We’ve all been there before—you find a fitness app that you want to use to track your workouts and meals and then after two weeks or so, you cease to even open it. Using tracking apps for log can be tedious if you’re not extremely motivated to use them. Even more so when tracking meals and having to consider food groups and calories counts. However, there are ways to make the process easier. Here are some habits to form so that logging into your app to record a meal doesn’t seem like an effortful chore.
Menu Planning
Menu planning can be defined as planning out what meals you want to eat for the entire week, different than meal planning, which refers to preparing food for yourself ahead of time. While menu planning, you want to keep in mind of and write down the healthy meals you want to make for yourself for the week. They don’t necessarily have to be the same meals everyday like the typical assumption people make when meal planning. Write down how much of each of the ingredients you need for each meal. Doing this will make it easy to translate the information into your meal tracking apps. Knowing what you’re going to eat for the week will also allow you to log your meals ahead of schedule, rather than spending time logging each meal individually, and then make tweaks as you actually eat. Meal planning will also allow you to effectively grocery shop as you already know what you need instead of coming up with meals to make as you’re shopping.
Calorie Counting
Part of having an effective fitness regiment is knowing the amount of calories you’re consuming. When trying to gain weight, you want to ensure that you have a caloric surplus in that you are consuming more calories than you are losing them during workouts—vice versa applies when losing weight: you want to be in a caloric deficit. As you eat, keeping track of these numbers will give you a visualization over time of your calorie consumption.
Overall, calorie counting will positively affect how you track meals. As meal tracking becomes a habit, you will be more conscious of your eating habits and it’ll be easier to adjust accordingly for plans ahead. Suddenly, goals feel much more attainable as this habit persists and you’re able to keep yourself accountable for any regressions from your plans. In the long run of tracking and accountability, you could definitely see positive outcomes as you’re motivated to stay consistent.
Weighing on Scale
Although looking at the weight on the scale can be dreadful, it has some benefits. In addition to knowing how many calories you consume every day, it is essential to weigh yourself if you have a fitness goal. If you’re dieting, weighing yourself can show you the progress you’ve made overtime with what you’re consuming. If you’re trying to gain mass, you want to establish weight goals to achieve as you build muscle.
It’s important to note that obsessing over your weight is not the most effective way to achieve your goals. In cases such as losing weight and fat, a small increase in weight can mean you are gaining muscle mass, which is heavier than fat. The most vital aspect of tracking the scale is that you are conscious of your weight and you can take account for any of its changes. This will motivate you to track your consumption more effectively so you can focus on positive changes in the long run. Forming this habit will give you a more positive perspective in your fitness journey and a healthier lifestyle.
Stay Fit
Establishing consistency and the means to effectively track your fitness online starts with forming habits that streamline the tracking process and motivate you to persist in your fitness journey. Using apps to track your progress will allow you to be conscious of yourself and assess your capacity to be fit. Be consistent with these habits and see how tracking impacts you in positive ways.