3 Reasons You're Not Seeing Results
These 3 reasons are related to macro tracking accuracy. Our bodies are smart. Our bodies know exactly what we are putting into them even if we aren’t tracking our food correctly or at all for that matter.
Too much variation of these following discrepancies can cause your intake numbers to be off quite a bit which can contribute to you seeing no changes week to week. Before you go changing your macros or adding in more cardio, make sure you’re not doing these 3 things.
Self awareness check ✔
1. Eating higher processed foods and having incorrect food labels.. the FDA allows up to 20% error on food nutrition labels. If all your foods are packaged that could be a huge amount of error in your intake. And some companies have HIGHER errors but haven't been caught yet. This especially happens with "diet and low cal" labeled foods. Watch out for 100 cal snacks they are a bug culprit of this.
2. Not using a food scale. Using a food scale will increase your accuracy and for a lot of people makes tracking WAY less time consuming. Toss your bowl on the scale and zero it out to measure each ingredient... less measuring cups and spoons you have to clean after.
3. Eating out and getting frustrated when a meal is hard to track or not in myfitnesspal. The same with food labels, restaurants calories are usually underestimated and it'll depend on the chef which can cause big fluctuations if you're always eating out.
If you find yourself eating out often try picking more whole food options from the menu and ask for no oil or steamed veggies.. much easier to track correctly. Don't worry about this on untracked meals but remember just because you don't count it doesn't mean your body doesn't count it.
To mitigate these discrepancies in tracking we can:
Choose to eat more whole, less processed foods that are entered correctly into my fitness pal
Double check by googling the nutrition facts.
Using a food scale and measuring in grams.
You don't have to always be right on, but going over 10 to 20g of a food can make a difference if you're doing it all the time. 5g of oil is 45 calories but 10g of oil ends up 90 calories and doing that 4x a day ends up an extra 180 calories a day which could put you back to your maintenance range and no weight loss would occur.
Being honest with yourself.
If you eat something and have to guesstimate.. guess the serving size a bit higher especially if your goal is fat loss. If you're underestimating every guess food you throw in you're more than likely eating OVER your daily calorie goal.
Overestimate meals you eat out if your goal is fat loss.
Track your drinks correctly.
From Avatar nutrition: You can either count your alcohol as a substitute for carbs, fat, or a mix of both depending on what your macro plan for the day is.
Take the total calorie content of your drink and divide it by 4 if you’re going to count it towards your carbs, and divide by 9 if you’re going to count it towards your fat. This is because carbs have 4 calories per gram and fats have 9… Simple as that.
As an example, let’s take a look at a 5-ounce glass of red wine – we’re not even going to worry about the macro content at all, just the total calories. You’d do the same for hard liquors, beer, or any mixed drink as they are almost universally NOT going to have protein or fat content.
Bites and tastes still contain calories. Even if you don't swallow the food the calories are still being ingested.. look at gum nutrition labels. If you're eating right you won't have huge cravings or FOMO on foods. If this is you we need to talk about it and audit your current food choices to see how we can work on this together. It definitely happens and is nothing to be ashamed of and there are ways we can help to lower these feelings.
Which of these sound like you?
If you’re ready to see results and need help along the way, schedule your FREE consultation!
