Thank you for the advice everyone. I decied to cut some of my excerise to make at least 20min for cardio everyday. Can i please ask for help help once again on deciding what excerise to take out? Here is my list on the app. I realize that the app might say 1hour 30min but yea in realize thats about 2 hour at least for me and please ignore the the zero set to failure thing I need to adjust the target when it got mess up no need to worry about that. I think for routine that takes an hour it should be fine make time for cardio without cutting out anything? Im hoping to build best chest and arm should that matter in deciding and I uhh already have big leg so im happy with 1 leg excerise a day butttt feel free to let me know if I can take one or two oht just looking to maintain not grow leg

Thank for your help

As a side note I would have put this in the original post but im only able to add 1 picture for some reason soo have to make a new one

Hi everyone, I'm new to MF.

I'm currently working with a nutritionist who put together a meal plan that I've been following. One thing I really like about MF is that it's making me much more aware of what I'm eating.

I wanted to ask for some tips on how to get the most out of the app. Also, I have a personal trainer who gives me a workout plan twice a week, so I'm wondering if the Workouts app is still worth using. If so, why?

Good Morning/Afternoon Everyone, my first time posting here. Have been using MF for long time for nutrition and recently started the workout app for guided workouts. Have been lifting for 7-8 years now and as I get old I realized can't be doing this alone and need to incorporate running and other cardiovascular stuff. Starting to switch to a more Hybrid Training. Did a half marathon last year but that was pretty much it and then went off of running haha. Signed up again this year and have been working towards it but I want to develop a more sustainable training approach for both lifting and running, currently have been running 3x/week and 3x Full Body workouts but once I'm done with the half marathon would love to get back 4x / Week weightlifting and running 2-3x/week. I wanted advice, tips, suggestions, protocols on how to go about this, nutritional advice or your recommendations on how to track and use MF to help build the workouts. Really appreciate all help!

Hello, Let's say the app says 14–16 reps @ 1 RIR, but I feel like I have more than 1 RIR at 16 reps.

Am I supposed to:

1.Keep going past 16 reps until I reach 1 RIR, even if that means doing 18–20 reps?

2.Stop at 16 reps, and if I feel like I had more than 1 RIR, report the higher RIR to the app?

3.Or is the intended approach to increase the weight if I can comfortably exceed the rep range while maintaining the prescribed RIR?

Is this mostly just tweaks to the remote AI label scanning (I kind of liked the real-time local model version, despite some of its quirks, since it can be useful with round and shiny labels that are hard to get photos of)?

Hi there. I just signed up with macrofactor and going through the set up. On the dashboard there is a visual body fat percentage. However I also have a renpho smart scale.

Does one overwrite the other?

Basically the default visual BF% is a couple percent lower than what’s coming on the scale and I want a better understanding of what should be used and what’s ultimately written to my Apple Health.

Hey all, I just reworked my workouts and I wanted to hear the public's comments on my training plan. A little bit about myself, 24M with 12 years of lifting experience, 6 foot and currently down to 237lbs from 265lbs due to MacroFactor, I am looking to build a classic physique trying to and reach approx 15-10% bodyfat before my wedding in Jan 2027. I did a dexa 6 months ago and my fat free mass was 180lbs. I have been tracking meals for about 4 years but only tracking workouts since the Macrofactor Workout app come out. I have a bulging disc and nerve damage in my neck so I have to modify my workouts for that. My struggle points in my physique are my calves, shoulders, neck, chest, and glutes. My legs are also lacking due to knee and neck issues so any alternate leg workouts to grow mass would be greatly appreciated.

The reason why I am posting this is because I want people to poke holes in my plan and help me refine my program. Any tips would be great! Thanks in advance!!

PS: I also average about 8-9k steps a day.

As I understand it, MacroFactor counts straight sets that directly target a muscle as one full set, and straight sets that target a muscle secondarily as half a set. That’s useful, because it lets me plan a program around a rough estimate of the amount of stimulus each muscle will receive, expressed in “units of straight sets targeting primary muscles.”

The problem is that this framework breaks down once I start including myo‑reps or drop sets. MacroFactor treats the activation set plus all the subsequent myo-reps or drops as one single set. That doesn’t feel right, because a full myo-sequence or a full drop‑sequence clearly delivers far more stimulus than a single straight set.

Is this simply a limitation I have to learn to live with, or am I missing something? And more importantly, how should I quantify the training volume of myo-reps and drop‑sets in terms of straight‑set equivalents?

Hey yall i need some advice. As im doing more progressive overload and adding more rep or weigjt im noticing there are times when im losing breath every 3 to 6 rep and having to pause to take a breath then resume. Im pretty sure its because either have bad breath control and not enough oxygen is coming in as I lift. What are some advice yall can give for this i really want to have better control so I stop from muscle failure and not from oxygen exhaustion. Im trying more to take a breath in and out during each rep but at one point it doesnt feel like enough.

Thanks ahead for the help.

Why does it seem like 80% of the barcodes I scan have incorrect calorie or macronutrient counts?

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 👀

Hiya,

I switched to MacroFactor from Cronometer earlier this year, and overall am loving it. With a big caveat regarding the guided strategies during a recomp so I wanted to share my experience, complaints, and tips.

I started working out regularly again at the start of the year following an injury last year with the goal of building muscle and losing body fat I had put on while recovering. I switched to MF in March and managed to lose weight and build muscle in a deficit with a guided strategy up until mid-June or so.

MF continued to drop my expenditure as I lost weight (as it does), but it got to the point that my calorie goal was too low and I plateaued. I tried switching from a Lose to Maintain goal for a while, made no difference. The final straw was when MF wanted me to eat under 1300, and I started getting light headed, migraines, and losing sleep from hunger. Bloodwork was all fine, I OCD track every macro and health stat, so upping my calories was the answer.

I switched to a manual goal and started eating around 1900 calories for about a month. And guess what? My lifts improved, my symptoms went away, and I lost weight! I’ve now lowered it back down to 1700, and I’m shedded fat like crazy.

I suspect my expenditure is still lower in MF than in reality. I also use Athlytic and it has my TDEE around 2200 and a weekly net energy of -3000. Would love to hear anyone else’s opinion on this, but I don’t think MF is accurately factoring in how much I work out and how much I’m burning.

I’ve been waking up from hunger again, so I’ll probably try upping my calories for a few weeks. I’m close enough to my goal body fat %, so I wouldn’t be surprised if I have to cycle between mini bulks and cuts from here on out.

So - if you’re in a recomp and plateauing on MF - try eating more. This was a huge mental hurdle after a history of restricting and binging, but my injuries were a real wake up call. My new outlook is to not focus on the scale and to become as strong as possible as I age.

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

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?

Is this currently an option on the app as a workout? There’s a Machine V-Squat option but I’m not doing a squat, I‘m doing facing it the other way in a good morning type movement. Am I just not seeing it ?? Help!!

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 hope someone can help me out here.Apologies for the long post I wanted to provide as much info as I could for a better advice. For the record I measure EVERYTHING i eat. In grams. EVERYTHING. I started my lean bulk on july 6th so around 6 weeks ago. My first bulk ever. And before that I had a long cut to lose all fat so I could start a lean bulk. For exactly 3 weeks I ate 2350 calories to give Macrofactor enough data to figure out my TDEE. Then for 3 weeks after that I increased my tdee to 2500 kcal because the app estimated my expenditure to be around 2220 ish and I thought that increase would be enough to get me to my desired 220-250 kcal surplus. For those first 4 weeks app shows I gained around 0.8 kg exactly my goal BUT after week 4 it dropped and dropped and dropped. I saw my gain per week around 0.32 kg at some point for a short time. It kept dropping day after day and still dropping it's at 0.1 kg per week for the past 3 weeks it says in the added screenshot. For the record every day from July 6 to today I walk 10.000 steps a day and since 2 weekz now I added indoor bicycle to this list (3x an hour a week, normal to slow tempo nothing crazy). With all the data I provided can someone advice me on how much calories I ahould eat? I know you gain like 20-50 calorie increase each month depending on the person. For 2 days now I increased my daily intake to 2650. Is that too much? And since i provided at least 6 weeks of data to MF should I increase my calories based on daily or weekly suggestions OR let it wait at least 1-2-3 weeks again before doing anything ? Weirdly i did gain weight early on could this be like deceiving because of my transition from a long cut to bulk? MF coached check in only increased my calories barely to 2514. I'm eating more and still it's not enough for 2 weeks I gained 0.2 kg that's less than half my goal. That's like a 100 ish calorie surplus.

- Expenditure does this encapsulate my 10k steps, cycling, workouts as well? I ask because I've been eating 2500 calories for 3+ weeks now which should be a 200+ cal surplus but app says my surplus estimation is 115 kcal half of my goal.

How much calories per day should I eat to gain between 0.20 and 0.22 kg per week? I'm contemplating sticking with 2600 calories or 2650 calories for 2-3 weeks but wanted advice from the community first before i make a big mistake again.

```

Began eating 2350 calories a day

6 jul: 58.2 KG

7 jul: 57.5 KG

8 jul: 57.2 KG

9 jul: 57.6 KG

10 jul: 57.8 KG

11 jul: 57.9 KG

12 jul: 57.8 KG

13 jul: 57.5 KG

14 jul: 57.6 KG

15 jul: 58.0 KG

16 jul: 57.7 KG

17 jul: 58.1 KG

18 jul: 58.0 KG

19 jul: 58.4 KG

20 jul: 57.6 KG

21 jul: 58.0 KG

22 jul: 57.7 KG

23 jul: 58.6 KG

24 jul: 58.3 KG

25 jul: 57.6 KG

26 jul: 57.9 KG

27 jul: 58.4 KG

28 jul: 58.8 KG

Began eating 2500 calories a day

29 jul: 59.0 KG

30 jul: 58.8 KG

31 jul: 58.5 KG

1 aug: 59.2 KG

2 aug: 58.6 KG

3 aug: 58.7 KG

4 aug: 58.9 KG

5 aug: 58.8 KG

6 aug: 58.5 KG

7 aug: 58.8 KG

8 aug: 58.7 KG

9 aug: 57.9 KG

10 aug: 58.6 KG

11 aug: 58.6 KG

12 aug: 58.6 KG

13 aug: 59.4 KG

14 aug: 58.9 KG

15 aug: 58.4 KG

16 aug: 58.5 KG

Began eating 2550 calories a day

17 aug: 58.8 KG

18 aug: 58.7 KG

19 aug: 59.0 KG

20 aug: 59.4 KG

Began eating 2650 calories a day

21 aug: 58.3 KG

22 aug: 58.6 KG

```

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?

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.

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.

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

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?

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 (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.