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By using an algorithm, we can accurately figure out your maintenance calories more accurately than traditional regression based formulas like katch mc ardle.
It's way more accurate than calorie burn tracking devices like fitness bands and watches. (garmin/apple watch/whoop etc...)
Traditionally, people often use static TDEE calculators which often over or underestimate for some by 100s calories.
Chatgpt and TDEE calculators like Calculator.net or TDEECalculator.net use the same formulas, so they share the same limitation
If a beginner asks ChatGPT, "What are my maintenance calories?", ChatGPT can give them a number. But ask how it arrived at that number, and it will usually explain that it used a formula like Katch McArdle, Harris Benedict, or Mifflin St Jeor to calculate BMR, then layered activity on top using an activity factor, PAL, or MET tables.
Dig deeper and those formulas come from statistical regressions based on averages from past populations. That means maintenance calories calculated this way can be off by hundreds of calories.
MacroCodex uses your calorie intake and weight data to figure out maintenance calories specific to your body, not the population average.
It usually reaches good accuracy after about 3 weeks, or 21 days of calorie and weight logging.
This app is completely free, no paywall, no subscription and no ads. (works offline)
Most people start seeing weight gain or loss within 5 weeks.
We've reached 13,000+ users. Full support is provided if you experience any issue, most issues are resolved under 24 hours.
Discussion (9 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
Users can import up to 30 days of calorie and weight data from other apps that write to Google Health Connect.
Also, yes, Macrocodex doesn’t change your targets for every minor fluctuation in maintenance calories. It only adjusts your target when enough meaningful and measurable change has accumulated, as you correctly pointed out tracking changes below ~150 kcal is difficult.
You need to log only two things
1. Total calories consumed on a specific day
2. Body Weight
it doesn't care about anything else.
If you read our privacy policy, you’ll see that it collects total calorie and weight data from users, which we use to improve our adaptive TDEE algorithm. It does not collect email, phone number, date of birth or anything which is not necessary for product improvement/diagnosis.
You can probably achieve something similar with Claude and a bunch of scripts if you log your calories every day.
macrocodex is entirely deterministic, it just works and users don't need to fiddle with it.
Log your calorie each day, log your weight weekly and it will continue producing calorie and macro targets for you to achieve desired rate of weight gain or loss.
It also has many more features, such as lean bulk, cut, and body recomposition modules. It includes a planner that helps you decide when to switch from cutting to lean bulking (or vice versa), or when body recomposition efficiency starts dropping for you.
For example,
To gain least fat while gainng muscles, Lean bulk is what you need.
The key is to focus on your rate of weight gain, not a specific calorie number or surplus percentage.
Weekly Weight Gain Rate:
Beginners: 0.25-0.5% of body weight
Intermediates: 0.25-0.4%
Advanced Lifters: 0.1-0.25%
Usually, a calorie Surplus: +5-10% of TDEE (roughly 100-300 kcal/day) may get you there but if it doesn't adjust your calories up or down to reach the desired weekly weight gain rate.
This is where macrocodex can do better than chatgpt/claude over long horizon.
`datetime | 2500 kcal | 90 kg`
By using Macrocodex, users become part of a shared data pool. They pay nothing, but they can choose to share this data.
We've this data from 17,000+ users that's what makes this accurate.
Data collection on Android can be disabled by turning off Diagnostics under Profile.
The app does not collect anything beyond this, so there is no way to link the data back to any specific person. It does not even ask for your name.
Furthermore, users can easily delete all collected data by going to *Profile > Clear Data*. During onboarding, the app will also show the Health Connect permission request.
On the web app, there is no reliable way to store persistent data because IndexedDB storage can be wiped by the OS or browser. Because of this, it requires backend to save this data.
There are no cookies used on site, no tracking pixels etc...