Menu > Settings, then scroll to the “Meal Plan” or “Nutrition Overrides” headings

This field allows you to exclude foods from showing up in your meal plan. It works by excluding all recipes that include that word.

How to exclude keywords:

1. Once you’ve navigated to the Settings (Menu > Settings), find the “Keywords to exclude” section.
2. Tap or click inside the box and type in your keyword.
3. Press enter after every keyword. Each keyword should be in its own box.
4. It will save automatically. After making changes, when you navigate back to the Meal Plan tab it will notice your settings have changed and will ask you to regenerate your plan so that the changes can take effect.

A few helpful tips:

• In order to have the highest pool of recipes as possible, we recommend not excluding keywords of ingredients that are low calorie and aren’t typically crucial elements of recipes. For example, excluding keywords like “salt” or “parsley” will cut out a large number of meals and you can just just simply omit those ingredients while cooking and it will not have a significant effect on the calories, macros or composition of the dish while making sure you have the widest array of meals from our database to choose from.
• Avoid using overly broad categories of foods. For example if you want to avoid nightshade vegetables, instead of excluding “nightshades”, instead list the ingredients individually: “tomatoes”, “eggplant”, “bell peppers”, etc.
• To make sure you’re excluding foods you don’t like while still maximizing the pool of recipes to choose from, check out our recipes (Menu > Recipes) and see what kind of keywords are used. For example, excluding “juice” will exclude things like a glass of juice, but it will also exclude recipes that use “lemon juice” or “lime juice” to flavor foods. We use “fruit juice” to distinguish glasses of juice from other types of juices that are used more for flavoring. Checking out our recipes to see which keywords are used before excluding them helps make sure you have access to the widest number of meals in our database as possible.
• A maximum of 20 excluded keywords are allowed.

Adjusting the number of weekly recipes:

1. Once you’ve navigated to the settings (Menu > Settings), scroll to the “Meal Plan” section.
2. To change the number of different meals the meal plan generates, adjust the “Weekly variety” setting. A higher number will result in a plan that has a greater number of meals each week (and will likely increase your grocery cost as well).

Getting a wider variety of meals:

There are a number of ways to get more variety if you feel the meal plan is too repetitive.

1. Loosen your restrictions.
   1. Up your “Max recipe complexity” setting (Menu > Settings). The higher the number the more complex the recipe- but don’t worry- even our most complex recipes are still quite simple.
   2. Check your keyword exclusions so they aren’t unnecessarily reducing your options. See the “A few helpful tips” in the Excluding Keywords section.
   3. Up your budget. Strongr Fastr is all about having realistic meal plans so we don’t use many expensive ingredients. The best way to lower your grocery budget is to lower the “weekly variety” setting.
   4. Adjust your macro goals. If you’ve overridden our macronutrient goals, you may need to readjust them to be less restrictive.
   5. Add your own meals. See our Custom Recipes section
   6. Send us feedback. We add new recipes weekly, but if you feel there aren’t enough for your specific set up, let us know! (Menu > Contact/feedback).

Here you can override the app’s macronutrient recommendations and input your own. For an overview of macronutrients, please visit our FAQ.

Note that the app does not support hitting exact macronutrient targets. You can get pretty close to hitting macro targets by setting upper and lower limits, but the app requires a certain degree of flexibility in order to provide users with a meal plan with ample variety.

How to override:

1. Once you’ve navigated to the settings (Menu > Settings), scroll to the “Nutrition Overrides” section.
2. Here you can see the app’s calorie and macronutrient recommendations it made based off of your profile.
3. To override these recommendations, check the box and input your own targets.
4. The changes will automatically save, but you will need to regenerate your meal plan for the changes to take effect.

To learn why you can only override two out of the three macronutrients, see our “I want to set goals for all 3 macros, how can I do that?” question in our FAQ. 

There are two views of the meal plan. Making changes in one view will update the other accordingly.

1. Day View- View each day’s meals.
2. Type View- View the recipes for each meal type.

1. Meal Plan tab > Click image of meal
2. Click on the green bar that shows the dates.
   
3. Select which dates you want the meal and click “Save”.

There are 2 different ways to get new recipes into your meal plan.

1. Swapping- Use this method if you want to be able to scroll through suggestions or replace with favorited or custom recipes.
2. Pinning and Regenerating- Use this method if you want to replace multiple meals at once with random meals that meet your goals. This is also a good method to use if you’re seeing the error that your targets are not being hit.

1. Go to the Meal Plan tab.
2. Click the “Swap” button on either view.
3. Select which days you want to replace and click “Find Replacement”.
4. Browse meals and select one to swap in:

Pinning and regenerating is a great way to fill in gaps with random meals that meet your goals. This also is a good solution if you’re getting an error saying that you’re missing your targets.

1. Go to the Meal Plan tab.
2. Click the “Pin & Regenerate” button.
3. Pin the meals that you want to keep in place by clicking the pin button and turning it green. All of the unpinned meals will be replaced by other meals that meet your targets.
4. “Click Regenerate”.
5. You can repeat this process as often as needed until you’re happy with the set up.

Planning on going out to eat lunch with coworkers this week? Or maybe you have a weekly date night at a restaurant? You can set up these scenarios in the app. It won’t recommend a meal that day, but will tell you the macros to shoot for.

1. Go to the Meal Plan tab.
2. Click the the “Off-Plan” button.
3. Select the days you would like to replace with an off-plan meal and click “Confirm”. You can click the lock to lock it in place so the meal will automatically be off-plan every week.
4. You can see the recommended calorie/macro amounts for that meal by looking at the meal details (Meal Plan tab > click image of off-plan meal).

Your portion sizes for all recipes are automatically adjusted to meet your goals and are displayed in the recipe details. You can adjust the portion by:

1. Go to the Meal Plan tab
2. Click on the image of meal that you want to adjust the portions for
3. Click on the “…” button on the recipe 
4. Click “Adjust Portions”
5. Update portion size and click “Save”

Note: Changing portion sizes may throw your meal plan off of its nutrition goals. Randomize sides or swap out/regenerate different meals to get back on target.

Adding People:

1. Go to the Meal Plan Tab
2. Click the “Add People” button.
3. Add in each person’s details. Make sure each person who you want to add is selected and then click “Next: Pick Meals”.
4. Select the meals you want to add the person/people to. If you want to add them to all meals, click “Add to all”. Click “Confirm”. Recipes and the grocery list will be updated to include their portions.

Alternate Way to Add People:

1. Meal Plan tab, either view.
2. Click on meal image to go to Meal Editor.
3. Click person button:
4. Add/Remove people accordingly.

Viewing Portions:

You can view portions when viewing the recipe details. “Portions” button will show serving sizes for all people. The “Show for” buttons will update the ingredient list accordingly (it will not change the grocery list or who is added). “Everyone” will combine all persons’ ingredients into the ingredients list.

You can lock meals in place if you would like them to repeat each week and not have to manually add them in.

1. Go to the Meal Plan tab, either view.
2. Click on the image of the recipe you want to lock in place.
3. Click the green date bar at the top.
4. Click the “Lock meal to these days every week” button. Then “Save”.
5. The selected meals will automatically show up in all future weeks unless unchecked. 

If your plan doesn’t meet your calorie/macro targets, you will see a red error alert like the following:

There are multiple solutions:

1. The fastest way to solve this is to use the pin and regenerate functionality. The app will replace any unpinned meal(s) with another that meets your targets.
2. Try swapping some meals or randomizing side dishes.
   • Ideally, the recipes you’re replacing should be part of the problem with why your meal plan isn’t meeting your targets. For example, if your plan has too many calories, pick a high-calorie side dish to replace (or remove) or if your plan has too little protein, choose a low-protein side dish to replace, and so on.
3. If after this, you still can’t make it fit your macros, it may be because your overall settings are so restrictive that the algorithm can’t find enough meals that hit your macros exactly. This usually happens for people with very restrictive settings (e.g. someone trying to do a keto diet who also has a dairy allergy, someone trying to eat a very high protein vegan diet). If this is you, then:
   1. 1. Accept slightly missing your macros.
      2. Add in a few of your own recipes that do a really good job of hitting your targets and regenerate the meal plan around them.
      3. Stick to a pretty limited set of meals.
      4. Wait until we add more recipe variety- feel free to contact us (Menu > Feedback/contact) and let us know your diet type could use some more recipes.

To create your own custom recipes:

1. On Mobile
2. On Desktop (recommended for ease)

On Mobile:

1. Menu > Recipe Browser > My Recipes > “+ New Recipe”
2. Fill out the form. Click the “Add Ingredients” button at the bottom to add ingredients to the recipe.
3. Start typing in the search box. As you type, suggestions will appear below. Click the chevron to enter amount and click the “+” to add it in. Continue until all ingredients are added.
4. When done adding ingredients, click the back arrow to return to the recipe editor.
5. Review the ingredient list and click “Next” to continue.
   
6. Enter in remaining details and click “Confirm” to save.
7. To learn how to swap your custom meal into your meal plan, see Swapping Meals. Once it’s swapped in, the portion sizes will automatically adjust to better meet your nutrition goals. You can always manually adjust the portions; see Changing Portion Sizes.

On desktop:

1. Menu > Recipe Browser > My Recipes > “+ New Recipe”. Search for ingredients, adjust quantities by clicking “>” and add it in using the “+” button. Click “Next” when finished.
   
2. Enter in remaining details and click “Confirm” to save.
   
3. To learn how to swap your custom meal into your meal plan, see Swapping Meals. Once it’s swapped in, the portion sizes will automatically adjust to better meet your nutrition goals. You can always manually adjust the portions; see Changing Portion Sizes.

Whether you want to be able to add/remove ingredients to a recipe or edit it to more closely align with the nutrition facts of your favorite brands, you can!

1. On the Meal Plan tab, click the image of the meal you want to edit.
2. Click the recipe you want to edit.
3. Click the three dots in the top right corner and select “Edit Recipe”.
4. On the recipe editor page you can modify the recipe as you see fit. Add/remove ingredients, change quantities, photo, etc. Click “Confirm” to confirm the changes.

Note: Edits impact the base recipe which may then be scaled. The software works by taking the base recipe and scaling the portion size up/down when it’s added to your meal plan so that it better hits your calorie goal. To edit the overall portion size, see Changing Portion Sizes.

1. Let’s say you have a specific brand of tomato soup you always buy, and you want the nutrition facts to match it. To change the nutrition facts of an ingredient:
   1. Edit the recipe and delete the ingredient you want to change the macros for. Then click “Add Ingredients”.
   2. “My Foods” > “New Food”
   3. Enter in relevant data and click “Save”. If you only put in one macro, it will estimate the others.
   4. Fill in the optional fields, and include unit information. Here’s an example:
   5. Click “Save”
   6. Adjust servings and click “+” to add it to the recipe.
   7. Once added, you can confirm the recipe. Every time this recipe is shown in your plan, it will use the updated ingredient info.

Sometimes there may be ingredients that could have a broad range of nutritional values (for example, cereal or soup) and you want to know what target you should shoot for at the grocery store. You can answer this question by:

1. Click on the ingredient you want to learn more about.
2. Here you can see the nutrition facts of ingredient as listed in the app. In this example, at the grocery store you would look at the nutrition facts of protein powder and notice that their serving size is typically 1 scoop. Make sure the box in the app says “1 scoop”. The nutrition facts adjust to show what you should shoot for. In this example, you would look for a brand with about 109 calories and 24 grams of protein per scoop.
3. If you have a favorite brand that doesn’t match the nutrition facts that’s suggested in the app, see here for how to edit ingredients to have different macros.