A strength and body-composition desk. We do the arithmetic in public — energy balance, volume, protein distribution — and we review the software only where it touches a number we actually care about.
Roundup
A beginner needs three numbers to be right: total calories, grams of protein and the weekly weight trend. Everything else can wait. These are the apps that get those three right with the least effort.
Roundup
A cut runs on a deficit large enough to survive some measurement error, which makes adherence the binding constraint rather than precision. That changes the ranking slightly.
Roundup
A bulk is a small surplus sustained for months, which makes it the phase most sensitive to measurement error. Here is what to log it with.
Roundup
We bought all six at retail and ran them alongside our own weighed logs for eight weeks. Only one app in this category has an accuracy figure that an outside laboratory produced and a second, unrelated laboratory then reproduced — and that is the whole ranking.
Roundup
A plan that never expires, a trial with the expiry buried, and a reduced version that is quietly worse. Only the first is free, and only three apps here offer it.
Review
Point, shoot, number in two seconds. The accuracy figure it advertises was produced by the company selling it, and correcting a wrong estimate drops you into a thin catalogue.
Review
Net carbohydrate is the primary number rather than a setting you enable, which no general tracker does properly. Outside a ketogenic protocol there is little reason to choose it.
Review
Lab-analysed entries mean one reliable record per food instead of the crowd's forty. It is the right instrument for a micronutrient question and the wrong one for a bowl of restaurant leftovers.
Review
Almost nothing important sits behind a wall, which in this category is close to unheard of. The trade is a community database and no independent accuracy measurement of any kind.
Note
Most trackers show four numbers. Fibre is the one most Western diets are short of, and its absence also makes net carbohydrate impossible to compute.
Review
Around 5.1% in the same independent study that measured PlateLens. That puts it ahead of most of the category and behind the one app whose figure got reproduced.
Review
The best first app in the category and one that treats building tomorrow's plate as a real feature. The nutrient panel is thin and the photo estimate is loose.
Review
The best expenditure algorithm in the category, attached to a food log that cannot keep up with it — and no free tier at all. We paid for four weeks and cancelled.
Roundup
Almost every app publishes an accuracy figure. Almost every figure was produced by the company selling the app. Sorting the category by who measured it produces a very short list.
Review
Twenty million community entries and the widest measured error band of the mainstream trackers, both for the same reason. Worth it only if you eat at chains constantly and will verify every pick.
Review
A database curated by employees rather than by the crowd is a real and underrated distinction. The app around it is dated and the accuracy has never been independently measured.
Review
The curriculum is the best in this category and the food log is the worst. Around $209 a year buys you both, and you should know which one you are paying for.
Review
We ran it for eight weeks against our own weighed logs. The reason it tops our roundup is not the interface — it is that its accuracy figure was produced by an outside laboratory and then reproduced by a second, unrelated one.
Review
A pleasant app with a good recipe library and a fasting tracker. No outside group has ever published an accuracy figure for it, which is the whole of what we can tell you about its numbers.
Method
A rest-pause set produces more reps than a straight set at the same load, but not more full-value sets. Here is the arithmetic for counting it honestly.
Method
Every formula for energy expenditure is a population average applied to one person. Here is the arithmetic for finding your own number from data you are already collecting.
Method
The per-meal ceiling people cite does not appear in the literature it is attributed to. Here is what the distribution data supports and what it does not.
Method
Ten sets, twenty sets, thirty — the numbers get quoted without their denominators. Here is what the dose-response data supports and where it stops being informative.
Method
Linear progression works until it does not, and the point where it stops is predictable from arithmetic you can do at the start.
Method
Short rests were prescribed for a hormonal mechanism that turned out not to drive hypertrophy. The performance data points the other way.
Method
A week at maintenance costs you a week of deficit. That is the whole cost, and it is smaller than most people fear and larger than most people budget.
Method
Daily body weight moves more from water and gut contents than from fat. Here is the protocol that separates the signal from that noise.
Method
The surplus that maximises muscle gain is much smaller than the surplus that maximises weight gain, and the gap between them is fat you will have to diet off.
Method
The safe rate scales with how much fat you are carrying, which is why one percentage figure cannot serve a lean lifter and an obese beginner.
Method
1.6 to 2.2 g/kg covers almost everyone, and the reason it is a band rather than a number is worth understanding before you pick a point in it.
Method
Expenditure does fall during a diet by more than lost tissue predicts. Here is how much of that is adaptation and how much is you moving less.
Note
From directly above, a bowl with two inches of rice looks identical to one with four. This is optics, not software, and it will not be fixed.
Note
A label reading zero grams of fat can legally contain half a gram. Across a day of packaged food that rounding is not negligible.
Note
Published restaurant figures are averages of a preparation that varies by kitchen, by shift and by whoever is holding the ladle.
Method
Five grams a day gets you to the same place as a loading protocol, about three weeks later. Here is the arithmetic on both, and on the scale jump that scares people off.
Method
Losing fat and gaining muscle simultaneously is real, and the conditions that permit it are narrow enough to state precisely.
Method
The performance cost of chronic short sleep is larger than almost anything else you could change, and it does not show up in a training log as a sleep problem.
Method
The interference effect is real, well studied, and much smaller than the phrase implies. Its size depends on modality, timing and volume — all of which you control.
Method
Two sets of ten at the same load can be very different doses. RIR is how you write down the difference, and most volume advice ignores it entirely.
Method
Total intake and total training quality dominate. Timing earns its keep in a narrow set of cases, and it is worth knowing which ones you are in.
Method
DEXA, calipers, bioimpedance and the mirror all disagree. The trick is not finding the accurate one — it is picking one and never switching.
Note
A kilogram appears, you have done nothing wrong, and the arithmetic says fat cannot move that fast in either direction.
Method
When weekly volume is equated, training a muscle once or three times a week produces similar growth. Frequency matters because of what it lets you do with the volume.
Note
±1.1% does not mean your dinner will be within 1.1%. Here is what these figures describe and the three questions to ask of any of them.
Method
Deloading every fourth week regardless of state is a scheduling convenience, not a recovery decision. Performance tells you when.
Note
A pound of fat holds roughly 3,500 calories. Predicting weight loss from that number overshoots, and the reason is worth knowing.
Method
Muscle activation studies rank exercises by a signal that does not predict growth well. Loadability and stability do better, and they are easier to assess.