Strategies for Counting Macros Without Losing Your Mind

[Manveer]

I feel like my nutrition is holding back my lifting. I generally just eat whatever I want, make sure to get enough protein, and try to make the scale move wherever I think it should be moving (usually bulking slowly).

When I've tried counting macros in the past, it became really annoying. If my wife is making dinner, having to ask her about every ingredient (obviously easier when I'm cooking). Weighing every part of every meal. Getting to the end of the day and having to eat a ton of protein. Worrying about whether I can have an unplanned beer without messing up things. Trying to find things on a menu that fit my macros when going out. Generally it was just a hassle for me and probably annoying for my wife to have to deal with.

What strategies have you all used to count macros without losing your mind? Eating the same thing every day isn't really an option.

[Chebass88]

I've had the same issue - the level of fretting attached to My Fatness Pal isn't needed.

I do decently with an intermittent fasting approach. The only food I eat at work is what I take myself, and no desserts or sweets. One plate at dinner only. That tends to work pretty well. I don't use the 16/8 fasted/fed approach, more like 14/10.

Food for work:
1 large sourdough roll
Apple
Orange
Broccoli with cheese
Red or green pepper
16-20oz ground turkey

The only exception to no sweets / desserts is half a pint of ice cream on Friday nights.

I've been doing this for a couple of years and can say it works fairly well. If I'm focused, I can maintain weight or even reduce.

[Murelli]

I just eyeball a lot and focus on Paretoing my food log, I focus on the most significant 80% and approximate the rest. It has been working.

[CoconutChris]

+2. I try to hit the big points like everyone else – minimizing alcohol intake, eat high protein foods – but I've never done a comprehensive job at counting macros that wasn't stressful. And when I have counted, it wasn't long enough to see what progress I'm missing out on from lack of compliance.

Taking food to work is a good idea. I mostly mess up when I need to stay at work late, and can't make it to the butcher shops on a day I planned to cook.

[Manveer]

I eat at home most of the time. Go out to eat Friday and Saturday evenings usually. Take lunch to work 99% of the time.

So, it sounds like you guys don't actually count macros. I thought everyone who was "counting macros" was doing that 100% of the time, being pretty precise about it.

[cgeorg]

I have gone through a few months of strict tracking, but I haven't in a while. Just go by feel at this point based on the scale and what I learned when tracking.

[chromoly]

When I was counting macros, I would weigh things out when cooking, calculate macros for the total thing. After that, approximate how many servings each batch of food is, and then you have macros for each portion. Annoying to make someone else do that for you though. At some point, if you weigh out enough food and pay attention to volume of food, you'll develop a good estimation of how much a cup of X ingredient weighs or how much a handful of Y ingredient weighs, and then can input that into your macro list.

Pro Tip: get a white board/sheet of paper to write down the food weight as you go along. Wait until you're done cooking or have some cooking "down time" to tally up the macros in some macro tracking app. Don't enter the food into MFP as you're cooking; that draws out the cooking process way too long.

When I more loosely tracked macros, I also just used things other people have input into MyFatnessPal and MyMacros+. Say I made some kind of fried rice-- I would just go to MFP or MM+ and find someone else's recipe for it. It'll put you in the ballpark.

[broseph]

The smug feeling of self satisfaction when I hit my goals everyday is motivation enough for me to hardcore track, but I also eat pretty much the same thing 75% of the time.

Breakfast: oatmeal, blueberries, almonds, milk, whey.
BCAA's pre/post workout
Lunch: sweet potato, milk, banana, maple syrup, whey.
Second lunch: this actually varies.
Dinner: meat, lots of veggies, starch, added fat, alcohol.
-at this point I've hit my protein goal and am close enough with carbs/fat. Whatever calories are left go into Edy's slow churned ice cream.

When I need to adjust calories, I add or take away bits and pieces of this general set up. And I do most of the cooking.

Edit: We also make pizza, stews, casseroles, pastas, etc for dinner sometimes. You only have to enter all the ingredients once and save it as a meal or recipe in My Fitness Pal, then figure out your serving size.

[ithryn]

Yeah when I was tracking religiously (made is 6-9 months I think?) it wasn't that much of a hassle but I'm the primary cook in the house. I precooked chicken and rice for lunches. Most of the recipes we do I entered as recipes into the tracker (I like Mynetdiary, seemed faster to get to logging food which is important, and they have a nice widget for your home screen on your phone) so I could just re-enter them easily.

You could also track everything but your wife's awesome dinners. Then just guesstimate that loosely. Basically if your goal is 3k calories and you hit, say, 2,000 calories before dinner, you have a lot of wiggle room to either eat light and stay under or pig out. You won't get abs that way, but you also won't be making five scoop protein shakes before bed.

[ithryn]

Are you even worried about weight loss?

I think if you're trying to lose consistently, then yeah, you have to be crazy about it, don't eat anybody else's food ever, eat the same shit every day.

If you're slow bulking then just track enough to start to eyeball X amount of carbs and protein at every single meal, like 50 and 50, even if it's throwing an oat and whey shake after the meal. Fat will take care of itself.

[GregoryDomnin]

Myfitness pal app is the tool to use for Macro counting. The premium edition was superb for dialing it in and planning ahead.

However, I have found 0 scientific evidence that counting macros and hitting 1 gram of protein per lbs of body mass is the most effective way to bulk.

[d0uevenlift]

Myfitness pal app is the tool to use for Macro counting. The premium edition was superb for dialing it in and planning ahead.

However, I have found 0 scientific evidence that counting macros and hitting 1 gram of protein per lbs of body mass is the most effective way to bulk.

I don't think anyone would argue against that, mostly because with bulking, it's total calories that matter. But counting macros is a helpful way of making sure the bulk doesn't get out of control. You don't want to be eating 200g/fat per day, for example.

[BenM]

I don't have any, because I think I've lost my mind already.

Seriously though - I am a bit hardcore about it. I was already doing most of the cooking, now on the nights when my wife does cook I have her well trained, like she makes a certain type of salad every fortnight (chicken/pasta/feta... so some of the ingredients are calorie dense) while I'm at work, and she will weigh/keep the labels for me so I can input quantities and get an idea.

I take a big meal prep bag to work every day, and try to mostly plan my daily food in advance, but I also keep a few staples in the bag just in case of unforeseen eventualities....

All that said, it is stressful and I'm suffering from a bit of burnout from it - so breaks from time to time are also a good idea.

[Cody]

I tracked every fraction of an ounce for a while. I learned that the real secret is to eating roughly the same thing every day. The statistics on people who lost tons of weight essentially say that you'll put the weight back on. The ~5% of folks that don't literally eat the same few meals consistently.

I've had basically the same breakfast every day for the past 4 years. If I'm cutting, remove two eggs. Bulking, add two more bacon slices, etc. If once a week I have pancakes instead of oatmeal, that's easy to adjust for. But, I'm not having wildly different breakfasts, so there's very little calculating I have to do.

Lunch is a rotation of the same meals that are all roughly similar macros. Subway, chic-fil-a, Chinese, etc. They're all ~1,400 calories and 40+ g protein. Add some shakes and some pop tarts, then just dinner is left. 85% of my nutrition is taken care of by this point, so I do whatever I want at dinner and don't worry about it nowadays. I did track it for half a year, but it turns out that I came pretty consistent to my goals over time with just my eyeball.

All this is to say that if you don't want to track literally everything, just eat the same thing every day. Have meals that are roughly iso-caloric and similar protein profiles to swap around for sanity's sake, then just enjoy your life.

[tdood]

I track pretty strictly. I found the best way to do it (for me) is to identify when I like to eat a lot of food and make sure I have plenty of macros leftover. I like to eat a lot in the late afternoon and evening, so I always make sure I have a bunch of calories leftover for after work. I'm lucky, I maintain at over 4200 cals a day, it took work to get there, but now that I'm there I basically eat 2200 cals between breakfast, lunch and snack (6am, 10am, 2pm).. then can go hog wild at dinner and still have room for a pint of ice cream every day lol. I also pretty much eat the same thing every day for breakfast, lunch and preworkout snack. Each of the first 3 meals has about 50g Protien every 5 hrs for that Mps.

Current maintenance macros are 219p/469c/165f and I get 40-60g fiber although that much isn't necessary.
Breakfast:
4 eggs
Metamucil
Big bowl of cereal with whole Fairlife milk (like 70-90 grams Lucky Charms, chocolate cheerios, whatever I feel like and like 325ml milk)

Lunch:
~140g Boneless, skinless chicken breast (change seasonings for variety)
400g potato or sweet potato with 2 tbsp butter (and 1 tbsp brown sugar if sweet pot.)
1 bag of steamed veggies (lots of greens) with various sauces that aren't crazy high in cals.

Snack: 4 Greek yogurts lol

So then I eat whatever I feel like for dinner and the rest of the day, and that's not too hard to track.

[Mahendra]

Tracking was annoying for me at first, but now it's pretty much 2nd nature to me. It's not so bad because I pretty much eat the same things every week. Lunch is generally a tuna or chicken salad sandwich (homemade). Dinners are pasta, tuna steak, souvlaki chicken, homemade chicken strips, and then I eat out Friday & Saturday night where my meals are either thai food, sushi, or burrito.

It's easy'ish for me to do because I cook everything, but I know it may pose some issues when the fiance and I get married and live together, as she likes a lot more variety in dinner, and she'll definitely kill me for asking her to weigh stuff the nights that she cooks. At that point, I'll probably just make sure I eat the same breakfast & lunch that I make, and just eyeball whatever she makes. As long as it's a decent sized chicken / piece of fish, I'll eyeball the carbs, and just eat more or less ice cream for a snack to help with whichever way I want my weight to go.

One great thing I love about tracking, is that it always allows me to get in some ice cream pretty much every day. It also lets me eat MOAR food. Generally speaking, when I don't track, I tend to under eat.

[simonrest]

I have over 1000 day streak on MFP tracking macros and I've got the sloppiest rig on these boards. Make of that what you will...

[TimK]

I feel like my nutrition is holding back my lifting. I generally just eat whatever I want, make sure to get enough protein, and try to make the scale move wherever I think it should be moving (usually bulking slowly).

Honestly given how meticulous you are with tracking all of your other training variables I'm surprised you don't do the same with your diet.

Anyway, for me I have had much success using myfitnesspal and tracking everything. However, the only numbers I worry about are total calories and protein. I literally don't even look at carbs and fat except occasionally out of curiosity. This has worked great for me while cutting. I've dropped 33 lbs in the past 23 weeks and my lifts overall haven't changed much. Granted, I haven't been getting really lean or bulking, so maybe hitting specific carb and fat numbers is more crucial in those instances.

The actual tracking is easy for me as I do tend to eat the same meals over and over and have them saved in myfitnesspal. If I eat at a restaurant or a home cooked meal then I will search the app and find something that seems close to what I actually ate. An approximation is better than not tracking at all and over time you get better at estimating portion sizes, etc.

[gtl]

Mostly just echoing other responses.

Eating the same things makes it easier.

Also, if you're making something at home, let's say chili. I add up the ingredients (2lbs meat, 2 cans tomatoes, 2 cans beans, etc.) and get a total for everything. Then I eyeball portions. I might use a cup sized 'measuring spoon' and dish it out into 6 Tupperware containers. That way, I know each serving is 1/6.

But, I typically do shake+fruit for breakfast. Shakes are obviously easy to track. I'll make an actual breakfast on weekends.

Lunch is chicken, rice, veggies in some sort of fashion. If I used chicken breast, I'll add something like a Power Crunch bar as s 'dessert'. If I used chicken thighs, I don't. Or, if I eat out, it's usually 4 places: Chipotle, City BBQ, Fresh Indian Grill, ChickFila.

Afternoon snack might be a shake again, or a protein bar, some jerky, etc.

Then dinner might be burgers on the grill, something the fiance makes, etc. If we're feeling lazy, Trader Joes frozen Turkey Burgers + Trader Joes Reduced Fat White Cheddar Cheese + 2 slices of bacon with some steamed veggies of some sort.

[aurelius]

Probably someone has already said it, but just have a set day with predetermined meals you eat 4-5 times per week. M-F afternoon is the same meals. I pick up 2-3 'healthy' meals Friday through Sunday. And just watch proportions otherwise. I dropped from 190ish to below 180 and have maintained on this plan.

For most people, 70% or so compliance is enough to drive goals. 4 to 5 clean days without going crazy on non-cheat days is good enough. Now this won't get you on stage in a thong.