Tracking Food AND Having Fun??? How???
The nutrition aspect of your health and fitness can oftentimes be the most daunting part of your journey. There is SO much information floating around with Do’s and Don’t’s that it can be hard to navigate what you need to do for YOU.
Your fitness and nutrition goals should be tailored to YOU, not anyone else. Working with a coach, who can keep you accountable, help create goals and help you stick with them, and tailor your plan to your wants and needs is one of the most overlooked and beneficial aspects of working with a trained coach.
With that in mind, there are some universal tips and tricks I like to give ALL of my clients around general anxiety over tracking nutrition. Many people feel like if they track their nutrition, they will never be able to attend a girl’s night again. They will never be able to go to an all-inclusive resort with their spouse for their honeymoon. They will never be able to live a “normal” life because they will always be anxious with tracking their food.
This is absolutely not the case. I find with many of my clients, and myself through personal experience, tracking your nutrition (macros, specifically) can be the most liberating thing, especially for women who grew up in a toxic dieting culture. It gives you an understanding of exactly what nutrients your body needs to fuel itself and educates you on what nutritional properties different foods have. Education is KEY to liberating yourself from
People seem to have the idea that tracking your nutrition and being social are two things that can never co-mingle. You’re either miserable and tracking or you’re overindulging and out with friends.
This doesn’t have to be the case.
There are ways that you can make the best of both worlds happen and have the freedom of being social, accepting an invite to go get drinks after work, AND still hitting your macros and getting your nutrition on track.
Here are a few tips to make the most out of your nutrition tracking while also saying yes to wine & french fries!
Plan ahead! The best thing you can do for yourself is to plan ahead with where and what exactly you’re going to eat. If you know you’re going to Buffalo Wild Wings after work with your friends for some beer and wings, PLAN AHEAD! It may mean the rest of your meals that day are mostly veggies and protein, but you can still enjoy your social life by accepting the invite to go out after work.
Have a good understanding of basic nutrition and good alternatives to food that you love. One of my favorite parts of working with clients and their nutrition is the moment they find food alternatives that work for them and get excited about planning date nights, girls weekends, and trips because they know they can still hit their nutrition but also have fun. Do you feel like you don’t even know the basics of what a good meal should consist of? Email me for a FREE “Eat This Not That” list that can change the way you view nutrition!
Track the thing you want to enjoy the most, FIRST! Then work backwards from there! If you are going on a girl’s weekend and you KNOW you’re going to drink, track your alcohol intake FIRST. Work backwards on the rest of your meals for the day from there! If you’re tracking everything that doesn’t bring you joy first, you probably won’t have much wiggle room left for the things you enjoy (ice cream, fries, a greasy burger, etc), which isn’t going to be very sustainable for you. Yeah, you might eat celery for 3 months straight and lose 45 lbs, but as soon as you’re off of that diet, you’re going to go back to eating what you enjoy, and you’ll be putting those lbs right back on, plus some. So track what you enjoy first, and then go back and plug in the rest of your meals, especially if you’re planning for a social event.
Change your mentality around missing your macro goals on social events. Don’t make going out and completely slaughtering your macro goals a regular thing, but don’t deprive yourself of every single social event that comes up because that is not sustainable, and this will only fuel the “binge and purge” urge even more. The goal of a sustainable meal and nutrition plan is to have it be S U S T A I N A B L E! You should be able to do whatever you’re doing forever. That is why I urge my clients to have grace with themselves. If they know they’re going to a bachelorette party and they aren’t going to hit their macro goals all weekend, I tell them to focus on getting water and protein in, and we’ll figure out the rest later. If 80% of the time you are hitting your goals, you have the luxury of that 20% of the time to have fun and enjoy life like it’s meant to be enjoyed.
Getting to your health and fitness goals takes time, it takes hard work, and it takes a lot of dedication, BUT you should also not deprive yourself completely because that is just a recipe for falling off the wagon.
Your goal should be educating yourself on the best and healthiest ways to still have a well-rounded and nutritious diet while also enjoying your life.
What is one food or beverage that is an absolute NO-GO to give up!
For me, it is those McDonald’s fries!
Drop yours in the comments or DM me your answer on Instagram at @coachfrankie17 for a quick "Eat This Not That" list that can ease your nutritional social anxiety and save you time and stress when you're out and about!