How to Track Your Macros
Foods generally fall into one of three categories:
Fats
Proteins
Carbohydrates
These are called Macronutrients. They are like Jesus: the same yesterday, today, and forever. No matter what diet is popular, a food will be classified into one of those three categories.
Macronutrient Balance
An important key to long-term health is keeping your macronutrients balanced. I have found that many people get too many carbs and not enough protein or fat. This can create a lot of problems in the body which leads to health issues and weight gain.
Tracking your macronutrients for a few days is a quick and easy way to determine if you’re keeping things balanced. Every once in a while, I run a Track Your Macs challenge in The Christian Health Club to make sure my Feast 2 Fasters are keeping their Heck Yeah’s reined in.
Track Your Macs Challenge
To do a Track Your Macs challenge, simply follow these steps:
Download the My Fitness Pal app:
This is a free app that lets you journal your food for you to see how many fats, proteins, and carbs you are getting in a day’s time.
Determine Your Calorie Needs”
Unfortunately, My Fitness Pal defaults to a 1200 calorie goal which is NOT appropriate for everybody. Your daily calorie target depends on several things including your current weight, height, age, activity level and health goals. In order to determine the right calorie target for your individual needs, go to this post HERE.
Set Your Macronutrient Goals
Again, My Fitness Pal has a default set of macronutrient ratios. You will need to manually change your macronutrient goals. To do this, go into My Fitness Pal and hit the MORE button in the bottom right hand corner. Then hit the GOALS button. This is where you can set your current weight, goal weight, daily calorie target, and macronutrient goals.
A good general target - especially if you’re in maintenance mode - is the following:
Carbohydrates: 30% – Fats: 40% – Protein: 30%
(for weight loss, lower carbs and up your fats)
Journal Your Food
Start entering everything that you eat into the app. Yes, this can be a little high maintenance and tedious at first. But once you get the hang of it, you’ll be efficient and quick about it. At the end of each day, check your macronutrient ratios by hitting the MORE button and then the NUTRITION button. This will show you a pie chart so you can easily see the ratios of fats, proteins, and carbs for the day. From this you will know if you need to tweak in one category or another.
And that’s it! You can do this for a few days or for a few weeks. Whatever it takes to help you become more intuitive about your macronutrient ratios. Tracking Your Macs is a great tool for self-correction. Any time you feel like you’re getting “off” – track your macs for a few days to see where you are.
A good Challenge
Even though I’m not a big fan of tracking and counting, I find the Track Your Macs challenge helpful to get a handle on my BLT problem. No, not my bacon, lettuce, tomato problem, my bites-licks-tastes problem. I’m a licker and a plate picker. I’m always picking off the leftovers from my kids’ plates. I’m fighting the kids for licking the spoons and bowls when we bake. LOL These are not very comely habits, to say the least, so a good tracking challenge always helps me rein in it. You can’t accurately input licks and picks into My Fitness Pal. This is when the tediousness of food journaling can be really effective. The other thing that helps my BLT problem is fasting. Those little extras break a fast which is not something I want to waste a good, long fast on.
The only tool you might need for this challenge is a food scale. Because you need to be somewhat accurate in the amount of food you enter into My Fitness Pal, a food scale can be very helpful…especially for measuring protein. I use this scale from Amazon but you can find food scales in most big stores like Target, Bed Bath & Beyond, and even your grocery store.
Two more things:
If challenges like this make you kind of crazy and fanatical….don’t do it. It’s not worth it. It’s not healthy to be obsessive about calorie counting and macronutrient ratios. This is meant to be a helpful exercise, not one that overtakes your brain.
On a more fun note, please make sure you are a member of The Christian Nutritionist Community on Facebook. I am very active in that group answering questions and guiding you along the way. Click here to join.
Thank you for being here! Good luck with the challenge. Let me know how it goes.