**This was a training pulled from my pop-up 4 day nutrition challenge**
Ever find yourself puzzled over how to track your meals without becoming overwhelmed or losing your mind? We've got you covered! Our Food Freedom series launches with a candid exploration of various food tracking methods to suit your unique health and fitness journey. Whether you're a newbie feeling daunted by the idea of measuring every bite or a veteran dieter on a deadline, we're here to help you find the sweet spot for your lifestyle. From intuitive eating to the precision of meticulous tracking, we dissect how each technique can align with your personal goals, and we introduce a clever hand portion method for those on-the-move portion estimations that sync with your body's needs. The takeaway? Flexibility is key; as your life and ambitions shift, so can your approach to tracking.
Join our enlightening chat as we navigate the digital landscape of nutrition tracking within fitness apps, where a supportive community and challenges make the journey less solitary and more engaging. Alongside features like a photo food diary, we discuss the crucial role of macronutrients in not only managing your calorie count but truly nourishing your body. We break down loose tracking – hitting those calorie and protein targets with a wiggle room for daily intake – and for the goal-oriented, we outline the full tracking method that offers predictability by closely observing all macros. Throughout the conversation, I'll be your guide, sharing how to harness the power of the app to make your nutritional goals not only attainable but downright manageable. Tune in to empower your approach to food and reclaim your food freedom!
**This was a training pulled from my pop-up 4 day nutrition challenge**
Ever find yourself puzzled over how to track your meals without becoming overwhelmed or losing your mind? We've got you covered! Our Food Freedom series launches with a candid exploration of various food tracking methods to suit your unique health and fitness journey. Whether you're a newbie feeling daunted by the idea of measuring every bite or a veteran dieter on a deadline, we're here to help you find the sweet spot for your lifestyle. From intuitive eating to the precision of meticulous tracking, we dissect how each technique can align with your personal goals, and we introduce a clever hand portion method for those on-the-move portion estimations that sync with your body's needs. The takeaway? Flexibility is key; as your life and ambitions shift, so can your approach to tracking.
Join our enlightening chat as we navigate the digital landscape of nutrition tracking within fitness apps, where a supportive community and challenges make the journey less solitary and more engaging. Alongside features like a photo food diary, we discuss the crucial role of macronutrients in not only managing your calorie count but truly nourishing your body. We break down loose tracking – hitting those calorie and protein targets with a wiggle room for daily intake – and for the goal-oriented, we outline the full tracking method that offers predictability by closely observing all macros. Throughout the conversation, I'll be your guide, sharing how to harness the power of the app to make your nutritional goals not only attainable but downright manageable. Tune in to empower your approach to food and reclaim your food freedom!
Let me open this up. Hello guys, and welcome to day one of the food freedom series. I wanted to start this series off with showing you how to track your food. Okay, because, just to put it plainly, if you're not tracking your food in some way, you're not going to be able to understand what you're eating. You're not going to be able to understand what you're eating. So there is a spectrum. Okay, we have a spectrum here I'll make my face a little smaller that I created for you guys, and at the top we have things that are less precise, and the further we go down it gets more precise. And let me also say that the less precise you are with tracking your food, the less precise you are going to be with your results, which is okay. So if you're somebody that maybe is triggered by weighing your food, tracking your food, you know down to the gram. That just stresses you out, then just know that the less precise you are, you're probably not going to. You know, oh, I'm losing two pounds a week, like on the dot. It's going to be a little bit more fluid and may take a little bit longer, but usually people who have that more intuitive eating mindset are looking for more generalized health and fitness goals, which is okay. Maybe you want more energy, maybe you want better blood work, maybe you are looking to lose some weight, but it doesn't have a specific timeline. If you're somebody that's like, hey, I'm ready, I'm looking to lose 20 pounds in X amount of time, tracking is going to be for you. You're going to want to track and be more precise towards that part to hit your goals. You're willing to do what it takes and you just want to reach that goal. So you can see that spectrum there, right, and so that's the first thing to kind of get through your mind there.
Speaker 1:
But let's kind of break down the different things. And another thing I do want to note is that you can float between these. If you pick one thing, you will not necessarily be there forever. Just like how life changes and ebbs and flows, so will your ability to track. Like I was tracking pretty strictly for about a month or so, and the past week or two I've taken a break from it, mainly just because I've been really busy. But I have the tools to be able to still stay on track while not physically logging, and I've maintained my weight and we'll get into that a little bit as well. So you might start at intuitive eating and then you go to full tracking for a little bit and then you go back to intuitive eating or maybe you do the hand portion method. So it will be an ebb and flow. So let's take a look here at the intuitive eating. So that's the first one.
Speaker 1:
Ie you may have heard of intuitive eating, but pretty much what it is is an approach to eating based on one's internal needs, whether physical, emotional or other influences. So essentially, you listen to your hunger cue, you listen to your body and you eat when you feel like eating, and if you're not hungry, your hunger cues, you listen to your body and you eat when you feel like eating, and if you're not hungry, you don't eat. Sounds simple. But the issue with intuitive eating usually at least at first is that when we first start intuitive eating, our hunger cues are messed up, whether it be from the types of foods that we're eating, or maybe we were really deprived from eating. So our body's like we're hungry. So we might overeat and initially put on some more weight because our body's still regulating our health hormones. But if you are patient and you're really looking to kind of reset your body. Over time, your body's hunger cues should level out and that weight should also balance out. But you may go through a period of extra weight gain, eating more as you're kind of finding where your natural set point is and your body cues. So that is something to think about.
Speaker 1:
As far as intuitive eating goes, but who is it for? It's great for those who feel stressed with tracking and weighing food, but it's a great option for those with disordered eating habits, less healthy relationships with food or have suffered from an eating disorder in the past. And let me also say that it is illegal for me to work with people who have eating disorders. That is meant for the medical professionals. So, looking at a nutritionist I am certified in nutrition I just can't write meal plans or deal with medical conditions specifically like, hey, this is what you should be eating for your diabetes and things like that. So that would be. You know, maybe you need to seek a little bit more guidance if that's somebody, if you fit into that box, but otherwise, intuitive eating would be great. As just to, maybe you want to take some time to be more in tune with your body, get more intuitive with your body, learn your body signals and you just want to take that more kind of relaxed, intuitive for lack of a better term approach to eating. Okay, so that's intuitive eating.
Speaker 1:
Then, a bump up from that is the hand portion method. You may have heard of this before, actually have a guide that's going to break it down a little bit more. You use your hand to portion out food groups to create balanced meals. So you know our hand. It's a great tool because one we carry it with us everywhere. So even when you're out to eat, you can use this method. You're at a friend's house, grandma's house, whoever it is, you can use your hand.
Speaker 1:
And the cool part is is if you're a larger human, that requires more food, your hand's probably going to be bigger. If you're a smaller human that requires less food, your hand's going to be smaller. So the portioning works out really well and it's really simple. And you know we use our palm to estimate the size of protein that we should be eating. Maybe you have a cup hand for carbs, a thumb serving of fat, usually a cup or two cupped handfuls for veggies and fruits and things like that. So that's a great way to kind of eyeball portions without physically like measuring stuff out. The hand method is great for that and it's great for those who feel stressed again by tracking and weighing food and it's, again, great for on the go, okay. So hand portion is very direct, it's very simple to learn, but, again, I will have a guide and a supplementary training for that. If you want to dive deeper into that method in particular, okay and that's another reason if you are in the tracking app, if you're coaching with me or you have app access Side note, I will say, if any of you do want to utilize my coaching app as far as tracking food, keeping your stats using the meal plan generator, getting access to some fit at home workouts so you can track some workouts in there, sync up your watch, all that stuff it is $25 a month, okay, so it's pretty good deal.
Speaker 1:
You know no coaching, but you get a lot of great features and I'm running challenges and we have a group chat going and I'm trying to bring more of an experience to that. In April I would like to start a monthly challenge, so that should be fun for everybody, who's in the app, clients or not, okay, but if you are using the built-in food tracker within the app, you could use the hand portion method because there's a way to just take photos. You don't have to actually log your foods but create a photo food diary and if you simply take photos of your foods, you can kind of see the portions, you can see the balance of the meals, and that would be, I would say, a form of intuitive eating hand portion and I would also say have a photo food diary. So that kind of you know goes with these two here. Okay, then we have loose tracking, okay. So this is a step up.
Speaker 1:
This is getting into tracking your macros, which, uh, for those of you who don't know, macronutrients, if you look on your nutrition label, all foods are made up of three major nutrients, or macronutrients right, big nutrients, macronutrients right, big nutrients. Macronutrients proteins, carbohydrates and fats. Those are the essential ones to keep our bodies going. Okay, protein good for recovery, muscle and keeping us full. Carbs is that quick energy. And fats are to help regulate hormone health. Okay, so those are the big three. Micronutrients is everything else sugar, fiber, your vitamins and minerals, all that fun stuff. Those are micronutrients important also, but they're just kind of sprinkled in, right?
Speaker 1:
So all of your foods are made of protein, carbs and fats. Some are strictly just protein, like egg whites, for instance, is a perfect example. Some are just carbs, some are just fats, some are more dominant in other macronutrients than others, but it's really great to track because every food is made up of that and it's a really easy universal system as opposed to, maybe using Weight Watchers not opposed to Weight Watchers but I always ask the question like what if Weight Watchers was to go away? Today they have their own point system and it's like what if it were to go away or you were eating? Maybe you travel to another country and you're eating somewhere where the point system doesn't quite work. It's like how are you able to translate that? So like a nutrition label is you know everything's made of calories. It's just scientifically established. Everything's made of protein, carbs and fats and it's just there. That is what it's made of and you'll always be able to reference it. So just something to keep in mind that you'll always have that to fall back on, regardless when you're eating your food.
Speaker 1:
Okay, but calories and protein is usually a nice lenient method. So hitting your calories because we want to consume just enough food, not too much, not too little, so our overall calories will determine that. And protein. I put protein in the forefront. Protein is always queen because, again, protein keeps us full. Most of us tend to under-eat on protein. We miss the mark on protein. So if we track our protein and we hit our calories, more likely than not we are going to hit our carbs and fats to some degree and they can balance out. You can be a little bit more flexible with how much of those you get. But if you hit your protein and calories, you're going to be pretty spot on with your goals. Okay With that. When you're tracking, everybody is a little bit different if you've talked to any other coaches or you've seen or worked with other coaches. But my rules that I like to follow is you have a good gold star day if your plus or minus about 100 to 150 calories. So let's say your goal is 1900 calories. If you are at 2000 or 1800, up to 2050 and 1750, you're technically within your goals. Okay, because it's flexible.
Speaker 1:
We're not perfect food, you know there's. You got to account for room for error and to measure everything out down to that perfectness. Unless we're like a competitor, a fitness competitor, it's not necessary. You can have that little range of error because some days you're going to be over, some days you're going to be under, and it does balance out. We look at the average over days, right, not just one single day. We don't isolate that one day. And then same thing with the grams for protein, and this goes for carbs and fats too. If you're plus or minus 10 within 10 grams of your goal, you're usually pretty good and the app does a great job at this. I can actually change how strict your variance is for your goals, but if you hit a gold bar within the app, that means you hit within your range. If you get all gold bars, you get a nice little gold star. Red bar means that you are over your goal and blue means you're under. So it's really nice. It's a nice visual in there to see where you're at.
Speaker 1:
Okay, so who is the calories and protein? Good for the loose tracking. This is great for those with more specific body goals, but may feel overwhelmed by tracking the full calories. Right, because, again, I have tried many different methods of tracking and eating, food and dieting and I can tell you that tracking your food this way is the most accurate and it's going to get you the most predictable results. Hence why bodybuilders do weigh their food down to the gram and they're very, very strict with it because they know what's going in and out and it's the best way to reach a certain goal. Okay, then we have, at the very end, full tracking calories and total macros. So tracking and weighing out food to hit calories, protein, carbs and fats plus or minus that 100 to 150 calories, and then the plus or minus 10 grams for all macros. And let me also say somewhere in between, because there's definitely a lot of other little methods in between. These guys, these are just the big four I wanted to point out to you.
Speaker 1:
Within tracking there's even some variation, right, like, maybe when you're measuring something you use a measuring cup, okay, like, if something's half a cup, yeah, like, measure it. I will say it would be interesting for you to weigh it, though, because on a nutrition label you'll usually see half a cup. In parentheses it might say 100 grams. Right, that's how you weigh it. So if you zero out your little scale and you weigh out 100 grams, that's how you're going to get the most accurate portion. Okay, but I get it. If you're on the go, maybe you don't have a food scale, maybe you're just mentally like I'm not weighing it out today, that's fine, just know it'll be slightly less accurate.
Speaker 1:
Other things like Oreos come to mind, even though we probably shouldn't be eating too many Oreos, you know, it'll say two Oreos as a serving, like you don't need to weigh that out, they're pre-portioned, they're going to be about the same size. You're fine just being like yep, one, two. Or pretzels it might say, hey, 17 pretzels as a serving size. Count them out. You know them out. You know that's how you can measure it.
Speaker 1:
Some things don't necessarily need to be weighed, but some it's important to weigh them. Things like peanut butter, um, when you have a tablespoon it's very easy to get like a heaping rounded tablespoon. That's not a true tablespoon. Grams. Weighing it by grams would be your most accurate. So usually those like liquid, semi-solid things like yogurt and things like that, if it's not pre-portioned, um, trying to weigh it out, avocado, um, shredded cheese, things that can kind of get a little less precise, I would recommend weighing out so you can get a true portion, because it's really easy to um underestimate or overestimate. I know, for me, I always talk about this the shredded cheese is 28 grams as a serving and I always weigh it out, because before, when I was just sprinkling it on, I was probably getting about two to three servings. So instead of 120 calories, I was getting like two 300 plus calories, and I was just thinking I was hitting a hundred calories. So that could easily prevent you from hitting your weight loss goals. So definitely something to think about there as well the level of your tracking and how accurate you are with your tracking. Okay, the level of your tracking and how accurate you are with your tracking Okay.
Speaker 1:
But who is the full tracking for? It's those who feel comfortable tracking and weighing their food Great to start out with to really deep dive into what you're eating, with the goal to shift away to less intensive tracking methods. So let me say that again if you've never tracked your food before, you're not really going to know if it's for you. So I encourage you guys or maybe you used to track and then you fell off Anybody who's curious and not opposed to full tracking, I strongly encourage you to give it a chance again.
Speaker 1:
It is a learning experience, it is a skill. Like anything. It will take some time. There's going to be times where you don't track everything. You fall off, you mess up, you know, you go over, you don't hit your goals. It's gonna get frustrating sometimes but you will learn and once you get that skill, it's really powerful and that's why I really teach it, cuz I truly believe it's the best, best, best, the best method to track your food and it gives you the most freedom.
Speaker 1:
Because we were just talking in our group chat on the app about like what we slip up with and one girl was saying you know, I eat a bacon, egg and cheese on the weekends and I said, well, you could probably make that fit your macros if you know how much is in there. You know, plan your day around it and you could be pretty close to your goals if you just log it and then that way you'll be mindful the rest of the day. So it's really really powerful. I've had people who eat Chick-fil-A, eat meals out, whatever, and they log it and then they still hit their goals because they know what to eat to still hit those goals, based off of, you know, weighing food out and portioning and I do it myself and it truly does give you that food freedom. So definitely go into it with an open mind.
Speaker 1:
Again, for people who have never tracked before and just kind of eat. It's very eye-opening as well. It'll be like whoa I didn't realize I was eating this many carbs or whoa I didn't know this had many cap, this many calories, or whoa I'm really under eating. It's just a totally eye-opening experience because you're truly just laying it out and going this is, this is what I'm eating, this is what's made of what I'm eating, these are the nutrients, this is how much calories, this is how much protein. And you get to look at it you know it hits you in the face but again go into it with the goal that you're going to shift away from it, because the goal of tracking is to create balanced meals and have go-to balanced meals.
Speaker 1:
So I could say, oh, like when I combine breakfast A, lunch B and dinner C, I will hit my macros. And then you don't have to log it because you know from doing it so much what the portions are, you can eyeball it, you know what to pick, you know how to make healthy swaps and you can generally you know briefly do it in your head and be like, yeah, I'll be good for the day. Okay, so that's kind of the goal to to shift away and then revisit it as needed. Or maybe there's a new food and you want to check the calorie or nutrition count, um, but it really is knowledgeable and it gives you the tools to learn how to create balanced meals. Because that's another big thing I'm seeing pop up, even in these diets, um, the trendy diets and things people just simply aren't eating enough of the right foods to keep them full. They might be hitting their calorie goals, they might be making all these fancy low caloriecalorie, low-sugar tastes-great meals, but at the end of the day, they're still hungry, they're still unsatisfied and it's not balanced. And tracking your macros will show you that and give you the power to do that and make the right choices.
Speaker 1:
Okay, so, yes, that is the spectrum. Nothing is, you know, better than the other. Like I said, just know that these will produce different outcomes. If you eat on the less precise end, you're going to get less precise results. So it's all about your personal goals, it's all context. What is your goal? Do you have a more strict goal or a more generalized goal? What are you comfortable with? And think about this. So you know, your little homework for me is to simply just look at these and think about which method you want to try, and feel free, if you're comfortable, comment below um or in the facebook group, because you're probably watching this on loom, but comment back in the facebook group under this post. Uh, which method you're either currently using or which method you want to lean into and try right now and share it with the group. All right, um, but other than that, that's all I got for you today. Thanks for tuning in and we will chat soon. Bye.
