Tracking Nutrition vs. Developing Healthy Habits.

Any personal trainers worth their salt are pretty much agreed at this point, that caloric and macronutrient intake is what defines body composition, in combination with a properly structured training plan. Gone are the days of prepping six chicken and rice meals to eat every two hours to “stoke your metabolism”. And thank god.

The internet changed fitness forever, where weight-training was previously relegated to super-strict bodybuilders who spent every waking moment thinking about what to eat, when to eat, prep, meal-prep, repeat. Access to correct information, now means that the average person can get in the best shape of their life, with a lot less overthinking and sacrifices than before.

There is certainly a case to be made for tracking calories and macros, but many opt for healthy eating habits, as they find calorie tracking develops an unhealthy obsession with food. I would argue the opposite. I believe that periodic tracking actually sets one free because they have spent the time educating themselves on what healthy eating habits look like.

Strict Tracking

If you’ve spent any bit of time tracking your nutrition you know what I mean by strict tracking but for any newbies to fitness. This is where you are weighing your food gram for gram, scanning it into MyFitnessPal, and looking to achieve a certain calorie and macronutrient goal each day. When structured correctly based on your current stats and metabolic rate, the results are truly amazing.

Education

I would always encourage anyone interested in their health and fitness, to at the very least spend some period of time tracking their nutrition, as it will help to break down a lot of the guilt associated with “dirty foods”, sugar, etc. It really proves that there is no such thing as bad food, but the devil is in the dosage. For example, the first time I ever tracked my calories for a month, I achieved visible abs whilst including sugar, pizza, and a host of other previously off-limits foods in my diet.

In this aspect, calorie tracking can be very useful in educating a new trainee where one starts seeing the forest for the trees. Once that truth has been established, it is difficult to look back.

Resetting a Baseline

A few months back I embarked on moving from Ireland to Bulgaria. A significant move on my part, given that I don’t speak the language and knew nobody in my new city. Prior to that journey, I had spent a few months tracking and was very much in a sweet spot of being able to estimate my caloric intake when I arrived. However a few months later, my lifts went to shit, I started drinking a little too much and training took a backseat with all the change that was going on in my life. No regrets though. I was busy making new friends.

Now that I am looking to lose some body fat, and regain the strength and muscle that I lost, I am tracking my calories again so that I can get back to my previous condition in as little time as possible. Tracking, measuring and re-evaluating does indeed deliver results.

A Possible Treatment for Eating Disorders

I’m no therapist or doctor, but in my youth, I did have extensive experience with disordered eating. I would binge enormous amounts of food for days at a time, then diet, and then repeat the cycle. I had such an unrealistic ideal of the kind of strict diet I would need to follow in order to lose weight, that I would go completely off the rails anytime I broke the diet. The thought of giving up certain foods for life in order to change my body made me feel hopeless and depressed, and so the cycle would continue month after month. Diet, binge, diet binge, etc.

As is the case with most disordered eaters, a need for control is commonly discussed as causality, where if one feels like they have no control over external circumstances, they can use food as a crutch for the one thing they can control. Well, I say if that is the kind of person you are, then wouldn’t it make sense to somewhat lean into this by taking complete control by knowing what goes into your body?

One could spend a lifetime trying to “eat intuitively”, but at least for me, I had to accept that I would always have to have some form of control over my nutrition, as a form of treatment. I think too much focus is spent on cure in this regard, where sufferers of EDs are encouraged to establish a better “relationship” with food. In my opinion that comes later.

If deep-seated sub-routines have developed in one’s behavior, it might be best to substitute the behavior for something that will benefit their health in the long run. Tracking calories and macros for a period of time gave me the control I was looking for, and a better body as a result. Something I could actually stick to, which never resulted in a return to the destructive disordered eating patterns.

Intuitive eating comes later as a natural consequence of tracking, as the approach to tracking becomes more flexible over time. I’d be willing to bet that all those who do suffer EDs spend a significant amount of time in their heads, so they are going to need to how much they should be eating. That perfectionist streak will always be there in my opinion, so best to channel it in a way that is not depriving the sufferer, and will benefit them in the long run.

The Case for Healthy Habits

For me, it has always been difficult to adopt healthy habits, unless I have a framework for guaranteeing results. Tracking your nutrition will deliver that guarantee. You will see results, once it is done correctly. However, one of the fears people of tracking calories is that it will negatively impact their lives because of so much time spent fixating on food.

I think it is fair to say, that that way of thinking is jumping to extremes. Tracking macros is not something that anyone does indefinitely. It comes in cycles, and it paves the way for developing healthy habits that last a lifetime. It actually delivers the ability to eat intuitively because you have spent a significant amount of time eating correctly in order to hit your macronutrient targets.

Tracking your nutrition comes in waves, but allows you to make guaranteed progress within a fixed period of time, where you can essentially eyeball it for the rest of the year, or loosely track, before coming back to tracking at a later point to re-establish a baseline or push harder for a specific result.

Like all things in life, balance is key, but balance is rarely achieved day to day. It comes in ebbs and flows. Track when you can, loosen up every now and then. I think that is the recipe for longterm success when it comes to nutrition.