Do I Need to Track Macros To Reach My Goals?
Macro tracking is an effective tool that can teach you how much energy your body really needs. But is it absolutely necessary to track if you want to see progress?
A question that I get all the time as a strength and nutrition coach is “Do I need to track macros to achieve my goals?” The short answer is it depends… but there’s never really just a short answer is there? Whether your goal is building muscle, losing body fat, recomposition, performance, or anything else along the specturm, nutrition is going to play a huge role in getting you where you want to go.
To answer this question let’s first start off with a few nutrition basics. In order to make changes to our body composition, we must think about energy balance. On any given day, your body uses a certain amount of energy to keep you alive and carry out your daily activities. This number is called your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE). If your goal is to lose weight, you’ll need to eat in a caloric deficit meaning that you eat less calories than your body burns each day. If your goal is to gain weight, you’ll need to eat in a caloric surplus meaning that you eat more calories than your body uses.
So where do macros come into this? There are infinitely many ways to achieve a caloric deficit, surplus, or sit at your maintenance calories. While macros aren’t the only way to help you get there, it’s a very effective tool that can help you build awareness around how much food you’re consuming. If you’ve never tracked your food before, it’s very possible that you don’t know exactly how much you’re eating. This makes it easy to under or over-eat without even realizing it.
That’s why I love using macro tracking, at least in the short term, as a tool to help teach clients how much food they really need to be eating. The goal for many is to eventually transition to a more intuitive approach, but it’s almost impossible to eat intuitively if you don’t know what’s in your food. So in short, tracking macros isn’t a requirement but it’s a great teaching tool that can help build awareness and consistency.
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