Hi Casey,
Do I always need to be tracking my calories or macros to maintain my weight? I've lost about 30 pounds and have reached a plateau weight-wise, which I am super happy with. I've applied your wisdom over the last 18 months while transitioning from a runner/cardio-only/stress-injuries-aplenty exerciser to CrossFit with a focus on weightlifting. I've also used this time to work on my eating habits.
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I love my body composition in a way I didn't think was possible before lifting/CrossFit. I've been living a calorie deficit and MyFitnessPal-tracking life for about 10 months, and I'm now in a rut. I'm working against years of disordered eating habits, and I don't know what it means to have a normal, maintenance-oriented nutrition plan that's not (a) focused on losing weight, (b) turning a complete blind eye to my eating habits (binging and regretting), or (c) completely neurotic. Do I always need to be tracking my calories or macros? How often should I schedule a cheat day/meal? I want to eat to feel good and have enough energy for the gym, but I also want to be able to enjoy delicious food. I drink very occasionally, but I do love chocolate and cheese and waffles. I also work in a pretty traditional office where the default mode of showing "appreciation" is bringing in baked goods. I feel like being able to balance all of this should be more intuitive, but for me it isn't. I don't necessarily want to be counting calories or macros my whole life. Is there another way to live?
Thank you!
Erin
Man, I feel like I’m a person who has all this pretty well figured out, but reading your letter really brings me back to how exhausting this all can be when you feel like you’re working with a lot of unknowns. I think the real key here is to take several big steps back. First—you’ve already had quite a bit of success managing your food! That is great, and you should be really proud.
As far as a maintenance mode, the key thing I try to remember is that exercising and eating should enable you to live your life, not the other way around. When I’m tracking food, I try to really stick to it, but when I’m not, I try to see food for exactly what it is—nutrition, fuel, sometimes enjoyable, sometimes broccoli and kale. What can you do? That’s it. It all lets you pursue exercise, which makes you feel really good in your day-to-day life, and the way those things fit together is important, but that is all. As someone who used to have days-long spirals about eating a brownie (thanks to the relentless inescapable programming from society about How a Woman Should Look and Be) and has come a long way, I can tell you that if you think much more about food than that, it has more power over you than it deserves.
When not trying to gain muscle or lose body fat, I’m never trying to hold perfectly steady at a precise number of pounds. I mostly stop weighing myself altogether. Our weight can fluctuate a few pounds every day just from water, salt, and carbs, so there is never any point in me getting attached to a single number. And even more to the point, if that number goes up beyond a reasonable doubt, I don’t stress because I know that it can go down again, because it has before. After a lot of work, I’ve gotten detached enough from how I look that there is no static “best” weight or look.
I also know that the way to lose body fat is not through extremes, starving as much as possible or working out as much as possible, but through moderation and taking care of myself. So, to answer your first question about whether you always need to be tracking—no. That would be like prison and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. I mean, no one could actually achieve the balanced diet we should be getting without paying a little bit of attention ("Did I eat some vegetables today?," and so on). I typically keep a rough mental tally of how much protein I’ve eaten, just because that’s the most important building block for muscles. But logging and calculating and trying to hit specific numbers day in and and day out for eternity is too rigid of an existence. You need to live, too! “Really you shouldn't need to track what you eat forever,” Jennifer Case, Ph.D., R.D., and nutrition consultant for Renaissance Periodization, tells SELF. “For sustainable weight loss, meal choices during the calorie restriction phase should be developed in such a way that food and drinks that you consume daily are something you can maintain for long haul. It needs to be a true behavior modification, not a quick fix or a crash diet that does not have sustainable meal choices.”
Simply spending too much time dieting, regardless of weight changes, has negative effects. According to Case, “regularly restricting certain foods or total calorie intakes can result in extreme cravings and binge-eating behaviors, which can lead to disordered eating behavior,” as well as increased fatigue and lethargy caused by your metabolism adapting to your lower body weight. Case explains that we simply cannot be dieting all the time; taking time to maintain is good and important for both your body and brain.
As someone who’s come a long way from obsessing about eating one brownie for days before and after, and whose heavy-lifting journey certainly helped, I can say that your goals or deliberate lack thereof should not dictate whether you eat the things or not, or how much. You should be able to eat the things, if you want, within reason.
If your relationship with food is fraught such that you can’t eat in moderation or to satiety without either tracking rigidly or losing control, it’s not a problem with the circumstances or existence of the food, and not a problem with you; it’s that food means much more to you than is probably healthy, and your relationship with it is requiring more than a simple cupcake, or a dozen of them, can give. This kind of thing is definitely something a therapist can help with. Again, it doesn’t mean something is wrong with you, but unpacking this dynamic that’s developed will certainly help food become less of an unknown to you.