Macro Tracker

Macro Tracker in action, giving feedback on the user's macronutrients and nutritional advice.

Inspiration

My partners and I recently began hitting the gym to improve our fitness, and we quickly noticed that most fitness apps are locked behind paywalls, restricting valuable tools and information for tracking progress. This experience motivated us to build a free, accessible app to help ourselves and others gain insights into their nutrition and physical activity without added costs

What it does

Macro Hacker Tracker is a user-friendly app that helps users track their nutritional intake and calories burned based on personal data and activity levels. Users can log individual foods, get nutrient breakdowns, calculate calories burned from walking or running, and visualize their macronutrient intake through pie charts. This allows users to monitor their diet and activity to better understand and manage their fitness goals.

How we built it

We built this app using Python, customtkinter for the GUI, and pandas for efficient data handling. Matplotlib powers our data visualization, and we leverage the OpenFoodFacts API to provide users with reliable nutritional data. Our approach blends a robust back-end for calculations with an intuitive front-end design.

Challenges we ran into

A few challenges emerged, such as handling occasional API errors from OpenFoodFacts and ensuring smooth integration of dynamically updated charts into the Tkinter GUI. Balancing functionality with ease of use also required several design iterations.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We’re proud of creating a functional, visually engaging app that provides real-time nutritional insights without hidden costs. We were also able to integrate a third-party API successfully, manage error handling, and deliver a seamless user experience with Tkinter and matplotlib.

What we learned

This project taught us valuable skills in GUI development, API integration, and user-centered design. We also learned the importance of error handling and data validation when relying on external data sources.