MacroFactor - Macro Tracker 12+

Game Changer

This app is a game changer ! The built in nutrition coach algorithm take out all the guess work out of dieting and will prevent you from spinning your wheels in the wrong direction for weeks or months! It will help you achieve your goals whether it’s building muscles or losing fat. You’ll have to invest a little extra in logging food because the food database is more limited than MyFitnessPal for example, but that’s a small price to pay (especially given the amount of wrong food entries plaguing MyFitnessPal in recent years)

Calorie Calculator

Putting aside the lack of Polish products in the food log, the error that struck the the most was my energy expenditure. Being a 170cm and 62kg (F), the app calculated a 4500kcal maintenance (lifting and cardio level intermediate). That just doesn’t sound right. After correcting it to 2000kcal, the app gave me an estimate of 1150kcal per day to lose weight (note that’s weight not fat). That’s really low for a “standard rate”. Also there’s no way to change your maintenance after that.
Additionally, the protein intake which I chose was average and was given a 163g per day (there’s no way to change that either). That’s almost 3x my weight in kilos, while eating more than 2x can couse hormone imbalance, especially for women.
For an uneducated user, eating like that can couse serious problems.
That being said, I love Jeff’s content, but this app just doesn’t cut it.

Developer Response ,

>Being a 170cm and 62kg (F), the app calculated a 4500kcal maintenance (lifting and cardio level intermediate).

I'm almost positive you accidentally entered incorrect information when setting up your profile. Given the BMR equation and activity multipliers we use for your initial expenditure estimate, the highest maintenance estimate you could get at 62kg would be about 3150kcal. It's also possible you experienced a bug, but I don't believe we've ever gotten any bug reports for the initial expenditure calculation.

>After correcting it to 2000kcal, the app gave me an estimate of 1150kcal per day to lose weight

The recommendation is based on the target rate of weight loss you specified. When setting a goal, the app shows you the calorie targets implied by your goal, so you can weigh that decision for yourself – would you prefer to lose weight faster (which will mean eating less), or lose weight slower (which will allow you to eat more)? So, if you indicated that your maintenance is 2000kcal, and you wanted to lose about 0.8kg/week, that would require a calorie target of about 1150 calories per day – that's just how the math works out. If you would prefer a higher calorie target, you can always reduce your target rate of weight loss.

>Also there’s no way to change your maintenance after that.

You can. You can enter a manual initial expenditure estimate and/or change your expenditure start date whenever you want: https://help.macrofactorapp.com/en/articles/70-set-a-manual-initial-expenditure-estimate

>Additionally, the protein intake which I chose was average and was given a 163g per day (there’s no way to change that either).

In addition to the 4500kcal maintenance estimate you got, I'm now even more confident that you entered some incorrect information during onboarding. The highest recommendation MacroFactor will give (for someone who's engaging in resistance training, aiming to lose weight, and who selected the highest protein option) is 3.1g/kg of fat-free mass. The moderate recommendation for you should have been 2.25g/kg of FFM, given the info you've provided here. So, even if you're extremely lean, the moderate protein recommendation should have capped out at ~120g/day for you.

As mentioned previously, it's possible that you encountered some novel bugs, but knowing the math/logic used to generate the initial expenditure calculation and the nutrition programs, the 4500kcal maintenance estimate and the 163g protein recommendation should not be possible given the information you've provided here. If you shoot us an email at support@macrofactorapp.com, we'd be happy to look into it for you, but I think it's very likely that the app gave you poor recommendations because you entered some incorrect information during onboarding. If I had to take a guess, I suspect you selected metric units, but entered your body weight in pounds.

A good companion.

App is generally fantastic. It is easy in use and rather intuitive. Though the improvement would be to add more languages. This way it would be much faster to insert the nutrition information from the products outside the US. One thing I have to mention tho is the lack of horizontal view. It really bugs me especially when I use this app on my iPad. So my kind request is, could you add the horizontal view option, please? :)