Ensuring Accuracy with Your Nutritional Tracking

The reality is the vast majority of us are terrible when it comes to estimating how many calories we eat in a day.

Time and time again, I’ve had clients telling me something similar to ….

“I’m only eating 1400 calories and my body just absolutely refuses to lose weight. You suck”

However, once they become educated on how to accurately track their nutrition, they soon realize they are eating twice that amount!

Now, I firmly believe that they are never intentionally being deceptive, rather they haven't been taught how to track food intake accurately yet.

Again, I want to set the record straight, I do not believe that calorie counting every single calorie is a long term solution. This is a short term goal that will give you your biggest weapon for longevity: Awareness and knowledge!

The ultimate goal by tracking your nutrition is to build awareness and a solid nutritional foundation, not to actively track everything for the rest of your life!!

So, here’s the step by step guide to accurately track your food intake.

This is definitely one of the longer emails, yet there’s so much great information here. You’ll probably want to continue to refer to or save this email.

Step 1: Assembling your Flexible Dieting Tool Kit

  1. Have A digital food scale (this is the one I personally use and it works extremely well)

  2. Download the MyFitnessPal app.

Step 2: Learn How to use both of these Tools

  1. How to use digital Food Scale Video

    1. Here is an excellent video to show you how to exactly use your food scale

  2. How to use MyFitnessPal Video

    1. Unsure how exactly to use MyFitnessPal? Don't worry, I have you covered!

    2. Here’s an excellent video in which Tyler Mayer explains everything you’ll need to know how to use your MyFitnessPal.

Step 3: How to Weight Foods with Food Labels

  1. If the food has a label, then this will make your life so much easier. Simply, all you’ll need to do is scan the barcode with the MyFitnessPal app and the nutritional info will pop right up. Boom!

Step 4: Know your Serving Sizes

  1. This is a major key to long term success as most people do not look at it. Almost everything you’ll consume has multiple servings within it and the food label only per serving.

For example, let’s say you’re eating a pop tart. We all know that pop tarts come in packs of two and most of us would assume that a serving size would be 1 pack. However, the food label on the packeting is for only 1 pop tart.

Step 4 Measuring Foods without Food Labels

Now, what do you do if your food item doesn’t have a food label? The most common food items without a label are going to be fruits and veggies.

Now, a simple search on MyFitnessPal will yield many different options with varying amounts of calories. Choose the average amount of food and go with it. For example, if an apple’s calories are between 100 or 140 calories, go with 120 calories.

No need to overly complicate it. Select the average and move on with the rest of your life.

Step 5 Eating out at Restaurants-

How to track Macros and still have a social life

At one point, you’ll eventually have a moment in which you’ll find yourself on a diet or a meal plan and your friends will want you to join them.

Instead of responding. “sorry guys, I’m on a diet and I can’t have those types of foods, or “sorry, that doesn’t go along with my meal plan” (let’s be honest, no one wants to be that guy), this is where having a flexible dieting mindset is crucial!

This is one of the best parts of flexible dieting is the fact you can eat out and still hit your macros. This means you can still be lean while not being an antisocial hermit.

The whole purpose of adopting a flexible dieting mindset is to provide you with nutritional freedom and being able to enjoy your life.

Here are 3 tips to maximize your progress while eating out

  1. Plan ahead before you go

    1. The key to hitting your macros while eating out is to plan ahead what you're going to eat at the restaurants and plug it into MyFitnessPal

  2. Overestimating or underestimating

    1. If you are trying to lose body fat, overestimate by at least 10% on the fats and carbs number provided while underestimating the protein by 10%

    2. If you re on a lean bulk aka building muscle, then don’t stress about it!

  3. What if the restaurant doesn’t have nutritional information online?!

    1. The restaurant doesn’t have the nutritional information online, then don’t panic! You can always find a restaurant that is similar to the places you are going to.

      1. Here are some examples

        1. Chipotle for any Mexican restaurant

        2. Subway for any sub shop

        3. Pizza Hut/Dominos/Papa Johns for any Pizza

        4. PlaceIHOP/Denny’s for a breakfast restaurant

        5. Red Lobster for a seafood restaurant

        6. Five Guys for a burger restaurant

      2. I think you get the idea. Will the information be 100% accurate? Maybe? but it will help you stay on track, still have a social life, and avoid the “fuck it” stage and eat everything in sight.

Now, I want to quickly touch upon a very important point here, so I want to set the record straight.

The ultimate goal by tracking your nutrition is to build awareness and a solid nutritional foundation, not to actively track everything for the rest of your life!!

I want you to actively track your nutrition so you can roughly know how much calories and protein you’re eating so you can hit your calorie and protein targets.

That’s the ultimate goal; not becoming a slave to your scale and understanding what an actual serving size is! When you are measuring out your foods, start to take notice of what a serving size looks like for each food choice

Eventfully, you are going to be so tired of tracking every little thing you are eating that you’ll stop entering your food into MyFitnesspal. I know this because everyone will eventually run into this issue.