My Macros Tracking Journey – Month One

This is my third draft of this post, no joke. I waiver in and out of wanting to write it. To be honest, I feel like a bit of a fraud. I preach not counting anything, yet, here I am, tracking my food and trying to hit macros targets. I used to equate counting with self-hate and punishment and not counting/tracking with self-love. I don’t think either of these are true. I believe in self experimentation and I am treating this as such. I am leaning into the discomfort and hitting publish (probably while I cover my eyes).

I don’t think that I would be doing this without previous work on my relationship with food through the Whole30. Or I likely would have done it for 2-3 days before saying fuck it and given up. It really has helped me build a solid foundation with eating whole foods and cultivating awareness around how foods make me feel.

Why am I doing this?
I have been dedicated to taking really good care of myself. I’ve struggled since I kid with my weight, meaning, I attached a lot of my self-worth to my size. I always felt like the “fat kid” in school. More recently, I’ve been working on making peace with my body — peace now and peace in the future. I am seeing if this helps. It may or may not. I have a little deal with myself — if this causes more chaos or negativity, I will stop. To be honest, I have had one day of that feeling. I messaged my doctor to have a chat about it and we were able to make some adjustments. Yes, I am working with a doctor – I highly recommend working with a healthcare professional.

How is it going?
My experience so far has been pretty anti-climatic, I haven’t lost any weight and only 1.5′ from my waist (I don’t measure anything else). Counting macros (unless maybe done on the extreme) isn’t a magic pill for ‘instant’ weight loss or the solution to all problems (sorry, not sorry?). I have been taking it really slow — slow is sustainable. I was weighing and measuring weekly but that will be changing to monthly because weekly was just too much for me.

You haven’t seen my numbers because I haven’t shared them and I will not be. Macros are personal, what I’m doing very likely isn’t appropriate for you.

It has been hard for me and uncomfortable. I feel my inner-rebel coming out at times giving some of this the middle finger. I’ve been talking to my therapist about it. I sometimes feel like a whiner and weak. Maybe I am being dramatic, maybe this is normal. Changing eating habits is hard.

I wish I could leave you with some magical, over coming adversity-type story but I’m not there. Not sure if I’ll get there, but I’m still working at it.