Macros that move when your weigh-ins say so

Your weigh-in trend moves your calories, and one bad morning changes nothing

Water, salt, sleep and a late dinner can each move the scale a couple of pounds overnight, so no single reading changes your targets.

At each weigh-in, MuscleBuddy averages your last seven weigh-ins, compares that with the average of the ones before them (up to seven), and turns the difference into a rate per calendar week. If you weigh in daily, that is this week against last week. The first trend needs ten weigh-ins, and the app counts them down for you.

That rate gets checked against a band around the rate your current goal calls for. Inside the band, nothing changes. Outside it, carbs (or whichever macro your coach chose) move by about 150 kcal toward the band. After a change, the next one waits at least a week, unless you are losing faster than the band allows, in which case calories come back straight away. On a cut aiming for a pound a week, the band runs from half a pound to a pound and a half. Lose 0.3 lb a week and carbs come down; lose two and they go back up.

Maintenance and deload blocks are meant to hold steady, so the adjuster leaves them alone. A recomp block aims to keep your weight level, so calories move only when the trend drifts more than half a pound a week either way, and then back toward level.

Reverse diet, carb cycling, and contest prep

Three modes sit alongside the default cut, bulk and maintain logic, all part of Pro.

Reverse diet walks calories back up after a long deficit. You take each step when you are ready, at most one a week. The step is 100 kcal unless you or your coach set another size, and your weigh-in trend shapes it: while your weight is flat or rising up to 0.1 kg a week you get the full step, faster gain shrinks it, and at 0.35 kg a week or more the week holds until the scale settles. Each step keeps your macro split. The reverse diet ends at maintenance: your coach's number if they set one, then yours, then an estimate from your current weight. While it runs, a weigh-in cannot cut calories back out from under it. It is a gradual way back up, with no promise about what your metabolism will do.

Carb cycling assigns high, medium and low carb days across the week, lined up with your schedule: high on training days, low on rest days. Protein stays put and fat fills the rest of the target. You set the ratios and the day mapping.

Contest prep sequences a long deficit, peak week and a structured rebound for physique athletes. If you have a coach, your phase transitions wait on their approval. If you coach yourself, they apply directly and you can reverse them.

Log food without typing macros

The free food catalog covers single ingredients, common cooked dishes and a growing list of branded items. Recipes are free too: build a meal from its ingredients once, save it, and log it as one entry after that. Eat half a portion and it scales.

Pro adds the parts that save the most typing. Scan a packaged food's barcode and its nutrition comes from Open Food Facts or USDA FoodData Central. Meal plans build from your macro targets and the foods you log, so the suggestions look like what you eat. Micronutrients get daily targets with percent coverage.

Logging works offline. Log a meal in a gym basement or on a plane and it syncs when you have signal again.

What nutrition reads, and what it hands back

On Pro, your training schedule shifts your meal plan's carbs toward training days and your session minutes count toward your hydration target. Your calorie targets themselves come from your weigh-in trend alone, not from what you lifted. Your weight trend also sits beside your lifts on the Pro analytics chart.

Upkeep does not feed your targets. Medications and appointments are not read into them, so if your trend jumps for a reason unrelated to food, you decide what to do about it.

Every change comes with its reason

Each adjustment stores its own explanation: the trend it measured, the target it compared against, and what moved. When your carbs drop on a Monday, you can read why.

A real one reads: "Your weight fell 0.14 kg/wk vs a 0.45 kg/wk target, so we removed 150 kcal of carbs." The same weigh-ins give the same answer every time, because a written rule produced it.

If your coach reviews your adjustments, they see that reason first and approve or reject the change before it reaches you.