Fuel by design
Fuelby Design
Six meal styles. One lever. Calories decide the outcome — but insulin decides how hard it is to hit them. Steady the curve and appetite settles, cravings quiet, and staying in your numbers stops being a fight. That's why insulin control and calorie control go hand in hand.
The Core Idea: Cause & Effect
This isn't a meal plan — it's a decision. Every meal sits where three things meet. Get the inputs right and the output follows.
No rotation breaks the laws of energy balance — total intake still decides where you end up. But each style moves your blood sugar and insulin differently, and big swings drive hunger and cravings while flat, stable ones keep appetite quiet. Manage the curve and the calories tend to look after themselves. That's the whole game — plus one number that beats any rotation: enough protein, roughly 1.6–2.2g per kg of bodyweight, most days.
How Each Style Moves Your Insulin
Picture every meal on one line — from the flattest response to the sharpest. Where a style sits tells you what it's for.
It's rarely the carbs alone. The same carbs eaten lean are fuel into worked muscle. The same carbs buried in fat mean high insulin while fat is abundant — so the fat gets stored, not burned, and the combo is hard to stop eating. Same carbs. Opposite outcome.
The Six Styles
Six tools, each with a different insulin signature. None is "good" or "bad" — only right or wrong for the moment you're in.
Recovery Meal
Keto
Carnivore
Fasting
Plant-Based / Carb-Led
Cheat / Ultra
Where Does It Fit?
Once you can read the curve, you can place any food. Tap something you eat often and see what it does, where it belongs, and how to make it work harder for you. No "good" or "bad" — just the right slot.
Eating Fully Plant-Based
If plant-based is your whole diet, you'll naturally live in the carb-led style — so the work is reaching the flatter, protein-forward styles too. The curve logic never changes, only the ingredients. Here's how each style looks plant-based, and what to watch.
The Day Architect
Drop in your goal, your training, and your eating window. The Architect maps the six styles onto your day — your fasting window, a protected pre-training meal, your recovery meal, and where the rest sit — with the effect on recovery, inflammation and energy shown at every step.
Windows bend around real life. If the fast fights your training, sleep, or hunger — shorten it. Fasted hard training doesn't suit everyone, especially with high volume or any health condition. This is a starting map, not a rulebook.
Your Weekly Menu
The whole thing in one place. Set your goal, mark how each day trains, and — optionally — drop in a calorie target. The builder lays out a full example week with real meals: fuelled around your sessions, lighter on rest days. It's a worked example to show how the diet looks, not a fixed prescription.
This is a map of a typical week, not a contract. Swap days as life moves, shorten the fast if it fights your sleep or training, and treat the templates as starting points to adjust from your own feedback.
The Calorie Layer
Optional, and for when you already know your numbers. Bring the daily calorie target your coach or tracking gives you, set how it spreads across the day, and the tool turns it into calories and a fuel mix for each meal.
| Meal | kcal | Fuel mix | Protein | Carbs | Fat |
|---|
The number you entered is on the low side. Please confirm it with a coach or dietitian before building a plan around it — under-fuelling costs you training, recovery and health.
Protein is the number that matters most. If a meal's protein looks light — the Plant / Carb-Led slot especially — top it up before you touch anything else. The macro grams are a rough starting guide, not a rule; adjust them to how you train, recover and feel.
Track & Adapt
The method only works if you close the loop. Log how meals make you feel — energy, hunger, cravings — then adjust. Copy your log straight into a coaching check-in.
Read This First
This is a framework, not a prescription.
- Educational only. Not medical or dietary advice. It doesn't replace a doctor, dietitian, or your coach.
- Energy balance comes first. No style overrides the total. Insulin management makes hitting your target easier — it doesn't break physics.
- Inflammation effects are gentle, not guaranteed. Where the tool shows inflammation easing, treat it as "may help for some" — the diet–inflammation link is real but individual.
- Fasting is optional. If a window fights your training, sleep, or hunger, shorten it. Fasted hard training isn't right for everyone.
- Not for everyone. If you have a history of disordered eating, structured rotation — and especially "cheat / free" meals — can feed binge–restrict cycles. Please don't use this solo; work with a professional.
- Respond, don't restrict. If energy, sleep, training, or mood drop, that's the signal to adjust — not to push harder.
- Individual first. Pregnancy, menopause, medical conditions, and the menstrual cycle all change the picture. Treat every map as a starting point.