Guide › Track it your way

A beginner's week

An invented week with the numbers Forma works out.

One invented person, one ordinary week, and the targets Forma works out day by day. Read it to see what a normal week of numbers looks like before you log anything yourself.

When to use it

• You are new and want to know what to expect from your first weeks.
• You wonder why the target is higher on a training day than on a rest day.
• You want to see where the protein, carbs and fat in your target come from.

How Forma builds a day's target

Forma builds each day the same way, from the numbers you have already given it:

1. It starts with your resting burn, worked out from your weight, height, age and sex (the Mifflin-St Jeor formula). When Forma already has a body-composition reading, it works the same figure from your lean mass instead.
2. It adds everyday movement: 10 percent of the resting burn.
3. On a training day it adds the exercise the day should bring: about 250 kcal for a strength day until Forma has at least three of your own sessions to learn from. A rest day adds nothing.
4. Your goal then moves the day. On maintain, it stays where it is.
5. It splits the calories: protein is a fixed amount per kilogram of bodyweight, fat is 27.5 percent of the calories, and carbs fill what is left.

A worked example

Amira is a woman, 62 kg, 165 cm, 34 years old. Her goal is maintain, and she trains 3 strength days a week. Her resting burn is 1,320 kcal.

Her week, as Forma sets it:

For a strength day, Forma's own wording is: "Strength day: 1,702 kcal — rest days are 1,452."

How to read it: protein never moves between rest and training days; the extra 250 kcal on a strength day all go to carbs and fat. Three training days spread across the week make an average of 1,559 kcal a day. That is what her body is expected to use on an ordinary day of the week.

Good to know

• The 250 kcal on a strength day is an estimate until Forma has three of your own sessions. After that, Forma uses the median burn from your own recent sessions; on a day your watch has measured the training, the measured figure is used instead of the estimate.
• Protein is set per kilogram of bodyweight. On maintain it is 1.8 g/kg, which for Amira's 62 kg gives the 112 g she sees every day.
• The target is never lower than the higher of your resting burn and a common least-to-eat guideline. Amira's target comes nowhere near the floor. Some people's do; Forma holds the target up and says when it does.
• You never type a calorie number. Forma works the target out; the goal is what you change.
• These targets are information and estimates from your own entries, not medical advice. Talk to a doctor before you change how you eat.

Related

• Your day target, and why it moves
• A cutting week
• A gaining week
• Ways to judge progress

Something unclear or missing? Write to support@raveniq.ai and say which page.