If you are new to tracking your intake it can feel overwhelming at the beginning. You aren’t sure exactly how much you’re supposed to be eating and how to properly input portion sizes into your tracker. There is a lot to learn when it comes tracking macronutrients. You have to understand how to properly weigh and measure your food and get an idea of how much of each macronutrient is in a specific portion of that food item. 

There are three common mistakes that people make when beginning to track their macronutrient intake. Take a look at the mistakes and how to avoid them so you can be off to a great start with your macronutrient journey. 

 

 

Overshooting Calorie Goals to Hit Macronutrients 

If you have a day where you go over your carbohydrate budget for example.  You may think that the best thing to do is to still hit your fat and protein budget as well but what ends up happening when you do this? By doing this, you may cause yourself to go over your calorie total for the day. It is important to stay within both the macronutrient budgets and total calorie goal. On the days that you may end up going over in one of the macronutrient categories, instead of hitting your other two macronutrient budgets, default to simply hitting your overall calories and letting your macronutrients fall wherever they may end up. 

Giving Up Too Soon

Remember that you are on a journey with your health and weight loss. It takes time for your metabolism and body to adjust to the changes you are making in your diet. The first few weeks make feel frustrating as you will not always see changes right away.  A common mistake with macronutrient tracking is that people will assume that it doesn’t work for them simply because they didn’t give it enough time. 

Sticking with it and just focusing on small goals for the day or week can help you in your journey. By making positive changes each week and sticking with your tracking you will see results with patience. Fat loss can be a slow process but there are many factors to look at besides the scale in your journey. 

 

 

Adjusting Macro Goals Too Frequently 

If you don’t see results as quickly as you had hoped for, your initial response may be to change your macronutrient budgets. Instead of playing around and changing the numbers too frequently, set your budgets appropriately for your body and stick with them for a while. As long as you are slowly getting results, you don’t need to change the numbers. Once you reach a weight loss plateau, then you can begin to slightly change the macronutrients to see what will begin to work for you again. As your metabolism and body adjust to a certain amount of macronutrients your needs may vary by a small amount. Without sticking with a certain amount for long enough before changing, you cannot tell whether or not those budgets are working well for you.