When it comes to staying on top of your health, there’s a wealth of technology out there that can give you a boost. The best fitness trackers can help you keep on top of your step count and exercise, while the best smart scales can help you monitor metrics like body composition.
But can you use AI to stay fit and healthy, lose weight, or build muscle? As an experienced health and fitness writer with over a decade using fitness tech like the Apple Watch, I’ve been putting ChatGPT to use as part of my health and fitness regime.
While the usual caveats about AI apply (double-check for hallucinations, etc), I have to say I’ve come away mightily impressed with it as a fitness tool. A lot of the “logistics” of fitness can often involve a lot of minutiae and data, such as calculating macros (proteins, carbs, fat) for your diet. AI is perfect for this sort of work.
So whether you want AI help developing massive workout plans for the weeks and months ahead, a full week’s worth of eating, or more granular help with day-to-day fitness needs, here’s how you can use ChatGPT to help supplement your health and fitness.
Coming up with the right prompts
Fitness and ChatGPT are a lot alike in one key aspect. You really only get out as much as you put in. If you’re half-hearted with your workouts or lax with your diet, your results will reflect that. Likewise, the more precise you are with ChatGPT, and the more effort you put into your prompts, the better the information you’ll get in return.
For example, if you ask ChatGPT, “How do I grow muscle?”, you’ll get some helpful but largely generic advice about progressive overload, reps and sets, and nutrition. None of this is wrong, and if you’re a beginner, ChatGPT can be a handy place to start collating some basic principles of health, exercise, and more.
But I’m here to tell you that ChatGPT is way more powerful than that, and it’s all about going deeper, being more specific, and really stretching the LLM’s legs. As I’ve already hinted at, ChatGPT is useful for large, comprehensive fitness and health tasks, but also for granular day-to-day stuff. Here are some of the prompts I’ve used.
ChatGPT, like most AI tech, is still emerging, growing, and learning. It’s not immune to hallucinations, so it’s always good to sense-check everything it tells you. Whatever prompts you’re putting in, especially when it comes to health and fitness, give everything a careful read. If anything stands out as abnormal or unexpected, try and cross-check the information via Google, or a trusted source for health and fitness.
1. Generate a workout plan
Can you generate an 8-week workout plan that will help me build muscle? I work out in a local gym, so can use most standard equipment, but I only have about 60 minutes a day to exercise.
ChatGPT can be used to generate a full workout plan that can last weeks or even months. This is a great example of the broader, more comprehensive approach to prompts I’m talking about. ChatGPT designed me a six-day workout plan that lasts eight weeks, with an outline of the weekly schedule and a workout breakdown by day.
There are several key components that make the prompt useful. I’ve specified the length of the plan and the goal (eight weeks, build muscle). Crucially, I’ve also specified the level of equipment I have access to, and the length of time I’d like to spend working out.
Each of these is a parameter you can tweak to your own liking, for instance, you could ask for shorter workouts, or specify that you have no equipment so you’ll need to do bodyweight exercises only.
Bonus follow-up: ChatGPT didn’t specify how much rest I should take between exercises, so this is a great follow-up question to ask.
2. Exercise help and lifting form
Can you tell me about the correct technique for doing a Romanian Deadlift?
Perhaps this is your first time lifting weights, and you’ve spotted an exercise you don’t recognize. You can ask ChatGPT for information and advice about lifting technique, specifying the correct technique to avoid any confusion. A lot of lifting technique is common sense, and I’ve not seen ChatGPT give out shoddy advice in this regard, but ChatGPT even offered me advice on several reputable fitness sources I could check out for video advice if I wanted to get a proper look.
3. Weight and progressive overload
With this workout plan – what sort of weight should I start with, and how do I lift heavier?
If you’re doing any kind of weightlifting or workout plan, especially for the first time, it’s important to know how much weight you should be lifting (and how much you shouldn’t). This is crucial to avoiding injury, but also to ensuring you’re going to make progress over time.
ChatGPT can use a prompt like this to give you general guidelines about progressive overload, but can also be used for specific examples. For instance, you could ask it to give you a progressive overload plan for bench press over a number of weeks.
4. Impromptu training
I’m on holiday and there’s a gym in my hotel, can you generate a quick 30-minute workout for my whole body?
Perhaps you’re not looking for a comprehensive workout plan, but you’re on holiday or a work trip and want to get a quick blast in. A prompt like this can generate a full-body workout in just seconds for you to follow. All you have to specify is your time limits, the target muscle group, and the level of equipment you have access to.
5. Set your diet and nutrient benchmarks
I’m 6 feet tall and weigh 107kg, can you calculate a rough BMR for me, as well as an ideal macronutrient split for fat loss?
If you want to lose weight, pack on muscle, or maintain your physique, knowing your basal metabolic rate (how many calories your body needs each day) is crucial. With just my height and weight, ChatGPT provided a comprehensive picture of my BMR, including estimates of total daily energy expenditure based on activity levels.
Then, it suggested a calorie deficit, and a macronutrient split of protein, carbs, and fats. You can use this information to come up with your own nutrition plan or use this next prompt to get ChatGPT to do it for you.
6. Take the guesswork out of nutrition
I’d like you to generate a one-week meal plan targeting 2,500 kcal a day. I’d like to eat three times a day, getting 40% of my calories from protein.
If you need a diet or nutrition plan to complement your exercise, you can ask ChatGPT for a nutrition plan specifically tailored to your calorific needs. Just be sure to specify your target calories, how often you’d like to eat, and a general idea of your macronutrient split. You can be more precise too, adding in percentages for carbs and fats.
Bonus followup: ChatGPT can turn the meal plan it has generated for you into a shopping list, organized by food type to make shopping easier.
7. Day-to-day meals
I only have 600 calories left in my intake today, but need to consume around 50 grams of protein. Can you think of a good meal?
If you prefer to eyeball your nutrition or don’t want to follow a daily nutrition plan, you can also ask ChatGPT for on-the-fly meal ideas. I find it helpful to specify the number of calories left that I need, as well as any macronutrient requirements. For this prompt and the previous one, you can also specify any dietary restrictions, intolerances, or just general preferences, too.
Exercise ChatGPT
Each of these prompts is specific and useful, but can also serve as grounding for your one inspiration. For example, just as ChatGPT can create an eight-week lifting program, it can also create a running training schedule, or a plan to help you get better a cycling.
I’ve asked ChatGPT for lifting advice and techniques, but this can also be applied to other disciplines. Likewise, my nutritional goals are largely built around protein and building muscle, but you can tailor your requests to suit your needs, for instance with a focus on fat loss, or on fuelling up properly for endurance work.
Like I said, the key is to apply the principles of fitness to using ChatGPT, the more precise you are and the more effort you make with AI, the more you’ll get out of it.
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stephen.warwick@futurenet.com (Stephen Warwick)
