Hey all. As someone who is now starting to take the diet component much more seriously, I am wondering (and this may sound really dumb) now essential it is to account for every last gram of protein, carb and fat in my diet. I am now reading about all the different diets on the F.A.Q. page, and it seems both daunting and very time consuming to keep track of every gram of macronutrient consumed. The diets talk about ingesting X grams of protein here, and X grams of carbs there. How do you keep track of all this without getting totally bogged down with record keeping? I actually began to keep a food diary of everything I ate last week - added up the grams fat, protein, carb, etc. and total calories to get an idea of the percent of each macronutrient in my diet. But if I had to go through this computation everyday, I wouldn’t have time to workout!
So, I guess what I’m looking for is some helpful advice on how to be able to practically follow any of the t-mag diets without getting so carried away by the details (maybe the answer is…it’s not possible…maybe you just have to become that rigorous about following exact macronutrient recommendations, if you want to grow? Is that it?) Thanks again to anyone who offers their feedback.
After doing it for a while, keeping a food log becomes one of two things: 1) really easy because you know the breakdown of just about everything you eat or 2) unnecessary if you learn how to structure your meals properly and don’t do any radical changes from your current program.
I usually figure how many calories I need to eat then come up with a diet to fit those calories and whatever macro(40P,35C,25F,etc) breakdown I am going for. Then I usually eat the same thing everyday while on that specific diet. If I change a meal for some reason I just eat something that is similar in calories to the meal I just changed. 10 or 20 calories in difference will not matter much. I found this a lot easier than trying to eat a variety of different foods everyday.
I made up a spreadsheet on Excel. I have one part with the menu items and the macronutrients in their individual columns. I have a sheet for each day of the week with formulas in cells to total the calories, protein, fat, and carbs for the day. Instead of keeping track of everything I eat, as I eat it, I plan my menu out for the day or week. I cut and paste meals or food items and the totals for the day come up in their individual spots. After a while you get a handle on what each meal is worth and so you just make sure you eat them when you should.
All of the previous suggestions are good, but I’ve been making use of a method that is much easier than keeping a detailed food log, and more flexible than planning out all your meals a week in advance. I’ll outline my current diet as I explain to provide an example. First I figure out how many calories I need to be consuming, currently 4000, and my desired macronutrient breakdown, which is at present 35/35/30. That means that on a daily basis I need to make sure I get 1400kcal or 350g of protein, the same amount of carbs, and 1200kcal or 133g of fat. I then decide how I want to break up my meals, in this case 8 meals, 4 P+C and 4 P+F. I then figure out what the macronutrient breakdown of each meal should be. The P+C meals need to have 44g of protein and 87g of carbs, and P+F meals need 44g of protein and 33g of fat. I then select foods, basically whatever I feel like eating at the time, to fulfill my macronutrient requirements for each meal. This method falls short in that I don’t really account for the small amounts of fat in my P+C meals, or the carbs in my P+F meals, but I consider this to be ok as I’m currently trying to pack on some pounds, and realize that even the most detailed food log will have a margin of error. Hope this helps.
A good way to get started with getting into the habit of keeping a food log is to go to fitday.com and get registered for a free account. They have tons of foods listed, and you can add any foods they don’t have. They tally the calories and the macronutrients for you. It takes me about five minutes at the end of the day to enter all my diet info and tally my intake and macronutrient ratio’s for the day. Have a look at the site it’s a good start.
I agree with both Jasons and SteelyEyes. I should also add that learning to keep a diet log is just like trying to teach yourself to eat 6-8 meals a day. At first, it’s difficult; after a while, you won’t know how to live without it.
What i do, especially when dieting, is be extremely detailed in figuring my diet for the week, by doing just one day. i just stick to that daily plan religiously and i know i’m alright. i change it when/if i need to. there’s no way in hell i can do it every day. my philosophy is, is that it’s easier to keep track of what i need to do than it is to keep track of what i did. if i did that, i’d fuck up and not know it until it’s too late…
Drex-o’s method is an excellent way to manage macronutrient intake. It is the exact way i do it myself, except i take into account the macronutrients of ALL my foods, even supplements like liver and amino acid tabs. I think Drex-o’s method gives you maximum flexibility while keeping you within the confines of your established macronutrient goals.
Figure out your totals for each macro (in grams) for the diet you are currently on. Then, do the same thing for a P+F meal and a P+C meal (total protein/6, total carbs/3, total fat/3). Try and stay relatively close to these numbers when consuming each meal. Keep a small sheet of paper w/ you throughout the day and write down the macro breakdown of each meal you consume. At the end of the day, make sure it adds up to the daily totals previously established. Throw away the paper. Repeat when you wake up.
Well, everyone’s covered the answers pretty well above, but just as a sort of general summing up: yes, you definitely DO need to track your food pretty closely, and that means keeping a log for at least several months (until you get to know more or less by instinct what you’re eating). It’s a pain at first, but, well, deal with it.
One thing that no one mentioned is: you’ll need to get yourself a food scale if you haven’t already. Don’t go by the old “I had a ‘portion’ of rice and fish for lunch…”; unless you know exactly how much that rice and fish weighed you won’t know what the macro content is.
(Disclaimer to the Forum: This is obvious advice for many of us here, but the guy said he’s a newbie…)