Latest / Cameron's Conversations: The last weight loss podcast you'll ever need. / Episode 53: How calorie tracking accuracy can make, or break your weight loss journey
Transcript
- Cameron Cummings: Welcome to the Cameron's Conversations podcast. And today I have Harry back on with me. He's done rescuing cats from trees, at least for now. So we thought we'd talk a little bit about how tracking accuracy completely derails some people's progress. And I think this is right up there, other than sort of people's relationship with the scales and getting stressed out about those, probably the second biggest reason. that people don't have success with weight loss when it comes to calorie tracking. If that's the approach we're taking, I think this is a really common, common issue. So I'll let you kind of start off. So yeah, your first kind of thoughts on calorie tracking accuracy and why is it important, Harry? Why does it actually matter? Why does it not matter if I just guess the lowest calorie option in my fitness palette every single time so I can eat more food? Harry: Yeah, the classic. I think the best way to look at this is when it comes to tracking, view it as measuring, because that's what it is, right? We're trying to measure something. Now, I've just had my bathroom renovated or whatever. Now, if the guy who was doing it, because I definitely didn't do it, if he came in and he brought his tape measure and he started measuring things up and going, yeah, yeah, yeah, but he was. not really paying attention. He's kind of just glimpsing at the tape measure. He's going to come in, things aren't going to fit. There's going to be gaps. It's going to be a nightmare, right? It's the same way with tracking. Like if you're going to measure, try and measure to the best of your ability. If you're kind of just, you know, and there is, it's not, it's not as simple as it sounds. There's so many psychological things that come at play here about like not wanting to admit kind of what's happening or gone out for a meal and you've Like Cameron said, you search your pizza and there's one pizza at 500 calories and all the rest are at 1200 and you pick the one that's 500 because you're like, oh, that sounds better. It's one of those things that you do as a human and afterwards you think, yeah, that's a little bit silly. I did that. I don't know why I did it, but it's so normal. I cannot explain how normal it is. yeah, tracking. If you're going to track, you have to do it accurately. It's a pain in the ass. It can be frustrating. Um, but If you're going to measure, want to measure, what's that saying? Measure twice, cut once. Same thing, right? You want to try to be as accurate as you Cameron Cummings: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think this is a big thing because one of the things that we'll see and I've seen this time and time again and the interesting thing about this is for a bit context you would think this is just an issue at the start of people's where maybe someone's learning to track calories but that isn't always true, right? Because actually a lot of the time someone can be six months in or seven or eight or nine months in And then all of sudden they kind of hit like a bit of a weight loss plateau. And we'll have like seen this hundreds of times at coaches. I can think of so many occasions, even in the last week where I've had discussions with this about clients and they've kind of said like, ⁓ I feel like things have slowed down a little bit. And then the first question I ask is like, how accurate would you say your calorie tracking is? Like if someone was to give you a hundred pounds, right at the end of today, how confident would you say that you are within 50 calories of your kind of like what you actually have eaten? And I'm like, if you're not like a nine out 10 confident that you would be winning your 100 pounds, then we've got a bit of a problem. And a lot of the time people are like, yeah, I wouldn't be winning any prizes for the last four days. Like I've kind of been eyeballing a few bits. had it like, was making the kids dinner and I had a little bite of this, a little nibble of that. And I'm to be honest, that didn't get included. And one of the things that very quickly you realize is that by the time you have a portion size that's slightly out, by the time you've had a couple of nibbles and bites and maybe one biscuit or something that just slips past, You think, it's not that much, but the biscuit was 60 calories, the nibble and bite was 40 or 50, the portion 60 calories. And if you're a small female and you're out by 160, 170 calories, that's quite meaningful, right? It adds up. And that's the things that you're kind of aware of. Nevermind the maybe the couple of things that you're not aware of. Like you go out for a meal and the meal says 600 calories on the menu and it's not actually 600 calories, right? Because they cook it slightly differently. It is so easy to slip into. And I do think that... Like I say, a lot of people think, ⁓ this would be a new dieting problem. And it is, for sure. People are trying to figure it out at the start. takes practice. But people can be six months, 12 months in, and they just get a bit too chill about it. Like, ⁓ I know what's in that. I know it's roughly that. But the problem is, is you're underestimating, not overestimating, right? You probably don't need to weigh the milk in your coffee every day if you've done it 10 times and you take the highest value and you forevermore use that high value, sure. But if you're always using the lowest one or kind of underestimating it, yeah, that's not so good. Like I have a classic one where a client was like, oh yeah, I five grams of butter on my toast. And I'm like, I want you to do an experiment. And I was like, I want you to get five grams of butter on the of a knife. And then replied back being like, yeah, okay, point taken. Like that is, I think I've done put 20 grams on it. It was like my butter was smothered all over my toast, not scraped like a tiny little bit. So yeah, I think that's quite important. Harry: Yeah, it's that complacency, isn't it? And it builds. That's the thing. Like you can, you can start off with, you know, weighing out a portion of whatever cereal, whatever. And you're like, okay. And then you might kind of stop tracking, stop weighing it. Sorry. Because you're like, I kind of couldn't just eyeball the amount, but it, yeah, that extra five grams sneaks, sneaks in and then. another five grams, then within a few weeks you're having 15, 20, 30 grams more and it builds and then that complacency goes across everything. All of sudden you stop tracking this, you stop tracking that and it's like, oh, it's okay, it's okay. And then your progress slows down. And from like a coaching perspective, I think we're quite often, you know, we can see and we're like, well, this doesn't really make sense because you're doing all of these things that you were doing two weeks ago and it was working really well and all of sudden it's just kind of slowed down. And it is a conversation that... I'm sure Cameron has as well where you kind of have to say, okay, you know what, is it the most accurate thing? I don't want it to sound like a negative thing when that happens because there's a lot of empowerment in there in the way of like, okay, if you're not seeing results, it can be frustrating. You know, it can be frustrating, especially if you are tracking kind of 60%, but then you're not getting results. That 60 % is almost wasted to some extent. But it's the idea of kind of being able to go, okay, I'm not seeing the results. What do I need to do to fix this? Well, the first thing you probably need to do is start tracking accurately again, and that will start, you know, really kind of getting progress coming again. Then you'll go, okay, I get it. And it just needs that little bit of, let me just dial that in. And it's just, it's a simple fix. It's not always the easiest fix, but it is a simple fix of like, okay, let me get back onto my track and let's go back to basics. Like Cameron was saying, quite often at the start, you're a lot more on it with this kind of stuff. And it's like, let me go back to what I was doing before. And you'll find that the results are coming in again. Cameron Cummings: Yeah. Yeah, I'd agree with that. I think there's like this initial phase of learning where you maybe make mistakes with your tracking in the first couple of weeks. But the thing that helps, right, is when you're at the start of a weight loss phase, as much as you should try to be as good as you can, even if you're not perfect, because you've got a higher body weight at that time and more weight to lose, typically weight loss is that bit easier. So if Harry comes into coaching and in his first two weeks, he tracks a couple of things wrong, he maybe mixes up the dry weight and the kind of normal weight of pasta, or he makes a little mistake here and there, he can probably get away with it a little bit more than he can when he's six months in and much lighter. Not that you should be trying to get away with it, just simply that the margins are a little bit bigger. You're probably in a bigger calorie deficit. It's probably easier to be in a big calorie deficit. But often it's not. After his first couple of weeks, your sort of calorie tracking is the best it will be, right? Because you're really, you're getting stuck in, you've got it nailed down, you're really motivated. Then down the line, you're still really motivated, but it is so easy to be bit laissez-faire about just being like that little bit relaxed and just be like, ⁓ it'll be fine, or ⁓ that doesn't matter. And those are the, I always say to clients, if you ever catch yourself saying the words like, it doesn't matter, it's only a little bit, and it's like, yeah, but there's 32 of those little bits a week, that's the problem, it's not just one thing. But I do think this is it. And there's a little bit of a harsh truth in this that. Harry touched on there where he said, you you might feel like you're tracking pretty well, maybe 60, 70 % of the time. For most people, that simply will not be enough. Like, full stop. It just will not be enough. And I think having an awareness of that is really helpful, that tracking most of what you eat isn't good enough. Which again, makes me sound like a big meanie, but it's a reality, right? It's like, it's not enough. Especially like if you're a small female. Like you could easily an extra 200, 250 calories and that knocks you massively out of your deficit and slows you right on down. And the thing is, even if you are losing weight, it becomes so slow that you get frustrated and then you just lose focus anyway. So I think this is the kind of a bit of truth in it as well as like someone tracking like a 95 % sort of accuracy will probably make really good progress. Someone at 75 % won't make 75 % of their progress. They'll probably see. relatively little, we'll maybe see some, but it's not after the initial wins. So I think this is a really important one. we just wanted to touch on that topic because I think it's probably fair to say, you can probably tell that I've been talking about a lot of this week with clients and obviously I think, even from what Harry's saying there, you can tell it's a common conversation we have and with both brand new clients where I'll emphasise like you're tracking accuracy really bloody matters. but also as we go farther into it. Like I've got two or three clients this week who I'm doing a visual food diary with so I can check in on their tracking to make sure it's as accurate as possible and give them a bit of feedback because we're making progress for all three of them but maybe a little slower than I'd like and I have a suspicion that maybe there's a little bit of tracking and accuracy so it's something we're focusing on. So just wanted to touch on that topic. But if that was helpful for you guys and you would like to hear more of the podcast then you can drop us a little review but you can also. click the link for one-to-one coaching in the show notes as well. And there's also a little ⁓ link in the show notes for a free, I was gonna say free, completely forgot what it's called, free weight loss plan ⁓ as well. So if you're trying to structure out your nutrition and you're not sure where to start, then you can jump into that as well. Brain freeze there, pressure of the moment got to me. That was too much for me clearly. Anyway, thank you for listening guys, I'm gonna speak to you soon. Harry: Hmm. Cheers guys.