Tracking

Hello again, I realise, yet again it has been a while since I wrote anything at all. I could try and explain the million and one things that have been happening in my life and use them as an excuse but I will save myself the extreme grovelling, for now.

I wanted to do a post about tracking because, frankly, I have not been tracking anything I have been doing in the last few months. There are pros and cons to this and I want to have a little look into what they are.

I am going to use my case as an example first, so as many of you might be aware of I had an eating disorder and ended up extremely thin and it took a while to get myself out of that 'I want to be skinny' mindset.

The thing is when I was first trying to lose weight I didn't track anything at all, I just ate less, ate minimal fat and moved a lot more. And again, there are good and bad sides to this, it's good because I didn't fixate on numbers and amounts etc, but bad because I just thought I needed to reduce what I ate, again and again, until I ate around 300-500 calories a day and I was burning over 1000 - not good.

So, tracking for someone who has had an eating disorder or someone with obsessive tendencies could be detrimental, you start to fixate, you get down when things don't go to plan or you eat something 'bad' so for those people I do not recommend tracking and you can find other ways that are a lot more 'balanced'. An upside to this is it can also help you to analyse if you are eating enough calories, if you eat too little you will not gain weight, whatever kind of weight that it (muscle, bodyweight etc).

For a lot of people, calorie/macros tracking has worked for them and helps them stay on track. Personally, I am all for flexible dieting where you can track macros but essentially (as long as they fit in with your carb/fat/protein intake) you can eat what you want.  I tend to track food on myfitnesspal when I am not sure of the calories or when I feel I have had a particularly bad week of eating. I know a lot of fitness models I watch on YouTube use these kinds of apps to stay on track and for the most part, I think it's a healthy thing to do. A lot of us have no idea what we are eating, and the science of weight loss is fairly simple, eat less than the total amount of calories you've burnt during the day and you will lose weight (there are many other factors to take into account but I am breaking it down simply for now).

There are also other parts of tracking, not just food, such as tracking workouts, weight lifted, miles run, heart rate, number of reps - the list goes on. Again, you can also do this on myfitnesspal but there are also other apps out there that have full workouts that you can track as you go and show you the moves (which is very useful if you are a beginner) In the past I have used the bodyspace app by bodybuilding.com as they have different workouts for different levels from 1 week to 8weeks+, for added nutrition plans etc it costs money but for the workouts they are free, and you can even create your own.

As for myself, I feel like I am seeing minimal to no results at the moment and when that happens I feel like I need to analyse what is happening, whether that is my diet, my gym routine or the amount of cardio I am doing. For the most part, I don't like doing this for food as it will more than likely trigger my negative food thoughts, but I like to think I have reached a point where I can control this and use it to gain muscle and not to become 'thin'.

I have never really worked on muscle building before so I feel like a novice and I know there are things I can improve on and for me, that means educating myself. If I can learn from someone else who is more experienced than me then why not? If I can find a routine that works for me and gives me results then why not track that and learn from it?

You have to keep in mind that everyone is different, tracking works for some people but not for others. You do not want to put too much pressure on yourself thinking 'I only have 300 calories left' or 'I can't manage that part of the routine I have failed' -- no, these things should be baselines and not things you base your happiness on.

Whatever shape, size, weight or height you are, you are still beautiful and your body does not define WHO you are and what you can achieve. It has taken me years to learn that and it is something I still need to tell myself but I believe it, wholeheartedly. Be grateful for the body you have, it keeps you alive and you need to give it more credit, I mean look at all the amazing things it lets you do!

What are your thoughts on tracking? Do you track? I would love to hear all about your experiences!

Bye for now.