The Whole Internet Runs Hevy and MacroFactor Side by Side. So I Built One App.
I started training later than most people do. Mid-40s, kind of starting from scratch. I went looking for one app that treated training and food as part of the same system, because that's what I actually needed to figure out. I never found it. What I found instead, when I searched "Hevy MacroFactor," was thread after thread of lifters cross-referencing the two apps by hand. Someone built a tool just to move data between them. It got 14 upvotes. People wanted it enough to upvote that. It's not just my problem.
That gap between the two apps is what this post is about.
The two apps everyone runs
Hevy is good. I'm not going to pretend otherwise. Logging is fast, the little calendar dots and PR ribbons are weirdly motivating, and it does exactly what it says.
MacroFactor is good too. The macro targets adjust to what your weight is actually doing, which is more than most food apps can say.
Neither one is the problem. The problem is the gap between them. Nobody built the part where training and food are supposed to be the same system. So people do that part themselves. Every night. In their head.
Where it breaks
Three things keep showing up in the threads.
- Lifts stall and the calories don't notice. The threads fill up with lifters a few weeks into a harder block, recovery getting expensive, watching MacroFactor serve the same targets because it had no idea they'd just done legs. Eating like it was an easy week while training like it wasn't.
- The two apps just disagree. There's a whole thread on r/Hevy titled "Vast volume disparity between Hevy and MacroFactor" that captures it. Hevy counts volume its way. MacroFactor's expenditure math lives in a completely different world. When progress stalls you can't tell which side broke. Training? Food? You're guessing across two apps that don't talk.
- And MacroFactor's targets don't know whether you trained today. Same numbers whether you hit the gym or sat on the couch. That's how the apps are built — the training day and the rest day look identical on the nutrition side.
None of this is a hot take. It's what the lifters running both apps are reporting.
What I wanted it to look like
Once you see the gap, the fix seems obvious:
- The program drives the macros. Strength block? Targets should reflect that. Deload week? Back off. Automatically, not me doing math at night.
- One signal when things stall. Look at the training and the food together instead of me playing detective.
- One log. Finish the session, the food side already knows.
Nothing did this. So I built it.
So I built FitForge
Quick background: I'm a developer. I spent years in oil and gas, not fitness. I'm not a coach and I don't pretend to be. I started training later than most people do, wanted structure, and couldn't find one app that treated training and food as one thing. So I did the thing developers do when they get annoyed enough.
FitForge gives you a pre-built program and macro targets that match it. When you're in a strength phase, protein and calories are set for a strength phase. Deload? They adjust. Your /today screen shows your workout and your food targets together, because they were never supposed to be separate.
I stopped asking myself "did I eat enough for the block I'm running?" The app answers it.
Should you ditch the two-app setup?
Honest answer: not necessarily. If you track workouts sometimes and food rarely, keep doing whatever works. Two apps is fine when the stakes are low.
But if you're running real programs and your food is just existing next to your training instead of supporting it, the two-app thing is quietly costing you. It was costing me.
Try FitForge free — no credit card, no upsell maze. And if you think I got something wrong, email me. I answer everything myself.
If your reason for using Hevy is just that you want a different workout tracker (no nutrition), see our best Hevy alternative breakdown — it covers Strong, FitNotes, StrengthLog, Boostcamp, and FitForge side by side.