Understand Your Energy Balance
Why the calorie numbers on your watch, your app and this site all disagree — and which one to act on.
6 steps · ~30min · tick as you go
6 steps
Get a starting estimate of what you burn, and see which equation produced it.
Why Your Watch's Calorie Count Is Wrong
Understand why your watch measures heart rate well and estimates calories badly, and stop eating that number back.
Turn a goal into a rate you can actually hold, rather than the fastest one.
Set the protein floor that protects muscle while the weight comes off.
Ultra-Processed Food: The One Controlled Trial
See the controlled trial where people ate ~500 kcal a day more without noticing, and why food choice beats arithmetic.
Grade six claims about calories, protein and food quality, and see which ones you were taking on trust.
How this works
Nothing here is gated and nothing is new: every step is a page or a calculator already on the site, and you can jump straight to any of them. The order is the contribution, along with the last step — a round of Grade the Claim, because reading something and being able to judge it later are different skills, and only the second one survives the week.
Ticks are saved on this device. Claims you meet in the check come back on a spacing schedule, and what you know keeps the tally.
Written and reviewed by Mathew Beale, MSc Biotechnology, University of Reading.
Last reviewed: