No magic numbers. Working shown.

Carbs per hour: a ceiling you earn.

How many carbs you can use in an hour is limited by how much your gut can absorb, not by willpower. So COOKED starts from the length of the session, adjusts for how hard it is and how trained your gut is, and never goes past a ceiling.

Intensity adds 10 g/hr for a hard session and takes 10 g off an easy one. Gut level is −15 for a beginner, 0 intermediate, +5 advanced, +10 elite. Sport factor reflects how easily you can eat on the move: cycling 1.0, triathlon 0.95, running 0.8, swimming 0.7.

Sports have their own practical caps too: 120 g/hr cycling, 100 triathlon, 90 running, 60 swimming. Easy sessions under 90 minutes, and anything under an hour, get no carbs during. Your pre-session meal has it covered.

Your gut is trainable.

The ceiling isn't fixed. COOKED learns from how your sessions actually went. After three clean sessions where you hit at least 85% of your ceiling, it moves up 5 g/hr. After two sessions with gut trouble, it steps back down 5 g. It never drops below 30 g/hr and never passes your sport's cap.

The gut-training plan does the same on purpose: 5 g/hr more each step, two comfortable sessions before the next. Above 60 g/hr it calls for a glucose-and-fructose mix of about 1 : 0.8, because the two sugars are absorbed through different routes and together you can take in more.

Measured, scaled, capped.

The in-app sweat test gives your real sweat rate: weigh in before, train, weigh in after, and note what you drank.

That rate is then scaled for the day: cold ×0.85, mild ×1, hot ×1.2, very hot ×1.35, and easy ×0.9, hard ×1.12. A rate you measured on a hot day isn't inflated again for heat it already included. No test yet? COOKED estimates about 10 ml per kg of body weight an hour, adjusted for sport.

You don't drink back everything you sweat. COOKED aims to replace 60% of losses, rising to 70% from 1.5 hours and 80% from 3 hours, with a little more in the heat. Then a hard cap: 1,200 ml/hr on the bike, 1,000 running, 800 swimming. Drinking far more than you lose dilutes the sodium in your blood, which is more dangerous than mild dehydration, so the cap is a safety feature, not a target.

Your sweat, not a stock answer.

Sweat saltiness varies a lot between people. A measured value wins; otherwise you pick how salty you are and COOKED uses the matching band: not salty 500, average 800, salty 1,200, very salty 1,500 mg/L.

Sodium only shows up when it matters: sessions over 90 minutes, or over an hour when it's hot. It's never below 300 mg/hr when it is given, never above 2,500, and capped at 1,500 until you've done a sweat test.

The forecast at your start line.

26° and dry is a different day from 26° and humid. COOKED works out the apparent temperature (how hot it feels) at the time and place you start, using the Steadman formula:

Heat raises fluid and sodium and changes how you take carbs (more, smaller feeds in a weaker mix), but it never lowers your carb target. Forecasts only ever push the plan up; a cool day changes nothing.

Fuel for the work required.

A rest day and a five-hour ride shouldn't get the same plate. Daily carbs follow how much you train, then scale with how hard (easy ×0.85, hard ×1.15), because hard sessions burn stored carbohydrate much faster. This is the "fuel for the work required" approach (Impey et al. 2018).

Protein starts at 1.6 g per kg, in the middle of the 1.2–2.0 range for endurance athletes (Thomas, Erdman & Burke 2016). It goes up to 1.8 if you're 50 or older or training 150 minutes or more that day, and 2.0 if you're trying to lose weight. The highest rule that applies wins, and the app tells you which.

Calories start from Mifflin-St Jeor, the standard clinical formula, plus what your training burned. Then COOKED adjusts gently (within ±20%) as it learns from your weight trend.

Before and after.

Eat within an hour. Training hard again in under 8 hours? COOKED switches to rapid recovery: about 1 g of carbs per kg every hour for 4 hours.

A ramp, not one giant pasta night.

Carb-loading tops up the carbohydrate stored in your muscles before a long race. COOKED ramps it over the final six days, scaled to how long your race is:

Race morning: about 2 g of carbs per kg, roughly 3 hours before the start, low in fibre and fat so it sits well.

Why the chart never runs low.

The minute-by-minute chart is a model of the carbohydrate you have on board. You start with a full-ish tank, burn it at a rate set by how hard you're going, and each feed tops it up about 15 minutes after you eat it (that's how long it takes to absorb).

Your starting tank is about 7 g per kg of body weight (350 to 650 g), a little less if you start the day tired. Feeds are spaced so each one (25 g by default) lands before the line drops into the empty zone, with 150 ml sips every 12 to 20 minutes. With a power meter and FTP, the burn rate is worked out from your own power.

Missed a feed? The maths holds.

Once you're 20 g behind, COOKED spreads the deficit over the time you have left instead of telling you to cram. It adds at most 25 g/hr on top of the plan, and never pushes you past your gut ceiling (or 1.35× your plan if your ceiling isn't known yet), so the catch-up never becomes the thing that ends your race.

Pinned by thousands of tests.

About 2,700 automated tests check the maths every time the app changes. Some test specific numbers against textbook values. Others prove the model can't contradict itself:

COOKED gives general sports-nutrition guidance, not medical advice. If you have a medical condition, check with your doctor or a registered dietitian.