Improving your Macro Tracking

The great thing about personal training and developing client relationships is that it has given me a number of nutrition based topics which I can blog about.

This weeks topic as per the subject title is 'Improving your Macro Tracking'.

Macro Tracking, is the term given to tracking your Protein, Carbs and Fat intake.  This is a different approach to a calorie controlled diet, where you will be given a calorie allowance to hit each day, and you can hit this calorie allowance selecting any food source you wish.  

I find on average it takes a new client around a fortnight to start hitting their macro's within the 5g targets I set them.  This is mainly down to the adjustment of using this method to track their foods, and then as their memory adapts and then understanding how much carbs, fat or protein is in a certain food source, or being able to differentiate between a protein, carb  and fat source.

Tips when it comes to Macro Tracking

1. Don't just input a food source into your 'My Fitness Pal' and the quantity you are about to consume or have consumed.  Instead look at the macro break down first, by doing this you will become more knowledgeable of how much macronutrients is in a particular food source.  For example 100g of chicken has for example around 25g of protein, 3g of fat and Zero carbs.  So in future if your low in hitting your protein and fat target but have already hit your carb target you know that by consuming chicken it has no carbs in it therefore it will not effect your carb limit.
2. Read food labels carefully, as per the picture below, this product was in an end of isle display next to the health isle in a well known Supermarket.  For a consumer who does not track macro's as part of their diet but 'thinks' they follow a low carb, high protein diet would naturally think this product is perfect!  On a further inspection this product is actually mainly a carb source - not the protein source that it states on the front of the packaging.  So why has the manufacturer written protein on the front of the package?  because unlike your standard granola it contains more protein - that's all! therefore they can market it with the word 'Protein'.
3. Low Fat options - again read the food labels!  Opting for the low fat alternative in most cases means their is added sugars or sweeteners and the full fat option is actually the better choice.  Did you know that legally a company can market any product of theres as a 'diet' or 'low calorie' alternative providing its less than the standard option?  This means your 'healthy' alternative bread may infact only be 1g less in fat! - the total of 9 calories (if your following a calorie controlled diet).
4. If your trying to make clean and healthy choices then look at the product and ask yourself is it in its natural state or as near to?  Do you know what's in it?
5. If you are making your own recipe, use the recipe maker in My Fitness Pal, enter the weights and all ingredients that you are using and then enter the portions  - Hey presto the app can give you your full macro break down per serving!
6. If using my fitness pal be aware of 'cooked' and 'raw' weights.  If I use carrots I always enter 'raw carrots' then weigh and enter. 
7. Be mindful people can enter a food source and all the macro info into My Fitness Pal (I personally only rely on 'raw' or bar code scanning, I never search for a product).  If you do search for a product, again study the macro break down of the product - does it match the food label of the product you have in front of you?  Also supermarkets change their barcodes - I once froze some meat I bought from Asda to use at a later date.  A month later I scanned it, then noticed that bar code now belongs to Asda's Unsmoked Bacon! If I never noticed I would have been completely out on my macro targets that day.

I always say to my clients that you know more about good nutrition than you think you do, you just haven't really thought about it in this way until now.  We all know how to eat right and what foods are good and bad for us, but some of us ignore this.