As a macro coach, my job is to help you get your food dialed in to get you to your goals, and your job is to know what you like to eat! Oh, and be diligent in your tracking and education around macros :)
Often, my clients come to me feeling completely overwhelmed, and asking them to do more as part of their health journey, just isn't something they want to hear. I get it. I embrace that. But I also recognize from my experience with coaching 100s of people, that my most successful clients track their macros.
While there are lots of different ways to track your food, if you want the most accurate feedback, you gotta get out that food scale! Sure, there are tools such as hand portion guides, and estimating portions based on your past knowledge and experience, but no one has guesstimated their way to the body they want or the health outcome they desire.
So, while you won't need to track macros for the rest of your life, you do have to track them to get educated. You should plan to track for about 3 months to have enough information to form a picture. In fact, I will say with complete confidence that my most successful "intuitive eaters" started as macro counters, and were consistent for at least six months before they moved away from weighing and measuring their food.
What Scale Should I Use?
The first thing you'll need is a food scale. I recommend this one: Food Scale
You don't need to pick up that specific scale, but you do need a scale that has a TARE button and weighs in grams and ounces.
Now that you have a tool, let's use it!
Using MyFitnessPal Premium:
I've used MyFitnessPal for a decade alongside other apps like Loseit, Chronometer, and a few others, and I can say that MFP has done a good job over the years of streamlining things and making their app user-friendly, and the data collection process as easy as is available. For our coaching purposes, I will require you to use MyFitnessPal as well. If you'd like to pay for the Premium version, I highly recommend it. It's a good investment. (This is not sponsored, I wish it was!)
My clients often as me if they should weigh their food cooked or raw. I recommend weighing your food raw unless it is meat. When we cook food, the weight will change due to water loss, and for most foods, you'll get more accurate results if you're weighing your food raw.
For meat, weigh it cooked, and when you search in MyFitnessPal, always search for the cooking method along with the food. For example, search "grilled chicken" if your chicken was grilled. Search "baked chicken" if your chicken was baked.
Units of measurement:
I recommend using grams as your unit of measure. When you refer to food labels, you'll see that the serving size is always listed in grams.
In the example above, the serving size is listed as 55 grams. I like using grams because I may not want an entire serving, but I want to know how many calories/macros are in a smaller amount. Here is a video on how to scan your food, using the MyFitnessPal Premium service:
This is the simplest approach to counting macros-- adding food as you go. While this is the simplest, and a great way to start, most of my clients struggle when recipe creation is involved.
Recipes:
My best tip for recipes is once again, to use the Premium subscription. It's worth the $50 dollar annual investment for the ability to see your macros in grams and percentages, as well as the quick add calories function, create recipes you can edit for serving sizes, and create a library of your own meals that work for you.
Here is how you add a recipe from the internet:
The most important part of adding recipes from the web is to double-check the ingredients that matched. Take your time to do this initially, as you don't want to build out recipes that are inaccurate. If you take the time initially to make sure everything is correct, this will be a reliable library you'll start to build. I also really like that you can just save this, but edit it in the future for serving sizes or ingredients.
Adding a recipe you have is done similarly, just choose "Enter Ingredients Manually" instead of "Add from the Web". You can edit your own recipes the same way you do for the recipes that come from the internet. This way you can keep old favorites, but make them suited toward your goals. Again, always check that your ingredients match what you intended to add.
"Quick Add" function:
This is a useful function if you're using recipes that have the macros listed, such as this one: Low-Calorie Carmelitas
You'll notice that the macros are already broken down in the recipe, so for ease, here is how to add quick calories, along with your macros so you're accounting for everything you're eating.
I also like using the quick add function for Alcohol--yes, those calories and macros count, too! Alcohol is a funny macro, it contains 7 calories per gram. Fat contains 9 calories per gram, and carbs and proteins contain 4 calories per gram.
So, as you can see, alcohol is quite calorie dense, nearly as calorie dense as fats are. When adding alcohol, I suggest you take calories from your carbs, or fats, not proteins. To do this, take the total calorie content of your drink and divide it by 4 if you're going to count it towards your carbs, and divide by 9 if you're going to count it towards your fats.
This covers the high-level details around accurately counting your macros. Yes, questions always come up and please reach out if you need specific help, but this is a great way to double-check that your calories and macros are getting accurately entered and accounted for.
The final step? Give your macros 4 weeks before you adjust. Getting to your goal isn't going to be linear, no matter what your goal is. Keeping track diligently and without judgment for 4 weeks before you shift your macros, is vital!
If you have questions about how to count your macros, or what your macros should be, please reach out! I would love to chat with you and determine if my coaching services would help you reach your goals.
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