Getting lean, answered plainly.

What is Doubles?

Doubles is an iPhone app for people who work out and want to lose body fat. You log food by saying it, snapping a photo, scanning a barcode or typing it. You get one daily calorie target and a protein minimum, and an AI partner remembers your days, answers your questions and keeps you on track.

You pick a plan: Lose fat, Recomp, Maintain or Just log. It costs $69.99 a year or $12.99 a month after a 7-day free trial.

Why is it called Doubles?

Because getting hot takes two: a plan and a partner. Two numbers a day, calories and protein. Workouts build it, food reveals it.

Do I need a food scale to lose body fat?

No. A scale is more precise, but what takes body fat off is a calorie deficit you keep up for weeks. Estimates are good enough for that if you log every day and fix the obvious misses. Plenty of people quit tracking because weighing every meal is too much work, and a log you stop keeping doesn't help at all.

The misses that matter most are cooking oil, butter, sauces and drinks, so be generous with those. If your weight trend hasn't moved after two or three weeks, eat a little less or tighten up the foods you guess most.

In DoublesBuilt for estimating. Say it, snap it, scan the barcode or tap one of your usuals, and fix any number that looks off with a sentence.

How many calories should I eat to cut? What's my maintenance?

Maintenance is how much you'd eat to keep your weight steady. Apps estimate it from your age, sex, height, weight and how active you are, then refine it from what you actually eat and how your weight trends.

For a cut, a common pace is about 0.5% of your body weight a week. At 180 lb that's a little under a pound a week, which takes a deficit of roughly 450 calories a day. Going faster than about 1% a week makes it harder to keep your muscle and to stick with it.

In DoublesDoubles estimates maintenance with the Mifflin-St Jeor formula and an activity factor. You choose a pace of 0.25%, 0.5% or 0.75% of body weight a week. The deficit is never more than 25% below maintenance, and the target never goes under 1,200 or 1,500 calories a day, depending on sex. A weekly wrap-up can suggest a new target from your logged days and weigh-ins. Nothing changes until you accept it.

How much protein do I need on a cut?

Research on people who lift points to about 0.7 to 1 gram per pound of body weight a day (1.6 to 2.2 g per kg) while cutting. That's about 130 to 180 g at 180 lb. More protein helps you keep muscle and keeps you fuller.

Treat it as a minimum, not a target to land on exactly. Going over is fine.

In DoublesDoubles sets a protein minimum of 1.6 g per kg (about 0.73 g per lb), or 2.0 g per kg (about 0.9 g per lb) if you strength train or pick Recomp. At 180 lb that's about 130 g or 165 g.

Should I cut or recomp?

A cut means eating clearly below maintenance to lose fat faster. A recomp means eating at or just under maintenance with plenty of protein while you lift, so you lose fat and build some muscle at the same time. On a recomp the scale barely moves while your waist and body fat come down.

A common rule of thumb: recomp suits newer lifters and people who are "skinny fat" (not much muscle, some fat around the middle). If you have more fat to lose, roughly over 20% body fat for men or 30% for women, or you have a date coming up, a cut gets you there faster. A recomp only works if you strength train regularly.

In DoublesDoubles has both. Recomp sets calories about 5% under maintenance (or right at it) and protein at 2.0 g per kg, and asks that you strength train at least twice a week. Lose fat sets a weekly pace instead. When a plan ends, you can keep going or switch.

How do I track calories with ChatGPT without it forgetting?

ChatGPT is good at estimating a meal from a photo or a description, but a chat isn't a log. Long chats get slow, earlier days get lost or mixed up, the format changes from day to day, and it sometimes declines to count calories at all.

What people do to work around it:

• Keep the log in a file or spreadsheet and upload it at the start of each chat.
• Start each week with a new chat and paste in a short summary of last week.
• Ask for the same table every time, with a running daily total.
• Copy the totals into a tracking app that keeps your history.

In DoublesDoubles started as its founder's own ChatGPT routine: snap the meal, ask for the numbers, keep a running total. It keeps every day in a journal, adds up the totals itself, and the partner remembers your plan and your recent days, so you never paste a summary into a new chat.

How accurate are AI food photos?

They're estimates. AI is usually good at telling what a food is and weaker at telling how much, and it can't see oil, butter or sauce cooked into a dish. Expect some meals to be off, mostly on portion size and hidden fat.

What helps most: add a few words ("cooked in butter", "large bowl"), scan barcodes or read the label for packaged food, use a restaurant's published numbers when it has them, and save meals you eat often so you only get them right once.

In DoublesDoubles shows every number as an estimate you can correct by saying what's wrong. When a chain restaurant publishes nutrition, Doubles uses those numbers and says so. Meals you eat often become one-tap usuals.

Why does the scale go up when I'm in a deficit?

Mostly water. Salt, carbs, a hard workout, poor sleep, stress and your menstrual cycle can each move your weight 2 to 4 lb in a day without any change in fat. The first week of a cut often drops fast for the same reason.

Weigh at the same time each morning, after the bathroom, and judge by the trend over two to three weeks, not by single days. If you can, track your waist or body fat too, because on a recomp they move when the scale doesn't.

In DoublesDoubles looks at your trend, not a single weigh-in, and shows body fat and lean mass next to weight when you track them.

Should I eat back my Apple Watch calories?

Usually not. Watch calorie-burn numbers can be well off, and a good calorie target already includes your normal activity. Eating back every workout is one of the most common reasons a deficit quietly disappears.

If you start training a lot more than when you set your target, update the target once rather than adding food after each session.

In DoublesDoubles keeps your target fixed and never adds workout calories back. It reads your workouts and steps from Apple Health so your partner knows how active you've been.

Can I drink alcohol and still get lean?

Yes, if it fits your calories. Alcohol has 7 calories per gram and drinks add up fast: a light beer is about 100 calories, a 5 oz glass of wine about 120, and a margarita can be 250 or more. Drinking also tends to loosen up what you eat later.

Plan for it: log the drinks, get most of your protein in earlier in the day, pick lower-calorie drinks, and go easy on the late-night food.

In DoublesAsk your partner what fits before you order, drinks included. Log them like anything else, with no making up for it tomorrow.

What does Doubles cost, and how do I cancel?

Doubles is $69.99 a year (about $5.83 a month) or $12.99 a month, in US dollars, after a 7-day free trial. Before you start the trial, the app shows the price and the date your first charge happens.

To cancel on iPhone: open Settings, tap your name, tap Subscriptions, then Doubles, then Cancel Subscription. Cancel at least a day before the trial ends and you won't be charged. Deleting the app doesn't cancel the subscription.

If you cancel, your history stays readable and you can export it. Apple handles refunds at reportaproblem.apple.com. For anything else, email [email protected].