VydaloSupport
Need a hand with Vydalo? We're happy to help. The fastest way to reach us is email, and we aim to reply within a couple of business days.
Common questions
Tap a question to see the answer. These same answers are built into the app under Help.
Getting started Logging food Photo logging Gluten free Calories, macros and targets Weight and progress Workouts Account, sync and offline Your data and privacy Problems and feedback Health and safety
Getting started
What is Vydalo?
A food and training log that adapts to your diet, balanced, low carb, keto, high protein or your own custom macros, with gluten-free awareness built in for anyone who needs it. You log what you eat by photo, barcode, search or your saved favourites, and Vydalo works out your calories and macros, tracks your weight, and adjusts your daily target as it learns how your body actually responds.
Do I need an account?
Yes. Your log is tied to an account so it survives losing or changing your phone, and so it stays private to you. You sign in with an email address and a password.
Can I use pounds and feet instead of kilograms and centimetres?
Yes. Open your profile and set Units to imperial. Weights then show in pounds and heights in feet and inches, across your profile, weight logging, goal and history. Your data itself never changes, only how it is displayed, so you can switch back at any time and every number will read exactly as it did before.
How do I put Vydalo on my home screen?
On iPhone, open Vydalo in Safari, tap the Share button, then Add to Home Screen. On Android, open the menu in Chrome and tap Install app or Add to Home screen. It then opens full screen like a normal app.
How do I set up my targets?
Fill in your profile: name, date of birth, sex, height, current weight, goal weight and activity level. Vydalo calculates your daily calories and macros from that. You can change any of it later and your targets update straight away.
Logging food
What are all the ways to log a meal?
Five. Pick from your food library, photograph your plate, scan a barcode, describe the food in words and let the AI finder estimate it, or search the full online food database. Anything you have logged before also shows up under Usuals for one tap re-logging.
How accurate are the calorie and macro numbers?
They are estimates. Photo estimates are typically within roughly 20 to 30 percent, barcode and database entries are usually closer because they come from label data. They are meant to build awareness and consistency, not to be laboratory exact. Weighing your food occasionally is the best way to calibrate your eye, and being consistently a little wrong in the same direction still tracks your progress correctly.
Can I adjust the portion size?
Yes. Every item opens a portion sheet with quick fractions (a quarter, a half, three quarters, one, one and a half, double), a custom multiplier, and a grams field when the food has a weight based serving. The calories and macros update as you change it.
What is the Usuals list?
Your most frequently logged foods, built automatically from your history. Tap + Log to add one instantly at the same portion as last time. Hold the button down for a moment instead of tapping if you want to scale it first (fractions, a custom multiplier, or grams), or tap the food itself to open the same portion picker.
Can I log something for a past day?
Yes. Change the selected date and log as normal. This is handy if you photograph meals during the day and enter them all in the evening. When the day you are logging to is not today, Vydalo ignores the clock and offers the earliest meal you have not filled in yet on that day, so working down a day gives you breakfast, then lunch, then dinner. The meal chips are always there if you want a different one.
How does Vydalo decide if something is breakfast, lunch or dinner?
From the time on your phone. There are six slots: breakfast from 05:00, morning snack from 11:00, lunch from 12:00, afternoon snack from 16:00, dinner from 18:00 and evening snack from 21:30 through to the small hours. Each one runs until the next begins, so nothing falls through a gap. It is only ever a suggestion: the meal chips appear every time you add something, and whatever you tap is what gets saved.
Why is the meal on some entries greyed out?
That means Vydalo guessed it from the clock rather than you choosing it. It is shown faded so you can tell a suggestion from a decision at a glance. Tap the entry and pick a meal to make it yours, and it stops being greyed.
Can I change the meal times? I eat late.
Yes. Open your profile and set when each of the six meals starts under Meal times. Each runs until the next one begins. The screen tells you what the current moment would be filed as while you edit, and there is a button to put the standard times back. Changing these affects new entries only, nothing already logged is reclassified.
Can I copy what I ate on another day?
Yes. Each logged food or workout has a small clipboard icon next to its delete button, tap it and pick the date you want to copy that entry to. It works from any day's log, food and workouts both. Entries are copied, not moved, so the original stays exactly as it was, and a copied meal keeps its meal slot. Useful if you eat much the same breakfast most mornings, just copy it forward a day at a time.
A food is not in the library. What now?
Search the full online database from the food page, or use the AI finder and describe it in plain words, for example "homemade lentil soup with cream". Both let you save the result into your log, after which it appears in your Usuals.
How do the micronutrient estimates work?
They are rough, estimated from the foods you logged rather than measured. Treat them as a nudge towards variety, not a nutritional analysis. If you are managing a genuine deficiency, work from blood tests and your health provider, not from this.
Photo logging
Can I pick a photo from my library instead of taking one?
Yes. Tap Snap or choose a photo and your phone offers both taking a new photo and choosing an existing one. This is designed for photographing your meals as you go and then entering them all in one sitting later.
Does Vydalo keep my photos?
No. The photo is resized on your phone, sent for analysis, and never written to storage on our side. There is no photo gallery inside Vydalo and no copy of your images on our servers. Your photos stay in your own phone library, where only you control them.
The photo was not recognised, or the result looks wrong.
Add a short hint and retry, for example "chicken thigh, rice, olive oil". Hints help most when the dish is mixed, homemade, or hidden under sauce. Good light and a straight down angle also help a lot. If it is still wrong, log it with the AI finder or search instead.
Does it handle a shared dish?
It tries. If the photo looks like a dish for several people, the estimate is given for one portion and says so. Adjust the portion in the sheet if your share was bigger or smaller.
Gluten free
How does the gluten flag work?
With gluten free mode on, the food library hides items that commonly contain gluten, and barcode scans warn you when a product looks like it may contain gluten. These flags are informational and they can be wrong. Do not use Vydalo to decide whether a food is safe for coeliac disease, an allergy or an intolerance. Always read the official product label and follow your health provider's advice.
Can I turn gluten free mode off?
Yes, in your profile. Turning it off simply shows the full food library and stops the warnings. You can switch it back on at any time.
Why did a product get flagged when the label says gluten free?
Product data comes from public food databases and can be incomplete or out of date, and the check errs on the side of warning you. The label on the packet is always the authority, not the app.
Calories, macros and targets
How is my daily calorie target calculated?
First your resting burn is estimated from your height, weight, age and sex, then multiplied by your activity level to get your maintenance calories. Your goal and chosen pace then set a deficit or surplus on top of that. Roughly, half a kilo a week needs about 500 calories a day of difference.
What are BMR and maintenance calories?
BMR is what you burn just being alive, keeping your heart, brain and breathing going. It is usually 60 to 70 percent of your total daily burn, more than any workout. Maintenance is BMR plus everyday movement, training and digesting food. It is the number your target is built from.
Why won't Vydalo let me set a lower target?
There is a safety floor. Your target will not be programmed below your resting burn, or below a sensible daily minimum for your sex. If the pace you picked would need eating under that floor, Vydalo caps it and tells you your progress may be slower than the date shown. Eating far too little backfires: it costs you muscle, energy and sleep, and it is the most common reason people quit.
How does the automatic calibration work?
Formulas are only a starting guess. Once you have logged consistently for about two weeks, Vydalo compares what you actually ate against how your weight actually moved and works backwards to your real maintenance calories. It needs weigh ins at least ten days apart and food logged on most days in between, otherwise the answer would be noise and it stays quiet. When it has enough, it offers to recalibrate your target to the measured number.
Are the calories I burn exercising added to my daily allowance?
No, deliberately. Burned calories are shown as information, and it is up to you whether to eat any of them back. This is not the app shortchanging your training: the two week calibration is measured from your real weight results, so if you train regularly that effort is already reflected in your maintenance number. Adding workout calories back on top as well would double count them, and workout burn estimates are the least reliable number in any fitness app.
How is my protein target set?
Protein is anchored to your bodyweight at roughly 2 grams per kilo, which protects muscle while you are losing fat. Carbohydrate and fat then split the remaining calories according to the diet style you picked.
What do the diet styles (Balanced, Low carb, Keto, High protein) actually change?
They set how your calories split between protein, carbohydrate and fat, and Vydalo uses whichever one you pick to shape your targets and its meal suggestions. Balanced keeps a roughly even mix. Low carb and Keto shift further towards fat with less carbohydrate, Keto much more so. High protein raises protein higher still. None of these change your calorie target, only how it is split. Prefer to set the numbers yourself? Pick Custom macros in your profile and enter your own protein, carbohydrate and fat percentages instead.
Can I override the targets myself?
Yes. You can set your own calorie number, and choosing the custom macro option lets you set your own protein, carbohydrate and fat percentages.
If I change my pace, does it change my past days too?
No. A new pace, goal or calorie number applies from the day you set it onwards. Days you already logged keep the target that was actually in force at the time, so switching to a more ambitious pace today will not turn last week's good days into days you went over. Your weekly average compares each day against its own target for the same reason.
My weight has stalled. Is my metabolism broken?
Almost certainly not. As you get lighter you burn less, so your intake and your burn have simply met. Portions also tend to creep up quietly over weeks. Let the calibration re measure your maintenance, tighten up logging accuracy for a fortnight, and check your sleep, because short nights raise hunger hormones.
Weight and progress
Why does my weight card show an average instead of what the scale said?
Because a single reading swings a kilo or more on water, salt and food still in transit, and reading that as progress or failure is misleading. The headline is your 7 day average, with the change against the previous 7 days underneath, and your latest raw reading shown below that. The average appears once you have three readings in the window. On the chart the solid line is the average and the faint dots behind it are your daily readings.
How often should I weigh myself?
Daily if you can face it, at the same time of day, ideally in the morning after the toilet and before eating. Daily numbers bounce around by a kilo or more from water, salt and food still in transit. The trend over weeks is the real signal, not any single morning.
Why did my goal date move?
It is recalculated from your actual results, not from the original plan. Faster progress pulls the date closer, a slower stretch pushes it out. Vydalo also tells you whether you are ahead of or behind the schedule your pace implies.
What do the waist and body fat numbers mean?
Waist to height ratio is a better health marker than BMI because it reflects where fat sits, and under 0.50 is the usual guidance. The body fat figure is an estimate from tape measurements, useful for tracking a direction over time rather than as a precise measurement. Measure at navel level after breathing out normally, the same way each time.
How is my body fat percentage worked out?
One of two ways, depending on what you have measured. If you enter your neck, Vydalo uses the US Navy method, which combines waist, neck and height, plus hip for women, and is usually within about 3 to 5 points of a DEXA scan. Without a neck measurement it falls back to RFM, which uses only waist and height and is less precise. The note under the result always tells you which one produced the number.
I train hard and the body fat number looks too high.
That is a real limitation of every tape based method, and worth being honest about. These formulas infer fat from your proportions, so a muscular build tends to read a few points high and a very lean one reads low. There is no validated way to correct for how much you train, so Vydalo does not invent an adjustment. Adding your neck measurement will tighten the estimate. For a number you can rely on, a DEXA scan or hydrostatic weighing is the real answer. Either way, the trend over months is far more useful than the absolute figure.
Why does BMI say I am overweight when I lift?
BMI only knows your height and weight, so it cannot tell muscle from fat and it misreads muscular people. That is exactly why waist to height ratio is shown alongside it.
Workouts
How is the calorie burn from a workout estimated?
From the intensity of the activity, your bodyweight and how long you did it. Heavier bodies and longer or harder sessions burn more. Treat it as a rough figure, because real burn varies a lot between people doing the same session.
What are the daily 15 minute plans?
A ready made session of one strength block, one cardio block and one stretch, needing no equipment. Browse the options with the arrows, tap the dice to roll a random pick, and tap Done on a block to log the burn automatically. There is also a builder if you would rather assemble your own.
Can I log a workout the app does not know?
Yes, two ways. Describe it and let the AI estimate the burn, or enter a name and the calories yourself if you already know the number from a watch or machine.
Account, sync and offline
Does Vydalo work without a connection?
Yes. Your log lives on your device first, so you can keep logging with no signal and nothing is lost. Vydalo syncs to your account as soon as you are back online, and anything you entered offline wins. You may briefly see a note telling you your log is safe on the device.
Can I use Vydalo on more than one device?
Yes, sign in with the same account. Sync works best when you use one device at a time, because if you log on two devices while one of them is offline, the offline device's version is the one that gets kept when it reconnects.
I signed out and my history looks gone.
Signing out clears the copy held on the device on purpose, so nobody who picks up your phone can read your log. Signing back in with the same account pulls your history down again. If you sign out while offline, anything not yet synced cannot be recovered, so Vydalo warns you before letting you do that.
How do updates reach me?
On their own, in the background. When a new version is available Vydalo picks it up the next time you come back to it after a break, as long as you are not in the middle of entering something. If you are mid-entry you get a green bar instead, saying a new version is ready, and it waits for you to tap it. You never need to reinstall or visit an app store.
Your data and privacy
What do you actually store?
Your account email, your profile details, and what you log: food, weight and workouts. Nothing is sold, and nothing is used for advertising. Full detail is in the Privacy Policy.
Are my food photos stored?
No. A photo is analysed and discarded. It is never saved on our servers and there is no copy of it inside Vydalo.
Where is my data held?
On managed database infrastructure hosted in Central Europe, reachable only by your own account. See the Privacy Policy for the detail.
Can I get a copy of my data?
Yes. Use the backup option in the app to copy out everything Vydalo holds for you, which is also a sensible thing to do before switching phones.
How do I delete my account and everything in it?
Email privacy@vydalo.com from the address on your account, or use the delete option in the app. Your personal data is removed within 30 days, apart from records we are legally required to keep.
Problems and feedback
Something is broken, or a food estimate is badly wrong.
Email support@vydalo.com and tell us what you did, what you expected, and what happened instead. A screenshot helps enormously. If it is about a specific food or photo, say which one.
How fast will I get a reply?
We aim to answer within a couple of business days. Vydalo is run by a small team, so please be patient with anything that is not urgent.
Can I suggest a feature?
Please do, at support@vydalo.com. A good part of what is in Vydalo today came from users asking for it.
Health and safety
Is Vydalo medical advice?
No. It is an informational tool, not a medical device, and nothing in it is a diagnosis or a treatment plan. If you are pregnant, managing a medical condition, taking medication that interacts with food, or recovering from illness, get your targets from your doctor or a registered dietitian rather than from an app.
Is it safe to eat as little as possible to speed things up?
No, and Vydalo will not help you do it. Very low intakes cost you muscle, energy, sleep quality and mood, and the weight tends to come back. Vydalo enforces a floor under your target for this reason. A steady pace you can hold for months beats an aggressive one you abandon in three weeks.
What if tracking food is becoming unhealthy for me?
Logging helps a lot of people, but for some it can tip into something that feels compulsive or distressing. If counting is making you anxious, if you find yourself skipping meals to keep a number down, or if the scale is affecting how you feel about yourself, that is worth taking seriously. Please talk to your doctor or a qualified professional, who can help you far better than any app. It is completely reasonable to stop tracking, and you can export or delete your data whenever you like.
Contact
Vydalo is operated by BP Consulting Africa Sàrl, Marais Rond 11a, 1847 Rennaz, Switzerland.
General support: support@vydalo.com
Privacy requests: privacy@vydalo.com