Podcast Transcription: Simplifying Food Tracking: How To Count Calories Without Getting Obsessed with Ted Ryce (Part 1)

Ted Ryce: Tracking your food intake is proven by many studies to be one of the best ways to successfully lose weight. And it makes total sense, because you start to learn what you’re actually eating and how many calories you’re actually eating in a day.

But the thing is, many people complain of either not getting results, the dreaded, “I’m only eating 1200 calories, but I’m not losing weight” complaint. Or maybe they’re getting results but going a little crazy in the process, it’s getting a little obsessive for them or a little stressful. There’s even some research that suggests calorie tracking apps may trigger people with a history of eating disorders.

So, to help you achieve your fat loss results the right way with tracking I’ve created this episode to show you how I coach my clients to success. So, if you want to lose fat, and you know that understanding how many calories you’re eating every day is important. But either you failed in the past with tracking, or perhaps you’ve never tried it, because you don’t want to stress out over trying to figure out how many calories you’re eating or how many foods or different foods, this episode is for you.

Now it’s going to be in two parts. Today, I’m going to set the foundation so that you focus on having the right mindset with tracking. And if you’re already rolling your eyes with that word “mindset”, I want you to listen to this episode twice because you need it. It’s really important that we set this stag,e properly set our intentions, set our expectations at the beginning of this process so that you don’t fail halfway through because that’s what most people experience.

How do I know? Well, that’s what I do for work. This is one of the strategies, one of the tools that I use with my clients. And so I want to first tell you about how I started with tracking because you may listen to some of what I’ve talked about, and said, “Well, this guy’s just one of those people. He’s just one of those trackers. Probably things come so easy to him, and tracking probably came very easy to him. But for me, it’s really hard to do.”

And I’ll be honest with you, I was super resistant to tracking my food. And if you don’t know my story, I’ve been in the fitness industry for 23 years. I started in 1998. And I’ve had My Fitness Pal on my phone, on my iPhone since 2013. But I tried it and I was like, “You know what, this isn’t for me.” I gave up right away. In other words, I never did it seriously until I hired my coach, Eric, in 2019.

And why did that happen? Well, I was in Bangkok, Thailand, and I was eating every lunch and dinner in restaurants. And if you don’t know about Bangkok, it is a foodie paradise. The food is incredible there. And I mean, whether you’re eating a $200 meal at Gurgaon, which is a famous restaurant in Bangkok, where if you’re in Chinatown, at a Michelin starred street car paying $2 for a meal, the food is just incredible.

And there was no way I was going to sit at home and eat chicken breast and broccoli to get lean when I had these amazing culinary experiences available to me, there was no way I was going to miss out on experiencing the culinary culture of Thailand, just because I wanted to look lean. That’s not a sacrifice I was willing to make.

And more importantly, I knew I didn’t need to make that sacrifice if I just dialed in my calories. So, I started tracking. And I want to tell you something, the first day I did it, I wanted to give up. It was annoying. And I started to have this voice inside my head told me like, “Do I really need to do this to get lean? Can’t I just kind of wing it? Can’t I just find another way?” But after all, the whining was done, my inner bitch started to shut up—so it showed up but once it started to shut up, I decided I was going to commit to doing it.

Another thing that really helped at the time was my business partner, Giselle. Well, I want to say that she was supportive, but in reality, she’s like, “Hey, you need to do this, okay? You need to get lean. You need to follow the program. You’re a coach, you’re working with a coach, you need to be a good client. And it’s really important for our business that you get in the best shape possible,” so I stuck with it.

And you know what, after three days, it became kind of easy. The first three days, at least for me—and now this is my experience—the first three days were really tough, I wanted to give up, I wanted to stop doing it. That was that resistance. I’ve talked about this in the past. My habit was already to not track. I’ve tried tracking, and it didn’t work for me. So I had this belief, this pattern already established that, “Oh, this sucks.”

And so I had a habit of not tracking, of a negative association with tracking. But once I pushed it through, after three days, it became pretty easy. Now, for you, it might not be three days, maybe it’s a week, maybe it’s longer, especially if you don’t have an expert teaching you how to do it, because Eric coached me on how to do this, so I didn’t get that frustrated with the process.

I mean, yes, there were times I wanted to give up. Yes, there were times where I was like, “Man, am I doing this right? I don’t think this is correct.” In fact, let me tell you, I got dengue fever during my coaching program with Eric. So, about a month of the coaching program was weeks of me laying in bed, getting up every day to go to the hospital to get my blood—I forget exactly what happens, if it’s your white blood cells or your red blood cells, I forget what happens with dengue fever.

But my numbers—I think it was white blood cells, they were just getting lower and lower. And so I felt like—and it was way worse than COVID. Let me tell you, it was pretty scary. It’s like, “Am I going to die in Thailand?” I mean, I was in a good mood, but I felt like 90 years old. Even with that, I made a commitment to stick through it.

And actually, it helped me because on Dengue fever, I lost weight. But I didn’t lose weight, because…And I was sleeping all the time, and I’m like the opposite of a sound sleeper. I’m not the person that can sleep anywhere, at any time, under any circumstances, I really have to have the right environment with, it needs to be cold, it needs to be dark, needs to be quiet.

But I was just falling asleep during the day, no matter what was going on. It was super weird. It was completely—my physiology was a mess. And my appetite was gone. And my appetite, I mean, even with some of the stressful events I’ve been through in my life, the deaths of family members didn’t knock out my appetite, but dengue fever did.

So actually, the tracking helped me to stay on point with the nutrition to make sure I was eating enough. And I still struggled, I was having vegetable soup and forcing myself to eat. Because one of the problems is when you get sick and you start to lose too much weight, that’s what kills people. That’s what kills a lot of people.

Anyway, so it helped me like, “Oh, wow, whether you’re eating too much, or eating too little, tracking can really help you” And hiring my coach and going through that experience, even with all the ups and downs, even with the dengue fever, it became a pivotal point in who I was as a person, a coach, and a business owner, even.

And the reason I’m telling you this story is this: tracking is a tool. But what we’re really trying to do with this tool is to help you become the person that you need to become to get the results that you want in this area of your life. We’re talking about health, we’re talking specifically about fat loss. And what I’m telling you is that when you step up and do what it takes in a healthy way, and that’s important, and we’ll talk about that more, when you step up and do what it takes in a healthy way to achieve your goal, all areas of your life improve.

That’s why I’m so passionate about what I do. That’s why I love coaching. You think I’m not smart enough to come up with a different business model, a different way to make money. There’re so many ways to make money online. But what gets me so pumped up about coaching is I get high when other people win in their life, I feel like I’m doing something good for the planet.

Well, for the planet, maybe not, but for society, for human society. I feel like the more people who become emotionally healthier and achieve what they want and force themselves to grow into their potential, really, that’s a good thing for humanity, and that’s my belief. That’s what I believe.

So every single client who works with me experiences successes in other areas of their life, not just with their weight, or their health or getting off medication or going from pre-diabetic status to regular blood sugar levels, or even how they feel when they look in the mirror. But what I like about tracking is it’s just a repeatable system that every single person can do to achieve better fat-loss results.

It gives you a sense of power, a sense of control in a world where so often we get knocked on our ass like with Coronavirus, the quarantines, all the political craziness, you can’t do anything about it. But tracking is a way to take the chaos of like, “Oh, what should I eat? Oh, I’m starting to lose weight, but then it goes away. I think I see my muscles and then I gained the fat back. I don’t know what’s going on.”

This is a way that can help any person get to that next level with their health. And let me tell you, folks, our society right now wants to tell you it’s okay to be fat, it’s okay to be obese. And look, it doesn’t say anything about your worth as a person if you’re overweight or obese, but I’ll tell you something, it ain’t healthy for you. 100%, it’s not healthy for you.

Some of us have a body that can handle more fat than others. That’s why you get people who are “metabolic healthy”, but they’re obese, but it doesn’t last forever. Eventually, you pass your point, and you start having problems. So tracking is a system that every single person, no matter what your gender is, your age, your hormonal status, if you’ve got Hashimotos, or if you are pre-menopausal, or post-menopausal or if you think you have low testosterone, this is something that will work for you—when coached properly, of course.

So let’s get into some other reasons why you should track your food. So if my story of tracking didn’t hit home with you and inspire you enough, there’s some other reasons to track as well. So I told you earlier, it was proven by science to work. But in fact, a research review in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association looked at 22 studies on the relationship between weight loss and food tracking.

And the reviewers consistently found a connection between diligently tracking food and successful weight loss. Does that come as any surprise to anybody? It’s like, knowing what the hell you’re eating is associated with better weight loss than not knowing what the hell you’re eating. Now, I know what you think, you think, ‘Well, I know what I’m eating, I made these healthy choices.”

But as I talked about before, healthy choices are only 50%, because you can get fat by eating healthy food, and then it becomes not healthy, right. That’s why there’s so much gray area here. So, the quality of your foods important, but the quantity is what most people they don’t know, they don’t know it’s 300 calories for a six-ounce ribeye steak but for 10 ounce 500.

They don’t know they’re eating 500 calories when they’re eating that superfood acai bowl, when you could go to McDonald’s something that no person who thinks in this way would ever think was a better choice than an acai bowl and get an Egg McMuffin for 300 calories. And another example I’ve used, when you’re eating full fat Greek yogurt versus nonfat, it’s like double the calories. So, this works is proven by science.

And it works on the principle of calories in calories out—not on cutting sugar, not on like, you don’t care that you’re eating three tablespoons of olive oil on your salad, which is like 360 calories, but you think that cutting the one sugar that you add to your coffee every morning, ‘Oh, just get rid of that 4 gram of sugar, that 16 calories coming from sugar every morning.” Like, that’s going to make a dent in your weight loss because it’s “sugar.”

That’s the type of stuff that tracking can help you move away from. So, number two, your memory sucks. And I’m not insulting you, it’s a human flaw, right? my memory isn’t so great, either. And what do I mean by that? Well, what did you eat for lunch last Tuesday? Unless it was your daughter’s birthday, or your birthday, or some special event, you probably don’t remember.

And guess what? It’s totally normal. You’ve got to remember the important stuff, and what you ate last Tuesday is not really up there on the priority list of what you’ve got to do every week. But even if you do remember, what were the foods that you ate and the total calories in the portions? So, unless you’re tracking, you don’t know that, and life is just too hectic to use our memory to keep track of what and how much we’re eating. That’s just how it is.

And here’s another one that I don’t think this is talked about enough. Our environment makes us fat by default. Something a lot of people say to me—actually, a lot of people don’t say this but a couple do, “Why do I need to track? It just seems so unnecessary and extreme.” And look, I hear you, but here’s the perspective that you’re missing.

You know what else is extreme, the modern lifestyle we live compared to our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Tracking helps us navigate and manage our food choices in an environment where we’re inundated by advertising, easy access to food, UberEATS, vending machines, candy jars on your secretary’s desk. Look, you can always just quit modern life and move to Tanzania, in Africa and live with the Hodza tribe. If you don’t know who they are, they’re their tribe that still has their hunter-gatherer lifestyle intact, they haven’t modernized.

And guess what, you probably wouldn’t need to track. But you’ll also be running and walking miles every day, you’ll be hunting and gathering your food every day. And you’re not going to have any time to—I don’t know what your goals are, but you’re not going to have time to do any of it. Because your whole life is going to revolve around hunting and gathering.

But if you’re going to stay here in the US, or wherever you’re living, and live this crazy, modern, high-stressed sedentary lifestyle that we’re all living in, I mean, I’m sitting right now as I’m recording this, then you’re going to have to do more than eat intuitively, or go on trendy diets. And tracking is a way to again, take control the chaos that is our modern, digital crazy life.

Number four, it can help improve your relationship with food, although many people think tracking is a bit extreme. If you do it the right way, it can help with your relationship with food. And I’ve alluded to this earlier in this episode, as well as I’ve talked about it on other podcasts. Most people separate food into two groups. There’s good food and bad food. “Oh, kale? That’s good. I’ve seen that all over the place. So acai, that’s good. Oh, Oreo cookies? That’s bad. Dessert? That’s bad. I mean, it’s also good because it tastes so good, but it’s bad. You don’t want to have it, even though it’s so delicious.

But that’s the unhealthy relationship with food right there in a nutshell. When you track, you start to see that you can eat all this healthy food but still be obese. If you pour five tablespoons of olive oil on your superfood kale salad, that’s not healthy, okay? Because, again, I’ll return to that idea. It’s not just the quality, but it’s the quantity that matters. And that also works in reverse, by the way.

Am I unhealthy because I ate a Magnum ice cream bar the other day, or because I ate a brownie with ice cream the other day? Guess what, my biomarkers are all solid, I’m getting leaner right now. I’m going to be that obnoxious... I’m going to hit you know, be talking about the veins on my abs soon. I’m in better health, but I eat dessert regularly. I don’t want to say every day, but almost every day, folks, I eat dessert almost every day.

I’m not saying that you should do that. But for me, it helps me balance out the other things that I need to do to stay lean. So, in other words, you start to see food choice, as less black and white and more shades of grey. And that’s even before we consider the mental aspects of being overly obsessed with eating healthy.

I did a presentation to a few 100 people the other day, and most of them were really happy about my presentation, but one person was talking about how wrong it was to eat sugar. It’s just wrong. That’s not a diet, folks. That’s a religion, okay? Sugar isn’t the devil, right? Your issues with your emotions are the problem, or your belief system around food is the problem. But sugar is just sugar, it’s just there. It’s not even sugar really, it’s these hyper palatable foods.

I’m not going to get into that. I’ve talked about it before and I’ll talk more about it in upcoming episodes if you don’t know what I’m talking about. But just to save you the suspense, Google hyper palatable foods and read about it. Become educated. To many people online say the dumbest of things. It’s okay if you were saying that sugar is evil 20 years ago, but if you’re still thinking that people are buying domino’s sugar by the kilo and then going home and spoon feeding it to themselves, and that’s the problem, that’s just stupidity, it’s just ignorance.

Okay, we’re way beyond that. Please step your game up if you’re saying that, or if you know someone who’s saying that, please talk to him about hyper palatable foods. Actually, don’t talk to him because you’ll just get into an argument. People love to argue about nutrition. But the point is this. It’s not about sugar. It’s about the combination of sugar and fat. In other words, ice cream or i.e. ice cream. Ice cream is more fat. Look at Haagen Daz ice cream, it’s more calories coming from fat than sugar.

And same thing with croissants. Whoo, I had a croissant this morning, it was delicious. Again, the calories are the same number of calories coming from fat than there are coming from sugar. So, number five, it helps identified food issues. So some of us are more sensitive to some foods than others. For example, high FODMAP foods can give people digestive issues.

Another example of this is sometimes we’ll have a food but it won’t really satisfy our hunger. And we feel like, “Oh, I just need more, I just need more.” And so you can start to see, “Oh, when I ate that ice cream, I had one serving, but I came back for another.” Like, me, ice cream, I can’t have it in my house because—or I can only buy the amount that I’m willing to eat because it will disappear.

It doesn’t matter if it’s two pints, it’s going to probably disappear in one day, day and a half max. In two days, it will all be gone. So I can only buy a Magnum ice cream bar. Or if I want to eat a pint, okay, but I don’t buy those things because I’ve recognized it’s a trigger for me.

Another thing is, you can start to recognize food choices you make when you’re stressed. So if you’re tracking, you start to recognize patterns of behavior or symptoms with your food choices. I read about a woman who was experiencing eczema, and then she started tracking her food, and then made the connection that when she was having certain nuts, like peanuts, a lot of people have problems with peanuts.

I actually had another client, he actually flew from Miami Beach to Colorado to work with an expert in, I think, it was…Was it immunology? I forget. But this whole team of some of the best doctors couldn’t figure out why he was having these skin problems. And then through working with me and looking at his nutrition, he was able to identify he was having problems every time he ate peanuts. And then when he got rid of the peanuts, the eczema problem went away. So, tracking can help you do that.

Let’s move on. Here are three methods I use to help my clients track their food according to their goals and experience level. Because what you think—you might think, “Oh, okay, well, I’m going to track now. So what I’m going to do, I’m going to track every day and I’m going to track every morsel of food. Okay, track my black coffee. There are zero calories in that, that’s kind of wasted time, but I will track it anyway. Oh, yeah, well, I’m going to add these spices to this food that I’m cooking, and so, oh, there’s no calories in that.’

Look, you can drive yourself crazy by doing this the wrong way. And it’s not that it’s the wrong way. But being overly meticulous about it. And before we get started, it’s important to understand why we’re doing this. We’re not tracking to become experts at food tracking, we’re tracking so that you can fill the gaps in your food knowledge and develop awareness and take action once you figure out what you’re actually eating. In other words, we’re tracking to get results. So, with that understood, there are many ways to go about achieving this goal.

I also want to say that your level of dedication to food tracking depends on the results that you’re going to achieve. For example, I’m probably about 12%, maybe even 11% body fat right now and I want to get back down to 10% or lower in order to make those obnoxious comments about how I can see the veins on my abs because I know you like them so much, right?

But if you’re just looking to go from obese to overweight, or maybe in a normal way, you don’t have to be quite as dialed in as me. And to be honest, it’s quite simple to go from being obese to normal, and I don’t want to diminish the journey. It’s hard. It’s not easy, but it is simple. And what I mean by that is this, your knowledge and/or ability to act on your nutrition knowledge is really low. That’s the bad news.

The good news is that you’re at a great point where you can make the fastest progress. There’s no way I’m losing six pounds in a week or five pounds in a week, like some of my clients do. Okay, there’s no way I’m making fast progress, it’s really like, wow, I’m in this period where I do see a difference every week, but he comes very slowly. Because if I lose more than one pound a week, I’m screwing up and burning up muscle.

So that’s not just good where you are, it’s great. It’s an opportunity. You’ve got to see this as an opportunity. So, if you’re obese and wanting to get out of obesity, or maybe if you’re just a straight up beginner, maybe you’re not obese, maybe you’re just overweight or perhaps normal weight, but you’re a beginner, here’s how I want you to start.

Week number one, don’t track, just start reading food labels. Read the food facts on the foods that you’re eating. Now some of them won’t have labels like chicken, although if you buy it in the store, it may. But for any foods that don’t have labels, I want you to download My Fitness Pal and look them up.

So start reading food labels, start reading the nutrition facts, start to understand about portion size, how many calories are in those portions. Start reading about the portion sizes. You’ll start to realize that your portion of peanut butter is actually not one portion, it’s more like five. And the goal here is simple is to move away from the good food, bad food thinking and to start understanding portion sizes and calorie content.

And here’s what I want you to do, if it wasn’t clear enough, read food labels, read all the food labels, check out the serving sizes, check out how many calories are in the serving, and I want you to measure and weigh portions. So not only will you have to download My Fitness Pal, but you’ll have to invest in a scale as well just start reading and measuring some things, get an idea of portions like, “Oh, is that a portion?’

Make it into a game, don’t obsess about it, just start to make it into a game. Because I’ve done this before, I’ve showed some of my clients in my coaching program, I show them two plates of food. There’s chicken, there’s like a rice and lentil mix and there’s spinach. And then I show them. One of them has 300 calories in the meal and the other has over 500 calories. And I say, “What’s the difference here is the same food.” And they’re like, “I don’t know what the difference is.”

That’s how they all start out, most of them start out, then they start to realize, “Oh, I’m sorry, there was guacamole there, too.” And then they start to realize, “Oh, wow, that guacamole serving is much bigger. It’s about double.” It doesn’t look much but it is actually double. And that rice pilaf, I guess you would say, the rice lentil pilaf is also about a portion and a half.

And just from the changes in portions, the same foods, but the changes in portions, the calories went up to almost double. And this is where a lot of people screw up. It’s not that people who are overweight are eating nothing but processed food. A lot of people are making healthy choices. The clients who come to me, they’re very financially successful. They’re not crushing Cheetos in Mountain Dew, right? Like giant bags of Cheetos in two liters of Mountain Dew, these are people who are eating good quality food.

And you might be in that same situation, too. When someone says, ‘Give up the process food, fatty,” you’re like, “Hey, listen, asshole. I don’t even eat that much processed food. So what you’re saying is bullshit. I think it’s my metabolism. I think it’s my genes. I think it’s something else. It’s my hormones.” Now, that’s not true, either. It’s not those things.

But this is this is an example where people go wrong. The idea is if someone’s overweight or obese, they’re just slamming processed food is just not true. You can eat healthy food and get very fat doing it, or what is commonly referred to healthy food and get very fat doing it. And the opposite is true as well. You can eat junk food, you can eat every meal at McDonald’s, and if it’s under…

You know, there was a guy who did the McDonald’s diet, you can look that up. He ate 2000 calories per meal and only ate at McDonald’s and he lost, I believe it was something like 30 pounds. I mean, I would never go and eat every meal at McDonald’s, that’s horrible. And you’ll probably have some digestive problems because of the quality of the food and some of the preservatives that are in it, or whatever causes those problems.

But the point is you would still lose body fat, and you would still get healthier as a result. People have this disconnect. It’s like there’s no way I can be unhealthy if I eat healthy foods, and it’s not true. Just like oh, there’s no way I can be healthy if I eat these unhealthy foods like ice cream and Oreo cookies. That’s not true either. It’s a gray area that.

And that’s why you come to this podcast, because I’ll tell you the truth because I’m not trying to sell a $37 keto intermittent fasting meal plan, I’m trying to help you with this. And if you want to take the next level, you hire me as a coach and I coach you through this process. That’s my business model. Super transparent. Do it on your own. If it doesn’t work, hire me. I’ll help you make it happen.

So, anyways, just to recap here, if you’re beginner, start with reading food labels, looking up foods that don’t have labels, and measuring and weighing your portions. There’s no need to track in the app, just get an idea of what portion sizes look like. And the calories in the portion. You don’t need to know how many calories, you don’t even need to know. A lot of people say, “Hey, listen, but how many calories do I need to eat to lose weight?’

I’m not going to answer that question, because number one, it’s more complicated than you think. And number two, I don’t know. So just do this, and you may not even need to ask that question or answer that question. So week number two, track for a week. You’ve got My Fitness Pal downloaded, you’ve started measuring and weighing some food. Now I want you to track it in My Fitness Pal.

You could journal it with photos or use notes in an app, or write it down and old school, what would you call it? Analog, but you write it in a journal with a pen and paper. If you want to, you can do that. But start to track it. Now, I recommend My Fitness Pal, it’s just super easy. It remembers your food, so you don’t have to look them up again. And most of us eat the same thing on a regular basis.

And the goals here are simple: dial in what you learned in week one, take your knowledge and skills to the next level and get better results by challenging yourself. Because what people do—just like in martial…Look, I’m a martial artist, I’ve got a brown belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. I didn’t start with brown belt moves when I was a white belt. I got my white belt; you get that when you first start. And then I got my stripes, I got stripes on my white belt.

And then I got my blue belt, and then I got my purple belt. And then I’ve got my brown belt. I’ve got two stripes on my brown belt. And I’m probably pretty far away from black belt at this point. But the point is, a lot of people, they have their white belts on and they don’t want to strike, they want to move right to brown belt or a black belt or a purple belt.

But the truth is, it needs to be progressive. If you start trying to track every day, it’s going to be too much for you most likely start small. Now that’s not sexy, it’s not what you want to do, you just want to get to it, you just want to get it done. The issue is, this is why people get so stressed, so frustrated. Do it in stages. Just start with week one, reading the food labels, looking at foods that don’t have labels, measuring and weighing portions out so you get an idea of the portion size and the calories contained in those portions. Then week two, take it up a notch, track for a week.

Again, I recommend My Fitness Pal because then you still have to weighandn measure to make sure the portions are the same way, but when you track it in My Fitness Pal, as soon as you type it up, My Fitness Pal will remember it and you can just put it right into your slot for whatever meal you’re eating. You’ll see what I mean when you download My Fitness Pal and use it.

So, let’s talk about, okay, well, that’s a good way to start, but what if you’re wanting to get really lean? Well, the answer is simple; you’ve got to track until you achieve your desired results. Now let’s talk about some things that you need to understand when you start tracking. Number one is expect to be frustrated.

It’s not easy to do this. If it were then everyone would be fit, everybody would just track and everybody would be lean and it would be really easy. But the truth is, it’s not, it’s a challenge. I mean, I wanted to give up in the first three days of tracking, but I did it and now I’m able to eat the foods that I love. eat in restaurants almost every day and stay lean while doing it.

Number two, challenge yourself. But also have the self-awareness to know when you need to take a break, but make sure it’s your best self that saying you need to take a break, not your bullshit self just trying to sabotage you. You know exactly what I mean. Whenever I want to get out of doing something, I asked myself, “Is this my best self or my bullshit self talking?”

Number three, it’s not about tracking. We’re tracking because it’s a tool, but it’s about getting results. It’s not about being the best tracker around. It’s about can you use tracking to drive results in the real world. So, if you’re not getting results, then you’re doing something wrong. You don’t even have to track so diligently to get results. You just have to do enough to get the results that you want.

Again, I’m tracking everything but I’m not weighing everything right now, I don’t have a food scale with me. Then again, I’ve tracked for the better part of a year and did weigh almost all my meals, except the ones that I ate at a restaurant, I wouldn’t break out the scale at a restaurant. So anyway, you just need to be good enough to get the results that you want. You’re not trying to be perfect here, you’re trying to get results.

Number four, ask for support. Don’t break out your phone in front of your family or the food scale, without telling them and expect them to react in a way that’s supportive to you or your friends. Sit down with them, explain what you’re doing, explain how important it is to you that you improve your health and lose some weight and ask for their support, ask for their help.

Number five, hire an expert. You may listen to my two-part episode on tracking and get all the success that you want, you may get exactly what you want, and you’re happy with the results. No problem. Great. I’m so happy that my podcast helped you that the information that I worked so hard to put together to put out so that you can take your life to the next level, I’m glad it worked.

But, depending on your goals, depending on how much struggle you go through with this process, you may need help to get there. Look, I hired a coach to help me with this. And I was already in the health and fitness industry for over 20 years when I worked with my coach, Eric, in 2019. For me, I didn’t need help getting lean living in the US, hey, it was really easy. You just go to Publix and Whole Foods and you have everything that you need there.

But I was struggling to get super lean while traveling the world and eating at restaurants all the time. I needed help with this and the accountability to get where I am today. And I’m so glad that I did it because even though I paid money and invested my time and all the things that come with coaching, it gave me the results in such a short time, it took my knowledge to the next level. So hire an expert to help you if you’re not getting the results you want. If you’ve been spending too much time with this and you’re frustrated, hire someone to help you.

And that is it for this episode, I hope you enjoyed it. Go take action on what you learn. Don’t just let this sit in your head. Learning is not learn, learn, learn, learn, learn. It’s learn, apply, learn, apply. You must apply. If you’re not applying, you’re not learning, you’re missing the other half of what it is to learn something. It’s not learning, you’re entertaining yourself, so go apply something.

And in the next episode, we’ll talk about how to track to get the most out of it, and also so you don’t lose your mind in the process. There are some key things that you need to know so that you don’t waste your time tracking or spend two hours trying to figure out how to track your meal that you ate at a restaurant. There’s no need to stress out about that. I’m going to share with you some shortcuts to make this, again, not an easy experience, but an easier experience. Learn from my mistakes so you don’t have to, okay?