We have done it! September begins with a major Kudo 👍🏽 We can now adapt your nutrition plan to your training on Strava in real time.
We are delighted to achieve unprecedented nutritional personalisation, and this is only the beginning. Our goal is integration with all devices providing relevant information, covering activity and rest, like the already integrated Apple Health and Google Fit, but also biomarkers, glucose, body composition, genes and more. There is a long journey ahead, but exciting possibilities are opening up.
The app will notify you of adjustments to consider when preparing meals and taking supplements , where applicable. Here, we explain our Strava synchronisation in detail, including what still needs refining.
How Can You Sync Your INDYA App with Strava?
You can sync INDYA with Strava in four places:
- Through the app questionnaire completed when you start
- During any monthly review or adjustment of your plan
- Through an automatic adjustment of training
- By tapping your photo in the app’s top-left corner and opening Connected Apps.
Everything You Need to Know About Strava Synchronisation
This is a major update. Here is how Strava synchronisation helps us achieve unprecedented personalisation.
How Do We Adjust Nutrition?
These adjustments are complex, accounting for body composition goals, medical conditions, training adaptation, age, gender, how you feel and more. Broadly, adjustments happen at three levels: calories, macronutrients and foods.
A simple example: you planned an easy run but felt good and switched to 800-metre intervals (something to discuss with your coach!). Once done, you need more calories and probably more carbohydrates because intensity was higher than planned, plus more protein because muscular impact was greater too.
We do not necessarily replace every calorie burned. For example, if you seek a calorie deficit , we replace fewer. Nor do we replenish all macronutrients equally. We might replace all the carbohydrates used, but not all the fats. This largely depends on intensity, duration, goals, competitions and more.
Do We Adjust Your Recipe or Replace It?
Our priority is adjusting calories and macronutrients within your existing recipe for practical reasons. You may already have bought the ingredients or prepared it. A different recipe might be impossible to make.
If that is insufficient, we can add, modify or remove extras such as coffees, side dishes, desserts, pre-workout snacks, recovery meals and during-exercise fuel.
Finally, if needed, we may suggest replacing the recipe . For example:
You planned chickpeas at 15:00 before training at 20:00, but your afternoon changes and you choose indoor cycling at 16:00. We notify you that you have added intense training immediately after a planned pulse-based meal and recommend a more suitable recipe.
Real-Time Nutritional Adjustments
Having a sports nutritionist who understands your case, monitors progress, explains decisions and follows up is a luxury now accessible to amateur athletes. This makes a difference, which is why sports nutritionists are central at INDYA.
However, a nutritionist has working hours, weekends, holidays and other athletes to support.
With technology and these integrations, you no longer need to wait until Monday to tell your nutritionist about Saturday’s activity and receive adjustments afterwards, when they are less useful.
More History, More Accuracy
Studies estimate the calorie expenditure of training types using METs. These evidence-based estimates are useful but general.
An exciting part of integrating with Strava is that, if INDYA detects your calorie expenditure trending up or down, we automatically adjust nutrition.
Here is an example.
Scientific estimates (METs) might predict expenditure for an easy 3-hour bike ride or 30 minutes of CrossFit, but Strava shows you expend less during that activity. We then adjust nutrition to the actual expenditure reported by Strava. Over a month, this difference between theory and your reality matters. NOW displays a notification such as:
“We have recalculated estimated energy expenditure for this training type because your Strava energy expenditure is decreasing/increasing.”
Pretty cool!
Nutrition Adjustments Based on Heart Rate
Another possible scenario:
In September, cooler weather, a steadier routine and mountain training may have substantially lowered your heart rate and calorie expenditure. Your watch reports lower expenditure adjusted to your heart rate. We calculate average METs correlated at 98% with calorie expenditure and use those average METs to determine how many calories to replenish, adjusting in real time.
We are also working on nutritional adjustments based on time in zones, maximum heart rate and VO2max , measured or estimated. Exciting things are coming!
Planned Training vs Unexpected Changes
Sometimes we cannot anticipate what you will do. If we receive a Strava workout that was not planned, we add it and adjust upcoming meals. We cannot retrospectively adjust your pre-exercise fuelling or during-exercise fuelling.
Planning training in advance remains best, allowing us to optimise energy in preceding meals. Once we integrate with TrainingPeaks (a little preview!), this will become easier.
Why Is a Strava Workout Sometimes Not Created?
If you use Strava synchronisation, you may notice this occasionally. Here is how it works:
Created and Nutrition Recalculated When
- INDYA detects a completed workout in Strava and finds no planned workout that day.
- INDYA detects a completed workout in Strava and finds a previously planned workout in the same sport that you did not complete. It creates the Strava workout, removes the uncompleted one and recalculates nutrition based on your actual activity.
Not Created, but Nutrition Recalculated When
- INDYA detects a completed workout in Strava in the same sport, lasting approximately the same time and starting at practically the same time as the planned workout. It matches and replaces the planned workout with Strava’s recorded activity.
Neither Created nor Nutrition Recalculated When
- INDYA detects a completed workout in Strava that differs substantially in time, sport or duration from planned activity. For example, an unplanned Strava workout arrives in the morning while another workout remains planned that afternoon. We do not know whether you substituted the morning session for the afternoon one or intend to do both.
We therefore prefer not to create the workout received from Strava or recalculate nutrition, because your plans for the later session are unclear.
In NOW, we explain this. If you will not complete the later workout, one option is opening Adjust, removing it and manually adding the workout completed with Strava. This manual change recalculates nutrition using the day’s actual activity.
Strava Synchronisation: What Still Needs Resolving?
If activity does not sync with Strava, we cannot capture it yet. For example, without turning on your watch during CrossFit, Strava does not record the activity, so neither can we.
If you planned one running workout, such as progressive hill repetitions, but completed another, such as short intervals, we may match them because they share a sport. Strava reports the sport rather than the workout type. We do not yet identify this through heart rate or intervals, but plan to in the near future.
Activities shorter than 10 minutes are excluded because they do not justify a nutritional adjustment. Some may slip through as we refine things: a 15-minute cycling commute, for example, may register as training. We will improve this soon.
Already Resolved
We now remove duplicates generated by Whoop.
We continually iterate. Follow our progress in our Strava Club.
Thank you for reading.
