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How your daily target is calculated

Updated October 2, 2026

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Your target is a guide to how much to eat in a day to move towards your goal. It is not a hard limit: plus or minus 200 kcal on any single day is fine, and the weekly average matters more.

What we ask and why

When you first open the app, it asks a few questions:

  • your goal: eat better, lose weight, gain weight or stay in shape;
  • sex, age, height and weight: these determine how much energy your body uses at rest;
  • activity: from "Calm" with a desk job to "High" with five or more workouts a week;
  • target weight and pace: if you want to lose or gain.

If you are unsure about activity, choose "Moderate". Overestimating it is the most common mistake: the target comes out higher than you need, and you do not see results.

How the number is calculated

  1. First we calculate your basal metabolic rate, what your body uses at complete rest. We use the Mifflin-St Jeor equation: it is more accurate than older formulas and does not require knowing your body fat percentage.
  2. We multiply it by an activity factor. Our factors are a little more modest than the classic ones: people almost always rate their activity higher than it really is.
  3. We account for your goal. For weight loss that is a gentle deficit of about 18%, for weight gain about 12% on top. If you chose a pace, we calculate from it: so many kilos a week means so much deficit.
There is a floorYour target is never lower than your basal metabolic rate, and never below 1,200 kcal for women or 1,500 kcal for men. If the pace you picked would need less, the app tells you: reaching the goal will simply take longer.

Protein, fat, carbs, fibre and water

  • Protein comes first: 1.6 g per kilo of body weight, or 1.9 g when losing weight, because it helps preserve muscle.
  • Fat is about 28% of calories, but never less than 0.7 g per kilo.
  • Carbs are whatever is left.
  • Fibre is 14 g for every 1,000 kcal of your target.
  • Water is 30 ml per kilo of body weight, plus 500 ml with high activity.

At a higher body weight we calculate protein, fat and water from an adjusted weight rather than your full weight. Otherwise you would get unrealistic numbers like 300 g of protein a day.

How to adjust your target by hand

Open Profile → Target and macro split. You can change any number: calories, protein, fat, carbs. If the grams stop adding up to the calories, the app will point it out. To go back to the calculation, tap "Recalculate from my data".

When your goal, activity or details change, the target is recalculated automatically. What happens after that is covered in Recalculating your target.

This is a guide, not medical adviceIf you are pregnant, have diabetes, kidney disease or another condition where a doctor prescribes your diet, follow their recommendations.