The first time you open BeforeIBite, you'll go through a short setup — about 90 seconds — that ends with a personalised calorie and macro target. Here's what it asks for and why.
What's in the flow
The setup has three parts.
1. A few survey questions. What brought you here, how you usually eat, whether you've tracked before, what trips you up, and what would feel like a win in eight weeks. These shape the copy, examples, and reminders you see in the app — they don't change your calorie target.
2. Your goal. Lose weight, maintain, gain weight, build muscle, or train for endurance. This is the single biggest input into your daily calorie target.
3. Your body stats and activity. Gender, date of birth, height, weight, and how active your typical day is. If you grant Apple Health access, we can read height and weight from there so you don't have to type them.
Once you've answered those, BeforeIBite computes your daily calorie and macro targets and shows them on a summary screen. The last step is picking a time of day for your first meal-log reminder.
What goes into your daily targets
Only the body stats, activity level, and goal affect the calorie and macro calculation:
- Body stats — your basal energy use, derived from gender, age, height, and weight.
- Activity level — multiplies your basal energy to estimate total daily energy expenditure (TDEE).
- Goal — adjusts TDEE up or down so the calorie target supports the result you're after.
The four micronutrient targets (sodium, sugar, fiber, saturated fat) are set from public-health guidelines and don't change with your inputs.
The full equations — Mifflin–St Jeor BMR, activity multipliers, goal adjustments, protein g/kg by goal, fat as a share of calories, and the public-health sources for the four micronutrient ceilings — are all documented in How are nutrition's daily targets defined?.
Editing later
Anything you set during onboarding can be edited afterwards:
- Body stats and goal — Settings → Profile.
- Calorie and macro targets — Settings → Daily targets. See Adjust your calorie and macro goals for the override flow.
- Meal reminder time — Settings → Meal reminders.
If you change a body stat or your goal, BeforeIBite re-derives your daily targets automatically — unless you've already set them manually, in which case your overrides stay put.
A note on what we store
For the full breakdown of what BeforeIBite stores, where, and for how long, see What data does BeforeIBite collect?.