Clients sometimes ask, “Should I be tracking what I eat?” Whether you should track your meals largely depends on your fitness and nutrition goals, but for the majority of people, using a food-tracking app can help in their fitness journey.
Using an app, such as myfitnesspal or LoseIt, makes it easy to capture nutritional details and review relevant information about calories and macronutrients. When working with clients, we use this information to get a clear picture of your nutrition, making adjustments to support muscle gain, weight loss, and health.
Importantly, food tracking is not for everyone. If you have a history of disordered eating, skip the calorie counting. Research shows that food-tracking apps can contribute to and worsen symptoms of eating disorders. Instead of looking at the numbers, focus on a balanced diet with high nutritional quality. Working with a certified nutrition coach or a Registered Dietician can provide a better form of support to meet your health goals safely.
What should I be tracking?
If a calorie-tracking app seems right for you (talk to a trainer if you are not sure!), there are a few different things to keep an eye on:
Calories.
People are notoriously bad at predicting how many calories are in their food. Tracking apps correct these misconceptions and also encourage users to get an accurate idea of their serving sizes—something else we’re also pretty bad at estimating!
Logging everything can also help you account for hidden calories. That is, the calories that don’t tend to make it into our mental calculation. Cherry tomatoes are very low in calories, but the olive oil they were sauteed in is not. It can be easy for small bites across the day to add up!
What this means is that a tracking app will provide a more accurate picture of your caloric intake. If you’re looking toward weight loss, calorie intake is the most important factor for understanding the progress that you can expect. Having that knowledge in hand gives you more control over your weight loss journey.
We use this information to help tweak and adjust nutrition plans over time. This data-driven approach lets us move past plateaus, ensuring that weight loss progresses in a healthy manner or that caloric intake is high enough to support muscle gain.
Macronutrients.
A calorie is a calorie, but it’s also a little more. Macronutrients, or macros, refers to the source of the calorie—carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. Each macronutrient plays a role in our body’s functioning and in our overall health.
Depending on your body and your goals, you may require a different ratio of macros in your ideal nutritional plan. For example, protein is key for repairing muscles after strength training. If your goal is to increase your muscle mass or hit a new PR on your squat, it’s vital to ensure you get enough protein in your diet.
If you’re looking to spend more time in the gym and less time doing math, a food-tracking app can make the process of calculating and monitoring macronutrient ratios much simpler. And having that information on hand provides another lever to make adjustments to keep your goals on track.
Micronutrients: vitamins and minerals.
In addition to macronutrients, food-tracking apps can help you monitor your intake of other vitamins and minerals that are important for your health.
Vitamin D calcium, increasing the risk of osteoporosis
Iron, leading to a risk of anemia, particularly in women
Potassium, with a risk of heart disease
Magnesium, causing headaches and muscle cramps
Tracking essential vitamins and minerals can be especially important if you are on a calorie restrictive diet, are trying to get pregnant, or have other health considerations in mind.
Together with calories and macronutrients, monitoring vitamin and mineral intake helps create a complete picture of your nutritional health.
Using your food-tracking data
The goal of food-tracking is always to help you meet your health and fitness goals. Track what you’re eating, see if it’s working for you, and then adjust. Embrace the experimentation and find what’s right for you.
At Body by Ford, we start by understanding your fitness goals through a free consultation and develop an individualized nutrition plan that is tailored to those goals. We use our expertise to reduce trial and error and use our experience working with clients to make informed, targeted adjustments. Food-tracking data is an excellent tool to make this process even more effective and efficient.
