Stronger By Science - MacroFactor App

[mgil]

This looks interesting:



Info available here per @gnuckols when I asked a question on Instagram.

https://www.strongerbyscience.com/macro ... ming-soon/

[dw]

I'm optimistic about the app but that logo doesn't work for me.

[mgil]

https://www.strongerbyscience.com/macrofactor/

Pricing and features look good.

[TheGloriousW]

I am very curious have this will compare to Avatar Nutrition (which I notice is not in their comparison list).

Everything I see on the site has MacroFactor tracking weight. Does the app need weekly BF estimations? It doesn't say. Ultimately I care more about BF than what I weight.

[JohnHelton]

I will probably give this a try. I am trying Carbon right now and have used Avatar a lot. My major issue with Carbon is that it doesn't make dynamic changes to your macros mid-week so that you stay on track for the week. It looks like MacroFactor does that.

[J0]

I was able to download the app this morning through the app store. Two week free trial. Just an FYI.

[TheGloriousW]

I was able to download the app this morning through the app store. Two week free trial. Just an FYI.

Just downloaded. The 14 vs 7 trial is much nicer.

Initial impressions. Very feature rich and very "busy" UI. Being able to enter a meal by voice is cool though. No recipes yet.

[TimK]

I was a beta tester for MacroFactor. Overall I like it way better than MyFitnessPal and FitGenie (both used extensively) and also the RP Diet app (only trialed for a few days, didn't like it). My biggest gripe is that when setting your goal you can't pick a specific end date/deadline. I want to set a weight and date and then have the app adjust to keep me on track for that target. Right now you can only set a target weight and rate of weight loss per week, and it will adjust accordingly. However when I posted in their FB group Greg agreed that a target date option would be good so hopefully it will get added before too long.

[JohnHelton]

There is much to like here. I was able to enter my macros for the last week, giving it a head start. It also already has my weight history now via the Fitbit integration (which is integrated with my Withings scale). No manual entry of my weights. That is nice. We'll see how it makes adjustments going forward when I blow it on Friday night with 3 IPAs. LOL.

@TimK, does it rebalance your prescribed macros through the week based on actuals, helping you hit your weekly targets?

[TheGloriousW]

My biggest gripe is that when setting your goal you can't pick a specific end date/deadline. I want to set a weight and date and then have the app adjust to keep me on track for that target. Right now you can only set a target weight and rate of weight loss per week, and it will adjust accordingly. However when I posted in their FB group Greg agreed that a target date option would be good so hopefully it will get added before too long.

It has been added. I am never compliant enough for it to work for me, but it is there.

edit: Looking at it, I don't think it will cut your kcals if you are off track to meet your target date. I only predicts your target at the start of your goal.

[TheGloriousW]

We'll see how it makes adjustments going forward when I blow it on Friday night with 3 IPAs. LOL.

Yeah I adjusted extra for the weekends when I uh.. plan to blow it. I wish there were sliders like Avatar because those 100 extra kcals I got aren't going to cut it.

[TimK]

My biggest gripe is that when setting your goal you can't pick a specific end date/deadline. I want to set a weight and date and then have the app adjust to keep me on track for that target. Right now you can only set a target weight and rate of weight loss per week, and it will adjust accordingly. However when I posted in their FB group Greg agreed that a target date option would be good so hopefully it will get added before too long.

It has been added. I am never compliant enough for it to work for me, but it is there.

edit: Looking at it, I don't think it will cut your kcals if you are off track to meet your target date. I only predicts your target at the start of your goal.

Yeah, you can dial in a target date in a backwards fashion by adjusting the rate of loss slider, but it won't keep you on track for that date, it will just automatically change based on your actual data going forward.

[TimK]

There is much to like here. I was able to enter my macros for the last week, giving it a head start. It also already has my weight history now via the Fitbit integration (which is integrated with my Withings scale). No manual entry of my weights. That is nice. We'll see how it makes adjustments going forward when I blow it on Friday night with 3 IPAs. LOL.

TimK, does it rebalance your prescribed macros through the week based on actuals, helping you hit your weekly targets?

I think there's an advanced mode where you can do this manually but I don't think it's automatic from what I understand (based on some back and forth between Greg and one of the other testers that I saw on FB). It only adjusts/updates your plan once per week if you have it on full auto ("coached") mode.

[JohnHelton]

I'm sold on this app. I built my own spreadsheet to do calorie coaching based on the same principle. Their app is better than my spreadsheet. The principle is that given your calorie in take and movement in weight, the app can determine your average TDEE (total daily energy expenditure). Given your TDEE and desired weight loss, then the calorie prescription is just math. If TDEE = 3000 and you want to lose 1.5 lbs per week, then prescription = 3000 - 1.5 x 3500 / 7 = 2250 cal/day. They explicitly say in the Knowledge Base that compliance isn't necessary to generate the next week's prescription. That has always been one of my frustrations with the other coaching apps. There really isn't any need for this.

To speed the app along in determining my TDEE, I loaded a month's worth of data regarding calorie in take and weight. Without that I would have gotten to the same place, it would have just taken more time.

[J0]

When you entered in back kcal data did you have to enter in all the foods for each day? Or is there a way to simply enter in kcal or macro data? I would like to do similar but can't bring myself to enter in all the foods in order to get the kcal and macros count. Thanks for any help. I also like the app and foresee myself using it for some time.

[TimK]

They explicitly say in the Knowledge Base that compliance isn't necessary to generate the next week's prescription. That has always been one of my frustrations with the other coaching apps. There really isn't any need for this.

I agree, but the big catch (which they also make clear in the documentation) is that you need to log everything for it to work. Partial logging will wreck the algorithm because the app will just think that's all you ate that day. So if you start logging one day but then you go out to eat at a restaurant or something and don't track that meal, it's going to mess things up (to be fair, they point out that a one-off instance isn't going to be a big deal, but if you do it repeatedly it can start to cause problems). So ideally in that scenario you would either just enter a rough estimate of your calorie intake (you can do this without actually logging individual foods) or just delete the stuff you logged earlier and then the app will ignore that day in the calculations.

[TimK]

When you entered in back kcal data did you have to enter in all the foods for each day? Or is there a way to simply enter in kcal or macro data? I would like to do similar but can't bring myself to enter in all the foods in order to get the kcal and macros count. Thanks for any help. I also like the app and foresee myself using it for some time.

You can enter calories and/or macros for a day without actually picking out the foods you ate.

https://help.macrofactorapp.com/how_to/ ... gging_food

EDIT: John's instructions below are better for logging past data, but check out this link anyway, it's to their Knowledgebase with lots of FAQs and how-tos.

[JohnHelton]

When you entered in back kcal data did you have to enter in all the foods for each day? Or is there a way to simply enter in kcal or macro data? I would like to do similar but can't bring myself to enter in all the foods in order to get the kcal and macros count. Thanks for any help. I also like the app and foresee myself using it for some time.

I didn't enter the foods. If you scroll to the bottom on the Dashboard, click on Nutrition and then click the + sign at the upper right corner of the page. I just entered the total calories, not the individual macros. One can do the same for Scale Weight at the bottom of the Dashboard. It takes a little time, but it is worth it if you have the data.

[JohnHelton]

They explicitly say in the Knowledge Base that compliance isn't necessary to generate the next week's prescription. That has always been one of my frustrations with the other coaching apps. There really isn't any need for this.

I agree, but the big catch (which they also make clear in the documentation) is that you need to log everything for it to work. Partial logging will wreck the algorithm because the app will just think that's all you ate that day. So if you start logging one day but then you go out to eat at a restaurant or something and don't track that meal, it's going to mess things up (to be fair, they point out that a one-off instance isn't going to be a big deal, but if you do it repeatedly it can start to cause problems). So ideally in that scenario you would either just enter a rough estimate of your calorie intake (you can do this without actually logging individual foods) or just delete the stuff you logged earlier and then the app will ignore that day in the calculations.

Yes. That was my understanding. So if you go on a vacation and don't record, it won't throw off the calculation. Just don't do partial entries. That makes sense.

[TimK]

Yes. That was my understanding. So if you go on a vacation and don't record, it won't throw off the calculation. Just don't do partial entries. That makes sense.

Yeah I figured you already knew that, just wanted to add some context for anyone else who hasn't dug into the app/knowledge base yet.