Here's a thing that shouldn't need to be said: using a fitness app should not make you feel worse about your identity. The bar is literally on the floor, and most fitness apps are tripping over it.
I didn't fully understand this until I started building Body by AI and talked to users who'd tried every major fitness app on the market. The stories were consistent — and consistently awful.
How Binary Male/Female Fitness Apps Get It Wrong
The pattern is the same across almost every major fitness app:
Step 1:"Are you male or female?" — No other options. No explanation of why they're asking. No acknowledgment that the answer might be complicated.
Step 2: Your entire experience is filtered through that single binary choice. Calorie targets. Exercise suggestions. Progress benchmarks. Body composition categories. Even the stock photos.
Step 3:If you're trans, nonbinary, intersex, or just don't fit neatly into one of those two boxes, every session starts with a small act of misrepresentation. You either lie to the app or you accept programming that's wrong for your body.
This isn't a theoretical problem. It's a daily friction that makes people stop using the tool, which means they stop getting any coaching at all. The inclusion failure becomes a health outcome failure.
"Strong for a Woman" — And Other Things Your Coach Should Never Say
Gendered benchmarks are baked into fitness culture so deeply that most people don't even notice them. But they're everywhere:
- "You bench 135? That's strong for a woman."
- "Average male deadlift for your weight class is..."
- "Women's standards" vs. "Men's standards" comparison tables
- Achievement badges tied to gender-specific thresholds
Every one of these is a landmine for a trans user. A trans woman who's told she's "strong for a woman" at a weight she knows was influenced by years of testosterone exposure. A trans man who's compared to cisgender male averages he can't yet match. A nonbinary person who doesn't fit into either comparison set.
Body by AI doesn't use gendered benchmarks. Ever. Here's what it uses instead:
- Your previous performance as the baseline
- Your rate of progression over time
- Your goals as the target
- Your body composition data for calculations
"You added 5 lbs to your squat since last week." That's the only comparison that matters. Not what someone else lifts. Not what an "average" person of your "gender" lifts. You, compared to you.
Menstrual Tracking Should Be Available to Anyone
This one drives me up the wall. In most fitness apps, menstrual cycle tracking is gated behind a "female" sex selection. If you selected "male" at signup, the feature doesn't exist for you. It's invisible. There's no way to access it.
Think about who this excludes:
- Trans men who still menstruate and whose training and nutrition are meaningfully affected by their cycle
- Nonbinary individuals who menstruate and want cycle-aware coaching
- Anyone who selected "male" for any reason and later needs cycle tracking
Body by AI built cycle tracking as a feature available to any user, not gated behind a sex-at-birth field. Our cycle service tracks menstrual phases — menstrual, follicular, ovulatory, luteal — and adjusts training intensity and nutrition accordingly. During the luteal phase, progesterone raises BMR by 100-300 kcal/day (Stacy Sims, PhD, has written extensively on this). That's real physiology that affects real training, and it shouldn't be locked behind a gender checkbox.
If you menstruate and want cycle-aware coaching, you get it. If you don't, the feature stays out of your way. That's it. No gatekeeping.
Display Customization for People Who Don't Want Gendered Categories
Body composition reporting in most fitness apps uses categories like "Athletic Female," "Average Male," or "Healthy Range for Women." If your gender identity doesn't align with these labels — or if seeing them triggers dysphoria — you're stuck.
Body by AI reports your body composition in terms of actual percentages, lean mass, and fat mass — without gendered labels. Your coach doesn't tell you you're in the "fit male" range or the "average female" range. It tells you your body fat percentage, your lean mass, your trends, and what the evidence says about health outcomes at your current composition.
Because here's the thing: body fat percentage is body fat percentage. The health implications of 15% vs. 25% body fat are real and worth tracking. The gendered label wrapped around that number adds nothing useful and can cause real harm.
What We Collect and Why
Transparency matters. Here's what Body by AI asks about your identity and why:
- Sex at birth (required): The Katch-McArdle formula and body fat estimation formulas use different parameters. We use sex at birth as one input to metabolic calculations. We're honest about this.
- Gender identity (optional): Free-text. Your coach uses this to understand how to contextualize your experience.
- Pronouns (optional): Your coach addresses you correctly. Every time.
- Chosen name (optional): If you want your coach to call you something different from your account name, this is how.
We don't sell this data. We don't share it. It stays in your profile and is used exclusively to make your coaching better. And if you're wondering about community features — yes, we moderate for misgendering. It's a tracked violation type because it should be.
If You've Felt Alienated by a Fitness App's Gender Assumptions
You're not alone. And it's not your fault. The fitness industry has a gender problem that goes way beyond apps — from "shrink it and pink it" equipment marketing to locker room design to the entire concept of "men's" and "women's" workout sections.
I can't fix the entire industry. But I can build an app that doesn't make you feel worse about yourself when you open it. An app where the math is based on your body, the language is based on your identity, and the comparisons are based on your own data.
That's what Body by AI does. No gendered benchmarks. No gated features. No assumptions.