Turn-by-Turn Directions & ETA to the Goal You
Time to Goal(s) & Plan Period
Depending on your current health status and your selected body composition goals, Wellest creates a uniquely personalized overall plan for you. Wellest uses the latest evidence-based research on how much progress can be safely and sustainably made at each step along the way. This is critically important because your ideal rate of Body Fat Percentage (BF%) change is based on your hormonal sex and current BF% level. And your ideal rate of change of Fat-Free Mass Index (FFMI) change is based on your hormonal sex, current BF% level, as well as your Genetic Potential Achieved (GPA).
Because both values are interdependent and projected to change each weekly plan period, they must be interactively evaluated throughout your overall plan to estimate a reasonable amount of time to achieve each goal or Time to Goal(s). These values match with those you'll find on the Your Goals screen after you've chosen your current goal combination for Goal Leanness and Goal Muscularity. You can think of Time to Goal(s) like an Estimated Time of Arrival (ETA) given in a turn-by-turn navigation app. And you can think about each weekly plan as one of the major turns along the way to your destination.
It is possible for one of your goals to be already accomplished, which is shown as "At Goal". It is also possible for the time to achieve one to be much different from the other. For values below Genetic Potential BF% or above Genetic Potential FFMI, plan durations are not know and instead are shown as "Continuous" referring to continuous improvement as Wellest will continue to push you to improve upon these values indefinitely. Finally for Goal Muscularity set below your current level you will see "Loss Not Supported" because Wellest does not support the loss of Lean Body Mass (LBM) programmatically as there is no research to suggest that reducing LBM is better for your health. If you have an interest in reducing your LBM strategically, please contact your Wellest Coach directly for help.
To better understand how Wellest creates and dynamically tunes your overall and week-to-week plans it can be helpful to understand your current health status and your goals by reading the Your Status and Your Goals FAQ articles.
Plan Period
It will take some overall period of time, expressed in weeks, to reach the Goal You. This duration can fluctuate up and down as you make progress towards your goals faster, slower, or at the planned rate of change. The plan period refers to which week of the overall plan you're currently viewing (e.g. I am viewing the plan for the 2nd week out of an overall 10 week plan to reach my goals). Each plan period, the amount of BF% and LBM change that is ideal for you at that time is calculated and used to set your nutrition and activity plan requirements. Once these ideal values are known, the projected change in your weight is calculated assuming that your food volume and hydration status remains relatively fixed over time.
Planned Progress
Weight | Because inconsistent or short-term changes in your day-to-day life can rapidly and significantly impact your food volume or hydration status, it is important to focus on more consistent and slower moving measures of success such as sleep quality, fullness, energy levels, body measurements, strength gains, and BF% and LBM changes instead of weight. In fact, Wellest attempts to dampen the affect of weight variability, by averaging out these minor daily oscillations. Still, it is helpful to have a rough idea of the amount of weight change you should expect during each plan period. But do not worry if you are ahead or behind this projection as you may be making better progress on one of the other more important metrics that is masking or preventing a short-term change in weight.
Body Fat Percentage (BF%) | Because an unhealthy BF% is much more damaging to your short- and long-term health than a suboptimal FFMI, Wellest prioritizes making progress on your Goal Leanness (or Goal BF%) first. Your nutrition intake requirements are set by the energy imbalance required for you to change your BF% at the ideal rate when balanced against your planned activity level. Then the projected amount of ideal progress you should make on your BF% is calculated and prescribed on the Your Plan screen at the start of each week.
Fat Burning Activity | In the limiting case where your nutrition requirements do not allow for a sufficient energy deficit to elicit the ideal rate of BF% loss each plan period, Wellest will prescribe an additional amount of "Fat Burning Activity". This is not the same as what is traditionally thought of as "cardio" because its goal is not to improve your cardiovascular health but rather to burn excess calories to speed the rate of fat burning. In fact, the "Muscle Building Activity" required to elicit the change in LBM each plan period is generally sufficient to optimize your cardiovascular health assuming you do not have sport-specific training goals in mind.
Lean Body Mass (LBM) | After first considering the energy imbalance required to change your BF%, Wellest prescribes the required calorie imbalance, macronutrient, micronutrient, and Muscle Building Activity to stimulate the ideal amount of LBM change for your current level of GPA within the plan period. Then the projected amount of ideal progress you should make on your LBM is calculated and prescribed on the Your Plan screen at the start of each week.
Muscle Building Activity | There can be temporary increases in LBM attributed to increases in protein, carbohydrate, water, and electrolyte intake or inflammation due to injury or recovering from exercise. However, the only way of stimulating permanent LBM growth is through muscle mass gains. Muscle mass is gained by first stimulating your muscles through Muscle Building Activity and then provided sufficient recovery resources including nutrition and sleep to allow your body to build itself back stronger and more capable than it was before. Various Activity Types could theoretically provide a sufficient stimulus to motivate a given individual with a given FFMI status and goal to gain LBM. However, in practice the only way to ensure sufficient stimulus for any individual in any situation is to use a progressive overload scheme with Resistance Training (i.e. weightlifting, functional- and traditional-strength training). By scaling the difficulty of exercises by increasing the intensity (i.e. weight), rep count, set count, etc., to create greater and greater stimulus for growth over time we can ensure it is possible to optimize muscle mass and therefore LBM gains over time.
Progress Compared to Expectations | In every plan period after your first one, Wellest will compare the actual amount of progress you made in the prior plan period compared to your projected progress. Depending on if you were able to accomplish more, less, or inline with the expectation for BF% and LBM progress, Wellest will adjust your nutrition and activity plans. This ensure that you make optimal progress in the next weekly plan. The only thing that is required for Wellest to prepare this assessment is your updated body measurements. In addition, it is extremely useful, but not required, that you've provided an accurate record of your events during the prior plan period. This means adding meals and activities you did beside those prescribed by Wellest and providing completion status for all events so Wellest knows the difference between what it prescribed, what you added, which events you deleted, missed, and completed. With this information Wellest can properly calculate the actual energy change in your body due to all components of your metabolism and changes in body composition to determine an accurate Wellest Energy Anomaly. Tuning this value with help Wellest to more quickly determine exactly how your body and lifestyle are different from the scientific research and other people with similar demographics, measurements, and progress (i.e. what makes you uniquely you).
💡 Tip | You can see your projected progress for Weight, BF%, and LBM on the Your Plan screen. If you tap on the values you can change them from the default unit system showing your projected change (e.g. lose 0.5% BF) to others if available such as the target value at the end of the next plan (e.g. 10% BF).