Intro
I believe that tracking calories and macronutrients is important for everyone to do at some point. I think it is a valuable tool to help teach people about portion sizes, food measurements, and it adds another aspect of accountability. In this post I will talk about why it’s important track your nutrition as a beginner as well as other instances in which it may be beneficial to track. I will also discuss some of the better nutrition tracking applications to help make things easier. If you’re already familiar with tracking your nutrition, then I would recommend skipping this post. However, if you’re someone that is unfamiliar with tracking or someone that has thought about trying it and just haven’t committed to it yet, I would advise you to read on.
Why Tracking Is Important
I have recently seen a lot of people on twitter argue against tracking nutrition and I have also seen them use this point as a way of selling their method of eating and diet plans. “I look this way and don’t track my nutrition so neither should you, buy my diet plan.” Honestly, I believe most of them probably don’t track their nutrition and they probably really do help people get results using their methods. However, I would bet at some point in their lives they have tracked their own nutrition for at least a brief period of time. Tracking calories and macronutrients can be confusing, tedious, and overwhelming for the beginner that’s just getting started. I totally understand why, however I think there are several benefits to tracking your nutrition.
Tracking your calories and macros can be a valuable learning tool. Most people have no accurate idea of the portion sizes they are consuming. Most people will either drastically under or overestimate the amount they are eating. I touched on this in an earlier post talking about how when people start a diet, they still fail the diet because they are consuming more food than think they are. A lot of people also don’t understand how to properly measure their food. Tracking your food can be a good way to learn how to properly measure food and familiarize yourself with more accurate portion sizes.
Another major benefit of tracking food is that it helps to give you an idea of what the foods you eat are actually composed of. For instance, you may eat a 6-ounce chicken breast and realize that it contains 48g of protein, or you may eat a Twix candy bar and realize that it contains 32g of carbs and 24g of sugar. Tracking will help give you a visual of the nutrients you are consuming, and I believe that seeing visual data will help you learn about foods and nutrition more quickly. Another added benefit of tracking is that it adds another layer of accountability. When you see the nutritional data every time you log your food you are less likely to sway from your diet or nutritional plan. If you are someone that decides to hire a coach it is also a valuable tool for them to refer to. It can show them how compliant you’re being and can also help them to identify why your body may be responding in a certain way. Another reason I personally find tracking nutrition beneficial when working with client’s is because it can also be used to help identify issues in a client’s blood work such as micronutrient deficiencies or other nutritional related abnormalities.
How To Track Your Nutrition
Luckily technology has made tracking our nutrition much easier than it was in the past. Now we have several different apps that can be used to quickly log your food giving you a detailed breakdown of everything from calories to macro and micronutrients in an easy to read format. Some of the popular ones that are on the app store are MyFitness Pal, Nutrition Coach: Food Tracker, MyPlate Calorie Counter, Cronometer, and Calorie Counter-MyNetDiary. These apps are all fairly similar but have a few small differences. Some provide different features like meal planning, nutrition education, workouts, and recipe ideas on top of the basic food tracking. The only ones I have spent any extensive time using are MyFitnessPal and Cronometer both of which I used solely for tracking and logging my calories and macronutrients. For simply tracking my food both of these apps have been sufficient. If you purchase the paid version of MyFitnessPal, you can use the barcode scanner to quickly find and log the foods you eat. I believe this feature is also accessible with the free version of Cronometer however MyFitnessPal seems to be a little more user friendly. I recommend trying a few of the free versions and testing them to see which interface you are the most comfortable with.
When entering your food information into these nutrition trackers it will also be important to make sure you are entering the correct measurements for what you eat. If you do not own measuring cups, I recommend buying a set and getting yourself familiar with them. Another extremely useful tool I recommend purchasing is a food scale, they are like $12 on Amazon. Weighing food is much more accurate than simply using a volume measurement. Accurately measuring your food can make a huge difference over the course of an extended period of time. If you’re consistently eating a little more or a little less than you thought that will compound over time and can have a negative impact on your results.
Why Tracking is Not the End All Be All
Now that I’ve spent this entire time trying to convince you that tracking is beneficial and that you should do it, I’m going to be hypocritical and explain why it’s not the end all be all to your success. There are other ways to achieve success with nutrition, and I myself do not track all of the time. Truth be told the only time I really track these days is when I’m trying to gain weight and size, or when I’m transitioning out of a “bulking” phase. Keep in mind though, I have spent a lot of time tracking my food in the past, so I am very familiar with the nutrient profiles of the foods I eat. I also mainly eat the same things as I talked about in “The Best Diet” post, so once I track for a few days I’m good and no longer need to track everything I eat.
Eventually you will all get to this point as well, and some of you may not even find it necessary in the first place. However, there will be several of you that greatly benefit and learn from doing it. I believe the visualization of the calories nutrients will help teach you a lot about the foods you put into your body and for those of you who have issues being compliant it will add another layer of accountability that I do not think should be overlooked.
Summary
Hopefully this helps some of you better understand why tracking your nutrition can be beneficial to your success. Tracking can be a great learning and accountability tool especially for beginners and there are several useful applications to aid you along the way. It can be tedious and annoying but it’s not something that you should have to do forever. Once you learn the ropes and build yourself a base of healthy foods you enjoy eating consistently, you should be able to adopt a more intuitive eating approach. If you have any questions, you can comment below or reach out to me on twitter and I’ll do my best to answer you. Best of luck!
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