I have been tracking my weight daily for the past 5 weeks. I’ve been doing it as a way to collect data on my weight loss journey, and as a way to have a healthier relationship with the scale. The scale used to be my number 1 arch enemy. I would eat great and workout hard and not see the results on the scale, or I would see the results but then the next week all the progress I had made was gone out the window and I would essentially give up and go back to old eating habits, which then resulted in even more weight gain. In the fall of 2021 I connected with an online coach who introduced me to macros. The idea of eating what I want, as long as it fit within my macro allotment was enticing and I had fast results. After a while the loss stopped happening and my coach changed my calories to kick start my loss again. I lacked the knowledge on macros to adjust my macros on the own and threw in the towel.
Fast forward a year and I’m finally back into a fitness routine. I’m seeing physical changes in my body, as well as getting stronger. It was time to start focusing on my nutrition so I could achieve the goals I set out for myself. This time around I didn’t want to be given my macros by a coach, but I wanted to understand the calculation and how to make changes to my macros on my own. Biceps after babies was a podcast I listed to last summer that helped me get past some of the mental hurdles to weight loss. It’s a podcast for women, the host is a registered nurse with years of fitness experience. She brings on guest speakers to have conversations with and I found it great for personal development. On many of her podcasts she discusses macros and she even has a macro class you can sign up for. I started with a 1 week confidence in your numbers class that is designed to help you calculate your macros, and gives you background on what each macro is and why they are important. I had the opportunity to sign up early for the macros 101 class and I took the plunge. I decided it was time to invest in me and my health again and this program was designed to help me not only calculate my macros but keep adjusting them!
There is a whole segment on the scale and using the number on the scale as a data point and it helped me break free of the anger and frustration when the number went up and continued to go up (and it did over the last 5 weeks). I originally setup an excel sheet to track my weight but came across an app that has you can use to track daily, even has milestones to help motivate you to hit your end target. After inputting all my data into the app that I had collected over the last 5 weeks, I was shocked to see I’ve lost 5.6 ponds since I started! I take an average week over week and have never calculated the difference between day 1 weight and current day weight. This was a huge boost to my self esteem and reminded me that counting macros is working like it’s supposed to be! I don’t have to be perfect 100% of the time, and in fact I’m not. I’ve gone over my calories more than 20% of the time due to birthday celebrations, unplanned lunch date with my significant other and giving in to cravings despite them not fitting my macros. My relationship with food has improved so much over the last 5 weeks, by tracking everything, I get to decide if the food I want is worth it or not, and I’ve proved to myself I don’t need to be perfect to see results.
