Rowan Hale

Rowan Hale is the pen name this site publishes under. One person picks the formulas, writes the code that runs them, writes the guides that explain them, and reads everything that arrives through the contact form.

What the work actually is

Every calculator here starts with a decision about which published equation to use. Resting metabolism could run on Harris-Benedict, Mifflin-St Jeor or Katch-McArdle, and they disagree by a couple of hundred calories for the same person. Choosing one means reading the validation studies and picking the equation that tracks measured expenditure most closely, then saying so in the guide rather than presenting the output as a fact.

After that it is arithmetic and prose. The JavaScript runs in your browser, so nothing you type is transmitted or stored. The guides write each equation out in full, name the paper it came from, and spend most of their length on the cases where it gives the wrong answer.

What this is not

No medical, dietetic or exercise physiology qualification sits behind this site, and nothing on it is written from clinical experience. That is the reason the guides cite sources as heavily as they do. A claim that traces to a paper you can open and read does not depend on trusting the person who typed it.

So the pages here will tell you what the research found and how confident it was. They will not tell you what to do about your thyroid, your medication or your pregnancy. For that the person to ask is a clinician who can examine you, and the medical disclaimer sets out the limits in full.

How a guide gets checked

Each calculator is tested against the worked examples printed in its source paper and against the reference tables health services publish. A 30-year-old man at 175 cm and 70 kg should come back with a BMI of 22.9 and a BMR near 1,650 kcal; if an edit moves either number, the edit does not ship.

Guides get the same treatment applied to sentences. Figures are traced back to the study rather than to another site quoting it, which is how the 3,500-calorie rule and the eight-glasses rule both ended up with articles explaining why they are wrong. The editorial policy sets out the sourcing and correction process step by step.

Corrections

Errors in a formula or a citation go to the front of the queue. If something here contradicts a source you have, send it through the contact page with the reference and it gets fixed, with the change noted on the page. More background on the site itself is on the about page.