The quickest way to lose weight with macro tracking is to take ownership of your choices right now
Macro numbers aren’t magic. That’s right, I said it. Knowing your macros isn’t going to magically lose weight if you don’t put in the work to make them work. The truth is that like anything good in life, you have to constantly be working on your health. Macro tracking can teach you what healthy eating looks like for you, but you have to take ownership of your choices.
When I started my macro tracking journey, I had to learn this exact lesson. I was working with a macro coach, and I was getting a little bit frustrated because I felt like I was putting in a lot of work. I was doing everything that I was supposed to be doing. I was showing up, I was putting my meals in MyFitnessPal, I was planning the night before. I was doing everything that I could to get to where I wanted to go and things were not changing. I told my coach that this wasn’t working. I'm wasn’t going fast enough. I'm wasn’t getting to where I wanted to go in the time frame that I wanted to go.
She responded back with: The numbers are not magic. They only work if you work them. Just because you came here and you gave me money and I handed you some numbers doesn't mean that it's going to be easy and that everything that you do is going to cause you to lose weight and that we're not going to have any issues. The numbers only work if you work. If you don't like the rate that you're going, if you don't like what you're seeing, then you need to change what you're doing.
I had never had a coach be that direct with me - and I’ve had a lot of coaches in my life. I wanted to fight back. I wanted to show her how I was doing everything right and how she was wrong about me. She didn’t understand my situation, or my body.
I didn’t want to admit that my health and weight were in this position because of the choices I’d made. But, it was her job to challenge me. To challenge how I thought about myself, my efforts, my choices.
Instead of fighting with my coach, I had to get really really honest with myself. I started asking myself questions and having conversations with myself about are my actions in alignment with what I want? When I sat down and I got really honest with myself and started analyzing what I wanted, and my behavior and actions looked like, I realized they weren’t in alignment.
To start seeing the changes in my body I needed to start taking ownership over my choices. It wasn’t my coaches fault, it was mine.
I’m going to share the questions I asked myself with you today so that you can take a moment and have that conversation with yourself. You can’t expect to just show up and have someone else do the work for you. Your health, your nutrition is your responsibility. You need to own up to it and start making sure that your actions lead you to your desired outcome.
Are you giving macro tracking your best efforts?
You are the one with the goal. It’s not up to anyone else to make sure you plan your food, or stick to your plan. It’s your goal, it’s your responsibility to put in the effort to reach your goals.
This is a pretty easy point to start because it’s yes or no. Either you’re working your hardest or you’re not.
What trips us up here is excuses. You might say, well I tried but something got in my way. Someone wanted me to do something different.
When you give into pressure to not take care of your health, that’s still on you, sis. You are the person who makes the choice. You have to own up to that.
That being said, you can give yourself some grace. Maybe you didn’t see the pattern of being too tired to cook a healthy dinner after work, but now you do. You can see the excuse, give yourself grace, and come up with a plan to work around that excuse. But giving into the excuse isn’t a valid reason for not making the choice to put in your best effort.
Am I being honest with my tracking?
Just like you tell your kids, when they try to take a shortcut they’re only hurting themselves; you are only hurting yourself when you aren’t honest about your tracking.
Did you sneak a chicken nugget off your kid’s plate? Did you have an extra wine that you feel guilty about? Hiding your real actions and not accounting for them will keep you stuck.
Plain and simple.
You can’t pretend to be perfect when it comes to your nutrition. The results show up even when you don’t want to admit it.
I have been here and my clients have been here too.
One of my Macros Made Easy Mamas, Rebekah, is a type-A personality. She like to hit her numbers right on and one week she told me that she had forgotten to put something in her tracker. She knew adding this to her tracker would put her over and that gave her a little bit of anxiety, but then she realized that not adding it to her tracker didn’t change the fact that it happened. She knew we’d see it bump up her weight on the scale for a day or two and then it would go back down.
But the biggest realization she had was that making a mistake, or doing something outside of her boundaries just once, didn’t make her a bad person. It didn’t mean she was an unhealthy person. It didn’t mean she was a bad macro student. It didn’t mean she was a bad mom.
She was just a human trying her best who made a mistake. She put the food in her tracker. And did better the next day.
We saw the weight come and go within a day or two and it was done. No harm.
Being honest in your tracking even if you’re embarrassed about the choices you made is essential because it shows your coach how to help you! Maybe you can’t give up your coffee creamer because it’s your favorite part of your day, but it puts you over in fats every day. That’s fine! Knowing that helps me, your coach, find a way to let you have that simple pleasure while still leading your to your goals.
What excuses and stories are you telling yourself?
Your brain so desperately wants to help you be right that it will come up with completely false stories that support where you’re at and give you a reason as to why you can’t get to where you want to go. The problem is that 90% of the stories we tell ourselves aren’t true!!
You’re not stuck because your mom and grandma had the same experience with weight gain. You’re not stuck because everyone else is better at this than you. You’re not stuck because you don’t like broccoli, or chicken, or drinking your water.
You’re stuck because you’re choosing to believe those stories! You don’t have to live the same life your mom or grandma led. No one is better at making healthy choices; we all have the same ability to make choices! Liking certain foods has nothing to do with living healthy!
You need to sit down and identify what stories you’re telling yourself and where they came from. Are they stories you’ve had your whole life? Are they brand new stories? What’s the truth? Maybe you saw a macro tracker eating a certain food on Instagram and you think you need to eat that too to be a “good macro tracker.” That’s not true, mama! You need to be you and that’s all.
If a story doesn’t serve you, it doesn’t move you closer to your goals or help you make better choices then get rid of it! You don’t need to continue holding onto stories that don’t help you.
Am I doing the work to let go of those stories?
This is where mindset work comes into play. If you aren’t doing things that build you up and help you see your potential, then you’re going to stay stuck in those stories.
You should be doing something everyday that improves your mindset. A few of my favorite tools are:
Journaling
Reading books
Listening to podcasts
Listening to devotionals
Getting outdoors
Exercising
Meditation or prayer
When you take the time to focus on your heart and mind, you’ll start to naturally release some of the stories that are holding you back. Some will take more work - you might have to journal out why a story isn’t true and rewrite it so that it serves you. But I promise, this will make a bigger impact in your nutritional journey than anything else.
Losing weight is about the food, but it’s not really about the food. Until you heal your relationship with food and with yourself, you will be stuck in this endless loop of dieting. Let go of those stories and you’ll get out of that loop and start getting the results you want.
I know these questions aren’t fun to answer. Most of us will not like the answers - I didn’t when I did this with my coach. But sitting in the suck for a little while will help us take ownership of our health and will making moving forward much easier.
The good news is, you don’t have to do this on your own. I can help guide you through this journey. Schedule a free discovery call with me to get started on your nutritional journey. I’ll help guide you through these questions so that you can get the most out of macro tracking.
