#29 Calorie Tracking Mistakes

if you feel like you are tracking your calories and doing the things but still not seeing results? This episode is for you - we unpack the common mistakes people usually struggle with when it comes to tracking calories, and potentially these could be something you unknowingly are doing, hence why you are not seeing the results you want

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hey guys, welcome back to Mindset Meet with Muscle. I'm Emily and I'm here with my beautiful Tash, and we want to talk about something we see all the fucking time. People tracking their food on my fitness path, doing it consistently, putting in real effort and not seeing results. And it can feel fucking frustrating if I'm honest. It can feel like you're going around in circles because you start thinking, is it me? Am I doing anything wrong? Why is it not working for me? I'm not seeing the results that I want to. But most of the time, it isn't obviously your lack of discipline. It's that you are making a few small, simple mistakes and that are quietly cancelling out your progress that we want to be making and want to be seeing. So today we're gonna be breaking down the biggest ones, the most common ones, because once you fix these, you can fix pretty much everything. And everything will start to click for you.

SPEAKER_00 0:48

Yeah, and this episode is honestly one we probably wish we had when we first started. But firstly, I just want to say if you are tracking, like if you've just started tracking, if you're getting into the habit of tracking, that is bloody phenomenal. And you should be really, really proud of yourself for that because it's something that a lot of people have a barrier with, and it's something that people really struggle getting into the habit of. But it is genuinely, I know you and I both think this, the best tool that we can use for weight loss or building a body and just becoming the best version that you can be because it allows you that freedom, that flexibility, it teaches you about food, it helps you know what fuels your body best. Like it's amazing. And it's it's done wonders for our relationship with food. And we just see such we see so much positive in tracking your food. And um, there is just little little things that we can easily slip up on and we don't even realise that we're doing it or we're not tracking properly, that can easily stop us from seeing those goals, seeing those goals that we want to seeing those goals? Seeing that that seeing that body that we want to see. Results. That's the word I'm looking for. See those goals. Okay. Seeing the results that we want to see. So if you feel like you're doing everything right, but maybe stuck in the same place, getting frustrated, and maybe this is where you give up completely, these are the things that you need to hear because this might be just like these little simple things that are holding you back.

SPEAKER_01 2:14

I actually want to touch base on the relationship with food thing. So I had a beautiful client who talked to me, and she is her background is quite heavily disordered eating, and she was that I'm really nervous to track. And you will see on social media a lot of people saying, don't track your food if you've got an eating disorder. And yeah, that can be absolutely true. I think everyone is entitled to their opinion, but everyone is individual, right? My relationship repaired with one, the scale, when I jumped on the scale every day, and two with tracking my food. And because I started looking, stopped looking at the food, it's just calories. And that's what I was doing before. Now, I'm telling you now, anyone with an eating disorder will know how many calories are in a fucking teaspoon of ketchup, okay? We will know that before anyone even starts saying tracking on my fitness pal. I would have told you the calories in every single thing before I even started tracking on my fitness pal because I was so well aware of reading labels at a young age, right? But when I started looking at food as not just calories, and I started tracking my food and started looking at shit like how much fibre am I getting a day, where's my fitness coming from? I was getting excited, right? And I was like, oh, it's later, like it's nice. And I thought that was more empowering because I was looking at food then as fuel. I was looking at it as vitamins for my body and minerals for my body and nourishment for my body. I wasn't looking at it just as calories, and that fucking retrained my brain to not see food as enemy and just calories as that beautiful, powering, fueling substance. Okay, so first mistake in FitnessPal is treating your FitnessPal like it's completely personalized to you. Because obviously, we all have maintenance calories or average maintenance calories, and you will note when you go on FitnessPal, it will give you an incredibly generally low calorie target. And that will be fucking hard to stick to. Okay, so it won't really pay attention on how your body's responding over time, it won't pay attention to maybe all of your energy expenditure that you're creating. So if you're following that number perfectly and not seeing results, it doesn't mean that your body is broken. It just means that the number might not be right to you because you're not sticking to it. That doesn't make sense, does it?

SPEAKER_00 4:16

No, it does. No, it does. Maybe not the last bit of not sticking to it, but the number might not be right for you. Also, FitnessPal will give you basically like your basal metabolic rate before you've done any activity. And then it gets you to plug in your activity calories burned. Yeah. And then it changes your number of calories every single day. And we know that calories burned from exercise is incredibly inaccurate and you're probably really overestimating how much calories that you've burned when you're exercising. FitnessPal is probably giving you a number that's way too low, and it's all just very confusing from the get-go. When you are putting your information into my FitnessPal, I we would both highly recommend that you figure out your maintenance deficit calories yourself. And we use TDEEcalculator.net. It's a relatively reliable one for your fat loss equation. But obviously, everyone is completely different. Like it's just a starting point. So track your data, track your progress. If the scale is maybe moving not as fast as you would want it, you can bring the calories down, maybe 100 calories from your carbs and your fats. And the important thing is to always keep protein the same, no matter what. I would say I use the TDE calculators to find out your overall calories and then figure out your own protein target. We always say two grams per kilogram of body weight, and then carbs and fats are gonna make up the rest of that calorie number. So that was all I was gonna say.

SPEAKER_01 5:53

Another thing is if you actually didn't want to use a calculator, and I take calculators, but I take them with they're not gonna be 100% accurate all the time. Like even if you've got more muscle mass or less muscle mass than we envisioned, you know, that's gonna slightly change just smidgens, but it will slightly change it. Another way you can do it is even just tracking your own food for a couple of weeks, you know, what you consume on a daily for a couple of weeks, and just see where your own maintenance rides are. If your data is staying the same, you're pretty much staying around the same. Obviously, scale weight will fluctuate on a daily occurrence anyway, but realistically, you're staying the right same sort of fat mass. That is your maintenance, okay?

SPEAKER_00 6:30

And then you can reduce from the yeah, it's important to know that your body is your feedback, right? Not the app. The app is not accurate, that doesn't know who you are. You've got to also check in with yourself, right? If your weight isn't moving, if your energy is low, if your strength is dropping, like these are all feedback systems that we need to listen to from our body. So don't ignore those and rigidly stick to a number. If things in your body are changing, and that might be a signal that you need to respond to, like you maybe need to make some changes. It might mean eating a little bit less. It might mean, as we said, maybe reducing the calories by an extra hundred. It might mean increasing the calories, might mean increasing the protein, changing uh carbs and fats, maybe your activity levels you realize need to be slightly higher. But the key is don't hand all of your control over to the app. You have to stay aware and be willing to adapt to things if they need to be adapted to. And this, I will say, like a shameless plug for coaching, is where coaching is really, really helpful because obviously we are in control of all of these feedback loops for you. And this is what we do on a daily basis, and we know what we need to change. We know where things need to change, and this is why we always say data and tracking your data is so important because then it's so easy to make those changes if we know something's not quite working.

SPEAKER_01 7:48

The biggest without fail mistake when it comes to tracking, I without fail, we all know what's gonna be, don't we? It's the inaccurate tracking, right? Goes without saying. But if you are eyeballing your portions and you are guessing your quantities on a regular basis, I am telling you now, you are not sticking within your calories. Um, it doesn't take a lot, right? You've got to imagine, right? Say if you started a deficit and you've ridden around 300-ish calorie deficit, for example, that can completely be swiped out from just having a bite of your kid's food, eyeballing a teaspoon of peanut butter, and that's it. It's gone. It's literally gone. No, I did a reel ages ago. It was about biscoth because who doesn't love biscoff? Love bisco. Yeah, right. And it was one was 200 calories teaspoon, and one was 85. And it's like, where's your teaspoon size? That's double, over double, the amount of calories on one teaspoon. But people be like, no, no, I consume 90 calories. And I'm like, yeah, but if you're estimating these calories, you're never quite bang on, and not not, you're not even quite bang on because even packaging can be up to 20% different anyway, in terms of the labels and the the quantities of calories. So we're trying to be as accurate as we can. But if you are eyeballing your shit and you're thinking you're in a deficit and you're not seeing progress, reality is you're not in a deficit. And that's why the biggest, we talk about it over and over again, but the biggest blockage for people isn't potentially dracking their food, it's the weighing of the food, you know? That is a real, I guess, grit for issues for people to put right. So I've got a cup here, right? And I've got a table. This is what it is. That's how long it took to put my cup on my table. That is how long it takes to put a fucking jar on your scale. It's that. So if you're using that as an excuse, I'm gonna be honest, it's not good enough.

SPEAKER_00 9:37

It's one that way through. No, but it's not good enough. It's not good enough. And it's like it's so quick and easy to put things on the scale. And if you are someone that feels like, oh, I keep forgetting to put things on the scale, like leave the scale on your counter. My scale is literally like it's now a part of my tabletop counter, right? Because you've built it in a habit, right? You've built that as a habit. So yeah, and it's easy to see, like it's easy to do these habits if we see them right in front of us. So if you are not using the scale, put the scale out on the counter. Simple. It makes it so much easier. And also, FitnessPal, I mean, I actually don't use my FitnessPal. I use carbon and I like input all of my things myself, which took a very, very long time. So I wouldn't recommend that to people. But I'm pretty sure with FitnessPal, it starts like it gives you the options first of like one cup or like one handful. It's like very, very, very not generic, like eyeball y. Yeah. Yeah. Quite inaccurate initially. So make sure you change everything to grams as well. Because if you are doing things by cup, by a handful, or like portion, like obviously that's who the hell knows what that is.

SPEAKER_01 10:43

It's like half, half a medium potato. What's half a medium potato? Yeah. What's the medium potato? My medium potato might be a lot bigger than your medium potato.

SPEAKER_00 10:53

We've got to be doing grams. Like, grams is so important. Grams and weighing everything. Because as Emily said, it's like that couple of bites of your kid's food could make the difference between you being in a deficit or not. Like it's these small things that slip through. It's like your your handful of nuts that looks about right. Like, no, it's probably not, right? It's probably triple what you thought. And these things really don't feel like much in the moment, but they do make a massive difference. So tracking consistently needs to be the first place that you're looking if you feel like you're not seeing change. And sometimes that may be just like, oh, I've just let me just have a little bite here. Like, don't worry about inputting that into my fitness pal. Unfortunately, like if you're if you're starting out, you need to be tracking everything. Like it's non-negotiable.

SPEAKER_01 11:35

Another massive, like the way I'm really emphasizing the word massive and big. Massive. Another massive one is not logging, like you've just said, everything you consume, right? Because one of the big culprits, I think, is liquid calories. And I'm sure you all agree. Because it's not just like the coffees and the splashes of milk, right? It's the oils. It's when you're going for your protein shakes and you're using, you know, however much m amount of milk. It's the calories that you are consuming, the ones that don't make you feel full, right? So it's those liquid calories that you're consuming without even thinking about it. And it's really easy to overlook these and forget to lock the log them entirely. But they still count as calories. They are absolutely worth calories. And I think things like oils as well, they are such an overlooked, right? But they are heavily calorie dense. And if you are not taking that consideration, that could be your deficit just from frying your chicken.

SPEAKER_00 12:30

Very important to note that oils like olive oil, extra virgin, they are great. And it's a really good healthy source of fat. And it's a great thing to have in your diet, but we need to be measuring these things. And even with the coffee point, so a lot of people think of I'll avoid like a Starbucks because it's everyone knows now that like a frappuccino from Starbucks is like 800 calories. But even just like your small oat milk, flat white that you're getting from the local coffee shop down the road, like that has a lot of calories in. I was um, I was speaking to someone the other day who was like he was struggling with weight loss, and he had no idea that only recently when he started looking at calories, he had no idea that he was, so he was having four flat white oat milk, oat milk flat whites every single day. And realized with the amount of milk that that was like 250 mils of oat milk four times a day. That's over 600 calories. That's actually wild, isn't it? That is your deficit right there. Like just by cutting those out of his day-to-day diet, he would lose like over 500 grams of weight every single week because that is so many calories. And people don't really think like one one oat milk, Latte. 150, 160 calories.

SPEAKER_01 13:43

Easily.

SPEAKER_00 13:44

It's wild.

SPEAKER_01 13:45

And I'm a coffee fanatic. I drink a lot of caffeine. And I don't, it's not that I don't have milk, but it's just that I don't have milk. It's that I don't know that I don't have milk, it's that I don't have milk. Don't have milk. I don't have milk because it's not because of the calories, it's because I'm just so used to drinking black coffee now. But when I go out, for instance, if I'm out, you know, having a coffee with a girlfriend, I will have an oat milk latte or a frappati or whatever. I have an oat milk or something. I will have a macchiato or a cortado.

SPEAKER_00 14:17

What's a macchiato? A macchiato is literally like a couple of teaspoons of the frothy milk that you put on top of the coffee. So it's kind of like an espresso with a top of milk. Or I have a cortado, which is a little bit more milk, but we're not looking at any more than maybe like 50 mils of milk. So it kind of gives you that like milky coffee here. You've still got it in the same cup, but you're having at least 50% or more or less of the calories. Um, to be honest, that's something that I actually don't track because I consistently do that every single day now. So I know that whatever I'm consuming, that's gonna be going on top of that. But it's like there's little things that we can do to reduce the amount of calories, like liquid calories that we're consuming. So taking it out of your milk is obvious taking it out of your milk, taking it out of your coffee is obviously one of the easiest ones that we can do. And just like coming up with little other hacks here and there, but it's having that level of awareness that actually creates control because you can't, you can't, you can't unknow what you already know. Like once you know, you know, and you're able to make easy strategic changes that really don't feel like that much to your day, but you wouldn't have been able to make those changes if you're not aware of what you're consuming.

SPEAKER_01 15:33

I think there is one that some people will still question. I think, especially when they first come to coaching, they will be like, I'm just being making sure. And obviously, I think most people are pretty aware, but what I do want to just touch base on is when people eat back the calories they burnt from exercise. We've spoken about this many fucking times, but your calories that you burn during exercise, one, they are inaccurate from your watch, for example. Two, they are very, very small. But three, they are counted in your calorie deficit. Okay, so if we say that we're a you know moderately active individual and we train four times per week, for example, you are counting those calories within your deficit. Okay, so they're already accum accounted for. So you need to kind of forget the calories you burn. That's kind of why calories in exercise are they're not worth the thought process. It's not gonna make much of a difference. Your app will tell you, especially on FitnessPal, it will tell you you've burnt fucking loads like during a workout. And then it encourages you, unless you switch it off, to eat them back. It will be like you've got two or whatever, 200 extra calories to consume back. But the problem is those burns are obviously one, inaccurate, but they are overestimated. And then, like I've just said, they are already accounted for in your calorie deficit.

SPEAKER_00 16:47

I'm honestly not sure why that feature has not been like killed by fitness. It doesn't make sense to me. Like, why would they not have just edited that out because everyone complains about it? And I just it is sorry, go on.

SPEAKER_01 16:58

No, go on. It is something though that do you I still get clients or that have just signed up and they're like, I'm just making sure that that I don't count those, you know? Yeah, it's still like people aren't a hundred percent still on it, and I don't understand. Like you've got people that have used fitness bar for years that clearly like you do not eat about those calories. So anyone that's much yeah, it makes it confusing.

SPEAKER_00 17:19

I don't know why they've just not cancelled it out because they've probably got so much shit feedback from it. But also, I just think that it can, I don't know, I just think it can breed quite an unhealthy relationship with exercise and food. And so that's something that we need to be really aware of. Like, and we're not, we say this all the time, we're not in the gym to burn calories. We are in the gym to build muscle, and we are in the gym to become the healthiest version of ourselves and make sure we're protecting ourselves for long-term health and really like shape our bodies, right? We're in the gym to get more muscle onto our frame. We're not in the gym to lose weight. The weight loss, the fat loss comes down to the calories that we're consuming and the calories that we're burning as just like being a human overall, right? So just really always encourage people to separate training from weight loss because like they're two different things.

SPEAKER_01 18:15

I've got a really big issue with certain coaches. I have a really big issue with certain people in general, but I've got a really big issue. I've just got an issue with everyone. I've um I was like speaking to a to a client who came from another coach, and he used to tell her that she had to burn a certain amount of calories when she trained every single session. And I'm like, that's that's just not okay. Like, firstly, they're gonna be inaccurate, but secondly, that's really not breeding a healthy relationship with training. We also, right, okay, I understand that if we're incorporating more cardio, we might be looking at that as more of an energy expenditure, right? I get that. But even if you did a calorie target on that, I don't really vibe with. But your training is for fucking sculpting your transforming your body and retaining your muscle mass in a deficit. It is apps and strength and fucking risk of health. Like you're not going there just to burn calories. If you burn one calorie during your training session, cool, literally cool, like fine. And so people that are breeding this calorie burn from exercise, they're fucking stupid and they shouldn't be in the industry.

SPEAKER_00 19:20

No, that's not okay. And I just think as we said, like you're you're not there to burn calories, you're there to add to your frame. And I like to look at it like if we have a cake, okay? Say our physique is a cake, and without training, we're like a bear cake. There's no icing, there's no decorations. That's it. Like, are we talking like a Victoria sponge or are we going to like a well, let's let's go Victoria sponge, plain Victoria sponge with nothing on it. Like literally just sponge. Okay, no, no creak, no cream, no jam. No cream, no nothing, no, no, just just the sponge, right? But then we train and we add to the cake. So we've now got the cream, we've got the jam, we've got the icing, we've got the decorations, it looks pretty. It's a beautiful cake, right? What cake are you choosing? What cake do you want to eat? I don't want to eat the shit, like just sponge. Like, I want the cake with all the bells and whistles. Training is your bells and whistles, right? You're adding and we're not taking anything away. And I think that that's a important analogy, Dave. I'm sat here smiling, going, she's gone. They're laughing at this. But it's true, like we're not, like, we're not there to, it's not there to take from us, right? But fat loss is fat loss is like what we're taking away. Training is kind of what we're adding in terms of muscle. Should we do the last, should we just go, should we do focusing on perfection over consistency as our last one? Because I feel like everyone knows that we want them to eat protein and tracking in your mindset kind of go into the same as perfection over consistency.

SPEAKER_01 20:44

Why can't I find that?

SPEAKER_00 20:45

Mistake five. Mistake five. Focusing on perfection instead of consistency.

SPEAKER_01 20:51

And then we look at the the mindset, because mindset meets muscle. Great, great name for a podcast, because that is exactly what we're looking at. Because it's not just the muscle essence, it's not just the calories, it's also the way we think about it and the perception. A lot of people think tracking is all or nothing at all. And yeah, we do need to be consistent with our tracking. But if you hit your calories perfectly and you think, okay, that's a great day. And then if you go over slightly and then you think, my God, I've failed, and then you stop tracking, and then you've got into that cycle again because you will go over your fucking calories sometimes. It will happen. Like you've got to remember you aren't gonna stay in your calorie zone every single day for the rest of your life. It is absolutely gonna be days where we do go over them, and there'll be days where you go under them. Like it will just be a teeter towards a balance. But the mindset of giving up will never ever give you the results. It will fuck you in. I was gonna say fuck you in the ass. I think that's probably a bit of a heavy expression, but it will.

unknown 21:59

And

SPEAKER_00 22:00

And our progress doesn't actually come from our perfect days because think about actually how many perfect days have you had in your entire career of building your body? Probably none. One, right? One, maybe one. And so obviously, your progress is not going to come from that. It's going to come from your days where you're as consistent as you can possibly be. And one day of going slightly over your calories is not going to do anything long term. It's not going to undo anything. What matters is what you do most of the time. And what I really like, actually, and something that I get my clients to do a lot is I'll be like, okay, here's your calorie target, right? Let's say it's 1800 calories for a deficit. Yeah. But it would like, like, we we're just gonna sit in a range. And I'll I'll be like, okay, so 1800 is your deficit. Your maintenance is let's say 2200. So if you consume 1900 calories one day, you're still in a deficit and you're not failing. So it's really important, I think, to look at our calories as a range. Because if we do slightly go over, we're like, okay, I'm still in a deficit. It might just not be as large of a deficit as what I initially wanted, but that's okay. And maybe tomorrow I can go to 1700 calories and I'm be okay with eating a little bit less. And it's important to try and stay as we always say this. It's like we're not setting rules for ourselves. We're setting boundaries that we can bend and be flexible with. We're not setting rules that can only like that we're just gonna break because rules break, boundaries bend. And instead of chasing that perfection, I think it's important to focus on just being consistent enough that you can move forward. And that's what actually gets results.

SPEAKER_02 23:35

So if you are tracking and you're not seeing results, then just take a step up. Step up and look at how you're using the tool.

SPEAKER_01 23:47

Okay. Look at how you are using it on a daily look at your adherence to the little bites here and there. Look at the way you're weighing your food, look at the way you're reading your labels and the way you are tracking. And also allow yourself some grace and some slut.

SPEAKER_00 24:06

Yeah, and give yourself time, right? These things take time. Give your body time to respond, stay consistent, and genuinely like that's all you can do. Like it's your own journey. You're not in a race. You're not like the take the pressure off. And we need to, if we want to see the results long term, we've got to be doing this forever anyway. So make it your lifestyle, enjoy it along the way, and just keep going and take take all the time that you need to get it right.

SPEAKER_01 24:31

Thanks, Size, for joining us on Mindset Meets Muscle. We hope you enjoyed this episode and it gave you some insight onto mistakes you might be making with your tracking.

SPEAKER_00 24:40

And please subscribe to the podcast if you enjoy it because it really helps us so much. Please share it with your friends. We appreciate all of the support and we obviously just want to reach as many people as we can. And that happens through you guys subscribing. It helps us so much more than you realise. So just click that little button and we'll see you in the next one. All right.