Your ThriveZone app, screen by screen

Open the link

On your iPhone, open the link I sent you:

thrivezone-academy.de/en/app/

The page gives you the short version of what the app is and what happens to your data. Read it once before you go on.

Tick the privacy box

Scroll to the bottom, to “Privacy & your consent”. It sums up what the app records and where that’s stored; tapping “Full privacy notice (app)” opens the whole thing.

Tick the box. Only then does the blue “Open the app →” button become tappable. The date and time of your consent appear underneath it.

Add it to your home screen

Tap “Open the app →”. It opens in whichever browser your iPhone uses by default — for most people that’s Safari. Don’t sign in yet — put it on your home screen first:

• Tap the Share button at the bottom of Safari — the square with the arrow pointing up.
• Scroll down the list to “Add to Home Screen”.
• Tap “Add” at the top right.

The ThriveZone icon now sits on your home screen like any other app.

Open the app from the new icon

Close Safari and open the app from the icon on your home screen. You land on the welcome screen: the logo, and three short cards explaining what the app does.

If you open the app in Safari, you also get the note “Add to your home screen first” with the three steps above. Once you’re in through the icon, that note is gone and you go straight to the email field.

Enter your email address

Under “Sign in with email”, type in the exact address I sent your invitation to. Your account is tied to that address — another one won’t work.

Then tap “Email me a code”.

Type in the 8-digit code

You’ll get an email straight away from Thrive Zone Personal Training with an 8-digit code. Type it into “Your code” — the “Sign in” button goes live once all eight digits are in.

• No email? Check your spam folder.
• Waited too long? Tap “Resend code” — the old one stops working.
• Wrong address? Tap “‹ Different email” to go back.

That’s it — you’re in

The code takes you straight into your day. Your daily structure, your plan and your targets are already there — I set them up before sending you the link.

You stay signed in. Next time, tap the icon and you’re in. You only need a new code if you sign out or switch devices.

1 · At the top: your Protective Shield

The five corners are your five pillars: Training, Recovery, Nutrition, Healthy Habits and Mindset. The further a corner reaches out, the stronger that pillar is today. Underneath, Shield integrity as a percentage — one number that pulls all five together.

It starts low in the morning and fills up as the day goes on and you tick things off. That’s by design. Part 13 explains how it’s worked out.

If there’s no sleep logged for today yet, a yellow line appears underneath: “😴 Recovery is running on a neutral value” — tap it and you go straight to the sleep window. Part 13 explains why that matters.

Right below it sits the purple button “📝 Open reflection — boosts your mindset”; once you’ve written something for today it reads “Edit reflection” — more on that in Part 11.

2 · Date, reviews, and the day switcher

Below the shield: today’s date and how much is still open — the app calls the individual items in your day “slots”, e.g. “6 slots open”. Then two buttons that open your weekly reviews — “📊 Your week — full breakdown” and “🌱 Plant variety & fiber — your week” (Part 12).

Filling in a day you missed

The row with the arrows ‹ Today › is your day switcher. Tap the left arrow to go back a day — the date appears with “Catch up · tap for today” underneath. Anything you log while you’re back there lands on that day, not today.

• You can go back up to 14 days.
• You can’t go forward past today.
• Tapping the middle jumps straight back to today.

3 · Progress bar and macros

The thin bar shows how much of your day is done, with the count next to it — 6 / 12, say.

Then “🍽 Macros today”. Top right are your calories: what you’ve logged against your daily target. If it shows a range like 1920–2200 kcal, I’ve given you a carb range rather than a fixed number.

Below that, bars for protein, carbs, fat — and fiber, if I’ve set you a fiber target. Under each bar: where you are against the target.

The rows underneath

Every meal you’ve logged today gets its own row with its numbers. These rows are tappable — one tap opens that meal to edit. Handy for a snack you added on the fly, since it hasn’t got a card of its own.

4 · Protein quality, steps and water

Three cards sit below the macros:

• 🥚 Protein quality — how much of your protein your body can actually use. It appears as soon as you’ve logged protein today. Tap it for the full picture (Part 12).
• 🚶 Steps today — where you are against your step goal, with a bar. Tap it to enter today’s figure.
• 💧 Water today — same thing for water.

If a card still says “Log”, you haven’t entered anything for today.

5 · The quick buttons

Eight small buttons for everything that comes up on the fly and has no fixed card in your day:

• ＋ 🍎 Snack — log a meal that wasn’t planned
• ＋ 🍽 Restaurant — help with what to order (Part 9)
• ＋ 🚶 Activity — a walk, gardening, mobility (Part 7)
• ＋ 🏃 Run — a run or ride from a screenshot (Part 7)
• ＋ 💊 Supp — add and schedule a supplement (Part 8)
• ＋ 🏋️ Workout — a session outside your plan
• ＋ 🩺 Symptom — tell me something’s off (Part 10)
• ＋ 💬 Andreas — send me a message (Part 10)

6 · Your day as a list

From here on it’s the day itself: everything that’s on for today, in order from morning to night. Big cards for meals and training, slim rows for everything else — habits, mobility, wind-down.

The Thrive Zone Personal Training block sits right at the bottom — that’s the end of the page. Your list shows exactly what’s on your plan today.

Slim rows — the small stuff

Water, morning light, the walk after eating, mobility, wind-down. These rows have two places to tap:

• The circle on the right ticks it off directly. Green with a ✓ means done. Tap it again to un-tick it.
• The row itself opens a panel underneath.

What’s in that panel

• 🔥 Streak — how many days in a row you’ve kept it up, and how often this week
• the short version of why it’s in your day
• Alternative: — what to do instead on a day when it won’t happen
• “Source & details ›” — opens the full info card
• “Change status…” — for “didn’t happen” or “not on today”
• On walks and mobility there’s also “⏱ Log with duration ›”

Two cards the app adds itself

Two more cards turn up in among the rows. They aren’t part of your daily structure — the app adds them itself:

• 💊 Supplements · [meal] — sits right after the meal your supplements go with. Tap it to open the check-off list (Part 8).
• ☀️ Vitamin D sun — shows up during the months when the sun gets high enough for your body to make vitamin D, once that window is open for the day. It reads something like “Open now — out until 15:20 · lots of skin in the sun”. Tapping the card ticks it off; the ⓘ explains why. In the last ninety minutes of the window it moves to the top as a reminder.

Some rows have a “🏖 off” button (the commute row, for instance) — tap it and the row is hidden for the day. “Hidden today:” then appears at the bottom of the list with a button to bring it back.

Big cards — meals and training

Blue for meals, red for training. Here’s how they work:

• Tapping the card opens whichever window belongs to it — the meal logger or the workout.
• The circle on the right doesn’t tick it off here; it opens the status window with three options.
• The time at the top left is tappable — more on that below.

Once a meal is logged, the card says what’s in it: “✓ 465 kcal · 38 g protein logged — tap to adjust”.

The status circle: three states

On big cards, the circle opens a window with three lines:

• ✓ Done — it happened. Saves immediately.
• – Didn’t happen — it was on and it fell through. You can then pick a reason: cold, ill, pain, tired, time / stress, forgot, away, no motivation — or type your own. The reason is optional, but you do have to tap “– Save as didn’t happen” at the end; tapping the reason on its own doesn’t save it.
• ○ Not on today — it wasn’t on your plan today at all. It doesn’t count anywhere — not even as a miss.

Once a status is set, a fourth line appears: ↺ Open — resets it.

Moving things around

If a time doesn’t work today, tap the 🕑 time at the top of the card and set a new one. The app then asks:

• Just today — tomorrow the old time is back.
• From now on — your routine changes for good.

You can also drag cards: press and hold the ⠿ handle on the right edge of the card briefly, then drag. The time adjusts to the new position and applies to today.

What’s behind the ⓘ

For most items you can read why they’re in your day. Tap “Source & details ›” in the open panel, or the ⓘ on a big card, and you get an info card: my explanation, how far the evidence actually carries, an alternative for awkward days, and the source itself with the type of study it was.

You don’t need any of that to use the app. It’s there for when you want to know why you’re doing something.

Opening the meal logger

• Tap the meal card in your day (breakfast, lunch, dinner…)
• Use ＋ 🍎 Snack at the top when nothing was planned
• Tap a row in the macros block to change something you already logged

The header says “Log meal” — or “Edit meal” if something is already logged for that meal today.

Way 1 — say it (the fastest)

This is the one I’d recommend. At the top of the window sits the field “🎤 Say it or type it — straight into your log”. Nothing to look up, nothing to weigh, no list to go through — you just say what you ate.

How to speak a meal in

• Tap once into the field. The keyboard comes up.
• Tap the microphone — it sits on the keyboard, just left of the space bar.
• Talk normally, in your own time, in ordinary sentences. Your words appear in the field as you go.
• When you’re done, put the keyboard away and tap ✨ at the right of the field.

A few seconds later your meal is there as separate items, with nutrition values. That’s it.

How you can say it

• “Two eggs and a slice of toast with butter”
• “A big pot of skyr with berries and oats”
• “Chicken breast with rice and broccoli, normal portion”

You can give amounts, but you don’t have to. Leave them out and the app assumes a normal portion — and you fix it afterwards with − and + in two seconds.

Above the items it always tells you how confident the estimate was, e.g. “2 item(s) added (medium) — please check and adjust.” A quick look is enough.

Adjusting items — however you added them

Everything you add shows up as its own card under “Your meal · suggestions (edit, remove, or add)”. You can edit each one separately:

• − and + change the amount. Foods move in 10-gram steps; recipes and anything the app picked out of your text move in half portions (Port.). You can also tap the number and type it.
• The values on the right update as you go.
• ✕ removes the item. “Undo” appears briefly at the bottom in case that was a mistake.
• Where a recipe shows “▸ Adjust ingredients”, you can leave individual ingredients out or change the amounts.
• “Clear” at the top right empties the whole thing.

The total sits under the items: “This meal: 24P · 23C · 24F · 400 kcal”.

Way 2 — photograph the meal

Tap 📷 Photo of your meal and take a picture of your plate. The app breaks the meal into its parts and gives each one its own card, in grams. Remove anything it got wrong with ✕ and fix the amounts with − and +.

Way 3 — scan a nutrition label

📋 Scan nutrition label (save product) lets you photograph the nutrition label on the packet. The values come in as an item — and the product is remembered. Next time it’s right there in the search, offline too.

Way 4 — my staples and your favorites

Under “⭐ Your staples (n) — tap to add” are the foods I’ve set up for you with exact values, grouped by the meal they suit. One tap adds them with their standard portion.

You build your own favorites as you go: tap the star on a search result, or use “⭐ Save this meal as a favorite” at the bottom for a whole combination. Next time it’s one tap.

Way 5 — recipes and picks

Under “🥗 Picks for you · tap to add” you get up to three recipes that suit this meal and what you’ve still got left for today. The search field “🥗 Search more ThriveZone recipes” gets you to the rest. Once something is logged for that meal the picks disappear — you’re done there.

If a pick shows “▸ Adjust ingredients”, you can leave things out or change amounts before you log it.

Way 6 — search and custom entry

Under “Search another food”, results start appearing once you’ve typed two letters. It looks in your own catalogue first, then in a large food database. A ✓ means I recommended it; “saved” means you’ve used it before.

At the very bottom, “+ More options (quick foods, custom macros)” opens the quick foods (fixed values per 100 g) and the custom entry, where you type in the name, protein, carbs and fat yourself — for anything that isn’t listed anywhere.

↩ Same as last time

If you often eat the same thing, “↩ Same as last time” appears at the top with however you logged it last time. One tap loads it all in, still editable.

Saving

The blue bar sits at the bottom. Once there’s something in the meal it reads “Log · 24P · 400 kcal” — or “Update” when you’re editing something already logged. One tap saves and closes; the numbers appear in your macros block straight away.

Logged something you didn’t actually eat? Open the meal again, remove every item with ✕, and the button turns into “Clear log (ate nothing)”.

Opening the workout

Tap ▶ Start workout. If your plan has more than one workout (A and B, say), the app first asks “Which workout today?” and shows how many exercises each one has.

Inside you see the workout name at the top, then “Today’s workout” and your current phase, e.g. Phase 1 · week 3 of 6.

The ℹ button

If there’s an ℹ at the top right, I’ve written you a short note on this plan — rep ranges, when to add weight, what to watch. Read it the first time round.

How it’s laid out: circuits and stations

Headings sit above the exercises: Warm-Up · Mobility, then Circuit A, Circuit B and so on — or Main block for an exercise that isn’t part of a circuit.

The label on the right of each exercise tells you how to run it:

• A.1 and A.2 belong to one circuit: one set of A.1, one set of A.2, then back to A.1 — alternating, not all sets in a row.
• W is warm-up. Tapping the row ticks it off; there are no sets to fill in.

Under each name is what I’ve set you, e.g. 40 kg × 10 reps · RIR 2. RIR 2 means you stop with two clean reps still in you.

The blue “Last:” line shows what you did on that exercise last time — your anchor for today’s weight.

Logging sets — two modes

Two buttons at the top. “Track values” is on by default.

Track values

Tap a Set 1 tile. “Log set 1” opens at the bottom with your fields — Weight (kg), Reps, RIR, or Duration (sec) on timed exercises. Everything is pre-filled with my prescription; − and + adjust it.

• “✓ Done” (left) saves the values but doesn’t write them onto the tile — it just shows ✓.
• “With values” (right) saves and shows them: the tile then reads 40kg × 10.
• “Cancel” closes without saving.

Quick log

Switch to “Quick log” and a tap on a set tile saves it immediately, no input box. Good when you’re training exactly to plan and want to stay in the flow.

After each set, “⏱ Rest: 90s” appears at the top and counts down. It’s a guide — carry on whenever you’re ready.

Adding an exercise, reordering, finishing

Under the list sits “+ Add exercise” — for anything you throw in on the day. Type a name, set the number of sets, “Add”. It shows up under Extra exercises and counts towards your total. Your plan stays untouched.

To reorder, use the ⠿ handle on the right: press and hold briefly, then drag.

At the bottom: “Finish workout (3/15 sets)” — and “🎉 Finish workout” once every set is in. That ends the session, closes the window and ticks off the training card in your day. The app then asks briefly how the session went (Part 7).

⚖️ Weigh-in

Tap the circle on the right of the weigh-in row. − and + move in 100-gram steps, or type the number straight in — commas and full stops both work.

Under the field you get the context, depending on how much data there is:

• The very first time: “First reading — from here you’ll see how it moves.”
• For the first fortnight: “Last reading 84.6 kg on… · After two weeks I’ll show you the trend instead of a single number.”
• After that, the trend against last week: the app compares the average of the last seven days with the seven before that, rather than two individual days — so day-to-day swings even out.

• Best first thing in the morning, before breakfast.
• Anything under 30 or over 300 kg won’t save — the button stays grey.

😴 Sleep

Same again: tap the circle on the right of the sleep row. Two things go in:

• Sleep duration, in half-hour steps, with − and + — or type the number straight in; commas and full stops both work.
• Sleep quality: 🤩 Great · 😴 Good · 😐 Okay · 😟 Poor.

Under the duration you see where you landed: “✓ Goal reached” or “-1.5 h under goal”.

🚶 Steps

Tap the “Steps today” card. Put in the number from your Health app or watch — digits only.

Underneath, a line runs across with three marks on it: Base 5k, Healthy 8k, Active 10k. That line always runs to 10,000, whatever your personal goal is. The card on the home screen measures against your goal — which is why the two bars rarely match up.

“ⓘ Why steps count — the data” takes you to the reasoning behind it.

💧 Water

Tap the “Water today” card. No number field here — buttons instead:

• ＋ Glass (250 ml) and ＋ Large (500 ml) — one tap per drink.
• Reset puts it back to 0 if you lose count.
• Below that, ☕ Coffee (100 ml) and 🍷 Alcohol (250 ml). These count against your hydration.

🚶 Logging an activity

Tap ＋ 🚶 Activity at the top, or open it from a movement card in your day (walk, mobility), in which case the group is already filled in.

In order:

• When? — date and time. Change the date and the app tells you the entry will be filed on a different day.
• Group — 🚶 Everyday movement, Mobility, Cardio, Strength. The group decides which pillar of your shield it feeds; it says so under the duration field: “counts toward Training” or “counts toward Healthy Habits”.
• Common — tappable presets with a duration.
• Activity — the name; type whatever you like.
• Duration (minutes).
• ＋ Metrics (distance, pace, HR…) — for distance, pace, heart rate, calories and elevation, if you want them.

“＋ Log” at the bottom. Without a name the button stays grey.

🏃 Runs from a screenshot

Keep tracking runs and rides with whatever you already use — Strava, Nike Run Club, Apple Fitness, Garmin, Komoot. Then:

• Take a screenshot of the summary screen after the session.
• In ThriveZone, tap ＋ 🏃 Run.
• At the very top, tap 🏃 Log from a screenshot (run, ride…) and pick the shot from your photo library.

The app reads the sport, duration, distance, pace, heart rate, calories and elevation from the image and fills in the fields. If there’s a date on the screenshot, it files the session on that day — even if you get round to it later. You’ll see something like “Read (high) · 📅 auto-set to Sat 30 Aug — check the values and add it.”

Every value stays editable — give them a quick check, then “＋ Log”.

After the session: “How was the session?”

As soon as a training, mobility or cardio session is done, the app asks once how it went: 😮‍💨 At my limit · 😕 Hard going · 👌 Just right · 💪 Easy. You can add a line for me.

It comes up after “Finish workout”, after you tick off a mobility or cardio row, and when you set a session to “✓ Done” through the status circle.

It’s optional — “Skip” is perfectly fine, the tick is already saved. But it’s the fastest feedback I can get from you: over a few weeks it tells me whether the load is sitting right.

Ticking them off

Whatever I’ve put on your list turns up as a green card right after the meal it belongs to — e.g. “Supplements · Dinner · 0 / 2 taken”. Tap it to open the list.

Tap each one to mark it taken; tap again to undo. Each shows its dose and your week so far, e.g. 🗓 5/7 days.

Adding one yourself

Taking something I haven’t set up? Use ＋ 💊 Supp. It’s three steps:

• Pick — from your list, or 📷 Scan label (photo), or ✍️ Add manually.
• Check the profile — name, brand, form, serving, standard dose. A scan fills it all in; give it a look, then “Save & continue”.
• When & how much — which meal it goes with (or a fixed time), the dose, and optionally a note like “take with fat”.

Then “＋ Add to day” — it’s in your daily list from now on.

Anything you added yourself, you can take back out of the day with the ✕ in the list.

Help at the table

Tap ＋ 🍽 Restaurant. At the top you’ll see “Still left today” — what’s left of your calories, protein, carbs and fiber. Everything below is worked out against that.

Two ways in:

• 📷 Scan the menu — the app reads the menu and picks from what’s actually on it.
• ⌨️ Type in the cuisine, or use one of the chips (Italian, Greek, Thai, Turkish, steakhouse, sushi…) and it shows typical dishes from that cuisine as a rough guide. The screen tells you when the dishes aren’t from your actual menu.

🩺 Logging a symptom

Open it with ＋ 🩺 Symptom. A scratchy throat, a knee that niggles, a shoulder making itself known — log them, even if they’ve nothing to do with training. Over weeks it turns into a pattern.

• Where? — tap the spots on the body map; you can tap several at once. Front / Back flips the view. For anything you can’t pin down: 🌍 General / whole body.
• Symptom — one of the ten chips (cold, headache, joint pain, run-down…) or your own words. This is the only thing that’s required.
• Severity — mild, moderate, severe. Optional.
• Pattern — the “Ongoing / recurring” switch, for anything lasting more than a few days.
• Note to Andreas — e.g. “for 3 days now after eating, worse in the evening”.

Then “Log symptom”. You can log more than one on the same day.

💬 Message to Andreas

That’s the ＋ 💬 Andreas button — for anything that doesn’t fit a field. One sentence does it: “knee niggles on stairs”, “away next week”, “question about my plan”.

Under “Sent today” you can see what’s already gone out — including the lines you added to your sleep, steps or water check-ins. The small chip on the left tells you where each one came from.

📝 Your day in four blocks

This one’s behind the purple button under the shield. All of it is optional — filling in just one block is fine.

• 🌅 Morning · Set your focus — your three most important goals for today, plus one quality you want to bring to it.
• 🌙 Evening · 7 good things — seven lines from different parts of life: relationships, body, work, food, growth, hobbies, calm. The areas are prompts, not rules.
• Daily check-in — energy, mood, flow / focus on a scale of 1 to 5. Tap the same number again to clear it.
• Challenges — three at most. Deliberately not “problems”.

“Save reflection” at the bottom. There’s one entry per day: write your goals in the morning, open it again in the evening, and everything is still there to add to.

Reflection feeds the Mindset pillar of your shield — the number at the top moves as soon as you save.

🥚 Protein quality

From the card under your macros. Two numbers: what you ate, and how much of it is usable — plus that as a percentage.

Here’s why: not every protein source supplies amino acids in the same ratio. Rice is short on lysine, pulses on methionine — together they cover each other’s gaps. The app works this out across the whole day, not per meal. So you don’t have to get a complete protein onto every plate.

Below that, your protein sources for the day listed one by one, and a tip on what would round the profile off today.

🌱 Plant variety & fiber

From the second button under the shield. The green ring shows your variety points over the last 7 days against your weekly goal. Next to it: how many different plants that was, and how many botanical families.

Below, your families as chips, your estimated fiber per day as bars — and under “Missing this week — adds new families”, specific foods that would each add a new family.

📊 Your week

The big one: a rolling review of the last 7 days, and what we work from when we talk. In order:

• Shield average and the 7-day trend as a line
• The 5 pillars as weekly averages, each with a line of explanation
• Macros — your average across fully logged days against your targets
• Plant variety & fiber
• Training — every session of the week
• Sleep & recovery with your goal line
• Supplements — one dot per day taken, per product
• Movement, sun & daily life and Cardio & endurance
• Daily structure — how much of your day you got through, by area
• Mindset & reflection with your good moments of the week

Pale dots on the trend line are days with unusually few entries — they’re left out of the average so a half-logged day doesn’t skew the picture. And today is always still in progress.

Why the weakest pillar counts for so much

Half of your shield value comes from the weighted average of all five pillars. The other half comes from the weakest of the four core pillars alone — training, recovery, nutrition, habits.

It’s built that way because you can’t out-train a gap. Eat and train perfectly on five hours of sleep and you won’t get a full shield — and you shouldn’t. That’s exactly the sort of thing we look at together.

Mindset deliberately sits outside the core four: a day without a reflection can’t drag your shield down. It still moves it a little — mindset carries 10% of the average, so filling one in lifts the shield by roughly two to three points.

You don’t have to work that out for yourself. As long as there’s no sleep logged for today, the line “😴 Recovery is running on a neutral value — no sleep logged yet” sits just under the shield. Tap it and the sleep window opens. Log it and the line goes.

It’s two entries and ten seconds — and it’s the difference between a shield that shows your day and one that shows a gap that isn’t there.

The three states

• Integral from 80% — everything is holding.
• Partial from 55% — one pillar has a hole in it.
• Broken below that — time to rebuild.

How to read it

A low number in the morning is normal — the day hasn’t happened yet. What matters is how the week goes overall — that’s what “📊 Your week” shows you. A dip on a rest day is the point, not a problem — that’s recovery.

Anything you set to “○ Not on today” doesn’t count anywhere — neither for you nor against you. Use it on days when something was never on the plan.