After clicking on a client from your Client Dashboard, locate the Nutrition card within the Assigned Goals section. Click on the cog button to access their meal plan settings.

This field allows you to exclude foods from showing up in clients’ meal plans. It works by excluding all recipes that include that keyword.

How to exclude keywords:

1. Once you’ve navigated to the meal plan settings for a client, find the “Keywords to exclude” section.
2. Tap or click inside the box and type in the 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 a client’s meal plan it will notice your settings have changed and will ask you to regenerate the meal 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 either simply tell the client to omit those ingredients while cooking or you can manually edit the recipes so that they do not include the ingredient. 
• Avoid using overly broad categories of foods. For example if you want the client 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 while still maximizing the pool of recipes to choose from, check out our database 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 primarily 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 per client.

Adjusting the number of weekly recipes:

1. Navigate to the client’s meal plan settings.
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 recipes each week (and will likely increase their 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 the restrictions.
   1. Up the “Max recipe complexity” setting. The higher the number, the more complex the recipes can become- but don’t worry- even our most complex recipes are still quite simple.
   2. Check the keyword exclusions so they aren’t unnecessarily reducing the options. See the “A few helpful tips” in the Excluding Keywords section.
   3. Up the budget. Strongr Fastr is all about having realistic meal plans so we don’t use many expensive ingredients in our recipe database. So while you can increase the budget, the best way to lower the client’s grocery budget is to lower the “weekly variety” setting.
   4. Adjust their 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.

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 client’s meal plan settings, scroll to the “Nutrition Settings” section.
2. Here you can see the software’s calorie and macronutrient recommendations it made based off of the client’s 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 any current meal plans for the changes to take effect. 

With our Coach’s Favorite feature, you can highlight your favorite recipes to clients while also adding some personality and guidance into their meal planning experience. You can add your own favorite recipes or handpick some gems from our database. Your Coach’s Favorites will automatically be shared with clients assuming the recipe meets the client’s nutrition profile. This means, your favorite meat-based recipes won’t be shared with your plant-based clients and any favorites that contain excluded keywords or allergens will also remain hidden for them.

Think of Coach’s Favorites as your own personal recipe book that’s perfectly tailored to each client.

You can add Coach’s Favorites by favoriting recipes on the main Recipes tab. These favorites will populate to all clients (assuming it matches the client’s nutrition profile). You can also set client-specific Coach’s Favorites by favoriting recipes while creating their meal plan. 

For a recipe book-like experience, clients can view all of your Coach’s Favorite recipes by going to Menu > Recipe Browser on the app/website, but they will also be highlighted to the client while they view/create their meal plans.

What it looks like for the client:

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 > 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 two different ways to get different recipes into meal plans.

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 the client’s goals. This is also a good method to use if you’re seeing an error that the client’s targets are not being hit.

1. Go to the meal plan.
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 clients’ goals. This also is a good solution if you’re getting an error saying that the meal plan isn’t hitting the client’s nutrition targets.

1. Go to the meal plan.
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 the client’s targets.
4. “Click Regenerate”.
5. You can repeat this process as often as needed until you’re happy with the set up.

What if you don’t want to suggest recipes for a certain meal? Perhaps it’s a holiday or your client is traveling for a few days and won’t be able to cook. You can set up these scenarios in the software by using our off-plan meal feature. Setting an off-plan meal will remove any recipes for that meal and will instead tell the client what macros to shoot for. You can message them to let them know if you’d like them to either log food off-plan or simply eat intuitively.

1. Go to the meal plan.
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. Clients will be able to see the recommended calorie/macro amounts for that meal by looking at the meal details (Meal Plan tab > click image of off-plan meal).

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

1. Go to the meal plan.
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 the meal plan off of its nutrition goals. Regenerate or swap in different meals to get back on target.

If your client has family members who will be sharing meals with them, you can add their family to the meals they share and the software will suggest an appropriately-sized portion for everyone or you can specify or you can specify by percentage of the client’s calories or enter in a specific calorie level. The additional ingredients will be added to the recipes and grocery list.

Adding People:

1. Go to the meal plan.
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:

Portions are visible when viewing the recipe details. The “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.
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 until the lock toggle unchecked. 

If the meal plan isn’t hitting your client’s 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 their targets.
2. Try swapping some meals or randomizing side dishes.
   • Ideally, the recipes you’re replacing should be part of the problem with why the meal plan isn’t meeting their targets. For example, if the plan has too many calories, pick a high-calorie side dish to replace (remove, or adjust the portion size of) or if the 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 their overall settings are so restrictive that the algorithm can’t find enough meals that hit their macros goals. This typically 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 your client, then you can:
   1. 1. Accept slightly missing their macros.
      2. Add in a few of your own recipes that do a really good job of hitting their 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 certain diet types could use more recipes.

You and your clients can add your favorite recipes to the software so that it can be used in meal plans and/or logged off plan. When professionals add custom recipes, the recipes are only shared with clients if the recipe matches the client’s nutrition profile. For example, recipes that include meat will not show up for vegan clients and if you’ve excluded the keyword “banana” for a client, your custom banana pancake recipe would not show up for them either.

Be sure to carefully classify custom recipes’ diet types, allergens, and other categorization options so that they are appropriately distributed to clients.

To create your own custom recipes:

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

On Mobile:

1. Recipe tab > “+ 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 meal plans, see Swapping Meals. Once it’s swapped in, the portion sizes will automatically adjust to better meet the client’s nutrition goals. You can always manually adjust the portions; see Changing Portion Sizes.

On desktop:

1. Recipe Tab > “+ 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 meal plans, see Swapping Meals. Once it’s swapped in, the portion sizes will automatically adjust to better meet the client’s nutrition goals. You can always manually adjust the portion sizes; 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 preferred brands, you can! 

1. Click the recipe you want to edit.
2. Click the three dots in the top right corner and select “Edit Recipe”.
   
   1. If you are editing a recipe on a client’s plan you also have the ability to edit a recipe specifically for that client. If you select that, those edits will override any edits made to the master recipe and they will only impact that specific client.
3. 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 a meal plan so that it better hits clients’ calorie goals. To edit the overall portion size, see Changing Portion Sizes.

1. Let’s say you have a specific brand of tomato soup you recommend to clients, 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/Team 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. As long as you edit the master recipe, every future time this recipe is shown in a plan or on grocery lists, it will use the updated ingredient info.