1. Why Track Macros?
We all know that having a handle on your diet is one of the more important factors towards reaching your health and fitness goals. Thankfully, as of late, there has been a shift from the “hardcore” deprivation style diets that allow yourself to be treated to cold tilapia out of tupperware to a more flexible, lifestyle approach to dieting. One where you can actually have your cake and eat it too.
Flexible dieting and “If it fits your macros” (IIFYM) are by no means a ground breaking concept, but one that has gained a lot of traction over the last few years. IIFYM, from a high level, is rather than having calorie based goal, you have a goal based off of Protein, Carb and Fat intake (and I suggest keeping tabs on your fiber as well). IIFYM tries to decouple the thought of only eating “clean foods” as being a requirement to being healthy and in shape. IIFYM lets you enjoy the journey a bit more because you don’t have to deprive yourself from any of your favorite foods or shut yourself off from the social aspect of food.
Most peoples favorite foods, and the ones they are excited about not having to cut out while following the IIFYM principles, are those calorie dense foods that bodybuilding traditionalists consider “not clean”. Remember, everything is fine in moderation but if consumption is gone unchecked it is easy to spill over your nutritional goals. That is why I always suggest tracking your food and keeping a log of what your eating.
A couple of the main reasons I suggest tracking your diet are:
• Ensure that you reach your daily goals and stay on track
• Learning to better estimate portion sizes when you don’t have the ability to weigh out your food.
• Gain some insight into how certain foods affect your mood and well being
So now you may be thinking, logging everything you eat “Ain’t nobody got time for that” but I’m here to show you how easy it is.
In the early days the way it was done was pen and paper. You keep a hand written log of what you ate, nutrition values it contributes and tally up at the end of the day. Very time consuming and largely inefficient.
Next came Excel, basically bringing your hand written food diary on a computer. A big step in the right direction as far as updating, calculating and tallying your totals were concerned, but you were still limited in what you can do. Your nutrition database was confined to whatever you entered yourself, you had to physically send your spreadsheets whenever you wanted to share it with someone, the list inefficiencies goes on because that is simply not what excel was designed for.
These shortcomings along with a myriad of lackluster attempts by others was exactly why I developed My Macros+. My Macros+ is a diet tracking app for iPhone and iPad that was made specifically to track your macros and other nutritional information. Shipping pre-loaded with over 40,000 food items you can log the food you ate in under 10 seconds, quickly tabulating your meal specific and daily totals.
How can I drop 10 pounds in 2 weeks?
- Eat Fewer Carbs and More Lean Proteins. …
- Eat Whole Foods and Avoid Most Processed Junk Foods. …
- Reduce Your Calorie Intake by Following These Tips (See List) …
- Lift Weights and Try High-Intensity Interval Training. …
- Be Active Outside of the Gym.
Some of the convenient features that you get from My Macros+ include:
- Add food to an infinite amount of meals, no more being restricted to Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Snack
- Have multiple nutrition goals that can easily be applied to different days. Perfect for workout vs off days or carb cycling.
- Copy entire meals from one day to another
- Browse our recipe library for some great meal ideas or add your own custom recipe
- Macronutrient totals are given not just for the day but for individual meals as well
When it comes down to it, “There’s an app for that” can definitely be applied to diet tracking and My Macros+ has you covered. To learn more check out our website at www.getMyMacros.com , visit us on the app store https://bit.ly/18BHY7N or email founder of the software personally at [email protected]