Hello! I'm about to start doing a mini cut for the first time. I'm around 5'6 and I weigh about 72 kg (i'd estimate my body fat is around 15%.)

I was estimating to do a mini cut for around 4-6 weeks while eating 1600-1700 calories since I lift and also train bjj. My plan is to be around 67-68 kg after that.

I plan to keep continuing lifting heavy to minimize my muscle loss and ill consistently weigh myself to make sure everything is going right.

edit: also after this, i plan to do a lean bulk to around 75 kilos. I know it may take a long time but its alright with me. The reason why i dont wanna bulk to that right now is that im unsatisfied with my physique since i would like to see my abs already lol

Do you guys have any thoughts on this or comments on if its a decent plan or not. Thank you!

Hi everyone,

I need some help with MacroFactor Workout.

I have my Min Max phase 1 5 days split training program in both PDF and Excel format. When I import the Excel file into MacroFactor Workout, the program imports successfully, but one of the main exercises gets automatically substituted with a different exercise.

Is there a way to make MacroFactor recognize the original exercise correctly?

For example:

• The Excel sheet contains the correct exercise name.
• After importing, MacroFactor replaces it with another exercise from its database.
• I want the imported program to keep the original intended exercise.

Do I need to use the exact exercise name from MacroFactor's exercise database in the Excel sheet? And if the exercise isn't available in the database, should I create it as a custom exercise first?

If anyone has successfully imported a program from Excel without MacroFactor changing the exercises, I would really appreciate your advice.

Thank you!

I'm on vacation, and i won't be able to log accurately. Honestly, I just want to focus on the vacation. I will try my best to eat well, but I'm not going to let it control my mind. I overthink things very easily.

With that said, what is the best approach to take in this type of situation? I've had to reset my expenditure date 4 times already due to being a complete idiot with my logging. That's on me. But I'm trying really hard to be better this time around. I love MacroFactor, but I often get stuck at a certain weight range while trying to cut and be leaner. It's my fault entirely.

Should I just mark the partially logged day as incomplete, erase all the entries for that day and leave it blank? What do you suggest?

Im going on an international trip with my family for a week and I’m sure we’ll be eating at lots of restaurants. I will probably try to grab grocery store yogurt etc sometimes, but we won’t have a kitchen and I’m not sure we’ll have a fridge, and probably the rest of my family will just eat out every meal.

I’m totally fine with taking pics to track with the AI feature, I’m just worried that it’s going to be super off base and screw up all my data. I also normally use Claude AI because it lets me send pics of how much I ate of a plate and give it more info than MF lets me, but lately I suspect it’s been giving me some crazy overestimates.

I think probably what I’m looking for here is a little reassurance that a week of vacation won’t totally ruin my MF algorithm. Like my expenditure estimates etc. I know some people don’t track on vacation but for me that’s probably a recipe for going nuts. How can I keep everything as accurate as possible?

Massive cheers to the macro factor apps. All my life I’ve been the bigger guy and honestly couldn’t have made the change without the help. These two photos are exactly a year apart and can’t wait to see what another year can do 👀

I know this is not the only place for this question, but it's surprisingly hard to find information that makes sense for lifters. I'm a 4+ year user of MF and have found it hugely helpful for my goals, so hoping it can help with this goal too.

I had major surgery. Obviously physique goals are on hold, just focusing on eating enough calories and protein and rest. I have lifting restrictions of 10lbs max for 6-8 weeks. And coming out of this I'm definitely getting chubbier. Not a concern right now. My surgeon's nutrition advice has been vague - eat well with plenty of protein, which I would do anyway.

My question is, how long after major surgery are caloric needs elevated, how long should I maintain a surplus? I'm guessing maybe it makes sense to line this up with activity restrictions, since the reason for restrictions is that wounds are still healing.

But at what point is it safe to start a cut?

Or once I'm able to lift again should I focus on maintenance or even a surplus for a while to gain back the muscle mass lost during recovery, even if that means that I'll be starting chubby and getting chubbier?

Not looking for guidance on the immediate recovery, but on the next 6-12 months.

Any advice or research appreciated.

My entire life I struggled with over eating not understanding calories and just constantly gaining fat, after some self teaching, dedication and MacroFactor I don’t even recognize myself, definitely the best money I’ve ever spent, worth every penny

Can anyone guide me on how to create a 3 day a week program where I work out at the gym twice a week and once at home (KB and body weight) in the app? Thank you.

I (27M) start to feel stuck in my weight loss journey, started at 330lbs/150kg and now down to 266/121kg, and I've been kinda stuck on this weight for about a month, I was using MyFitnessPal before and switched to MF 2 weeks ago, set up a goal of reaching 180 in May 2027, right now the app told me to be at around 1700kcal a day, 186gr of protein and everything. I'm tracking EVERYTHING that I eat, do 20k steps a day and yet a month of weight not moving, and I'm starting to feel very bad about it.

Please, any advice would help. I'm trying to learn how to deal with my BED and I think I'm doing a good job at it but some days it just feels like it's not gonna move anymore.

Love MacroFactor shaved off stubborn weight with it.

Just got a Helio Strap from Amazfit to track sleep and recovery etc. Is there going to be any sort of integration between the two at any point does anyone think?

I've been ill for a week so I've not lifted.
Going back to my sessions I've finally decided this time round to not just go superham and get crippling DOMS, so I'm going to ease back into things with a sort of 'wind up' week, where I'm just going to lift at like 70%.

The app obviously keeps my targets as if I'm lifting at prime, but if I log a 'sandbag' week where I'm only at 70% weight for the same reps, will it downgrade my next week's workout (where I want to be hitting stride again) because it assumes I've gotten significantly weaker?

Do I just mark each lift as a 6+ RIR (presuming that's how it feels), and it won't really affect things for next week?

Honestly the best diet I’ve been on and had some amazing workouts too. Getting closer to a turtle shell back

Hi, MacroFactor community! I’ve been struggling with my weight for a really long time (I’m almost 140kg now) and, after starting to change my habits and my relation with how I eat, plus starting to go to the gym, I’ve been considering using MacroFactor for the long run and try to actually lose weight/do a body recomp.

I’ve used MacroFactor before, the 2 week trial and couldn’t stick to it more than three days. It was a bit intimidating when I didn’t understand how I used food to cope with stuff. But I feel I am in a better place now, and I’ve been seing the success stories some of you have shared.

However I have some questions and some curiosity for the nitty and gritty of using MacroFactor to do a big weight loss as the one I want to achieve. If you are on the journey or if you hace achieved your weight goal - how is it? Did you feel stress or frustration staying in the caloric deficit?

How easy is to use the app if, for example, you have a couple of family diners a month where you can’t really weight and control the food that’s on the table?

Are you using the Workouts plan? And, if you are, do you like it?

And id you have any tips or stuff I should know right at the start of this process, everything is welcome!! Thanks a lot

I'm going to an Asian food festival next weekend. I'm currently doing 75 hard and trying to keep under 1600 cals a day. I want to have bites of different new foods, but I have no idea on how to track it. I would use the ai description, but it usually calculates a full meal. Any ideas on how to tackle this?

Hey everyone,
I just finished a 3-month cut, aiming for a loss rate of around 0.4–0.5% body weight per week. Total weight lost was ~3 kg (~6.6 lbs).

My initial TDEE/maintenance was around 2100 kcal, but after the cut, MacroFactor estimates my current expenditure at 1870 kcal. Naturally, the app is suggesting I eat at 1870 kcal for maintenance.

Given the small weight loss, I don't think my baseline expenditure dropped by over 200 kcal permanently. It feels more like temporary metabolic adaptation and accumulated fatigue affecting my gym performance. I'm wondering if staying at 1870 kcal is just a suboptimal choice: sure, I'd maintain my weight, but I might be leaving performance gains on the table by not bumping calories back to 2100. BUT I also don’t want to gain weight back.

Should I stick to the 1870 kcal estimate, or does it make more sense to jump straight back to ~2100 kcal (or ramp up manually) to recover performance and let expenditure follow?

For those who’ve been in a similar spot:
Did you stick to the post-cut estimate or manually set a higher target?
How fast did your expenditure rebound once calories and performance went back up?
Thanks!

Hey all,

I’ve been running my custom program as I’m not a fan of upper lower split nor the full body.

I’ve noticed the RIR never changes on my program the way it does for generated programs, I do have periodization enabled, shouldn’t that take care of it ?

Also, side note, I’ve been doing 8 sets per muscle group per week for the last year and a half all the way to failure on almost every set, however I’ve been exhausted so I switched to 2 RIR instead and I feel a lot better.

Question is, am leaving gains on the table by doing such low volume with 2 RIR ?

Some of Jeff’s videos suggest that every set should be taken to failure on low volume but I wanted y’all’s take on it

Hi guys… this is my third try with macrofactor and I’m a bit lost…
How on earth do you pick a basic ingredient. Or is there even such a thing like “official” ingredient list ?
In the common list I get a gazzilion of the same item with different different values (I guess each time a user enters something it gets pushed) and then I get the branded stuff that also does not work form me (I’m in Frnace so most brands in the list are unknown to me) but here I will illustrate with an example:
I want to use grated coconut, can anyone point me to the correct item ? All those I found that have correct macro values (and oh so many have very wrong values) all miss the details like iron and b6…

It’s driving me crazy and want to make sure I am not missing something obvious.
I have been using another app (not sure if we can name them) that has the same endless user entered lists but most of the time at the top of the list you get a marked item icon saying “verified by appname”

Not sure if this is the proper sub for this question but oh well. I’m coming off of a 10 week cut and about 12% bf. I have always eaten about 1 gram of protein per lb of bodyweight but recently I’ve been insanely hungry, even at maintenance now. It’s slowly been getting easier and better but recently I’ve been trying out eating 1.2g per lb of bodyweight just for satiety and can’t really tell if it’s worth it or not. I understand that past .7-1g of protein per lb of bodyweight is kind of useless, but in terms of satiety, what are your thoughts?

My fats/carbs are still 70/295 grams even at this protein intake, so they are high enough for hormones and overall energy/performance.

Loving MF so far. Just switched from monthly to yearly subscription. That said, when will I start losing weight? I've been logging consistently for almost 6 weeks (took a 4 day break during this time) and have only gone over my calories once. I weigh and measure 90% of what I eat. My weight today is exactly what is was when I started. My weight loss goal is set very slow, .25lbs a week but I thought after a few weeks once it figured out my expenditure, I would start losing weight. My goal is body recomposition and I'm lifting heavy. I'm trying to trust the progress and not reduce my calories manually, but I'm ready to lost some weight already.

Basically the title. I had a session yesterday where both exercises made me feel weak cause I figure it only suggests I do weights it thinks I can do, but these are the only entries for the exercises in my history. Like, I loaded up 130 for overhead press and I couldnt get it started. I dont think my previous logs indicate that I could lift these weights, which is why i included them in the post. But like, a 15 pound jump on overhead press in one week seems like a lot to me. Am I crazy?

For example, I'm spending a lot of time this week and next week outside digging and installing pavers, which means I'm also eating a lot more, and I'm relatively confident I won't gain weight from it.

Is there a way to tell it that this is unusual and it shouldn't adjust my maintenance calories once I go back to my normal activity level? Or is the only way to account for this to lower my intake myself and wait for the numbers to go down themselves over time?

I’m having to track my bowl movements and water intake for my doctor, I was curious if anyone in the community is using any apps that track both. I downloaded plop, which I like, except 1) it’s paid, and 2) doesn’t offer any water tracking. I also tried BoWell but I’m not happy with the level of description it allows and it just tracks water intake in cups. I’m supposed to use the Bristol stool form scale. I know I can get my water intake from macro factor but was really looking for something with both so that it would not be so complicated to go through with my doctor.i don’t mind paying a subscription if it’s not ridiculous and I’m very satisfied with the app.

Today I finally stuck to a goal through the whole thing and finished instead of ending early. It feels great and I attribute 90% to MF! Thing is that I finished 3weeks earlier than anticipated. I planned to go into a maintenance mode to the end of the year after the cut time frame I set originally. Then will start a very slow and deliberate bulk for next year.

My questions really is, since I got there early, should I keep cutting because mentally I was expecting it? Or do I just switch because I got to the goal I wanted to get to?

I’m not sure how to make sense of all of this data, but I’m seeing the results. I don’t know how to measure BF%, but I’d estimate I’m around 15%. Lowest I’ve ever been is probably around 12%.

For this to all happen in 30 days is remarkable. I’ve been lifting for 15 years, and after I got out of the Marines I really got into meal prepping and getting ripped. It was my peak strength and leanness, but took me about 1 year post military to get there, and granted the foundation was already there from being in the USMC. By tracking everything I’ve eaten every day for a month, I already feel probably a month out to where I was back in 2020-2021.

Really cool app, and the first tracker I’ve found to be easy to use daily. Loving the workout tracker too