The most important thing for you to know about any diet plan or program is this.

The only way to lose weight is to eat less calories than you are burning each day.

And the only way to know how many calories you are eating is to track your food intake.

Here are 5 Tips to make it more enjoyable.

My Case For Tracking

• It’s the only method available to know exactly how many calories you are eating and how it is affecting your weight loss.
• This is a big one for me. Tracking gives you permission to eat the foods you enjoy. Guilt free. No food is off limits. You just need to fit your favorite foods into your diet.
• Tracking allows you to enjoy your favorite foods and drinks and go out to restaurants, guilt free. How many times have you gone out to eat or indulged in your favorite food or drink and woke up the next morning and felt extremely guilty? Tracking allows you to fit those foods in your daily calories, leaving you full, smiling and satisfied.
• Tracking takes 3-5 minutes of your day, once you get used to it. Let’s be honest, we’re creatures of habit. We mostly eat the same foods. Once you start logging foods into your tracking app, the app remembers your portions sizes and exactly what you’ve logged before. Plus, popular apps have tens of thousands of every brand and type of any food you can think of. It really does become less of a chore, the more you do it.
• Tracking keeps you accountable. If I can eat 2500 calories a day to lose weight, the app tells me exactly how many calories I have left to eat. It makes it easier to plan my meals and my day.
• Tracking allows you to learn about the foods you are eating. This is where the fad diets fall short. After a few weeks of tracking your food, you will be able to fairly accurately guess the calories and macronutrients (which we will discuss right away) that are in specific foods. You’ll learn so much about nutrition by simply tracking your food intake.
• Tracking allows you to follow a plan and trust the process. It takes the guesswork out of dieting. All you have to do log your food and keep hitting your numbers on a consistent basis. Maybe you miss a day. No big deal. Tomorrow, you get right back to hitting your number. It’s your nutrition compass when you get off track. You know exactly what you need to do. Do it long enough and you will not only lose weight, you will develop the habit of tracking.

Here are some simple rules for tracking.

1. Calculate your TDEE. https://tdeecalculator.net/
2. Download a food tracking app such as MyFitnessPal. Enter your daily goals for Calories, Protein, Fats and Carbohydrates.
3. Protein is king of the three macronutrients. Aim for 0.7g to 1g per pound of body weight per day.
4. Fill in the rest of your calories with any combination of carbs and fat. Hitting your Calorie goal and your Protein goal are the main priorities.
5. Track on a consistent basis and try to hit your numbers daily. Don’t worry if you miss a day or two. Just get back on track as soon as possible.
6. Don’t factor in daily movement (steps + workouts) in your calorie tracking app. You’ve already done this in the TDEE calculator.