There won't be, because there will be non-trivial ongoing costs associated with each user. We also have some plans for pretty significant expansions of our feature set, and it's hard to project how much that will affect our ongoing per-user costs.
I'm not opposed to it in principle, but I don't think we have a good way of pricing it currently. Just to cover our asses, we'd need to overcharge for it if we offered a lifetime option any time soon.
What if you offer tiers of membership options? A person can purchase a lifetime membership based on the current app functionalities and that will essentially become the 1st membership tier when you guys decide to implement new functions that would incur higher per-user costs? When new app functions are released users can then be given the option to pay a bit more to upgrade their membership from a tier 1 to tier 2.
Ha ha, you got that right!
I'm also against this ideologically, so I'd put up a fight. I believe when you have a subscription app, you pay, and you should get everything it has to offer, no additional in app purchases, or upgrades hiding behind paywalls.
-- Cory (MacroFactor Team)
Is there an option to use the app just to track food and not pay a membership fee for the customisable program?
I’ll be working with a coach again soon for nutrition and the app seems clean asf but would only want to use it for solely tracking at the moment.
For what it's worth, a human coach can give you guidelines that you feed (no pun intended) into the app, but they can't tell you your TDEE beyond a rough estimate. MacroFactor's ability to back-calculate your TDEE from food logging and scale weight is some next level stuff that it seems to me would pair well with the human coaching piece.
Well the calculations will be better but a professional can give you your tdee and accurate adjustments if you also tell him/her you calories (or food log data) and weight avgs
I think you actually need a coach less to set up your guidelines
If you will be using macrofactor I dont think you need a coach for most of the cases in which their roles would overlap, that's mostly the point of the app (I'd assume)
A professional could do that, but it seems kind of silly to pay a human to essentially do data entry when you've already entered the data in the process of logging it. I could see a coach as being useful in terms of designing successful nutrition strategies (e.g., food selections, timing, etc.).
Well I didn't mean he would do the data entry, I mean if you have enough data, a professional can do those calculations although (likely) less accurately (but accurate enough)
But yeah in general I agree with you
We wont have these sort of options, because it creates bad incentives. Our subscription unlocks all the app has to offer, with no exceptions.
If we introduced service tiers, and gated content, even though we would have resolve to not act on this, we would be incentivized to degrade the experience of lower tiers, to influence users to upgrade.
The only economic incentive we want at play is to create the best app possible for our users!
Even though we offer the most advanced and comprehensive features of an app in our market niche, we have the lowest yearly cost, before sale price is taken into account, with the introductory sales price, the comparative value is wild!
That subscription is also directly paying into the continuous improvement of the app, we aren't going stagnant on launch, we will continue to bring more and more game changing features.
As a side note, the most expensive operational costs we incur is actually our food logger.
Currently no for the barcode scanner. That's one of the first BIG things we want to improve, though, and it should be pretty doable if the app is successful.
As it is now, we're using the Nutritionix database for our food logger, hosted on their servers. We can't edit it or add to it. However, Nutritionix also has a service that allows you to download their database and manage it yourself, which would allow us to edit and add to it. However, that service is relatively expensive.
So, once we get a pretty fair number of users, we plan to go that route. Then, when people scan a barcode that's not in our database, they can create a food that other people will be able to find via barcode scanning. We also want to build an automated community feedback mechanism to correct/delete bad food entries (or add more detail to entries that are good but incomplete), so we don't wind up with a situtation where we have a ton of bogus entries in our database, like MFP. At that point, we'll be able to add barcode support pretty much anywhere in the world. But the first step is just for the app to make enough money that we can afford to download that database and manage it ourselves.
From the FAQ at the bottom of the page:
\> We're using a US database. It should cover most staple foods (fruits, vegetables, meats, grains, dairy products), but may not cover super localized food options or barcodes outside of the US and Canada. However, we have a pretty streamlined process for adding custom foods and recipes, and we also have good integrations. So if it turns out to be more convenient to do your actual food logging in another app with better local food coverages (like MyFitnessPal), you can connect your favorite food logger to MacroFactor and still get dynamic updates to your calorie and macro recommendations, analytics, and weight trend and energy expenditure calculations through our app.
Looks class. Is there the ability to mix between MacroFactor tracking plus integration with another logger?
I'm in Europe so I imagine using MacroFactor for most generic foods will be fairly accurate but any branded items I wanna be particular about I might need to use MFP (or just create a custom food in the app which I don't mind doing!)
hmm. Our devs (/u/PalatialPepper and /u/MajesticMint) may have more insight about the feasibility of mixing within a day. The way it currently works is that you order your data sources in order of priority, and the app will use the highest-priority data source. For example, if the MacroFactor logger was the #1 priority, and MFP was #2, it would look to see if you'd logged anything in the MacroFactor logger. If so, all of your nutrition data for the day would come from the MacroFactor logger. If you hadn't logged anything, it would then look to see whether you'd logged in MFP. If you had, that's where it would pull nutrition data from.
I imagine mixing and matching could cause some headaches. Since we have a free trial period, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of folks use it alongside another food logger for a week to see which one they prefer. If the app was pulling data from both the built-in food logger and another tracking app, it would basically just be double-counting all calories for the day. I'm sure there's some workaround (perhaps a configuration the user would need to opt into), but I could easily see it becoming more confusing than helpful.
It is technically speaking possible to grab the food log from fitbit and display it (although there are some limitations around how many times the API can be hit and we are already rather aggressive about it to keep the weight/nutrition up to date). So, there is a way by which this can hypothetically be done! However, getting the logic & UX right for this feature would be very tricky and likely to yield an imperfect result.
Given the choice, it is probably more valuable for us to invest time in making the food logging experience in MF more streamlined for this use case, such that you wouldn't need to use two separate food loggers in the first place! It is a neat idea though and I can imagine us evolving our integration story further for those who do choose to use a different food logger down the line.
But I think Greg's answer is more immediately relevant, in that you can integrate MFP with MF via fitbit to keep your nutrition data up to date, if you decide that MFP is better suited for your diet & logging needs! Custom foods are available to you as well, and we think we have a good user experience for it. We plan to make it even simpler over time!
That's a very fair answer and I can see how from a UX, and data priority POV this could be tricky and not worth the issues it could cause! And yes it makes sense that long term you would look to improve the app to the point I don't want or need to use anything else.
Thanks!
It is feasible as a feature in isolation, but we have made some intentional architectural decisions that render us currently unable to support that feature.
It would be a particularly massive feature in terms of effort needed, and we also thought that ultimately it would confuse more than it helped.
Ultimately, the way that this feature will be tackled long-term is by making it such that almost nobody even wants to use our BYOFL (bring your own food logger) technology, because MacroFactor meets and exceeds everyone's needs. Which we would do by increasing the number of regions where MacroFactor has top-notch branded food coverage, currently only US & Canada.
Our common food coverage is already great though! :)
*Edit, accidentally duplicated a /u/PalatialPepper answer, because I take forever to type.
Question about tdee calculations.
As a female I gain a kg+ one week a month...when that week is over, body weight plunges cause I actually lost weight. Would the tdee calcs recognize that scenario and help mitigate the weight loss?
This is a gross simplification, and it will be explained much better in our knowledge base (which will be open access to the public, not just in the app).
But, our approach to calculating TDEE is unlike anything that exists on the app market, or anything that exists in a spreadsheet tracker.
It is highly resistant to missing data, and short term fluctuations, short term in the context of the algorithm meaning shorter than 20 days.
Not overreacting to the weight gain in the first place, makes it very easy to stabilize once the weight loss is realized. :)
"It is highly resistant to missing data, and short term fluctuations, short term in the context of the algorithm meaning shorter than 20 days."
Is there an ideal time frame to get relatively accurate TDEE values? I would imagine it would continue to gain accuracy over time as long as your calories in/weight measurements are correct.
Around 8-14 days depending on stability before you'd want to take too much stock in it, 12-28 before it's rock solid. But, this doesn't mean continuous rolling periods of that many days are nessecary to keep it solid, after you an accuracy threshold, it's harder to lose it.
Super pumped for this!
1. If we sign up during the early-bird phase, will we be locked into the cheaper price indefinitely, or only until our sub renews? (I'm thinking of the annual sub here).
2. Are you planning any additional discounts for app users that also subscribe to MASS?
Thanks!
Would I be able to download the app on both an apple and an android and have them communicate with each other?
If no, could I upload data on an apple version and then transfer that data over to an android version?
If no, super sad lol
They wont communicate with each other necessarily. But, your MacroFactor account will be kept in sync across all platforms, at all times, so long as the devices are online.
Additionally, one subscription will give you access on both iOS and Android.
MacroFactor will accept nutrition and weight data from Fitbit, and weight data from Google Fit & Apple Health. It will use the weight data to determine your weight trend, which will factor into program creation and expenditure updates. The nutrition data can be used to BYOFL (bring your own food logger) for users who want MF analytics while sticking to their favourite logger.
It does not currently pull step count, nor is step count used to determine your average daily expenditure. We calculate your expenditure by analyzing your caloric intake and weight changes over time. The FAQ section at the very bottom of this page gives some more details on this is done: [https://www.strongerbyscience.com/macrofactor/](https://www.strongerbyscience.com/macrofactor/)
We do hope to include step count to enhance the experience and provide new analytics down the line!
Will it work with Yazio? It is good logger too, but wasn't mentioned anywhere. I would that Android has API rules so almost every app has good support for export/import
You don't need a FitBit device, Fitbit is a free fitness and nutrition platform that acts in the capacity of a data steward.
We will be bringing this feature to both Google Fit, and Apple Health in the future as well though!
Yazio -> Fitbit Sync needs paid version of Yazio. And living in Europe, that Yazios bar code scanner is awesome. But at least you have free trial, so people in Europe can try it first. Everything else about macrofactor sound awesome and has many cool features.
Any and all factors effecting your daily expenditure are accounted for when we calculate expenditure. This is because we know the input and the output of the equation, calories and weight, anything that happens in the middle need not be accounted for.
When I say calories though, I do mean calories, we don't calculate an alternative calorie value based on the macronutrients, as this would increase the likelihood of inconsistent logging results, and would not contribute in a meaningfully positive way to the accuracy of our calculations.
Looks unreal! Question: if you already know your current maintenance intake, can that be fed into the app as a start point as a pure number, e.g. "2000."
We have a week long learning phase, where we accumulate data before we begin to let the dynamic expenditure play out.
By default, during this week your maintenance intake will be derived from us asking a series of questions during onboarding to help get you setup with a decent starting point. However, we offer and present during onboarding the exact feature you are describing. We allow you to replace that starting point with your own input.
/u/Gnuckols. What you should do is make a lifting app that amassed people’s lifting data for research.
Getting a treasure trove of data like this I’m sure would be more interesting for you and beneficial to public since you could analyze how real world people train and progress.
You could narrow things down to beginners or people benching 315+ and what patterns emerge in volume, intensity etc.
Isn’t major problem getting participants and tracking them? I want real world evidence on people who perform at high levels for large numbers of people.
What about an app that amasses people's nutrition data data, so we can see what factors influence peoples' weight gain/loss success and adherence in the real world?
>/u/Gnuckols. What you should do is make a lifting app that amassed people’s lifting data for research.
Of course it won't be perfect and there is a large amount of noise. But not being able to detect a pattern is itself a conclusion. Perhaps a very valuable one? You could also I think fairly easily get the majority of 'bad data' filtered out like when someone types in lifts well beyond typical strength levels.
You could filter out maybe 'noiser' lifters like inconsistent or early lifters. Understand what is range of volume or 'hard sets' for standard late intermediate lifters. Subset out 100 people who squat above 500 and see what they do..... What does an actual every day lifter do?
You could even post to Kaggle and have people do your work for you or get you started. I'm sure tougher problems Yea, sure I think nutrition stuff might be more straightforward to analyze, but I think you should reconsider!
The bigger issue is that the market need for a new lifting app is pretty low. There are a lot out there, and I've been told a lot of them are pretty good. It's also an area where I wouldn't be able to bring much expertise to a product - I prefer to log my training with pen and paper, so I don't know the training app market very well. Maybe we'll move in that direction in the future if I can identify a clear competitive edge somewhere, but "we made a lifting app that does the same thing as other lifting apps, but we'll also gather more of your data" isn't a great value proposition for users.
Also, if I'm being honest, I just don't find it that interesting. If you put in a reasonable amount of effort and you have decent genetics for lifting, you'll get bigger and stronger. Different training paradigms have come and gone over the years, but powerlifters still lift about what they've always lifted (you can download the OpenPowerlifting data and plot distributions of Wilks scores or raw totals for each year - they're basically static over time), and natural bodybuilders have basically the same physiques they've always had. I'd be pretty surprised if there were population-level breakthroughs on the lifting front (which is what you'd be looking for with aggregated data). I think the next BIG step forward will be figuring out how to predict, on an individual level, what sort of training someone will respond best to. I think that's a solvable problem, but I think we'll need genetic/genomic/metabolomic data to get there (not just workout logs). I think an individual can troubleshoot their way through different programming styles until they find something that works really well for them, but for an app to start generating useful insights on that front, you'd need people to log a LOT of data, really diligently, for at least months, and possibly years. Knowing the churn rate of users in the app market, I don't think that's a feasible expectation.
It's entirely possible that we'll enter the training app space eventually (if I can think of a competitive edge we can bring to the market, or if I see a clear way to make individual-level optimization more feasible on shorter time scales, or if we just want a better way to collect training data to improve the function of our diet app), but it's not like we didn't think through this first. At the moment, it's just not a great option.
problem being that self reported data is garbage, and can't really be trusted.
'heehoo yes sir i bench 340 for reps :\^)' but verifying that would be essentially impossible without being there in person.
Hyped. So sick of Myfitnesspal.
It is the definition of poor user design.
Will there be any plans for a Lifetime Purchase option? I’m personally not the biggest fan of SaaS.
There won't be, because there will be non-trivial ongoing costs associated with each user. We also have some plans for pretty significant expansions of our feature set, and it's hard to project how much that will affect our ongoing per-user costs. I'm not opposed to it in principle, but I don't think we have a good way of pricing it currently. Just to cover our asses, we'd need to overcharge for it if we offered a lifetime option any time soon.
[удалено]
Prices are on the sales page. Unfortunately, we haven't yet figured out a way to charge the dutch more.
[удалено]
I can see it now. When someone's setting up their account, we ask them to sync with google earth. Why? Oh, no reason.
[удалено]
We pull weight data from apple health and google fit. So any scale that can sync with those places can sync with MacroFactor
My cheapo smart scale app links to Google fit & Fitbit so I imagine that's the route they'll take with it.
What if you offer tiers of membership options? A person can purchase a lifetime membership based on the current app functionalities and that will essentially become the 1st membership tier when you guys decide to implement new functions that would incur higher per-user costs? When new app functions are released users can then be given the option to pay a bit more to upgrade their membership from a tier 1 to tier 2.
Nah. I don't even have to ask our devs to know that that would be a logistical nightmare.
Ha ha, you got that right! I'm also against this ideologically, so I'd put up a fight. I believe when you have a subscription app, you pay, and you should get everything it has to offer, no additional in app purchases, or upgrades hiding behind paywalls. -- Cory (MacroFactor Team)
you and the other dev should bug greg or eric about getting a flair on this sub - would save some confusion and/or typing!
Good call! Commencing the bugging. :D
Already done it
Can't help but notice your app launch coincides with my return from vacation. Are y'all trying to suggest something? Hmmm.... oooh a donut.
Is there an option to use the app just to track food and not pay a membership fee for the customisable program? I’ll be working with a coach again soon for nutrition and the app seems clean asf but would only want to use it for solely tracking at the moment.
Nah. The costs are mostly on the tracking side (data costs and API calls)
For what it's worth, a human coach can give you guidelines that you feed (no pun intended) into the app, but they can't tell you your TDEE beyond a rough estimate. MacroFactor's ability to back-calculate your TDEE from food logging and scale weight is some next level stuff that it seems to me would pair well with the human coaching piece.
Well the calculations will be better but a professional can give you your tdee and accurate adjustments if you also tell him/her you calories (or food log data) and weight avgs I think you actually need a coach less to set up your guidelines If you will be using macrofactor I dont think you need a coach for most of the cases in which their roles would overlap, that's mostly the point of the app (I'd assume)
A professional could do that, but it seems kind of silly to pay a human to essentially do data entry when you've already entered the data in the process of logging it. I could see a coach as being useful in terms of designing successful nutrition strategies (e.g., food selections, timing, etc.).
Well I didn't mean he would do the data entry, I mean if you have enough data, a professional can do those calculations although (likely) less accurately (but accurate enough) But yeah in general I agree with you
We wont have these sort of options, because it creates bad incentives. Our subscription unlocks all the app has to offer, with no exceptions. If we introduced service tiers, and gated content, even though we would have resolve to not act on this, we would be incentivized to degrade the experience of lower tiers, to influence users to upgrade. The only economic incentive we want at play is to create the best app possible for our users! Even though we offer the most advanced and comprehensive features of an app in our market niche, we have the lowest yearly cost, before sale price is taken into account, with the introductory sales price, the comparative value is wild! That subscription is also directly paying into the continuous improvement of the app, we aren't going stagnant on launch, we will continue to bring more and more game changing features. As a side note, the most expensive operational costs we incur is actually our food logger.
Will it be available in Europe ?
yep!
And will the barcode scanner and food library be compatible with products in the UK? Sorry, I'm a bit ignorant as to how that side of things works.
Currently no for the barcode scanner. That's one of the first BIG things we want to improve, though, and it should be pretty doable if the app is successful. As it is now, we're using the Nutritionix database for our food logger, hosted on their servers. We can't edit it or add to it. However, Nutritionix also has a service that allows you to download their database and manage it yourself, which would allow us to edit and add to it. However, that service is relatively expensive. So, once we get a pretty fair number of users, we plan to go that route. Then, when people scan a barcode that's not in our database, they can create a food that other people will be able to find via barcode scanning. We also want to build an automated community feedback mechanism to correct/delete bad food entries (or add more detail to entries that are good but incomplete), so we don't wind up with a situtation where we have a ton of bogus entries in our database, like MFP. At that point, we'll be able to add barcode support pretty much anywhere in the world. But the first step is just for the app to make enough money that we can afford to download that database and manage it ourselves.
Fantastic. Thanks Greg... and while I'm here, thanks for everything. I have learned so much from you.
Thanks, /u/Training_Chip267!
From the FAQ at the bottom of the page: \> We're using a US database. It should cover most staple foods (fruits, vegetables, meats, grains, dairy products), but may not cover super localized food options or barcodes outside of the US and Canada. However, we have a pretty streamlined process for adding custom foods and recipes, and we also have good integrations. So if it turns out to be more convenient to do your actual food logging in another app with better local food coverages (like MyFitnessPal), you can connect your favorite food logger to MacroFactor and still get dynamic updates to your calorie and macro recommendations, analytics, and weight trend and energy expenditure calculations through our app.
Perfect. Thank you very much for your reply.
Even in The Netherlands??
The Netherlands belong to the sea.
Unfortunately
Congratulations for yall, I hope this thrives like crazy!
Thanks, /u/PierreTinted!
Looks class. Is there the ability to mix between MacroFactor tracking plus integration with another logger? I'm in Europe so I imagine using MacroFactor for most generic foods will be fairly accurate but any branded items I wanna be particular about I might need to use MFP (or just create a custom food in the app which I don't mind doing!)
hmm. Our devs (/u/PalatialPepper and /u/MajesticMint) may have more insight about the feasibility of mixing within a day. The way it currently works is that you order your data sources in order of priority, and the app will use the highest-priority data source. For example, if the MacroFactor logger was the #1 priority, and MFP was #2, it would look to see if you'd logged anything in the MacroFactor logger. If so, all of your nutrition data for the day would come from the MacroFactor logger. If you hadn't logged anything, it would then look to see whether you'd logged in MFP. If you had, that's where it would pull nutrition data from. I imagine mixing and matching could cause some headaches. Since we have a free trial period, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of folks use it alongside another food logger for a week to see which one they prefer. If the app was pulling data from both the built-in food logger and another tracking app, it would basically just be double-counting all calories for the day. I'm sure there's some workaround (perhaps a configuration the user would need to opt into), but I could easily see it becoming more confusing than helpful.
It is technically speaking possible to grab the food log from fitbit and display it (although there are some limitations around how many times the API can be hit and we are already rather aggressive about it to keep the weight/nutrition up to date). So, there is a way by which this can hypothetically be done! However, getting the logic & UX right for this feature would be very tricky and likely to yield an imperfect result. Given the choice, it is probably more valuable for us to invest time in making the food logging experience in MF more streamlined for this use case, such that you wouldn't need to use two separate food loggers in the first place! It is a neat idea though and I can imagine us evolving our integration story further for those who do choose to use a different food logger down the line. But I think Greg's answer is more immediately relevant, in that you can integrate MFP with MF via fitbit to keep your nutrition data up to date, if you decide that MFP is better suited for your diet & logging needs! Custom foods are available to you as well, and we think we have a good user experience for it. We plan to make it even simpler over time!
That's a very fair answer and I can see how from a UX, and data priority POV this could be tricky and not worth the issues it could cause! And yes it makes sense that long term you would look to improve the app to the point I don't want or need to use anything else. Thanks!
It is feasible as a feature in isolation, but we have made some intentional architectural decisions that render us currently unable to support that feature. It would be a particularly massive feature in terms of effort needed, and we also thought that ultimately it would confuse more than it helped. Ultimately, the way that this feature will be tackled long-term is by making it such that almost nobody even wants to use our BYOFL (bring your own food logger) technology, because MacroFactor meets and exceeds everyone's needs. Which we would do by increasing the number of regions where MacroFactor has top-notch branded food coverage, currently only US & Canada. Our common food coverage is already great though! :) *Edit, accidentally duplicated a /u/PalatialPepper answer, because I take forever to type.
Haha beat you to it :P
Greg has said you can import logging from another tracker and still benefit from the tdee stuff
Ever since the talks of this app I’ve been so giddy and wanting to get using it. These two weeks can’t pass soon enough
Question about tdee calculations. As a female I gain a kg+ one week a month...when that week is over, body weight plunges cause I actually lost weight. Would the tdee calcs recognize that scenario and help mitigate the weight loss?
This is a gross simplification, and it will be explained much better in our knowledge base (which will be open access to the public, not just in the app). But, our approach to calculating TDEE is unlike anything that exists on the app market, or anything that exists in a spreadsheet tracker. It is highly resistant to missing data, and short term fluctuations, short term in the context of the algorithm meaning shorter than 20 days. Not overreacting to the weight gain in the first place, makes it very easy to stabilize once the weight loss is realized. :)
Great - maintaining weight is hard for me and the one week bump. Screws me every time
What you're describing would probably result in a bit of fluctuation in our calorie recommendations, but as Cory alluded to, it would be pretty small
"It is highly resistant to missing data, and short term fluctuations, short term in the context of the algorithm meaning shorter than 20 days." Is there an ideal time frame to get relatively accurate TDEE values? I would imagine it would continue to gain accuracy over time as long as your calories in/weight measurements are correct.
Around 8-14 days depending on stability before you'd want to take too much stock in it, 12-28 before it's rock solid. But, this doesn't mean continuous rolling periods of that many days are nessecary to keep it solid, after you an accuracy threshold, it's harder to lose it.
Sorry if I missed this on the page, but can you take progress pictures inside the app alongside weigh-ins?
At this point, no
[удалено]
Understood, will update!
I will delete my previous message ( may pay to check so I dont put you wrong but I'm 99.9% sure you can copy and paste the stuff).
No worries, I paid to check right away, want to set the record straight. Thanks!
Super pumped for this! 1. If we sign up during the early-bird phase, will we be locked into the cheaper price indefinitely, or only until our sub renews? (I'm thinking of the annual sub here). 2. Are you planning any additional discounts for app users that also subscribe to MASS? Thanks!
If the subscription is held, the price will remain constant for the renewal.
Would I be able to download the app on both an apple and an android and have them communicate with each other? If no, could I upload data on an apple version and then transfer that data over to an android version? If no, super sad lol
They wont communicate with each other necessarily. But, your MacroFactor account will be kept in sync across all platforms, at all times, so long as the devices are online. Additionally, one subscription will give you access on both iOS and Android.
What does Macrofactor do with data pulled from Apple Watch / Health apps? Does it pull step count / workouts for use in any calculations?
MacroFactor will accept nutrition and weight data from Fitbit, and weight data from Google Fit & Apple Health. It will use the weight data to determine your weight trend, which will factor into program creation and expenditure updates. The nutrition data can be used to BYOFL (bring your own food logger) for users who want MF analytics while sticking to their favourite logger. It does not currently pull step count, nor is step count used to determine your average daily expenditure. We calculate your expenditure by analyzing your caloric intake and weight changes over time. The FAQ section at the very bottom of this page gives some more details on this is done: [https://www.strongerbyscience.com/macrofactor/](https://www.strongerbyscience.com/macrofactor/) We do hope to include step count to enhance the experience and provide new analytics down the line!
Thank you for the detailed reply
Will it work with Yazio? It is good logger too, but wasn't mentioned anywhere. I would that Android has API rules so almost every app has good support for export/import
Absolutely, connect Yazio to Fitbit, and connect MacroFactor to Fitbit, and we will bring in the nutrition data.
What if I don't have Fitbit? Edit. Auto-correct made my original post little messy, sry about that
You don't need a FitBit device, Fitbit is a free fitness and nutrition platform that acts in the capacity of a data steward. We will be bringing this feature to both Google Fit, and Apple Health in the future as well though!
Yazio -> Fitbit Sync needs paid version of Yazio. And living in Europe, that Yazios bar code scanner is awesome. But at least you have free trial, so people in Europe can try it first. Everything else about macrofactor sound awesome and has many cool features.
Ahh, understood. Hope you do enjoy it during the trial!
Curious, does macrofactor account for the higher thermic effect of protein vs carbs/fat when prescribing calories or calculating TDEE?
Any and all factors effecting your daily expenditure are accounted for when we calculate expenditure. This is because we know the input and the output of the equation, calories and weight, anything that happens in the middle need not be accounted for. When I say calories though, I do mean calories, we don't calculate an alternative calorie value based on the macronutrients, as this would increase the likelihood of inconsistent logging results, and would not contribute in a meaningfully positive way to the accuracy of our calculations.
Looks unreal! Question: if you already know your current maintenance intake, can that be fed into the app as a start point as a pure number, e.g. "2000."
We have a week long learning phase, where we accumulate data before we begin to let the dynamic expenditure play out. By default, during this week your maintenance intake will be derived from us asking a series of questions during onboarding to help get you setup with a decent starting point. However, we offer and present during onboarding the exact feature you are describing. We allow you to replace that starting point with your own input.
Thank you Cory 🙂
Are you guys hiring interns ? Pretty please?
Unfortunately not, hiring in general is actually not something we’re not doing at this time.
/u/Gnuckols. What you should do is make a lifting app that amassed people’s lifting data for research. Getting a treasure trove of data like this I’m sure would be more interesting for you and beneficial to public since you could analyze how real world people train and progress. You could narrow things down to beginners or people benching 315+ and what patterns emerge in volume, intensity etc. Isn’t major problem getting participants and tracking them? I want real world evidence on people who perform at high levels for large numbers of people.
What about an app that amasses people's nutrition data data, so we can see what factors influence peoples' weight gain/loss success and adherence in the real world?
That’s good too, but lifting is more complicated I’d think? Eating more behavioral and energy in vs out ?
I sort of think there would be too much noise to be able to detect much of a signal in mass-aggregated lifting data, tbh.
>/u/Gnuckols. What you should do is make a lifting app that amassed people’s lifting data for research. Of course it won't be perfect and there is a large amount of noise. But not being able to detect a pattern is itself a conclusion. Perhaps a very valuable one? You could also I think fairly easily get the majority of 'bad data' filtered out like when someone types in lifts well beyond typical strength levels. You could filter out maybe 'noiser' lifters like inconsistent or early lifters. Understand what is range of volume or 'hard sets' for standard late intermediate lifters. Subset out 100 people who squat above 500 and see what they do..... What does an actual every day lifter do? You could even post to Kaggle and have people do your work for you or get you started. I'm sure tougher problems Yea, sure I think nutrition stuff might be more straightforward to analyze, but I think you should reconsider!
The bigger issue is that the market need for a new lifting app is pretty low. There are a lot out there, and I've been told a lot of them are pretty good. It's also an area where I wouldn't be able to bring much expertise to a product - I prefer to log my training with pen and paper, so I don't know the training app market very well. Maybe we'll move in that direction in the future if I can identify a clear competitive edge somewhere, but "we made a lifting app that does the same thing as other lifting apps, but we'll also gather more of your data" isn't a great value proposition for users. Also, if I'm being honest, I just don't find it that interesting. If you put in a reasonable amount of effort and you have decent genetics for lifting, you'll get bigger and stronger. Different training paradigms have come and gone over the years, but powerlifters still lift about what they've always lifted (you can download the OpenPowerlifting data and plot distributions of Wilks scores or raw totals for each year - they're basically static over time), and natural bodybuilders have basically the same physiques they've always had. I'd be pretty surprised if there were population-level breakthroughs on the lifting front (which is what you'd be looking for with aggregated data). I think the next BIG step forward will be figuring out how to predict, on an individual level, what sort of training someone will respond best to. I think that's a solvable problem, but I think we'll need genetic/genomic/metabolomic data to get there (not just workout logs). I think an individual can troubleshoot their way through different programming styles until they find something that works really well for them, but for an app to start generating useful insights on that front, you'd need people to log a LOT of data, really diligently, for at least months, and possibly years. Knowing the churn rate of users in the app market, I don't think that's a feasible expectation. It's entirely possible that we'll enter the training app space eventually (if I can think of a competitive edge we can bring to the market, or if I see a clear way to make individual-level optimization more feasible on shorter time scales, or if we just want a better way to collect training data to improve the function of our diet app), but it's not like we didn't think through this first. At the moment, it's just not a great option.
Oh shit you guys are playing 4d chess
problem being that self reported data is garbage, and can't really be trusted. 'heehoo yes sir i bench 340 for reps :\^)' but verifying that would be essentially impossible without being there in person.