I Tracked Meals Every Day For A Month. Here’s What Happened.

I am a “walk the walk” health coach, so I did (and I’m still going) what I ask a lot of my clients to do: Track Meals.

Good Morning!

For the past month, and still to this day, I have been doing something that I ask just about all of my clients to do (or at least try to): Tracking Meals.

There are a few reasons why I’m doing this, but let me first explain something very important about my profession that differentiates it from a lot of others.

When a fitness coach offers advice to a client on making a change, it’s more of an experiment than a concrete fix.

It isn’t like customer service when wifi goes out, telling you the guaranteed way to fix your router. It isn’t quite like asset management (still a risky profession) either, where you can *basically* get a good return from a fixed-income portfolio or mutual fund.

Fitness coaches are in constant trial and error with their clients, and thus with their own processes, and have to be aware that what works for one person will not always work for another.

In fact, it’s best to assume each person needs their own individual plan, to an extent, while making sure all needs are met on the movement spectrum (2-3 hours of resistance training a week, 45-90 minutes of endurance training, for those keeping track).

So when I give out any rudimentary suggestion, I need to make sure it’s a rule I follow in my own fitness. This is more something that I am personally biased toward; not all fitness coaches do this (although they really, really should).

Tracked Meals

But I wasn’t following this one.

A few months back, I stumbled upon Mike Doehla, the founder of StrongerU. Mike is currently living every fitness coach’s dream: he sold his company for a hefty profit, retired early, and trains all day.

He created StrongerU on the foundation that tracking meals and food intake should be the fundamental principle for all of people’s health and wellness goals. Movement and training are all great, but as the old adage goes:

“You can’t out-train a bad diet.”

Fitness Proverb

So Mike hammered home tracked meals.

Many were resistant to it (as clients can be). But ultimately, people found that if they committed just a few minutes a day to this simple habit, it made weight loss and achieving the ideal physique (and health mindset, even more importantly) that much more achievable.

I thought to myself after reading this, “Damn. Why don’t I ask my clients to do this?” And why don’t I try it myself, too?

I, of course, am only an infant business owner, and have a long way to go before I even think about selling a company. But I thought “if I can get my clients to adhere to something that ultimately changes their lives, I’ll become a better coach AND get more referrals.”

So I redownloaded MyFitnessPal and started to “walk the walk” for my clients.

If I was getting pushback for how difficult, tedious and annoying keeping a food journal was, I had to see for myself.

Here’s What I’ve Found Since Tracking Meals From Early May

In all honesty, I can understand why people think writing down calories is such a task.

It’s boring, takes minutes out of my day that I could possibly doing more productive things during (this is actually a myth), and can be shocking to see how many calories I’m actually consuming.

And, like all habits, it took me about a week and a half before I was remembering to log every meal. Some days I would forget. Some days I would willingly leave things off the list because I was embarrassed I’d went over my mark.

But, the past 30 days have given me pretty clear insight on what I gravitate towards, when I get hungry, and what foods I could *probably* do without.

MyFitnessPal has a good way of reminding you what you consistently eat by suggesting meals from previous days, so if there’s a problem meal you want to get rid of (that bagel in the morning, the extra creamer in the coffee, the app will simply recommend it based on trends.

To me, this instilled a little bit of guilt, as if to say “hm, maybe I shouldn’t have this again.”

If you’re doing it old-fashioned and simply penning it down in a journal, you’re not getting the same calorie estimates that an app would have, but you still get to look back at the previous page, reflect, and say “that’s got to change.”

Whereas the first 4 months of 2023 were spent occasionally fasting (not something I’d recommend to everyone, but if you want more info on fasting, consider a paid subscription and see my take on it below), May and June were simply just analyzing my food.

I wasn't as concerned with when I was eating as I was with what and how much was eating.

What this reflection helped me do was to still eat the foods I wanted to, but with more presence of mind while consuming it. “Okay, this burger is 550 calories. I know that now. This will be my last meal of the day.”

It’s not always as cut-and-dry as that pull quote. But I was able to think more critically about my eating habits — something that doesn’t take as much mental energy as you think it does, I promise — and I was more mindful of what I was eating.

So if you take anything away from today’s newsletter, know that you’re telling yourself a much more difficult story about your food journey than it has to be. There is power in writing things down. I should know — I do it 2-3 a week, and you’re still here, aren’t you?