This week I wanted to share my experience of tracking calories and macros over the past 7 days. The reason I keep bringing it up is because I don’t like wasting time. If I have a weight goal which I know I can achieve faster through 20 minutes of tracking a day versus months of guessing and potentially not seeing results, I know which option I’m going to take. I also see people restricting themselves unnecessarily. I gathered helpful data regarding how my calorie needs and activity greatly varied over the week and how off I was on what I thought I was burning versus what I thought I was eating. This is important for ANY weight goal, whether you are looking to lower body fat or increase muscle mass.
BUT FIRST I want to play a quick game: Which food fits my calorie need? (Scene) You have been invited out to the movies with some friends who are in town. After the movie you stop at a restaurant to chat over some food, BUT you are trying to lose weight. You already had dinner before the movie and you have about 400 calories left in your daily budget. Knowing that’s not a huge amount you take a look at the smaller options like an appetizer or a dessert. For appetizers they have Buffalo Cauliflower Wings and for dessert they have Chocolate Cake.
Which do you choose? Obviously the Buffalo Cauliflower Wings because it’s a vegetable and it’s healthy, right? Let’s take a look:
For these two examples, on a strict macro level they are basically the same. The carbohydrates are identical (because veggies are a carb – so remember when you say you want to cut out carbs that includes fruits and vegetables too!), and the fats and protein are a little higher on the wings. If we have this information available we don’t have to sit at the table sadly munching on the wings when we really want the cake. That would have been an unnecessary restriction that stopped us from having what we wanted and had ZERO benefit towards us losing weight.
(Side note: Of course this is making certain assumptions. It is assuming we are 1. at a Wild Wings and comparing a Small Buffalo Cauliflower Wings plate to a generic slice of Chocolate Cake, and 2. that you are tracking total calories only and have 400 calories available. If you make both those dishes at home, you can of course make them lower calorie, change the proportion sizes, and alter them to make them “healthier”, but for the sake of the thought experiment I simply took the first nutrition information that popped up for each food. Also when you get to the micronutrient level of vitamins and minerals, the veggies are of course “healthier” than the cake, but a “healthy” diet and a weight loss diet are not one in the same.)
MY WEEK
If I were to make a meal plan for myself the first thing I’d do would be to go on any TDEE calculator and get my total calories burned for the day. After putting in my data (age, height, weight, activity level) the number I get is 2,117 calories burned a day. For me to lose weight I’d want to be in a 500 calorie deficit a day eating 1,617 calories. That to me seems pretty low for my activity level but if I don’t have any data this is where I would start. Lucky for me, I’ve been wearing my Fitbit consistently for almost 6 months and it keeps a more accurate record of what I’m burning:
| Cal Out |
| 2514 |
| 2518 |
| 2893 |
| 2651 |
| 2894 |
| 2366 |
| 2063 |
According to the online calculator I am burning 14,819 (2,117 x 7) calories a week but I actually burned 17,899. That is a 3,080 calorie difference. Why is this important?
If I am trying to GAIN weight (increase muscle mass) I want to be in a surplus by about 500 calories to my maintenance. The calculator says I’d need to eat 2,617 (2,117 + 500) calories a day but according to my Fitbit it would need to be closer to 3,057! If I am trying to gain muscle it’s not going to happen no matter how much I workout because I would not be in a surplus, but eating at my actual maintenance level (17,899 divided by 7 = 2,557 calories a day).
If I am trying to LOSE weight (decrease body fat) I want to be in a deficit by about 500 calories to my maintenance. This is because a pound of fat is approximately 3,500 calories (3,500 divided by 7 = 500 calories a day). If I eat what the calculator says is my deficit amount (2,117 – 500) I’ll actually be in almost a 1,000 calorie deficit a day which is way too low to function.
The goal is to match your surplus or deficit with what you are ACTUALLY burning, and we see that over the week my calories out varied quite a bit. On my highest day I burned almost 3000 calories while on my lowest it was barely over 2000. The days I am more active I need to eat more and days I am more sedentary I need to eat less.
So what I did was I tracked everything I ate for the week – every ounce of cream in my coffee, every chocolate chip to the individual chip, every grain of rice and gram of butter. I made sure that by the end of the day I was under by 500 calories in relation to what I burned THAT day:
| Cals In | Cal Out | Difference |
| 2041 | 2514 | -473 |
| 1772 | 2518 | -746 |
| 2298 | 2893 | -595 |
| 1957 | 2651 | -694 |
| 2289 | 2894 | -605 |
| 1748 | 2366 | -618 |
| 1557 | 2063 | -506 |
I finished off the week with a deficit of 4,237 calories, or what should translate to losing 1.2lbs of fat (4,237 divided by 3,500 = 1.2). In reality, my weight changed a lot more:
| Starting Weight |
| 149 |
| 148.4 |
| 147.6 |
| 147.8 |
| 146.8 |
| 146 |
| 145.4 |
I was down 3.6lbs in 7 days which I can attribute to some reduced bloating (not eating as much bread and sugar and snacks). I wasn’t starving on any days and it felt like the right amount of food (and all of those days still included pancakes, a beer, ice cream, and all my treats I really enjoy). The other big piece was noticing how my macro needs changed with my activity. For example, we know a good goal is to get 1 gram of protein per pound of lean body mass. I am 145-150lbs so I aim for that each day with protein (the rest of the makeup of fats and carbs doesn’t matter if the overall calories are inline). Everyday I managed to get over 100 grams of protein with the only day falling really short (Sunday).
| Proteins | Fats | Carbs |
| 131 | 66 | 203 |
| 141 | 68 | 126 |
| 161 | 77 | 233 |
| 147 | 76 | 138 |
| 165 | 76 | 174 |
| 139 | 83 | 91 |
| 105 | 68 | 141 |
In summary! Some days I burned 2063 calories, some days I burned 2893, some days I ate enough protein and some days I didn’t, some days my carbs were low and other days they were the highest thing on my plate. But I was still able to burn fat and retain/build muscle in a trackable way because I had the information. I cannot give you weight management advice if we don’t know what you are eating (how much in versus how much out). Neither can a nutritionist or dietician. Now this is also coming from someone who is relatively healthy, has no hormone imbalances and is not on any medications. Those things CERTAINLY come into play, but we don’t want to assume they are the culprits until we rule out the calories in/calories out equation first.
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