First step. Be honest. How well do you currently eat? How much of your diet is processed food? How much is real food?
If you eat pretty healthy, this is the path I would suggest. Most people can get good results simply by recording their food intake. Knowledge is a powerful thing, and most people do not know how they really are eating. Here are the steps to take if you already eat pretty well.
- Week 1. Get a food tracking app. Track your food, all of it for a week.
- Week 2. Start adjusting your macros. See how you do on fewer carbs for example
- Week 3. Adjust. Maybe you add more carbs. Do you feel better? How do you perform?
- Week 4. Make a decision on at what levels you feel the best. These will be your macros for the next 4 weeks.
If you do not currently eat “pretty well” Your first step, in my opinion, is to simply start eating better. Here are 3 steps.
- No fast food.
- Cook at least 1 meal at home a day
- Increase your vegetable intake.
Those three things would give you the most bang for your buck. You don’t need to worry about macros if you are eating fast food. You can drastically change your path by merely switching from drive through to home cooking.
One more thing…
What I just wrote above works. It works 100% of the time. But here is the issue. 99.9%(We used to think it was 99%) of people do not succeed by tracking macros. They fail because they eventually stop doing it. Some do it for three months; for others, one month—the majority stop within the first two weeks.
There is a lot of value in tracking macros, even if you stop shortly after starting. It gives you a lot of knowledge about serving sizes that you can use for the rest of your life.
We see that people who are pretty close to their ideal body weight do pretty good counting macros. They do it off and on as they need to lose a few pounds here or there or dial down the body fat percentage for a spring beach trip.
We also see that people who are not close to their ideal body weights do not do well-counting macros.
They need a habit change and help. And the support they need is a coach or a community of people who are there helping them stick to their goals. This is true for any habit change.
There has been a ton of successful nutrition programs in the last five years. The knowledge from twenty years of American dieting has been condensed and studied. The final conclusion is you need to change your habits, and you will need help in some form to do it.
At our gym, we address this need in two ways.
The first is individualized nutrition coaching. You get time with a coach to discuss your individual situation and then work on your habit changes together. This is not a 12-week process. If you want or need to lose more than 15lbs and not gain it back, this will take time.
The second is our private nutrition group. The group is a lower-cost way to gain access to our coaching staff.
If you are interested in either of these options, let us know! [email protected]
Link to our Nutrition Coaching Page
I have been trying to keep these short. I have failed again today.
Have a great day!
