I know that tracking your food can take up a lot of your time. That’s why people tend to avoid doing it. But with great planning and consistent routines, you can become more efficient with tracking, too. It will even become a habit. Here are some of my top strategies that I share with my weight loss accountability groups to make sure that I track my meals and fitness every day and how to be more efficient with tracking your food.
- Do it at the beginning of your day. If you track your anticipated calories and your anticipated workouts, you are going to be less likely to omit your workout session and add in extra treats later in the day. If you have to, get up five minutes earlier to make that happen.
- Log while being active. Since I get to the gym first thing in the morning, I try to log my food while I’m doing something active – typically walking on the treadmill or using the stair climber. You’re also burning calories.
- Use daily downtime to your advantage. Sometimes I will track during some scheduled downtime during my day – city on the city bus or in the minivan line at school, for example.
- Use the copy feature. You can save a lot of time by copying meals from day-to-day. I tend to meal prep on Sundays and bring the same things for lunch each day. I will simply copy my meal from the day before.
- Create a listing of frequently prepared meals. I realized that I eat a lot of meals that include many, many items. I’ve done some prep work to recreate a few of our favorite meals so that I can just add them with a click of a button and add/remove items as needed. Some of my frequently used meals include “taco night”, “salad bar”, “work breakfast”, “breakfast for dinner” and “running breakfast”.
- Use a similar item and cut yourself some slack. If you eat several different versions of similar items like energy bars, yogurts, fruit that are about the same nutrition content – stick with tracking just one item. I try not to get too into detail on which type of apple I’m enjoying or which flavor of yogurt I’ve consumed.
