October 17, 2013

Health Tools: Count Nutrients, Not Calories


I remember when I first turned vegetarian, the first question everybody asked me was 'But where will you get your protein?' I know that for many different food lifestyles, whether it be vegan, paleo or even just a calorie-restricting diet, there is often scrutiny surrounding whether you are adequately nourishing your body. Oftentimes, if a person is not adequately educated in what their actual nutrition needs are, (and this is especially true of weight-loss diets) it's possible that they won't be meeting an array of their daily nutrient needs. 

In the lead up to my 30 days of eating raw challenge, I have spent hours trying recipes and making meal plans to ensure that I will meet my daily nutrient targets and am consuming enough calories. This has been so easy to manage with the webapp 'CRON-O-Meter.' (There is also a smartphone app available for download, but I'm on a budget and prefer the free version for now.)

I highly recommend using this app if you have recently set yourself any kind of food goals (particularly significant goals such as losing weight or cutting out meat from your diet.) It's so important to reach these goals in a healthy manner and not compromising our body's needs. The app calculates your daily calorie needs (whether you are trying to lose, maintain or gain weight), then sets nutrient targets based on your body composition. On top of this, the app will also set macronutrient ratio targets if you are on for example the paleo diet, or you can create your own custom preferred target ratios. You use the app essentially as a food diary, where it calculates not only calorie but also nutrient intake. Of course the figures will never be exactly precise, however it is fantastic that you can generate different reports which show trends in your diet and visually allow you to see which areas of your diet need to be improved.

Let me know your thoughts if you have used CRON-O-Meter, or if you know and recommend a similar product xx

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