5 must-know macro tracking secrets that you need to get the results you want

Macro-tracking changed my life. Before I learned about macro tracking I bounced around from diet to diet, cutting out whole food groups and overeating in other ones in the name of being healthy. I never lost weight, and if I did manage to drop a few pounds they always came back with a vengeance. Until I found macro tracking and learned what healthy eating looked like for me. Now, I want to help other mamas who are looking to lose weight and live healthier lives understand how to start macro tracking too! 

I’ve talked to a lot of women over the last eight years as a nutrition coach. A lot of women have been on the same path I was on. They are bouncing from diet to diet without getting the results that they’ve been looking for. Some of them have even done macro tracking before and they still didn’t get the results they wanted.

Can I tell you a secret? The reason macro-tracking might not have worked for you in the past is that you didn’t know these macro-tracking secrets!

If you follow these tips, I know that you’ll have a successful macro-tracking experience that will not only help you lose weight but will set you up for a healthy life! Because macro tracking isn’t just about losing weight! It’s about learning what healthy eating looks like for you as an individual!

Know where you’re starting before you get your macro numbers

The first thing I have all my new clients do is start tracking their food. It makes sense, right? If you sign up with a coach she’d want to know what you’re eating. But, the thing that throws people off, is that I don’t want them to change their eating habits at all. 

I want one week of tracking where you show me how you’re actually eating - not how you think you should be eating or how you think I want you to eat.

This is extremely important because we both need to understand where you’re at right now. It does absolutely no good to give you macro numbers to aim for if it’s too big or too small of a jump from where you’re currently at. 

For example, most people don’t eat enough protein. If you are only eating 50 grams of protein a day (that’s like maybe one serving of chicken for dinner and a yogurt at breakfast) and I tell you that you need to now hit 150 grams of protein every day, you’re not going to be able to do it. 

It’s too big of a jump! You’re going to hate me and curse my name with every bite of protein you have.

Instead, I want to start where you’re at and build you up! I want to make small increases that will help re-regulate your metabolism and help you lose weight while we either increase or decrease your food. (Yes! Sometimes increasing your food can help you lose weight too!)

Aim to be 1% better each day instead of trying to be perfect

The number one reason people fail at dieting is that they try to do too much too soon. Just like in my example before, you can’t go from 50 grams of protein to 150 grams of protein in a day. I mean, you could, but you wouldn’t like it. And when you don’t like something the odds of you sticking with it aren’t great.

Instead, I want you to make small progress every day that will add up over time. 

I call this getting 1% better. All I ask of my clients is that they do 1% better today than they did yesterday. I don’t expect them to perfectly hit their macros on their first try. In fact, I don’t expect them to perfectly hit their macros in the first month!

Perfection isn’t required for macro tracking or weight loss. What is required, is consistency! You need to make a solid effort every day to do better and then you’ll see the results you’ve always wanted. (Plus you won’t feel miserable trying to get those results! It’s a big win-win) 

Weigh your food! Don’t just measure it!

If you’ve counted calories, or done programs like Weight Watchers or Noom before, you’ve probably measured your food. Measuring your food is obviously a big part of macro tracking too but with macro-tracking, we measure in grams and ounces, not cups and tablespoons.

If you look at a food label, it tells you what a serving size is and how many calories and macronutrients are in a serving. That serving size is usually given in two different measurements: cups and grams. To accurately count your macros you need to use the grams measurement.

It may not seem like a big deal since the two measurements should be equal, but it actually makes a huge difference. If you pulled out a measuring cup and served yourself a cup of Cheerios, which should equate to 37 grams of Cheerios, and then put it on the scale, I can promise you it would not be 37 grams.

When you’re using a measuring cup there are going to be pockets of air that take up space in the cup and it can make it over or under the actual serving size. This is why it’s much more accurate to use a scale rather than measuring cups

A lot of mamas think that weighing their food on a scale is going to be more work than just pulling out a measuring cup, but it actually can save you a lot of time! The absolute best part of using a scale is that you use fewer dishes, and therefore you have to wash fewer dishes! 

Instead of pulling out a ton of measuring cups to serve your food, you can simply pour your food right into the bowl you’re going to eat from and you won’t have to dirty up any extra dishes! I rarely even use measuring cups when I cook or bake anymore because weighing ingredients up saves me so much in clean-up time!

Never (ever, ever, ever) use a macro-calculator

One of the biggest mistakes I see mamas make when they’re trying to count macros on their own is that they use macro-calculators to determine their macros. There are so many reasons I don’t recommend macro-calculators, but these are the biggest two.

First, macro-calculators don’t teach you how to navigate the four phases of macro tracking. 

Remember how I said I have all my clients track their food for a full week before we even make changes, then I move them up or down in small increments toward their macros? I do that so that we can make healthy adjustments to your macros. A macro-calculator doesn’t do that.

If you tell it that you want to lose weight, it will immediately put you into cut macros. And if you go into those cut macros immediately and try to stay there forever (because it’s not teaching you when you change your macros) you’re going to be miserable! 

Macro tracking isn’t about hitting some magic numbers that you set on day one and never change again. You should be adjusting your macros every few weeks to keep seeing progress.

Second, macro calculators aren’t set up to support women’s hormones. Women’s bodies process and use fat in different ways than men’s bodies. One of the most important functions of fat in women is for balancing hormones.

I’ve seen too many women get fat numbers from a macro calculator that are way, way, way too low. I don’t like taking women under 45g of fat. And we only get that low when you’re in a cut. You should not be aiming for less than 45g of fat for more than a few weeks.

But macro calculators will set fat numbers without considering this. Living in lower fat numbers like this can cause real issues down the road. Please, don’t cut below 45g without consulting a coach or doctor.

If you have never macro-tracked before, then you need a coach to guide you through it. I teach busy mamas how to eat in different stages of tracking (because you don’t necessarily need to cut or restrict to lose weight!) so that they can lose weight, have energy, build muscle and hit any other health goals they have.

Track everything - even when you’re “being bad”

Accountability is everything in macro-tracking. The reason I have my clients track all their meals, snacks and drinks is because we need the data to understand why your body is doing what it is.

A lot of women don’t want to admit when they eat outside of their boundaries. They feel like it makes them a bad person if they fall to kid pressure and order a pizza instead of cooking dinner. But mama, that doesn’t make you a bad person or a bad mom.

I believe that there are no good or bad foods. Just food accountability. 

Mama, I get that you’re busy and sometimes you’re barely keeping your head above water. Sometimes ordering a pizza is how we make it through the day. That’s totally fine. 

But if you really want to understand your health and learn how to get the results you want, then you have to hold yourself accountable for all your choices. The good and the not-so-good. 

Tracking your pizza on a stressful night is going to give us insight into you and your body. It helps us understand why the scale went up for a few days or why you were still starving after a few slices. (it’s because you didn’t get enough protein, by the way!)

When you track everything you start to see patterns and then you can fix them! If you realize that every Wednesday night you’re eating out because you’re too tired to cook, you can start to plan around that. Maybe you prep food the day before, or you research what restaurants would fit into your macros. Then you can make changes that will lead you to the results you want!

I don’t want you to track your food to make you feel guilty about some choices! I want you to understand yourself and why you make the choices you do! That’s how you go from dieting to changing your lifestyle.

Bonus: Healthy living is about more than macros

I couldn’t let you walk away without this last bonus tip! Mama, healthy living is about more than just hitting your macro numbers. 

Healthy living is about more than just going to the gym and eating certified organic foods all the time!

The reason that all the diets have failed you in the past isn’t that you didn’t know these five tips. It’s that you didn’t address all the issues outside of food. You didn’t address why you turn to cookies and ice cream when you’re stressed. Or why you don’t eat anything when life gets busy.

There are so many emotions that lie behind the food. I always say, it’s about the food but it’s not really about the food because yes, we need to learn how you fuel our bodies, but if we don’t address all the heavy, emotional ties we have with food, we’ll never truly change.

In my Macros Made Easy program, I include a mindset lesson every week because if you don’t work on your mindset and how you feel about food, then you can’t overcome the patterns that got you into this place.

It may sound crazy or a little woo-woo but I promise you that including mindset work into your nutritional program will be the game changer you didn’t know you needed!

I can help you address both food and emotions so that you can finally lose weight, feel strong, and have the energy to run your busy life! Schedule a free discovery call today to get started.

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