Most “plans” are just a PDF of recipes and vibes. AlphaBite is the opposite: it’s a system. Here’s what actually happens behind the scenes when your plan is built.

1. You tell us who you are and what you want

First we collect the basics:

• Age, sex, height, weight

• Current activity level and training

• Goal: fat loss, recomposition, or muscle gain

• Food preferences and hard no’s (e.g. no dairy, no fish)

• Rough schedule: first meal, last meal, how many times you like to eat

This gives us the constraints your plan has to respect. No point generating a perfect plan on paper if it ignores the time you actually wake up or foods you hate.

2. We turn that into calories and macros

From those inputs we calculate:

• Daily calorie target – deficit, maintenance, or surplus

• Protein, carb and fat targets

• A sensible per-meal split, e.g.

  • Higher protein in main meals

  • Slightly more carbs before / after training

  • Enough calories left for your evening meal so you’re not starving at night

This is the numeric backbone your plan has to hit.

3. We build a whole-food ingredient pool

Next, we pull from the AlphaBite ingredient library:

• Whole-food protein sources (meat, eggs, fish, pulses)

• Simple carb sources (rice, oats, potatoes, pasta, fruit)

• Vegetables and high-volume foods for fibre and fullness

• Fats from real foods (oils, nuts, avocado, etc.)

For each ingredient we store things like:

• Calories, protein, carbs, fats, fibre

• Typical UK supermarket pack sizes

• Price per unit

• Aroma/compatibility tags (what tastes good together)

• Variety tracking (how often you’ve used it recently)

Anything ultra-processed or pointless for your goal doesn’t make the cut.

4. The optimisation engine does the heavy lifting

This is where the maths comes in.

The engine searches through thousands of possible ingredient combinations and chooses ones that:

• Hit your daily calories

• Hit your macro targets

• Stay within realistic serving sizes

• Respect your food preferences and exclusions

• Score well on variety (not chicken and rice every meal)

• Score well on ingredient compatibility (food that actually tastes good together)

• Use ingredients in practical pack sizes to limit waste

Under the hood it’s solving an optimisation problem:
“Find the mix of foods that best matches all these rules at the same time.”

You don’t see that part. You just see the result.

5. We assemble your daily structure

Once the engine knows which ingredients to use and how much, it builds:

• Meal 1, 2, 3, etc. with their ingredient lists

• Approximate timing suggestions based on your schedule

• Per-meal macros and calories, so you know what you’re getting each time

For weekly plans, it also:

• Rotates ingredients across days for variety

• Re-uses smart patterns where it makes sense, so prep is realistic instead of a new recipe every night

6. We run sanity checks

Before it ever hits you, the plan is checked for:

• Ridiculous serving sizes (e.g. 900 g of broccoli in one meal – rejected)

• Too little protein in any main meal

• Days that are way off on calories or macros

• Missing veg / fruit across the day

• Overuse of the same ingredient across the week

If something fails, the engine adjusts and reruns until the plan clears the checks.

7. What you actually receive

You don’t see formulas, you see something usable:

• A clear daily nutrition plan with meals and exact ingredient amounts

• Macros and calories per meal and per day

• A shopping list built around normal UK supermarket items

• Simple guidance on how to swap ingredients if needed without wrecking the structure

The whole point is that you never have to open a calorie tracker and guess what to eat. The engine does the calculations; you just execute.