Ep 273 – Can You Get Lean Without Tracking?

Do you need to track every calorie and macro to make progress? Ben and Dani discuss the pros and cons of macro tracking, how nutrition tracking evolved, and why tracking can be an incredibly useful tool without needing to become a permanent part of your life. They also explore meal plans, meal templates, structured eating, calorie density, intuitive eating, and practical ways to gradually loosen the reins while still making progress toward your goals.

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TRANSCRIPT

Dani Taylor (00:00)
Hello everybody, welcome back to another episode of Vegan Proteins Muscles by Brussels Radio. My name is Dani.

Ben (00:05)
I’m Ben.

Dani Taylor (00:05)
And we are recording our first podcast together in quite a while. Are you in the Cape right now?

Ben (00:11)
Actually in Lexington, but I

was in the Cape this morning when we got up at four thirty to to drive back. So yeah, it it’s always kind of a

Dani Taylor (00:17)
That’s unfortunate.

Ben (00:19)
little bit of a debate of whether we leave and come back in the afternoon or evening, or come back the next morning. But usually we just wanna spend as much time there as we can. And so we’re like, Okay, we’ll just get up early the next day. But not gonna lie, it was pretty brutal. Like I I meal prepped.

like all of our coffees and our breakfast for the morning and like packed the car as best as I can so there was the least amount of stuff to do in the morning. And, you know, I had my coffee and I started drinking a monster. And even then, while I’m driving like a monster and a coffee and I’m still like trying struggling to keep my my eyes open. And it’s not like we didn’t get you know, we still like six, seven hours, which is like pretty decent. you know, I can definitely usually operate on that just fine. But I think it’s like we had been going to bed later. So then shifting to like an earlier wake up is

little bit different. So yeah, we had been there actually since Saturday because Dana got Monday and Wednesday off and then she just switched shifts with the cowork Tuesday so that she could take the day off and so we were on the Cape and we got mixed weather like Sunday Monday were pretty nice. Tuesday was a little bit mixed and then yesterday was pretty much raining the whole day.

But we were able to go out on like a nice long bike ride. There’s like a bike path there that runs along a ton of the Cape. So we did that one day when we rode like over 20 miles. and then we went to the gym a couple times and just a little bit like hanging out. We were there with my parents most of the time, and it was just the four of us, which was fun. I don’t think we’ve actually done that before. and they had some friends who were kind of popping in and out as well. so we had a good time and now

We came back today. she’s actually the only one who’s working in the prep kitchen today. So sh that’s probably kind of fun for her. it’s

Dani Taylor (01:55)
Yeah.

Ben (01:55)
the slow season right now for for catering. So July and August, which was actually the time that we met and it was like funny because it was slow and we were hanging out a lot and then it got busy all of a sudden, like September, October, November. So we know that’s that’s coming, but for right now it’s like take advantage of the summertime and take advantage of the nice weather and spend as much time outside and you know on the Cape as as we can.

Dani Taylor (02:16)
It’s funny you say that ’cause

I was thinking it before, like, I don’t know if they’re half an hour ago. I was like, I feel like they’ve been dating for just about a year right now. I think it was around this time last year that you guys met. So happy anniversary ish, I guess.

Ben (02:29)
Thank you. Yeah. Alice and I recorded

a podcast last Friday and it was on our one year anniversary. So it’s been just over one year. yeah, it’s

Dani Taylor (02:37)
Yeah. That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Congrats.

Ben (02:40)
yeah, it’s great. It’s the first like long term relationship that I’ve really had. And so it’s it was a cool milestone to have and we got to celebrate with a little like staycation, so to speak, going going to the Cape. So it was nice, yeah. And now we’re back

Dani Taylor (02:49)
Mm. Yeah. That’s sweet.

Ben (02:52)
and August is gonna be busy because we’re going back, not this

weekend, although maybe if she gets more time off, who knows? Maybe we’ll go back down because it’s like, hey, you know, we’ll take the two hour drive or whatever to be by the beach and be able to hang out there. but n definitely the following weekend because both of my aunts are coming to visit and there’s like a race, like an 8K or something that a bunch of my family is is running in, like my brother and my mom and my aunt. and I’m just like I’m just like I’ll jump in it. I don’t have to train for it at all. So we’ll see how that goes. My

Dani Taylor (03:21)
Ha ha ha

Ben (03:23)
entire family is skeptical of my running abilities. But I have to remind them

Dani Taylor (03:26)
Uh-huh.

Ben (03:27)
that I played I played Ultimate Frisbee at a pretty good level

Dani Taylor (03:29)
Yeah, that’s true.

Ben (03:30)
there for a bit. so we might do that. And then the following weekend we’re taking a little family trip to visit my mom’s cousin who has like a little house on the lake in Vermont. And then the following

Dani Taylor (03:39)
cool.

Ben (03:40)
weekend, like these friends that I grew up from with home from home, we have like a a boys trip every there’s like twelve of us. We have a boys’ trip down to Rhode Island every single year. So that’s the following weekend. So

It’s gonna like busy with stuff to do, but at least like from a work perspective. I mean I’m kind of stable with with how my work flows throughout the year, but Dana is a little bit more relaxed at this time of year. So that’s nice.

Dani Taylor (04:03)
That’s exciting. Yeah, you got a lot of fun stuff coming up. Very cool.

Ben (04:05)
Yeah. Yeah. What about you? What’s been going on?

Dani Taylor (04:09)
let’s see. I don’t have anything really planned for August, except at the end of August, we’re going to the Anaheim Fit Expo in California. But that’s

Ben (04:18)
Mm-hmm.

Dani Taylor (04:18)
most it’s a work trip really. But you know, we’ll we’ll get to see some people we haven’t seen in a while, so that’s always cool.

we just got back from upstate New York. We went to visit some of Jack Moe’s family. They have a lake house there, and we took the kids and we went to Legoland, which I naively

Ben (04:32)
Whoa.

Dani Taylor (04:32)
thought was a giant Lego store with like a play place, but no, it’s like a full-blown amusement park. So that was a little overwhelming considering I was not expecting that and expensive, honestly. But they had a blast. So it was a it was a that we don’t have a lot of like immediate family, so the kids called.

the kids in Giacomo’s family cousins. They pretty much call everybody cousins, but they had all these matching like cousins shirts. It was so freaking cute. So that was fun. I came home more exhausted than I left, but it was still fun. So yeah.

Ben (05:04)
Yeah,

family family trips can be like that. I I I feel that. I didn’t actually know that there was a a Legoland other than the one that’s in Anaheim, actually. I’m pretty sure is where the other one is. And I remember going there as a kid and I loved it because I was super into Legos. And you know, what you were talking about with them being expensive, I feel like they’ve obviously they’ve gotten expensive over time as everything does, but I think one of the smartest things that Lego has done is I see them now trying to appeal to a lot of the like

adult demographic who grew up playing with Legos because now they’re the ones with the disposable incomes who can spend money on the Legos. Of course they’re always going to be great for kids, but you know, I hey, I would still love to play with a a Lego at at this age. So you know, I think that’s a

Dani Taylor (05:45)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, they’re pretty fun. They’re

fun. but holy crap, like they are expensive. Like to buy like a set of Legos

Ben (05:51)
Yeah.

Dani Taylor (05:52)
to build a specific thing, you’re like just like, what? What what do you mean? It’s a bunch of little pieces of plastic. What are you what are you talking about? But yeah, there were like roller coasters and stuff like that there. they they had a blast. They little fake driver’s licenses. It was adorable.

Ben (06:05)
That is awesome.

Dani Taylor (06:06)
All right, so what are we talking about today?

Ben (06:08)
We’re talking about how to make progress in your fitness journey without being super strict or meticulous with tracking your macros. And I think that that would be

Kind of blasphemous, honestly, to a lot of people who are in the fitness industry these days. But I thought we could kind of maybe take it back to the days where, like, if it fits your macros, macro tracking wasn’t even a thing, and people didn’t even know what that was or what that meant. and then how that kind of came about up to where we are today. and then kind of transition into talking about like why you might want to track or why you might not want to track, and talk about some strategies if that’s something that.

isn’t aligned for you, and what kind of circumstances people might find themselves in where that doesn’t make sense for them to be super meticulous with their tracking. And we could talk about that from like

maybe certain occupations or like people who are new parents or whatever it is. Like I I think something that we’ll talk about is just like when when stress is really high, maybe this is something that you’re not able to be as, you know, I’m weighing and measuring, you know, every single thing. Maybe you’re traveling again. We’ll get into the specifics later, but that’s kind of how I envisioned the the trajectory of the conversation going. Just because I think sometimes there’s an assumption that like everybody is doing that and and you know that’s how they’re making progress. And it’s like if somebody’s

Not doing that, then you know, there’s certain maybe misunderstandings about what they are doing. So I just figured it would be a good topic to kind of get into. So I guess maybe where we start out is defining maybe some terms. So when people think of like flexible dieting or if it fits your macros or macro tracking, how would you describe that to somebody who maybe is unfamiliar with that?

Dani Taylor (07:45)
So

I would describe I would say they’re all basically the same thing. And it’s all like a fairly meticulous tracking of your food. So weighing or measuring and then logging how much food you’re eating so that you can keep track of your calorie intake, your protein intake, your carb intake, and your fat intake, and ideally most likely to hit certain goals that you have by the end of the day.

sort of like a budget for these different macronutrients. And yeah, it requires you to be pretty accurate in your logging, which is the part that I would say most people dislike the most, is the actual act of measuring and weighing and plugging things in to either like a notebook with a pencil or like an app on your phone and anything in between.

Ben (08:30)
Funny story about this that I’ve told on the podcast a couple times. when I first started kind of learning more about nutrition and going into the gym, I read this book and it was talking about, you know, how to track and using a food scale and weighing everything out. And I remember I read that the first time and I’m like, that’s so much effort. I’m not doing that. And I stopped reading the book because I’m like, this useless book. I’m not gonna do this. And then I like thought about it for a week and I kept thinking about it, and I was like,

All right, I’ll at least finish reading the book. And then I read the rest of the book and I’m like, I’ll at least give it a try for like a little period of time. and I think that’s the reaction a lot of people have, like, well, isn’t

Dani Taylor (09:01)
Yeah. Yeah.

Ben (09:05)
that a little bit much? Isn’t that kind of a little bit, you know, obsessive, or do you really need to do that? And again, the answer is always like it depends. Like for certain circumstances, certain scenarios. If you really want to be precise and accurate as much as you can, of course, we know things like.

Okay, you know what they put on a food label for a certain product can be off by up to 20%. and it’s not super regulated. So you know, if you’re eating more whole foods, you’re probably gonna have less of those inaccuracies. but you don’t have to be perfect with those. So we understand that there’s some variability, even little things. And again, people, please don’t stress about this, but like

How ripe a fruit is can change actually, like the, you know, how much ends up getting absorbed because it can change kind of the fiber content of the fruit. So we don’t need to get into that. But all that to say, you try to do the best that you can with the information that you have. And the more things that you can track accurately, the more that you’re gonna be able to know the inputs. And that can then inform your decision making and help you get on track to your goal. So there’s utility there. and I think maybe just starting with.

the the history and like looking at okay what were what were people doing let’s you know take it back to to bodybuilding in like the sixties and seventies like what were people doing to get in shape? A lot of times it was you know things that maybe they didn’t know exactly why it was working but it seemed to to work out well for them. So there would be like okay I’m sticking to this sort of meal plan. I’m only gonna eat a lot of times it’s like I’m only eating these ten foods for the next, you know, three or six months. And oftentimes it’s like fruits, vegetables, like you know

Protein sources, and that’s like the majority of what they’re eating. So it’s like lower calorie dense foods. they’re they’re cutting out a lot of foods that are more highly processed or have more calories, and then they’re sticking to that over time and they’re being consistent. And so that’s how they would get into shape. But you know, over time people have gotten, at least if I’m thinking about bodybuilding specifically, have been able to get leaner and leaner and leaner. I

Dani Taylor (10:55)
Yes.

Ben (10:56)
think because of this ability to be more accurate and be more precise. Do you want to speak on that?

Dani Taylor (11:00)
Well, just one hundred percent. So I actually think I was thinking about this also before we started. I think I have a little bit of like a I don’t want to say a harsher stance on macro tracking than you do, but I think that like you said, you start saying track your food, weigh your food, measure your food, and a lot of people just stop listening. They’re just like, no, you know what I’d rather do instead of that, I’d rather keep doing what I’m doing for the next five years, keep complaining that I’m not making any progress, but also I don’t want to do this tracking thing because that’s crazy.

Whereas like I kind of think it’s crazy to just not really have any system whatsoever and keep complaining that you’re not making progress. And I think about it a lot like a budget. Like, yes, there comes a point for a lot of people where you don’t have to meticulously track every penny that you earn and spend in order to be like financially okay. But for most people, they’re gonna have to go through a period where they do that to figure out where their money is really coming from and where definitely where it’s going. And I look at

Nutritional intake the same way, especially if you’re someone that has been like struggling to make progress for a really long time. There are other ways to make progress besides tracking your intake, but in my opinion, it’s the only surefire way to make progress. And the issue that I have with some of the other methods, like there are other methods that can work, and I’m sure we’re gonna talk about them today.

But the issue that I have, like you said, a lot of people end up eating the same 10 foods. And over time, that kind of more like warps in their brain into these 10 foods make me progress, and all other foods hinder my progress. When like you and I both know that’s not true. It’s just happens to be the makeup of these foods. Maybe like the the blandness of the food or whatever. The fiber content helps people to not overdo it on their calories.

But it ends up, you end up accidentally demonizing things and kind of putting yourself in what I think of is even more disordered mindset than you know knowing what your intake is, I guess. So I guess I just kind of wanted to lead with that caveat that I’m like pretty pro tracking your food. Maybe not forever, but it’s like it’s such an invaluable tool, I feel like. But I know that it’s not for everybody, but I just wanted to throw out that idea that a lot of people think it’s disordered.

But I also think it’s equally disordered to just say I I don’t make any progress for the last ten years, but not be willing to try this thing. You know what I mean?

Ben (13:18)
Yeah, I think there’s some ambivalence going on in the people who who have that, where, you know, they they say they want something but that they’re not willing to do, you know, what they what they need to do in order to get the to achieve the thing that they actually want. And so you have to really decide what, you know, what is actually important to you. And you know, honestly, you know, for for those people it’s like what what’s the harm in just giving it a try if you haven’t tried it before? if you really decide it is how you feel it is, then okay, you know, that that’s fine.

And if it if you start to it’s not like, you know, you start doing it and then it becomes this obsessive thing. Like you you will see that kind of development over time, especially if you’re working with somebody and they’re, you know, they they’re able to help kind of help you think through it in the appropriate way. but yeah, I think it’s, you know, again, it depends on your goal, like and how strict and rigid you need to be. How difficult is it for you to get that goal? Because some people, their appetites are just naturally a little bit lower. And so, okay, if they’re eating kind of more mindfully,

Yeah, and the all the strategies that we’re gonna be talking about essentially come down to helping you lower your calorie intake, you know, increase your protein intake. And a lot of those have to do with, you know, eating more fruits and vegetables, this sort of things that are that are filling, that are nutrient dense. So strategies strategies like that that we’ll talk about. but like you were saying, tracking is kind of the the one way to make sure that you are are doing exactly what you need to do. And I think the

the mental peace of mind that people get from from tracking. Again, this podcast isn’t about like tracking is bad and you shouldn’t do it and here’s how not to do it. It’s about talking through the pros and cons and helping you understand your own situation and when it might be helpful and not. And also just understanding it’s a it’s a spectrum. It’s not like you can, you know, it’s not like there’s there’s tracking and there’s not tracking. most of the people who can achieve a really, you know, incredible physique and maintain it without tracking, they’ve probably tracked for like a good period of time and that’s what’s given them the understanding of what they need to do now. So

that’s a that’s a very important caveat. You don’t just like, you know, become a wizard overnight and understand, you know, exactly what your body needs just by intuition. Like it’s it’s these habits that you’ve built, and then you understand kind of, you know, what you need based on those habits and repeating those patterns over time. and I think what I was getting to with the with the bodybuilders is just they created rules for themselves. And that’s what people do when

Dani Taylor (15:27)
Yes.

Ben (15:27)
they follow like ketogenic diets or carnivore diets or whatever, you know.

the something diet. If it’s the something diet, they’re probably just eliminating certain things and that’s what’s creating

Dani Taylor (15:37)
Yes.

Ben (15:37)
again a calorie deficit. And that is easier for a lot of people than you know, c having a rules-based approach is easier than saying, okay, we’re just gonna track these things and we’re gonna manage these things because there’s more, I think, variables and there’s more input and there’s more critical thinking and there’s more effort required to to think, you know. And again, that’s that’s a cost you could say, but at the same time

there’s less potential like you were kind of getting to for maybe having a restrictive mindset around food that could be harmful in the long term.

Dani Taylor (16:07)
Yeah, totally. And it’s like depending on what your goals are with macro tracking, you know, there there can be like a restrictive mindset. If you’re in a deficit, that that’s kind of the limit, right? You’re the the goals that you have set.

And I can understand why people like, well, I get really obsessed with the numbers, and then I focus on that too much, and it just puts me in a really bad headspace. And I agree, and I I agree, and I’ve seen that, and I’m sure you’ve seen it as well, where it’s like you have to kind of help somebody kind of loosen the reins on their obsession with hitting these numbers to the gram. That’s a that’s a separate thing. but

On the other side, when it’s like these rules, like you said, like a keto diet, a carnivore diet, intermittent fasting is also just another set of rules, right? Over time, you start thinking, like, well, if I eat after six o’clock, like then bad things are gonna happen. That’s in and of itself a kind of restrictive mindset as well. So I don’t necessarily think that it’s better or worse. I don’t think one is one in particular is better or worse for everybody, but I do think.

I I really do think there’s some value in everybody going through a phase of tracking their food. So, okay, thinking back, let’s go backwards. So let’s see, calories I think weren’t even like discovered really or talked about until like 1890, I believe. And that was mostly in like a lab sense, like in a science lab. And I think then there were only

Calorie counts or estimates on about 500 different foods. which was, you know, that’s probably every food in 1890, I don’t know. But only about 500 foods. And then people didn’t actually start tracking calories until I want to say somewhere around 1910 or 1913, something like that. And it was because this woman, Lulu Peters, I believe was her name, she wrote a book.

And I can’t remember what it was called. It had kind of a funny name, but basically, she wrote a book instructing people how to eat fewer than 1200 calories. And this is where the 1200 calorie thing started. I did a video years ago on like the history of 1200 calories, and that’s how I know this. I didn’t just know it. that’s how it started. So it started in like 19 somewhere in the 19 teens, with this book. And it like still 1200 calories, like is what people talk about today.

Obviously, like mainstream bodybuilding as we think about like classic bodybuilding in the like 60s and 70s was a different thing. And I don’t actually don’t know a lot about how those guys ate. Maybe you do know. But what I do know is that food labels, as we know them now, nutrition labels, didn’t exist on foods until 1994. So it wasn’t even really possible for people to track their macros.

Like realistically, until almost like 2000, you know, because I think it was ninety-four where they like the US said they had to be on foods. But before that, you would only know calories from a book that had like whole foods calories in it, basically. So even if you wanted to do it, it was never gonna be super accurate then. It’s a lot more accurate now, but still imperfect. But I do think that’s why in the last 20 years we’ve seen.

so much more emphasis on tracking calories and tracking macros, it’s because we’ve only really been able to do it for the last 30 years, tops.

Ben (19:18)
That’s pretty fascinating. I didn’t know that the, you know, people tracking their calories went back to like the early 1900s. I’m like, surely there I I don’t believe there there was an obesity epidemic back then and like people were starving and they’re like

Dani Taylor (19:30)
Yeah.

Ben (19:31)
tracking their calories or whatever. but I think that probably more speaks to like the societal like standards that have been set for women, probably considering that there was a woman

Dani Taylor (19:39)
Mm-hmm.

Ben (19:39)
that wrote this like already back then when you know people were just struggling to survive, that that was still something that

you know, people were were focused on on doing. And the food label thing in nineteen ninety four, I did I didn’t know that either. I’m sure I learned that at some point during like one of my you know nutrition courses. But yeah, it just gives you again an idea of how recent a lot of these things are. And to your question about, you know, bodybuilders and what they were doing, I think it was just a lot of again, it was the rules based thing, like these are the, you know, the ten foods that I’m eating. and then, you know,

As I get closer to show, I might cut out some of these things. You know, I’m gonna cut out, I think it was like cut out dairy or cut out whatever it was as they got closer to the show. There was a lot of like myths as well, of course, about like, you know, tilapia thins the skin. That’s like a classic bodybuilding

Dani Taylor (20:22)
Yes. Mm-hmm.

Ben (20:23)
like myth or or trope. but I think there were like as you got into the 80s and 90s, there were bodybuilders that started to use more of a scientific approach. I think I remember watching a documentary documentary.

with Rich Gaspari, who I think was the Olympia runner up to Lee Haney, who won like eight or nine in a row, like three or four times. And now he’s got this big clothing company called Gasp that a lot of people might know. But, anyways, he was, I believe I remember seeing him in a documentary. Like he had the the food journals and he was tracking and he was measuring and you know, managing things more precisely. And then I just remember hearing stories, and this is you know where I

love to hear some of your experience because I think it really started to become in vogue as you were kind of coming up. but you know, this idea of flexible dieting and eating whatever you want and getting in really good shape as long as you’re tracking your calories and it being this kind of like magical thing that everyone was you know, seeing. I don’t know, it seemed like people were seeing like how much junk food they could eat while

Dani Taylor (21:17)
Yes.

Ben (21:17)
still getting like shredded. And of course people have heard about like the Twinkie diet and stuff like that. So talk talk a little bit more about that.

Dani Taylor (21:23)
so I remember prior to that, so like just prior to that, right around like I don’t know, 2005, 6, 7, 8, clean eating was everything. It was the only thing people talked about was clean eating. It was like people were obsessive about anything that they thought wasn’t quote unquote clean. So like depending on who you talked to, tofu might not have been a clean food.

because it wasn’t like in there were like the clean eating diets. I think it was written by Tosca Reno and her husband, who owned Oxygen magazine and probably a men’s magazine as well. But it was like a whole movement where people were just like, I’m just gonna eat cleaner and cleaner and cleaner, but not really with any regard to the amounts of what they were taking in. Like there were basic formulas where you would eat a protein, a carb, and a fat source at every meal. But

it wasn’t like you were shooting for a certain number of calories or even protein grams per day. It was like these are the servings you could, you know, you could have as much sweet potato as you wanted. For example, white potatoes were a no, sweet potatoes were fine. Like it it really didn’t make any sense at all. But this was like all you heard about in the fitness industry at that time. And then a bunch of kind of science-based guys, Lane Norton comes to mind immediately, was kind of coming up at the same time.

And it was like, this doesn’t make any sense. Like I study bodies, and a carb is a carb is a carb, and your body is for the most part going to digest the sugar from a donut the same way it’s gonna digest the sugar from a banana, which you know that’s mostly true, the sugar itself specifically. Like your body’s gonna break all carbs down into sugar, the end. proteins are all gonna break down into amino acids, the end. So there was like definitely some truth to that.

meanwhile, myself, I didn’t know anything about Lane Norton or bodybuilding.com or anything. I kind of, I don’t want to say discovered flexible dieting, but basically I was trying to copy what other people were eating that weren’t vegan. And obviously it wasn’t like there was an equivalent for chicken for vegans. So I was like, okay, well, what are they getting from chicken? Okay, they’re getting protein. How much protein do they get in three ounces of chicken? And I’d look that up and be like, okay, how can I get

25 grams of protein from something as a vegan. So I was doing flexible dieting that way. But I also was you know, feeling really bad if I was having a Boca burger instead of, you know, what they were having was plain grilled chicken. I didn’t want chicken, but you know, because I was like, well, this is the right protein, but it’s not clean. So I’m really screwing up here. but I just kept doing it because it was working. And again, over on the bodybuilding.com forums, the science guys coming up, they were like,

railing against clean eating and doing exactly what you just said and starting to be like, well, these are my macros. I don’t people didn’t even say the word macros before that. carbs, proteins, fat, these are my macros. And it was just called if it fits your macros, because you could eat anything if it fits your macros. And they did eat anything if it fit their macros. It didn’t matter, you know, there were companies coming out all the time, like donuts and deadlifts and, you know, every donuts was all the thing at the time. It was like a fitness thing.

To eat donuts, which was like blasphemous at the time. But that’s what was happening. And looking back, probably an overcorrection in a lot of ways, but what we were seeing was we were seeing people eating donuts and protein powder all day and looking better than anybody had ever looked before up until that point and going, Holy crap, like there is something to this, you know?

So it was pretty revolutionary, certainly an overcorrection. And I think most of those guys would say the same thing if you ask them about it today. but it got the point across in a way that maybe if it had been a little bit less in your face, it might not have. So I guess I’m grateful for it in that regard. But yeah, so that I think is what kind of shifted people away from more like food-based rules.

To like, well, this works always, right? Like you can eat clean, but what happens when you plateau? What do you eat cleaner? Like you can’t, there’s no measure of how to progress from there. Whereas with the numbers, it was like, well, I’ll just change the numbers. so there was always a route to progress from there. So that’s when a lot of people sort of switched over to that. and that’s lasted for a long time. And there is obviously pushback to it now, but I mean, that’s like.

at least ten or fifteen years, I would say it’s been like kind of the mainstay.

Ben (25:40)
And I think I feel like the the pendulum has kind of swung back a bit where people are still doing if it fits your macros or flexible dieting and tracking, but they understand that, okay, you know, the base of my diet should still be whole foods, you know, getting my protein in, my fruits, my vegetables. And then that other, you know, people talk about eighty percent.

And 20%, like 80% of it coming from those kind of things. And then 20% maybe, you know, that that small kind of cherry on top is, hey, whatever else you want really is gonna be totally fine. And that’s the part that allows you to adhere and stick to what you’re doing, which is always the base, you know, underlying any sort of thing that you’re doing. And I think that key distinction is really important if you want to be somebody who transitions away from tracking so strictly. You need to be very honest with yourself, I think, about the food choices that you’re making, and not, you know.

I think that’s why sometimes people say, well, I could never, you know, I have to track my macros. If I stopped tracking my macros, I would gain like fifty pounds or something like that. I feel

Dani Taylor (26:35)
Yep.

Ben (26:35)
like a lot of those folks, they have tracking a little bit to me as like a crutch or a a a a lifesaver where they haven’t actually developed a lot of the habits that would sustain them long term.

And I see it a lot where it’s like somebody is, you know, their structure, they’re eating at different times throughout the day. They’re eating different things every single day. There’s, you know, they understand the basics, but there still is a lack of like structure and routine with their nutrition that makes it harder and unnecessarily I think sometimes food focused, or there’s a lot of mental noise around food because they’re constantly having to figure out for each meal how they’re gonna make these numbers fit.

and you know, they’re they’re having different things all the time. And so I think there’s a

Dani Taylor (27:15)
Yeah.

Ben (27:15)
a middle ground here where you can use tracking to kind of make sure that you’re on the right track, but then you need to, I think, still develop these habits where, you know, you have routine and structure. So that looks like, you know, maybe eating similar amounts of of meals based on your your lifestyle, you know, at at at similar times, and having your kind of rotation of foods that you like that you can include. So I think that there is a that’s that’s a good place to

I think maybe transition into talking about some of these strategies for if you want to perhaps track a little bit more loosely or transition away from tracking your ma macros as rigidly, some strategies to employ. And I think having structure and having routine is going to be a big one.

Dani Taylor (27:55)
Absolutely. So I would say for there’s a lot of ways that I do this with some of my clients, but basically when I get a new client, which is rare these days, but when I when I get them, I I explain right at the beginning, like tell me your thoughts about nutrition, like here.

Are the pros and cons of macro tracking? And here are the pros and cons of a meal plan. And I explained them both very fully. we already talked about the pros and cons of macro tracking, but the pros and cons of a meal plan, the pro is if you’ve never seen kind of foods laid out in a structural way throughout the day with appropriate serving sizes for you and your goals, you’re gonna see it here in the meal plan. it does build some structure into your day.

some reliability in the foods that you’re eating. You don’t have to think about it a whole lot because it’s just like this is what I eat. But obviously the cons are you can get quite bored. For one, it’s boring. two, again, you might start to think anything not on this meal plan is bad. Right? so usually talk through that with some people. But a lot of people do opt for the meal plan. Now I’m not a tyrant. If they want their meal plan changed, I’m gonna change it.

but within reason. You know, I can’t change it for them every day or even every week, really. So, but that does work pretty well for a lot of people. It’s just there continues to be a lot of discussion about how, you know, there’s nothing magic in this meal plan. This just works for the goals that you have set and your body and you enjoy these foods, and it works with your schedule. So it’s working right now, but other things would work also. And I think that’s a really important thing to talk about when somebody is doing.

a meal plan, but you know, after a while, they do kind of just know what that meal looks like and that this is like an appropriate lunch for my goals right now. and that goes a really long way, I would say, in teaching somebody that has sort of no idea that if I put a set of numbers in front of them, they’d be so overwhelmed, they wouldn’t know what to do with it. This helps them visualize that in front of them in a way that’s like much less threatening.

Ben (29:55)
Yeah, I think it again, it kind of comes back to where somebody is starting from. So for somebody, if it makes sense for them to and they feel like they can start out with tracking and start out with being on a meal plan and gaining that knowledge and that education around, okay, you know, this is roughly, you know, for me and and my goals, you know, whether that’s, you know, fat loss or muscle gain or whatever it is, like what a breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks kind of need to look like in terms of portion sizes and foods. And then over time you could be like, okay, you know what?

you know for dinner or you know one breakfast a week or one dinner a week I’m gonna try to just kind of roughly estimate those calories and then you can kind of slowly transition meals or transition you know certain aspects of your day to being more estimated and being not as tracked and kind of see how that goes and continue to still take those other metrics. So continue to monitor your body weight continue to you know to do all the other things that you’re doing the steps the the training etc

so that can be one way tr you transition away from tracking if you kind of start there. But I also think for some people, the idea of tracking or following a meal plan can even be too overwhelming for them for them to start out. And so sometimes I think just starting with more more kind of habit-based approaches. So

Dani Taylor (31:07)
Mm-hmm.

Ben (31:07)
I you know, somebody might be coming from a place where, you know, even just

swapping regular soda for diet soda is gonna make a huge difference. and

Dani Taylor (31:14)
Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Ben (31:15)
I know that you, you know, that was something I think that you did that, you know, how to impact or stop drinking soda. And you know, that that, you know, that can be a a huge thing. even just you know, looking at your meals and trying to find a way to include a vegetable or a fruit at the meals that you’re currently eating. that’s gonna probably crowd out some of the the foods that are higher in calories.

adding some protein at each meal, it’s gonna help, you know, satiate you. It’s gonna help you with building muscle. These are all things that are, again, You don’t even have to necessarily quantify them and say, I need you to eat exactly this number of calories or this many grams of you know a vegetable or a fruit. You can kind of just start with, hey, make the base of most of your meals if you can, some some fruits and vegetables and some protein, and then fill in the gaps with

those other foods that you want to eat, the the whole grains, the nuts, the seeds, you know, your healthy fats, whatever it is. And sometimes just starting with those habits can feel a lot more approachable for people. And then actually over time from there, you can be like, okay, this got us to a certain point. Now we can maybe actually implement tracking or implement something like that to get us closer to where we want to be.

Dani Taylor (32:18)
Absolutely. Like I think that is why so many people, when they first go vegan or first go plant-based, they see such great results because they’re doing what you’re talking about here. They might be removing certain animal foods or highly processed foods and replacing them with more whole plant foods, and they immediately see like really good body composition results from that. however, in my experience, it’s only going to take them to a certain point.

And that point might be enough for them. It really depends on where they started. Like that could be fine. They could be perfectly healthy and happy with where they’re at there. But for a lot of people, it’s not going to take them all the way. And that’s when they start to get frustrated. And this is when the okay, what do I do eat cleaner? That’s when that mindset comes in. That’s when you start, you know, lasering through your whole diet to say, okay, what’s the dirty food that I can take out of here now? And I feel like that’s where some of the kind of

I I guess disordered thoughts, the orthorexic kind of thoughts come in, which is why I think there’s gotta be sort of a transition from there for those people. And I would say sort of the next step from there is what I kind of call meal plate, meal plan templates or meal plate templates, where you kind of categorize a lot of foods into like these are protein sources, these are carb sources.

These are all your vegetables. These are healthy fat sources. build your lunch, let’s say, with half of your plate being fruits or vegetables, a quarter of it being protein, a quarter of it being a healthy carbohydrate, and like a thumb’s worth of fat for just as an example. That that amount’s gonna be very different for each person. I think sometimes it’s called like an exchange method as well. Like you could be like a serving of.

Starchy carbs is like a half a cup of oatmeal. So your lunch has two carbs, or and you would just kind of build it from that. So it is a form of tracking. And I actually used to do this a lot when I very first started coaching. I would give people these lists and say, you can swap the starch out at lunch with anything off of this list, because this is the starch list, et cetera, et cetera. And it’s not as it’s not as specific as actually tracking those foods.

Because, you know, chickpeas are a starch and sweet potatoes are a starch, but they’re not exactly the same, even if you try to equate for like the sizes of them. But it’s still a step in that direction where we’re being a little bit more precise than just, you know, crowd out some of your foods with healthier foods.

Ben (34:44)
Yeah, I I do that as well where I’ll call like a flexible meal plan where I’ll give somebody and say, you know, hey, I don’t need to prescribe to you a specific vegetable or fruit like put do a hundred calories like a fruit or vegetable or this man many servings of of this sort of thing. so I think, yeah, like again, there’s it’s a spectrum, right? There there’s not like a a one like this is, you know, this is flexible dieting, this is, you know, not tracking at all, this is, you know, following a meal plan. They’re they’re all kind of different tools that you have in your tool belt that you can implement.

at different times. And I think there’s a big difference, you know, your your mindset and your mentality in how you are also employing these tools is important. And I think Dani’s kind of getting at that a lot is there’s this idea of I might butcher this but I’m gonna try. I think it’s flexible versus rigid cognitive restraint. And you know, macro tracking can be something that you view in a, you know, quote unquote healthy way or an unhealthy way, depending on how you’re looking at it. you know

And you can still have some of these mindsets, you know, maybe leaning more towards orthorexia while you’re still tracking your macro. So it’s like, or or you can have a more balanced approach. going back to, you know, like you were saying, getting more specific and and

Focusing more on, okay, you know, these this are the different portions of your plate. Even within that, you can manipulate that. So you can say, you know, depending on the phase you’re in, now have, you know, two thumbfuls worth of your your healthy fat serving, or, you know, we’re actually just gonna do a half. Or, you know, at this meal, we’re actually not gonna necessarily do that. It’s gonna be maybe more just like protein and carbs for this meal, and not necessarily a direct fat source. but you know, maybe you have tofu in there and you know, it’s kind of both anyway. So that’s where it starts to get. Yeah. Yeah.

Dani Taylor (36:14)
Right. See? And that that’s where it gets tricky with these exchanges is like, yes,

tofu is a protein source, but it is equally a fat source. So where do you put it in that graph? Right. It does and

Ben (36:24)
Yes. Yes.

Dani Taylor (36:26)
and this is where education becomes really important as well. And it it’s kind of all they’re all roads are kind of pointing to the same thing that knowledge is power. And the more you understand these things, the more you can kind of pick the direction that makes the most sense for you right then. yeah, an another

thing that I’ve done that has nothing to do with actual like amounts or sizes of plates or design of plates is just meal timing. Like, let’s create a meal schedule right now that’s gonna work for you. What time are you gonna eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner? And what time makes the most sense for us to have a snack or two or three or whatever the person calls for? Because a lot of people end up just doing what I call and actually what I think the literature calls chaotic eating, which is just eating.

Whenever they feel like it, which could mean they skip breakfast, they don’t eat till one in the afternoon, but then they eat a huge lunch and then or they just start grazing all the way till they go to bed. And then the next day, it’s like it’s like your body doesn’t know what to expect. So sometimes you’re starving, sometimes you’re stuffed, and it makes it really hard to actually really analyze what’s going on and what needs to change or continue in order to keep making progress. So that change alone, without changing amounts or

Numbers can be a big difference for people.

Ben (37:38)
Yes, yeah. I that was kind of what I was hoping to get to when I was first kind of talking about creating structure and routine. I do think, you know, most people have kind of a flow to their day and you can probably set up these certain you know, okay, this is when I eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner and snack. And then I think within that, it’s good to have like a rotation or a roster of meals that you enjoy. So like, can we have

three to five breakfasts, three to five lunches, three to five dinners, and then like a handful of snacks that you keep on hand. And if you kind of, you know, if you’ve tracked before, you generally know the portion sizes and what’s appropriate for each of these meals. you know, you can kind of just rotate through these things. You just pick one of those options for breakfast, pick one for lunch, pick one for dinner that you’re gonna prep this week. you could create kind of a like a again, not a rule for yourself, but like more of a guideline of, you know, when I prep, you know, let’s say you’re somebody who is a meal prepper.

when I prep my, you know, my lunches for this week, for every single week, I’m gonna try to keep it to 500 calories and 35 grams of protein. Then, you know, you when you make the recipe, you kind of figure out what’s gonna get you there. And then you make it and you kind of just, hey, that’s my lunch. And you don’t even necessarily you need to use a tracking app as you go throughout the day to track things. If you kind of have these, you know, standards or standardization in place when you’re going to to do it, hey, that’s something that can work out. Again, you know, if you take the

the bulk, you know, kind of prepping approach where you’re prepping individual things and then you’re putting them together at meals, that can start to be, you know, a little trickier, I think, if you’re trying to just estimate or sort of guesstimate. But then you can even just go back to what we were just talking about with, hey, let me just take a, you know, this amount size portion of this and this amount size portion of that. and just understanding just general nutrition, you know, knowledge, you know, basics. So understanding calorie density, that’s like honestly just a massive one.

If you understand calorie density, you can just manip you can use your hunger and you can use calorie density alone. And I’ve used I’ve done this myself and I’ve, you know, implemented this with clients to kind of manipulate your body weight up and down. even if you don’t do any of these other things. You know, if you try to eat more berries, more melon, you know, if your protein sources are like satan, Morningstar chicken strips, you protein powder, enamame puffs, things that are pretty much just pure protein without

Too many carbs and fats coming along. if you’re in including a lot of, you know, leafy greens and those sort of things, and then your fats, you know, you’re coming from avocados, nuts, seeds, and you’re, you know, you still have them in your diet, but maybe you’re just, you know, you’re being a little bit more mindful with the portion sizes with those. Maybe you’re trying to not adding as much oil to stuff because the the calorie density is gonna be a little bit higher. you maybe you make the higher proportion of your foods, whole foods, again, like.

You have to have a mindset where you understand that these foods are not bad and you can’t have them. You just understand that, okay, there’s a certain budget that I have. These are the foods that are gonna take up less of my budget. These are the foods that are gonna take up more. Depending on what phase you’re in, you choose from, you know, somewhere along that spectrum that makes sense.

Dani Taylor (40:27)
And this is where we see a lot of people who don’t have the knowledge of the calorie density scale. You know, they are eating healthy. They’re eating very healthy foods. But if their healthy foods are, you know, they’re eating a bunch of pineapple and mango, or like, let’s say, dried pineapple and mango, right? But it doesn’t have any added sugar to it. It’s just pineapple. The only ingredient is pineapple, but they’re eating two cups of it. And they’re just like, I’m just eating fruit. It’s like, that is true. You are just eating fruit, but you are eating like the

Densest form of fruit that you possibly could eat, and they’re just beating themselves up like something’s wrong with them. when it’s just like there was this piece of knowledge that they didn’t know, which I have to say, they would know if they threw it into a calorie tracker, right? I mean, how many times have you started tracking with somebody and they’re like, holy shit, this has this much in it? I had no idea. Because how would you know that if you weren’t actively looking for it? So

One thing I did want to point out is like we we keep talking about this like progress is always fat loss or losing weight or getting leaner or getting smaller. And I understand that’s like most people’s goal, but there are still a decent amount of people who their goal is to build muscle and get bigger. And all of these things that we’re talking about still apply, just in the other direction. Like they can still apply. But because our bodies really like homeostasis, like they will give you some pushback in either direction.

And make it harder to do these things, I think, which is why having kind of an objective measure of how you’re doing can really help.

Ben (41:57)
Yeah, and people will say things like, I’m you know, I’m try like basically force feeding myself. I can’t you know, I can’t eat anymore. you know, I can’t I’m struggling to gain weight. And then you’ll look at, you know, you’ll have them track a day or you’ll have a look at what they’re eating and it’s like

Okay, you’re no you’re you’re not eating or like or they’ll say like I’m eating this many cal I’m eating at least, you know, three thousand calories or whatever it is, and they’re you know, you track and you’re eating two thousand or something like that, because you know, you eat a lot on one day and then you find that you’re not hungry the next day, and then you under

Dani Taylor (42:27)
Right.

Ben (42:27)
eat and then you overeatereat. and again, I think it comes back to like establishing that structure and that routine. I find, you know, if I’m having somebody eat consistent meals, they’re gonna get hungry for those meals and their body’s gonna come to expect those meals.

and of course, again, on the flip side, there are strategies that you can employ that don’t require tracking that increase the calorie density of your foods, like

Dani Taylor (42:46)
Mm-hmm.

Ben (42:46)
again, kind of flipping it on a head. You can cook your, you know, add some olive oil to your rice, you can you know, chuck some dates in your smoothie, you know, stuff like that. you know, add more nut butter to your oatmeal in the morning. Like the there’s strategies that you can employ, but you don’t actually necessarily fully know unless you’re having some sort of system, some sort of routine. and

You know, if you’re not quantifying things objectively, you would need at least need to have some structure and a system so that you know how to make adjustments. And I think that’s that’s

Dani Taylor (43:14)
Yeah.

Ben (43:14)
a really key thing.

Dani Taylor (43:15)
And I just almost lost my train of thought. What was I going to say? something about how yes you have to be writing it down. No, I lost it. It’ll come back to me later, I’m sure. I think both you and I have done like the kind of like meal plan template situation, which to me is like

Yeah, meal plan templates. That’s like the happiest medium of like, okay, I want to track my food. I want to know what I’m taking in, but I don’t want to have to do this five times a day every day. Like, I just don’t want to deal with that. So I’ll just like write down or log one day, and I’m like, I’m eating this this week. And that’s and then I might not even log it the next six days. It’s just that’s what I’m eating for the rest of that week or sometimes many weeks because that’s just how I am. I know most people are not like that, but.

I am, I know you can be also. So that’s a happy medium, I think, for a lot of people.

Ben (44:04)
I think that also really works well if you do let’s say like two out of three meals for the day. So let’s say you know your breakfasts and lunches are always the same because let’s say you wake up and you’re kind of going to work first thing in the morning, you know, grab, you know, have some breakfast before you head out and that, you know, that may or may not be a shared meal. I think a lot of people breakfast and lunch tends to be a little bit more like, you know, DIY. And then dinner is that like social meal for a lot of folks. So, you know, if you kind of

keep your breakfasts and lunches for, you know, a certain amount of time consistent with either, you know, the calorie intake or what they consist of. then dinner, you know, that leaves you a little bit more flexibility to then decide what, you know, what you want to eat for dinner. But it’s like you have the stability in the other meals of the day. And then that’s the the part of the day where, you know, it makes maybe more sense for you. I’ve done this before in the past and it’s worked really well.

Dani Taylor (44:52)
I do this with a lot of clients, clients that kind of pick the meal plan from the beginning. Like, I want the meal plan, but then after a certain time, they’re like, okay, the meal plan is like a little limiting and my partner is not loving it at dinner time. And I’m like, okay, here’s the meal plan. And I might change it so they have a larger like dinner budget, but I’m like, da-da-da-da. Okay, here’s your breakfast, your lunch, your snacks, dinner.

650-ish calories, shoot for 25 grams of protein, but have what you want, you know, within those parameters. and even if it, you know, it doesn’t have to be perfect, but like roughly, you know, and that works pretty well for a period of time. And with some people it works really well. And with some people, that gets a little bit out of hand pretty quickly, and then we have to kind of change it a little bit. But I did remember what I was gonna say. one of the kind of

Pushbacks to macro tracking and really any kind of nutritional tracking at all, any of the methods we’ve talked about is mindful eating and intuitive eating, which I happen to think are two different things. Like anybody can eat mindfully, but intuitive eating specifically is like just listen to your body and eat what your body wants. And I, for the most part, not a huge fan of that, especially for people.

That have goals that they have struggled to get to for a really long time. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read people being like, okay, I’m trying this intuitive eating thing, but like it’s week two, and I’m still intuiting that I want to eat ice cream for breakfast every single morning. Like, when does this phase stop? And my heart breaks when I read that, because like I get where they’re coming from. The idea is like, just give your body what it wants, and after a while, it’s just gonna want healthy foods. But like.

No, it’s it’s it may very well not ever crave broccoli. You know, it might always want cookies. So what I much prefer is what I call intelligent intuitive eating, which is like kind of intuitive eating, but with this education that we’re talking about behind it, where like, you know, if you want cookies every day.

You’re also an adult and you know you have to eat vegetables sometimes. And that’s part of like, I don’t know, I guess like parenting yourself is like, nope, we have to eat some healthy food too, even if our bellies don’t want it right now. but I think just solely relying on intuitive eating, even if you give it the real fair shake that a lot of people say you have to give it a long time before it really settles out.

I’ve seen many times that sometimes it doesn’t settle out. And someone’s put, you know, six months, a year into this, they’re up 40 pounds from doing it. And now they’re like, well, shit, this didn’t work. And now I’m in a worse position than where I started. So it’s just that as its sole path, I find that that usually doesn’t work very well for people who are already struggling. There’s always going to be people that have never really had an issue with food or eating in their whole life. They’ve had kind of a normal

relationship to food their whole life. And it’s probably gonna be pretty easy for them because they’ve already been doing it since they were a baby. But for the rest of people that have been struggling with food, I don’t I don’t think it’s the best path personally. I’m curious if you have thoughts on that.

Ben (47:46)
Yeah, I I actually read the the book Intuitive Eating a couple years ago because I wanted to really see, okay, what, you know, people say this is what it is. What is it actually? And what, you know, what are the authors of the book saying? from what I remember, really, you know, that of course they’re like it, you know, it can be for anyone, but for me it it really seemed like it was for a very specific kind of person who was probably recovering from like an eating disorder most of the time.

Dani Taylor (48:09)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Ben (48:10)
but I’ve also, you know, I’ve heard stories or talked to people.

who have, you know, who have EDs and it didn’t help them or actually made their situation worse. And you know, the important thing to remember is that it’s not supposed to be a a tool for manipulating your body weight. It’s a, you know,

Dani Taylor (48:25)
Right.

Ben (48:25)
it’s a weight neutral approach is the terminology. and so when people use the term intuitive eating, I don’t think they’re usually talking about this. I actually don’t think they’re talking about intuitive eating as it was written, as it was designed

Dani Taylor (48:36)
Hm. Yes.

Ben (48:38)
in the framework there.

push back maybe on the people who who you know who designed it or come up with it. I think sometimes when they get feedback or criticism, the the response is, well you didn’t do it right or you didn’t do it correctly

Dani Taylor (48:48)
Yes.

Ben (48:48)
or you didn’t give it long enough like you were kind of saying and I I don’t necessarily think that’s always true. And so perhaps that’s a little bit that leaves a little bit something to to be desired there. But I would say that, you know, what people are trying to I think get to like you’re saying is just being more mindful really than anything

Dani Taylor (49:04)
Mm-hmm.

Ben (49:05)
and

just having an understanding of nutrition so that you don’t have to be as you know locked in dialed in year round 24-7 in order to feel like you’re making good progress. and I think, you know, again for your goals, if you’re a bodybuilder who wants to get stage lean shredded, the very, very small minority of people are going to be able to do that, you know, using a again a mindful eating approach and a more habit-based approach. Yeah. Yeah. Alm almost nobody.

Dani Taylor (49:27)
Yeah, almost nobody. Almost nobody. Mm-hmm.

Ben (49:32)
and

You know, if your goal is to lose five pounds and be healthier, probably you can do it this way. So again, it it really

Dani Taylor (49:37)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Ben (49:38)
just depends what your what your goal is and what you’re working on and where you’re at and your knowledge of nutrition and all of these different things. So it’s not like a hard black or white yes or no answer with with a lot of these things. And it can it can ebb and flow with your life. Maybe there are periods of time where you pull back from tracking and you use a lot of the habits that you built through tracking.

And that kind of helps you to to hold ground of with where you are. and maybe there are other times where it’s exciting for you to actually be able to look at the numbers and be able to kind of dial things in a little bit closer. I know that’s something that I’ve been doing recently is you know, I’ve been kind of tracking things after not having done that for the past four or five years. I did really closely for the like the first two years.

of getting into, you know, lifting weights and bodybuilding and all of that. And then the last five, not as much. Like obviously I built again those skills the first couple of years to be able to be successful in in what I was doing. and now it’s kind of a a you know, the way coming back to it, I think my mindset and approach to it is a lot different. I think when I did it initially, it was very rigid. It was very like, these are the calories, this is what you’re doing.

you know, you need to stick to this, you know, you can’t be, you know, off in your calories by more than this. And now, it’s almost like when I first started doing it a couple weeks ago, I was just, first of all, I was not weighing and measuring everything. I was, you know, some things were estimated. and it wasn’t like a, you know, an all or nothing like and I’ve I’ve done this before where it’s like if I can’t track something super specifically, I give up on tracking for the day or for that meal. and I made a commitment to myself. Yeah. And

Dani Taylor (51:04)
Mm-hmm. A lot of people do that. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Ben (51:07)
I made a commitment to myself this time around and I said,

You know what? I’m just going to try to do the best that I can, track as accurately as I can, and understand that it may not be accurate, but to a certain extent, it’s almost like consistently inaccurate. and that’s something that that I understand is like maybe I find that my average is, let’s say, 2500 calories. In reality, that might be 26 or 27 because I’m missing some things, but if I’m doing that consistently, it kind of ends up being the same thing at the end at the end of the day. so

For me, tracking this time is more of a curiosity to see, you know, where am I at without necessarily specifically having a goal around it. That’s a thing you can track without having a goal of what you want to do if you want to lose weight or gain weight, just to have that information and to have that knowledge. You don’t have to, you can still track and not weigh and measure everything super specifically and just do some things that are maybe harder to estimate or guesstimate. something I’ve done before is give people ranges for their calories. So

It’s not like this one number that they have to be and they have to be super rigid about it. So there’s different there’s different strategies that you can employ.

Dani Taylor (52:08)
Yeah.

I I think it’s important I should say this because I don’t think I said it on this podcast, even though I’m like, yes, I am a big proponent of tracking because I think there’s so much we can learn from it. Like you just said, where you’re like, but I didn’t really track for like several years. I I probably track like, I don’t know, two weeks out of the whole year, like spread out throughout the year now, because I don’t have to, I guess. Like I’m

Mostly where I want to be. And this would be different. Like at the beginning of the year when I did my cut, I tracked that because I wanted to make very specific progress in a very specific time frame. Could I have done it another way? Probably. It will probably would have taken me longer. I wouldn’t have really understood exactly what I did that worked, which I think is really important. But outside of that, I don’t have to track all the time because I know what meals look like for me. I know how many meals I have per day.

I know when I’m going eating more than I normally eat or less than I normally eat for the most part, but I still do these like little like audits on myself every once in a while just to see like, am I really around this area that I think I am? And most of the time I am. Occasionally I surprise myself and I’m eating way less than I thought I was eating. That’s happened. so

Even as a proponent, I don’t think it’s something that people have to do forever. And I don’t think it’s something people really should do forever, unless they truly enjoy it and it’s just like fun for them, then by all means. But yeah, I don’t think that’s the goal to like live and die by it forever. It’s like, it’s like riding a bike once you’ve done it for long enough, you’re not gonna forget how to do it. And people could say this is a downside too. I’ve heard people say, like, once you’ve tracked macros for long enough, food is never food. Again, it’s just always numbers to you. I used to feel that way a little bit. I remember feeling very frustrated.

that I couldn’t just see food for food, but that passed, I guess, for me. But I could see how someone would feel that way for a minute. one last thing actually that I wanted to talk about that I use sometimes with people, especially if we are tracking food and I am afraid that they’re getting too rigid with it, is we will implement free meals. Like literally, okay, on Saturday, you’re gonna have your normal breakfast, normal lunch.

And then go out, like they’re they probably would want to go out anyway, but like go out to dinner, pick something from the menu that you want to eat that is satisfying to you, eat till you’re satisfied. Don’t stuff yourself. And then just go home and we’ll start again with the meal plan tomorrow. And it’s a really good exercise in not tracking things, being in a kind of tempting environment and still feeling like you, for the most part, have control.

around how much you’re taking in in a social situation, in a situation that you’re not like it’s not your kitchen or anything like that. I like doing dinner out because there’s no leftovers, right? You don’t have a kitchen full of leftovers that you have to deal with afterwards.

And if you feel like you kind of screwed up or went over, like whatever, you’re gonna go home and go to bed and it’s gonna be a new day tomorrow. So that is something I don’t do it with all of my clients because I don’t think it’s necessary for all of them, but some of them I really, really like this, especially if they’re starting to get that place like, I don’t wanna have to track forever for the rest of my life. And I’m like, well, you don’t, but we have to slowly teach you that you can let go of the reins a little bit and like nothing bad happens. You’re okay, you know, but it’s gotta be a gradual thing.

Ben (55:14)
Yeah, and it’s it’s not something that you have to, you know, jump into the to the deep end right away with it, like you said, you know. and there are times where I will try to push someone outside of their comfort zone a little bit and get them if I feel like they’re relying on it a little bit too much. I will try to like encourage them to to slowly, you know, are there certain things that we can be okay with with not tracking? Like, hey, maybe we don’t have to track our scoop of protein powder, maybe we can just, you know, do it kind of standard. Yeah, exactly. We don’t have to weigh it. That’s what I meant. We didn’t have to you don’t have to weigh

Dani Taylor (55:36)
Don’t have to weigh it. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Ben (55:41)
the protein powder every single time.

You just do a scoop and know it’s gonna be pretty close, stuff like that. So I don’t really have too much more to say. I think if you do want to transition away, again, having structure, having routine, and focusing a lot on a lot of the habits that you’ve built. If I had to give somebody just like one piece of advice, it would be maybe just focus on eating three square meals a day, try to get a couple servings of fruits and vegetables in at those meals, try to get twenty to forty grams of protein, depending on you know.

you know, your body weight, how big of an individual you are, your protein needs, et cetera. and then just be mindful of, you know, calorie density, the the foods that are more calorie dense and moderate those appropriately based on your goals.

Dani Taylor (56:23)
Yeah.

Ben (56:23)
especially if your goal is fat loss.

Dani Taylor (56:25)
If I could add to that, because I agree with everything you just said there, I would say if your goal is fat loss, try to leave each meal not full full. And if your goal is to gain weight or gain muscle, you should leave every meal full. Like not stuffed, but like a little fuller than

Ben (56:40)
Yeah. Yep.

Dani Taylor (56:43)
is comfortable. You should leave the meals when you’re trying to lose weight just a little bit less full than is comfortable. And if you can do that.

Repeatedly, meal over meal, you will tick forward towards those goals.

Ben (56:54)
There we go. Anything else you add before we close things up? Okay.

Dani Taylor (56:57)
No, I think that’s everything.

Ben (56:58)
All right. Well, if you’ve enjoyed this episode, guys, and you’re looking for some assistance on your health and fitness journey, building muscle, losing body fat, whatever it is we’ve got you covered. That’s what we do here at vegan proteins. So if you’re interested in learning more about our coaching, you can check that out in the description below or send an email over to coach at veganproteins.com. you can find us all on social media at Muscles by Brussels at vegan proteins.

I’m at Ben A. Mitchell. Sawyer’s at Soy Boy Fitness Coaching and Alice is at Vegan Proteins Alice. If you’re enjoying the podcast, please be sure to leave us a review or a rating, comment, share with your you know, your folks and and get them to tune in as well so that they can enjoy the episodes. we’ve been getting a lot of really great feedback, so it’s always helpful to know what you like, what you want to see more of. and we’ll continue to get

more episodes out to you with the other coaches and with guests. so with that said, thanks for listening to another episode. I’m Ben.

Dani Taylor (57:50)
I’m Dani.

Ben (57:51)
And we’ll catch you on the next one. Bye everyone.

Dani Taylor (57:53)
Okay.