Is tracking calories necessary?
Tracking calories does make sense, if we’re honest. We track petrol before travelling to work and our bank balance before making a retail purchase. But we don’t like to inconvenience ourselves when it comes to tracking calories. Even though energy and our goals are paramount to our overall well-being!
As the famous quote goes “What gets measured, gets managed”. – Peter F.Drucker –
People want the fast route especially toward weight loss and muscle gain.
What is the fastest route?
Tracking calories! This doesn’t mean tracking calories is a forever thing. We soon understand what energy intake our bodies require for optimal health and weight maintenance. And once we learn visually what we need and what foods are best for our circumstance, things get a lot easier.
When you lose weight you can subconsciously move less whilst your hunger increases! This can easily catch you out too when not tracking.
2 options!
- The benefits to tracking calories are complete versatility with food, include ‘naughty foods’ and have peace of mind that you’re definitely progressing. It requires 5-10 minutes of planning and tracking.
- Consume a meat, vegetables and fruit (naturally lower in calories) only diet. Take out calorie dense foods like alcohol, junk, grains, seeds, nuts to reduce your chance of eating into your calorie deficit and hope you’re progressing (be careful if you’re a picker).
You can lose weight when not tracking. But it’s very easy to hit a plateau and not know what to do next due to having no data collected. Often calories become the scapegoat which makes adhering to your diet too difficult. In many cases nothing actually needs changing it is just a case of persistence or some tweaking to your training or macros.
Personally I track, it gives me peace of mind and allows flexibility. It is extremely easy to do after a few days of learning and means you won’t stagnate.
Do you guess or do you track?
