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#144 - Guarantee Your Fat Loss With This 1 Skill
12 Plays7 hours ago
Tracking calories is a skill that removes the guesswork so you can stop spinning your wheels and start losing fat on purpose. This episode shows you how to do it without adding a bunch more to your plate.
In this episode, you'll learn
- • The basic principle all fat loss methods follow
- • How to simplify your macros with a simple focus on calories and protein
- • The biggest myths that keep people stuck and what’s actually true about metabolism, restriction, and time
- • Practical tips that make it easy and sustainable day to day (including eating out)
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Transcript
Introduction to Fit Dish Project
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome back to the Fit Dish Project with your host Lathan Bass, where we make fitness and health simple for regular people like you and I. We have the weekly episode for you this week. Before I get into that, if you can leave a review, if you have not done so, continue to get this out to more people who could use this information. I greatly appreciate that.
00:00:22
Speaker
The
Essential Skills for Eating Habits
00:00:23
Speaker
episode for this week, this is more of a niche topic, more of a practical type of episode, but it is one of the most important skills when it comes to improving your eating habits. It is the one thing that really changed it all for me because it allowed me to build the right habits create a better mindset around food and just being able to eat things that I actually enjoy, and also just get over so many of those old myths and things that we think about food.
The Importance of Tracking Calories
00:00:51
Speaker
In this episode, I'm going to explain how to actually track your calories, how to set up your macros, and then just some tips to make it easier. I think when a lot of people hear the idea of tracking calories, they think, oh, just another thing that I have to add to the list of things that I have to do in my already busy schedule.
00:01:09
Speaker
Tracking calories doesn't have to be that difficult. It doesn't have to take up a bunch of time. It doesn't have to be very stressful. It actually ends up doing a lot of the opposite things once you get into it, once you build this skill, because that's exactly what it is. And that's really what health is, is a lot of very small skills that you build that allows you to get to the goals that you want to get, to feel better, to lose weight, to build muscle, to not overeat, to feel more energetic and have more focus and all those end goals that we really want to get to a lot of those things are done through creating better habits and especially better eating habits and so in this episode i want to share with you exactly how to go about using this how to go about tracking calories so that you can hit those goals And I think the one thing that I'll say too, before even getting into this entire episode is just because you track calories for a period of time, it does not mean that you're going to have to track calories for the rest of your life. I think people think that when they take this thing on of tracking calories, oh man, this is something I'm going to have to do forever. And that's really daunting for a lot of people.
00:02:09
Speaker
But it's really not. to explain to you how you can go about using tracking for a period of time to get the goals that you want to get and to create better habits and to create a better relationship with food. And then once you have those things, you can just use this as a tool periodically. And so you don't have to spend all your time tracking or be so meticulous or be so detail oriented. But there's definitely some benefit in doing that for a period of time.
Misconceptions about Calorie Tracking
00:02:32
Speaker
So when it comes to tracking calories, why or why not? Like, who is this for? Well, ultimately, tracking calories, we're just trying to solve a problem here. And for a lot of people, that problem is they don't know exactly what they should be eating. So they're trying to figure out what types of foods they should be eating.
00:02:48
Speaker
and the right amounts of those foods. And then the other thing is just not eating too much. And that's the biggest one. Lots of people, especially those ones who have goals around how their body looks and improving their body image and just losing weight, building muscle, all those things, they're eating too many calories. And part of that is not our fault because we live in an environment where there's tons of extra food. Things are highly processed and easily palatable. So it's just...
00:03:16
Speaker
To put it simply, it's very easy to eat too many calories. Even when it doesn't seem like we're eating that much, even when we think we're eating a balanced diet, even when we think we're doing a lot of the right things, there's so many hidden calories all over the place and just an abundance of food that is very easy to overconsume that if you're not tracking for a period of time and you haven't built up these skills, the likelihood that you're just going to figure it out on your own is not very high. Can you do it? Yes, you can. Some people lose weight without ever tracking calories. I would caveat that with saying that those people are typically people who have a lot of weight to lose. So when you have a lot of weight to lose, you can jump into something like weight loss and you can just start to improve very simple things and you're going to see progress right at away.
00:04:01
Speaker
But what I've noticed is as those people start to lose weight, Eventually, they do come to a point where they need to track calories because they lose a lot of weight, their body starts to adjust, their calorie needs are different.
Adapting Calorie Intake for Weight Loss
00:04:13
Speaker
And as they start to get closer to that goal body weight, the amount of room for error that they have is much less. And to help with that, to help them actually hit the right targets, hit the right numbers, eat the right amounts, they need to bring a little bit more detail, and a little bit more awareness to their food.
00:04:29
Speaker
And you do that through tracking. So again, this isn't something that you have to do for your entire life, but it is going to be helpful. When we're talking about calories or tracking calories, as I've mentioned on tons of other podcasts, it all just comes down to energy balance. And that is just the science behind it.
00:04:45
Speaker
If you eat less than your body needs over a period of time, you are going to lose weight. That's what we call calorie deficit. If you eat more than your body needs for a period of time, you are going to gain weight. That is what we call a calorie surplus. If you are eating the amount that your body expects from you, just based on your body size, your activity, all those certain things,
00:05:05
Speaker
on average for a period of time you are going to maintain your weight that is the only way to lose weight to gain weight is eating more or eating less so tracking calories allows you to actually see objectively whether or not you are doing those things this doesn't happen on a single day but over a period of time if you are consistently eating less you are going to lose weight over time and understanding that is just the foundation of all this because sometimes people will think things like, you know, I'm eating the right things, or I'm, I'm eating all these healthy foods. And that doesn't matter. If your goal is to lose weight, you have to, there is no exceptions, you have to be eating in a calorie deficit. Tracking gets rid of all those questions and thinking that your metabolism is broken. And thinking that you're doing all the right things and getting frustrated and all those things. So tracking calories can be a really good solution to actually have some data to make some more objective decisions so that you can actually get the results and get the outcome that you want.
00:06:02
Speaker
Before hopping into the how to parts of this, I just wanted to go through a couple common myths about just calories and tracking calories and that sort of thing. And so one of the big ones that I hear is people will try to lose weight or they'll start to get older and they'll start to think that their metabolism has adapted over time.
00:06:20
Speaker
And it does adapt when you start to lose weight when you're
Metabolism Myths and Tracking Benefits
00:06:23
Speaker
in a calorie deficit for an extended period of time, but not to the extent that people think, especially if you're doing this in the right way. Your body will adapt over time. Like as you lose weight, you're going to need less calories in general. And the longer that you're in a diet, your body will start to adapt a little bit. but it's not anything crazy. And so when you're tracking calories, you will actually start to see this. Like you'll see that you are losing weight and you'll see that you're not eating crazy amounts of food less than you were when you were just trying to maintain. And having that data is helpful in starting to turn your mindset around and start to dispel some of these myths that you may have around your body and your metabolism and food and all those things. Another one that I hear a lot is I'm eating so little, but I'm not actually losing weight.
00:07:07
Speaker
Again, i hate to be the bearer of bad news, but when people say things like I'm eating healthy where I'm not eating very much food, You just have to go back to the science. If you are not eating in a calorie deficit for an extended period of time, you're not going to be losing weight. When people say things like this, it just simply means over a long enough period of time, they're not eating in a calorie deficit. They may think they're eating in a calorie deficit. They may think they're eating healthy things. They may think they're not eating very many calories. But when you start to actually track these things, you add these numbers up, you see, oh, there was these snacks here that I didn't really realize. There was these extra portions that I was having. There was that weekend where I had a little bit more food. Even when I was super on top of my things throughout the week, there was that
00:07:52
Speaker
two day bender that I went on and I had a bunch of alcohol or I had a bunch of food or I went out to eat or I went to this buffet or there's just so many ways that these calories start to sneak up on us where we might look back on our week as a whole and we did do pretty well like we ate fairly healthy but if you're having a day or two in there or there's little things every single day that you're not really realizing and it's very easy to get to a point where you're no longer in a calorie deficit over that weekly period and that's where people get so frustrated and that's why people get so confused
00:08:23
Speaker
What's more likely, the fact that your body is defying the laws of thermodynamics or is it more likely that you're eating more calories without realizing it?
Challenges and Realities of Calorie Tracking
00:08:34
Speaker
I would probably say the second thing is much more likely. And so you can blame other things, you can get frustrated, you can say all these things like your metabolism is broken, your body is broken. all these different things but that doesn't get you anywhere the fact of the matter is when you start looking at the numbers when you start tracking when you start being more objective about this rather than being super emotional about this and getting frustrated you can actually make the changes that you want to make i understand that for some people this is a reality check and this is kind of hard to hear And this also, I should say, this doesn't mean that weight loss isn't harder for some than it is for others. Like if you're a smaller person, or if you're a person who just hasn't been super active, like you don't have a higher metabolism as some people, just different factors like that, that make weight loss more difficult. There's some people who just more likely to overeat just based on their genetics, their hormones are a little bit different. They don't get satiated. as much as other people. They don't have cravings as much as other people. Like if you've ever met those people who are like, oh, I forgot to eat one day.
00:09:35
Speaker
Or you meet those people who are just like, I'm not really that hungry. They just don't eat that much or they have no issues with just stopping themselves when they're full and like leaving food on their plate. I'm not that person. But there are people out there like that. And so for those people losing weight or even getting to the point of where like they needed to go on a diet to lose weight, it just it wouldn't be difficult for them because they have a lot of those things already in their favor. And for some people, they just don't have those things.
00:10:00
Speaker
For those reasons, weight loss and specifically just dieting and and those sorts of things becomes a lot more difficult. And so is dieting harder for some people than others? Yes. But the laws of science, they still apply to
Flexibility and Education through Tracking
00:10:14
Speaker
everybody. Like everybody needs to be in a calorie deficit in order to lose weight.
00:10:18
Speaker
Couple other of the myths around tracking calories is people will say things like counting calories takes too long. Tracking calories is a skill just like anything else. And once you get good at it, it really doesn't take much time at all.
00:10:31
Speaker
I always say that I traded about five to 10 minutes per day to lose 100 pounds, which ultimately changed every single thing in my life. It made everything better. Losing that weight, getting healthier, building more confidence, getting better physically, being able to do all the things that I want to do, look better, feel better, all that stuff that happened because I track calories for five, maybe 10 minutes per day.
00:10:54
Speaker
To me, that seems like a pretty dang good trade off. And so when you say things like you don't have time to track calories or it takes too long or things like that, you just have to make a decision for yourself. Like, is it worth five to 10 minutes of your day to track your food in order to get this result that you want to get?
00:11:08
Speaker
For most people, I would say yes, but you have to make that decision for yourself. Another thing that people will say about tracking calories is that it's too restrictive. And for some people, this can be the case. Like for some people who get very neurotic about this, they get obsessive about this, they develop eating disorders and things of that sort.
00:11:25
Speaker
Tracking calories isn't the right route for them to go. But when it's used in a way where you just use it as an educational tool, which is what I'm a proponent for, like you use it for a period of time to really learn about food, to learn about portion sizes, to learn about proteins and carbs and fats, to learn about calories and different foods, and just to get a better, well-rounded education about food, because most of us were not really given those things or have ever really even thought about food as anything more than something that just we eat for taste.
00:11:54
Speaker
Food is a lot more than that. And when you start to track food, it starts to give you a lot better insight into the things that food can do for you. And so for lots of people, I think that tracking calories is not restrictive and in fact can actually be something that increases your flexibility, which was the case for me.
00:12:12
Speaker
Once I realized that it wasn't these certain foods, it wasn't donuts or it wasn't pizza or it wasn't this specific diet or anything like that that I needed to do to lose fat, it was just a matter of controlling my calories and eating the right things.
00:12:25
Speaker
And I realized that I could fit in some ice cream, I could fit in some alcohol if I wanted to, i could have a social life and still lose weight. That was an absolute game changer for me. And so a lot of other diets, they are very restrictive in nature because they don't want to have you tracking calories. And so they restrict in other ways.
00:12:43
Speaker
There's always going to be some sort of trade off that you have to make in a particular diet. For some diets, they cause you to eat over a shorter period of time, which in turn you eat less. For other diets, you cut out certain foods or food groups, which in turn means you eat less. When tracking calories, you can actually see that number and you eat less. So they're all doing the same thing. They just do them in different ways. But when you track calories, now you're able to be a little bit more flexible and you don't have such restriction around the things that you can eat. You don't have a time period in which you need to eat. And so these things that you trade off and other diets, you're not doing that and tracking calories, but with tracking calories, you're having that 10 minutes per day that you're putting towards tracking your food.
00:13:24
Speaker
And the last one that I'll mention about tracking calories that i already touched on briefly was this idea that you have to track calories forever. Lots of diets aren't sustainable because people can't sustain them forever.
00:13:37
Speaker
And if you want
Using Tracking as an Educational Tool
00:13:38
Speaker
to track calories forever, you can do that. There's certain people that they track everything they put in their mouth. Those are typically more competitive type of people, whether it's like bodybuilders or they're like in athletics and they just need to make sure that they're getting certain targets. Like they're really engaged in their goals or they really have these certain things that they want to accomplish. And so they're very meticulous about tracking their food. For the average person, for myself and for lots of people, I recommend that you use this as an educational tool for a period of time. to build better habits, to learn more about food, to bring more awareness about food, and to reach your goals. And then once you have those good habits in place, then if you want to come back to this at any time, you can use it as a tool again, which is what I do. I don't track food for a majority of the time throughout the year because I've built better habits around food. And I just have like this running catalog in my head from tracking food for so long. Like I know how many calories are in certain foods. I know what foods are high protein and how much protein lots of foods have.
00:14:35
Speaker
I know which things are going to be very easy to overeat or have more calories than you would think. Like I've learned all these things over the years of tracking calories. And so now I don't do it very often unless I have a specific goal and I want to dial it in a little bit more, then I'll go back and I'll use tracking calories as a tool that I do for maybe eight weeks or 12 weeks and go on a little diet, lose 10, 15 pounds. And then I go back to not tracking again. So you don't have to do this forever. that I want to make that abundantly clear, but it is one of the best educational tools that you can use.
Reasons for Quitting Tracking and Solutions
00:15:08
Speaker
When we start to get in, okay, so how do I actually apply this? Like you've made the decision, I want to track calories. This is something that I want to do. Well, a lot of the reasons that people quit is because they don't feel like it's working or they feel like it's too restrictive, as I mentioned, or they can't stay consistent with it. And when it comes to tracking calories, it helps with all of these things. And so for the people who feel like it's not working, This was a big thing for me. I wanted to know that I'm putting in this effort towards losing fat.
00:15:35
Speaker
And a lot of times you'll see that scale going up and down. It will fluctuate. You'll feel like you're putting in work, but you don't actually see the progress in real time. So it takes multiple weeks, multiple months, sometimes years to hit your goal. And over those weeks and months, you want to know that you are doing the right things to make the progress. And when you have the numbers, when you track food, you know, even when that scale is fluctuating up and down that you're trending in the right direction because you are doing the things and you're controlling the things that you can control.
00:16:04
Speaker
So with calorie counting, it's like, I know that I'm hitting my daily target every single day, even if that scale goes up for two weeks straight or it doesn't move, which does happen sometimes. Like sometimes you'll hit a plateau, you're hitting your calories, everything's perfect. And that scale still goes up for whatever reason.
00:16:20
Speaker
That's a very common spot for people to throw in the towel, to quit, to get discouraged. But when you know for certain, like I'm hitting my calorie target, I'm tracking calories accurately. And I know for certain that I'm hitting those things.
00:16:33
Speaker
you can relieve some of that stress and you don't worry so much about those things because you you know, like you know, you have the numbers right there. I'm doing what I need to do. And eventually that scale is going to drop and I am going to start to see the results that I want to see over time. So it gives you a little bit of a mental break and just that confidence that you're doing the right things.
00:16:52
Speaker
As I mentioned already, just being too restrictive of a diet and not being sustainable, tracking calories can help with that. Remember, the goal isn't to track forever. It's to hit a certain goal and build better habits. And then you no no longer have to track anymore if you don't want to. And then we're just staying consistent.
00:17:07
Speaker
What gets measured gets managed. And that is goes for anything in life, but especially around like fitness habits. As I said, most people have this idea like, oh, I eat well, but I can't lose weight. If you track the calories, it's no guessing game anymore. Like, you know, you are going to hit those goals if you are tracking your calories. And so if you are focused on this thing, such as tracking food, you know that it becomes a high priority and you're going to be more consistent if you can just get in the habit of tracking those things. So a lot of the reasons that people fall off tracking calories can help with that. And so when we get to the actually how to part of it, you're going to need a couple of things.
00:17:42
Speaker
First, you're going to need to get some sort of app. And there's lots of them out there that track. There's even apps out there now that will like track your food and your intake and your calories. And they make it super simple with like, you can scan barcodes and it will adjust your calories over time. So like if you're hitting plateaus or things like that, it can also adjust for that.
00:18:01
Speaker
There's lots of apps out there and they're fairly cheap that you can get like on a monthly basis that do all that for you. I've personally always just used MyFitnessPal or the app called Chronometer in the past. These are simple apps. They've been around for a really long time. They have really big food databases. So I've always used those.
00:18:18
Speaker
You're also going to need some sort of food scale. That way, when you're eating whole foods, you're eating your proteins, you're eating your things that you need to measure out a little bit, rice, potatoes, things like that, so that you're actually being accurate with it. You're going to want to have a food scale for that.
00:18:31
Speaker
And then when you get into this, like you're going to need to set up your macros. And a lot of these apps, they're going to help you set those things up right there. You just put in your information like your height, your weight, your activity level, your age, all those things, and it's going to spit out a number at you.
00:18:45
Speaker
These things are never going to be perfect because it can't know exactly, but it gives you a good starting point. The cool thing about actually tracking your calories is now that you have the numbers, you can always adjust those later if needed. So if it gives you a number and then you're tracking for two or three weeks and you're not really losing weight or gaining weight, And you know, maybe, okay, I need to lower this a little bit or the information that I inputted at the beginning, maybe I said that I was highly active, but those calorie numbers aren't getting me to a point where I'm actually losing weight. Maybe I need to lower that into a different level so that I'm eating less calories.
00:19:18
Speaker
Having the numbers there makes it super objective. So you're not just guessing anymore. It takes the guesswork out of it, which is why I'm a big fan of tracking calories.
Using Apps for Effective Tracking
00:19:26
Speaker
Couple of other things that i would say about setting up your macros.
00:19:30
Speaker
Some of these apps, you can track all your macros. So you can track your calories, you can track your protein, you can track your carbs, you can track your fat, you can even track other things too, like fiber and certain nutrients and things like that.
00:19:43
Speaker
When it comes to tracking calories, I personally take the approach of less is more. Unless you're somebody who's doing like a bodybuilding competition or like you're doing some sort of like endurance race where maybe you want to make sure that you are getting more carbs or something like that. I typically just focus on calories and I focus on protein. And the reason being because if you want to change the way that you look, those are the two most important things.
00:20:05
Speaker
If you're hitting your calorie goal, if you're hitting your protein goal. you're going to be in good shape. And so if you want to track other things, you can. But again, I'm a big fan of making things as simple as possible and focusing on the right things.
00:20:17
Speaker
And if you do those two things, you're going to be golden. So calories and protein. When it comes to just tips for making this easier, like there's quite a few things that I could tell you, I'm going to give you a list of some of the common things that I've heard from other
Simplifying Meal Tracking for Beginners
00:20:30
Speaker
people. And just from my own experience with tracking calories over the years to help you out with this.
00:20:36
Speaker
Simple is better, which I was just mentioning. If you're eating very complex meals, like your meals have like eight, nine, 10, 11 ingredients, it makes it more difficult to track. Can you do it? Absolutely. But especially when you when you're starting this out and you just want to simplify this and make it so it's easier to stick to and so that you cannot have to spend tons of time on this, keeping your meals simple is going to be your friend. So three, four, maybe five ingredient type of meals,
00:21:04
Speaker
Also, just eating similar meals is very helpful. So maybe you're a person who you don't mind eating the same breakfast, or you don't mind having the same lunch, or you eat a lot of the same dinners, it's going to make tracking that much easier. And then if you want to start to branch out, you can start to add in more variety or add in recipes or things like that. Which brings me to my next point in these apps, you can typically save entire meals or entire recipes so that If it's something that you cook often and it does have a lot of ingredients in it, you can just save that right into your app. So then you're not going in and individually inputting this every single time, which can be a little bit tedious and take a little bit longer and just be kind of annoying, to be honest. So once you start to add those things, if it's something that you have often, it makes it little bit easier to track. Like for me, I eat homemade pizza quite often, like probably once a week, I would say I have this homemade pizza. And when it comes to like making that crust, It's like seven different ingredients. And rather than having to go through when I'm tracking calories and find every single one of those, put the amount in there and all that different stuff. I just save the recipe in my app and it just says pizza crust and it has all the ingredients on there. And I just click that and I do it once and I'm good to go.
00:22:13
Speaker
Or if you make like crock pot meals or you make like soups or different things like that, they just have lots of ingredients go through. It's going to be tedious. The first time you do it's going take a little bit longer, but the next time you have that, it makes it that much simpler to input and to track your calories accurately.
00:22:29
Speaker
Another tip for just making tracking easier is just to meal prep. So you measure it out once and then you split these things up into portions. And now you only have to track that one single time or measure out your food that one
Meal Prepping and Planning for Tracking
00:22:40
Speaker
single time. So let's say on Sunday, you're going to make all your lunches. Well, you make your big pot of whatever you have going on or you throw all these things in the crock pot. Let's say you're doing some sort of like chicken thing or chicken dish or whatever.
00:22:52
Speaker
I just made one on Sunday. So I'll use this so i as an example. Like it had beans in there. It had some chicken in there. It had some enchilada sauce. It had some corn in there and a couple other ingredients. So I put all that in the crock pot and I knew that I was going to make four portions. So you add all the calories up, figure out the protein, all that stuff. And then you just divide that by four. And now you have that input into your app. You know how many calories each serving is. You know how much protein it is. And then you're good to go. So you measure once and then you're good.
00:23:21
Speaker
Other things that you can do to make this simpler is to enter meals or snacks in the night before or the morning of. So sometimes people get busy throughout the day and they have trouble with tracking foods and then they try to do it at the end of the night.
00:23:37
Speaker
You can do that, but I would prefer and I would highly recommend to either do it while you or are going throughout the day or do it before you actually eat the foods. And that's just a simple fact of like we forget sometimes. Like sometimes we look back. If you try to think about what you had two days ago for lunch, you probably can't remember. If you try to think back to what you had even like maybe last night, like if you had any snacks or anything like that, like it just starts to get a little bit gray in there. And like sometimes we just forget when we don't input all the things that we had before. And then you run into trouble if you're doing that too often where you're tracking calories, but you're not tracking accurately, which is a huge part of this. If you want to get the results, you have to track accurately. So if you're not like you're leaving things out, you're missing calories here or there, and then you feel like you're doing the right things, you're tracking, but now you're still not really seeing the the results or seeing the progress. That can be an issue that you start to run into. So.
00:24:28
Speaker
something that you can do to help yourself out, enter your meals or snacks or whatever the night before the morning of like, if you know, like if you meal prepped, and you know, you're going have this certain thing for lunch, you can go through the night before or the morning of and put that in there. Or if you know what you're going to have for breakfast, lunch and dinner, you can go in and put that in there.
00:24:45
Speaker
And this does a couple things for you. Obviously, you're taking care of the tracking piece, and you're just being more accurate and just planning ahead, which is awesome, but it also forces you to think about the things that you're going to be eating throughout the day, which is a big thing for a lot of people.
00:24:58
Speaker
I say this all the time, but like planning is one of the best things that you can do. But for whatever reason, we all just think that we're going to figure it out on the fly. and When you're trying to improve your eating habits, when things get stressful, when things get busy, when you're short on time, when maybe you're a little bit angry or like there's different emotions going on throughout the day, like whatever, like you had something that came up and now you're just like thinking about that thing. Like the last thing you want to be doing is like tracking your calories. So doing this ahead of time and just planning ahead of time, it helps to prevent some of those things so that when life does throw you a little bit of a curve ball or things don't necessarily go as planned, you already have this pre-plan. You've already thought about it. You've already put in the work. You've already made your meals or you've already put in your meals. So you know exactly what to do. And when you can do those things, you're going to be much more likely to be consistent.
00:25:46
Speaker
The last thing that I would say is don't try to be perfect with
Flexible Tracking Approaches
00:25:50
Speaker
all of this. Like if you're going out to eat or maybe you're getting some takeout, maybe you're eating at somebody else's house and you can't get the perfect macros of perfect tracking.
00:25:58
Speaker
Don't try to be perfect with all this because that is a quick way for people to be like, well, if I can't get all of it right. If I can't be perfect, I'm not going to do any of it all. Do not do that. There will be times where you ought to eat and a lot of restaurants, they do have the info that you can find on the website, or you can just look up in the database of whatever app you're using and find a lot of different takeouts or a lot of different restaurant food or different things like that. And you're good to go. But there will be times like maybe you're at your parents' house or grandparents or you're at a friend's house and they prepare something for you and you don't wanna ask them like about this recipe, this casserole or this soup or whatever all this stuff has in it and like you can't track it perfectly, it's not a big deal. like You skip that meal or you make your best estimate with that and then you just get back on track the next day. It's not about being perfect, it's just about being consistent and the more that you can be consistent over time, you're going to see better results.
00:26:48
Speaker
When it comes to, let's say you do go out to E and like you enter something in a database and there's like tons of different options that pop up. Some of those will be very different in calories. And so what I typically do just to be safe is rather than pick the lowest calorie thing, which would be nice, right? Like every time you like look up something, if you pick the lowest calorie thing, you're going to be more likely to stay under your calories.
00:27:10
Speaker
But if you're being realistic with yourself, you're probably going to want to pick something that's closer to the middle or even on the higher side so that you're not going over your calories all the time. If you're always picking the lowest calorie thing, but in reality that food has a lot more calories than what it says on the app,
00:27:26
Speaker
that's not helping you get to your goal. So to be safe, I typically like to air somewhere in the middle or pick something that's a little bit on the higher side of those items. That way that I know I'm just having, giving myself a little bit of wiggle room and I'm just going to be a little bit more successful with my goals. When it comes to the app, a lot of these apps will have like certified food items or items that were put in by that app or by the company because with these apps,
00:27:50
Speaker
Pretty much everybody can add foods to these apps, but sometimes people don't always enter these things accurately. So the more often that you can pick the like certified items or the items that were input from the company or through the app, you're probably going to be a little bit better off.
00:28:04
Speaker
That is pretty much all of it. I know that was a lot of information there. think the whole thing of this is to really think about tracking food as a tool.
Learning About Food Through Tracking
00:28:15
Speaker
It's a skill that you will build and get better at But the amount of things that you can learn from tracking, even if it's just like 30 days, you'll be shocked at the things that you can learn through that period of time. Like so many people have this idea that they're eating less or they can't lose weight or their metabolism is broken. But if they really just tracked for 30 days, like if they just did it honestly for 30 days, tracked everything you put in your mouth, you would look at food differently from that point. Sometimes I think about like ignorance is bliss because once you do track food, there's certain things that you'll look at and you'll be like, dang, I wish I didn't know this had this many calories in it. Or like you look at a serving size of peanut butter and you're like, dang, I've been eating four servings of peanut butter when I thought it was one serving. But that's good information to know. You can continue to just ignore that stuff or pretend that it doesn't exist. Or you can actually know the facts about it and just really understand it and then decide for yourself, OK, is it worth it in this moment to eat this high calorie food or have this certain meal or whatever? And sometimes it is like sometimes you just want to live life and you just want to eat things and you want to, you know, enjoy the food and not really think about calories or protein or macros or tracking food or anything like that.
00:29:24
Speaker
And that is 100% fine. But there's other times where you might be trying to hit your fat loss goals. You might want to really focus on dialing in your nutrition where you look at that food and you're like, I know how many calories that has in it That's not really worth it to me.
00:29:38
Speaker
And that is what tracking calories does for you. It provides you with that education to make better decisions over time that actually align with what you want to be doing. So it's not something you have to do forever. It's not even necessarily for everyone. But I think for a good majority of people, if you do have specific goals around fat loss or just improving your relationship with food and just really learning about food, tracking calories is a really ah good thing to learn and to try out for at least a period of time.
00:30:05
Speaker
With that being said, as always, the one-on-one coaching link is in the show notes. This is something that I help clients with. Typically, most of my clients, not every single client, but a very large majority of my clients will spend time tracking food just for all the reasons that I just mentioned. And then once they get to a place where they don't need it anymore or they've hit their goals or things like that, they don't use it. And then they have that skill if they ever want to come back to it. But throughout that process, there's just so much learning that happens. And it's really cool to see like when people start to make these connections about like, oh, I can eat these certain foods and still lose weight. Like that's a big one. Or they realize like, oh, this food that I was eating, it's way higher in calories than I ever thought it was. Or they're like, oh, there's certain food over here that I can eat. Like I get more full and satiated from that food. So I'm going eat that food more often. Again, the more that you can bring awareness to this stuff and and really just learn about food,
00:30:55
Speaker
the easier that this stuff gets. And then eventually you get to a point where like food and eating healthy and feeling good and hitting your goals just becomes fairly easy. But you have to go through that period of actually building that skill and actually giving this a try. And so hopefully this episode was helpful from that standpoint. I know it was a very practical and very tactical type of lesson. But I know there's a lot of people out there and I get questions about like, what should I do for eating food or should I track calories or things like that? And I think that's a really good place for a lot of people to start. So now this is out there. I can send that to those people. Hopefully you will also got a nugget or two from this. As always, I appreciate you listening and we will see you next week.