Unlike generic calorie calculators, this one uses Energy Availability (EA) — the same framework researchers use to assess whether athletes are actually fueling enough for their training load. You plug in your weight, body composition, FTP, and weekly training schedule, and it gives you:
An EA diagnosis — are you fueling enough, or at risk for RED-S?
Day-by-day calorie and macro targets based on your actual training schedule
Built-in carb cycling — training days vs. rest days
Goal-based adjustments (maintain, gradual optimization, or aggressive) with safety
guardrails
Don’t know your body composition? There’s a built-in estimator using the Navy Method.
What I’d love feedback on:
Is this useful/helpful?
Do the targets feel reasonable for your situation?
There are clearly a lot of different things we can do with this and the product, so feel free to throw out your wishlist as well as any feedback you have.
Minor nitpick: the data form really doesn’t like users of Firefox on mobile (Android). At least in the mobile view it won’t allow any data input (except pasting from clipboard). Works in desktop view though.
Besides that, I like the idea of the calculator and will definitely play around a bit more with it. Not sure if it does provide it yet, but it would be awesome if it could be extended to also provide some insights into event fueling
Pretty neat concept. A couple of thoughts for continued development.
Link to TR account so that rides and other workouts can automatically be incorporated.
Link to MyFitnessPal and other food logging software for those that use them. Keep the manual entry for those that don’t log food and/or want to spot check their macros.
For me, the email and obligatory acceptance of marketing emails is a turn-off. I feel like your style is to be open with blog post and podcast training advice, and let that serve as low-key marketing that people are happy to consume.
I put a nonsense email in and could still see my results, so I get that there is a workaround. I think you’d be better off making it optional, make it exclusively podcast and blog post and new free tool notifications, and/or making funnel links more prominent.
Obvs not a huge deal and I realize you’re running a business in the real world, but it was just the biggest thing about the calculator that stood out to me.
On the substance, I didn’t feel like measuring my body parts and accidentally entered in my net calories which I track carefully, so the result numbers didn’t help. It’d be nice if you had a fast path that just reported the calories you need for the work you’re doing. (Also, obviously, build it into the platform as a feature.)
Overall, I like it, but given I’ve been tracking calories, TDEE and weight for a LONG time (using the MacroFactor app) and my training volume is pretty static - I’m confident the numbers it’s giving me would result in me gaining weight. “Rapidly optimise body composition” is basically maintenance. “Gradually” and “maintain” are definitely a calorie surplus and would result in weight gain.
Maybe I’m an edge case, but with an FTP ~3 w/kg at ~90 kg and doing 3-4 hours of training a week I find that suprising
Oh, also agree on the mandatory email, make it an option sure, but don’t force people to sign up
I think I’d need to be much more consistent with my diet and training to find a weekly prescription useful - when I’ve though about this before, I found a prescription for hard days vs easy days was more practical
Yes, but setting a macro target means there is a lot more work to do before going shopping
I’m not sure how useful it would be until I actually used it for a week or so.
The targets look pretty high to me at first glance just from a calorie perspective. Protein looks correct, overall calories don’t jive for slow weight loss.
Because I would be targeting slow fat loss, I think having it tied directly with my account to get the exact work performed each day would make way more sense. Running small deficits requires some pretty precise calorie in and out to get real value.
It was easy to use. As others have mentioned, the numbers seem much higher than I would have expected, but I’m willing to give the macro goals a shot, see if I can hit them (the protein in particular is VERY high), and look back in a few months to see if I’ve lost weight or altered body composition.
The biggest downside I see so far to the setup process is that LoseIt doesn’t let you set different daily goals, which will make it hard to track a Tuesday hard day versus a Wednesday easy day.
It’s interesting, at the very least! I think it would be hard to follow each per day, but it gives me a window and some numbers.
The targets seem reasonable, other than protein: I chose slow change in body comp, and it gave me 2g/kg of body weight as a goal (138 for 69kg). I can do that on some days, but getting it every day seems a bit beyond what I could pull off.
Yes, protein and fat are close to The Pfaffenbach’s calculations. Nice to see the carbs change based on time and rpe although aren’t you supposed to eat more the day before big days rather than on the day?
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