Poke for breakfast? Yes please.
I could eat this five times a day and be happy. And it would make for very easy tracking, too, even on vacation.
That’s something I don’t bother with currently. But this certainly doesn’t mean tracking macros is never worthwhile. On the contrary, everyone should track at least once in their life, AND whenever they want to “take their body somewhere,” such as when they want to lose fat at a favorable rate.
Tracking macros teaches you to connect the dots between the food you eat and its composition: calories, protein, carbs and so on.
This is must-know info for anyone who cares about their health.
The inevitable WTF moments — including the size of a real serving of peanut butter — make it well worth doing.
Tracking also forces you to be engaged in the everyday, mundane process of feeding your body; it also gives you the space to pump the breaks before “subliminal snacking,” grazing, or finishing your kid’s plate. These little extras can easily add up to 500 calories a day. (Another one of those useful WTF moments for the first-time tracker.)
But another less talked about benefit of meal tracking is that it’s much more FORGIVING than mere memory. Tracking allows you to look back at your behavior and put things in perspective.
Folks will vividly remember the times they blew their diet, especially the epic cheat meals or the scary slides into stress binging.
What they usually DON’T remember, for whatever reason, are all the times they did pretty darn good sticking to their plan: all the boring but repeatable breakfasts; the daily chicken salad snooze fest; the two or three dinner options repeated, seemingly, ad nauseum.
However, that one rough day when they broke down and had eight slices of pizza?
Those run forever in the back of the mind like corrupt software, lowering their overall opinion of their efforts and self esteem.
This is one form of our brains’ bias towards negativity. It’s a lot like getting 30 positive comments — and one negative comment — after a presentation, a report, or hell, even a social media post. Guess which comment the brain focuses on?
And, as bad as ignoring snacks and poor food choices are for the physique, obsessing over occasional mistakes can be very harmful psychologically.
You need to build momentum. That can come from being “perfect,” or — for the other 99% of us, 99% of the time — it can come from being able to look objectively at your behaviors and progress and put that stuff in perspective.
So: keep a log. Somehow. An online meal tracker like MyFitnessPal, the Notes app on your phone, or even a spiral notebook.
Any option that’s far from perfect is also far better than relying on the computer between your ears.
To quote the old proverb: the faintest ink is more powerful than the strongest memory.
Bryan