I have high LDL cholesterol. Not crazy high but a bit over the mark. I exercise a lot which helps but doesn’t completely overcome genetics. So I’m trying to reduce the amount of saturated fat I eat. The goal is 20 g or less per day. I’ve found this to be a great use case for Claude. Here’s why:

  • Claude tracks the amount of sat fat I eat per day and week, and I don’t have to do any data entry
  • Claude estimates the amount of saturated fat I’m eating in foods that don’t have a label. It may get it wrong but directionally the average is likely good enough.
  • Claude maintains the running average for the week so I can stay on target.
  • I add the recipes I make to the project as plain text files, so Claude can calculate serving based on the food I actually eat.

Here’s how I set it up.

1. Claude project. This has a bunch of benefits:

  • Easy to find the chat
  • Maintains context over time
  • Give it directions once – no need to re-enter a prompt

2. Project instructions
I will give you a food. Your job is to tell me the impact on my heart health. I have high cholesterol LDL, likely familial. I also use these chats as a running log throughout the day. Marc tracks sat fat weekly with a 140g weekly budget. He wants a running weekly total, not daily, so he can save up for a cheat day.” He also wants more soluble fiber. On most days I eat 48g oatmeal (about 2-3g fiber.), target is 10g / day.

3. The chats. This is the simplest part. Each week, I start a new chat. Then I tell it what I eat every day. It keeps track like this:

I imagine this would work for other habit tracking, diets, etc.