Your basal metabolic rate is the energy your body burns at complete rest. Ravenous uses the Mifflin-St Jeor equation, the most widely validated predictive formula in clinical practice: • Men: (10 × weight in kg) + (6.25 × height in cm) − (5 × age) + 5 • Women: (10 × weight in kg) + (6.25 × height in cm) − (5 × age) − 161 Your weight and height are converted from pounds and inches automatically, so the number you see comes from the profile data you entered.

Total daily energy expenditure is your BMR multiplied by an activity factor: • Sedentary — × 1.2 • Light — × 1.375 • Active — × 1.55 • Very active — × 1.725 Your activity level maps to a training-frequency bucket — roughly 0 sessions/week for sedentary, 1 for light, 3 for active, and 6 or more for very active. Every screen in the app that shows a TDEE (Body Metrics, your goals, the AI Coach) runs through this same single calculation, so the numbers never disagree with each other.

Your calorie target is a percentage adjustment to your TDEE, not a flat number: • Cut — a 20% deficit by default • Recomp — a 10% deficit • Maintain — your TDEE as-is • Bulk — a 10% surplus Percentages scale with body size, which a fixed "eat 500 less" never does. A 20% deficit typically produces around 0.75–1 lb of loss per week for most people. The final number is rounded to the nearest 50 calories so it's easy to work with.

If you've set a goal weight, the deficit gets slightly more aggressive the further away it is, because people with more to lose tolerate a larger deficit with less relative risk to lean mass: • Less than 20 lbs to lose — 20% deficit • 20 to 40 lbs to lose — 22% deficit • More than 40 lbs to lose — 25% deficit This tiering is based on the ISSN position stand on diet and body composition (Aragon et al., 2017), which supports moderate percentage-based deficits over aggressive fixed cuts.

No matter what the math produces, Ravenous will never recommend below 1,500 calories per day for men or 1,200 for women. If your calculated target would fall under that, the floor is used instead. If you're on a recomp and your target lands on that floor, the app tells you directly — that means your safe minimum intake is close to your maintenance calories at your current weight, which is worth knowing rather than hiding. These floors are conservative general thresholds, not personalized medical advice. Very low calorie intakes should be supervised by a physician.

Protein is set per pound of body weight, and the number is intentionally different for each goal: • Cut — 1.0 g per lb • Recomp — 1.0 g per lb • Bulk — 0.8 g per lb • Maintain — 0.7 g per lb Bulk being lower than cut looks backwards at first glance, but it isn't. In a calorie surplus your body already has abundant energy available, which is itself protein-sparing — you don't need as much dietary protein to hold onto muscle. In a deficit the opposite is true: your body is more willing to break down lean tissue for energy, so protein intake has to go up to protect it. Maintenance sits lowest because there's no active pressure in either direction. All four figures sit inside the range the ISSN position stand supports for active individuals (roughly 0.7–1 g per pound). Your protein target is rounded to the nearest 5 g.

Fat is set as a fixed percentage of your total calories, because it needs a hard floor for hormone production and fat-soluble vitamin absorption: • Cut — 25% of calories • Recomp — 27% • Bulk — 25% • Maintain — 28% Carbs are then the remainder: your calorie target minus protein calories (4 per gram) and fat calories (9 per gram), divided by 4. Carbs are the flexible lever because they're the one macro without a strict physiological minimum — they get whatever energy is left after protein and fat are secured. Fiber is set at roughly 14 g per 1,000 calories, in line with common dietary guidance, and your water target is about half your body weight in ounces.

Every formula here is a prediction based on population averages. Real metabolisms vary, and the only true test is what happens on the scale over time. These are starting targets. If your weight isn't moving in the expected direction after 2–3 weeks, revisit your calorie target by about 200 kcal — your Coach can help with this anytime. Recalculating your suggestions in your profile after a meaningful weight change is also worth doing, since every number above is driven by your current weight.