macro tracking made easy: let go of the small stuff

Emily Field 00:00:00  Welcome to episode 43 of the Macros Made Easy podcast. In today’s episode, we’re diving into all the things you don’t need to worry about when tracking your macros. So if you’ve ever felt yourself obsessing over the small details like whether or not you need to track every spice, whether your total calories should perfectly match your prescribed goal, or if those net carbs are really as magical as they seem. This episode is for you. I’ll walk you through why you can let go of these tracking stressors and focus on what really moves the needle for your goals. Whether you’re just starting out with macros or you’ve been tracking for a while, this episode will help you simplify the process and reduce the overwhelm so you can stay consistent and keep making progress towards your best self. Welcome to Macros Made Easy, the podcast that takes the confusion out of tracking macros. I’m your host, Emily Field, a registered dietitian that specializes in a macros approach. In each episode, I help you learn how to eat in a way that supports your health, body composition, and athletic performance goals.

 

Emily Field 00:00:56  We’ll cover the basics of macronutrients how to track for various goals, the role of macros in your health, and how to make sustainable changes to your habits. I’ve helped hundreds of people experience more food freedom and flexibility while navigating their nutrition. So whether you’ve tried macros and it just didn’t stick or you just heard the word macros yesterday, I can’t wait to help you to listen. You already know that I love macros. I love teaching people how to track macros. I think it’s one of the most powerful tools that both my clients and myself can use when it comes to trying to achieve health, body composition, and athletic performance goals. It gives you the flexibility to eat a wide variety of foods, while still being mindful of how they fit into your overall plan. A macro tracking approach offers structure and guidance regarding how much you should eat, while allowing for choice and autonomy over which foods you’d like to eat. You’ve definitely heard me say this before, but this can absolutely be a superior strategy to traditional calorie counting, or simply providing a list of quote allowed foods or a rigid prescribed meal plan.

 

Emily Field 00:02:03  By learning how to reach your unique and individualized needs. Gaining a basic understanding of nutrition and seeing how particular foods impact the way you feel. Macro tracking can be a long term approach to health and nutrition. I like to say that tracking macros puts you in the driver’s seat of how you want to feel, look, and perform. By controlling the protein, fat, and carbohydrate content of the food you’re giving your body, you’re giving it gentle direction for how to function. And if I put it another way, it’s like macros are the language that your body speaks. Tracking macros is like using that language to give your body clear instructions. Contrast that to counting calories, which just affects the measure of gravity against your body. In other words, it just affects your weight. Simply tracking your food with or without regard to the amount of calories increases your awareness and influences your eating behaviors. Tracking macros does this and it influences your body weight, your health markers, your body composition, your athletic performance. What I love about macro tracking is that it’s practical.

 

Emily Field 00:03:06  You don’t need to cut out entire food groups or rely on extreme diets to achieve your goals. It’s about making informed choices that align with your goals, and that’s something really anyone can do. However, I’ve noticed that people often get caught up in the wrong details the tiny things that don’t actually impact their progress, whether it’s obsessing over the exact grams of fat or worrying about whether a teaspoon of salad dressing really matters. These distractions can take away from the simplicity and the sustainability of macro tracking. For me, macro tracking is about making your life easier, not harder. It should not feel like a complex math equation that takes over your day, and it certainly shouldn’t cause stress or overwhelm. That’s why I’m committed to making macro tracking simple, easy, and flexible for my clients. I want them to see it as a tool for empowerment, not something that adds to the pressure of living a healthy lifestyle. So in this segment, I’m going to be breaking down the most common tracking stressors that people get caught up in.

 

Emily Field 00:04:02  Things that really don’t matter when it comes to seeing real progress and help you refocus on actually moves the needle in your journey. First up is not tracking your non-starchy vegetables. If you’ve been entering every cucumber slice and a handful of spinach into your tracker, you can stop that now. Not only does tracking these low calorie, high fiber foods make logging more tedious than it needs to be, but skipping them actually encourages you to eat more of them, which is a win. These foods don’t contribute meaningful calories or carbohydrates, and trying to track every lettuce leaf isn’t going to make or break your progress. So let’s take a common meal. Let’s just say a salad. With dressing, you’ve got cheese, maybe some nuts or seeds and lots of non-starchy vegetables. And break down what you should track and what you don’t need to stress about. First, the non-starchy vegetables. Think cucumbers, spinach, lettuce, bell peppers and tomatoes all low calorie and high in fiber, so tracking these isn’t necessary. A salad can have a huge amount of veggies, but they won’t significantly impact your calorie or carb count, and the fiber won’t interfere with your tracking in a meaningful way.

 

Emily Field 00:05:09  You can skip entering the cucumber slices the handfuls of spinach because these veggies are filling, nutritious, and they encourage you to eat more without adding up in calories. The benefit here is that when you don’t track them, you’re encouraged to eat larger portions of these nutrient rich foods without worrying about the numbers. So it’s actually a win for your nutrition and your sanity to let these go. Now, when we look at the cheese, nuts, and dressing, these are more calorie rich and will impact your macros in the overall calorie intake of the entire meal, you’ll want to track the cheese and nuts or seeds, because they provide fats and calories that will need to be accounted for in your daily totals. The dressing might be a little bit trickier, but if it’s a small serving, it’s still worth tracking, especially if it’s a higher calorie option like a cream based dressing. Some people might choose to track only large servings of dressing while estimating the rest. The point is that these ingredients are more significant contributors to your total calorie intake, so keeping log of them helps maintain accuracy in your tracking.

 

Emily Field 00:06:09  By leaving out a small, low calorie item like non-starchy vegetables from your log, you free up your time and your mental energy while still hitting your overall goals. Tracking the foods that actually impact your calorie and macro intake, like nuts, cheese, and dressing ensures that you’re staying on track without obsessing over every little detail. It’s all about simplifying the process without compromising your progress in your food diary. It might look like the meal is incomplete where you just have cheese, you just have your nuts. You just have your dressing. But you know in your head that you had a real and complete meal there. You had lots of non-starchy vegetables and it came together. But if you’re wasting your time and energy on those non-starchy vegetables. I welcome you to forget that detail. Now, a lot of people at this point would say, well, what about my fiber goal? I’m really committed to getting more fiber in my day. And I would say even if you did track non-starchy vegetables, these are probably contributing very little towards your fiber goal.

 

Emily Field 00:07:05  Each day you’re going to see more fiber from your nuts, your seeds, your whole grains, your starchy vegetables, your whole fruits. If you are able to get 20 to 25g of fiber from those foods, those macro contributing foods, you’re on the right track. And anything that you left untracked like your non-starchy vegetables is just extra. So I would encourage you to try to get your fiber goal met. You know, hitting that 15, maybe even 20 gram threshold by foods that actually contribute towards your macro goals and then leave those non-starchy vegetables out because those are just going to be extra. Next, let’s talk about net carbs. If you’ve ever seen a food label advertising only three grams net carbs and wondered what it means. Here’s the deal. It’s a marketing term. It’s not science based. Net carbs subtract fiber and sugar alcohols from the total carbs of the food. But the way our bodies process these isn’t so black and white. If carbs are something you care about tracking, stick to total carbs.

 

Emily Field 00:08:06  It’s more reliable and removes the guesswork. Net carbs are one of the most misleading marketing tactics in the food industry, and unfortunately, a lot of people fall into the trap of relying on them to guide their food choices, especially when they’re trying to lose fat. The idea behind net carbs is that you subtract fiber and sugar alcohols from the total carbohydrates because they’re supposedly, quote, not digested or don’t have an impact on blood sugar. But the reality is your body isn’t a calculator. These numbers aren’t as straightforward as food companies just want you to believe. I’m going to tell you a story about a client of mine. Let’s call her Jessica, who got stuck in this exact cycle. Jessica came to came to me feeling frustrated. She had been tracking her macros, carefully, choosing foods that were labeled low net carb, and avoiding things like fruit, potatoes, and whole grains because she thought she had too many carbs. Instead, her diet was packed with low carb protein bars, keto friendly tortillas, fiber packed bread, and artificially sweetened desserts all things that claim to be low in net carbs.

 

Emily Field 00:09:07  On paper, she was keeping her carbs extremely low, about 50g per day. And yet she wasn’t losing any weight. But that wasn’t the only issue. Jessica was also experiencing major digestive distress, constant bloating, discomfort, and irregularity. She thought something was wrong with her metabolism, but in reality, her diet was full of highly processed fiber additives and sugar alcohols, which were wreaking havoc on her gut. Many of these low net carb products contain ingredients like chicory root fiber, inulin, urea, little, and when eaten in excess, they can cause major bloating and digestive upset. When we took a closer look at our tracking, we realized something else. Her actual carbohydrate intake and calories were much higher than she thought. Those low net carb tortillas are still contributing calories. That keto bar that advertises three grams net carbs? It’s actually closer to 20g total carbs and more than 200 calories. But because she was only focusing on net carbs, she wasn’t accounting for them properly. Once Jessica stopped obsessing over net carbs and started focusing on total carbs and real whole foods sources of fiber, things completely change.

 

Emily Field 00:10:15  She swapped out her processed, low carb wraps for real veggies and whole grains. She reduced the artificial sweeteners and incorporated balanced meals. Instead of relying on snacks marketed as keto friendly. And within weeks, her digestion improved, her bloating disappeared, and she finally started feeling the fat loss progress that she had been struggling to achieve. So the lesson here is that net carbs are a marketing gimmick, and relying on them can lead to lead to misrepresented calorie intake, stalled fat loss, and digestive issues. So if you’re tracking macros, track total carbs, not net carbs, so you’re working with accurate numbers. And if your goal is fat loss, remember process fiber and sugar alcohols don’t magically make calories disappear. Choosing whole, minimally processed foods over low carb marketing tricks will almost always lead to better results. One of the most common frustrations with macro tracking is noticing that your total calories don’t always match your prescribed calorie goal. Even when you hit your macros perfectly, you might be following your targets down to the gram, but your tracking app still shows a calorie total that’s slightly higher or lower than expected.

 

Emily Field 00:11:23  This can be confusing, but the truth is, this discrepancy is completely normal, and it’s nothing to stress about. The reason for this mismatch comes down to how calories are calculated and rounding errors on food labeling. While we typically use the standard values of four calories per gram for protein and carbs, and nine calories per gram for fat. The reality isn’t always that precise. For example, fiber technically a carbohydrate doesn’t provide exactly four calories per gram, since some types aren’t fully digestible. Food manufacturers also round calories on nutrition labels, so an item that contains 97 calories might be listed as 100. And these small variations add up over the day. Additionally, tracking apps calculate calories differently. Some rely on raw food label data, while others strictly apply the 449 rule, leading to slight inconsistencies. If you consume sugar alcohols or alcohol, the math gets even trickier, as they don’t fit neatly into that standard macro calorie equation. So what should you do about it? Absolutely nothing. If your total calories are off by 20 to 50 or even up to 100, it will not impact your progress.

 

Emily Field 00:12:34  What matters most is that you’re hitting your macro targets consistently, because staying within those target ranges ensures your calorie intake is where it needs to be. Instead of stressing over small discrepancies, focus on the big picture. Consistent tracking, smart food choices, and long term adherence. Your body isn’t measuring calories down to the exact number, and you don’t need to be either. With my clients, I typically tell them if they’re landing 10% over or 10% under their goal calories, they’re doing just fine. What I am most concerned is if they are hitting their macro targets and we say excellent adherence is hitting about five grams up or five grams down of that protein fat and carbohydrate gram total. So if your total grams of protein per day is 130, I’d love to see you getting 125 to 135 in that range. Most days of the week, and if you’re landing in that five up or five down range for all three macros, you are absolutely on the right track and you’re most likely landing. And that 10% up or 10% down from your goal calorie your prescribed calories for the day.

 

Emily Field 00:13:43  This next one is an easy one. If you are tracking every single spice or zero calorie drink or low calorie source, it’s another place that you are getting overly complicated and you need to let go. Unless you’re drinking bottles of ranch dressing or downing your food in high calorie sauces, these tiny add ons are pretty negligible. The stress of logging a teaspoon of hot sauce just is not worth it. A really common item that I see people track, I tell them to let go of it is that black coffee or your can of Diet Coke, or a little bit of salsa that you put on a taco. Like these things can be let go again, freeing up your mental space to track things that actually contribute to your progress. And finally, let’s talk about cooking oils used in the pan. Do you need to track them? If you’re intentionally adding a measurable amount to your food. Yes, I would love to see you track that cooking oil, because you probably need to be aware of how much fat that’s contributing to your overall day, fats and calories.

 

Emily Field 00:14:41  But if you’re just greasing the pan and most of it isn’t making it onto your plate, stressing over logging every drop is unnecessary. The goal is to focus on what truly impacts your results, and I promise none of these things are it. Another example here is when you roast or bake a lot of veggies at one time, maybe you chop up veggies, you throw them in a bowl and you put some oil and salt and pepper on it, and you bake and you’re using those veggies across multiple servings throughout the entire week. The oil that is contributing to your day, the fat calories that might come from that little bit of oil spritz that you’re consuming on any given day of the week is likely not contributing very significantly to your fat or calorie goals, so I would neglect tracking that. I know this can be a sticky point for a lot of people, but I promise you if you are more likely to show up to the table with a good attitude about tracking macros, you’re going to be more likely to do it long enough to actually see progress.

 

Emily Field 00:15:40  That little bit of margin of error that might be reflected in your daily tracking comes out in the wash over the course of many weeks and many months. And if you’re somebody that has really big goals for your body weight, your body composition, your athletic performance, it means that you need to stay in the game for a really long time for a significant amount of time, let’s just say. So that again, that margin of error that might be coming from the day that you eat those veggies versus a day that you don’t, it’s completely negligible. You need to let that one go. The next thing you can let go of is that perfect macro distribution every single day. It is not necessary. So many people stress over those daily variations, like being a few grams over on fat or under on protein, but these fluctuations will not derail your progress. Your body is not a machine that needs to be fed perfectly within a 24 hour period. What matters most is that you’re staying within your macro ranges consistently over the week, which will give you the results that you’re aiming for.

 

Emily Field 00:16:40  If you need a number for this, if you’re able to hit within that five grams up or five grams down of your protein, fat and carbohydrate total maybe five days a week, you’re doing excellent. Okay, so let’s give an example to this. Maybe your goal is to hit 145g of protein a day. And on Tuesday it was 150. And on Wednesday it was 140. Maybe on Friday it was 120. That’s okay. Most days of the week, if you’re landing in that five gram range up or down, I would consider that excellent adherence. Those minor shifts are part of a balanced approach that will not impact your long term goals. The key is that macro tracking should feel flexible. It should be sustainable. I don’t want you downing egg whites at the end of the night so that you hit that exact gram gold. We have lost the plot. If we’re doing that. Okay, so please don’t sweat that small stuff. Stay consistent with your overall intake and your body will respond. This might be a great time to talk about flexible tracking.

 

Emily Field 00:17:40  Okay. When it comes to macro tracking, it’s important to focus on protein first and hitting your calories as they are the key drivers of change. This approach is what we call flexible tracking, and it allows you to adapt your eating pattern based on what works best for your day. Protein is the most important macro to prioritize. It plays a significant role in muscle maintenance, fat loss, overall body composition. So hitting your protein target consistently should be your primary focus as that will have the biggest impact on your progress. Next comes that total calorie intake. So getting your calories in line with your goals whether that’s fat loss, muscle gain, maintenance that’s essential. But after that, you really do have a lot of flexibility with where your fats and carbs land. The specific Balance of fats and carbs isn’t as crucial as hitting your overall calorie and protein targets. In fact, this is where the flexibility of macro tracking really shines. You can choose to eat more carbs and less fats on one day, or go higher in fat and lower on carbs in another, as long as you’re still meeting your calorie and protein goals.

 

Emily Field 00:18:44  So I kind of picture this like a windshield wiper. So on days when I want to have a higher carb meal, I know that’s what’s coming in my HelloFresh, for example. I might hold back on fat in my earlier meals to account, or a lot for that carb that’s coming. And the opposite is also true. Maybe I’m going out to eat, and I know that the choices that I am going to be presented with are going to be higher and fat. I might choose to keep my carbohydrate count a little bit lower earlier on in the day, in order to account for that. Fat that’s coming at windshield wiper approach allows me to hit the two most important things, which are my protein and my calories, but where those remaining calories come from in those carbs and fats is flexible. Okay? This flexibility makes tracking sustainable and adaptable, so you don’t have to stress about hitting the same fat to carb ratio every single day. Sometimes your body might feel better with more carbs for energy. Or maybe you prefer higher fat meals for satiety.

 

Emily Field 00:19:42  Either approach works as long as you’re still hitting your calorie and protein targets. So in the hierarchy of importance, focus on protein first, then calories, and in those remaining calories, you can be flexible with the fat and carb intake. Your app is going to do this math for you. You do not have to worry about recalculating your macros every single time you want to go higher on your carbs and lower on your fats, or vice versa. But a great rule of thumb to think about is that there’s about two grams of carb for every one gram of fat, so if you’re going to go over your carbs, you’re going to hold back on your fat. If you’re going to go over your fat, you’re going to hold back on your carbs. All of this makes more sense if you have some tracking experience. So I just welcome you to track your food as best you can, even as messy and inaccurate as you feel like you may be. I can’t describe it over a podcast episode as easily as I may be able to show you in an image, but essentially, I just want you to understand that you do have a lot of flexibility in where those fats and carbs come from, and where you land on a daily basis.

 

Emily Field 00:20:45  They can fluctuate on any given day depending on what you like to eat and what’s presented to you. Now let’s address something I get asked about all the time. Meal timing. People love to overcomplicate this one. Do you need to eat every three hours or is it bad if you eat after 8 p.m.? Well, skipping breakfast ruin your metabolism. And the short answer is no. Unless you have a very specific performance goals or a medical reason to time your meals in a certain way when you eat is less important than how much you eat over the course of a day. If skipping breakfast makes you feel sluggish, you need to eat. If you prefer larger meals less frequently, do that. There is no universal right meal timing for fat loss or muscle gain. What matters is what works for you and that you can do consistently. Now, of course, there are a few caveats here, and just because I am a dietitian doesn’t mean I am your dietitian. So there may be some specifics around your situation that might make meal timing a little bit more important.

 

Emily Field 00:21:47  So let’s talk about a couple of examples here. Let’s say for example, you work out first thing in the morning. Maybe having a carbohydrate rich snack before or during your session can improve your energy and performance. And then post-workout. While you don’t need to chug a protein shake the second you set down your weights, eating a well-rounded meal within an hour of finishing supports your blood sugar, muscle recovery and aids in muscle gain, especially if your goal is to build strength or improve your performance. One of the biggest mistakes I see people make with meal timing is going too long without eating, especially like five or more hours between meals. This can lead to blood sugar swings, energy crashes, and overeating later in the day, even digestive issues because you’re kind of trying to cram a ton of food in at one time. While intermittent fasting and longer gaps between meals can work for some people, most do better with a regular eating pattern that keeps blood sugar stable and hunger manageable. I’ll also say that eating within 30 to 60 minutes of waking can be really powerful for your thyroid help.

 

Emily Field 00:22:49  So if you are a woman that’s struggling with low thyroid hypothyroid, it might be in your best interest to eat in the morning within 30 to 60 minutes of waking. Similarly, eating earlier in the evening rather than right before bed may improve sleep quality, since larger meals too close to bedtime can interfere with digestion and melatonin production. So while you don’t need to stress about eating at exactly the same times every single day. Some awareness around meal timing, especially in relation to workouts, sleep, and long gaps between meals, can support your overall health and goals. But again, these are guidelines, not strict rules. And the best eating schedule is one that fits into your life and helps you stay consistent. Another thing that trips people up with macro tracking is being overly precise with food weighing. Look, if you’re competing in bodybuilding or cutting for a photo shoot, sure. Precision matters. You have a deadline at which you need to be at a certain body composition. But for the vast majority of people getting worked up over whether your chicken breast is exactly like 112g or 115g is just adding stress for no reason.

 

Emily Field 00:23:59  If you’re weighing your food most of the time and you’re getting pretty good at eyeballing, you pretty much know you know what that food looks like on your plate or in your bowl. And you’re using common sense for when you can’t use a food scale. You’re doing it right. Your progress doesn’t depend on whether you eyeballed half a banana instead of weighing it to the gram. Let’s talk about fitness tracker calorie burn estimates, because honestly, they’re just not accurate. I know it’s tempting to look at your Apple Watch or Fitbit and think, I burn 600 calories in this workout, so I should just eat that back. But those numbers can be off by hundreds of calories. If you’re basing how much you eat on what your watch says you burned, you’re playing a dangerous guessing game. Instead, focus on sticking to your macro targets that five grams up or down. Try to aim within that range most consistently. Over time, your body composition will reflect the bigger picture, not what your tracker thinks you burned in a given workout.

 

Emily Field 00:24:59  I’m going to give you two example scenarios here. In scenario one we have the over estimator. It’s Sarah. Sarah wears her smartwatch religiously and tracks her workouts and her steps every single day. Her watch tells her that she burns 2500 calories daily, so she sets her macro targets based on that number, thinking she needs to eat close to that to maintain her weight. The problem is, her watch is overestimating her calorie burn by a lot. Sarah does a one hour workout five days a week, but outside of that, she has a desk job and spends most of her time sitting. Her actual daily calorie burn is closer to 2000, but because she’s eating based on her fitness trackers inflated numbers, she’s unknowingly eating in a calorie surplus. After a few months, Sarah is frustrated. She thought she was eating at maintenance, but she’s actually gaining weight and can’t figure out why. She starts to feel discouraged and doubts whether macro tracking works for her. In this example, overestimating calorie burn led to consuming more calories than the body actually needed, and it resulted in unintended weight gain.

 

Emily Field 00:26:02  Sarah would benefit from ignoring her fitness trackers estimates and focusing on consistent macro intake based on a realistic assessment of her activity levels. I’m going to remind you that you are the best expert in knowing what’s happening in your body, but you have to be looking at the right data. We’ve talked about this in previous episodes, but if your goal is fat loss and you’re tracking with body measurements, progress pictures, a number of biofeedback markers, and your weight, if that’s important to you, you’re going to start to know which calorie threshold over time causes weight gain or fat gain, and which calorie threshold causes fat loss or weight loss. You don’t need to rely on a macro estimate, a calculator, another formula to tell you what you need to eat in order to see that kind of progress, you will know yourself. I get that when you’re brand new to this process, you just need one target and I welcome you to use those resources. But over time, you will become the expert at what is about the threshold that you need to feel excellent and at what threshold you’re starting to gain or what threshold you’re starting to lose.

 

Emily Field 00:27:10  It takes time, but if you’re committed to this process and you really want to understand how your body works, that is there for you. You can be that expert and you do not have to rely on another plan, a calculator, another worksheet, whatever to figure out your macro targets. Okay, so I have one more scenario for you. This is the opposite. This is the underestimated. This is Jake. Jake thinks he’s not that active because he only does structured workouts twice a week, so he assumes his calorie needs are low. He sets his intake based on a 1600 calorie estimate, thinking he’s barely burning 1800 a day. But what Jake doesn’t account for is how much he moves outside of the gym. He has a job that keeps him on his feet all day. He bikes to work. He plays at a recreational soccer league on the weekends. In reality, Jake is burning closer to 2400 calories a day, and he’s been under eating for months. As a result, he’s constantly tired.

 

Emily Field 00:28:04  He struggles to build muscle and he finds himself craving high calorie foods at night because his body is trying to compensate for the energy it’s not getting. Eventually, he gives up tracking because he thinks it isn’t working and ends up on a binge restrict cycle, eating way too little during the week and then overdoing it on the weekend. The consequence here is that underestimating his calorie needs led to low energy, stalled muscle growth, increased cravings, and an unsustainable approach to eating. Jake would benefit from reassessing his actual movement levels and increasing his intake to better fuel his body and prevent the cycle of restriction and overeating. The takeaway here, for both Sara and Jake, is that they ran into issues because they relied on inaccurate assumptions about their activity levels. The key is not to base calorie needs on what a fitness tracker says, or what you think your activity level is. It’s about looking at real world trends. Are you making progress towards your intended goal? Do you feel energized and strong? Do you have a healthy relationship with food.

 

Emily Field 00:29:05  Using a realistic macro plan and tracking progress over time is far more effective than trying to micromanage calories based on unreliable activity estimates. Before we dive into the next point, I want to take a quick moment to ask for your support if any of these tips are resonating with you. I’d be so grateful if you take a minute to rate and review this podcast. Your feedback helps others find the show, and it means the world to me to know that these episodes are making a difference in your journey. Just a quick review or a simple five star rating goes a long way for a podcast like mine. And hey, if you’ve been loving the podcast, share it with a friend who could use these insights too. Now let’s keep going and on to the next point. My next point is about clean eating, and the idea that you have to eat perfectly clean to make progress. This is one of the biggest myths in nutrition. There’s this belief that if your diet isn’t 100% whole foods, organic and free of anything processed, your results will suffer.

 

Emily Field 00:29:59  And that’s just simply not true. Yes. Nutrient rich whole foods should make up the majority of your diet because they support your overall cellular health. But that doesn’t mean you have to avoid convenience foods, treats, or packaged options. You do not need to be perfect with your food choices to be successful. One of the things I love most about macro tracking is it offers you the flexibility to spend your calorie and macro budget however you choose. That means that you can have a balanced plate of whole grains, lean protein, and veggies and still fit in that cookie or a serving of chips if you want. If you’re hitting your macro targets consistently, you will absolutely still see progress while including foods that are labeled as processed or, quote, unhealthy. The idea of food freedom that comes with tracking your macros is incredibly freeing compared to rigid diets or eating plans that restrict certain foods and food groups entirely. This approach can actually encourage a healthier relationship with food, because it takes away the guilt and restriction that often comes with following a clean eating pattern or clean eating rules.

 

Emily Field 00:31:03  When you’re not telling yourself you can’t have something, it allows you to enjoy foods without guilt. And it makes it easier to keep long term habits in place. You might choose to prioritize whole foods for their nutritional benefits most of the time, but the flexibility to incorporate processed snacks or your favorite treat into your plan means that you’re not feeling deprived. This isn’t just about calories. It’s about freedom, balance, and being able to live your life without constant stress of food rolls. Think about it this way instead of feeling like you’re constantly on a diet, macro tracking allows you to make empowered decisions about your food. You get to choose how to allocate your macros and calories in a way that supports both your health goals and your happiness. By focusing on hitting your macros rather than following a rigid, clean eating pattern. You can eat a variety of foods and still make progress. That kind of flexibility is a game changer when it comes to developing a sustainable, balanced and healthy relationship with food. In today’s episode, we covered a lot of ground on how to simplify your approach to macro tracking and let go of unnecessary stressors from not tracking non-starchy vegetables, which just adds to the workload without changing your results to disregarding net carbs, a marketing gimmick that doesn’t serve your long term goals.

 

Emily Field 00:32:18  We’ve explored why some of the things people obsess over just aren’t worth the mental energy. We also tackled why daily small fluctuations in your macros are totally normal and won’t ruin your progress. Why meal timing doesn’t need to be perfect, and why. Fitness trackers calorie burn estimates are wildly inaccurate and shouldn’t dictate your food choices. Plus, we covered the freedom that comes with not needing to eat 100% clean. A flexible approach allowing you treats, convenience foods and packaged options while still making progress. At the end of the day, macro tracking is supposed to be a tool that helps you, not something that adds stress. I encourage you to let go of unnecessary worries and focus on the big picture. Eating enough protein. Staying consistent with your macro targets. Identifying a routine that really works for you personally. That’s what actually leads to results. Not obsessing over every gram of food or every minute of the day. Thanks for tuning in, and I hope today’s episode gives you the clarity to approach macro tracking with more ease and flexibility.

 

Emily Field 00:33:20  Keep it simple and I’ll see you on the next episode. Thank you so much for listening to the Macros Made Easy podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, take a screenshot of the one you’re listening to right now to share it on your Instagram Stories, and tag me @emilyfield so that more people can find this podcast and learn how to use a macros approach in a stress free way. If you love the podcast, head over to iTunes and leave me a rating and a review. Remember, you can always find more free health and nutrition content on Instagram and on my website at emilyfieldRD.com. Thanks for listening and I’ll catch you on the next episode.