In the app, you can optionally plan out the amounts of which foods you are going to eat in order to hit your macronutrient targets for a meal. This process is designed to make it as easy as possible to hit the sometimes difficult macro targets necessary to get results.
Because the app auto adjusts weekly based on your weight we’re able to allow for some wiggle room within the meal planning process. At the highest level you can think of the meal macro targets as being plus or minus 5g of each macro and you’ll notice the app rounding macros consumed from your targets and the corresponding food weights.
Next, the app separates food choices up in to three ordered steps each of which target and count macros a bit differently. The first step is in some ways the simplest, it counts all macros and is focused on making sure you’re getting enough complete protein in order to maintain or build muscle. Steps 2 and 3 will not count any protein provided by foods selected in them, this helps you not have to go back and fiddle with exactly how much of the foods selected in Step 1 your are going to eat, so your goal is to get the red protein target bar maxed out in this step.
Step 1 is divided into three major sections, The Basics, Expanded, and Restaurant. The Basics lists a common core set of lean protein options along with a few safe special cases. The selection in The Basics should give you an idea of the kind of food selections which make for maintainable healthy eating in line with Sculp’s target macros. All of these selections aren’t appropriate all the time but broadly speaking they are a solid core list of food which lead to success. There are other healthy lean protein sources not on this list, it isn’t by any means exhaustive, and there are some foods which have been intentionally left off because there is too much nuance around when/why they may be a good or bad idea. The Basics are safe and reliable, if you’re happy sticking to them then things can be kept simpler and easier! The Expanded section is for adding some flexibility on top of The Basics with more specific store bought and packaged foods, many of which have barcodes for easy scanning. There are more than 600,000 options in Expanded, so it might take a bit more work to find exactly what you’re looking for and you should be careful to double check the macros whenever you’re using something for the first time. Restaurant is unsuSculprisingly for restaurant foods! With more than 150,000 foods from more than a 1,000 restaurants. Be mindful of the choices you make from Expanded and Restaurant and try to eat at least 80% whole healthy foods.
The app tells you what macros to hit meal by meal, and give you exact weights of every selected food you have to eat to meet those macros. If you want to maximize your chances of success, eat only the foods listed in the plan, or very similar whole foods. If you’re going to eat foods not listed, please count them to within 5g per macro. So if a your plan says to consume a meal of 20g of protein, 35g of carbs and 10g of fat, and you consume foods with a total of 17g protein, 37g carbs, and 11g fat, you’re in the clear!
Step 2 is focused on providing added fats when it is healthy to do so. In Step 1 you hit your protein target, if your chosen foods are healthy lean protein sources you may have a bit of extra target fat left over. The selections here will only contribute to your fat and carbohydrate targets so you don’t need to worry about having to go back to Step 1 because of protein that is present in these foods.
See App > Meal Planning – Step 1 for more details on the overall app meal planning process and the break down of meal planning into steps.
Step 3 rounds out your meal with carbohydrates. The choices made in this step will only count towards your carbohydrate target. The list of foods in this step is subdivided into three sections, Veggies, Low Density Carbs, and High Density Carbs.
For every diet type it is always important to have vegetables in your diet, which is why they are listed first. We recommend choosing your veggies first so you don’t talk yourself into leaving them out later in order to keep that bit of extra bread. The app will automatically choose a reasonable starting weight for your veggie choices but feel free to adjust up or down as desired. You’ll notice that most vegetables have a fair amount of wiggle room towards hitting your target carbs, so if you’re ever looking to fit a bit more food in to a meal veggies are a great place to look. See I don’t like Vegetables. What should I eat? for more info and recommendations.
The other two sections in Step 3 are split based on comparing the carbs in the food to its total weight. A low density carb has fewer carbs for the same total food weight than a high density carb. This means that low density carbs are good for fitting more food volume into a fat loss diet and high density carbs are good for packing carbs into a muscle gain diet without huge volume.
See App > Meal Planning – Step 1 for more details on the overall app meal planning process and the break down of meal planning into steps.
You can filter the list of foods shown in the app by enabling one or more of the following filters to match your dietary preferences. Only foods that match all of the selected filters will be shown.
| Filter | Description |
|---|---|
| Dairy Free | Foods that don’t contain and aren’t derived from dairy. |
| Gluten Free | Foods that don’t contain gluten. Low gluten foods aren’t included. |
| Grain Free | Foods that don’t contain grain. Pseudo-grains are still shown as some people can eat them while eating generally grain free and the few that exist are easily ignored. |
| Low FODMAP | Foods that contain low levels of FODMAPs (Fermentable Oligo-, Di-, Mono-saccharides And Polyols). If only a small and carefully measured amount of a food would be allowed then we err on the side of caution and leave it out. |
| Ovo-Lacto Vegetarian | Vegetarian foods including milk and eggs. |
| Paleo | Foods that are included on the Paleo diet. Opinions on what is “paleo” or not vary, we’ve done our best! |
| Vegan | Foods that are included in a vegan diet. Since some people apply a standard of animal harm rather than excluding all animal derived products we err on the side of including these easily ignored foods to make things easier for those vegans who do want to eat these foods. |
You can sort the list of foods shown in the app by one of the following options.
| Filter | Description |
|---|---|
| Name | Sort foods from A to Z. |
| Calorie Density | Sort foods by their relative calories in the same weight of food. Low calorie density foods are generally more filling. If you’re feeling hungry after eating the planned macros consider food choices with lower calorie densities. If you’re too full consider food choices with higher calorie densities. |
| Primary Macro | Sort foods by the highest amount of the step’s primary macro first. Step 1 focuses on protein, Step 2 on fat, and Step 3 on carbs. |
The Sculp Diet app counts carbs as total carbohydrates minus fiber.
For example, if a nutrition label displays 20 grams of total carbohydrates, of which 15 are dietary fiber, the app will display the food as containing 5 grams of carbs. Sugar alcohols are counted.
Though many food manufacturers exclude sugar alcohols from their reported “Net Carbs” values, the app counts sugar alcohols as carbohydrates. Though some sugar alcohols have very few calories, many commonly used sugar alcohols have a considerable calorie load, and are thus treated in our data as equivalent to other carbohydrates.
Fiber consumption promotes both health and satiety, while sugar alcohol consumption is at best neutral for health and can cause considerable gastric upset in even moderate quantities. Thus, our treatment of the data encourages more fiber consumption, and moderates sugar alcohol consumption, which is likely a net benefit for the vast majority of dieters.
Example Carb Calculations:
Yes, but this is a highly flexible plan, and there’s no need to do so. While this can make meal prep easier, adding different veggies, spices and herbs for each week can go a long way towards infusing your diet with variety, which plays a key role in ensuring that you consume ample vitamins and minerals to support your health.
As such, we strongly encourage you to rotate in at least a few staples for each major nutrient.
EXAMPLE:
| Nutrient | Week 1 | Week 2 |
|---|---|---|
| Lean Protein | Chicken, ground turkey | Pork tenderloin, salmon |
| Healthy Carbs | Brown rice, whole wheat pasta | Sweet potato, quinoa |
| Healthy Fats | Avocados, almonds | Peanut butter, olive oil |
If you’d like to use a workout shake for the workouts on this day, please select ‘yes.’ You never HAVE TO use use a workout shake, as you’ll get great results without one. Shakes are most effective if your workouts are very long or very hard, so please consider that. If you choose to use workout shakes, please note that they add up on top of your selected meal number. Thus if you selected 4 meals per day but added a workout shake, the shake will appear as another meal in addition to the other 4 meals, not replacing any of them.
You can choose the “roughly at macros” option if you:
- Ate the meal exactly as designed in the app.
- Used the macros-per-meal values and got to within 5g of each macro. So for example, if your macros for the meal were 30g protein, 50g carbs, and 15g fat, you can mark the meal “roughly at macros” if you, say, ate a meal that was 25g protein, 55g carbs, and 10g fat or anything closer to the meal macros than that.
- Combined the meal with another in-app meal or used macros for two meals in the app and combined them, coming within 10g of protein, carbs, and fats of the combination.
If the meal you ate was of much higher macros than the listed ones (more than 5g of protein, carbs, or fats above the listed macros), then you should select the “over macros” option to mark your meal as NOT eaten according to plan. If you were much lower than the listed ones (more than 5g of protein, carbs, or fat below) then you should select the “under macros” options. Do your best here, it doesn’t need to be exact.
In other words, only mark your meals as “roughly at macros” if you eat the exact meal as instructed or make your own meal but with the macros being very close to the target meal. This way, your diet adherence score will reflect your actual diet adherence and help let you know if you need to be shaSculper on your diet to get the results you’re looking for.
Macro targets in the app are rounded to the nearest 5 grams. You might wonder why we aren’t more precise with this measurement but the reason is simple: there is no need for more precision!
First off, nutrition labels aren’t even accurate enough to the single gram of macronutrient –– there is some error… but errors of less than 5 grams are VERY small!
Think about it like this –– trying to be more precise than the nearest 5 grams with macros is like trying to measure the gas you add to your car to the droplet or trying to measure your income to the fraction of a cent. At some point the difference more precision makes is insignificant and the work it takes for that precision is not worth it. Save your mental resources for the parts of dieting that will get you significant results –– like sticking to your meals in the app, getting your workouts in, and getting to bed on time!
The Sculp diet app worries about all of this for you –– it will adjust your diet as needed to keep you getting results, so you can relax, follow the plan, and reach your goals!