No App-etite?!

About Apps and an Athlete's Appetite

Welcome! For those who are new here — I’m Arne, a passionate cyclist and engineer with a deep interest in AI. I explore how technology, particularly artificial intelligence, is transforming sports—or not—and what it means for athletes, coaches and sport enthusiasts.

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The Shift from Intuitive Eating

Most of us eat when we’re hungry and stop when we feel full. This is called intuitive eating. At our core, we are all intuitive eaters—think back to your childhood. Did you worry about how much, when, or what exactly you were eating? Likely not.

As we grow older, we become more self-conscious of what we eat. That can be for many different reasons: maintaining body composition, improving mental health or physical health, adhering to dietary ethics like veganism, or improving athletic performance. Sports and good nutrition go hand-in-hand, but over the past years it has taken a flight.

From Weird to Common Practice

In 2017 Team Sunweb started with personalized plates for their climbers during stage races. Fast forward a few years, and this was common practice at Team Jumbo-Visma, which automated calorie tracking with the development of the foodcoach app. This app is now commercially available as the Athlete’s FoodCoach app.

The contrast is huge when you realize that only a decade ago, Victor Campenaerts was mocked at that very same team for bringing his scale to the breakfast table. Today, it is routine to track your food intake — even for seemingly playful cyclists like Tadej Pogačar as he disclosed in an interview with Peter Attia.

Intelligence or Math?

Honestly, there is little true “(artificial) intelligence” involved with foodtracking apps like the Athlete’s Foodcoach app. It is simple math. As an engineer I like math: it is based on numbers (e.g. data) and leaves no room for doubt. As an athlete I like the latter, remove guesswork and leave no doubt. You might conclude this would make me a fan of the app.

Well, yes and no. Leading up to the World Champs cycling e-racing (yes, I ride my bike indoor competitively — maybe more on that later😉), I used the Athlete’s Foodcoach app for a period of 8 weeks. Coming straight to the point: the math worked. I started using the app at 69kg, I set the app to help me lose 1 kg and maintained a steady weight of 68 kg for the final four weeks.

We Are Not Cars

Does this mean I felt like my food intake was as efficient and optimal as I would wish for? In my opinion, no. The app uses the “calories in, calories out” principle. It estimates your basal metabolic rate (BMR) based on your weight and daily activity level. This is a pretty reasonable estimate and it turned out pretty accurate for my body. Having set the BMR, you add your training data and the app calculates the exact amount of food you consume for that day including the right amount of carbs, fats and protein.

This sounds great and it works for maintaining, gaining or losing body mass in a controlled way. However, the app applies the math to each day as an isolated unit. There is no intelligence beyond this principle. Suppose I have four consecutive days of training:

• Day 1: 1.5-hour recovery ride

• Day 2: 6-hour long ride

• Day 3: Rest day

• Day 4: 3-hour VO2 max ride

The app would recommend:

• 3,500 kcal on the recovery day

• 7,500 kcal on the long ride day

• 2,500 kcal on the rest day

• 5,000 kcal on the VO2 max day T

Technically, this is correct in terms of total calorie expenditure. But it lacks practical application. I do not want to have a ridiculous breakfast on the long day, overeat post-ride and feel hungry towards the end of my rest day. Unlike cars, we do feel the difference between a 10% tank and a full tank.

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An intuitive eater would likely spread the calories differently—eating a larger dinner on the recovery day and slightly increasing intake on the rest day. This avoids large fluctuations. In my experience, this approach feels much better!

No Magic, Still Useful

I also discussed foodcoach app with other athletes who used it. Most of them like it after they “have found their way to work with it”. This meant adjusting the app’s recommended intake to better align with their actual BMR and/or redistributing calories across multiple days. For example, they might eat more the day before or after a big training session and then balance those calories on subsequent days.

This highlights an important point: we are still our own best food coaches. A nutrition app does not do any magic, but it does force you to understand what you eat and when. Using an Excel spreadsheet for multiple weeks will do the same, but it would not be as convenient—or marketable.

So yes—give it a try, get the insights you need, but do not forget to follow your own instincts. True Intelligence comes from combining the insights these tools provide with your own intuition and experience.

Some Interesting Apps

I talked a lot about the Athlete’s FoodCoach simply because it is the app I tried and it is well-known among cyclists. Other interesting apps for athletes:

• Hexis: Unlike Athlete’s FoodCoach, Hexis calculates food intake over multiple days, addressing the issues I mentioned earlier.

• MyFitnessPall: The original. While not designed specifically for endurance athletes, still provides great nutritional insights.

• Fuelin: Includes features for tracking fluid requirements and carbohydrate intake capacity.

• EatMyRide: Helps create fueling strategies tailored to your training sessions.