Understanding Carb Coding: Low, Medium, and High Carb Meals and Snacks

Use this article to understand how Carb Coding™ works, what each colour means, and how to add a Carb Coded meal or snack to your Fuel Plan.

In Hexis, every eating occasion - main meals and snacks alike - is Carb Coded™. Each one is assigned a colour that reflects your training demands and where it sits in relation to your sessions. This means every meal and snack has a job to do, supporting performance, recovery, and body composition goals rather than being treated as a generic add-on.

To view your carb code guidance, go to More, select Personalised Nutrition, then Personalised Carb Codes, and choose Understanding Carb Codes. You'll find guides for meals and snacks using the same colour-coded system throughout the app.

Low carb meals and snacks are shown in red and focus mainly on protein, healthy fats, and minimal carbohydrate. They're best suited to rest days, or times when you're not training and the goal is steady energy and appetite control without a significant carb load.

Medium carb meals and snacks are shown in amber and provide a balanced mix of carbohydrate, protein, and other nutrients. They're ideal for general energy maintenance or moderate activity days — enough to keep you going without the higher carb load of pre- or post-training fuelling.

High carb meals and snacks are shown in green and are primarily carbohydrate-focused. They're timed around training - before, during, or after long or intense sessions - with the aim of topping up glycogen stores, sustaining performance, and speeding up recovery. Hexis scales exactly how much carbohydrate each of these codes recommends to your individual training demands, so it looks different from one athlete to the next.

To add a snack, go to Add, select Extra Meal, then Snack. From there you can choose the snack type - general, pre-training fuel, or post-training recovery - and customise the name if you like. Set the timing and add it to your Fuel Plan.

Once added, meals and snacks appear together in your Fuel Plan alongside your training sessions. Each one is clearly labelled with its carb code, so you can see how it fits into your day's fuelling strategy at a glance.

Your carb codes automatically adjust based on the rest of your day. If your main meals already cover your carbohydrate needs for that day's training, your snacks may be coded lower. On days with multiple sessions or higher demands, snack carb codes increase to help bridge the gap between meals.