So, you want to lose weight without tracking those tedious calories? Well, I have a secret for you, YOU CAN! I know people hate the idea of tracking every little single thing that touches their lips because it seems SUPER repetitive and unfortunately it can feel that way for some people.

Some people don’t like tracking because they become obsessive over time and develop a bad relationship with food.

I personally track my macros and have for year, but I don’t mind it. I guess I’m that rare unicorn but nonetheless I have all my clients do it. Why?

Well because while this article will go over how to lose weight without tracking, the idea of tracking is still very beneficial to people who have never done it. If I asked you what 5oz of chicken looked like you’d most likely get it wrong if you haven’t tracked before but weighing out your food consistently and understanding what food looks like gives you the tools to be able to eventually intuitively eat.

Now does that mean you have to track forever? No, but you want to be able to see and understand portion sizes so that you can eventually eye ball things and be pretty damn close to the real thing.

I highly recommend that people learn how to track first and do it for a month or two so that you can figure out what portions look like, how much food you should be consuming in a day based off your maintenance level and figuring out what foods work for you and which ones don’t.

Being able to eat and manipulate your body in a healthy way is honestly a skill. But until you learn that skill I recommend tracking for a while and then you can easy up, getting away from tracking.

Anyways, the moment you’ve all been waiting for! Here are some ways to lose weight without tracking.

1.       Eating in  Deficit

You need to be consuming less calories than your body needs, meaning if you’re someone who’s maintenance calories is 3,000 then we need to start off by eating less than that to see some progress. So we might start off with a 500 calorie deficit and run that for a month, to see what kind of progress we are making. Then depending on goals and how you are feeling after 4 weeks or so, you might try slowly dropping calories over time to get more results.

2.       Being conscious of the choices you are making

Who doesn’t like a nice meal out, a drink watching the game or ordering pizza in on a Friday night? Well while I’m not telling you, you can’t have those things I’ll just say it’s probably not getting you any closer to your goals. That doesn’t mean you have to just eat chicken, rice and broccoli everyday but if you eat on the cleaner side of things you are more likely to have better and quicker results.

At the end of the day it’s about being consistent and a little strict when first starting out

So if you’re someone who isn’t ready to give all this up or simply don’t want to, that’s completely fine but you might just want to make some changes. So if you’re going out a few times a week to get food maybe we cut it back to one time a week, maybe you’re out drinking on the weekends but maybe we cut back on how much you’re having or how many times a week, but you can see where I’m going with this. You don’t necessarily have to stop enjoying the things you like but maybe just live in moderation to obtain the results you’re looking for. As you start to lose weight it might get harder so you’ll have to ask yourself is what I’m eating or drinking going to bring me closer or further away from my goals.

3.       No calories coming from drinks or snacks

During your day you might find yourself drinking a sweet beverage, a coffee with sweetener, or something else beside water. That’s a very easy way to add a lot of unnecessary calories to your day without you realizing it. I’m totally for protein shakes as a meal replacement but other than that I’d recommend trying to just stick with water.  

Far as snacking goes, it’s easy to just graze all day or maybe and have little snacks by you while you’re working and not even realize the snack is gone until you look down. I’m sure everyone can relate while watching tv and doing this. It’s like “ I could have sworn I had a whole bowl of popcorn two seconds ago”. It’s very very easy to consume tiny snacks all day and especially if you’re not present while eating it. So, one innocent snack of let’s say 100calories turns into maybe 500-700calories throughout the day.  The best thing I can tell you is eat 3-5 meals throughout the day to keep you full and try to avoid snacks.

4.       Increasing your N.E.A.T

What is N.E.A.T?  This stands for non exercise activity thermogenesis aka movement that’s not you working out in the gym. So this could be things like walking, hiking, swimming, playing sports, you name it but the goal is to get you moving more during your days. The more active you can be everyday the more calories you’ll burn. I highly recommend just 10mins walks when you can and try to just increase the number of steps you take daily.  Something so simple can make a big difference. If you’re someone who sits all day and maybe get’s in 3,000 steps but then increases that step count to 5,000 then 7,000 and so on but didn’t actually change the intake in food (assuming you’re at that deficit we talked about) it will actually put you in more of a deficit since you are now moving more and eating less.

5.       PROTEIN PROTEIN PROTEIN

Making sure you have protein present at every meal will not only keep you full but will make sure you are eating enough to preserve that muscle mass you’re trying to show off. When going into a deficit we want to retain as much muscle as we can and even build new muscle, so eating enough protein will be crucial. Fun fact, eating a higher protein diet will cause protein thermogenesis meaning you’ll actually burn calories digesting the protein because it takes more energy to break it down.

So how much protein should you have? Somewhere between 0.7-1g per body weight but if you have a lot to lose you’re going to aim for your ideal bodyweight you’re aiming for.

6.       Eat at home as often as possible  

As I mentioned earlier who doesn’t like to goto their favorite restaurant or eat in if you’re feeling lazy and don’t want to cook. Well those meals that you’re eating, you don’t know how they were cooked meaning you’re probably eating at least 500cals more than you’re expecting. But let’s say you were trying to be good and you went out to a restaurtant to eat essentially the same thing you would have just had at home. Well you probably just paid 2-3x more than it’s actually worth and again the calories are going to be higher than if you just had it prepped yourself.  So this does mean that you’ll want to prep your food and have a game plan so you don’t get caught with your pants down

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail

7.       Find other ways to track your progress

We all like to use the scale to measure our progress but that’s just 1 tool. The thing with the scale is that it can fluctuate a lot based off sleep, hydration, types of food you ate, alcohol, going out to eat, hormones, and a bunch of other reasons. So that being said don’t pay too much attention to the scale since that might frustrate you and make you quit but instead look at two other great tools.

One being how your clothes fit. There is no better way to see progress than fitting into clothes you haven’t worn in a while or maybe your down a few belt notches, or maybe your shirt you like to wear feels a little looser around the stomach. This is one easy way to see if you’re making progress over time. I can tell you that’s a very common way my clients see results for themselves.

The second way is taking progress pictures. This is probably my favorite way I have clients track their progress because it allows us to do comparisons at any given time, for example week 1 pictures vs week4. When taking pictures make sure to do it in the same spot, same lighting, showing as much skin as possible, and taking pictures from the front,back and sides. If you’re someone who doesn’t want to take pictures every week  you don’t have to. You can simply do it every 2 weeks or even once a month to compare and see if you’re making progress.

8.       The last thing and don’t hate me but it’s tracking your macros. When you do everything you can from what was mentioned above, you might find it hard to lose that last bit or maybe you’ve just hit a plateau. At this point you might want to track so you can really dial things in and be a bit more strict to make some more headway.