Choices: they are all around us. When the going gets rough, there is little that can stop me from going hog-wild on my favorite bag of fried snacks. If you also find yourself in this category, this is a safe space for you.
While grazing mindlessly through life is certainly one way to live, there is so much more out there to be won. Cronometer helps you make each meal a nourishing oasis of revitalization. When you know that your body is getting everything it needs, suddenly, the call of the wild becomes all that much easier to put aside.
What Is Cronometer?
Cronometer is a health and nutrition app for Android and iPhone with a community of over four million users. It tracks exactly what you eat, no matter what your diet is, ensures you get all the right nutrients, and helps you develop healthier eating habits over time.
Here are the things we learned using Cronometer, and how it can help you live more healthily.
Download: Cronometer for Android | iOS (Free, in-app purchases available)
1. We Are Creatures of Habit
When we're stuck in a routine, we tend to become desensitized to the things that we take for granted. Pizza for breakfast, a week straight? Suddenly, it's the weekend, and you kind of feel like crap.
Cronometer is a food journal that you keep daily. You can keep track of your daily caloric intake, as well as other factors like exercise.
After one day of documenting everything that I ate, I was absolutely appalled. I love to eat. I didn't realize what I was putting into my body until I saw it all in front of me. It's impossible to feel shame about your choices when you willfully deny the fact that you make them.
Cronometer's preloaded library of brand-name food and raw ingredients is extensive and will rarely leave you asking for more. If there is anything that you love not represented, you can add your own to the existing collection.
No matter how you live, you will be able to find your pet brand of lightly-seasoned snacking crackers or guilt-free frozen treats without a problem. Keeping track has never been easier, and you can favorite anything that you eat often.
2. Nutrition Is Fascinating
We all know that we need to eat leafy greens and to drink enough water daily. This is far from the extent of the world of nutrition, however.
One thing that this app makes clear immediately: protein is so much more than flesh and viscera. The building blocks that it is composed of, amino acids, all serve a different purpose within the body. Each one is essential, but many people do not realize this.
If you're gluten-free, vegan, or anemic, the vitamins and minerals included in your diet will likely already be on your radar. After using this app for a week, you start to learn a bit more about why the body needs what it needs.
Noticing your attention wandering during important meetings or tasks? You could very well be B12 deficient. Adjusting your diet or supplementing it in some way will make a world of a difference.
3. Cooking Your Own Food Is Empowering
The single greatest feature to be found in Cronometer is its recipe creation functionality. You are able to list out each ingredient and then break the recipe down into servings. Now you'll have the unfortunate pleasure of knowing just exactly how many calories are in each of your grandmother's famous chocolate chip cookies. For this, you have my sympathy.
The app lets you choose each ingredient, just like you do for each individual diary entry.
I love to cook, but I used to be a huge piece of trash. The day that I learned how gratifying it can be to create something sustaining and delicious from scratch was my last day hanging out by the Trader Joe's freezer section.
Keeping real cookbooks in the kitchen is kind of gross. Cronometer keeps every recipe clean and right in your pocket.
4. Having a Goal Helps (and So Does Having a Plan)
If you truly feel the need to drop a couple of pounds, doing so will be a simple matter of arithmetic. As a former butterball myself, I can attest to the fact that, despite this, slimming down can be tough.
While weight loss for its own sake should never really be your ultimate goal, having some idea of where you would like to be in a couple of months will inspire you as you make choices about food daily.
Cronometer's Trends tab offers both charts and a tab that shows how your diet averages out over some specified period of time. Taking in all of the data at a glance will be a learning experience. It will give you plenty of ideas about how you could be doing better from now on.
Once you have some notion about what needs to change, coming up with your plan will be easy. You might try going refined-sugar free for a month, or cutting out something like meat or dairy entirely. Cronometer allows you to experiment and to see how the numbers themselves align with how you're feeling.
5. A Healthy Lifestyle Is Something That Anybody Can Achieve
Knowing, truly, is half the battle. As mentioned previously, my own diet used to be a complete mystery to me. Now, with this newfound sense of self-awareness that Cronometer has conferred to me, life has gotten so much better. If I can do it, anybody can do it.
Once you get the ball rolling, the momentum will be something that you can feel. You'll have more energy and become more engaged with the things that you love. It all starts with the fuel that you choose. Cronometer keeps you accountable and on-track.
Cronometer Does the Thinking for You
...and we could not be more grateful. The perfect union of technology and real-world application, Cronometer makes nutrition accessible and easily understood by anybody.
The next step? Probably a regime of regular exercise. Maybe that part can wait until next week.