Find out what your body actually needs
Around thirty quick questions, about five minutes. You get your daily calories, your protein goal and day 1 of a plan built around how you live.
- About 5 minutes
- Completely free
- No card needed
- Every number sourced
The people pictured in this quiz are generated illustrations, not photographs of real people.
What matters most right now?
This sets your calorie target and what the training is for.
The pictures on this screen are generated illustrations, not photographs of real people or their results.
Which body are you working toward?
It sets what the training builds and what the tracker watches. A direction, not a promise: how a body changes depends on age, genes and time.
The pictures on this screen are generated illustrations, not photographs of real people or their results.
What would you change first?
It decides which measurement your tracker watches beside the scale, and what the sessions lead with.
The pictures on this screen are generated illustrations, not photographs of real people or their results.
How old are you?
Energy needs shift with age, so the target adjusts for it.
Where are you with your cycle?
Around and after menopause the plan puts protein at the top of the range and treats strength sessions as the part not to skip. This is health information: it only shapes that advice, and you can skip it.
Muscle is the thing to protect
Muscle mass and strength fall with age unless something pushes back, and the two levers with the strongest evidence are strength training and enough protein. For older adults who exercise, the PROT-AGE group advises at least 1.2 g of protein per kilo of body weight a day. Your plan sets the target above that and splits it across your meals.
Source: Volpi et al., Curr Opin Clin Nutr Metab Care 2004; Bauer et al., J Am Med Dir Assoc 2013 (PROT-AGE)
How active is a normal week?
Be honest. Overestimating is the top reason targets fail.
Your height and weight
Used to calculate your numbers and portion your plan. Never shared.
Where would you like to be?
A target lets the plan draw your pace, in weeks and a date. Leave it if you are not sure.
Your pace, on paper
Walking
A daily walk is part of every plan we write. How do you feel about it?
Strength training
Weights, bands or your own bodyweight, two to four short sessions a week.
Cycling, running or swimming
Anything that gets you out of breath for twenty minutes.
Stretching and mobility
Five to ten minutes of hips, back and shoulders.
How many strength sessions can you really fit in a week?
The plan schedules exactly that many. A plan you can keep beats one you admire.
How long can a session be?
Sets and moves are cut to fit it, so a session never runs over.
What can you train with?
Every session is written for what you have.
Where the fat leaves first is not up to you
Twenty-four adults did seven abdominal exercises, five days a week for six weeks, on the same calories as before: no change in abdominal fat or waist size, only in how many curl-ups they could do. In a 12-week trial that trained one leg with up to 1,200 repetitions a session, fat fell in the arms and trunk, not in the trained leg. The calorie target does the losing; the sessions decide what you keep; the tape measure shows where it went.
Source: Vispute et al., J Strength Cond Res 2011; Ramirez-Campillo et al., J Strength Cond Res 2013
Two sessions a week is the dose
The World Health Organization asks every adult for muscle-strengthening work on two or more days a week, on top of 150 to 300 minutes of moderate movement. That is the smallest amount that holds muscle while the calorie target does its work, which is why even a plan for someone who dislikes lifting keeps two short sessions, and why a session in your plan fits the minutes you said you have.
Source: WHO Guidelines on Physical Activity and Sedentary Behaviour, 2020
Protein works in portions
The body uses protein for muscle best when it arrives in portions through the day, not in one meal. A 2018 review puts the useful dose at about 0.4 g per kilo of body weight per meal, across at least four meals, to reach 1.6 g per kilo a day. That is why your plan states a protein figure for every meal, not just a daily total.
How long can dinner take on a normal evening?
Lunches and dinners in your plan stay under this.
How many meals suit your day?
The calories are split across exactly these.
How do you eat?
Your plan respects this, no foods you will not touch.
Anything you never eat?
Pick all that apply. None of it appears in any meal or swap.
What do you reach for when a day goes sideways?
Pick all that apply. The plan budgets for it instead of pretending it will not happen.
How many hours do you usually sleep?
Sleep moves appetite, so the plan accounts for a short night.
How is your stress, most weeks?
On a hard week the plan tells you what to protect first and what to let slide.
A short night makes the next day hungrier
Across 18 adult studies pooled in a 2008 meta-analysis, short sleepers had 1.55 times the odds of obesity. In a laboratory study, two nights of four hours of sleep raised hunger ratings by 24 percent and appetite for calorie-dense food by a third (12 young men, so a small study, but a clear one). On a bad week the first fix is an earlier night, not a smaller dinner.
Source: Cappuccio et al., Sleep 2008; Spiegel et al., Ann Intern Med 2004
Has a doctor diagnosed any of these?
Pick all that apply. It adds notes to your plan and changes nothing else.
Do you take any of these?
Some medicines change how a calorie target should be handled. Notes only; nothing here is medical advice.
Are you pregnant or breastfeeding?
A calorie deficit is the wrong tool for either, so the answer decides whether a plan is the right thing to give you.
This plan is not built for pregnancy or breastfeeding
The plan sets a calorie target below what your body uses, and that is the wrong thing to hand you now: both of you need the energy, and the safe figures come from your midwife or doctor, not from a formula. The guides below are written for exactly this time, and the quiz will be here afterwards.
- Pregnancy weight gain calculator
- Sleep aids for pregnant women: what is safe
- Sleeping with sciatica during pregnancy
Have you been diagnosed with an eating disorder, now or in the past?
We ask because a calorie target can do harm here, and we would rather know.
A calorie target is the wrong thing for us to give you
Counting, targets and a scale are the parts of this plan that can pull an eating disorder back, and no plan is worth that. If you are working with a clinician or a dietitian, a food plan should come from them. The guides below are the ones we would point you to instead: eating for energy, strength and sleep, with no numbers to hit.
Read the guides insteadYour health notes
What usually gets in the way?
Your plan leads with this instead of ignoring it.
What has changed in the last few years?
Pick all that apply. Weight rarely moves on its own; something usually moved it.
Why now?
The plan opens with this, because it is the thing you will read on a bad day.
When is it?
Your plan will say what the estimate looks like by then, honestly, and what it does not.
What have you tried before?
Pick all that apply. The plan starts where those stopped.
How sure are you that you will still be on this in four weeks?
Honest answers make a plan you keep. The plan starts smaller for a low one, not bigger.
The plan you keep is the plan that works
In a one-year trial, 160 adults were assigned to Atkins, Zone, Weight Watchers or Ornish. Each group lost between 2 and 3 kg on average, half to two thirds finished the year, and within every diet the people who kept to it lost the most: how closely people followed the plan predicted the result, the rules of the diet did not. So your plan is built to be kept: two short sessions before four long ones, meals you can cook in the time you said, and a week 1 that is easier than it needs to be.
Source: Dansinger et al., JAMA 2005
Building your plan
Calculating your energy needs...
Your plan is on its way
Day 1 and your week are in the email. Everything above is yours to start today.
Explore the free toolsGeneral information, not medical advice. Targets are estimates based on population averages, and any pace shown is an estimate, not a promise. If you are pregnant or breastfeeding, managing a medical condition, taking medication that affects appetite or blood sugar, or have a history of disordered eating, talk to your doctor before changing how you eat.