Most apps track how much protein you eat in a day. Pulse tracks when — because timing is what actually drives muscle protein synthesis (MPS).

Your daily goal is split across a few windows — breakfast, lunch, dinner (and evening, if you're on 4). Log a meal and a 3-hour MPS window opens for that pulse — that's the stretch of time your body is actively building muscle off that meal.

Hitting your protein target inside each window (not just somewhere across the day) is what the pulses are for. Missing a window doesn't undo your progress — it just means that particular pulse didn't hit its target.

There's also a ceiling on each pulse. Your body can only route so much protein into muscle-building at once — research points to roughly 40g for most people, a bit more for larger or more muscular people. Protein beyond that in a single sitting isn't stored for later use — it gets oxidised for energy instead, the same as any other calorie source. That's why Pulse warns you when one meal is carrying too much: splitting it across two pulses gets more of it actually used for muscle, rather than burned off.

Most nutrition tracking is built around one number: your daily total. But research shows when you eat protein matters almost as much as how much — because muscle protein synthesis (MPS) isn't something you can just top up whenever. It rises after a meal, peaks, then tapers off over a few hours, no matter what else you eat on top of it.

There's a practical ceiling per meal too. A widely cited review (Schoenfeld & Aragon, 2018) puts it at roughly 0.4–0.55g of protein per kg of body weight — beyond that, extra protein in one sitting isn't doing much extra work for your muscles; it mostly just gets used as energy instead.

Spacing matters as much as amount. Areta and colleagues (2013) compared three feeding patterns using the same total protein: very frequent small doses, moderate doses every 3 hours, or two large meals. The 3-hourly moderate pattern won, beating both extremes.

Distribution matters more than most people realise, too. Mamerow and colleagues (2014) found spreading protein evenly across breakfast, lunch and dinner produced 25% more muscle protein synthesis over 24 hours than the exact same total protein skewed toward a big dinner — a very common real-world eating pattern.

Sources: Areta et al., J Physiol 2013 · Mamerow et al., J Nutr 2014 · Schoenfeld & Aragon, JISSN 2018.

That's the whole idea behind a pulse. Not eat more — just eat on a rhythm that actually gives your body a chance to use it.