Hi ,

Louis from ETM here - thanks for checking out our app! I hope we can help you make some positive changes to your diet, or at very least, give you some new meal ideas.

Here's a quick rundown on the basics

1. The main way to interact with the planner is to regenerate individual meals and foods until the plan looks like something you want to follow. On the apps, tap the 3-dot menus to see a list of alternatives, and on the website, hover your mouse over a food to see the regenerate button.
2. You can customize the Meal Types (e.g. Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner). Tap the 3-dot menu next to a meal's name to edit the Meal Settings, or you can create new Meal Types. You can change prep time, whether or not you can cook, meal size, and number of family members to make extra servings for. The "complexity" setting also has a big impact on the recipes you see.
3. Rate foods to help the generator learn what you like. A thumbs up will cause similar recipes to show up more often, and a thumbs down will block that recipe and never show it again.
   You can also block basic ingredients, and recipes containing that specific ingredient will also be blocked. The plans will rarely be perfect the first time, but the process to get a perfect plan will get quicker over time.
4. Use Recurring Foods and Collections! These are the best way to have complete control over what meals the planner suggests. Want the same bowl of oatmeal for breakfast every day? Add it as a Recurring Food and set it to recur "always". You can also create Collections (like your Favorites), and add the whole collection to meals to completely customize what foods and recipes you see. The generator will make sure your meals fit your nutrition goals for the day. Note: Recurring Foods can be edited in their own section on the web interface, and are under Meal Settings for specific meals in the mobile app.
5. Want to change your nutrition targets? Find the Meal Layout in your Settings, where you can edit the layout of your meals and Nutrition Profile (named 'My nutrition targets' by default). There's a calculator in the profile editor if you want to re-estimate your targets, or feel free to use any other calculator on the internet, and then plug your numbers into the profile. Then just regenerate your plans to match the new targets.
6. Last but not least, you can use ETM as a calorie/macro tracker! Eat something not in the plan? Simply use the "Add foods" or "Search" menus to find what you ate (we have a barcode scanner too), add it to your meals, and remove whatever you didn't eat. Then hit the checkbox next to your meals to tell us you ate it. If you are using our Pantry feature, this will also deduct the eaten foods from your Pantry.

The free account lets you use all of the features to customize a single day's plan, as well as track your intake and progress. Once you get the hang of it, check out the extras you get for subscribing. If you want the extra convenience of full weekly meal plans and the ability to track your actual day-to-day intake (along with grocery lists and leftovers planning), our premium features are a big time-saver, and really streamline the whole process of feeding yourself (and your family). Plus, you'll be supporting our small team in continuing to improve the service :-)

If you have any other questions or feedback, feel free to write to us at [email protected], or simply reply to this email.

P.S. If you want a free subscription, tell your friends about us! For each friend that subscribes, you'll both get a free month of premium. Refer 3 friends? They'll each get their first month free, and you get 3 months free! Just send them your personal referral link: www.eatthismuch.com/a/.

(Note: The free months can only be applied to your subscription if you and your friends subscribe through the website, but you'll still be able to use the upgrades in our iOS and Android apps - more info)