The method

Your first calorie target comes from your weight, height, age, sex and training, plus the goal and pace you chose. Protein is set first. Carbs and fat fill the calories that are left.

The target is the same every day, training or not. One number is easier to hit.

To see the working, open Coach › How your coach built this.

The app compares your food logs with your weight trend. If you ate 2,300 calories a day and your weight held steady, you burn about 2,300. That's more reliable than any formula, and it doesn't depend on an activity level you picked once.

The first two weeks are left out, because water shifts when you change how you eat. After about 21 days of logs, the measured number replaces the starting guess.

Apple Watch calories are shown next to this estimate but never added to your food target. Watch calorie counts can be off by 20 to 30 percent.

Water and food can move your weight about 2 lb in a day. So the app smooths your weigh-ins into a trend line, and that's what it reads. One high reading barely moves it.

This is why weighing in often helps. More readings make the trend clearer, sooner.

A week is too short: water and timing can hide a real change. A month is too long to leave a plan that isn't working. Two weeks is long enough for the trend to show and short enough to correct course.

A check-in needs at least 7 weigh-ins and 10 logged days in the two weeks. With less, it keeps your targets as they are and tells you why.

One recommendation per check-in, with the reason: hold, adjust calories, adjust cardio, adjust training, a deload week, or a diet break.

Calorie changes are capped at 250 calories a day or 15 percent of your target, whichever is smaller. Small changes you can stick to beat big ones you can't.

If you weren't eating close to your target, it won't move the target. Changing a number you aren't hitting fixes nothing.

After 10 or more weeks of dieting, it may suggest a two-week diet break at maintenance.

Nothing changes until you say yes. Decline, and your targets stay as they are and the same change won't be suggested again. You can undo an accepted change later.

Chose Leave it to me during setup? Then the app keeps tracking and changes nothing until you ask.

The best plan is the one you can still follow on a bad Tuesday. That's why the pace is moderate, the workouts fit the days you have, and changes are small. Not the least you can do. The most you can keep doing.