How To - Manage Per-Meal Calorie and Macronutrient Targets and Create Meal Recommendations

With CoachMePlus, you can now personalize calorie and macro targets for each meal, as well as create meal suggestions. This article will walk you through how to manage calories per meal and even customize macros per meal. In addition, you will also learn how to make meal suggestions for athletes to use while logging their nutrition in the platform. Learn how to set calorie and macronutrient targets in the Nutrition Module here. 

Watch the video below for a walkthrough on this feature:

Below is a step-by-step guide on how to utilize this feature in the CoachMePlus platform:

Step 1: Once you have Macro targets saved for an athlete, you can manage Per-Meal Macros. From this screen, you can select to customize this:

Click on Manage Per-meal Macros

Step 2: On this screen, you can customize the percentage of daily calories you want to allocate to each meal by either dragging the sliders or manually entering percentages. Once satisfied on this screen, you can click Save. 

Step 3: Once you've hit save, you will be brought to the next screen which will allow you to customize the specific amount of protein, carbohydrates, and fat per meal. You can either leave the pre-set macro numbers or customize them yourself. *Note* changing the macro numbers will change the allocated calories to the meal, even though they were set on the previous screen. Keep an eye on these numbers to be sure you are staying with your set limits from the previous screen.

Step 4: Once you are satisfied with the per-meal macros, you will hit save and the option to Manage Meal Suggestions will appear. Click on this to build meal suggestions.

Step 5: On this screen, you will see each meal with 'plus' buttons underneath. You can click on those buttons to start to build a meal suggestion. Clicking a 'plus will make a box appear, which contains another 'plus' - clocking on this will bring you to the food search to begin adding items to your meal suggestion. *Note* You can add as many suggestions per meal as you'd like. The athlete will be given each as an option. Adding more meals will just give the athlete more freedom to choose what they'd like to eat.

Once you have created all of your meal suggestions, click on the save icon. The athlete will be able to choose from your meal suggestions or add their own foods to adhere to your recommended calorie and macro targets. You can track all of this in the nutrition module on the athlete's overview page as a coach.

This feature was designed with dieticians and nutritionists in mind, as well as those who wish to provide their athletes with detailed recommendations to help them reach their performance goals as efficiently as possible!