furthermore, if you’re consistently losing weight, the effect is smaller, and if you’re consistently gaining weight, the effect is larger.

So, we corrected this issue in V3 of the expenditure algorithm. As a result, most people will have an estimated energy expenditure that’s a bit lower with V3 than with V2.

Depending on the magnitude of your typical weight fluctuations, and whether you’re gaining, losing, or maintaining weight, the independent impact of this change should be around 0-130 Calories per day for most people. You personally might experience a larger decrease, or you might even experience an increase in your estimated expenditure when switching from V2 to V3, but any additional impact would be the result of smoothing out the larger periodic fluctuations present in V2. In my data above, my estimated expenditure with V3 is, on average, about 23 Calories lower than with V2. But, it was up to 215 Calories lower at one point, and up to 120 Calories higher at another point, since the periodic fluctuations are so much larger in V2 than V3.

These changes have additional upsides for people with weight gain goals

If you have a weight gain goal, you may be concerned that this change will lead to less accurate nutrition recommendations for bulking. In the previous section, I explained that gaining weight consisting primarily of muscle mass does require a smaller energy surplus than the energy deficit required to lose weight (primarily consisting of fat mass) at the same rate. But, the impact of this change fully washes out for you.

To illustrate, let’s assume that you’re gaining half a pound per week while consuming 3000 Calories per day, and you want to keep gaining half a pound per week.

If we assume that you’re gaining 100% muscle mass, that would imply that you’re in an energy surplus of just 59 Calories per day, and your energy expenditure is 2941 Calories per day. So, how much do you need to eat to keep gaining half a pound per week? 3000 Calories per day.

If we assume that the 3500 Calorie rule applies (in other words, tacitly assuming that you’re gaining predominantly fat), that would imply that you’re in an energy surplus of 250 Calories per day, and your energy expenditure is 2750 Calories per day. So, how much do you need to eat to keep gaining half a pound per week? You guessed it: 3000 Calories per day.

In other words, your estimated energy expenditure will be a bit lower, but the implied energy surplus required to keep gaining weight at your desired rate will also be higher, and those two changes will fully cancel each other out, resulting in the same Calorie recommendations for your desired rate of weight gain.

In fact, this change actually comes with even more upside for people who are using MacroFactor to gain weight. Previously, some users reported that MacroFactor seemed to be a bit too conservative with Calorie increases for people with weight gain goals. In hindsight, that should have been foreseeable – a slower rate of Calorie increases was an unintended consequence of assuming that gaining weight at X rate implied a smaller energy surplus than the energy deficit implied by losing weight at X rate.

To illustrate, let’s assume that someone currently has a calculated expenditure of 2500 Calories per day, they want to lose a pound per week, and a cumulative energy deficit of 3500 Calories is required to lose a pound. To lose a pound per week, they need to be in a daily deficit of 500 Calories, so we’d recommend that they aim to consume 2000 Calories per day. But, if they start eating 2000 Calories per day, and they only lose half a pound per week, that would imply that their energy expenditure has decreased, and may be closer to 2250 Calories per day. Since their data suggests there’s a fairly large gap (250 Calories) between the expenditure implied by their current energy intake and rate of weight loss (2250 Calories per day), and our previous estimate of their energy expenditure (2500 Calories per day), their calculated energy expenditure – and therefore their energy intake recommendations – will decrease fairly quickly.

Now, let’s assume that someone currently has a calculated expenditure of 2500 Calories per day, they want to gain a pound per week, and a cumulative energy surplus of just 2000 Calories is required to gain a pound. To gain a pound per week, they need to be in a daily surplus of 286 Calories, so we’d recommend that they aim to consume 2786 Calories per day. But, if they start eating 2786 Calories per day, and they only gain half a pound per week, that would imply that their energy expenditure has increased, and may be closer to 2643 Calories per day. Since their data suggests there’s a smaller gap (143 Calories) between the expenditure implied by their current energy intake and rate of weight gain (2643 Calories per day), and our previous estimate of their energy expenditure (2500 Calories per day), their calculated energy expenditure – and therefore their energy intake recommendations – will increase at a slower rate than the rate at which energy intake recommendations would decrease in the weight loss example above.

But, if we change one assumption – gaining a pound requires an energy surplus of 3500 Calories, rather than 2000 Calories – that difference goes away. The rate at which energy intake recommendations will increase when people fall short of their desired rate of weight gain will be the same as the rate at which energy intake recommendations will decrease when people fall short of their desired rate of weight loss.

Just how well do MacroFactor’s algorithms work?

At the most basic level, MacroFactor’s algorithms work by making predictions, monitoring how well observed outcomes conform to those predictions, and then updating those predictions based on the observed differences between predictions and outcomes. To illustrate, if MacroFactor estimates that you have an energy expenditure of 2500 Calories per day, and you consistently eat 2000 Calories per day, it would predict that you’ll lose weight at a rate of about 1 pound per week. But, if it then observes that you’re actually losing weight at a rate of 1.2 pounds per week, that would imply that its prior prediction was a slight underestimate, and your energy expenditure is likely greater than 2500 Calories per day, so your estimated energy expenditure will increase.

To judge how well MacroFactor’s algorithms work, we can retroactively compare its predictions to subsequent outcomes. Just to provide an example, in June of 2021, I consumed an average of 2960 Calories per day, and MacroFactor estimated that my energy expenditure was about 3380 Calories per day. At that level of energy intake, MacroFactor would predict that I should lose about 3.6 pounds that month, given its estimate of my energy expenditure. In fact, I lost about 3.4 pounds that month. Since MacroFactor’s predictions were quite accurate, my estimated energy expenditure didn’t change very much. But, if I would have lost 7 pounds, my estimated expenditure would have increased by quite a bit, and if I only lost 1 pound, my estimated expenditure would have decreased by quite a bit.

There are various ways you could analyze and quantify the accuracy of MacroFactor’s predictions (and by extension, the accuracy of its nutrition recommendations): Do you look at a week of data? A month of data? Do you look at average error? Root mean square error? Mean absolute percentage error? Correlation coefficients? We look at all of those things, and this section almost turned into a litany of numbers that some people wouldn’t understand, and even fewer people would care about. But, as the old saying goes: a picture is worth a thousand words (and maybe a thousand numbers). So, here it is: this is my actual weight data from the past 3 years, overlaid with how MacroFactor’s V3 expenditure algorithm predicted that my weight would change on a rolling weekly basis, given its estimates of my energy expenditure, and my actual energy intake. I think it speaks for itself. 

Based on our testing, not only is the V3 expenditure algorithm both more responsive and more stable than V2 – it’s also about 10% more accurate. The absolute errors in its predicted rates of weight change are about 15% smaller on a weekly basis, and about 5% smaller on a monthly basis.

What’s next?

One final benefit of the V3 algorithm is that it’s structurally and functionally more modular and robust (both theoretically and practically) than V1 or V2 were. This means that it will be generally easier to modify and improve, and it means that it will more easily accommodate additional inputs without deviating from the core DNA that has defined all versions of MacroFactor’s expenditure calculation and coaching functionality. So, V3 is not only a big leap forward right now – it also gives us a stronger foundation to continue building and improving upon, which should accelerate the rate at which we’re able to innovate and make further progress in this domain.

Looking back, V1 of the expenditure algorithm is still better than anything we’ve seen from other apps in this space, and V2 was a sizable improvement over V1. With V3, we’re taking another big step forward, providing an even more accurate and more stable expenditure calculation to form the bedrock of MacroFactor’s one-of-a-kind coaching experience.

The post An In-Depth Look at MacroFactor’s New V3 Expenditure Algorithm appeared first on MacroFactor.

Each anniversary, we publish the MacroFactor Annual Report. You can find the first report from 2022 here, and last year’s report here. 

The purpose of the Annual Report is to document the changes and improvements we’ve made in the app and as a business in the last year, as well as to give you a peek behind the curtain at our plans for the future. 

As with our public roadmap, MacroFactor Monthly newsletter, and groups on Facebook and Reddit, the MacroFactor Annual Report is designed with our values of transparency and community in mind. 

We are so grateful for the support of MacroFactor users, and are excited to review and reflect on Year 3 with you. 

So let’s get into it! 

Looking Back: A Brief Review of the Year 

At its core, MacroFactor’s two main functions are food logging and nutrition coaching.

Many apps can do one well, but they often fall short on the other. Our goal with MacroFactor has always been to create an app that doesn’t force you to compromise. With MacroFactor, you can get evidence-based nutrition coaching AND excellent utilities for logging food, tracking progress, and reviewing data.

The story of the last year reinforces our dual focus and commitment to these two important utilities. 

On the food logging front, we introduced our Label Scanner, updated our Custom Food creation workflow, and added a Log By Macro utility. Each of these features made it easier, faster, and more intuitive to log your foods each day. 

In addition, the Food Submission pipeline we introduced in the spring was a huge step toward expanding MacroFactor’s database to cover more foods for more people worldwide. Users can now submit both corrections and new barcode products to our food database, allowing us to accurately grow our food database coverage for the foreseeable future. In the time since this feature was introduced, MacroFactor users have already contributed more than 70,000 new food submissions! 

As for nutrition coaching, the goal-setting revamp we released over the summer made it easier than ever to set, adjust, and achieve your weight loss, gain, or maintenance goals with precision and confidence. We also started beta testing for Version 3 of the MacroFactor expenditure algorithm. Though Expenditure V2 was already best in class, we knew it could be improved. We’ve spent months tweaking, testing, and tinkering until we developed a new algorithm that allows your expenditure (and, as a result, your program recommendations) to be considerably more stable and tolerant of short-term weight fluctuations, without making it slower to respond to actual energy expenditure changes. Expenditure V3 will be available to all users very soon! 

Our coaching updates culminated this year with our latest release, Version 3.0.0, which introduced the next generation of MacroFactor’s cutting-edge nutrition coaching. Now, in addition to updating your calorie targets, the Weekly Check-In also includes curated “Coaching Modules” that help resolve diet challenges you are facing and optimize your diet through further personalization. With this framework now built into the check-in system, our team plans to begin releasing new modules regularly, ensuring fresh experiences and added value for years to come.

In this “Looking Back” section of the Annual Report, we’ll go into more detail on each of these big updates (and more). We’ve organized it by season (Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer). Please note that this isn’t a full accounting of every single update and feature we’ve shipped; if you want more details, browse the MacroFactor Monthly archive or the Release Notes. 

Fall 

In Fall 2023, we released a full suite of iPhone and Android widgets, enhanced and expanded the Custom Food workflow, published 15+ new Knowledge Base articles answering FAQs, and published a website article explaining MacroFactor’s adherence-neutral philosophy.

Widgets

In October, we delivered the No. 1 most requested feature on the roadmap at that time – home screen widgets for both iPhone and Android.

With MacroFactor widgets, you can view details about any nutrient you can track in MacroFactor directly on your home screen and navigate to your favorite workflows with one tap.

These widgets are configurable, customizable, and optimized for their respective platforms, so you can build the home screen experience that matches your device and your unique style.

Learn more: 

• Feature page: Widgets
• Knowledge Base: Android Widgets and iPhone widgets

Custom Foods Update

In November, we released several features that enhanced and expanded MacroFactor’s Custom Food workflow!

• You can define nutrition for a custom food per serving, 100g, or 100ml, making it easier to create entries for products worldwide.
• Adding branded products is faster and more ergonomic with the option to use label-order for entering nutrition information.
• We added a quick way to convert from Salt to Sodium to enable European users to track their Sodium consumption from labels.
• The custom food wizard unfolds into a single page during editing workflows, or when a food is created using “Copy to Custom” or “Duplicate” options. This one-page editor makes it easier to tweak existing foods without going through all steps of the wizards.
• The Custom Food Creator remembers your latest preference for serving style and order of entering nutrition information for when you create new foods.

Learn more about how to create Custom Foods in this Knowledge Base article: ​Create and Add a Custom Food​.

Articles, Case Studies, and Resources

In addition to launching new features and functionality in the app, we also work hard to publish informative content and resources for you. 

Here are the articles, success stories, and other resources we released in Fall 2023. 

Success Story: Brett Alcox’s 46-Pound Weight Loss

Brett Alcox, a 30-year old software engineer, used MacroFactor to lose 47 pounds and achieve his goal of a single-digit body fat percentage. 

“My biggest win was the lifelong changes MacroFactor assisted in making,” Brett said. “About 4 months into my cut, I started walking a minimum of 12,000 steps per day, and MacroFactor really showed the difference on the expenditure graph. It has made diet compliance a breeze due to the sheer increase in calories while also positively impacting so many other aspects of my health — resting heart rate dropped, blood pressure dropped, HRV increased, lipids dropped, and sleep quality improved.”

Read more from Brett’s success story here. 

Article: What Do We Mean When We Call MacroFactor “Adherence Neutral”?

We sometimes refer to MacroFactor as an “adherence neutral” app, and you might be wondering what we mean when we use that term.

​This article​ by MF co-founder Greg covers the topic as directly as possible, and discusses why we have an adherence-neutral philosophy.

We think this is a pretty important article, because adherence neutrality can be a pretty unintuitive concept – dietary adherence is obviously important for reaching your goals, so wouldn’t it make sense to try to enforce a high level of dietary adherence to help people reach their goals? Usually not.

What Do We Mean When We Call MacroFactor “Adherence Neutral”?

Read the article >

Success Story: How Bárbara Used MacroFactor to Gain Strength and Build a More Muscular Physique

Bárbara Martins, a 32-year-old personal trainer and nutrition coach, started lifting weights more than a decade ago, but has always struggled with gaining weight and building muscle.

“My main goal with lifting, since day one, has been to get stronger and put on muscle,” she said.

A little over a year ago, she found herself at one of her lowest weights ever. At that point, she said she was ready to buckle down and get to work in the gym and in the kitchen to gain weight, add muscle, and transform her body to what she’d always envisioned.

With the help of MacroFactor, Bárbara has gained 27 pounds, gotten stronger, and built a more muscular physique.

​Read the full article to learn more about why she chose MacroFactor and her advice for people with similar goals.

15 Knowledge Base Articles That Answered Some Common Questions 

1. Why Don’t My Macros Add Up to my Total Calories? 
2. How Do MacroFactor’s Coaching Algorithms Deal with Partially Logged Days?
3. Does MacroFactor use Energy Expenditure Data from my Wearable Activity Tracker?
4. Why Does MacroFactor Recommend Smaller Surpluses for Bulking Than I Expected?
5. What Should I Do When I Can’t Accurately Log a Meal?
6. How Accurately Do I Need To Log My Food?
7. What Should I Do If I’m Pursuing a Goal With a Strict Timeline?
8. How Should I Use MacroFactor When I’m Sick?
9. ​What Should I Do If My Activity Levels Change Drastically? 
10. ​Should I Still Log My Weight if I Feel Like I’m Bloated, Constipated, or Retaining Water?
11. ​Will Logging Food to a Future Day Affect my Expenditure and Coaching Recommendations? 
12. ​Will Logging Food to a Previous Day Affect my Expenditure and Coaching Recommendations? 
13. What Should I Do if My Initial Expenditure or Recommended Energy Intake Seems Too High or Too Low? 
14. ​Why Does my New Program Have Slightly Different Calorie and Macronutrient Targets Than My Old Program, Even Though I Didn’t Change my Goal? 
15. ​Does My Data Reset if I Change Goals or Create a New Program? 

Winter 

In Winter 2023-2024, we released one of our most exciting features yet: the MacroFactor label scanner. The label scanner unlocked faster, easier food logging for everyone. In addition to the label scanner feature, we published several new success stories and Knowledge Base articles. Plus, the first scientific study using MacroFactor to track nutrition was published in the Journal of Sports Sciences in February. 

Label Scanner

In December, MacroFactor added a label scanner to its food logging suite so you can create and track new foods effortlessly. No more back and forth to input nutrition facts – simply scan and go!

Nutrition label scanning is a powerful tool to effortlessly create and track new foods. 

This feature eliminated the need for manual data entry and guesswork, ensuring accuracy in your macro tracking. 

Whether you’re counting calories, monitoring your protein intake, or keeping an eye on your carbohydrate and fat consumption, our label scanner simplifies the process, making it easier to stay on top of your nutritional goals.

Learn more: 

• Feature Page: Label Scanner
• Knowledge Base: Tips on how to utilize the label scanning feature

Articles, Case Studies, and Resources

Here are the articles, case studies, and other resources we released in Winter 2023-2024. 

Success Story: How Amanda Learned to Fuel Her Body Using MacroFactor

Amanda Barnett has used MacroFactor through weight loss, maintenance, and bulking. As a vegan, she has also used the app to ensure her nutrient requirements are being met.

“My biggest win is finally having control and understanding of how to properly fuel my body after 40 odd years of being in the dark,” Amanda said. “I have completely transformed myself inside and out. I have done things I never thought I was even remotely capable of doing, both in terms of strength gains and physique. I have never felt so empowered and it has transferred to all aspects of my life.”

Read more from Amanda’s success story here. 

Video: How To Get Abs In 60 Days (Using Science)

In this ​video by MacroFactor co-owner Jeff Nippard​, Jeff shows you the most effective, science-based way to get six-pack abs.

He covers the best ab exercises, how many calories you should eat, how much protein you should eat, and what supplements he takes – all in a thoughtful, nuanced manner. Jeff also takes a look at some of the most common mistakes people make when trying to get their abs to show.

Even if you aren’t interested in getting six-pack lean, Jeff gives great advice for abdominal strength training, macro tracking, and more.

​How To Get Abs In 60 Days (Using Science)

Watch the video >

Success Story: How Max Used MacroFactor to Prep for a Bodybuilding Show

Max used MacroFactor’s smart diet coaching features to lose 20 pounds, get stage-ready, and place 2nd in Classic Physique at his bodybuilding show.

“I think there are a lot of people who think they need a coach to diet down for a bodybuilding show, and I am not discrediting that thought at all,” Max said. “I also think, however, that people don’t realize that the tools are out there for those of us who want to do it ourselves, and MacroFactor is one of the tools that any fitness enthusiast needs to have in their toolkit.”

Read the article to learn more about how Max used MacroFactor to reach his goals. 

Success Story: How Mark Used MacroFactor to Lose Weight and Create a Better Relationship with Food

Mark Evans used MacroFactor to become more disciplined in his eating habits and create a better relationship with food. 

“Since I started using MacroFactor, I’ve been able to build better discipline around the food I consume,” Mark said. “I’m not snacking unnecessarily because I’m bored, but actually eating because I’m hungry. I’ve been able to fit into clothes now that used to be tight and uncomfortable. When I do ‘cheat,’ I don’t beat myself up, just know that the next meal/day, I’m back on track and that one blip isn’t going to ruin all my hard work.”

Read more from Mark’s success story here. 

The First Scientific Study to Use MacroFactor

In February 2024, the first scientific study using MacroFactor to track nutrition was published in the Journal of Sports Sciences. The study examined the influence of resistance training proximity to failure on hypertrophy and fatigue, and the research subjects used MacroFactor to track their nutrition and weight during their time participating in the study. You can check out the full text of the study here. 

Knowledge Base Articles that Answered Some Common Questions 

1. If You Have an Unusual Day of Eating, Is It Better to Log It, or Leave the Day Blank?
2. Understanding The Widgets At the The Top of The Dashboard
3. Tips For Creating Recipes for Dishes Comprised of Multiple Servings
4. How to Configure Your Food Logger
5. Tips for Logging Food More Accurately
6. How do MacroFactor’s Algorithms Respond to Body Recomposition?
7. ​How Does MacroFactor Make Adjustments For a Weight Gain or Weight Loss Goal?​

Spring

In Spring 2024, we released a big feature that allows users to submit new branded foods to MacroFactor’s database. We also published a thorough five-part article series on habits and a new success story. 

Food Submission

In April 2024, we released an exciting, long-awaited feature: Users can contribute new branded products to our food database.

This release was another step toward growing MacroFactor’s global branded product coverage. This feature allows us to accurately and efficiently grow the number of barcodes in our food database for users all over the world.

In addition to the benefits for the MacroFactor community, we are also sharing all new and validated submissions with Open Food Facts, a non-profit organization with the mission of making food information freely accessible to everyone. That way, if you choose to contribute new foods to the database, your work will benefit everyone who may want to access this information – not just MacroFactor users.

In the time since this feature was introduced, MacroFactor users have already contributed more than 70,000 new food submissions! You can browse the new additions here.

Learn more

• Release Notes: Release notes and FAQ about food submission
• Knowledge Base: How to Submit New or Updated Foods

Health Connect

In March 2024, we released an update to replace Google Fit with Health Connect. (Why? Google deprecated on-device APIs for the GoogleFit Platform and replaced them with the Health Connect Platform.) 

With this update, Android users got a new and improved MacroFactor integration with their on-device health and fitness platform. 

Articles, Case Studies, and Resources

Here are the articles, case studies, and other resources we released in Spring 2024. 

Article: Logging for Loss: A Look at the Research on Logging Food and Weight

Does logging help with weight management? If so, is there a best way or method to maximize its benefits?

If you’re wondering whether your logging efforts have been in vain, ​this article​ by MacroFactor’s Head of Content Leigh Peele might offer clarity.

It dives into the research behind food and weight logging, discussing elements like frequency and consistency for effectiveness. Lastly, it might inspire a reevaluation of logging, not just for weight loss but also for maintenance.

Logging for Loss: A Look at the Research on Logging Food and Weight

Read the article​ >

Article Series: Habits

This five-part series dives deep into the research on habits while providing actionable steps for meaningful change.

If you’re interested in strategies for making your nutrition and fitness habits more sustainable (or if you’re just interested in the fascinating science behind behavior change), make sure to check these articles out.

Why Habit Formation Matters For Goals

​Read the article​ >

Why Are Habits Hard to Change?

​Read the article​ >

How to Form (or Break) Habits

​Read the article​ >

Daily Routines for Successful Habits

​Read the article​ >

Crafting Environments to Support Your New Habits​​

​Read the article​ >

Article: Five Key Tips for Satiety and Satiation

Is protein the most satiating thing we can eat? Do energy-dense foods help prevent overeating? Does exercise blunt appetite?

This article on the MacroFactor website by Leigh Peele tackles these questions and offers five practical tips to help you get the most fullness from your meals.

Five Key Tips for Satiety and Satiation

​Read the article​ >

Success Story: Brayan’s 40-Pound Weight Loss 

Brayan Pagan struggled to maintain his desired weight until he found MacroFactor.

“Through MacroFactor, I’ve essentially learned how to eat properly. I gained knowledge about portion sizes and how even the smallest dietary choices contribute to my overall nutrition. Since starting the program, I’ve lost 40 pounds, bringing my weight down to 230 pounds. Not only have I shed a significant amount of fat, but I’ve also gained muscle in the process. However, the most important impact MacroFactor has had on my life is showing me that what once seemed like an impossible task is actually achievable with hard work and determination.”

Read more from Brayan’s success story here. 

Summer 

In Summer 2024, we released new coaching and goal-setting features – including one of the biggest updates to the app yet. In addition, we introduced a new Log By Macro feature for food logging, and published a new BMR article series, Nutrition Fundamentals article series, and several new success stories. 

The MF Coach and Coaching Modules

Earlier this month, we released one of the biggest updates to the app since it launched three years ago and introduced the next generation of MacroFactor’s cutting-edge nutrition coaching.

From inception, the foundation of MacroFactor’s nutrition coaching has been its weekly in-app nutrition “check-ins” for users. During the check-in, MacroFactor makes any necessary updates to your calorie and macro targets based on the last week of weight and nutrition data – ensuring that your dietary targets are aligned with your stated goals and unique metabolism.

Until this release, the check-in has consisted only of that functional, quantitative adjustment. This system produces smart, industry-leading recommendations that have helped thousands of people reach their diet goals, but the experience of checking in lacked personalization, flexibility, and personality.

With this update, the Weekly Check-In transformed into a more dynamic and personalized experience, driven by the intelligent “MF Coach.” The Check-In now consists of curated “Coaching Modules” that will help you resolve diet challenges you are facing and optimize your diet through further personalization.

Here’s how it works:

• The MF Coach observes your logging behaviors and analyzes your data and progress each week, then curates a custom Check-In experience with experientially rich Coaching Modules.
• During the Check-In, the MF Coach will ask you relevant questions, suggest novel changes to your macro program, and make personalized adjustments based on your data and feedback.

The result? In-app diet coaching that feels more customized, flexible, and attentive to your unique journey – like working with a high-quality human coach.

Version 3.0.0 included MacroFactor’s first six modules, but there’s (much) more to come.

With the coaching module framework now built into MacroFactor’s check-in system, our team plans to begin releasing new modules regularly, ensuring fresh experiences and added value for years to come.

Learn more

• Announcement article: The MF Coach is Here! Experience Our New Coaching Modules for Personalized Nutrition Guidance

The MacroFactor Equation 

In August, we introduced the MacroFactor Equation. The app’s initial expenditure calculation now uses the MacroFactor Equation to determine a new user’s basal metabolic rate (BMR). This equation improves upon the strong foundation of existing BMR science by accounting for metabolic adaptation during weight loss, non-linear decrease in metabolic rate due to aging, and other factors. 

Learn more: The MacroFactor Equation was developed after a thorough review of the literature on the latest BMR science, detailed in our companion article series on the website. 

Goal-Setting

In June, we released revamped goal- and program-setting experiences.

We improved explainers in the wizards, strengthened the goal-program narrative, and clarified the relationship between target setting, weight trend, and scale weight. 

Of course, this release also included a set of new features and quality-of-life improvements:

• Edit coached and collaborative program
• Edit the target weight whether you are pursuing your goal with scale or trend weight
• Reopen past goals
• Fine tune your goal rate
• Override the app’s recommendations for bulking goals
• Reset the collaborative program
• View summary of the changes you made to your goal during editing

Learn more

• Announcement article: Ready, Set, Goal! The More Powerful Goal-Setting Experience is Here
• Knowledge Base articles: Setting a new goal and creating a new macro program.

Log by Macro

In June, we released the Log by Macro feature, which allows you to specify the Calories or macros you consumed via a food and have MacroFactor calculate the serving size for you.

To see a few use cases for this feature, check out this quick video on MacroFactor’s Instagram. 

Learn more

• Knowledge Base: Log by Calories or Macros

Bidirectional Integrations

In August, we introduced bidirectional integrations – meaning that MacroFactor can now import Calories, macros, and micronutrients for the day from Apple Health and Health Connect! 

Weight data can also be imported into and exported from your respective health platform. That means you can track your weight in MacroFactor and have your weight record in Apple Health and Health Connect as well. 

Learn more

• Knowledge Base: Integrations

Articles, Case Studies, and Resources

Here are the articles, case studies, and other resources we released in Summer 2024. 

Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) Calculator

The BMR Calculator tool on the MacroFactor website will estimate your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). Your BMR is the amount of energy your body burns at rest, and it’s the largest component of your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE).

This BMR Calculator accounts for key factors that other BMR calculators and equations overlook, to give you the most accurate BMR estimate possible. We have calculators for both metric and imperial units, and the calculator page also includes key points about the impact of sex, age, athletic status, weight loss, and weight gain on BMR. 

BMR Calculator: How many calories does your body burn at rest?

Use the free calculator >

Article Series: Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR)

We did a thorough review of the literature on the latest BMR science digging into the research on factors that affect BMR.

On one level, this series explains the “whys” behind MacroFactor’s BMR formulas, but on a more basic level, it serves as a comprehensive resource to teach you everything you need to know about resting energy expenditure.

What are the Best Basal Metabolic Rate Equations?

​Read the article​ >

What Determines Your Basal Metabolic Rate?

​Read the article​ >

The Impact of Sex on Basal Metabolic Rate

​Read the article​ >

Does Your Metabolism Slow Down With Age?

​Read the article​ >

How (and Why) Athletes’ BMRs Differ from Non-Athletes

​Read the article​ >

How Weight Loss Affects BMR

​Read the article​ >

How Weight Gain Affects BMR

​Read the article​ >

The Reasoning and Methodology Behind MacroFactor’s New BMR Equations

​Read the article​ >

The (Surprisingly Wide) Range of BMRs in Adults

​Read the article​ >

No, PCOS Doesn’t Lower BMR (Scientific Review)

​Read the article​ >

Article Series: Nutrition Fundamentals

Our series on nutrition fundamentals covers a range of topics, from daily intake guidelines for macronutrients to food sources and their potential impact on health. This series is great for those new to nutrition and enthusiasts seeking the latest guidelines.

How Much Protein Should I Eat?

​Read the article​ >

How Many Carbohydrates Should I Eat Every Day?

​Read the article​ >

How Much Fat Should I Eat Every Day?

​Read the article​ >

Protein Quality: Why It Matters and How to Maximize It

​Read the article​ >

Can You Eat Too Few Carbohydrates?

​Read the article​ >

What Types of Fats Should I Be Eating?

​Read the article​ >

Article: Do Your Calories Feel Too Low? Too High?

This article discusses the steps you can take if your MacroFactor calorie targets feel too low or too high. We explore common reasons your targets might seem off and provide practical tips to tweak and optimize your plan.

Do Your Calories Feel Too Low? Too High?

​Read the article​ >

Article: Tips for Hitting Your Macros When Bulking

Struggling to hit your macros while bulking? This article will give you some practical tips for managing appetite and optimizing your macro intake without feeling too full.

Tips for Hitting Your Macros When Bulking

​Read the article​ >

Article: Tips for Hitting Lower Calorie and Macro Goals

If you’re struggling to reach your lower Calorie goals, this article will help you develop a more effective strategy.

Tips for Hitting Lower Calorie and Macro Goals

​Read the article​ >

Success Story: Charlie’s Bulk and 25-Pound Weight Loss

Charlie Ryan used MacroFactor for both a bulk and a cut, transforming his body over the course of a year. 

“With MacroFactor I’ve been able to transform my body in a fairly short amount of time like I didn’t think was possible,” Charlie said. “I started using MF last July and bulked up a fair amount until the end of the year, maybe taking the bulk a little too far and too fast. Since January I’ve been able to cut down roughly 25 pounds while keeping all of the muscle I put on, looking drastically different than when I started last year. I’ve gotten tons of compliments and people asking how I did it, and I’m always quick to recommend MF.”

Read more from Charlie’s success story here. 

Success Story: Aaron’s Cut-to-Bulk Strategy that Transformed His Physique

Aaron Rosenberg used MacroFactor as his guide for both bulking and cutting. 

Aaron said he “lost 25lbs initially, bringing me down to the lowest weight in my adult life. Perhaps more impressively, I turned around and started bulking without feeling like I was undoing all the hard work I had done to get there. Eventually I decided that I would try to have visible abs for the first time in my life, a vain goal but a great motivator! It took about 10 months for the initial cut, initial bulk, and minicut.”

Read more from Aaron’s success story here. 

Success Story: Mike’s Months-Long Maintenance with MacroFactor

Mike N. decided he wanted to move from a cut to maintenance, and he used MacroFactor to take him all the way.

“I’ve been able to manage my weight better than I ever have. From cutting to maintaining, MacroFactor has made manipulating my weight incredibly easy. It’s by far the best nutrition/calorie-counting app I’ve ever used. In fact, I wouldn’t even call it a calorie-counting app. It’s much more than that. It’s a weight management app. It makes losing, maintaining, or gaining weight incredibly simple and straightforward. Tell the app what your goal is, give it accurate data, and enjoy the progress!”

When asked what his biggest win with MacroFactor was, Mike said:

“A few months ago, I thought my 18-pound cut from 202 to 184 from Feb 5 to April 15 was my biggest ‘win,’ but I think maintaining 190-192 for four months is an even bigger win. In the past, I had always struggled to maintain weight for more than a month or two. With MacroFactor, I couldn’t believe how easy it was to maintain my weight, even through periods of very high-volume training and periods of lower-volume training.”

Read more from Mike’s success story here. 

Team, Business, and Community

In addition to expanding the features and functionality within the app itself, we also worked hard to expand the business, team, and MacroFactor communities this year. Here’s a brief overview of those changes and improvements.

User Growth 

When we published our first annual report in 2022, we had 35,000 users. Last year, we had 90,000. This year, we are excited to say that MacroFactor has grown to more than 185,000 users. 

A huge part of this remarkable growth is due to word-of-mouth marketing from MacroFactor users like you. Many of you have told your friends and family about the app and contributed enormously to the sense of community and excitement we see in our Facebook group, subreddit, and support channels every day. Thank you! We are blown away and so grateful. 

New Team Members

We welcomed four new members to the MacroFactor team this year. 

In January, Leigh Peele joined as our Head of Content. Since then, she’s published 15+ fantastic, evidence-based articles on the MacroFactor website and Knowledge Base, and has become an integral part of our mission to provide high-quality nutrition content that complements the app. 

In February, Justin Butts joined as a Product and Support Specialist. Every day since then, Justin has been helping users in our support channels and communities by answering questions, explaining features and workflows, and going above and beyond to make sure each MacroFactor user has a great experience with the app. 

In May, Ryan Ferrell joined the Engineering team as a Staff Mobile Engineer. Ryan has brought with him a depth of expertise with Apple platforms, which he has applied to increase the MacroFactor surface area on iOS. For example, soon you will be able to experience MacroFactor on your Apple Watch and see his incredible work in action. More iOS feature announcements to follow!

Earlier this month (September), Jake Boychenko joined the Engineering team as a Senior Flutter Developer and hit the ground running. In his first week of joining, he made nine product enhancements requested by our users and is now creating a home for your step data within MacroFactor. We are excited for this experience to come to you soon!

We are so thrilled to have each of these amazing people on our team. 

Launching in Japan

In addition to the four great US-based team members we welcomed this year, we’ve also had the pleasure of working with a top-tier Tokyo-based team (Andy Morgan, Kengo Yao, and Jon Clemons)  to localize MacroFactor for Japan. 

In May, the Japanese version of MacroFactor officially launched! 

The app is not only translated into Japanese, but it also includes a specialized database with thousands of Japanese foods. 

It’s been so exciting to introduce MacroFactor’s unique macro tracking and diet coaching features to thousands of new Japanese users who are looking to lose fat, gain muscle, and maintain their weight!

A Brief Review of Last Year’s Report

In last year’s report, we told you that we would spend much of 2024 creating a coaching experience that serves you better – one that’s more dynamic, observant, and experientially rich.

We are excited to say that we completed that goal and launched our new coaching system earlier this month. 

Of course, we also completed several other large feature sets that weren’t mentioned in last year’s report and delivered on a few of the most-requested features on our product roadmap, including widgets, label scanning, and the food submission pipeline.

It’s been a busy year, and we are proud of what we’ve created and how we’ve grown.  

But, of course, there’s still so much we want to do! Let’s look forward to what’s next. 

Looking Forward: What’s Next for MacroFactor

The app updates we made this past year weren’t just one-time improvements. These updates set up systems that will ensure key areas of the app continue to improve year after year.

The food database gets more comprehensive and accurate every day due to our food submission pipeline and partnership with Open Food Facts. In the years to come, you can expect more foods from more parts of the world available for logging in MacroFactor. 

The smart nutrition coach and check-in experience will continue to improve with the new MF Coach and Coaching Module system. You can expect many more check-in modules that are capable of suggesting novel changes to your macro program and making personalized adjustments based on your data and feedback. Our next modules, for example, will allow you to review and adjust your protein targets and goal rate on the fly during the check-in. 

The new expenditure algorithm is more elegant and flexible than its predecessors, which will make further enhancements simpler. Plus, our work on things like Health Connect and bidirectional integrations this past year will enable more data types to be added to the app and considered by our algorithms. For example, we’re excited to announce that step data will soon be available in MacroFactor. 

Because these systems make developing and improving key areas of the app more seamless, we will also be able to expand MacroFactor into new frontiers in the coming years: availability on Apple Watch, a MacroFactor workout app, original research, and more. 

Disclaimer: As with everything we work on, we can’t commit to delivery details or timelines for when these things will be available, but we want you to know that we’re already hard at work

MacroFactor on Apple Watch

MacroFactor is coming to Apple Watch!

We’ll be able to share more details very soon. For now, though, we’re thrilled to give you this exciting first look…

Workout App 

It’s official. We are building a workout app! 

Much like the nutrition app, the workout app will feature an easy-to-use interface, helpful analytics, evidence-based recommendations, and innovative and meticulously crafted utilities.  

We can’t give too many details on this new app yet, but we can let you know that development has already begun, and we are all extremely excited about what we’re cooking up for you. 

Metabolism Research 

This year, we’ll be partnering with a team of researchers to carry out a major initiative that will help further improve MacroFactor’s initial nutrition recommendations, while also benefiting the research community as a whole.

In short, there’s been a lot of metabolism research conducted over the years, and it hasn’t all been formally and systematically meta-analyzed … ever. There’s a good reason for that: just locating all of the studies and extracting all of the data will take (conservatively) 500-1,000 hours of work, and it’s not a project where you’re apt to find much public funding.

So, we’ll be funding it, and making all the resulting data tables and analyses publicly available. This won’t just benefit MacroFactor users – it will save the global research community hundreds or thousands of hours that would otherwise be spent doing duplicate systematic literature searches.

If all goes according to plan, we should be able to start publishing our analyses within the next year. And, if that goes well, we’ll likely expand out to other areas of research in the future.

New Year’s Challenge

We’re currently planning our very first MacroFactor New Year’s challenge for January 2025. 

This challenge will be open to all MacroFactor users who are interested in setting (and achieving) a body composition goal, getting some extra support, and winning some serious prizes in the New Year! 

We’ll share more details in the communities and on our social channels as we get closer to the end of the year. 

How to Get Involved and Stay Updated 

First, join our communities or subscribe to our newsletter to stay updated.

Communities: Folks in our Facebook group, subreddit, and Instagram communities are the first to hear about new releases and what we’re working on. The groups are also a great place to ask and answer questions and connect with a like-minded and supportive community. 

Newsletter: Another way to stay updated is the MacroFactor Monthly Newsletter. On the last Monday of each month, we send a brief newsletter that includes sections on new features in the app, content recommendations, and a sneak peek at features in development. 

Second, you can submit and vote on new features using our public roadmap. 

We maintain a public roadmap that shows our short- to medium-term plans for new features and improvements. You can vote on the upcoming features that are the highest priority to you, which will help guide our development priorities. 

Third, leave a 5-star rating on the App Store or Google Play. 

If you’re enjoying MacroFactor, please consider leaving a 5-star rating or review on the​ App Store​ or​ Google Play​. Positive reviews of MacroFactor really help with discoverability for folks looking for an app like ours.

Thank You

We’ll end this third Annual Report the same way we’ve ended it the last two years: by taking the opportunity to say thank you one more time. 

There is no MacroFactor without you. You support us, inspire us, and motivate us to keep building and improving. We are so grateful for our MFer community, and so excited to continue working on this product that we love.  

The post The 2024 MacroFactor Annual Report appeared first on MacroFactor.

From inception, the foundation of MacroFactor’s nutrition coaching has been its weekly in-app nutrition Check-Ins for users. During the Check-In, MacroFactor makes any necessary updates to the user’s calorie and macro targets based on the last week of weight and nutrition data – ensuring that their dietary targets are aligned with their stated goals and unique metabolism.

In Version 3.0.0, the weekly Check-In becomes a truly thoughtful, dynamic, and personalized experience, driven by the intelligent MF Coach. The new Check-In will consist of curated Coaching Modules that help resolve diet challenges users are facing and optimize their diet through further personalization.

The MF Coach thoughtfully designs your weekly check-in to keep you on track

Throughout the week, MacroFactor’s intelligent MF Coach observes users’ logging behaviors and analyzes their data and rate of progress toward their stated goal. Then, through a series of experientially rich coaching modules during the weekly Check-In, the MF Coach will ask relevant questions, suggest novel improvements and changes to the macro program, and make personalized adjustments based on users’ data and feedback. 

The MF Coach is designed to be meaningfully impactful and minimally disruptive. Many food loggers on the market have been utilizing invasive marketing questionnaires masquerading as personalization, and those questionnaires seldom lead to any meaningful changes to the user’s experience. The MF Coach stands counter to this trend and instead curates the check-in experience, only presenting new information when it may be helpful along your journey and only asking questions when answers can meaningfully impact the trajectory of your goal.

Coaching modules address unique diet challenges you may be facing

Coaching modules are the building blocks of the check-in. They are thoughtfully curated for each particular user and each particular check-in. The MF Coach determines which modules appear based on the user’s unique habits and progress. Some modules will be mainstays at most check-ins, while others will only surface for specific situations.

Version 3.0.0 includes MacroFactor’s first six modules. This first batch of modules focuses on reviewing the week’s nutrition and weight logging data with the user, allowing them to provide context that will lead to more accurate coaching recommendations.

Here is the anatomy of a coaching module and how it works.

First, the MF Coach will introduce the module on the Check-In page and explain why the module is being surfaced at this Check-In at this precise moment. You can skip any module, or choose to continue to its contents.

Many of the modules may offer an explanation of a new concept or an observation about the current state of your account as the first step. For example, the first page of the Partial Logging module introduces you to the concept of Partial Logging and how logging your day incompletely may impact your expenditure analytics and program recommendations.

When necessary, a module will follow up with clarifying questions to help rectify your data or confirm the MF Coach’s understanding of your situation. For example, the Partial Logging module will display days that the MF Coach has flagged as potentially incomplete and ask you to confirm whether those days were indeed partially logged. 

Once the MF Coach has enough information, it will take action. Usually, the last step of a module provides an explanation, offers guidance, or makes a meaningful change to your account data or program. For example, the Partial Logging module will take action and mark certain days as incomplete to safeguard your expenditure analysis from inaccurate data. 

Finally, each module ends with a familiar screen indicating that you are done with that portion of the Check-In. The final screen gives you the ability to permanently dismiss any module that you did not find useful. 

Coaching that is personalized, but also finely configurable

The MF Coach is built to improve a user’s ability to adhere to their diet and reach their goals, with precision in mind. It aims to solve problems that arise in the moment, without surrounding the user with unnecessary noise. To deliver on the promise of a highly personalized coaching experience, we added fine controls so you can customize your MF Coach to your needs.

If certain module topics are not of interest to you, you can permanently silence any existing or future module from the Strategy page in the More menu. If you are an advanced MacroFactor operator or are working with a coach but leveraging MF to keep your targets current, you can also opt into a Fast Check-In, which will skip past all coaching experiences and give you updated macros each week.

Project MFer-01: The Kettle Bot

Every good coach deserves a trusty and experienced assistant. With coaching modules, we are introducing a new character to the MacroFactor animated universe.

KettleBot

— Calorie burner, beast of pure metabolism, and (not so) humble adventurer!

KettleBot overcomes unique challenges with you along your journey. He is motivated, mischievous, and encouraging and is ready to go where you will take him. As you find yourself in new circumstances, you will also see KettleBot in new situations, adding some humor to your experience. 

With this additional emphasis on making MacroFactor enjoyable, we remain deeply committed to highly functional and streamlined user experience. 

Reinforcing our commitment to diet coaching innovation

The MF Coach is grounded in MacroFactor’s science-based analytics, combined with a human-centric approach to problem solving.

For the past three years, MacroFactor has been the uncontested mobile app leader in metabolic analysis for diet coaching. MacroFactor is the only app on the market that continuously learns from the nutrition and weight you log to give you an accurate estimate of your maintenance calories, leading to better dietary outcomes. The MF Coach builds on top of this strong foundation to address the human side of dieting. 

With the coaching module framework now built into MacroFactor’s check-in system, our team plans to begin releasing new modules regularly, ensuring fresh experiences and added value for our users for years to come.

See you at the next check-in

The MF Coach will start curating coaching modules for you as early as your next Check-In, and the MacroFactor team is always available to help on the MacroFactor app community on Facebook and the MacroFactor subreddit. 

If you are ready to get started with MacroFactor, you can download the app now from the App Store or Google Play. 

You can also learn more about macro tracking, nutrition, and physiology by reading our in-depth articles or browsing our extensive knowledge base. 

The post The MF Coach is Here! Experience Our New Coaching Modules for Personalized Nutrition Guidance appeared first on MacroFactor.