You’ve been reading everywhere that calorie tracking is key for losing fat.
So you download a calorie tracking app.
But after a few days, weeks, or even months, you find that the scale just isn’t moving the way you thought it would be.
And inevitably, your tracking becomes spotty, and you give it up.
Calorie tracking works.
There’s a reason why people who get paid to look good shirtless do it.
And why everyone who does it right gets top 1% results.
Figuring this out transformed my body faster than anything else I’ve learned.
But you might make mistakes that prevent you from seeing the weight loss you want.
Here’s how to avoid the seven most common calorie tracking mistakes so you can finally get the results you’re after.
Before we start:
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Let’s get into this…
Estimating too frequently
You might think that you can eyeball and estimate one tablespoon of peanut butter.
So you log it in myfitnesspal as 1 tbsp.
But you don’t realize that that one tablespoon of peanut butter is actually two servings of peanut butter.
Instead of the 90 calories that you think you’ve been having, it’s actually 180 calories.
Can you see that the spoon on the left is a double serving, and the right is a single?
Just kidding. I just punked you.
The right is a double serving of peanut butter.
The left is a three and a half times serving of peanut butter.
That is 180 calories, and 335 calories, respectively.
180 extra calories you didn’t account for on your morning toast alone.
Keep doing that with other foods through the day, and you derail your fat loss progress.
Instead, there’s a far more objective and accurate way to track your calorie intake.
Using a food scale to measure how much you’re eating.
Obviously you can’t bring a food scale to a pizza dinner when you go out at a restaurant.
That’s another strategy we’re going to cover later.
But for everything you cook and prepare at home, the food scale is a no brainer.
Tracking every gram of every food you eat for an entire week will set you up for success long term and teach you so much about what portions actually look like.
At least for one week straight, just live by this motto:
If you bite it, you write it.
What if you feel like you’re tracking everything perfectly and you’re still not losing weight?
Here’s second big mistake guys make all the time, and I hear this every single week:
“How come I’m not losing any weight…?
I swear… I’m eating 1500 calories per day!”
If 2000 calories per day helps you lose fat, then 1500 calories per day must help you lose fat even faster, right?
The goal of calorie tracking is to keep your calories in the sweet spot week after week.
Not so high that you’re not losing weight.
But not so low that you can’t actually stick to it for very long.
Some of you will remember this helicopter flash game.
You want to fly high enough so you don’t crash at the bottom.
But not so high that you crash at the top.
You win by staying in the lane.
Same thing with calorie tracking.
You’ll know you’ve set your calorie goal too low if you’re super hungry all the time, you’re moody, your training quality is crap, and you’re having a hard time sleeping.
Last week’s video goes into detail about how to know if your calories are too low.
(Five Warning Signs Your Calories Are Too Low)
The easiest way to avoid this is starting with a modest calorie deficit.
Something like 500 calories below your daily energy expenditure.
And then you can reduce it from there if you want to or need to.
How big of a deal is it to go over your calories on weekends?
This might surprise you, but going over your calorie goals on the weekend isn’t always that big of a deal.
It depends on how big the blowout is and how frequently you do it.
Your body isn’t just a machine that switches on and off in fat burning mode, depending on whether or not you hit your calorie goals for the day.
Instead of thinking of losing fat like you’re driving a speedboat, where you’re taking sharp little turns…
Think of it like a barge, where over time, you make small little course corrections that move you in the right direction.
Your body utilizes the energy you give it on a rolling format.
So even if you eat a little bit less calories today than you need to maintain your current body weight, if you eat those calories back in excess tomorrow, then it basically evens out.
The same thing happens on a weekly or even monthly basis.
What you do on any given day isn’t actually all that important for calorie tracking.
What matters most is what you do consistently on average.
Here’s what I mean:
But did you know you can use this to your advantage?
If there’s one thing I hear most commonly from guys who keep losing the same 10 to 20 pounds over and over again in life, it’s this:
When I’m on track, I’m on track.
There’s no sugar, no beer, and I’m working out five days a week.
But when I am off, oh boy, am I ever off the wagon.
That’s why you get stuck on this weight loss roller coaster.
And you keep yo-yo-ing up and down with your weight loss.
If only you could just narrow the difference between your highs and your lows, you wouldn’t ever have to stray so far in either direction.
Here’s the secret.
You don’t have to be perfect in order for it to work.
As long as you stay within 5 or 10 percent of your calorie goal each day, you’re going to make progress.
If you go over your calorie goal today, just get back on track tomorrow.
Had a big blowout Saturday night?
Go for a walk Sunday morning, buy yourself some groceries and get back on track.
All these little hiccups are just going to be blips on the radar when you look back months from now after you’ve made all kinds of awesome progress.
Okay, so what if:
- you have a good calorie goal
- you’re tracking everything correctly
- and you’re still not losing weight?
If you’re asking this next question, you’re on the right track.
Should you adjust your calories?
That’s a great idea.
But most guys are over adjusting.
They adjust too frequently, and the adjustments are way too big.
Before you adjust, check these four things:
You’ve been accurately tracking your food
You’ve been hitting your calorie goal for at least ten days.
There have been no changes in your activity levels.
You didn’t have just some random scale bump because of carbs, fiber, sodium, stress, water, or alcohol.
And honestly, the last one shouldn’t be an issue at all.
You should be looking at the average of how your body weight is trending, and not any individual weigh in.
If those are fine, you can make a small adjustment, and in most cases we’re talking about a 10 percent calorie adjustment here..
Then you repeat the process of 10 more days of testing and checking, and you can adjust by 10 percent more if you need to.
It’s like when a man is peeing while standing up.
If you shake it more than twice, you’re just playing with it.
Stop messing around with your calorie goal and just let your body do its thing.
Speaking of which, MyFitnessPal has designed into its own application the most confusing display of any app I’ve ever seen.
It’s caused so many people to not lose weight that they think they should be.
You’ve probably seen this:
Food minus exercise equals calorie goals number.
Stop eating back those exercise calories.
It’s stopping your weight loss.
Set a standardized calorie goal each day and hit it every single day.
You don’t need to worry about eating back the exercise calories.
If you’re particularly active one day, great.
That’s just going to be some extra fat that you lose that week.
Personally, I use MacroFactor, which is way better than MFP anyways.
You can try it out using code MARRA at checkout for 2 week trial.
I buy the year because it works out to $6 / mo.
Every serious lifter and fitness person I know uses it.
Here’s another practical one for you.
Most guys have a ton of variety in their diet.
Every night of the week, it’s a different dinner.
And when you wake up in the morning, it’s just a total crapshoot as to what’s for breakfast that day.
If this is you, then, you’re making calorie tracking so much harder than it needs to be.
Start repeating your meals
That way you can just copy paste your calories from one day to the next.
Less variety means less time spent tracking, less time spent cooking, and less that can go wrong throughout the week.
You just get more results on autopilot.
Make it easy.
Make it repeatable.
Make it take 10 minutes per day or less.
You can’t lose.
And the last mistake I see is really kind of a habit based one.
You need to keep your phone on you
Food logging is something you do throughout the day.
Too many times I hear about guys whipping out their phone at the end of the evening.
Trying to figure out what they had throughout the day and going off memory.
A huge function of calorie tracking is keeping a running daily total.
So you know when you’ve eaten enough for the day and it’s time to stop eating.
You’re bound to forget all those little bites, licks, and tastes of snacks you had.
Which is going to lead to you under reporting your intake.
It should trigger a mental note when you’re about to eat something.
If you bite it, you write it.
Whip out your phone right before you eat it or right after and log so you don’t forget.
Avoid these seven calorie tracking mistakes.
You’ll see your weight reduce in the next seven days or less.
Hope you have a great weekend.
– Matteo
PS: Four Point Fat Loss is available now.
The course, the training templates, supplement guide, 10 minute meal guide, and more.
