So you want to track calories, huh? Well, using an app is by far the easiest way to do this,
but there's so many to choose from. There's multiple of them. The question is how do you
pick which app to use. In today's video, I want to discuss the top two apps that I've used that
I currently use and that I recommend to my clients that I think that you would get the most out of.
You don't know me. My name is Dustin Williams and for the best nutrition,
health, and fitness advice, make sure to subscribe to my channel, hit that little notification bell
so that you're notified every time that I post a new video. And there are quite a few apps out
there and most of them should give you the basics of what you're going to need in order
to get good results. When it comes to tracking your calories, tracking your macronutrients,
whatever it is that you're tracking, it should give you pretty much whatever you're gonna need,
regardless of which app you use, some are gonna be better for different reasons. Some not so good.
The first thing that I do want to point out is that I'm not affiliated with either one
of these apps. These are just the apps that I currently like based on my usage, based on what
I recommend to my clients and feedback that I get. The two that I like, one is going to be the top
one that is completely free and the other one is going to be a paid app. And I'll kind of discuss
the differences between the two. As I mentioned, the majority of the tracking apps should have some
of the basic functions. You want to make sure that it's got stuff like being able to scan
your barcode so that it automatically uploads the food. You want to make sure that you have
the ability to copy your previous day. So if you eat a lot of the same foods over and over again,
whatever you ate on Monday, you can copy it to Tuesday and change it. If need be. That
makes things a lot easier. You want to make sure that it's got a recipe function so that you can
input recipes that you use on a regular basis. Most of these basic things should be in just
about all the apps. Of course, they're in both of the apps that I'm going to talk about today,
but you want to make sure that it's got some of those basics, especially that that barcode
scanner, that's going to be the easiest one for you to go through and to make sure that it's got
a decent amount of options. Uh, whenever you are inputting, like if you go out to eat like national
restaurant chains or fast food places, anything like that, making it a lot easier to track.
So starting off with my top free app. Now, the one that I would recommend is called
cronometer. This app specifically is a free app. Now it's got a paid version. I typically
don't recommend the paid version to any of my clients. I've utilized it before. There's not
really anything in there that you're going to need unless you just want to pay for it.
But the free version will give you absolutely everything you need is going to have all the
basics that I mentioned. Here's the biggest reason why I like chronometer
every single person that I've come across. And I asked him this one question,
have you tracked your micronutrients? Have you ever tracked your vitamins and minerals? Do you
have any idea how much of everybody minute mineral you were getting? And typically the answer is no,
I've never done it. I've never paid any attention. Just tried taking a multivitamin, something along
those lines. All right. And no judgment here. I didn't track most of my micronutrients for
a long time, but the biggest reason that I like chronometer is that it does just that for you,
depending upon how you use chronometer, it will track all of your vitamin intake, all
of your mineral intake from your food. And it's still included in the free version of this app.
It makes it great because then you can look back and say, Oh, well consistently I'm not
getting enough, whatever vitamin and mineral, I'm not getting enough zinc. I'm not getting enough.
Vitamin D I'm not getting enough magnesium, whatever it is that you're getting. And you're
able to look at it of an average over a week's time because if you don't get enough of vitamin
and mineral in one day, that's not typically what's going to cause problems. It's going to be
all right. You're consistently not getting enough vitamin C week after week, month after
month. And it becomes more of a problem. And you can start to look at these averages and say, Oh,
well, over the last week, over the last month, I'm not getting enough of this in so that you can
figure out, well, maybe I need to supplement with this or add in some type of food that
has a lot of that specific vitamin and mineral. So it's really nice. It's just kind of an added
thing to look at. That's something that we should probably at least be somewhat paying attention to
honestly, to make sure that we're not creating any long-term deficiencies. And this is the biggest
reason why I really love this app and recommend people get really used to it because once they
get good at the basics of tracking their calories, macronutrients, whatever it is that they're paying
attention to, then they can start looking at the vitamin and mineral intake as well as kind
of a next-level into paying attention to their nutrition. Now, one of the things that I kind
of a negative side effect to using chronometer is whenever it inputs your calories for you,
and it gives you a calorie range, I'm not a big fan of the ones that they use. I've actually done
a video on how to calculate your calorie range. If you're looking for fat loss,
I'll put a link to that video in the description below. Check that one out.
If you need any help with coming up with a good calorie range for you specifically for fat loss,
I would not recommend that you use this app for that specific. You want to come up with a calorie
range, uh, otherwise than using this app, that would be the only downside, but chronometer the
free app that I recommend really good at tracking vitamins and minerals. Plus all the basics
now going into the next one, my top paid app, the one that I would recommend is called carbon
diet coach. It's a really solid app. I used it a couple of months on my own. I've recommended it to
a few clients of mine. It's a really good app. You pay, I want to say it was like nine 99 a month.
Don't quote me on that, but it should be pretty close to that. It was created by a guy named lane
Norton and a few other people. And I followed lane for a lot of years. He puts out a lot of
really good science-based content. Again, I'm not affiliated with him or his app. I just really like
this app from what I've gotten use out of it. And again, recommending it to certain people.
It's got, again, all the basic functions that I mentioned that all of these apps should have,
but when you get into the paid version of this app, essentially what you're getting that's
really, really neat is that it will refine your nutritional recommendations based on the progress
that you're getting. So like you'll be inputting your weight, different factors of tracking whether
or not you're making. So like if your goal is fat loss and you're weighing in every single day,
this, I was going to specifically look at what you're weighing and see if you're making
progress and if you're not making progress. So then we'll automatically start to adjust
your calorie ranges based on trying to reach your goal. It makes it very nice. Helps you
to break through plateaus. It'll tell you when to make changes and when not to make changes
if it feels that you are making the progress that you should be making,
which is really nice. I haven't seen any other apps out there that do this. There might be,
but if there's, if there is, I'm not aware of it, I think that's a really, really cool function.
One of the other functions that I really like about this is if you are calorie tracking,
most people understand that you don't have to hit your calorie numbers perfectly. On a daily basis.
It's really more about what you've done as an average over the week. So what's really neat
about this is let's say your calorie goal is 2000 calories and I'm just making up numbers.
But if your goal is 2000 calories a day, and if you end up going over that one day, for
whatever reason, maybe you, you kind of fell off for the day or whatever, and you ended up eating
2200 calories. Then what this app does for you automatically is it takes that excess number
of calories for that day and starts to average it out to where you'll eat a little bit less
over the next few days, so that your weekly average still comes out to 2000 calories. And
it does this for you automatically, which is a really neat function, honestly, because most
of us we're all human. We ended up going over when we shouldn't, we make mistakes, we eat things that
you know, more than we should at times. And that's okay. That's the benefit of utilizing this. It
allows you to still hit that calorie range because it'll automatically adjust everything for you.
So again, it's a really neat app. It's a paid one. You're going to get a lot more benefit out of it
if you are willing to pay the $10 a month for it. Um, but it's something that I would highly
recommend. So chronometer for sure as the top free paid one, and then the carbon diet coach
as the top paid one. Now, you know, my favorite apps that I use and recommend to my clients
for tracking calories, but there's more to long-lasting weight loss than just tracking
calories because of that, I've actually created a completely free guide is the yo-yo dieting
cure guide to help you stop yo-yo dieting again, completely free. I'm going to give it to you guys.
All you have to do is go to, uh, go to my website, click the link, download it again.
Completely free, kind of helps map out the top 10 steps that I recommend to stop yo-yo dieting and
to create an overall nutritional lifestyle. So check that out. Hopefully, it's helpful to you.
And if you guys liked the video, I would really appreciate it. If you'd smash the like button
and subscribe to the channel, share the video, but otherwise I'll see you in the next video.