Plan nutrition by phase

A nutrition plan is a client’s targets laid out over time: a sequence of dated phases (a cut, a diet break, a reverse diet, maintenance), each with its own targets. Within a phase the targets can differ by day, such as more carbs on training days than rest days, or a refeed every second Saturday. Stem switches the targets on the right day, and your client sees which day they’re on.

Before you begin

A client whose nutrition is Macros or Calories only. See Nutrition to choose how a client’s nutrition is tracked.
For planning from a goal: a goal with a bodyweight target. See Review a client’s progress.

Steps

1. Add a phase

Open the client’s Nutrition tab. The Nutrition plan card at the top shows the plan as a strip: each phase’s width is its length in time, a line marks today, and the part of the current phase already behind you is shaded. Choose + Add phase.

Pick its Kind (Cut, Maintenance, Diet break, Refeed, Reverse, Surplus, Peak week or Other) and give it a Name if you want one other than the kind. Set when it Starts and its Last day. The last day is the final day the phase runs, and the length shows beside it (”· 8 weeks”). Leave the last day empty on the final phase to make it open-ended: its targets then hold until you plan what comes next.

Expected rate (kg / week) is optional. It’s what you expect the scale to do, shown against what it actually does once the phase is under way. It never changes a target.

A new phase starts from the targets the client is on now, for you to change. Choose Save.

2. Make the targets differ by day

Under Targets in this phase, choose Varies by day (or Same every day for one set of numbers). To start quickly, pick a preset: Training / Rest, High / Low, High / Med / Low or Peak week. Each gives you rows to fill in, called day types.

Each day type has a name, the weekdays it falls on, and its own calories and macros. Tap a weekday to give it to a row: a weekday belongs to one row only, so ticking it on one row takes it off another, and Stem tells you if a weekday is left without a day type. + Day type adds a row. + Every few weeks adds a day that comes round less often, such as a Refeed on Saturday every 2 weeks, counted from the start of the phase. A phase can have up to 4 weekly day types and 8 in all. Weekly average shows the average calories across the week.

3. Switch a single day

Sometimes a day doesn’t go to plan: a session moves, or an event becomes a refeed. Open that day in the food log on the client’s Nutrition tab and use Day type: choose Use Refeed on this day (or whichever day type you need). The day then reads “Refeed day · set for this date”. Choose As planned to put it back. You can change today and any later day; earlier days are history.

When you look back at a day whose target differs from today’s, the food log says which one applied, for example “Target that day: 1,750 kcal · from 5 Oct”.

4. Insert a diet break

Open a phase’s ⋯ menu (or right-click it) and choose Insert a break here. It lands today in the current phase (tomorrow, on its first day), or in the second week of a phase that hasn’t started, as a two-week Diet break that you can change. Then choose what happens to the phases after it, under Later phases:

Move them, so they keep their length. The rest of the phase and everything after it move back by the length of the break.
Keep their dates. Nothing after the break moves, so the break shortens the phase it splits.

The same choice appears whenever you change a phase’s dates and there’s something after it to move.

From the same menu, Edit opens a phase, and Delete removes one that hasn’t started yet. Its targets go with it, and the phase before it runs on through its dates. A phase that has ended can still be opened, but it’s read-only.

5. Plan from a goal

After you save a goal with a bodyweight target, the goal card offers Plan nutrition for this goal. You’ll also find Plan from goal on the Nutrition plan card while the goal has room left before its date.

The draft is a cut down to the target (or a surplus up to it), from the first free day in the plan to the goal’s date (or 12 weeks, if the goal has no date). It shows what that takes, for example “Needs −0.52 kg/wk, 0.74% of bodyweight a week”, worked out from the client’s 7-day average weight (or the goal’s starting weight if they haven’t weighed in recently). A cut that needs more than 1% of bodyweight a week is marked Aggressive. That’s information for you, not a block.

Set the targets for the phase. Stem doesn’t calculate calories from bodyweight; the numbers are yours. Then optionally:

Diet breaks: every so many weeks, for so many weeks. The cut keeps its end date, and the panel lists when each break starts. A break goes in only where at least a week of the cut is left after it.
Maintenance after the goal’s date, open-ended, with its own targets.

Choose Save the plan. The whole plan is saved together, or none of it is.

6. Keep the plan and the goal’s date in step

If a change would make a cut or surplus end after the goal’s deadline, such as a diet break that pushes the cut back, Stem stops before saving and tells you: “Cut now ends 28 Dec, after the goal’s deadline (14 Dec).” Choose one of:

Move the deadline to the day the cut now ends.
Keep the deadline, and save anyway.
Shorten the cut so it still ends on the deadline. Where a push caused the clash, this keeps later phases’ dates instead.

It only asks when the change is what makes the phase late, not about a phase that was already late.

7. Choose what the client sees

Every phase is Shared with the client unless you untick it. A client sees the name of a shared phase. For a hidden phase they see only the numbers, never its name.

In their app, your client sees:

The phase they’re in, such as “Cut · week 3 of 8”, and the next phase when it starts within two weeks (“Diet break from 10 Nov”).
The week’s day types above their day (Training, Rest, Refeed), so they know what’s coming.
A way to switch today or tomorrow to another day type, such as when a session moves. A day they change says “Changed for this day”, with Back to the plan to undo it. You see the change in their food log.
A prompt when they start a workout on a day that isn’t a training day, once a day: they can switch to the training targets (Use Training targets today) or keep the day as planned.
The phase on their goal, and the day type on their home-screen widget (iPhone).

8. Stay ahead of the plan

Today on your dashboard tells you when a client’s plan ends within a week (Plan next phase; after it, the last targets carry on) and when a phase starts tomorrow (Open plan), in case you want to tell them first.

What you’ll be able to do

Plan a client’s nutrition as dated phases, each with its own targets
Give training days, rest days and refeeds their own numbers, and switch a single day
Insert a diet break and choose whether later phases move
Draft a plan from a bodyweight goal, and keep it in step with the goal’s date
Decide which phases your client sees by name