In today’s smart-tech world, there are hundreds of apps available to help you track your daily macronutrients (macros).  Most of them are free and allow you to upgrade to a premium account to access more features. 

Tracking apps help you to monitor your caloric intake and macronutrient calculations.  You log what you eat each day and are able to see how many calories you have eaten and the grams of fats, proteins, and carbs you have consumed.  It’s important to note that these tracking apps are only effective if you input everything that you eat and drink (minus water; although most apps also have a feature where you can log how many glasses you drink each day). 

You can also sync most tracking apps to your smartwatch or Fitbit.  Your daily steps (more about the importance of daily steps in upcoming weeks) are then automatically synced/transferred to your app.  I faithfully use my tracking app every day.

Tracking Apps To Consider

Carb Manager – this is, I believe, the most popular tracking app.  This app is free, but you can pay an annual fee to get more features.  I can’t speak to the value of paying the premium fee as I don’t use this app.  I can, however, tell you that majority of people using the free features only seem satisfied.

Click here to learn how to properly set up the Carb Manager app.

MyFitnessPal – this is the tracking app that I use.  I do pay the annual fee as I believe that it is worthwhile.  The $90 (or thereabout) annual fee always me to input and save my own recipes for ease of adding foods.

It doesn’t matter which app you decide to go with.  Just pick one and get it downloaded!  If you plan on participating in the 10 Week Keto Challenge (individual or group)  familiarize yourself with the app of your choice so that when week 1 begins, you’re ready to start tracking!

Side-note:  In case you missed it, my post ‘What Are Macronutrients?‘ gives you information on calculating your unique macros through the Ruled.me website.

Logging Your Food (Macro) Intake

To familiarize yourself with how tracking macros works, it’s a good idea to start practice logging your food and beverage intake. 

Some foods are incredibly easy to log as your tracking app likely has a bar code scanner. 

To add your food, scan the bar code and then indicate how much of that food you ate (or will be eating) and the app calculates the rest! 

Other foods, vegetables for one example, don’t come with a barcode.  You will want to know exactly how much of that food you consumed.  This is where a food scale comes in super handy.  As the 10 Week Keto Challenge begins with strict keto, it is important that you log everything that goes into your mouth.  You’ll likely be surprised by just how many calories and carbohydrates are in some of your favorite foods.

How to Accurately Log Your Macros

To ensure that food logging is accurate when input to the tracking app, you may want to purchase an inexpensive food scale.  This allows you to weigh your food so that you can input exactly how much you ate.  My Etekcity food scale was one of the best purchases that I made! 

Here is the Amazon link, should you be interested.

If you aren’t interested in purchasing a food scale, you will need to ‘estimate’.  You could do this by basing portion controls using your hand.   Please note that this method is not recommended due to its inaccuracies.