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smithb39
smithb39 Posts: 4 Member
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Hello I’m new to premium but not fitness pal wanting to make like minded people I exercise a lot to try and tone but find it hard to keep up macros x

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  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,930 Member
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    Hi and welcome to the Community side of MFP - as this looks like it may be your first post, even though you've had a MFP account for a while. (Your profile says you joined in early 2015, just a few months before I did.)

    I'm also pretty active, and do strive to hit reasonable macros (among other nutritional goals). Even so, personally I think it's fine to think of it as "close, on average over a day or few". Humans are adaptable omnivores, so we do have a little flexibility, which can makes it easier. For example, a little over on protein one day, a little under the next, good on average for the week - I figure that's fine. Exact isn't essential.

    Maybe that's already what you're doing, since you're an old hand here, but we do see new folks thinking they have to be exactly exact on each macro every individual day, or (worse yet) exact on their macro split every single meal. I think that's making it harder than it needs to be for good health/fitness outcomes.

    For me, it helped to think of my eating in terms of patterns: Trying to create relatively pleasant eating habits (patterns) that got my macros roughly where I wanted them daily, without a lot of conscious attention. I eat different things every day, but over time there are patterns that reflect habits. Early on, protein was something I needed to work on getting, at reduced calories. (I'm vegetarian, which makes it a tiny bit more challenging.)

    I found that looking at my food logs, there were types of foods that "cost" relatively many calories that I didn't need to eat in then-current portions (or frequencies) in order to be full, get other nutrition, enjoy my eating, etc. I could reduce or eliminate those, add other foods into my rotation, things I enjoy that had a little more protein instead. Doing that analysis and habit-adjustment for a while, getting adequate protein became pretty routine. That may or may not work for you, but it worked for me.

    Best wishes!

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