Jonathan Steedman (00:01.528)
Hey team.

This is for anyone who has been tracking calories and is finding it difficult to stop. It's just started raining, but I hope it's not too noisy. First, I want to say I like tracking calories. I think it is a great strategy for some people. Alright, for the right person, it is a really great way to get a handle on what you're doing, to learn about your nutrition, to maybe realize, this is the portion I'm aiming for. This is how I should feel after I eat an appropriate amount of food for my goals.

and my requirements and things like that. There are lots of other ways to get that same outcome of figuring out portions and figuring out how you should be eating for your body and your goals and your health, but tracking is one of those ways. so again, I like it. I think it's a great strategy. I'm not anti-tracking at all. That being said.

I want you to think of tracking and the way I like to think of tracking is it's great for setting a course or for correcting or checking in on your course. And so what I mean by that is if you are trying to lose weight and you've moved into a weight loss phase, I would, and you like tracking and wanted to track, I would get you to track for a week or two so you can kind of.

Adjust to all these are the portions I'm looking for. This is how much food I should be expecting across the day This is loosely how I should feel from an energy and appetite perspective when I eat to these targets And after you've done that for a week or two You should be able to peel back the tracking and continue eating in that fashion and then maybe in a month or a few weeks time or something you just track for a few days to just double check that your portions and approach haven't drifted and you keep doing that and then eventually you want to change Goals and so you want to move from a weight loss phase to a maintenance

Jonathan Steedman (01:43.272)
performance phase and so you track again for a couple of weeks because you need to adjust to different portions and you can see how we would use tracking kind of on and off. That is how I love to use tracking. I think that is the right way to use tracking, the healthiest way to use tracking. I think if you have to track every single morsel of food for like three plus months in a row, you're not learning anything. You are kind of abdicating your job of paying attention to what you're eating to an app.

And that's very easy to do. I'm not meaning to attack anyone who is doing that, right? But if you are sitting there being like, man, that's me, cool. This is going to be a really good podcast for you to maybe listen to and consider doing some of these things. So we're to talk about how to, if you have been overly reliant on tracking apps, how do you start to stop?

The first thing you can do is to just start to be a little bit more relaxed, particularly if you have been tracking carbs, fats, and protein. So you've been tracking all three macros. I would drop back to just tracking calories and protein, right? You're gonna be logging your food and those numbers will still, carbs and fats will still be tracked, but I don't want you to.

worry about hitting certain targets for carbs and fats. just want you to be focused on, all right, I'm going to go for protein, I'm going to go for the calories, I'm going to do that. Again, once you've done that for a little bit, maybe you even forget about the protein, okay? You're still going to be eating it, you're still going to be inputting it into your app, but you're not going to be checking in every day on, like, am I within three grams of my protein target? We're just going to be largely focused on, have I had enough fuel today, right?

next thing we can do or it doesn't even need to be next this might be either the next thing you do or the

Jonathan Steedman (03:33.528)
first thing you do instead of moving from macros to calories and protein and so forth is don't track every day. Aim for every second day or track your unusual days. Chances are most people I work with who have been tracking for a long time and they want to stop tracking, they eat pretty similarly every day and every day you're just putting the same stuff into your app and you just copy pasting or you're entering the same breakfast and the same lunch and if that's you, you absolutely can just not track on one day, okay?

know what you're doing. It's exactly the same as it was yesterday and will be tomorrow. So go to track every other day or maybe you just track Monday and you don't track the rest of your week. Starting to pull back how frequently you're tracking can be a really good step towards not needing to track for a while.

Then what we can do is move away from a numerical or objective-based tracking system and either use just literally the notes in your phone as a bit of a log where you're just typing in what you ate, not amounts, no gram, no portions, just oats with blueberries and yogurt.

God, that's such a bro meal. putting that in and logging your food like that, so you still got a record that you could reflect on if you felt you needed to. Otherwise, what I love doing is using a visual tracker. So like photos, there is an app called Food View, all one word. I'm pretty sure it's a free app anyway, so even if I was affiliated, it's not helpful. But I've used that with a bunch of clients and members to help them track their

their food without having to weigh anything or account for any numbers and that can feel like a far calmer far less burdensome way of tracking while still keeping an eye on things so I find it to be a really helpful step away from meticulously adding everything to my fitness power.

Jonathan Steedman (05:40.238)
moving through some of those strategies or at least starting with one of them can be a really helpful way to move away from tracking. This is going to sound like a plug. It's not, I mean it is, but it's not intentional. One of the ways I've seen a lot of people get away from tracking is they move to working with a dietitian. They move to working off a meal plan and when I say meal plan,

my meal plans and the meal plan of any half-decent dietitian is not a prescriptive you must eat this today or a single page eat these same three meals over and over again but it helps provide you with

portions and recipes and ideas and you can use that to manage your intake rather than using an app. So it's almost like instead of you tracking, you let me track for you for a time and we continue to then, like my ultimate goal is still then that you don't need the meal plan either, right? We still want to eventually end up there, but working with, sure, me or another dietitian, so it's not just a plug for me, all right.

And like I said, essentially outsourcing your tracking to a professional can be a really comfortable step, particularly if you're someone who struggles to let go of the tracking thing. And finally as well, I would encourage you to focus on adding a different goal.

I think a lot of people track for body composition goals and that's okay but if that has been your goal for a very long time I would encourage you to instead add a performance goal or a skill based goal. Focusing on that instead of your body fat percentage or your muscle mass can help you

Jonathan Steedman (07:29.268)
shift away from needing to track every number as well and both myself and clients have found that really helpful. If I'm really focused on trying to crush my runs I worry a little bit less about nailing my calories and just making sure that I'm eating enough and fueling properly and eating to hunger.

and then seeing how my sessions feel and if they are feeling better and better on average then I know I'm doing okay. So you might find having a separate non aesthetic related goal could be helpful. yeah, to reiterate, I like tracking when it's done right and when it's done in kind of bursts.

And also to reiterate if you are someone who has been tracking for a very long time and you find it very hard to let go of You're not broken. There's nothing wrong with you. I get it. It's it can feel really safe and and stopping can feel really unsafe But I think it is a really really valuable thing for you to be able to do So I believe in you you can do it pick one of those go for it and let's

and that my fitness pal street. right. Thanks, team. I'll check you next time.