LightWeight: Calories From a Food Photo

Manual calorie counting wears out in about three days: find the product, weigh it, type the grams. LightWeight shortens the path. Snap your plate, send it to the bot, get calories, protein, fat and carbs back. 🍽

It is a Telegram Mini App and bot that uses neural networks. The interface is in Russian.

From a plate to numbers

The bot accepts three kinds of input: a photo, a text description, or a link. If the dish is in front of you, send a picture. If you would rather type, describe lunch in words. A link helps when the recipe or ingredient list lives on a page.

You get back a calorie and macro estimate, and the figures go into your diary.

Your goal drives the advice

You choose a goal: weight loss, muscle gain or weight maintenance. Nutrition recommendations adapt to it. Someone cutting needs a deficit, someone bulking needs a surplus, so the same lunch reads differently for each.

The /mydata command opens the personal data the bot uses for its math. Check it right after you start, and update it when your weight changes.

Daily statistics

The bot keeps a history and analyzes your diet: what you ate, how many calories and how much protein it added up to. A single meal says little. A few days in a row say a lot.

• Trends. You see where you regularly overeat or undereat.
• Protein. A frequent dieting trap: calories on target, protein too low.
• Snacks and sweets. Memory drops them, a diary does not.

An honest word on accuracy

A neural network judges portion size by eye, and an error of 10 to 20 percent on complex dishes is normal. Soup, dressed salad and casseroles hide oil and sugar that a photo cannot show.

Shoot in good light, add a text hint such as olive oil, 200 g, and check against a kitchen scale for the first few weeks. 📏

Commands and terms

/start opens the menu. /terms shows the terms of use and payment, so read it before paying for anything. Prices and what the paid part includes are listed there.

The project has a news channel, and you can reach the author with questions through the contacts in the bot profile.

Where a counter cannot replace a doctor

A calorie tracker helps when you are healthy and want order in your eating. With diabetes, an eating disorder, pregnancy or a chronic illness, a doctor or dietitian builds the plan, not an app. 🩺

Do not drop below a safe calorie level because the number on screen looks neat. Weight loss should be gradual.