Before you start: have your current weight handy. You'll also need a food scale and a bathroom scale once your diet starts. See What you need.
Step 1. What's your diet goal?
Pick one:
- Fat loss: lose fat and preserve muscle
- Muscle gain: gain muscle and gain weight
- Maintenance: power your workouts and enhance recovery
Not sure which? See Choose your goal. Want to lose fat and build muscle at the same time? See Recomp.
Step 2. Tell us about yourself
Enter your name, sex, weight, height and age.
Step 3. What's your body fat percentage?
Pick the range whose photo looks most like you. Eyeballing it is fine, because the app adjusts from there. See Choosing your body fat percentage.
Step 4. Your goal
This screen depends on the goal you chose in step 1. On every goal, you set your diet duration (start and end date) and your target weight. Each article below shows its own screen and a worked example:
- Set up a fat loss (cut) phase: choose Highest success, Slow & steady or Custom goal
- Set up a muscle gain (bulk) phase
- Set up a maintenance phase
When you tap Next, the app rates your goal, for example "11 lbs. Doable. Some suffering may be required." Tap Ok to continue.
Tap Learn more about diet goals and safety for the limits.
Choosing a fat loss plan, setting diet duration and target weight
Step 5. Physical activities
- Step plan: your average daily steps. Estimate a typical week. You can change this later.
- Workout days (optional): tap + to add the days, workout type, start time, duration and intensity. You can also turn on Use workout shake. You can also change this later. See Which workouts to log and how to rate them.
Step 6. Meals & schedule
- Meal schedule: the days, your first and last meal time, and the number of meals. See How many meals a day should I eat?
- Busy schedule (optional): times you don't want meals or workouts scheduled, like a commute or meetings.
Step 7. Weigh-ins
Choose your weigh-in days and time. Weighing in 4 or more times a week gives the most accurate results. Morning is best. See How to weigh yourself.
Step 8. Weight loss drugs
Tell us whether you're using, or planning to use, a weight loss drug such as semaglutide (Ozempic, Wegovy), tirzepatide (Zepbound, Mounjaro) or retatrutide. Choose Yes or No. If you're not sure yet, choose No. Your answer doesn't change your plan. It helps RP understand how these medications affect people's diets and results.
To learn more, see what we do with your data.
Step 9. Calorie target
Choose how to set your calories:
- RP daily recommendation (recommended): follow the daily calories RP suggests for you.
- Custom daily target: set your own calories if you already know your numbers.
Here's your plan
The summary shows your goal, start weight, weekly rate and goal weight with your start and end dates. To change anything, tap the pencil icon in the section you want to edit. When you're happy, tap Start my diet! and the app builds your plan.
Your diet is ready
You'll land on your Schedule. If your start date is in the future, you'll see when your diet begins. Next: find your way around the Schedule and add foods to a meal.