Show HN: FoodPips – I reverse-engineered a weight loss system and made it free

I lost 15 lbs on a well-known subscription weight loss program, let the subscription lapse, and gained all the weight back. The method works and I'm cheap, so I built my own version.

Every food gets a "pip" value: (calories × 0.0305) + (sat_fat × 0.275) + (sugar × 0.12) − (protein × 0.098). Protein pulls the number down, sugar and saturated fat push it up. Vegetables, fruits, eggs, and lean proteins are always 0 pips so you can eat them freely.

You get a daily pip cap based on your body stats (Mifflin-St Jeor with a 500 calorie deficit). Stay under the pip cap to lose ~1 lb/week.

There's also an analysis page that looks back 90 days and tells you which specific foods are causing your over-cap days. It's often things like rice portions, alcohol, or honey - not necessarily the things you'd expect.

The tech stack is PHP/MySQL because I'm a gray beard and boring old tech still ships.

foodpips.com - free, no subscription, no ads

Nice and simple. Sounds like it could work. Thank you for your service.