CSIRO Launches AI-Powered ‘My Plan’ for Personalized Weight Loss
Image Crdeit: Jannis Brandt | Splash
CSIRO has launched “My Plan”, an AI powered meal plan personalisation feature for the CSIRO Total Wellbeing Diet, positioning it as a practical response to new analysis showing that people who use meal plans tend to lose more weight.
Weight Reduction by 6.9kg in a Year
In a news release dated 6 January 2026, CSIRO said a study of nearly 78,000 members of the CSIRO Total Wellbeing Diet found that heavier use of meal plans was associated with stronger results. According to CSIRO, members who used meal plans the most lost an average of 6.4 kg at 12 weeks, which CSIRO described as 24 per cent more than those who used them less frequently. CSIRO also reported a timing effect, saying members who used meal plans most in the early stages lost 6.9 kg after a year, 48 per cent more than the least frequent users.
From a lifestyle technology angle, the pitch is straightforward: if planning behaviour is consistently linked with outcomes, then software that makes planning easier, faster, and more personalised becomes a logical lever for engagement and retention.
Why Meal Planning?
CSIRO also cited a separate survey of 1,300 past and present members to explore the “why” behind meal planning. CSIRO said 90 per cent of people who achieved their weight loss goals used the meal plan, and 89 per cent of members who lost more than 10 kg in 12 weeks reported that having a meal plan was crucial to their success. For members who did not lose weight, CSIRO said 72 per cent believed they would have been more successful if meal plans were personalised to their preferences and lifestyles.
“My Plan” Can Be Personalised
CSIRO describes My Plan as generating meal plans tailored to individual needs, including likes and dislikes, allergies, intolerances and eating styles. CSIRO also says it can be tailored to support some health and life stage needs such as high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, and menopause. CSIRO adds that the tool learns over time and becomes more personalised as it is used.
CSIRO is also explicit about the scale story. CSIRO Research Scientist Dr Gilly Hendrie said AI allows personalisation “at scale”, and CSIRO says it used 23 million data points from more than a decade of meal plan usage among 200,000 members to train the AI behind the tool.
Separately, the program’s own My Plan explainer page describes training in another way, saying it is trained on more than 3 million meal interactions from over 70,000 members.
These look like different metrics rather than a direct conflict.
The Wider AI Nutrition Market
My Plan lands in a crowded category where “AI” can mean very different things.
Some competitors focus on recognition and logging. WeightWatchers has promoted an AI powered food scanner using photo recognition and a recipe importer that uses AI to calculate Points from recipe websites. Noom has promoted AI food logging using photo, text and voice input, alongside an AI assistant called Welli.
Others are moving into integrated wellness dashboards. Garmin has released nutrition tracking updates inside Garmin Connect, positioning it alongside broader insights tooling in its ecosystem.
CSIRO’s approach is more clearly centred on structured meal planning and personalisation within a defined program framework, rather than open ended chatbot coaching. That distinction matters because structured planning tools can be easier to quality control, while conversational assistants need strong guardrails to avoid overreach.
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