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I stopped tracking my nutrition with dedicated apps (even though there are some really good ones) because there’s too much friction to search & choose between different options for every dish or ingredient. So I now use a personal tracking system involving a Notion calendar where I list consumed foods daily and a language model (like ChatGPT) to estimate calories and macronutrients, reducing obsessive behaviour, promoting intuitive eating, and offering consistency, although it may be less accurate. I hope this helps others struggling with conventional app tracking.
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First off, this is probably not as granular as a dedicated tracking app, and certainly not as accurate (but how accurate are the source data, anyway?).
I have a Notion calendar set up to make a new page every day. The template simply has a line saying “Estimate total calories and macronutrients:" followed by a list containing a few things I often eat (apple, protein shake with its specific nutritional info, and so on). I input foods I’ve eaten in the list as I go, but often I just do it at night, because it turns out I can remember more or less what I’ve eaten.
Then, when I have time, I copy-paste the entire list, including the leading line, and stick it in an LLM (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Frontier, still not sure which is the best) and it gives me a rough estimate.
I don’t currently pay for Notion AI, but that would make it even easier – removing the need to go to separate app or site. However, I do like the option of trying different models, in case one estimation is way off. Sometimes I might jot down something like “vegetarian lasagna” and it estimates a huge amount of calories, but another model might decide there’s no cheese in it and the variation will be wild. But so far, when I compare them, they’re usually pretty close. Definitely close enough for me. And most of all, I don’t obsess. I type things like “one slice of bread with tahini and marmalade” and that’s it. Okay, if I weighed the bread and specified if it was wholemeal, seeded, sourdough, and so on, and made a distinction between one teaspoon of marmalade and 9 grams, I’d get more granular knowledge, but at the expense of time spent messing around, and the danger of making me obsess about food – I’ve been there and it’s not worth it!
Since I don't update it much during the day, I'm less obsessive about overeating or under-eating. From this approach, I get more perspective, and I'm starting to eat more intuitively, less reliant on an app that makes me more shortsighted than I am. After a few months of this, I am actually implementing things that I’ve known forever on an intellectual level but never really turned into habits before, for instance roughly hitting a protein goal for every meal (my main deficiency) and starting with the protein every time. This way I can manage to reconcile tracking nutrition and having normal family meals. I can look back and realise that yesterday I was ravenous for snacks in the evening because my protein was low in every meal. Nothing new here, I’ve always known about these issues, but my new tracking system has made me consistently address them. These are personal examples, so you can extrapolate for your own case.
I mentioned consistency, and that’s probably the most important thing that my system does for me. You can be as accurate as anything, but if you give up after a week or a month, what’s the point? Also, another superiority of this way of tracking is that I can add, refine, change things about the system, so it evolves with me, unlike an app that is dictated by the app’s designers and developers.
I’m typically Gen-X, faster at typing a list freely than picking and choosing in phone menus; younger people might be happier and more productive twiddling their phones. My inferior system is probably only good for a small minority. But it’s working for me, and that’s why I’m taking the time to write all this: I know that other people who are disgusted by the compulsion of app tracking might find some benefit.
Also, please reach out if you need tech help with it, or if you want to share ideas!
Since I pay for Notion AI, I can do all this inside Notion.