Weighing and tracking every ounce of food… it’s true, if you want to manipulate your weight and are able to stick to it, it works better than any diet which just restricts certain foods. But for many, IIFYM becomes a source of stress and anxiety over time. A diet is not ‘flexible’ if you fear eating out in case you can’t estimate how many grams of chicken are on your plate or don’t want to risk your salad coming with dressing.
It is completely possible to be in shape and manage your weight without tracking calories strictly, it just takes an adjustment period of you learning how listen to the signals your body is giving you again.
Here are the steps I would recommend to transition to intuitive eating. Depending on your own experience, you might fly through these steps in a matter of days, or it might take a year. Go at your own pace!
1. Track at the end of the day. Instead of planning your food before or during the day, eat as usual (most people continue eating the same sort of meals anyway) and then plug them into MFP at the end of the day. Perhaps you naturally over eat on protein, or don’t get enough calories in. Make a mental note to change that the next day.
2. Take a day, or better, weekends off. This is not an opportunity to binge or have a ‘cheat day’, just an experiment to see how you get on with eating without logging the macros all day. Be mindful of everything. Are you still hungry after meals? Do you feel uncomfortable pouring food into a bowl and eyeballing it?
3. Start only tracking protein and calories on the days you do track. In the grand scheme of things, fat to carb ratio will have no crazy effect on your body composition and how you feel. Some days, you might be craving peanut butter and avocado like crazy, others you might want to eat rice with every meal.
4. Delete MFP. By this point, you’re probably so used to tracking, you can look at a plate of meat and potatoes and know more or less how much protein and calories are in it. If you want to tally things up in your mind throughout the day, that’s fine, but don’t be chained to an app.
5. Work on it every single day. It’s not an easy thing to do. At first, I struggled to differentiate between physical hunger and boredom hunger. I also was still in the mentality of ‘giving into cravings is weakness’ when, in reality, those ignored cravings stay bottled up and do more damage in the long run. Do some reading on mindful eating. When you eat, sit at the table with no distractions such as the TV on or your phone in one hand. As you eat a bite of food, let your cutlery rest instead of already preparing the next forkful to shovel in. Pay attention to how the food makes you feel!
I can imagine for someone who has never spent years a slave to MyFitnessPal, this all seems absolutely insane. But it is a great tool that, unfortunately, is often abused and made into something toxic, especially in the fitness community. I love the intuitive eating ‘trend’ and hope to see more people at least try it!