Do you feel stuck when it comes to reaching your fat loss goals? You feel like you make good decisions when it comes to your nutrition- you cut sodas out and drink water instead, you eat salads for lunch, and grilled chicken for supper. Plus, you never miss a workout.
You’ve also been doing this for a couple of months now, and it seems like all progress has stalled, or worse… hasn’t even started. What gives?
The hard truth?
You might be making good decisions when it comes to food/nutrition, BUT do you really know exactly how many calories you are taking in? How much of those calories come from protein? Fats? Carbohydrates?
While all macronutrients have their purpose and each of them benefits the body in their own way, not all macros are created equal.
The MOST common comment, hands down that I get from online coaching clients who start tracking their nutrition is always “I had NO IDEA what is actually IN the food choices I have been making”.
Oftentimes you’ll hear how restricting, time consuming and “annoying” it is to log everything you eat and drink. And while that isn’t totally wrong, like anything, it does get better AND easier with practice.
Now before I tell you the “how to” when it comes to tracking your nutrition through a food log, I’m going to give you 3 reasons WHY you should even give it a try in the first place.
#1: You have a concrete health/fitness GOAL. Whether that be to lose 20lbs, gain 5lbs of muscle or maintain your current weight and reach for a performance goal. Tracking your macros/calories is the ONLY way you will actually know EXACTLY what you are putting in your body and how it is affecting your goals. No matter what your goal, ultimately, results come down to calories in vs calories out (given, there is a lot of added nuance here). You have no idea what you are consuming in terms of overall calories if you don’t track/log your intake.
#2: Once you start tracking your intake you will understand, but there are A LOT of misconceptions around food out there. What’s in food, what makes a “good food” that will support your goals, versus what doesn’t support those same goals. You might even be surprised at just HOW many calories are in some foods compared to others. This goes hand in hand with portion size. When you measure out and track your food, you find out what a “portion” is and how disappointing it can be sometimes! You can read the food labels all you want, but have you actually weighed out and measured an ounce of almonds? It’s heartbreaking. Yet, the amount of calories in 1 ounce of almonds is equivalent to 1 ¼ cup of high protein greek yogurt, or nearly 4 ounces of lean ground beef! Now, think about how much easier it is to overeat almonds, vs greek yogurt or ground beef. And almonds aren’t even a heavily processed food. I would even venture out to call them a pretty good and healthy snack choice, BUT you have to be aware of portion size, if you have a goal in mind that you are trying to reach.
#3: If I haven’t convinced you yet, this reason should. And it comes down to the fact that most of the general population is grossly UNDEREATING protein. Ahhhh protein. You see it advertised everywhere lately- high protein this, high protein that. Protein is all the rage right now and for good reason. It supports nearly every bodily process, helps to feed muscle growth/maintenance, and is even found to help the body combat disease as well as prevent it. Here’s the kicker though- all the “high protein” foods you are seeing in the store? Aren’t always actually “high protein” Tracking your nutrition will help you to know exactly what foods are high protein, and which ones aren’t all they are cracked up to be.
Take bacon for example. It’s a protein source, right? Wrong. There is actually MORE protein in half of a cup of fairlife milk than there is in TWO pieces of bacon. Wild, right? I can’t tell you the amount of times I have heard people say that they eat a protein dense breakfast every morning and it ends up being eggs and bacon. Eggs are another one, while they are a great source of nutrients and healthy fats AND they do have protein in them, they are not necessarily considered “high” in protein.
Now for the “how to”. How do you even get started with tracking your nutrition? It can seem pretty overwhelming and like it might be a huge time commitment. And when you first start tracking, it IS going to take some time. It takes time to find the foods you like in the app, to input recipes you make, to measure out all of your food and it can even be tough to remember to log after every meal/snack.
However, one thing I have noticed not only with my own food logs, but also all of my clients, is we tend to be creatures of habit. You will often find you tend to eat the same foods on repeat. Tracking in an app like myfitnesspal or cronometer, the app learns your favorite foods and it actually becomes quite quick and seamless to track.
And this leads us to step number one: download a food tracking app. My recommendations are either Myfitnesspal or Cronometer. Both have free versions that are easy to use and have great food databases to pull from. They each offer a barcode scanner as well to quickly scan foods into your food log. In my opinion, MyFitnessPal is more user friendly, but cronometer offers a better breakdown when it comes to micronutrient makeup of foods.
Step Two: start tracking. And don’t change what you have been doing as far as diet. Eat your normal foods, just input them into your app. Do this for at least 5 days (with at LEAST 2 of those days being weekend days) but ideally 2 whole weeks. Doing this will give you a great idea of what your baseline is. Where you are starting. What your current nutrition is like.
Don’t judge your choices or beat yourself up if you come short on the goals you thought you were reaching. Just learn from it.
Step 3: After 2 weeks of tracking your normal intake, step back and take a look at what you could improve. Are you eating 1g/lb of ideal body weight in protein? Are you eating at least 25g fiber daily? Do you consistently eat around the same amount of calories daily? Do weekdays differ from weekends? Were you surprised at what an actual serving of peanut butter was?
The more you pay attention and learn about the macronutrient and calorie content of the foods you are eating, the better/easier it will get for you to choose foods that support your goals moving forward.
This all being said, it’s a good idea to approach tracking your nutrition as a learning experience, or even an experiment. Personally, I think EVERYONE should at least TRY it once. If you don’t, how will you ever know how much and what you are putting in your body?
And remember, this doesn’t have to be a forever thing. In fact, there are VERY few people I know who like to track their macros ALL THE TIME, year after year. While the goal is to not have to ALWAYS track your food/calories, taking the time to do it consistently for some time will allow you to start to get an idea of what appropriate portion sizes LOOK like, and what the macro make up of those portions actually is.
And it isn’t for everyone either. If you have a history of disordered eating or a not so good relationship with food, maybe tracking your macros won’t serve you in a healthy way.
The ultimate goal should be to confidently be able to intuitively eat and still come close to your daily goals. To know what foods will support your health and wellness, and which ones are maybe not helping out as much as you thought.
Still have questions? Or ready to get started and need some help? Sign up for coaching here, and I walk side by side with you through it all. No matter your goal, tracking your macros WILL be helpful to get you there.