Do you trust yourself?

Back when I tracked everything, all the time, I would be too afraid to stop using MyFitnessPal. 

Do you ever feel like that?

For me, the only times that I didn’t track, were on holidays, and at Christmas - where I would eat all around me because I had been quite rigid and restrictive outside of those times.

I didn’t trust myself to be able to eat without consulting the numbers first.

This is not to say that counting calories is a bad thing.

I think the complete opposite actually. I think it is a great tool to help learn about food and what your body needs, as long as you are not aiming for a calorie goal that is too low.

What happens when you aim for a calorie deficit that is way below your maintenance level (>500 cals), is that you are hungry, and naturally - all you can think about is your next meal, how many calories it is going to be, and when you are going to have it.

For my clients that have a goal of getting leaner, we aim for a *slight* calorie deficit, which has them slowly dropping body fat but avoiding hunger wherever possible.

It’s a fine line between teaching them about nutrition, and making sure they don’t become obsessed with tracking.

When I started improving my relationship with food, and my body, I had to start by trying not to care when I went over my calories.

By looking at the averages for the week, I found that there were days that I went high on calories, but by just aiming for my usual amount the next day (without dropping them to “make up” for it), it hardly made a difference to my results.

What did make a difference was when I would be angry at myself for going over my calories, so I just didn’t track whatever I had for the rest of the day - which ended up in me having a lot more than if I just kept tracking.

Or else, the next few days, I would try reduce my calories to make up for the surplus. But I couldn’t keep it up, when I naturally got hungry again and put myself into a surplus again.

I learnt that it was about *consistency over perfection*.

Then, when I wanted to learn to trust myself to survive without MyFitnessPal, I deleted the app but then I had a rough idea of calories in my head.

I was eating most of the same stuff so I already knew the calories. I was able to roughly tot up in my head how many calories I was having.

Whenever I had a new food, I didn’t allow myself to look up the nutritional info. I just had to go by how it made me feel and hunger levels etc.

When estimating, I still managed to be in a slight calorie deficit in the long run (I still checked my measurements for peace of mind).

When I was comfortable with that, the next step was trying to move away from numbers altogether. I aimed for 3 solid meals a day, with a focus on listening to my hunger levels to gauge how much to eat.

While I still had a goal of fat loss, I knew I would still need to have a little hunger or sacrifices to be in a calorie deficit, and I was ok with that at the time.

This was over the course of a couple of months, and it took a lot of work on trust, values, priorities and mindset - it was so worth it, for the freedom it gave me in my mind.

That was a couple of years ago. Since then, I dip in and out of tracking calories, when I want to tighten things up.

As I mentioned, calorie counting can get a bad rep but I hate seeing people trying to lose body fat and not being sure on what they “can” or “can’t” have.

On the other hand, I hate seeing people live their life with the goal of having as few calories as possible.

It’s all about the balance.

And that’s what we teach in The Furnace.

If you want to learn to have this freedom, join us today :)

Training, nutrition and mindset for only €89 per month.

Have you any questions?

Thanks for reading,

Siobhan “I’m a numbers gal” O’Hagan