How Mero plans a week.

Rules, not generative AI

Mero’s app builds your week with deterministic, rule-based logic, not generative AI. The same complete planning context produces the same result; Mero does not improvise with a chat model. That makes the system transparent, repeatable, and auditable.

The inputs are your goal, your body and profile details, your seven-day schedule of hard, easy, and rest days with an Early AM, AM, or PM time for each training day, your meal coverage and prep preferences, and any allergies you record.

The output is a complete Monday-to-Sunday draft you can review before you pay. The lifecycle is: draft, swap any eligible meals, accept, a fixed current week, then the next draft at 8 a.m. on Friday, your local time. If you start mid-week, Mero also builds a short starter plan for today through Sunday.

How targets are estimated

You do not enter macro targets. Mero estimates them. It starts with your resting energy needs from the Mifflin-St Jeor equation, the same starting point most dietitians use, scales that by an activity factor, and adjusts for your goal to reach a daily calorie target.

Protein is set per kilogram of body weight. Fat has a minimum per kilogram and as a share of energy. Carbohydrate fills the remainder.

There are guardrails. The size of a deficit or surplus is capped, and the daily calorie target has a fixed floor and ceiling that a goal cannot push it past.

Prediction equations vary in accuracy from person to person, so Mero treats the first number as a starting point and refines it from your own results, as described under “How the plan adapts” below. You can see the baseline version of this math in the free calculator.

How training shapes the week

Mero does not treat every day the same. Protein stays steady across the week, while carbohydrate moves with the demand of the day. Rest days sit at your baseline. Easy training days get more carbohydrate, and hard days get the most, scaled to your body weight.

The time you train matters too. Meals are placed around an Early AM, AM, or PM session, and for an early-morning session part of that day’s extra carbohydrate moves to the evening before, so the fuel is in place when you start.

This follows the idea that fuel should match the work required rather than sit at one flat daily number. Mero keeps this at the level of hard, easy, and rest days. It does not attempt intra-session fueling, race-day protocols, or clinical carbohydrate manipulation.

Where the food numbers come from

Ingredient macros come from USDA FoodData Central or a product’s own nutrition label, not a generic crowd-sourced recipe database. Portions are calculated per meal so the day’s totals reconcile against your targets, and each recipe shows its ingredients in grams and in household measures.

The grocery list combines quantities across the week and rounds to whole packages where food is sold that way.

Recipes that contain an allergy you have selected are left out. The current release is omnivore-only and has no diet-style selector. Always check ingredients and allergen information yourself before eating.

When your week changes

An accepted week stays fixed. If you move a session, change its time or intensity, skip it, or make it a rest day, your meals, targets, prep, and grocery list do not change.

To cover ordinary changes, the weekly shop includes a small reserve of portable carbohydrate: up to three flexible carb top-ups, depending on how many sessions you have planned. When a session lands on a new day, Today points you to one.

You can swap eligible meals while a week is still a draft. A swap changes the draft only.

How the plan adapts

Each Friday at 8 a.m., your local time, the next week’s draft is ready. It is built from your current profile and your next training week, and it rotates recipes against the meals you accepted in the last 28 days.

Mero also reviews the week you just ran. If you logged your weight at least three times that week and checked off at least half of your planned meals, Mero compares your weight trend with what you ate to estimate how much energy you actually use. It then moves next week’s calorie target toward your goal by a small, capped step.

If there is not enough data, your targets carry over unchanged. Either way, logging a weight or checking off a meal never changes today’s meals or the week you are in. Only the next draft changes, and you review it before you accept it.

The same guardrails apply here as in the first estimate: the adjusted target cannot go below the calorie floor or past the limits on a deficit or surplus.

What you should verify, and the limits

The plans and numbers are examples and starting points, not personal prescriptions, and you are always responsible for reviewing meals for allergens and suitability. I am not a registered dietitian, and Mero is not medical advice.

Mero is built for healthy adults 18 and over who train on a real schedule. You do not need to know your macros to use it. If you have a clinical condition, a history of disordered eating, are pregnant, or are chasing a competitive weight-class goal, please work with a qualified professional instead.

Sources

These sources inform the general framework above. They support the approach, not any single number in your plan.

• Mifflin MD, St Jeor ST, et al. A new predictive equation for resting energy expenditure in healthy individuals. PubMed.
• International Society of Sports Nutrition position stand: protein and exercise. PMC.
• Impey SG, et al. Fuel for the work required: a framework for carbohydrate periodisation. PubMed.
• Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, Dietitians of Canada, and the American College of Sports Medicine joint position on nutrition and athletic performance. PubMed.

Questions

More about the person building this on the about page. For anything else, email [email protected].