Should You Track Your Calories?

Whether you are trying to build muscle or lose fat, the simple answer is: No, it is not absolutely necessary. However, learning to track your calories and macros can be a very important tool towards reaching your goals faster.

This doesn't mean becoming obsessive over tracking your calories. Instead, the average fitness enthusiasts can track their eating habits for a couple of days to get a rough approximation of their total caloric intake, once every month or once every couple of weeks. Personally, I track my calories every now and then to get a good estimation and over a period of several years, I can pretty much guarantee the amount of calories I consumed per day by about 100 calories. This is largely due to the fact that I eat most of the same meals every single day. This works for me, however, if the thought of tracking your calories is one of the worst things to do then you have to embrace the concept of healthy eating. Healthy eating is really subjective and it means a lot of different things to a lot of different people.

The simplest way to view healthy eating: an idiot-proof way of eating food in order to get a better body composition, focusing on more nutrient-dense foods and getting a lot of nutrition for the amount of calories you consume. For example, most people say that rice is fine to eat, which is true, but you won't get a lot of micronutrients, vitamins and minerals from eating a lot of rice. This is why big basic health rules work, drink a lot of water, eat a lot of vegetables, have whole unprocessed foods, it is because these are idiot-proof guidelines. Following the basic health rules will lead you to naturally gravitate towards less calorically-dense foods that are more filling, meaning you are eating more food in total but still consuming less calories so you will naturally lose weight. That is one approach you can follow and this is why paleo-diet works because you are gravitating towards foods that are lower in calories.

It is up to you how you want to reach your goals. If you don't want to track your calories, by all means, but you have to be more careful with the foods that you select. Do you want to track your calories and really know what you are eating? That is awesome and I think it is a good idea to at least do it occasionally to find out how many calories you need and how many calories you are consuming and what macros you need to hit. At the end of the day, it is more important to train hard, get ample rest and make smart food choices, so don't worry if you are 3 calories over your goal for the day. Develop a healthy relationship with food and keep it at that.

For people who are more health-conscious and want to lose weight, I will gravitate towards the healthy eating approach aka having more nutrient-dense foods, less calorically-dense whole foods, making better food choices over time. On the other hand, with the younger people, guys that want to build muscles and more of a IIFYM (if it fits your macros) approach, I will give them calories, macros and micros to hit and it is up to them to fill it in. They will then track their progress over time and find out how many calories they are consuming. Ultimately, it is up to you and what works right for you.

Do you currently track your calories? Yes/No

#Diet #Calories #Nutrition #Macro #Paleo #Weight #Loss