New Tool in Our Journey

We've been tracking our food for a decade.  We use an outdated software version of FitDay that doesn't get updated, but we've built a database over that decade, and it was hard to do anything else.  We've tried MyFitnessPal for extended periods of time and didn't like it.  I even did it with a few family members, and it was nice, but when they slacked off, we didn't like it enough to stay with it.

I follow a vegan vlogger (started as a Hawaii/DIY vlogger and I've just stuck with her)  She's doing a new raw series that is okay (I couldn't eat that way all the time), but she did introduce me to a new tracker, Cronometer.   It's free with ads, and the amount of nutritional information it gives is insane!  My doc has been testing us for Vitamin D deficiency, and we're pretty deficient.  (She recently had us up our 2000IU's to 3000 because we're still on the low end.)  So I was interested in looking at where I was getting any vitamin D from my food, but then I began to get interested in other measures and found out I was severely deficient in things that FitDay and MyFitnessPal weren't showing me.

Here's how I use it (the free version) and I apologize for the pics being so small, you'll have to click to enlarge them.

Based on my weight and my desire to lose 2 lbs per week, the circled "budget" is what I would be restricted to if I did nothing but share a blood supply with the couch.  (Which I do most of the time.)  So anything I burn exercise wise is added to my calorie budget.

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Then I start adding my food for the next day.  I base what I enter on what are either consistent measurements I stick to (like always 5 oz of cantaloupe at lunch) or the high end of something whose weight could change based on changing size.  IE- bananas are always entered as 4.5oz before I eat them, but I know they'll likely be closer to 3.50 to 4 ounces which I go back and correct after I weigh them for the meal.

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To save time, I'll make "recipes" of something I have all of the time like my "lunch veggies" includes 2 broccoli florets, 2 cauliflower florets, 1 large radish and 1 medium stalk of celery.  Instead of adding them separately, I can add that one custom piece and get all four in.  I've done this for turkey tacos as well when you have measurements that aren't going to change which makes it easy.

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The deficit tells me how much I have to burn during my workout to make sure I hit my caloric goal for my 2 lb per week weight loss...on paper.  Since we always exercise before dinner, after I enter the workout calories burned, I can take a peek and see where I'm at on nutrients and calorie budget and adjust where necessary.

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I wasn't hungry, so I didn't eat those extra 215 calories.  If you hover over the budget, it'll remind you of your weight goal and what you can do if you want to lose more or it seems to encourage you to eat the calories which I may or may not do depending on how I feel.

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But the thing that has been the game changer for me is the Cronometer layout of all of the macro breakdowns.  This was a particularly good day, and I know that I will likely not hit 100% of all of the time because once you add exercise, the targets change.

While my vitamin E and zinc levels were low, they were about 40% higher than the previous week when I was just trying to get a baseline of where I was.  I paid more attention to the nutrients I was critically always low on and am working to up those as naturally as possible.  I was consistently low on Vitamin K and selenium and now hit them over 100% every day.  Why are these important?  Selenium does a few amazing things like lower inflammation in the body, reducing buildup of plaque in the arteries (which can eventually go to the brain contributing to dementia), actively helps prevent some cancers.  You know how we get it?  We eat one brazil nut per day!  Our diet is constantly low in selenium without it, and by eating half to one 5g brazil nut, you get everything you need from it.  We take it as a supplement but its natural, which is always better.  Here are more benefits of selenium.  Be careful though, you can take too much, and one nut is all you need per day for supplement purposes.

Vitamin K is essential for blood clotting (wish we'd known this on our vacations this year since the Mr has had a resurgence of nosebleeds), bone, cognitive and heart health.  I add 1/4 ounce of dandelion green to an omelet, salad or side dish or one kiwi to get my vitamin K for the day.  Because of its effect on the blood, you should consult your doctor before adding these foods for vitamin K supplementation.

I'm also always low on zinc and vitamin E, which I'm working on getting higher.  Zinc is always very low, so I will take a supplement at the end of the day in the form of 1/4 of a 30mg zinc pill.  Sunflower seeds have really helped up my vitamin E.  Given the hard workouts we're doing this month, my goal is to try to give my body as many of the nutrients as it needs to properly recover.  It's almost like a game to see how you can get the most nutritional bang for your buck out of the foods you eat.  You can also click on a nutrient, and it'll tell you what foods gave you those nutrients that day.  Like here's where my vitamin K came from that day.

I've even started charting my Omega 3 vs. 6.  You need both, but you need more 3 than 6 (and 9).  Omega 3's help clear fat out of the liver, keeps your heart healthy, reduce dementia risk, and lots of other health benefits.  If I've entered my food and see I'm low on 3's, then I will add chia seeds to my oatmeal, or if I can't find a place to fit it in, I'll do a flaxseed supplement which is rare but can work in a pinch.  You can read more here about how to balance your omegas.

You can add your exercise in for the day by either choosing from their database or doing a custom entry like I do.

I like to see the exact workout I did that day, so I enter it from my calendar and the info from my HRM.  The Mr has an Apple watch, and it syncs up with it.  Obviously, it doesn't list the exact workout he did that day, but he could write a note if he wanted to with that info.

You can also add other measurements to track from your weight loss to height, blood pressure info, blood glucose, mood, how much sleep you got, cholesterol, etc.

 You can also write a note in your diary for the day to get anything off of your chest, note certain conditions that might affect things or mini triumphs.

Cronometer has all kinds of breakdowns like that, but the free version does have some irritants.  You can't group your meals together to see the breakdown of each one which I do like in FitDay/MFP.  The Mr will write a note to separate them visually, and that seems to work for him.  But if you pay $35 for the year (as opposed to monthly at $6), it lets you break them down by meal, no ads, "ask the Oracle" (like in Neverending Story) for food suggestions on how to reach certain nutrition goals, timestamps, advanced charting, priority support and sharing your recipes and custom foods with others.

With two of us using it in the house, that would be $70 per year when we paid that back in the day for one program that lasted us over 10 years.  I don't know when we as a society thought "hey, I'd rather pay yearly for something instead of software I only have to buy once" but here we are.  So yeah, we'll stick with the free one for now, and I will keep working to incorporate more foods that have the nutrients I'm lacking.

Have you used Cronometer before?

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