Nawtch Guides & How-To

Before you log a single bite, spend a few minutes deciding what you're actually aiming for — a diet style you can realistically stick to, a macro split that supports it, and a calorie target range that matches your goal (losing, maintaining, or gaining weight). Don't guess at the calorie number: use the TDEE calculator on the Calculators page to get a research-backed starting range based on your sex, age, height, weight, and activity level. If you're not sure what eating pattern to commit to, the Diets page is a good place to read up on popular options — Mediterranean, keto, flexible dieting/IIFYM, and more — before you settle on one.

Once you've settled on a target, lock it in — head to Settings → Calorie Target Range and set your floor and ceiling (or hit Apply to Settings straight from the TDEE calculator). While you're there, set the lb/kg, kcal/kJ, and currency preferences to whatever you actually think in day to day — every page in Nawtch respects these settings automatically, so you only have to set them once.

Next, build out your Foods catalog as your core diet plan — the small, repeatable set of meals and snacks you intend to eat on a normal day, each saved with a realistic Target/Day serving count that adds up to your macro and calorie goals. Eating roughly the same core items day to day isn't a limitation of the app, it's the whole strategy: consistency is what makes a calorie target achievable and sustainable, and it's dramatically easier to hit a number when you already know exactly what a "normal day" looks like.

Sticking to a small core rotation also pays off on cost — set Bulk Total Price and Servings in Package on a food and Nawtch works out your true cost per serving, which is almost always cheaper than buying single-serving portions. Buying staples in bulk and rotating through the same core meals is one of the most reliable ways to lower your food spend while keeping your macros consistent.

Custom items on the Today page are meant for everything outside that plan — a one-off restaurant meal, a snack you don't eat often enough to justify saving, or a cheat day where what you eat varies too much to standardize. Logging these as custom items keeps your Foods catalog clean and focused on your actual core plan instead of getting cluttered with things you only ate once.

Log food as you eat it, not at the end of the day from memory — it keeps you honest, and the running total on the Today page tells you in real time how much room you have left, so you can decide whether another meal or snack still fits before you eat it, not after.

Your daily log resets at midnight, and once a day is over you can't go back and edit it — you can review it on the History page, but the numbers for a finished day are locked. That's by design: it keeps every logged day an honest, permanent record of what actually happened rather than something you can quietly rewrite after the fact, which keeps you accountable to your plan instead of your hindsight.

Above everything else, your calorie range is the primary target. Macros matter for body composition, energy, and satiety, but weight loss and weight gain are ultimately governed by calories in versus calories burned — if you only ever hit one number consistently, make it your daily calorie range.

After a few weeks, the History page turns into your feedback loop — use its Calories per Day, Weekly Cost, and Macro Split charts to see what's actually happening, not what you assume is happening. Maybe your real spend is higher than expected and more of your core plan should shift to bulk-bought staples, maybe your protein is consistently low, or maybe your hit rate on the calorie range is inconsistent and the range itself needs to move. Let what you observe reshape your plan rather than sticking with an untested guess forever.

Nawtch's core is daily food, calorie, and macro tracking, but it's built to support the rest of your fitness picture too — track your weight over time to see whether your calorie range is actually producing the trend you want, and build out programs and exercises to pair your nutrition plan with consistent training. Used together, these give you a much fuller picture than calorie tracking alone.

Nawtch keeps everything — foods, logs, weight, programs, exercises, settings — locally in this browser, not on a server. Nothing leaves your device, but that also means clearing your browser's site data/cookies for this page, using private browsing, or uninstalling the browser can permanently erase your data.

Avoid logging your data in a private/incognito window — many browsers wipe that storage the moment the session ends. If your browser ever asks to allow persistent storage for this site, allow it — this helps keep your data from being automatically cleared to free up space.

Back up regularly from Settings with Export Full Backup (JSON) — it downloads everything as a single file you can keep somewhere safe. If you ever need to restore, Import Backup (JSON) from that same file will bring everything back — but note it overwrites all existing data and cannot be undone.

Add a food from the Foods page with the + Add Food button, or scan a barcode to prefill the name and nutrition automatically. The barcode scanner is powered by the Open Food Facts API, a community driven food database, and may not always provide accurate nutritional information — always double-check the details before saving. Use Edit to change a saved food's info, or Delete to remove it permanently.

Foods you log occasionally without saving to your catalog can be added as a custom item straight from the Today page — these are one-off entries that don't stick around after the day resets.

Set Bulk Total Price and Servings in Package to auto-calculate Cost/Serving, or enter a cost per serving manually.

Target/Day must be greater than 0 for a food to count toward daily target calories, daily target cost, and weekly cost projections. A target of 0 means the food is still loggable but excluded from all targets.

Hide removes a food from the daily tracker, daily cost target, and expected weekly cost without deleting it — the food stays in storage and can be restored any time with Show.

Get started on the Foods Management page.

Tap the + / − buttons on a food in the Today page to log servings. Toggle half servings when you need finer-grained logging — it steps by 0.5 instead of 1.

Your daily calorie floor and ceiling can be changed any time from Settings → Calorie Target Range. This range drives how your daily total is judged as under, on, or over target.

The Today page also tracks cost — running $ spent today against your $ target/day (based on each food's Target/Day), plus a weekly cost total you can reset from Settings if you want to start a new tracking period.

Your log automatically resets at midnight — servings and custom items clear for the new day. You can also reset the current day manually at any time from the Today page if you want to start over.

Log your weight from the Weight page — once you've logged today's weight, the same field switches to Update so you're always editing a single entry per day rather than stacking up duplicates.

Switch between lb and kg any time — this preference is shared with Settings, and your weight history is stored normalized internally so changing units never changes your actual data, just how it's displayed.

The Weight Over Time chart (Daily/Weekly toggle) fills in once you've logged at least one entry. For a trend that actually means something, try to log at roughly the same time of day each time — weight can swing a few pounds/kilos just from food, water, and time of day.

Set a goal weight to turn tracking into a countdown: pick a direction (lose or gain), a target weight, and a target date, and the Weight page shows the days remaining (or overdue) until then. Your starting weight is captured automatically — from today's entry if you've already logged one, or from the next entry you log if you haven't — so progress is measured from wherever you actually started, not from when you happened to set the goal. Hit the target and you'll get a "Goal complete!" banner showing how many days it took; only one goal can be active at a time, and you can delete it early if your target changes.

Try it on the Weight Tracker page.

The History page organizes every day you've logged into months → weeks → days. Click a month to expand or collapse its weeks, then click a week to expand or collapse its day-by-day table — calories, protein, carbs, fat, and cost for each day, plus whether that day landed inside your calorie range. The current week starts expanded automatically.

A week that crosses from one calendar month into the next is split across both months, with a badge like "↑ from Jan" or "↓ into Feb" marking which days belong to which month, so nothing gets double-counted or lost.

The Your Stats section at the top charts your Calories per Day (Daily/Weekly), Weekly Cost (Weekly/Monthly), and overall Macro Split. Use the Export button in the header to download your full history as CSV or JSON.

Check it out on the History page.

Start a program from the Programs page — give it a name, then build it out day by day. Each program can have up to 7 days, and every day needs at least one exercise before the program can be saved.

Add exercises to a day by picking one from your Exercise Library or creating a new one inline. The library is shared across all your programs, so an exercise you create once can be reused anywhere. Editing an exercise that came from the library also updates it there. Reorder exercises within a day using the up/down arrows.

Manage the library itself — creating, editing, or deleting exercises — independently of any single program.

Use Edit on a saved program to change its name, description, days, or exercises, or Delete to remove it entirely. A program needs at least one day — you can't remove the last one.

Try it on the Programs & Exercises page.

The Calculators page is a free set of fitness and nutrition calculators for the numbers Nawtch itself doesn't calculate for you — how much to eat, how your body composition and measurements stack up, how hard you're working out, and daily habits like water and sleep. Every one of them is evidence-based, cites its source formula, and runs entirely on your device — nothing you type is stored or sent anywhere.

Calorie & macro targets — Calorie, TDEE, BMR, Macro, and Protein calculators, for turning your stats and goal into a daily number (or a protein/carb/fat breakdown). Apply to Settings on the TDEE calculator writes its result straight into your Settings calorie target.

Body composition & measurements — Navy Body Fat %, BMI, Waist-to-Height Ratio, and Ideal Weight calculators, from a few tape-measure or scale inputs.

Activity & performance — Calories Burned, One-Rep Max, VO2 Max, and Walking Calorie calculators, for estimating energy burn and fitness level from a workout, a set, or a test.

Daily habits — Water Intake and Sleep Cycle calculators, for hydration targets and wake-up timing.

The full, current list (with more added over time) is on the Fitness & Nutrition Calculators page.

The Diets page is a hub linking to a dedicated page for each of 15 popular eating patterns — Mediterranean, DASH, Intermittent Fasting, Keto, Plant-Based/Vegan, Paleo, MIND, Whole30, Flexible Dieting/IIFYM, Flexitarian, Volumetrics, Low-FODMAP, Blue Zones, Carnivore, and Eating on GLP-1 Medications. Each page covers the actual rules, the cited research behind it (or, for diets like Whole30 and Carnivore, an honest note about how thin or nonexistent independent clinical trials are), concrete food examples, a sample day of eating, who it might or might not suit, and links to reputable outside sources if you want to go deeper. It's meant purely as a starting point for research, not medical advice — check with a doctor or registered dietitian before making a real change to how you eat.

Take a look at the Diets page.

Diet Arena, at the top of that page, lets you pick any two diets and see them side by side — typical foods, eating pattern, macro emphasis, evidence strength, restrictiveness, and more — using the same categories for both so the comparison is apples-to-apples. It's built as a reference tool, not a recommendation engine: it never declares one diet "better" than the other.

Try it at Diet Arena.

The Supplements page is a hub linking to a dedicated page for popular supplements — creatine, omega-3/fish oil, electrolytes, protein/whey, vitamin D, magnesium, caffeine, collagen, beta-alanine, and berberine. Each page covers how it works, the cited research behind it, realistic dosing where it applies, and who should be cautious — evidence strength is called out explicitly since it varies a lot from one supplement to the next, and none of them are presented as a "must-have." Berberine gets extra caution given its real drug interaction profile. It's meant purely as a starting point for research, not medical advice — check with a doctor or pharmacist before starting any supplement, especially if you take prescription medication.

Take a look at the Supplements page.

The Peptides page is a hub linking to a dedicated page for popular peptides — Semaglutide, Tirzepatide, PT-141 (Bremelanotide), BPC-157, Sermorelin, TB-500, and MK-677 (Ibutamoren). Each page covers how it works, the cited research behind it, realistic dosing where it applies, and who should be cautious. Evidence strength is called out explicitly since it varies a lot from one peptide to the next. It's meant purely as a starting point for research, not medical advice — check with a doctor or pharmacist before starting any peptide, especially if you take prescription medication.

Take a look at the Peptides page.

The Supplement Tracker logs daily supplement and approved-medication doses separately from your food log. Pick a known item from the grouped list — everyday supplements like creatine or vitamin D, or an FDA-approved medication like semaglutide — or type your own entry if it's not listed, then set a dose (e.g. 500), a unit (mg, g, ml, or IU), and a target number of doses per day.

Each saved supplement gets its own card with +/− buttons: tap+ once per dose taken, and the card shows your progress as "X of Y today." Once you hit your target, + disables so you can't log past it. Tap − to undo the most recent dose if you tapped by mistake. If you edit a supplement's dosage or unit partway through the day, doses already logged keep their original values — only future taps reflect the change — so a single day's log can correctly show two different dosages if you adjusted mid-day.

The History tab lists every past day you've logged a dose, most recent first (30 at a time, with a Load More button for older days), along with a ✓/✗ showing whether every supplement hit its target that day. Switch to Month or Year to filter to a specific period instead — a Year dropdown only appears in Month view once your history actually spans more than one calendar year. Tap any day to see exactly what was logged, with a per-supplement ✓/✗ and every individual dose's time and amount.

Like the rest of Nawtch, the tracker resets at midnight and everything stays on your device.

The Tools page is a small collection of standalone helpers that live outside your daily food, weight, and workout tracking — useful on their own, with nothing to log and no connection to your Nawtch tracking data. It currently has three tools, Scorekeeper, Bowl Builder, and Grocery Budget Calculator, with more planned over time.

Check out the Tools page.

Scorekeeper is a free-standing scoreboard for board games, card games, drinking games, or anything else where you just need to track points for a group of players — no relation to your food, weight, or workout data. Simple, easy to use one-handed, fast, and of course free. It works on phones, tablets, and desktops!

Add a player with a name and optional starting score (defaults to 0). Tap a player's card to select them — a selected card is highlighted — then use the − / + controls to subtract or add whatever amount you type into the box between them. Players are automatically re-ranked highest to lowest after every score change. Reset All Scores zeroes everyone out without removing them, while Delete All Players removes every player entirely — both ask for confirmation first since neither can be undone.

localStorage need-to-knows: like the rest of Nawtch, Scorekeeper stores everything locally in this browser, not on a server — nothing leaves your device. That means the same storage caveats from How to Keep Your Data Safe above apply here too: using a private/incognito window, clearing this site's browser data, or uninstalling the browser can permanently erase your players. Unlike your food/weight/program data, though, Scorekeeper's players are not included in Settings' Export Full Backup / Import Backup — it keeps its own separate storage, so there's currently no built-in way to back up or transfer a player list between browsers or devices.

Try it on the Scorekeeper page.

Bowl Builder is a free meal/plate builder for putting together a bowl item by item and watching calories and macros total up live as you go — handy whether you're just curious what a combo of foods adds up to, or you're building something to log.

Tap a popular food tile or search for anything else, then use the − / + controls to adjust each item's portion (grams or ounces — toggle whichever you prefer). Running calorie and macro totals update instantly with every change. Anything not in the food database can be added as a custom item, the same way you'd add one on the Today page.

Save Bowl keeps the bowl's individual components so you can reopen and keep editing it later. Add to Foods is a separate, one-way action: it flattens the bowl's current totals into a single food entry on your Foods page, ready to log from Today like any other saved food. Editing a bowl afterward never changes a food entry you already created from it — the Add to Foods feature creates its own independent snapshot each time.

Try it on the Bowl Builder page.

Grocery Budget Calculator is a bottom-up budgeting tool — instead of a flat, top-down estimate based on household size like most grocery calculators, you build your real list item by item, at the real bulk quantities you actually buy, and see what it truly paces out to per week.

Search covers roughly 300 common grocery items (the same database as Bowl Builder) plus anything already in your saved Foods, marked with a ★. For each item, enter a cost per serving directly, or use the bulk-price helper — total price paid ÷ total servings in the package — to calculate it automatically. Then set target servings per day or per week: how often you actually go through the item, not how much the package holds. Everything totals up live as you type, with no button to press.

Save Plan keeps the whole list under a name you choose, so you can maintain several plans — a bulk-buy week, a fresh-produce week — and reopen, edit, re-save, or delete any of them later. This is a planning tool only: it's entirely separate from the real spend total on your Today page, and searching your Foods here is read-only — it never changes an actual food entry.

Try it on the Grocery Budget Calculator page.