Nutrition, tracked simply

The food log is one screen per day. At the top sit your targets for the day: calories and the three macronutrients, protein, carbohydrates and fat. As you add what you eat, each target fills up and shows how much room is left.

You don't have to hit every number to the gram. The point is a clear picture: are you roughly where you want to be on calories, and are you getting enough protein to support your training. The rest is detail.

Logging a day is quick once it becomes a habit. Add a food, set the portion, and it lands under the right meal with its calories and macros counted. You can edit or remove an entry any time, so a wrong guess in the morning is a two second fix in the evening. Miss a day and nothing breaks; you just pick it back up.

A training day and a rest day rarely deserve the same numbers. Both target editors take two sets of values, one for training and one for rest, and your food log shows whichever fits the day you are looking at.

You decide which kind of day it is. The app can preselect the type from your training and from the day templates in your plan, but a suggestion stays unconfirmed until you pick it. If the day turns out different from the one that was planned, a card says so and you choose which target counts.

• Your own day templates carry the same marking: training, rest, or good for any day.
• A coach planning your week sees the rest-day comparison in their grid, so a rest day gets planned as one.

Adding a food should take seconds. There are three fast ways to find one, and most days you'll lean on whichever is closest to hand.

Once a food is in your log, adjusting the portion updates its calories and macros right away, so a rough estimate is easy to correct. Custom foods are the real time saver: build your usual shake or your standard lunch once, and adding it later is a single tap.

1. 1
   Search by nameType what you ate and pick the closest match from a large food database. Results show calories per 100 g; tapping one opens the portion view with full macros before you add it.
2. 2
   Scan a barcodePoint your camera at the label on a packaged product and the scanner pulls its exact nutrition straight into your log.
3. 3
   Save a custom foodFor a meal you eat often, save it once with your own numbers. It then lives in your list, ready to add in one tap.

Most days you eat the same handful of things. Quick log turns those into tiles: one tap puts a known meal in your log, and a portion multiplier adjusts the amount before it lands.

The other shortcuts exist for the days that go sideways. Take yesterday over wholesale, park a photo of a meal you have no time to enter, and add the reason for an off-plan meal later, or never.

1. 1
   Tap a tileThe tiles come from what you already ate: the meals you logged yesterday, one slot at a time, the day templates that fit the day type you picked, and the foods you marked as favourites. One tap adds the whole tile with its macros, and the portion multiplier scales it to the plate you actually had.
2. 2
   Copy the previous dayOn a repeat day, take the whole previous day over at once and edit only what was different.
3. 3
   Photo now, log laterSnap the meal and the picture waits in your log as a reminder of an entry still to complete. Reminder photos stay on your device and are never uploaded.
4. 4
   Name what was differentAfter a meal outside the plan you can add a reason. It is optional, and it can wait. You can also mark single entries so they show up in the week you send your coach.

A meal plan groups foods into the meals of a day, for example breakfast, lunch, dinner and a snack. It gives your day a shape you can repeat, so breakfast is already decided and you can just make it and move on.

The plan is what you set out to eat. Swapping a food, changing a portion, or skipping a meal whenever real life gets in the way is expected, and the log still tracks what you actually ate against your targets, so the plan tells you what was intended and the log tells you what really happened.

If you train with a coach, they can set your daily targets or assign a full meal plan. From then on your food log shows their numbers, and you track your real intake against them. Your coach can see how the week is going and adjust.

Working with a coach on nutrition is optional. On your own, you set your own targets and change them whenever your goal shifts.

Either way the log works the same. You record what you actually eat, and the targets, yours or your coach's, sit alongside it. Nothing about the tracking changes; only who set the numbers does.

When your coach plans your week, each day arrives in your food log under Planned today, one card per meal, naming the recipe and what it costs you in calories and macros. Nothing left to work out while you are already standing at the stove.

Portion buttons sit on the card at 0.75x, 1x and 1.25x. Pick the one that matches the plate in front of you, tap Ate as planned, and the whole meal lands in your log with its macros counted.

Real days go sideways. If your coach approved alternatives for that meal, they sit on the card as one-tap swaps. If you ate something else, Something else opens the food search, and where your coach allowed a tolerance the card shows the calorie budget you have. The app then asks what was different, no time, travelling, no appetite or a digestive issue, and that one tap is what explains the week to your coach later.

Every daily target says who set it and when. A target out of your coach's plan names the coach with the date; a target you set is marked as yours.

Adjust a single value yourself and the rest stays attributed to whoever set it. The header always follows the target actually in force, so a half-edited day never claims to be something it is not.

When a plan runs out or the coaching ends, the old target neither vanishes nor quietly keeps counting. It rests as a grey card, and you decide: adopt it as your own, or carry on without a target. Adopting is offered for today.

Under Week, a week chronicle pulls the days together: training days and rest days, what you logged, the reasons you gave and the entries you marked. Your own week note sits apart from those recorded deviations, so a rough week can carry an explanation without rewriting the record.

The server builds the card and it goes to one active coach of your choosing, through your chat with them. If you are offline the send queue holds it and delivers it once you are back.

Once it is out, your device notes who received it, when, and the note that went with it. Change the note afterwards and it shows as unsent, so a draft never looks like a delivered week.

On your coach side an unanswered week card turns up as an exception in their roster, and after more than 72 hours without a reply they can come back to it and follow up.

Under Profile, Settings, Nutrition you pick your allergens and dietary notes from a fixed, translated list of chips, and you can add a personal note of up to 200 characters. The fixed wording is the point: a recipe carries tags from that same vocabulary, so the two can be compared instead of guessed at.

Your active coaches keep the same chips in your nutrition view and read your note. Every change records who made it and when, and you see the registered full name of the coach who made it, also after the connection has ended. In the coach view their own edits are marked as theirs, yours carry your name, and another coach shows as a neutral label.

A coach tags recipes in the kitchen with that vocabulary. When they save or send a week, Ironstead compares your chips against the recipe tags and names the recipes and the notes affected. A coach can override a conflict deliberately, with a reason, and the release keeps the confirmed recipe and note pairs. On the planned meal you then see the full name of the coach and the overridden notes that still apply to you.

Those planned days come out of the nutrition hub, the coach-side screen where the week is assembled. If you coach, this is where the time goes. If you are coached, it helps to know what your coach is working with.

The hub has three tabs.

1. 1
   KitchenThe recipe library. A recipe holds its ingredients, a photo, dietary restriction tags and instructions, and the ingredient search takes nutrition values straight from the food database. Scaling adjusts every ingredient at once until the recipe meets a calorie or protein target.
2. 2
   Week planA grid with the days across and the meals down. Drag a recipe from the drawer into a meal, or stack several when the meal is built from components. Every meal takes a portion factor, a fixed or flexible tolerance, approved alternatives and a note. A coach can scale one day or the whole week to a target, save a day or a week as a template, or copy a week that already works. Send to athlete is what puts it on your phone.
3. 3
   OverviewThe roster in one table, with average calories and macros against target per athlete, next to a feed of the athletes worth a message: nothing logged for two days, a macro that keeps landing low, a plan about to run out.

A single day tells you little on its own. Over a week or a month you can see your average calories and protein and whether your body weight is moving the way your goal expects. That average is what you steer by.

If the trend and the goal disagree, you have a clear next step: nudge calories up or down and check again in a week.

• The weekly average calorie count, with single-day swings smoothed out.
• Protein hit rate: how often you actually reached your protein target.
• Body weight direction: slowly up, slowly down, or holding, matched against your goal.

Questions about nutrition

Do I have to hit my targets exactly?

No. Getting roughly close on calories and reliably hitting protein over the week is what matters.

Can I scan barcodes?

Yes. The barcode scanner reads the label on a packaged product with your camera and adds it to your log. You can also search by name or save your own custom foods.

Do I have to eat exactly what my coach planned?

No. Log the portion you actually ate, take one of the alternatives your coach approved, or pick Something else and search for what you had. Either way your log records the real day.

Can I build recipes and week plans myself?

The nutrition hub, with its kitchen, week plan and roster overview, is a coach feature. On your own you set your targets, log your food and build your own meal plans.

What if my coach set my targets?

Your food log then shows the targets or meal plan your coach assigned, and you track your real intake against them. Nutrition coaching is optional; on your own you set and change your own targets.

Do rest days get their own targets?

Yes. Both target editors take separate training and rest values, and the log applies the one for the day type you picked. A suggested day type only counts once you confirm it.

What happens when a coach plan runs out?

The last target rests as a grey card instead of quietly counting on. You choose whether to adopt it as your own or continue without a target.

Do my meal photos get uploaded?

No. A photo you park with Photo now, log later stays on your device as a reminder of an entry still to complete. It is separate from what you log.

Who can see my allergens and dietary notes?

Your active coaches. They edit the same chips in your nutrition view and read your note, and every change records who made it and when. Treat it as guidance for planning, not a safety check.