UPDATE- This App is no longer available for Apple, but is still available on Google Play.

What are Macros

If you’ve been on the internet lately, you’ve probably heard people talking about tracking their macros. They are referring to macronutrients, which are protein, carbohydrates and fat. These three things make up whatever calories you consume in a day.

The “big deal” in tracking them is to see where your calories are coming from so you can best utilize food to your advantage. I can eat a 60 calorie chocolate pudding (which I do when I want a snack…chocolate pudding rocks!) or I can eat a 60 calorie orange. Guess which my body will use in a more efficient way?

Recently on the other side of the coin, there seems to be a push for low-carb eating. As a runner, I want a good balance of carbs, proteins and fats. Especially this week, as I am tapering for the marathon and upping my carb intake.

Enter Cronometer

The Cronometer App (for Google Play) is one I’ve downloaded to use for tracking these macros. The free version has so much included in it! I can even enter my own recipes and it will figure out the macros and even generate a nutrition label for them!

For example, here is the label for my fish taco recipe (without taco shell):

The app will also track the vitamins, minerals, caffeine and alcohol as well. You can set up targets to make sure you are on track for what you want. Someone who is bodybuilding will probably want to have a higher protein goal than someone like me who is wanting to store glycogen for long runs.

There is also a website to enter food (manually or with the search feature, since you won’t be able to scan the barcode like you can with the phone app…see below) and look at your information.

Entering Your Foods

The neat thing about the app on the phone is it has a scanner, so you can scan a label and have the app enter the info automatically. You can also add food manually when you are eating say an egg or drinking a cup of coffee.

It will save your foods for you, so next time you eat the same thing you just have to pick out the food from a list.

It also has the information for whole foods as well, so just enter the name of the food and pick from a list exactly what you are eating.

You can also include your water intake if you are trying to hit a goal for that.

When I am not carb loading for a race, I revert the carb goal back to the RDA. I know what I can eat for fueling if I go for a long run, so I don’t really need to make sure I am hitting the daily goal as if I’m in the final phase for a marathon.

Losing Weight

If you are trying to lose weight, you can tell it what your goal is and the app will figure out how many calories per day you should be eating based on your current weight. It also will tell you how much you are burning just sitting around, but hopefully, you are doing more than that!

You will also be entering in your activity, and it will calculate how many calories you have burned based on the exercise and how long you did it.

What is interesting when you are trying to lose weight is to see the bigger picture that this app can provide. It is amazing to see how much sodium, for example, different foods have that you wouldn’t think of. Sodium, while needed for long runs for replacing what we sweat out, can also mean water retention. Holding water will make the scale go up, and that’s not what we want to do in weight loss mode!

Keeping a food diary is one of the top ways to see just how many calories you are ingesting in a day. Most people are surprised…and not in a good way. Showing you where your weak spots are and making the choice to fix them go a long way to eating healthier, which in turn leads to weight loss.

Using the App for Daily Use

I am not great at using the app on a daily basis when I am not trying to lose a few pounds or make sure my carbo load is on track.

It can be fun to track everything for a few days, but gets tedious if I don’t have a specific goal in mind…which is why having a goal for running is important for me. If I don’t have a goal, I don’t do as well.

Even using the app for a week, though, can show you how you are eating in much greater detail. This can help you make better food choices and kick up your healthy habits a notch.

Breaking down what you put in your mouth has many benefits for the runner. We want to become faster and more efficient and learning how foods help or hinder that is obviously beneficial.

I Have the App…Now What???

I would start with this video from the people who developed the app itself.

Here is a good article from Runner’s World about the 15 nutrients runners need for performance. These are micronutrients, and they also list the foods that you will want to eat to incorporate the recommendations. The list includes what your targets should be, so a nice resource to go hand in hand with the app.

For Macros (carbs, protein and fats), I took the information below from a book called Finish Line Fueling by Jackie Dikos and put it in chart form. I will be reviewing this book for a future post in the next few weeks.

Her website is Nutrition Success and she has some recipes and other great information on nutrition for the athlete. She is a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist with board certification as a Certified Specialist in Sports Dietetics.

You can go to this online calculator if you want to convert your pounds into kilograms. The Cronometer app also automatically converts your pounds to kg as well.

This is a fun app to play around with, and really gives you a great picture of your actual nutrition.

Use the free version and see what you need to add or take away regarding your diet. The app can be a real help to reach weight, running and overall health goals.

I’m going to try to use it faithfully over the next few weeks and get a good picture of my eating habits. I will update this post with any new information or lessons learned!