A very common conversation I have with people when out and about:
- Person: “I really want to lose weight, I feel like I don’t eat so bad, I eat mostly clean foods and try to eat organic whenever I can.”
- Me: “That’s great, how many calories a day are you taking in?”
- Person: “…I eat clean mostly and maybe some treats sometimes, like I said though organic when I can…plus my FitBit says I burn 3000 calories a day, I don’t monitor calories though, that sounds like alot of work…”
That was me for a looooooong while. I worked out 5-6 days a week, worked my office job that had me sitting on my butt for 8-10 hours a day plus an hour long commute on either side of it, and I paid my diet zero mind other than trying to make “decent choices”. But until I started to count what was coming in, not much of what I thought I was doing right mattered.
Clean foods, organic foods, food quality doesn’t matter for weight loss purposes until food QUANTITY is where it needs to be.
- A runner tracks their mileage and pace to improve.
- A lifter tracks their weights and reps and sets to improve.
- A swimmer tracks their laps and times to improve.
- A Crossfitter tracks their named workout times, running paces and and tracks their weights and sets and reps to improve.
If we aren’t keeping tabs on what’s coming in, we are literally guessing how much we need to eat each day, and most of us flat out aren’t very good at it without first learning what foods in what amounts make sense given our goals.
Tracking calories, tracking macros, whatever it looks like, weight change usually starts and ends with tracking. If you can measure it, you can manage it.
Is it a decent amount of effort? Yes.
Is it easier than letting the next 1, 5, or 10 years go by, guessing as you go, and create more work for yourself down the line? Probably not.
Biggest advice for anyone who wants to change their body weight: Track your daily caloric intake, start weighing in daily, tweak as needed.
There are many ways to skin the proverbial cat and many ways to effectively lose weight. But any effective way of eating is effective because it has you in a caloric deficit, which can only be set up once you know exactly how much is coming in.
Start there, and let us know if we can help you get that scale moving. 😊
