Carbon Diet Coach – My Review

I don’t care if you’ve had your diet on lock for years (and your body looks the part) or if you’ve never stuck with a diet for more than a week.

Anything that has to do with “tracking food” is hard.

The worst part about it is, short of shooting yourself up with Ozempic or whatever, it’s not like you can get new shoes or a new barbell and instantly see an improvement in your body composition (like you can with certain training aides).

You have to know how to track and measure your food and you have to actually do it.

Food/macronutrient tracking app aren’t the best teachers and they sure as hell can’t do the work for you…but they can be pretty useful…

…and Carbon Diet Coach is, if nothing else, very useful.

I’ve been subscribed to Carbon for roughly 5 months now and have found it to be an excellent tool/resource for assisting me with my macronutrient tracking. I have experience working with multiple nutrition coaches (to include my wife who used to be a professional) so I have more existing knowledge than the average user likely does. Nevertheless, I’m pleased with my results.

I’m going to assume you have at least a semblance of an idea of what the app is all about so I won’t go into too much more detail with explaining what it is (and isn’t). Let’s get right to my personal experience with it:

“Functionality”

At the end of the day, the Carbon Diet Coach app is a food/macronutrient-tracking application. I would argue that the vast (and I mean vast) majority of people who use it are probably using to track their personal weight, personal progress over time, and the macros they are consuming on daily and weekly bases.

…and for these tasks, it is perfectly functional and very easy to use.

With an almost endless array of pre-entered food options, it’s easy to quickly find listings for even obscure foods. When your selected option is really obscure (i.e. not in the system), it’s not hard to either scan a barcode for the app to “find” the food or to take a couple of minutes to manually enter the food’s information and macros for it to permanently be a part of your diary.

As you might imagine, you still have to put in the work of actually weighing and measuring your food in order to have any semblance of tracking accuracy (as useful as “the fist” and “the palm” methods may be for people newer to tracking, they do you no good at all when tracking with actual numbers). As such, be sure you’re familiar with counting macros before getting this app.

Carbon also has calendars, which can be specified to the day, that are used to enter daily weight numbers (which, as you can imagine, is much easier, even for the uninitiated, to track and record). It is simple to quickly look back to identify trends over a period of weeks, days, or months.

Finally, there are weekly check-ins which are facilitated in the “Coach” area. When first starting a tracking “campaign”, you’re prompted to select a check-in day every week. On this day, your “coach” will ask you a couple of questions (mainly just asking if you were “compliant” during the week) before determining what your new macros for the week will be.

I would argue that these three areas are probably where ~90 percent of people (to include myself) are going to tap out. You can certainly dig deeper (as we’ll see in a second) and get more functionality out of the Carbon Diet Coach app, but for most people, this much is more than enough to make progress.

Personally, if I want more “advanced” or “precise” data, I’m going to pony up for more professional services, hence why I fall into the “keep it simple” camp, but it’s nice to know that I have more advanced options when/if I so choose to expand my horizons. I mean, just look at the micronutrients you can track:

I’m never going to go that far down the rabbit hole on this app, but if this is something you’ve been dying to do…now’s your chance…

“Functionality”: 95

Ease of Use

The Carbon Diet Coach app isn’t really difficult to use at all, although there are a few things that take a little trial and error or at least some getting used to.

For the most part, you’re just clicking and entering information. Nothing special; nothing difficult.

Every now and then things get a little trickier. For example, if you’re adding a new entry, you have to make sure you have all of the macros and the desired serving size in before you can proceed forward. I don’t know why, but for some reason, I almost always miss this step and have to backtrack.

Also, when you’re entering weights from past days, it’s a little tedious to have to scroll through the “dial” to the correct day (being able to click on a normal-looking calendar would be much easier) before adding your weight. If you try to do this in the reverse order, it won’t work.

Finally, sometimes I feel like my “coach” is waiting for some type of additional input or comment from me during my check-in. There have been weeks that have gone by where I have definitely missed (although “blown” would be a more accurate description) my macros and nothing has changed. According to my wife, sometimes you have to “suggest” changes manually, but I have yet to do this.

Outside of these little gripes, the app is very straightforward and self-explanatory. This is assuming you know what you’re doing when it comes to tracking your macros and you know how to read nutritional labels (particularly if you’re regularly entering information). If you don’t know how to properly perform these last two, you need to learn before you start paying for this!

Ease of Use: 90

Extras

For such a low price, I didn’t really expect too many extras from Carbo Diet Coach and, to be honest, there aren’t really that many to speak of. However, given the price and, at least relative to other apps of its kind, I would say that the included extras are at least in line with, if not slightly exceeding, what others are putting out.

I get weekly newsletters in my email from the Carbon Diet Coach staff members, mainly discussing a recipe or some other type of nutrition-related insight. I think I’ve opened, like, 3 of these (at least when they were first sent to me) and about half of each newsletter is just success stories (which are nice, but not exactly all that valuable to me).

There are also links to podcasts with Carbon “pros” such as Dr. Layne Norton as well as short Q&A sessions with Norton. The newsletter itself looks like something you’d see from a high school “Interact Club” or something and aside from the podcast content, the information is pretty vanilla.

Carbon also hosts different challenges from time to time, but most of these are paid (they are not included in your basic membership) and I’ve never bothered with them. If these are your thing, I’d say go for it, but I’m pretty sure you don’t have to be a Carbon user to participate.

Overall, it’s nice to get these little extras (even if they probably amount more to me being on a mailing list as they attempt to upsell me, more than anything else), but they’re not really worth getting too excited about.

Extras: 85

Personal Results

There are obviously a lot of factors that would influence one’s personal results with any kind of nutritional “training” program.

What does your training regimen look like? How much are you sleeping? How well are you hydrating? How accurate are you tracking your food? How attainable/reasonable were your goals?

The list goes on…

I’m not promising your results will be anything like mine (for better or worse!), but, for context:

• I train CrossFit for roughly 1-to-1.5 hours 5 days per week
• Have another day each week where I only do conditioning work (row, bike, run, etc.) for roughly 45 minutes
• Ruck for ~one hour 4-6 days per week
• Perform ~20 minutes of mobility work every day
• Consistently get between 6.5 and 7.5 hours per sleep each night
• Maintain a mid-to-low stress lifestyle

November 10, 2024 was my first day tracking with Carbon Diet Coach and I weighed in at 77 kilograms (just under 170 pounds). I did not have body fat numbers, but I estimated mine to be between 18 and 20 percent.

My initial macro targets were:

• 2186 total calories
• 180g protein
• 200g carbohydrates
• 74g fat

Within two weeks I was down to 76.1 kilograms (167.7 pounds), although I was consistently exceeding my fat numbers and undereating carbohydrates (I didn’t notice any performance changes).

On December 10 (one month in) I was down another kilogram (75.1/165.5 pounds) and by Christmas I was 74.1 kgs (163.5 pounds).

At this point, things slowed down quite a bit as this is more of a “normal” bodyweight for me. I was still at 74 kilograms on January 10 (two months in) and actually put on .2 kilograms on Day 90 (February 8).

I didn’t hit my (ambitious) goal of 72 kilograms in 90 days, but was still pleased with my progress. I still haven’t done a formal body fat assessment, but judging from my “progress pictures”, my body composition had noticeably improved by this point.

Throughout February and March I continued to slowly lose weight despite the app periodically adjusting my macros, exclusively in an upward direction. As of this writing, my weight is 73.1 kilograms (~161 pounds) and my current macros are:

• 2352 total calories
• 192g protein
• 210g carbohydrates
• 80g fat

I’m not only satisfied with my overall progress, but am impressed that the app actually gave me food when it sensed my weight loss was maybe too fast. I didn’t quite hit my (admittedly, arbitrary) target/goal weight, but I don’t think most people would complain about losing ~5 percent of their total body weight while improving their body composition in ~4 months.

To finish off this section, I’ll admit that there were certainly times when I would check my remaining macros in the afternoon only to realize that I had pretty much exhausted them and I would be falling asleep slightly hungry. However, I never felt “deprived” or truly starved; if anything, the app was acting as more of an accountability buddy stating “you don’t need that last little bit before bed”.

Those little bits add up and cutting those out probably contributed to at least half of my weight loss.

Personal Results: 90

Price

I get that Carbon Diet Coach doesn’t provide you with an actual nutrition “coach” and that you already have to have a pretty decent grasp of counting and tracking macros to really use the app. However, if you have this knowledge, it Carbon provides really good value.

At $10 per month, it “loses” to free macro-counting applications (many of which are in the “get what you pay for” mold), but I can’t really think of any paid apps that are more affordable and there are far fewer that would provide nearly as much value.

If you’re able to make it work with a free app like MyFitnessPal (or something similar), all the power to you. I’ve used that app before and know that you can definitely make progress from it. However, $10 really ain’t too bad at all…

Price: 95

App

To be honest, I’m not the biggest “app guy” and as long as an app is at least mildly functional, I’m not really one to complain. With that being said, of all of the areas where I could be critical of something, an app’s look and overall functionality is where I probably give the most leeway.

(I also have, like, 3 apps on my phone so I don’t have the biggest sample size to pull from in determining what a “good” or “bad” app experience is like!)

Those caveats out of the way, I think that the Carbon Diet Coach app is actually pretty functional. I have yet to experience any major bugs or glitches, the interface looks good, and it is easy to navigate.

Because there are only 4 main menu items (“Diary”, “Coach”, “Me”, and “Settings”), each opening up and expanding on its respective content area, I think there is less opportunity for the app to get overloaded or for my eyes and brain to get too overly stimulated with crap all over the screen.

Logging information, whether in terms of my consumed foods, my daily bodyweight numbers, and my weekly check-ins is incredibly smooth (the latter is actually prompted, making it almost impossible to overlook/miss).

The app’s graphics themselves aren’t overly sophisticated, but I find them appealing. It is nice to get a visual of how much of each macro I have already consumed throughout a given day (even when I realize that I’m running out!)

The only real “issue” I’ve experienced is when I have forgotten to add my weight for a particular day and need to go back and update. Switching days in the appropriate section is a little bit more tedious than it should be (the process actually seems to be the inverse of what you would expect), but is very quickly solved. This also serves as a good incentive not to forget!

Overall, for a $10-a-month app, there really isn’t much to complain about.

App: 97.5

Who is Carbon Diet Coach really for?

A lot of people have the potential to make a lot of progress with Carbon Diet Coach. Just make sure you fall into one of these camps (and have the requisite knowledge to really get the most out of it):

People who want accountability

Carbon Diet Coach isn’t in itself a diet. It doesn’t buy the groceries, it doesn’t measure and cook the food, and it sure as heck doesn’t eat it.

You have to do all of these things (or, if you’re like me you are lucky enough to have a wonderful wife to help with most of these)!

With that being said, there is something to be said about getting in the practice of honestly and consistently entering information into a paid app that makes me more inspired to actually do it. Also, knowing that I have to check-in with my “coach” every week adds a bit more pressure for me to stay accountable to the prescribed macros.

People who want an affordable (but not free) macro tracking app

It’s easy to spend a lot of money on nutrition coaching and hard to find 1-on-1 coaching for less than a few hundred dollars a month.

At the same time, it’s also pretty easy to find free macro-tracking apps.

Carbon Diet Coach is a good middle ground as it is much more affordable than dedicated coaching while also being just expensive enough to make you feel guilty for not using it.

Not for people who have never tracked their food

If you’ve never weighed, measured, and/or otherwise tracked your food, I don’t really think Carbon Diet Coach is right for you…

…yet

There is some literature that comes with the app that does a halfway decent job of explaining how everything works. However, trying to take all of this in as you navigate your personal tracking in real time is akin to drinking out of the fire hose.

It’s just too much to take in in you have zero experience.

I would suggest working with a nutrition coach for ~3 months and learning what all of this stuff means and best practices for weighing, measuring, and tracking correctly before getting started with Carbon. You’ll have to pay a bit for this knowledge, but once you have it, keeping it going will cost you less than $15 a month…which is definitely worth it.

Frequently Asked Questions

In most cases, I’m scratching my head, trying to think of the questions that would, actually be asked with some “frequently”. However, when it comes to Carbon, I have the opposite problem: there are so many questions you could ask! Here’s my best stab at answering the most FAQs:

Carbon Diet Coach…affordable accountability (that works!)

Dieting, counting calories, counting macros….whatever you want to call it, is hard.

No ifs, ands, or buts about it.

Unfortunately, I have some more bad news for you: with Carbon Diet Coach, it’s still hard.

…but, assuming you know what you’re doing, Carbon does make things a lot easier.

Considering how inexpensive Carbon is (and yes, I know that there are free apps…and I don’t care), and how easy it makes tracking macros and measuring progress, it provides excellent value and is an excellent addition to one’s personal health and fitness resources.

As I mentioned before (and want to be very clear about this), you’ll definitely get the most out of the app if you spend some time learning to track and count macros (preferably from a coach/pro) before downloading it. Once you have this knowledge, though, you’re off to the races.

I’m pretty sure Fred concurs with this assessment!