Why I'm Never Tracking Macros Again

For years, fitness has been the foundational piece in which I take care of myself. It started long before having children, and honestly goes way back to when I was 14 years old and found my inner strength by working on my external strength with a consistent gym routine.

But, I haven't always had a healthy relationship with my body and as a result, food.

While I enjoyed working out, I found myself working out from a place of “have to” instead of “want to” and I internalized a dialogue of self-criticism towards how I looked (or didn’t look) and figured the best way to combat the hyper-critical voice inside of my head was to meticulously control every piece of food that went into my body.

I want to pause here for a second and share this message that took me decades to learn:

You will never shame yourself or hate yourself into a loving relationship with yourself.

I tried it for quite a while and the data is in. It doesn't work.

Now, back to the fitness journey.

Over the last 20 years, I’ve trained for a variety of reasons. I trained to “get skinny” (barf), I trained to feel strong, I trained to assist in the other sports I played, I trained to take care of my mental health, I trained to compete, I trained to build muscle, I trained to lose fat, I trained to improve strength and performance,I trained to build community among friends, and I trained to take care of myself during pregnancy and most recently, I've trained to rebuild my strength and sense of self after having children.

While the activity of picking up the weights was the same, the reason behind it has morphed and changed several times over the last two decades.

Now, over the last 10 years, I’ve tracked macros for a variety of reasons, too. I’ve tracked macros to fuel better for workouts. I’ve tracked macros to assist in workout performance. I’ve tracked macros during my competition prep to get stage lean. I’ve tracked macros to earn a more flexible approach to food and fitness. But at the root of all of it, I’ve tracked macros to maintain some sense of control over what was going in my body, because if I was able to control that, I could control how I look.

And if you want to get even deeper than that, if I can control how people look at me, I can control their perception of me.

While I can polish up macro tracking in any way to make it sound like I did it “for the health of it”, if I’m being really honest about my shadows, it was all about approval.

Approval of what society says I should look like. Approval from others on what it means to be that disciplined. And, deep down, I was begging to approve of myself.

Now, this doesn't mean that every single time I’ve tracked macros I’ve had a negative association with it. In fact, prior to my pregnancies with my girls, I’d say I was at one of the most healthy physical AND mental places with food and fitness, and I can’t really say those two roads have ever intersected in that way before. I tracked when I wanted to and it felt empowering to me, and I didn’t when I didn't want to. It felt like a good balance.

But the idea that I “needed” to track macros to not just look good but ultimately achieve the acceptance that I clearly was after never really went away. The negative self talk got louder and louder during both of my pregnancies when I gained 70 lbs with both. I vowed to “bounce back” and prove to the world what I was capable of, because thats where the world placed my value.

With Scarlett, the weight fell off. I was navigating some pretty deep postpartum depression, so turns out when you are afraid of literally everything, the thought of eating food isn't really appealing to you. So, that was easy enough. Plus, breastfeeding is a metabolic inferno.

With Nora, however, it didn't “fall off” the way in which it did with Scarlett. Probably because I wasn't in the depths of a depression and I actually could enjoy food.

That being said, I was still only crawling towards a goal of feeling comfortable in my skin again, where I would have rather sprinted.

After about 6 months, I hired a trainer again for weight lifting programming and reluctantly agreed to tracking macros again. And, I noticed something inside of me.

I downloaded the app and a pit in my stomach was born. With every meal and inputting of food, the feeling of shame crept in. Every time I put something in my body that I didn’t immediately track, I felt at war with myself.

And, my internal dialogue started to shift from one of awe and acceptance for everything my body had gone through to a mindset of stress and… “not good enough”.

It took me about 6 weeks of wrestling with the feelings of “not good enough” before I finally told my coach that I wasn't interested in tracking my food anymore, only my lifts. She met me right where Im at (as any good coach should..) and immediately stopped counting that as a metric in which we were measuring me. In fact, I told her I didn't want to measure anything about me, what so ever. I just wanted to work on showing up for me, and getting stronger.

What happened next shouldn't be surprising, but in the journey to trusting myself more, it was.

I enjoyed showing up to workout again. I didn't feel stressed around meal time. And most importantly, my internal dialogue which turned into a war started mirroring one of more self love and self acceptance.

Oh, and not that this is important, but my “results” started happening a lot faster, too.

I needed to let it go. The measuring, the comparing, the shaming. I needed to set myself free from the previous standards I had, and really any meaning that myself or anyone else attached to them.

It took me 10 years to get to this point. To know that there likely will never be a time in which tracking macros serves me ever again. I could list a million reasons why its important for me to show up the most healed version of myself around food and with self love, but I only need two reasons.

And those two reasons are Scarlett and Nora.

They will never witness their mom shame herself for what she eats. They will never hear “diet talk” in the kitchen or in our home. They will never know that food can be “good” or “bad”. They will never see me stressed over whether I ate enough protein or whether I ate too many carbs (according to myfitnesspal).

They will never be in an environment where my own failures to love myself rub off on them.

And if that means I never have shredded abs again, I consider the trade off well worth it.

I deleted MyFitnessPal, and I'm never going back.

Candidly,

Kate.

Hi, my name is Kate and I’m a recovering perfectionist.

The topic of perfectionism is complex and hairy, and something I’ve tried to dig deeper on within myself over the last few years. See, from the outside, perfectionism is seen as an admirable trait (for the most part..) because the byproduct is usually positive. Whether it was in the gym, with my diet, with whatever event I was helping plan, or even with the kitchen fridge. The Ketchup goes with the AMERICAN condiments, not the ASIAN condiments. Can you imagine how much fun that is to live with? There has been no area of my life that has been untouched by my perfectionist tendencies.

But, what happens when the very traits and behaviors you receive praise and recognition for are no longer serving you, or even worse, are hindering you?

That’s a question I had to start asking myself when it became impossible for me to keep up with even the standards I had created for myself. As several of you warned me, things would change when I had kids. And, I smugly thought to myself, “Well see..”. And, I will say that with one, I kept “it” together, for the most part. “It” being my ridiculously rigid standards and impossible metrics to meet. It was, however, costing me in sanity, creativity, and connectedness with the people in my world. I couldn't relax if the house was a mess. If work still needed to be done after the work week, I guess it meant I would crack my laptop open on the weekends.

My commitment to checking boxes drown out the joy of the process, or as some of you call it… “going with the flow.”

Whatever sliver of control I was trying to maintain with one child was quickly shattered once we had two under the age of two.

It became abundantly clear almost immediately that we were shifting from a life run by perfectionist tendencies to “I hope we make it through today”.

I distinctly remember the moment I decided to let it all go.

I was home alone with an 8 week old and an almost 2 year old. I was nursing the newborn while the toddler needed attention, and Andrew was gone for the week in New York City for work. My attention was being divided in a big way with two little ones who both desperately needed all of me, and I was running out of creative ways to appease them both. Im nursing my newborn while trying to entertain my toddler, and she had let me know that it just wasn’t… Good enough. In the matter of an instant, my toddler ripped off her diaper, paused as she looked down and started to pee our almost-new designer area rug that was carefully curated and selected to fit the space. And, with a baby quite literally attached to me for food, I had no choice at that moment but to just sit back and watch it happen.

While I didn't expect my breaking point to be watching my toddler pee on the floor in front of me without interrupting her, it turns out it was exactly how far things needed to go for me to realize that the world doesn’t end when things aren't perfectly in place. In fact, minus the clean up job required after, most of the time it can be quite liberating to let go to what you’ve been clinging so tightly to.

Since being in full-blown perfectionist recovery, I’ve noticed a few things shift in my world:

For one, when I practice compassion for myself through easing up my impossible standards, I indirectly practice compassion for others. See, how we treat others is a direct reflection of how we feel about ourselves, not them. So, to change our relationships “out there”, we must first change our relationship with ourselves.

Second, I began to get to a point of enjoyment in motherhood much sooner. While I will be drawing a boundary around peeing on the floor in the future, I’ve also made a vow around not sacrificing connection with my children for correction, unless they are putting themselves or someone else in harm's way.

Lastly, and probably most importantly (and something I may one day do a series on), I’ve realized that my appetite for control is just a more socially accepted form of fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of what happens if things don't go according to plan, fear of not being able to predict the outcome of whatever is going to occur.

And by recognizing that fear disguised as perfectionism and control, I’ve been able to be more present, more tolerant, more compassionate and more curious.

And so, If you’re holding on tightly, this is your invitation to let it go. To loosen your grip on the illusion of control just a little bit, so that by doing so you can have a chance to welcome in what you haven’t yet had room to grasp.

Candidly,

Kate.

"Up."

“When I’m sleeping through the night again…”

“Once I go back to work and figure out what life looks like for me…”

“When I get more time for myself again…”

This is a small list of the personal reasons I used to delay getting back into the habit of working out daily and tracking my nutrition. Now, on the surface there’s nothing wrong with having reasons to not take action on something. Especially when those reasons include massive sleep deprivation and being responsible for an additional tiny human life

We all have a list of our own unique reasons or excuses that have presented themselves to us at whatever challenge in life we are currently facing.

And, with that, ,we also need to learn how to use a level of discernment to decide when the right time is for us to take the RIGHT action at the RIGHT time, based on where we are in our lives. That time came for me early May. Six months with a new baby and as a family of four came and went. ‘Back to work’ came and went. “One day” came and went, over and over again. And in early May, the reality of “one day” smacked me in the face for the last time.

I had a dinner with a client down in Fort Lauderdale which ended up being a pivotal moment in my own development during this chapter of life.

The subject of personal habits came up and he went over his morning routine with me, where he outlined every single detail down to “up, sit up in bed, drink water, brush my teeth, put my shoes on” and so on and so forth. Now, I was confused by his decision to outline the fact that he had to sit up in bed . Wasn’t that a no brainer? Why go through the process of writing it down? What difference did it really make?

Now, while there wasn’t anything magical in the way he sits up in bed or how much water he drinks, what I recognized immediately is that the deliberate attention to detail was a decision to run his day, rather than his day running him. By outlining every detail, he was embedding intention into his action. It made sense to me then.

The word “up” continued to haunt me for the next few weeks.

Was I being deliberate with my day or reactive to my day?

I already knew the answer to this, and the reality started closing in on me until my reasons for stepping into this new season of deliberate choices started getting louder than my reactive excuses of why I was staying the same.

A few weeks later in mid May I sent him a text bright and early at 5am.

“Up.”

That was the first day I made a decision for myself to start showing up for myself stronger again, in this season of life with two young ones, while still not sleeping through the night. While still not having it all figured out. While still struggling to fit it all in.

See, this is what I realized in all of this is that while I was waiting for things to feel easier or to fall back into alignment, the lesson for me was that “one day” would never come. The ease or convenience I was looking for around decision making would continue to elude me until I made a decision to succeed, regardless.

Since that one decision, a series of decisions have been made that have continued to upward spiral my own growth.

1. I started tracking my water again

2. I started tracking my protein again

3. I started lifting weights 5 days a week again

4. I have increased my strength week over week

5. I have gained muscle mass

6. I have lost fat mass

7. I have re-hired my fitness coach for weekly check-ins

Most importantly, I have held the line for a habit and behavior of mine that I know has continued to pay me dividends.

Every day my morning starts with one text: “Up.”

With one word, one text and one decision, I have experienced the positive trickle down effect into every other facet of my life. But heres the catch: My excuses didnt actually go away. I havent slept through the night yet. I still dont quite feel like I have a grip on this new chapter of life. And yet, it’s time. It’s time for me to make better decisions towards the life I know feels empowering to me.

Is that time for you now? I don’t know. Only you do.

But what I do know, is it never gets easier to make a hard decision.

What one decision can you make that by doing so will positively impact everything else in your life?

Candidly,

Kate.