Before the guide to Cronometer, let me tell you something. The most important thing about food is that it tastes good. Eating healthily tastes good too, if you prepare your foods well. In relation to this article - if tracking all different ingredients and products you eat daily spoils the taste, don't do it.

Cronometer is an application very useful for discovering major defficiencies of any micro-nutrients. It can be a mineral, an amino acid, or a vitamin. At the same time, Cronometer countrs your calories for you.

Setting Cronometer

1. Open the settings

2. You will see a new table:

There are three things to set. It is pretty intuitive. I have only two notes here. As for general activity, you may want to use custom settings later as you know how much you burn in total a day. This will work only if you do the same or very similar workouts daily. I personally prefer this calculator.

As for Macronutrient targets, it is really up to you how you set ratio fat to carbs. It is source what matters. If you want to live healthily, you should include both macronutrients in your diet. Erasing fats is not a good idea. Eating only fats in Ketogenic diet is advocated by some influential health authorities, but I would prefer to avoid it. It seems to me that benefits of Ketogenic diet come from removing bad sources of sugar mainly.

What really maters is protein intake. Researchers pretty agree on that ideal intake of proteins is 8% and should not exceed 10% of total energy intake. Vegans can probably eat more, amino-acids (small moleculas a protein is made of) in plants do not make in trouble in your digestion system. Neither they influence development of cancer. However, this is not proven by major researcher to the best of my knowledge. There is no reason you should eat more protein than 10%.

Our ancestors ate a lot less protein than current averages do. It is mainly due to increase of portions due to some unscientific claims made after the discovery of proteins. People were told, it is proteins, which is the most important in their diet. Today, we say the balance is the most important!

4. Set custom value for Calcium

Now, click on the percent count on the calcium row. Set the minimum Calcium intake to 600 mg. RDA is wrong at this point. Its high values are likely politically motivated. As more researches prove, dairy is not good for us, men of dairy business have to lobby.

Tracking Datas with Cronometer

You will basicaly only use biometrics and adding food if you use calorie calculator I recommended above. To measure everything correctly, you should import your weight and height. As for food, not everything is in the tables. Therefore, you will have to put there foods, which have very similar content. I use herbal teas I collect myself. Given plants are not in the tables, thus I either add green tea etc., write a note or skip it. If you make a salad of this plant:

you have no chance to find it as it has never been commercially distributed. Add spinach for example instead.

Analysis

The chance you will want to carry on tracking data every day, every week, every month is low. You will prefer to use Cronometer to recognize flaws of your diet only. If you want to gain on weight, you will have to rapidly increase calories intake. That's what Cronometer is great for.

You look for a diet, which will give you perfect balances seen on the top of the image. As you can see potassium:sodium for example, it is very in favor of potassium. Current average eats as many times more sodium than potassium as our ancestors ate of potassium than sodium. Values are set as it is good for us. Through long evolutionary process, we got used to eating more potassium than sodium, so it is in favor of potassium to a great extent and it is right.

One graph that is not there is calcium:phosphorus. You don't want to eat significantly more phosphorus than calcium. Use percents of recommended intake on the right.

Analysis is also good for finding, which supplements may be good for you. Some supplements don't count as micronutrients intake at all, they don't work. No supplements are a proper replacement for real food. Only if you have no time to go out during the whole day, you have an excuse to take vitamin D3 combined with K2. Otherwise, taking a supplement should not be a rule.

Watch For ________ If You Suffer From ________

I am sorry if you already suffer from something. If it made you to turn to healthy lifestyle, it might be a positive in a long run, that health condition showed you a path. Some diseases lead to death before they are found. In case of those, which don't kill, you still can do something about it. And you might want to focus your daily intake of nutrients on some specific ones.

For bone-related conditions, you will watch for Calcium, Magnesium, Phosphorus, D3, K2.

For anemia, you will watch for Iron, B12, B9 (folic acid), C.

There could be other examples, I will write a whole article about them in the new year, early.

 

@greenmask9

Like, resteem and spread a good word about this article to encourage me to write more. I can adapt my posts to what my followers prefer. Share with me your opinions in the comments. Follow me to get all articles of mine into your feed.This year, you can look forward to:

• 7-5-3 Code: 7 Virtues of a Warrior (part 2/2)
• 7-5-3 Code: 3 States of Mind
• Education System of Finland
• Homemade Coconut Toothpaste Recipe, Advantages, Disadvantages
• ... bonus

You might be interested in these previous articles of mine:

• No Sweets on Holidays
• 7-5-3 Code: 5 Keys to Health (easily followable)

Happines and love to all people @greenmask9