Food & water.

Your calorie goal

Levelwell starts from your resting burn, the energy your body uses at rest, worked out with the Mifflin-St Jeor equation from your sex, age, height and weight. It converts pounds and inches to kilograms and centimetres first.

Women   BMR = 10 × kg + 6.25 × cm − 5 × age − 161
Men     BMR = 10 × kg + 6.25 × cm − 5 × age + 5
kg = lb × 0.453592 · cm = inches × 2.54

Your maintenance calories are your resting burn times your activity level.

Then your goal sets the suggestion:

Safety rules

• Never below a safe minimum: 1,200 kcal for women and 1,500 kcal for men. A lower suggestion is raised to it, or to maintenance if maintenance is already lower.
• No deficit if you're underweight: with a BMI under 18.5, Lose weight suggests maintenance.
• No surplus at a BMI of 30 or more: Build muscle suggests maintenance.
• You can type your own goal. Later edits are kept between 800 and 9,000 kcal, with a warning under the safe minimum.
• Your goal doesn't change by itself when your weight does. Settings › Goals shows the new suggestion, and Recalculate from my profile applies it.

Protein, carbs, fat, fiber

Your macros always follow the calorie goal you're using. Protein is set first, from a reference weight: your weight, but no more than the weight that gives a BMI of 25 at your height (and no more than your goal weight when you're losing).

Protein = reference kg × g/kg   (1.8 lose or build · 1.6 maintain · 1.4 endurance)
          never under 0.8 g per kg of your weight, or 50 g
          never over 35% of calories
Fat     = calories × 0.25 ÷ 9
Carbs   = (calories − protein × 4 − fat × 9) ÷ 4   (at least 50 g)

Calories burned

Levelwell counts active calories only: what you burn on top of your resting burn. Resting burn is already part of your calorie goal, so it's never counted twice.

Activities you log

Each activity is estimated from your weight, how long it lasted and how hard it was, using its MET value (how many times your resting burn it takes). One MET is taken off, since that part is resting burn.

kcal = (MET × intensity − 1) × kg × hours
intensity: Easy × 0.8 · Moderate × 1 · Hard × 1.25

Workouts you do in the app are counted the same way, set by set: each set's own time at that exercise's MET. The Workouts page has the details.

Everyday movement

Without Health Connect, movement is estimated from your steps: about 0.03 kcal a step at 150 lb, scaled to your weight. That's walking at 3.8 MET, roughly 6,300 steps an hour.

kcal = steps × 0.03 × (your lb ÷ 150)

The day's total

If your watch or tracker sends active calories through Health Connect, Levelwell takes the larger of that number and its own estimate. It never adds them together, because a watch's number already includes the workouts it tracked.

without Health Connect   total = workouts + step estimate
with Health Connect      total = max(Health Connect active, workouts + step estimate)

Workout calories in your budget

Settings › Goals › Workout calories decides whether workouts give you more to eat that day. It's Off by default, because your calorie goal already assumes an everyday-active day. Only workouts and logged activities are added, never steps or Health Connect movement.

budget = calorie goal + added
Off    added = 0
Half   added = workouts ÷ 2   (estimates often run high, so half is the safe middle)
All    added = workouts       (best with Sedentary as your activity level)

With a 1,797 kcal goal and a 293 kcal run, your budget is 1,797 (Off), 1,944 (Half) or 2,090 (All). Protein, carbs and fat grow with the budget. The ring, kcal left, the Home tile, the widgets and the nightly nutrition check all use it.

Food search and barcodes

• 13,626 foods on your phone from the US Department of Agriculture: 8,051 from the Standard Reference, 5,202 "foods as eaten" (FNDDS 2021–2023) and 373 Foundation Foods, with values per 100 g. A quick list of 117 common foods with typical servings is searched first.
• Barcode scan: point your camera at a barcode, or type it in. Only the barcode number is sent to Open Food Facts, a free public food database, to look up the label. The Nutri-Score grade shows when the product has one.
• Packaged and branded foods by name: only when you tap the button, never while you type. Only the words you typed are sent to Open Food Facts.
• Portions: up to two household portions from the USDA, then 100 g, 1 oz (28.35 g) or grams. Every food you log today can be tapped to change its amount, rename it or swap it.

Water

Your water goal is set when you finish setup: 35 ml per kg of body weight, kept between 1,600 and 3,700 ml and rounded to the nearest 50 ml. Water is shown in ounces if you use pounds, or in ml and litres if you use kilograms.

goal = kg × 35   (min 1,600 · max 3,700 · nearest 50)
on a day touched by a fast of 24 h or more:  goal × 1.25

• Example: 161.4 lb (73.2 kg) gives 2,550 ml, which is 86 oz. On a 24-hour fast day it rises to 108 oz, because food normally supplies about a fifth of your water.
• You can change the goal between 16 and 135 oz (500–4,000 ml).
• One tap on + water adds a cup: 8 oz by default, or 250 ml in metric. Pick another cup size any time, from a can to a jug.
• Reminders come every 2 hours by default (1–4 to choose from), between 9 AM and 8 PM. Each one counts from your last drink, and they stop once you reach your goal. The reminder's + 8 oz button logs your cup without opening the app.

What food and water earn

Logging earns XP straight away. A nightly check runs once the day is over and pays for how close you came to your targets. It only runs on days with at least 2 foods logged and at least 60% of your calories eaten, so a half-logged day is never judged.

A full nutrition day is worth up to 200 XP before your streak bonus. Lost XP is capped at 150 a day for everything together.

Food quests and badges

• Daily quests: Log 3 meals or snacks (+40), Eat your protein at 90% of target (+70), Hit calories and protein on the same day (+120).
• Weekly challenges: protein target on 5 days (+300), meals logged all 7 days (+250), water goal on 5 days (+250).
• Badges: Food Logger (100 meals, +200), Nutrition Nerd (1,000 meals, +1,000), Protein Pro (10 days, +150), Muscle Fuel (50 days, +500), Clean Plate (5 days with all four checks, +200), Dialed In (30 days, +800), Hydrated (7 days, +100), Hydration Hero (30 days, +300).