I've been doing CICO for over a 4-5 months now. The tracking part was always the most annoying bit. Not the discipline, not the hunger. Just the endless searching and logging every single ingredient.
I'm a developer, so at some point I decided to build something for myself. An app where I just take a photo of my plate and get the calories and macros back. No searching, no scrolling through databases, no guessing serving sizes from a dropdown menu.
It's been my daily driver for months now. The AI isn't perfect, but when it gets something wrong you can tell it "portion is bigger" or "there's extra oil" and it recalculates. That feedback loop makes it way more accurate over time.
Everything syncs to Apple Health. No account needed, no data stored on any server. The photo isn't even kept after the analysis.
One thing I added that I haven't seen in other trackers is allergen detection. You set your allergens once and it flags potential risks every time you scan. It's an AI estimate so definitely not something to rely on blindly, but it's a nice heads-up.
It's called Calcucal AI on the App Store. 7-day free trial if anyone wants to try it. Would love to hear from people who actually track daily. Is this useful? What would make it better?
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/calcucal-ai-calorie-tracker/id6759059319
by cprecius