By Aaron Boike, B.S. Kinesiology, ACE Certified Personal Trainer and Health Coach

Nutrition research has taught us a lot over the past few decades, and by now we all know that “Calories In vs. Calories Out” is not the holy grail of weight loss. That said, mindfulness around nutrition plays an enormous role in helping to moderate our portions, eat the right foods, and keep a consistent and positive dietary habits when it comes to losing weight or reaching a fitness goal. That is why for most of our clients, we recommend keeping a nutrition diary using an app or a good old school paper journal. Here are a few reasons why tracking your nutrition is one of the easiest ways to ensure you’re on track to reach your fitness goals and lose weight:

1. It Keeps You Accountable In Realtime – Let’s face it, we don’t always make the best decisions when it comes to our diet, and often, we don’t think twice about those decisions as they are happening. When you track your nutrition, you’re forced to go through an additional mental hurdle whenever you’re salivating over that rainbow sprinkle donut in the break room. Knowing that you’re going to have to track the donut, and thereby mentally digest the decision to eat it, you’re more likely to be detered from making that negative choice, and reach for a healthier option instead.
2. It Tells You Vital Nutrition Information – When you track your diet, especially using an app like MyFitnessPal, you get all of the stats you could ever want on calories, protein, fat, sugar, and even micronutrients that impact how well nourished you feel. For most, simply monitoring the calories, added sugars, and protein is enough, but for some, having that extra info can help them achieve their top energy levels and fitness. No matter what the latest magazine headline tells you, calories DO matter, so respect energy balance as a real element of weight loss, while aiming to eat as many quality whole foods as possible. The only way to know how many calories you’re taking in is to track your nutrition.
3. It Allows You To Reflect and Modify As Needed – If you don’t log your nutrition, you’re very unlikely to accurately remember what you ate last month, last week, or even yesterday for that matter. Being able to look back at our nutrition as we track results can help us to understand what nutrition factors have us losing weight, feeling energized, and feeling our best. If you’re not getting the results you desire, you can simply look at your diary to see what you can modify to get back on track…i.e. “Can I cut my sugar consumption?” or “I’m eating an average of 500 calories over my goal per day, maybe I need to cut the after dinner snacks.”
4. It Can Be A Way to Form a Support System – Finding friends on apps like MyFitnessPal is easy and fast, and allows you to form a mini online support group of your peers that are working towards their goals using diet tracking.
5. It Takes Less Than 10 Minutes Per Day – We find that for most clients, tracking nutrition is fast and easy and typically takes 5-10 minutes per day. Investing this 5-10 minutes puts you at a huge advantage when it comes to reaching your fitness goals.

If you haven’t tried tracking your nutrition, give it a try and commit to two weeks or a month to start seeing results. Our trainers love using MyFitnessPal with our clients, as it allows us to see our clients nutrition diaries, keep them accountable, and make recommendations to keep them progressing towards their goals.