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Lean bulk, cut, body recomp. Calculate maintenance calories

Details

External ID
48614890
Source
HN
Company
—
Product
Lean bulk, cut, body recomp. Calculate maintenance calories
Website domain
macrocodex.app
Launched
June 21, 2026
Cohort
—
Upvotes
28
Upvotes percentile
0.7868852459016393
Tags
—
Fetched at
Sept. 7, 2026, 9:26 p.m.
Updated at
Sept. 7, 2026, 9:26 p.m.

Description

A very simple idea: when you eat more than your maintenance calories, you gain weight; when you eat less than your maintenance calories, you lose weight.By using an algorithm, we can accurately figure out your maintenance calories more accurately than traditional regression based formulas like katch mc ardle.It's way more accurate than calorie burn tracking devices like fitness bands and watches. (garmin/apple watch/whoop etc...)Traditionally, people often use static TDEE calculators which often over or underestimate for some by 100s calories.Chatgpt and TDEE calculators like Calculator.net or TDEECalculator.net use the same formulas, so they share the same limitationIf a beginner asks ChatGPT, "What are my maintenance calories?", ChatGPT can give them a number. But ask how it arrived at that number, and it will usually explain that it used a formula like Katch McArdle, Harris Benedict, or Mifflin St Jeor to calculate BMR, then layered activity on top using an activity factor, PAL, or MET tables.Dig deeper and those formulas come from statistical regressions based on averages from past populations. That means maintenance calories calculated this way can be off by hundreds of calories.MacroCodex uses your calorie intake and weight data to figure out maintenance calories specific to your body, not the population average.It usually reaches good accuracy after about 3 weeks, or 21 days of calorie and weight logging.This app is completely free, no paywall, no subscription and no ads. (works offline)Most people start seeing weight gain or loss within 5 weeks.We've reached 13,000+ users. Full support is provided if you experience any issue, most issues are resolved under 24 hours.

Enrichment

Theme
ai nutrition and meal tracking
Vertical
—
Function
Analytics & BI
Audience
B2C
AI stance
Not AI
Project type
Hobby / open-source project
Normalized one-liner
calorie calculator for body composition
Manually corrected
False

Could you build this?

Yes An adaptive TDEE calculator relies on well-documented statistical algorithms (such as exponential moving averages or Kalman filters) on top of calorie and weight inputs, easily implemented in a mobile app.

Discussion

12 comments analyzed.

Competitors mentioned: MyFitnessPal, Claude, ChatGPT

Concerns raised: Doesn't account for nutritional quality differences between calories, Individual calorie absorption varies by gut microbiome and genetics, Data collection without explicit user consent, Calorie logging is inherently inaccurate and difficult

Feature requests: Import historical calorie data to backtest performance, Weekly meal plan input instead of daily calorie logging, Easier way to log meals by ingredient and weight

Competitors

Other products that read as similar to this one — 234 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.

Attention rank: #21 of 235 (itself plus its competitors, highest first — normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).

Launched 219 days after the earliest competitor.

Other launches for this product