Planning meals on mobile

The hi.fitness mobile app plans your week one day at a time. Open More → Nutrition plan and you get a strip of days across the top, Monday to Sunday, with that day's meals as cards underneath. Everything you change is saved automatically - there is no Save button to remember.

Starting a plan

If you have no plan yet, the screen is a welcome page: an illustration, a short line on what the plan does, your daily goal (calories with protein, carbs and fat - tap it to change the goal) and two ways to start:

• Get your personalised plan - the app builds a week of meals around your daily calorie and macro goal, ready in seconds. It is the quickest way in, and once you have a plan it is in the ⋯ menu in the top corner as Create a new plan (a new plan replaces the one you are on).
• Build your own plan - start empty. Your plan begins with four meal slots: Breakfast, Second breakfast, Lunch and Dinner. In ⋯ > Meal times you can rename a slot, set its time, add more slots or remove an empty one. A slot named after a meal - "Dinner", or "Dinner at mum's" - knows which meal it is, and the recipe list opens on dishes for that meal. A name of your own, such as "Cheat meal", or a numbered one, such as "Meal 5", is not tied to any meal.

Your week, day by day

The plan is seven days, Monday to Sunday, and it repeats every week - so the dates on the strip are simply a way of naming the days. Tap a day or swipe the strip and the meals below change to that day's; today is marked.

Under the strip, Daily goal shows the day you are looking at against your goal: how many calories the day has left (or how far it goes over), your daily calorie goal under that, a ring with how much of your goal is already planned, and protein, carbs and fat, each with a bar against its goal. Tap it to change your goal. Without a goal it says Not set yet.

A day with nothing on it says Nothing planned, with a + Add meal button to put its first meal on it and Copy meals from another day under it (see Rearranging your week below).

Adding meals

Tap + Add meal under the day's meals (or the + Add meal button on an empty day) and the recipe list opens. At the top a line shows how many calories of your daily goal the day still has room for. Under it:

• Search looks through dish names and ingredients at once, so "salmon" finds every dish with salmon in it, and you can type without accents.
• The row of pills narrows the list: Mine shows only the recipes you created, and Breakfast, Mains, Light, Snacks and Desserts show one kind of dish. When the day's next meal is a named one, its pill is already picked; tap it again to see everything. A recipe of your own that has no kind of meal yet stands under none of those five pills: you still find it under Mine, in search and with no pill picked.
• The filter button next to the search field opens Filters: Prep time (up to 10, 20 or 40 minutes), Eating style (everything, vegetarian or vegan) and Foods to avoid (gluten, dairy, eggs, nuts and so on). The button at the bottom shows how many dishes are left, and the list changes only when you tap it. A number on the filter button says how many filters are on.

The line above the cards always says how many dishes you are looking at and which filters are on. The list holds every recipe and keeps loading as you scroll; the search field stays at the top while you do. Each card shows the dish's preparation time, and so does a recipe of your own once you set its time (Mine · 25 min). Tap a recipe to read it first; tap the + on its card to add it to the day straight away.

Eating style and Foods to avoid are remembered on your phone for your account, and every recipe list in the app uses them - so does the meal plan generator, which starts from the same answers. The prep time filter lasts until you leave the list. Recipes you created, and the ones your coach shared with you, are always shown, whatever the filters: the app does not check their ingredients, and they are yours to choose. The filters go by our catalog's ingredient data, so with a serious allergy keep reading the labels of what you buy.

A new dish always goes after the day's last meal, into the next meal slot of your plan, so nothing is replaced. There is no limit on how many meals a day can have: when the day's last meal is already in your plan's last slot, the app adds a new slot to your plan and puts the dish in it. To place it elsewhere in the day, drag its card or use Change meal slot in its ⋯ menu (see Rearranging your week below).

To write a new dish, tap the create button (a square with a pencil) in the top corner of the recipe list; it is there when you replace a meal too. If a search comes up empty, the search text becomes an offer as well: Create "..." opens the same editor with that name. Either way you build the dish from ingredients on the spot. Save it with the check mark and the recipe lands in your own recipe library for reuse, and the dish goes on the day (in place of the meal you are replacing, if you are replacing one). Close the editor with the X and nothing is added.

Every recipe list in the app - this one, the list you replace a meal from and the swap in your food diary - looks and works the same way. Each recipe you created carries a Mine label in these lists (the label is not drawn on the dish's own page); a recipe your coach shared with you has no label. With Mine picked and no recipes of your own yet, the list says so and offers to create one. At the end of every list sits a row to create a recipe: here it reads Create recipe, in the diary's swap Add your own recipe, and once you have typed something it becomes the Create "..." offer described above. All of them open the same recipe editor, described below.

Reading a meal, and swapping it

Tap a meal card and the dish opens the way it does in the Calories tab: its photograph, what it is worth, what is in it, and how it is made. Each ingredient shows a picture of the food and how much goes in; tap one to see its calories and macros in detail. The preparation is laid out as numbered steps.

Foods that come in pieces - eggs, bread slices, tortillas, rice cakes - are always planned in whole pieces. When a portion is scaled up or down, such an ingredient reads e.g. 2 pcs (116 g) instead of half an egg, and the meal's calories are counted from what actually lands on the plate.

Two buttons sit in the top corner of that card:

• Replace opens the same recipe list for that meal, with the same search, pills and filters, ordered from the closest replacement: dishes with similar calories and macros come first, and the pill of the meal you are replacing is already picked. Each dish is shown at the portion that fits the meal you are replacing, and that is the portion it goes into the plan at. Dishes that cannot be portioned to fit are not hidden, they are lower in the list. Tap the picked pill to see dishes of every kind; pick another one and the list is ordered again for that kind. After the fitted dishes come the recipes the app could not fit - the ones your coach shared with you, for example - and those go in at the recipe's own portion. What you choose takes the meal's place in the plan on this day - and since the plan repeats, that is your week changing, not just today's food. Without an internet connection the list is in name order, a line above it says the portions are not fitted, and a dish goes in at the recipe's own portion.
• Edit opens the recipe editor full screen - the same page as a new recipe (see Your own recipes below): the name, the ingredients with every way to add them, the description and the preparation. A planned meal has no For which meal choice - its slot already says which meal it is - and no Servings or Preparation time either: it is always one serving. The totals update as you go, and Daily goal under the ingredients shows the day with this meal against your goal.

Editing a shared recipe never changes the original: the app quietly makes a private copy just for your plan.

Fitting a day to your goal

When a day's meals add up to much more or much less than your daily goal, a Fit portions to my goal button shows under Daily goal. It is there when:

• you have a daily goal;
• the day has at least three meals with calories, snacks and desserts included;
• the day's calories or protein are more than 10% away from your goal.

A day from the meal plan generator is already that close, so there you see the button only after you change the day.

After you change your daily goal you do not have to fit the plan day by day. If a day of your plan no longer fits the new goal, the app asks once (Fit your meal plan to the new goal?). Fit resizes the portions of every day with at least three meals in one go, the same way the button does for a single day, and the meals stay the same. Not now leaves the plan as it is, and each day that is off still shows the button.

Tap it and the app asks first (Fit this day to your goal?). Tap Fit and the app resizes that day's portions the way the meal plan generator portions a plan: each meal gets the part of the day that suits its time, dinner the biggest, and the last meal of the day evens out what is left. A portion changes in quarters, from half the recipe to twice it, and foods that come in pieces stay whole. Where a dish has a protein ingredient, such as the chicken in a salad or the skyr in a bowl, there can be up to 30% more of it so the day reaches your protein goal. The day is fitted to your calories and protein; carbs and fat follow from the dishes.

The dishes stay what they are - the same recipe and photo, just more or less of it - and no copy of the recipe is made. Your own recipes and meals you have edited only change their portion. Other days are not touched, but your plan repeats every week, so the change applies to this day of every week.

Once the portions are saved, the meal cards and Daily goal show the new numbers, a short message confirms it, and the button goes away while the day stays close to your goal. When the day is already as close as its dishes allow (three small dishes do not reach a high goal even at twice the portion), the app says This is as close as it gets: add a meal or replace one, then try again. Fitting a day needs an internet connection; if it does not go through, the day stays as it was.

Your own recipes

The recipe editor opens full screen. Give the dish a name, then pick under For which meal what it suits - Breakfast, Main meal, Light meal, Snack or Dessert, as many as fit. The meal plan generator goes by this when it offers your dish, so at least one is required; a recipe without one would only ever be offered last. Open the editor from the recipe list in your nutrition plan and the kind of dish picked in the list is already chosen. Open it from a swap in your food diary and the right choice for the meal you are swapping is already picked.

Servings sits above the ingredients: enter the ingredients for the whole pot and say how many servings it makes, from 1 to 20. Everywhere else in the app - your plan, your diary, the meal plan generator and the shopping list - the dish then counts as one serving. Calories, protein, carbs and fat are added up under the ingredient list as you go; with more than one serving they are shown for one, for example 802 kcal / serving. Description and Preparation at the bottom are optional, and so is Preparation time under them, in 5-minute steps up to 4 hours or Not set. Servings and preparation time are each set on a small wheel: the check mark keeps what the wheel shows, the X changes nothing. On Android the Back button works like the editor's X: if you changed something, the app asks before it throws it away.

Every ingredient starts at Add ingredients. It opens a search and a list of foods with their pictures: type a food's name in your language and tick every food the dish needs - search again and keep ticking, nothing you ticked is lost - then tap the check mark in the corner, which shows how many you picked. The list loads more as you scroll, so you can also just browse it. Each food goes in at a starting amount: its usual portion where the catalog knows one, such as one egg, otherwise 100 g. Catalog foods carry verified values.

Tap any ingredient to set its amount, or to Change product and swap the food behind it. The list there starts with the foods that stand in for it best, under Recommended substitutes.

A photo of the dish. The wide tile at the top of the editor is the recipe's photo. Tap Add photo and choose Take photo or Choose from library; once there is a photo, the same tap also offers Remove photo. The picture shows on the tile straight away and is saved with the recipe when you tap the check mark, resized and without its location data. It then appears on the recipe's cards and on its own page. Without a connection the photo waits on your phone and is sent as soon as you are back online. A planned meal's Edit page has the same tile; a photo added there goes on that meal's own copy of the dish.

A recipe with no kind of meal. A recipe of yours written before For which meal was required, or by an AI app you connected, may have none. It then stands under no meal pill in the recipe lists, and its page asks Which meal is this recipe for? Tap one and it is saved straight away, with a short confirmation; to choose more than one, edit the recipe.

A recipe you own can be edited and deleted in two places. In the list you add a meal from (Add to this day or Replace meal), each of your own recipes has a ⋯ button on its card, next to the +; the recipe's own page - opened from a recipe picker, from a generator replacement or from a diary swap - has the same menu in the corner. Both hold Edit recipe and Delete recipe. Catalog dishes have no such menu, and neither does a recipe your coach shared with you. Deleting asks first, then removes the recipe from your recipes and from every list. Meals already in a plan are not touched: they stay on their days, and they still open and can still be edited.

Rearranging your week

Every meal card has a ⋯ button: Edit, Replace, Move to another day, Copy to another day (pick a day and a copy of the meal lands in the same meal slot; if that slot is taken, the app asks before replacing the meal in it) and Remove. While the day has an empty meal slot, Change meal slot is there too, to move the meal into it. Tapping the card opens the recipe, and a meal's time belongs to its slot - set it in Meal times in the top-corner ⋯ menu. The app asks before it removes a meal.

When the same dish is in your plan more than once, Edit first asks which meals the change is for: Only this meal, or All in the plan, with how many there are. For a recipe of your own, All in the plan opens the recipe itself, so every meal with it changes, and so does the recipe in your recipes. For any other dish, those meals get one private copy they share, and the original dish never changes.

To change the order of a day, press and hold a meal card and drag it up or down. Each slot holds one meal, so the dishes trade slots: drag dinner above breakfast and the two dishes swap places, while each slot keeps its own time. Empty slots stay empty.

Copying a whole day. On an empty day, tap Copy meals from another day. You see the days of the week that have meals (the nearest one before this day is picked, or the nearest after it when there is none), and under them the picked day's meals with their times and calories, and the day's total. Tap the button at the bottom, for example Copy 4 meals, and the empty day gets the same meals in the same meal slots, with the same portions and times; the day you copy from stays as it is. While no day of the week has meals yet, the app asks you to plan one day first. To empty a day, tap Clear day under its meals; the app asks first, and your diary stays as it is.

A copied day shows up in your shopping list and among the planned meals in the Calories tab as soon as the change is saved.

The ⋯ menu in the top corner

Once you have a plan, the top corner holds a single ⋯ button. It opens a menu with these entries:

• Add your own recipe - opens the recipe editor. The recipe is saved to your recipes and no day of the plan changes; a short message confirms it, and you find the dish under Mine in every recipe list.
• Meal times - your plan's meal slots: rename one, set its time (it applies on every day), add a new one or remove an empty one.
• Create a new plan - opens the generator. A new plan replaces the one you are on.
• Delete plan - after you confirm, the plan disappears from the app, including the planned meals in the Calories tab and the shopping list, and you are back on the start screen. Meals you have logged in your diary stay. Deleting needs an internet connection.

Coach plans and other devices

A plan your coach assigned opens in the same screen. Date-based (calendar) plans line up with the real dates on the strip.

Your plan syncs with the Calories tab's meal suggestions. If the plan changes somewhere else while you have unsaved edits on your phone, the app asks which version to keep instead of overwriting either one silently. Changes made offline are saved on your phone and sent as soon as you are back online.

Your shopping list

More → Shopping list turns your plan into a list of things to buy. The calendar button in the header picks the range - today, tomorrow, 3 days or 7 days - and the app adds up every ingredient the plan schedules in that window, grouped by aisle: dairy, eggs, vegetables, meat, and so on. The range you are looking at is written on that button, so you can always see which window the list covers.

No meal plan yet? Then there is nothing to add up, so instead of the list you see Get your personalized plan, which opens the meal plan generator. As soon as the plan is saved, the list fills itself in. Until then there is no date range button in the header, and the share button tells you there is no plan to share yet.

Amounts are summed across recipes, so oats in three breakfasts appear once. They are in grams, millilitres (liquids), pieces or slices. Grams and millilitres are whole numbers, and from 1000 g the list switches to kilograms and from 1000 ml to litres, for example "1.2 kg" or "1.5 l". Where a food is normally bought by the piece you get both readings - "6 pcs · 360 g".

Tap a line to cross it off as you put it in the basket. It stays where it is for about two seconds, so a mis-tap is undone with a second tap, and then it drops to the bottom of its group, so what is still to buy stays at the top. A line you untick goes back to its place the same way, after a moment. The count at the top tracks how far you are. Ticks are kept on your phone, so they work with no signal in the shop and are not shared with your coach. If nothing is ticked for 12 hours the list clears itself and says so, and the next trip starts from a clean list.

Your own items. Not everything in the trolley comes from a meal plan. Tap Add item above the list, type what you need, and it appears in an Own group at the top. Own items are kept on your phone only - they are not part of your plan, and nobody else sees them. Unlike ticks they do not expire: a line stays until you remove it, and you remove it by swiping the line to the left. They cross off like any other line and count toward the progress at the top.

The share button in the header sends the list as plain text - to Notes, to a message, to whoever is doing the shopping.

On your Apple Watch

The same list is on your wrist: open hi.fitness on the Watch and tap Shopping list. You get the same date ranges along the top, the same aisle groups, and the same lines - tap one to cross it off with your phone still in your pocket.

Ticks are shared with your phone, so a line crossed off on either device is crossed off on both. Changing the range on the Watch changes it on your phone too, and needs your phone to be in range, since the list is rebuilt for the new dates. The list itself is kept on the Watch, so it is there in the shop even with no signal. Here a crossed-off line drops to the bottom of its group at once, Hide picked up and Clear sit at the end of the list, and the same 12-hour reset applies.