With This AI Nutrition Tracking Skill, I Completely Abandoned Those Fitness Apps
To be honest, I used to use calorie-tracking apps like MyFitnessPal and Lose It, but I couldn't stick with them beyond a few days. Why? The interfaces were overly complex, annoying ads, and logging each food item required endlessly scrolling through databases. Then I discovered an AI skill called Nutrition Tracker, which turned my diet logging into something as simple as chatting.
This skill was created by a developer named xeroctation on GitHub, in a repository called macros-log. Essentially, it's a collection of SKILL.md files that can be installed on compatible AI assistants—like Claude.ai, Claude Code, and OpenAI Codex CLI. After installation, you just talk to the AI naturally, saying something like "I just ate 200 grams of chicken breast and a bowl of rice," and it automatically logs the calories and macronutrients, even showing how much of your daily quota remains.
Sounds a bit magical, right? Below, I'll go into detail about its core features and my experience using it.
Onboarding — Set It Up Once, Then Sit Back and Calculate
The first time you use it, an HTML form pops up automatically (displayed beautifully on the web). You need to fill in: name, gender, age, height, weight, goal (fat loss / muscle gain / maintenance / body recomposition), speed (gentle / moderate / aggressive or custom), daily activity type, exercise frequency, target weight, etc. Then click "Calculate," and it automatically computes your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate), TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure), daily calorie targets, and gram goals for protein, fat, and carbohydrates. Finally, click "Save Profile" and you're done. The whole process takes less than two minutes, and there's no need for manual formulas at all! As someone who struggles with math, I absolutely love this.
What's even better: if your weight changes by more than 1 kg afterward, it automatically recalculates your TDEE and goals. For instance, after I lost 2 kg, the next day it asked, "I see your weight changed. Do you want to update your goals?" It's incredibly thoughtful.
Food Logging — Just Talk Normally to Log
What I appreciate most about this skill is its natural language processing capability. You don't need to learn any command formats; just say something like:
"For breakfast I ate three eggs, 100 grams of oats, and 250 ml of milk."
It automatically parses the weight and calories of each food item, then displays a neat table:
✅ Breakfast logged:
Eggs ×3 (180g) → 283 kcal | P:23g F:20g C:2g
Oatmeal 100g → 88 kcal | P:3g F:1.5g C:15g
Milk 250ml → 130 kcal | P:7g F:6g C:12g
─────────────────────────────────────────
Total: 501 kcal | P:33g F:28g C:29g
📊 Today: 501 / 2350 ███░░░░░░░ 21% (left: 1849)It also supports photo recognition! For example, if you share a picture of a dish, it uses AI vision capabilities to estimate the type of food and its weight (though this feature relies on the AI's inherent abilities, not something built into the skill itself). If a food item you log isn't in its database, it uses approximate values from its own knowledge base and marks them as "(approx.)", so you know it's an estimate. Some of the local foods I eat regularly, like "Jianbing Guozi" (Chinese crepe), it can roughly guess too—amazing!
Personal Product Database — Build Your Own Frequent Food Library
If you have certain foods you eat often (like chicken breast, Greek yogurt, protein powder), you can add them to your personal database. For instance:
"add product: my Greek yogurt — 60 kcal/100g, p10 f0.5 c4"
From then on, just say "200 grams Greek yogurt" and it will automatically use the precise data you stored, rather than the AI's approximations. This feature is incredibly useful for anyone strictly controlling every gram of carbs.
Daily Summary & Weekly Statistics — Progress at a Glance
Besides logging, you can say "summary" anytime to check your current day's progress: calories, protein, fat, carbs, water—all displayed as progress bars and numbers. Every week it automatically generates a report including average intake, weight change trends, days that met goals, etc. I particularly like the "short honest comment," where the AI gives you a brief, objective assessment, like "Protein intake was a bit low this week; make sure to supplement."
Additionally, if you don't know what to eat for dinner, you can ask, "I still have 600 calories and 40 grams of protein left tonight; what should I eat?" It then recommends specific food combinations based on your remaining budget. This feature has saved me from ordering takeout late at night on many occasions.
Workout Logging & Weight Tracking — All in One
You can also log workouts, not just food:
"Today I trained back, 60 minutes strength, 30 minutes cardio."
It automatically updates your daily activity level and affects your TDEE calculation (if you set a weekly exercise frequency). Weight logging is just as simple: say "I'm 88.0 kg today," and it saves and automatically updates the chart.
Data Privacy & Portability — Your Data, Your Rules
All data is stored in three plain text ...
