Intuitive eating and body recomp

maruby95

Are these mutually exclusive? I'm thinking I need to start moving away from counting everything down to the gram for mental health purposes. But I also want to stay on target with enough protein (specifically) to meet my fitness goals (gain muscle, lose some fat). Has anyone had any success in trusting yourself to make good choices out of habit and experience vs what the numbers say? Or maybe just keeping track of protein for example instead of everything? I realize I would be sacrificing a good bit of control over how much of a deficit if any at all I will be eating at if I choose to go this route, but I guess that's the point. It may be time to trust my good eating and training habits and let the cards fall where they may. That being said, I don't want to undo all my hard work :0.

Thoughts? Experiences?

Sarauk2sf

You mention recomp but you also mention eating at a deficit. If you want to recomp you will have to eat at a surplus on lifting days and at a deficit on non lifting days.

I think it is definitely 'do-able' but makes the recomp process that much more inefficient as, without calorie counting, you cannot monitor when you have eaten enough. That being said, if you have been tracking foods for a while, and are in no rush, as long as you have an awareness of what you are eating, it is something that can be done imo.

Anecdotally, I intuitively ate for a good few years while strength training. Some days I would have eaten above maintenance and some days below. I did not consciously do it, I just ate when I wanted, but some of the days above maintenance would have aligned with lifting days so I would have been recomping without being conscious of it. I did not look at it in this way at the time (as I was not aware of the need to do so back then) but I am pretty sure that I did make some muscle mass gains during the time - not huge amounts, but some. I think, had I been more conscious of the need, I would have been more effective at it as I would have veered towards higher protein in general and higher eating on lifting days.

I do not think that you will undo your work as long as you monitor your weight - if you find you are losing weight, make a conscious decision to eat more. Also, make a conscious decision to make sure you get a good amount of protein in - you may want to just have a scoop or two of protein powder each day 'as insurance' so you do not even need to track protein that way. It is more a case of not making gains than undoing your work in my opinion.

So, in short, and in my opinion/experience, it is do-able, but not very efficient. However, sometimes the mental relief of not tracking is worth the extra inefficiency.

maruby95

Thank you, Sara. I do know that I won't do much re-comping on a deficit, so I'm not really sure why I said that. I guess I just know myself well enough to know that in general, I will err on the side of under vs overeating. However, I am generally hungrier on lifting days anyway, so it may work out ok as long as I feed the hunger . I had my sights set on a true bulk in the fall, so I guess if I don't make much gain, I can go about it more purposefully after a break from counting for a while. And I'm reassuring myself with the fact that if I accidentally eat over maintenance for a while, I just bulked early .

I like the idea about the protein insurance with protein powder. I generally use a scoop a day anyway, so maybe just add a second in on lifting days to be sure. Protein is my biggest concern, so thanks for that advice.

I guess it won't hurt to give it a try for a few weeks and see what happens...(gulp)

Sarauk2sf

Just keep an eye on the scale - looking at long term trends. If you are edging up, you can always make sure you avoid that cookie or increase your NEAT. If it is going down too quickly - eat the extra cookie

SideSteel

I think mental health is very important. If you are feeling OCD or whatever else about tracking intake I would just stop tracking and see what happens to your overall bodyweight.

As Sara said above, If it starts going up, eat a little less or increase NEAT.

maruby95

This is why I love you guys- the voice(s) of reason .

Sarauk2sf

Locking so we can keep track of active threads better. Please PM myself or SideSteel if you have any further questions and wish us to unlock. Please link the thread in the PM.