The Tea with Tina
The Tea with Tina is going to be your new favorite weekly chit-chat that will feel like a good, juicy sit-down with your BFF. This podcast isn't your average (and boring) radio talk show-styled podcast. We dig deep, get personal, and have lots of fun along the way. Hear some relatable stories and a different perspective on various topics from health and fitness to pop culture. I am Tina Wieland, a certified fitness trainer and nutrition coach. Grab your caffeinated drink of choice, get comfortable, and be ready to hear the TEA.
The Tea with Tina
198 | Do I Have to Track Macros Forever? NO--here's how.
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Ever feel like you're in a never-ending cycle of counting macros and calories? Let's break down that wall together! In the latest episode of Tea with Tina, we explore the ins and outs of tracking your food intake and discuss how it doesn't have to be a lifelong commitment. I'll be sharing my personal insights on using tracking as a tool for empowerment, helping you to understand your nutrition on a deeper level. Whether you're a macro-counting veteran or a newbie curious about serving sizes, this chat is your ticket to nutritional enlightenment.
Get cozy with your beverage of choice and join us as we navigate the spectrum of food tracking commitment. From the meticulous bodybuilders to those who feel bogged down by numbers, I'll reveal there's a method for everyone. Plus, don't miss out on a sneak peek into my upcoming free four-day nutrition experience, where I'll be serving up my best tips, recipes, and alternatives to tracking. It's all about finding balance and making informed choices for your health and fitness journey, and I'm here to guide you every sip of the way.
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Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the Tea with Tina podcast. Today we're chatting about when you track macros are you going to be tracking them forever, and what you can do and what your different paths are with macro and calorie tracking. All right, let's dive in. Welcome to the Tea with Tina, your favorite podcast, where we talk all things health, fitness, lifestyle and maybe a little bit of tea gets spilled. We chat all about this in a super casual environment, so grab your beverage of choice, sit back, relax and enjoy, okay guys.
Speaker 1:So before I get started for my macro trackers out there, if you are listening in real time, I am hosting a free four day nutrition experience. It's going to be great. I'm going to be dropping all sorts of useful tools and teachings for you to wrap your head around pretty much how I teach tracking food and nutrition, and there's more than one way to do it, and I'm going to give you all of my best tips, tons of recipes and things like that. So if you are interested in that, we will be starting next week. So check out the link, the sign up link, in the description box below. It's free to join. Free to sign up, you know. Snag your spot if you're totally lost on nutrition, because every time I ask, like what do you struggle with most? It's always nutrition. If I'm like, what do you prefer, or which ones do you struggle with, more workouts or nutrition, it's always nutrition. So I know you're probably struggling, and even if you need just a refresher, this will be a great experience, all right. So, aside from that, tracking, tracking, tracking what do we do when we track our calories and our macros and we weigh our food? Is this something that's meant to be forever? No, and something I want you to frame in your mind is that calorie tracking and macro tracking is not a diet, it's a tool. It is a tool. Okay, you are simply measuring the food that you're eating, and that's why I love this method, because it's truly the most accurate method. You know, when you weigh out your food to the gram, you are going to get the most accurate serving of foods compared to eyeballing it. Sometimes you could be 200 plus calories off. You may think you're eating a certain serving size, but when you weigh out what an actual serving size is, that gives you a lot of knowledge and power, right? So what do you do when you don't want to track forever.
Speaker 1:I will say that everybody's different here. There are some people that grasp onto the numbers game and the tracking game and they're very robotic about it and they love it. And you know they just go at it and it's like mindless to them, right? Bodybuilders are a great example of this. It's just so mindless. Others struggle with it and I will say I think it's worth at least trying, if you've never tried it before, for at least like two to three months, maybe even more, maybe up to six months, just to see, because you know there's a little bit of a learning curve to it, like anything, like when you went to work out and you know you check your form and you weren't perfect with things and you got better over time. That's how tracking is and you know if it really stresses you out and you feel like it's just not a good fit for you. There are other options and that's actually something I'm going to be talking about in my free nutrition experience as well the spectrum of food tracking and you know what levels you can be at. But you know, try it out, maybe three to six months, see where you're at, okay, and based off this, okay, I was in there with some food going off of psymy ventilator on a Business Manager at DeWish for a couple of weeks with the. This is where we kind of start to phase out Okay, and I will say I like to reference it and continue to reference this as a tool your macro tracking and your calorie tracking, because you're gonna routinely refer to it.
Speaker 1:But it doesn't mean that like, oh my God, I'm gonna be doing it for 30 days in a row now. Like, let me give you an example. So I've been tightening up my macro tracking mainly because I need enough food to fuel my body for the workouts I'm doing. But I also wanna like lean out, almost like a body re comp, so I'm keeping my protein high. I wanna add more muscle but cut fat. Okay, and it's been going great.
Speaker 1:When was it? I tracked all last week. I'm recording on a Monday. So Monday through Friday I was pretty good with my tracking. Friday I was really tired and I crashed and I would say Friday night was my kind of treat meal. We got some pizza and I did not track it. Okay, saturday I was mindful of my portions and the food I ate.
Speaker 1:Because I've been tracking for so long, I know when I make X breakfast, it's gonna hit these macros. It's gonna be high in protein because I've been tracking it for so long, it's a staple meal of mine. And then we got Chick-fil-A right and I know how many calories are in Chick-fil-A. So I in my head kind of did some quick mental math Now, are the protein, carbs and fats gonna be perfect? No, when I'm mental mathing it, I just try to stick around my calorie goal, right.
Speaker 1:And then Sunday, yesterday, I really got back onto my routine and again I was making mindful choices but I didn't track. And then today's Monday, and I'm gonna go back on tracking, okay, so can you see how that would work right, like I kind of essentially take for the most part I take weekends off. But I take weekends off because I've been tracking for so long that I know what meals essentially would fit my macros and that's kind of the goal. That's the goal with tracking calories in macros. You wanna see, we kind of create these go-to meals for you and I like to have like about 30 meals in rotation for like breakfast and lunch, and of course the dinners are gonna vary a little bit more, but I like to have them in rotation in snacks, because then you go oh yes, like these are balanced, these hit my macros. So when I have breakfast, a lunch C and this dinner, I can just adjust the portioning to fit my macros, I'm good. And see how that starts to become mindless, right, you start to kind of see the patterns and you just fit them into the boxes.
Speaker 1:You would maybe pick up your phone for some tracking if you're like ooh, you know, we're out and about, we're at the gas station, let me see where my macros at. I'm really low on protein, so I think I wanna pick up a Fairlife shake that has 42 grams of protein and then I'm gonna get like a salad and use the dressing because I need some healthy fats. So you would use it routinely, right? That's kind of the goal, I would say, the step from people tracking seven days a week to maybe four to five and then eventually three, and then there's some people that just don't track altogether.
Speaker 1:I would say, once you're kind of in maintenance mode, you don't really track because you can kind of eyeball it, and that's the thing, guys, and that's something to realize, even when you're just taking a break from tracking. The less you track, the Easier it will be to kind of have variance in your weight, if that makes sense. The more precise you are, the more Precise you're gonna know your weight is. If you're tracking seven days a week and you're hitting your macros, you and they're the right macros for you you will hit your goals. You will lose weight. You will maintain whatever your goals are. The more that you kind of eyeball it and go with the flow If you're not skilled, the more likely you are to gain weight. Um, not see progress, see stalled progress, kind of mess up. So just take that with a grain of salt.
Speaker 1:But when you're in maintenance mode, I like to say like, let's say you hit your goal weight. It's a lot easier to maintain. So, you know, you kind of get those plus or minus five, even up to 10 pounds in your comfort zone when you have a little bit of fat on you, but it's nothing crazy because you're happy you're at your goal weight. That's when you can be, you know, a little bit more lenient and not be as strict as tracking. So, like you know, you're in maintenance mode for a couple months and then let's say like, hey, you're going to the beach soon, you have maybe A month or two and you just want to cut those five pounds that you have in maintenance mode. You want to shred up a little bit. That's when we would bring tracking back out right and you do it for a period of time and then you would relax, like maybe around the holidays you take a break from tracking. But you've learned and you visualize and you see what portions are and you learn because it's a tool how to balance your meals. So you know, when you go into things, how to make your meals healthier. So you're still, even though you're not tracking your calories or your macros down to the gram or the calorie, you're still making better choices than what you would have if you weren't tracking and therefore you're probably going to maintain your weight a lot better. Okay, so I hope that makes sense For those of you who are maybe currently tracking or interested in tracking and you're like, well, I've been tracking for a while or like, do I just track forever?
Speaker 1:You know it kind of comes down to you because everybody's journey is going to be different, but I did want to kind of give you a visualization of where you could go and it's all about when you're ready, you know. I mean, think about people who work out. Um, not everybody goes to the next level of, like I'm going to do crossfit, I'm going to do Olympic lifting, I'm going to be a bodybuilder. You know, we have the beginner level. Some people stay intermediate forever. Some people never really want to max out their weights. I can tell you, I played around, you know, I wanted to see where my strength was and I got up to like a 225 deadlift or whatever. And like I'm not really actively doing that right now, I am working out hard but like you don't have to always shoot for that, you can just shoot for a consistent, pretty good, challenging workout.
Speaker 1:Um, and that's how it is with tracking. Uh, you can choose to track your food and, you know, maybe you won't get to that point where you're absolutely perfect. You got to kind of find a happy medium for you and you'll definitely learn something along the way, regardless, that's why I always encourage everybody to try Tracking, because it really is an eye-opening, great tool. That that lays it all out for you. It shows you what you are eating. So, um, yeah, so something to think about as far as tracking your food. All right, guys, I think that's all I got for you today. So remember the four-day free nutrition challenge. If you did not already sign up for that, be sure to sign up for that below and we will chat next time. Have a great rest of your day and bye.
