#162: The Benefits of Tracking What You Eat
[00:00:00] Welcome to 40 plus fitness for women. I'm Lynn, your host, a certified menopause fitness coach helping women over 40 to build the bodies that they want to spend the rest of their lives in. And today we are going to talk about a topic that might be a little controversial, which is Do you actually need to track your calories to manage your weight or even to lose weight?
And I'm going to be sharing my opinion on this matter.
Well, spoiler alert. I do feel like you do need to track your calories in order to lose weight and that it is a super useful tool. Another piece of data, which is super useful for you if you do want to manage your weight or even lose weight.
But before we get started, I just wanted to share a little story about what happened to me over [00:01:00] Easter weekend. So it was actually my birthday over Easter weekend. I turned 53 and I had the kids with me that weekend. And the tradition in our family is that on, on Easter Sunday, the children wake up to like their beanies. filled with Easter candy, Easter bunnies, and you know, this kind of Easter treats.
So the Easter bunny has visited and brought candy. So I had candy in the house, which I don't normally have because I'm the kind of person that if there's candy around, I will eat it. And I know that about myself and I am not trying to kill myself by, Oh my God, I got to have willpower or whatever. All right.
What I do, my strategy is that I just don't keep candy in the house generally, so that I'm not tempted. And then I don't overeat candy because if it's [00:02:00] there, I literally, I will eat it. even if I don't feel like having candy. It's like it's there and there's just something like about my hand that it takes it and it puts it in my mouth.
And, and it's funny because I don't know where this comes from because my mom is completely the opposite. If you go to my mother's house. She has little bowls of Skittles and nuts and chocolate sprinkled around the house. And, uh, so, but she's the kind of person who doesn't eat them all the time. In fact, she will take a tray with her to her bedroom in the evening to go relax and read the paper and watch tv and whatever and she'll take like a piece of chocolate and a few skittles and in the morning there'll be like half of that piece of chocolate left and some of the skittles left would never happen in my house but in any case so getting back to the story is that so there was candy in the house [00:03:00] and of course I maybe didn't give all of the candy to the kids.
So I had some candy for myself. Plus, then we went out to dinner once for kind of Easter and my birthday and my oldest son's birthday. Then we went out to dinner again on my birthday and I ate this enormous bowl. I'd already had Easter candy. I came after the dinner where I was already just way, way, way, way, way full.
We went to a cafe for some dessert and I had some cheesecake and you know, I'm not saying any of this is wrong. It was my birthday. I kind of just enjoyed eating, but I really actually overate. I mean, honestly, over eight. And it's funny because even me who knows so much better. About how you maintain your weight and lose weight and [00:04:00] all these things.
My first instinct the next day, feeling like I am not stepping on that scale this morning. I feel like I ate a house or an elephant at the very least. I'm not stepping on that scale. I'm scared to get on the scale. I wanna just go running, I want to go burn calories. I wanna somehow pay for that and somehow get it off , get it off me.
And uh, yeah. So what I'm saying is I can completely identify and it was an awful feeling. And what I had to really do was kind of shake myself and get a grip and be like, okay, Lynn, you know what's gonna get you back on track is just getting back on track and. So then got back in the weight room, got back into getting my steps every day and got back to my just normal, normal eating habits.
And that was a blip on the radar and [00:05:00] now back to normal life. All right. But that was my Easter story. And maybe some of you have had the same Easter story.
And Doing a whole bunch of cardio to try to pay for it is not really gonna do a whole lot for you. But back to tracking, we're actually on to tracking. So the reason why I feel so strongly that tracking is useful is that I keep running into women, my clients, women I talk to, who are under the impression that they're eating like 1500 calories a day.
And some of them even are claiming to eat 1200 calories a day. But then when you sit down and you actually have the conversation with them and they think about it, and some of them are very savvy about calories, like really, are you sure that you're eating 1500?
Because, you know, we really want to know what the baseline [00:06:00] is, so that we know what a calorie deficit is, then You know, they think through and they're like, Oh yeah, but you know, I did have that. Glass of wine, but that's 200 calories. I had some peanut butter when I was making a sandwich for the kids.
Uh, I had some chips when I was watching TV on Saturday, you know, it's, it's all these small things, which you think you're eating 1500 calories a day, and actually you are just not. So tracking will help you to start being more truthful with where you really are with your calories. And I mean, you have to track everything.
I know pain in the butt. I know some ways of making it easier are, well, what I like to do is I have my scale and by the way, you need to track by weighing stuff, right? Not [00:07:00] by a one banana because bananas, if you look in the banana rack, they are like huge differences in the banana. So yeah, weighing stuff is probably the best way to track.
how many grams, ounces, whatever the weight measurement you're using. But anyway, so I have the scale in my kitchen and I have the pad next to the scale. And I have just trained myself that if something's going to go in my mouth, it's going to go via the scale first and I'll just write it down and. Then, if I am tracking, if I am interested in how many calories I actually consumed, then I will transfer that information into my calorie tracking application so that I can see what I'm actually eating.
And what you probably will find is that you're eating a lot more than you think you are. You're maybe having A little bit of cheese on that sandwich and all this kind of thing. [00:08:00] Anyway, so the tracking and the religious, religious, religious tracking will help you to understand that no, you're fooling yourself.
If you think you're eating 1200 calories a day and not losing weight or even worse gaining weight. Okay. Because that's really very unlikely. Okay. And then. The other thing that tracking really, really helps is for you to understand what are kind of expensive things to be eating and less expensive things to be eating calorie wise expenses, that is.
So, for example, you know, uh, when I was in my calorie deficit, so I was really, really tracking, Very religiously, I would do this writing down all day long and then before my last meal, I would put it all into my calorie tracker. And at that point I could see that, okay, do I have a hundred calories left [00:09:00] to spend or do I have 200 calories left to spend?
And then I start thinking. Oh, okay. I have this many calories. Let's say it's 200 calories left to spend. So how hungry am I and how much protein do I still need to eat? So that's always one consideration that I would use the protein, but then also. Thinking about, okay, do I feel really hungry? All right, then I need to make some wise choices, foods that are going to make me feel full, high protein foods are some of them, and foods that have a lot of like substance to them, right?
So you could choose like four M& Ms or two carrots, which one is going to make you feel more full? Probably the two carrots, right? So, so these kinds of decision making becomes much, much easier when you have some idea of how the different foods compare, and you're not really going to understand [00:10:00] that until you start paying attention to that for a little while.
So I think that is a very eye opening and useful experience for me. For example, it led to food, uh, choices. Like I generally have. A piece of bread with, ham and cheese on, on it in the mornings. And when I was in my calorie deficit, I realized that that cheese is pretty expensive. So maybe instead of having two slices of ham and two slices of cheese, I'll have like eight slices of turkey for the same kind of, Calorie cost, or even four slices of turkey for fewer calories, and I'm still getting full plus getting protein
so you start to just be aware of that a lot more when you're tracking.
And one tip that I really think is super useful and it will kind of take the blinders [00:11:00] off you is to not think of how many calories per day you have, but think about your calories per week. So for example, if my. Diet calories were 1500 calories a day times seven days a week.
That means I'm allowed to spend 10, 500 calories in the week. This is very much like having money, a budget of what you're allowed to spend in a week. So 1500 calories is like 15 for example. So if you gave yourself 15 a day to spend. So that over the whole week, you could actually spend 105. That's it.
You've got 105 to spend over the course of the week now, and you've got it in cash in your purse, no credit cards, nothing . If you think about that. [00:12:00] You could do a strategy where you're spending 15 a day, and let's say this is now the price of food, right? Instead of calories. But let's say you're spending 15 a day on your lunch or food.
And so that would be fine. You could do that every single day. But hey, wait a second. You have your friend's birthday dinner in an expensive restaurant on Saturday night. Oops. 15 is not going to cut it for that dinner in that restaurant. So if you still only have 105 that you can spend over the whole week on food, then you need to somehow cut your spending on the other days.
in order to have some extra for that Saturday dinner that you're going to spend at your friend's birthday. So maybe you only spend 5 on Monday or 10 on [00:13:00] Tuesday and 10 on Wednesday, whatever, but so that you accumulate extra. for Saturday so that you still overall, because you can't spend more than 105 cause you don't have more than 105.
You stay within your budget. That is the attitude that you need to have when you are trying to diet. If you want to have success. So all these people who talk about cheat days, well, does a cheat day work? If you're thinking about money, like you spend 15, 15, 15, then you spend a hundred bucks at your friend's dinner.
How does that work? Like you just, what, where does that money come from? You pick it off a tree. No, you know, you're going into debt at that point for that money. that you're spending on Saturday. So if you take that same kind of mindset around your calories, you can really be successful, but it's [00:14:00] not going to work unless you're actually tracking.
And by the way, you need to account for things like drinks, which are a lot of calories. So save up for that time. So that is I think my biggest tip for you, if you're really trying to lose weight and manage your calories is you need to look at every single spending that you're doing.
And the best way to really track that is To actually track that and not say, Oh, I'm living on 1500 calories or 15 a day, but hoops. Oh yeah. Saturdays I kind of like spend a hundred bucks. No. Then you are living on a much higher budget for your weekly budget.
In fact, instead of spending only 105 each week, you would be spending 190 each week. So you are significantly over budget and you're going to go into debt. [00:15:00] So you've kind of like screwed up. Like you're not spending just 15 a day. On average, you are spending 27 a day on average. Okay. So that's what you need to understand about how much you're actually consuming.
And that's, and once you get that piece, I really think that you're going to have success in your weight loss. And the other thing I would add to that is. Don't live in a constant state of feeling like you're in a diet or saying that you're in a diet or I'm, I'm, you know, eating 1500 a day, because as I just discussed in my example, you're probably not right.
Your average is probably way over that. And that is why you are not losing weight. You're maintaining your weight or even [00:16:00] gaining weight. And it's just exhausting to like fool yourself all the time like that. Rather just call a spade a spade say, Hey, I'm actually eating 2, 700 calories a day on average, and I'm gaining weight. And there's your reason why you're gaining weight. Okay. So,
all right, to summarize, the reason why I really believe that you should use the tracking as a tool, if you're trying to maintain or lose weight is that a, it gives you a better awareness of what you are actually consuming. All the little nibbles and one bite here, there, you know, the, the couple chips or the cookie that you have with your coffee in the break room, whatever, it gives you much better awareness of that
TWO:. It gives you a realistic view of how many [00:17:00] calories you're actually consuming.
Third. it helps you to better identify foods which are giving you like more bang for the calorie. In other words, that have more protein, less calories in them, that are more filling and have less calories in them. You know, so you can pick and choose what you're eating a little bit more intelligently.
And fourth, it enables you to do this kind of budgeting of your calories over the week so that you can stay within your calorie budget. And hit your calorie deficit goals and actually lose weight if that's what you want to do. Now, I don't think you need to be tracking your whole life. I think it is a very good exercise for some period of time.
Like now, if you're going to spend this spring trying to lose a few pounds of fat, then it is a really good [00:18:00] time to get really strict with your tracking practice that, and then, then be done with it, right? Then you can stop tracking. Or I like to write down, like I mentioned what I eat, but it's mostly that I like to do a quick check of what is my maintenance calories right now, because actually my weight has stayed the same for the whole year.
Since I did my calorie deficit last spring, so I'm kind of curious, you know, if I pick here and there like a week because I have a lot of those exceptional days, right? And, and then also I am interested in making sure that I'm eating enough protein and that's 140 grams a day is my own personal target.
Anyhow, so I hope, I feel like this was a little bit. Um, maybe long winded, but hopefully this was helpful as far as understanding a little bit more about the mindset around tracking, uh, and why it might be [00:19:00] beneficial and even might be beneficial for you to do so that you can stop feeling so obsessive about foods.
Once you understand like, which are the foods that are going to give you the most bang for your calorie and also. Really opening your eyes to what you are eating. So you're kind of seeing the truth instead of, you know, walking around with blinders on like, Oh no, no, no. I'm really like living in this 1500 calorie a day diet.
When actually, if you look at the whole week, your average per day is something totally different. All right. So I don't talk about dieting stuff very often because really weight training is the thing that I am most interested in promoting among 40 plus women. But here was my thoughts on that because this has come up a lot lately.
And just a quick reminder that if you are in a calorie deficit or planning on going into one, remember, remember, [00:20:00] remember to continue your weight training. Because you want to lose fat and not muscle. And the way you signal to your body to hold onto that muscle is by strength training, pushing your body and progressively overloading training close to failure.
And for more on that, I have other episodes. And if you want to get started weight training, and I've got my online courses and one to one coaching. Always available. So till next week, I will leave you with those thoughts and wish you happy training.