If your goal for beginning the keto diet is to lose weight, trying to learn the ins and outs of your new diet can be a struggle. Add in all the numbers and ratios, and it can be a bit overwhelming at first. Fortunately, there’s good news – you can simplify the process to make it more easy, convenient and intuitive with a keto food tracker.
However with the keto diet, tracking your macronutrients (i.e. carbs, protein, fat) is critical – especially in the beginning – to ensure you stay in ketosis (when your body uses fat as fuel instead of carbs) and ultimately ensure your success.
Consistently Monitor Your Food Intake in a Keto Food Tracker
Let’s face it, if something isn’t easy and quick, we aren’t likely to stick with it. That’s why for keto diet followers, convenience and consistency are key. If you aren’t tracking what you are eating, you are likely to drift off course and fall out of ketosis.
The best way to combat this is to use a convenient app that allows you to easily enter your food intake whenever and wherever you are. Fortunately, the tech-driven world we live in means there is a variety of free (or close to free) keto food tracker apps to choose from. We recommend apps like MyFitnessPal, Cronometer and MyMacros+ to track your daily food intake and ensure you are adhering to your daily goals.
When you start out, calculate your target protein, fat, carb and calorie goals by using a macronutrient calculator designed for ketogenic diets. (You can find a list of calculators as the bottom of this blog. Note: If using a keto food tracker such as Cronometer, the keto calculator is built-in.) Once you have your target numbers, simply enter them into the app. This will allow you to track your day-to-day progress against those numbers.
Still not sure how you are going to have time to enter those details as you go? Try entering your meals in advance to help you plan your day and ensure you are not over-consuming in any area of your ratios. This will not only help you stay on course but will simplify the process of trying to remember to enter what you ate during the day. If you need to deviate from the plan, you can easily update it.
Identify Macros You are Over or Under Consuming with a Macros Tracker
By monitoring the ratio of your fats, proteins and carbs (keto macro ratio), you can ensure you are successfully staying in ketosis. Although this may sound daunting, all of the keto food tracker apps noted above allow you to easily track your keto macronutrient ratios and see where you stand against those ratios.
Once you see where you are falling short or consuming too much, you can adjust your diet to get the right mix. This takes a bit of work upfront, but it’s an important step in helping you achieve the right balance for ketosis. Once the ratios are entered, you’ll be able to easily see where you stand. It won’t take long for you to reach the point where eating to your target macronutrients is intuitive. Additionally, as you become more advanced with the ketogenic diet, you can adjust your macros based upon your progress to best suit your specific body and health goals.
Get a Holistic View of Your Keto Journey
The keto food tracking apps give you a good start for tracking your macros, but you will want a more comprehensive view of how your ketogenicdiet is impacting your overall health and success. This allows you to monitor other key areas impacted by the keto diet, such as your blood glucose, blood ketones, blood pressure, weight, measurements, HbA1c, insulin levels, etc. Based on this information, you can adjust your macros and diet to account for the most critical areas of your overall health.
With Heads Up, you simply enter the food you’ve eaten into your keto food tracker. The trackers mentioned link directly with your Heads Up account, and the calculations for your ketogenic ratio are done for you. You’ll not only know at a glance if you are on track, but you will also be able to compare those levels side-by-side with your ketone and glucose levels, weight loss, measurements, lab numbers and more.
We hope these three tips will help you closely monitor your food intake, keto levels and track your success with ease. If you are interested in making your keto diet journey easier and more meaningful, you can get started with Heads Up for free using the button to the right. We’ll give you the tools to track all your data and make it simple in the process!
Try a Keto Food Tracker for Free
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