Tired Of Tracking Your Food? Try This Instead
Written by Kim McLaughin

Tired of tracking your food?

Tracking your macros, or calorie counting, is a widely used method for nutrition accountability and guidelines. Apps and trackers might make life a bit easier, but tracking burnout is real.

If tracking your food causes you a major headache, or if you’ve been doing it for a long time and you find it’s causing you more anxiety than less anxiety: you might need a tracking break.

But won’t I fall off track if I don’t log all my food?

This might be the assumption when tracking is all you’ve known, but having healthy guidelines and habits to fall back on can help you stay on track without having to log every single calorie.

Use these guidelines when you need a break from tracking

Here are the guidelines you need to know to eat healthy (in order of importance):

Total Calories are what matter for weight loss

Calories in have to be less than calories out to lose weight. Period. End of story. The more you move, the more calories you can consume and not have it turn to fat which is one of the reasons I would NOT have you drop the workouts. BUT keep in mind, a typical person only burns about 1200-1400 calories without working out …if you add an hour workout to that you are only burning an extra 200-300 calories (total 1500 calories). The movement you do outside of the workout (the other 23 hours of the day) is going to be the majority of the calories that you would be able to add. If you’re not moving outside of the workout (ie- walks, getting outside, super active job, etc) then keep your calorie goal 1500-1600 per day.
If something doesn’t come with a label, that’s where the tracking app can come in handy — type in your best guess as to what it is and see what the calorie count is. For example — Carne Asada burrito. I would type in Carne Asada burrito into Macros First and take a look at the HUGE variety of options and choose one on the higher end as far as calories to see how much you “could” be using up of your daily balance.

Protein intake matters

Protein is one of the hardest macronutrients to break down so you are burning calories when you consume protein. It also contains 9 essential amino acids that cannot be made by your body and they essential to maintaining and building muscle. The more muscle you have the better for a HUGE number of reasons — overall health, longevity, calories burned daily, ageing, etc.
As long as your total calories are accounted for, eating a lot of protein is a GREAT idea — but also see #3 and #4

Fruits and Vegetables should make up at least half of every snack or meal.

The micronutrients found in fruits and vegetables are not easily replicated. Even if you supplemented with a green drink or other pills and liquids, it is not the same as consuming those vitamins and minerals from the plants themselves. Your body needs those micronutrients to function optimally

Anything that comes in a package is considered processed — avoid as much processed foods as you can

Just because something says “high protein” on the package does not mean it’s good for you. Take a look at the ingredients, the added sugars, and the fat content to determine if something is “healthy” or not. All three of those things should be very minimal for a packaged food to be considered healthy. Ex — whey protein powder typically has 3-5 ingredients (whey protein, salt and some sort of flavoring), 1-3 g fat per serving, 0 added sugars

Follow these guidelines to give yourself a mental break from tracking your food

If you follow these guidelines, and eat until you’re at a 7 out of 10 on a fullness scale, you shouldn’t skip a beat with your nutrition. Taking a break from tracking doesn’t mean you can never go back, it just means you take the pressure off of yourself for a bit and rely on healthy habits instead.

Tired Of Tracking Your Food? Try This Instead