Calories vs Macro focus

Personally I wouldn’t be happy with that advice from a dietician; paying attention to calories and macros makes me more aware of what I am eating and how much I am eating and allows me to make better choices.

BUT it depends on how you like to work; lots of people are different from me and would rather be told to “eat a palm sized portion of meat” and “three handfuls of vegetables” etc rather than count calories and weigh portions. Lots of health professionals dumb things down because research has shown that it is easier for people to stick to a diet that is simplified this way.

I have also found through trial and error that what macros I eat DOES make a difference for me and it is hard for me to lose weight if I eat too many carbs, so reducing starchy carbs and high GI & GL carbs is important to me. Different people metabolise macros differently, so some people do well on high-carb, others (like me) do better on low-carb.

Also, it’s important to make sure you eat enough protein to protect muscle mass as you lose weight. There are calculators online to work out how much you should eat.

However, you don’t have to get everything “right” from day one, your knowledge and refinements will happen over time, so start with improvements that you can live with today.

Iragen wrote: »

Its been a while since I asked something here, but I just had a thought and figured I ask for community feedback.

My dietitian always leans towards "just be healthy, satiated and monitor portions" and the underlying idea is, from what I gathered, "I can't recommend anything to you to really optimize results of weight loss if you can't maintain stable eating habits as is" which I get, but I am curious about something. Do we look at "calories in/calories out" with steady exercise before trying to nitpick macros or would keeping an eye on both be the best approach?

Im trying to really make progress this year... like a few steps under drastic progress, so i figured let me try to monitor my calories but slowly work on getting more protein into my diet as opposed to all the carbs I usually slide into.

Thoughts?

While everyone is different in regards to what works best for them, this sounds like a very sensible and workable plan for me. It is similar to how I went about weight loss. As @kariadner said, focus on changing one thing at a time and once that is mastered, move onto another. Too many changes at once can become over restrictive and harder to stick to. Because of this you are more likely to give up.