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A gaining week

Eating for muscle with a small surplus.

A gaining week is a week in which you eat a little more than you burn, so your training has something to build from. This page explains how Forma sets the numbers, what a week looks like, and what to expect on training days versus rest days.

Forma does not ask you for a calorie number. It works the target out from your body, your movement and your goal. On a gain (the goal Forma labels Eat up), a small surplus is added on top of what your body is expected to use. The surplus is deliberate: the aim is a slow gain that mostly goes to muscle, not a fast one.

When to use it

• You train to add muscle and you are at a body-fat level where gaining is the sensible direction. Forma decides a goal from your measured body fat; until you have a reading, you choose the goal yourself in Settings under Goal.
• Your 7-day average weight has been flat for weeks while you train hard, and you want it to start moving up slowly.
• You want different targets for rest days and training days, instead of one flat number that is wrong half the week.

Step by step

1. Weigh in a few times during the week: tap Add weigh-in on Today, or let Apple Health bring the readings in.
2. Open Settings and check Height, Birth date and Sex. A wrong entry shifts every number.
3. Under Goal, choose Eat up. Forma may have chosen it for you already if your body fat is measured.
4. Open Fuel and read today's target on the ring. On a day with a strength session it is higher; on rest days, lower.
5. Log your meals with the plus button (Add food) and land near the target for the day you are on.

A worked example

Lee is an invented trainee. His data: a man, 68 kg, 178 cm tall, age 22, with 4 strength days a week and the bulk goal.

Forma estimates the resting burn from weight, height, age and sex. Then it adds everyday movement (10 percent of the resting burn), expected exercise (about 250 kcal on a strength day until it has learned from your own sessions), and the bulk surplus (+250 kcal, which is 12.5 percent of his average-day maintenance).

The full targets, with macros:

How to read it: the surplus only needs to average out over the week. Eating near 2,107 on rest days and 2,357 on strength days lands him on the intended pace, about 250 kcal up per day on average. Protein stays at 116 g on both kinds of day, because it is fixed per kilogram of bodyweight (1.7 g/kg on a bulk). The extra 250 kcal on a strength day goes almost entirely into carbs (267 g to 311 g), with a couple of grams more fat.

For his weekly total, that is roughly 15,700 kcal: four strength days and three rest days at those targets. Forma checks the 7-day average weight each week to see whether the pace is working.

Good to know

• The coach acts on your 7-day average weight, not a single weigh-in.
• If your body fat is measured, Forma may set the goal for you: for men, it chooses Eat up when the reading is below about 10 percent.
• The surplus is small on purpose: a bulk adds about 12.5 percent to average-day maintenance.
• There is no calorie field to fill in: Forma works the number out for you.
• Protein does not move between rest and training days. Only carbs and fat do, because training changes the energy you use, not how much protein you need to keep muscle.
• Protein is a floor, not a budget: going over it is good. Calories, carbs and fat are budgets; going over them is what to avoid.
• Carbs are the flexible macro. They take whatever calories are left after protein and fat. The grams are estimates; being reasonably close matters more than hitting the exact number.
• Forma never suggests less than your resting burn, or a common least-to-eat guideline for your sex (1,500 kcal for men, 1,200 for women). On a bulk this floor is unlikely to matter.
• The scale confirms the pace over weeks, not days. A kilo of change in a day is water and food, not progress lost.
• Prefer one number for every day? The diet coach offers that when it works alone: a flat everyday target with no training-day split.

Related

• A beginner's week
• A cutting week
• Your day target, and why it moves
• Weight and the 7-day average

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