INTRODUCTION
Stop Tracking Calories!….Well, Kind off! As we should all know by now, weight loss comes down to calories in versus calories out. If you are burning more calories than you consume, you will lose weight. The best way to make sure you are in a calorie deficit is to track your calories. Log how many calories you are eating every day. This is fine and understood by most now.
However, in this article, we are going to explain why you shouldn’t do this, why you should stop tracking calories! To be more specific we are going to explain why a diet break might be a good option for you. Time off from your diet and all the benefits you could get when you stop tracking calories.
We aren’t on about carb cycling or having high days or low days, we are on about a fully-fledged couple of days away from dieting and tracking. Why would you want to do this? Is it going to affect your progress? Will it undo everything you have already done? A lot of people panic about taking a diet break and hopefully this post should clear a lot of things up. Let us get straight into it with Why you might want to stop tracking calories.
WHY YOU SHOULD STOP TRACKING CALORIES?
So why should you have a break from your diet and maybe stop tracking calories? Well, for many, many reasons. The biggest one is it stops you getting unhealthy habits. As flexible as counting calories is and as easy as it can be. It can create some unhealthy habits and obsessions. You can find yourself stressing or obsessing over calories. Which when you are in a hardcore, prep diet will obviously happen, however, for the rest of us just trying to get healthier this added stress can affect us a lot. Taking a diet break can let you step away from this stress, not have to worry about calories and allow you to have more freedom eating. Shutting down any bad habits or obsessions. It isn’t so much an excuse to eat what you want and binge, it is more to not have to stress about meals and calories and planning.
On a similar note to this, a calorie break will allow you to find out if you even need to count calories anymore? One amazing thing about counting calories is you gain an understanding of how many calories are in certain foods. After tracking for an extending period, you will memorise certain foods. So when you have a break you might mentally still track. Obviously, it won’t be as accurate as weighing and tracking on an app, however you will be able to get a ballpark figure of your daily calories. For most people, this will be enough to maintain a certain weight.
HOW TO GO ABOUT STOP TRACKING CALORIES?
It’s as simple as it sounds! So the next big question is how do you actually stop tracking calories? Well, as it sounds. Just stop tracking. Pick a few days where you are going to not track and not worry. Not worrying about being the whole reason we are doing this is the first place. Another question is when? Which leads us on nicely to a few occasion that works perfectly and is easy to fit around.
When to do it is a very question, Personally, I like to put a diet break into a special occasion. For example, we have just had Christmas, I had a few days off over Christmas, completely worry-free about what I ate and drank and even how I moved. However, you could also use a birthday, a wedding or any other occasion. Please remember that this isn’t an excuse to just binge and eat what you want. We are treating this as a diet break. You should only be doing them a few times a year. So chose your occasion wisely. Obviously, you don’t need an occasion, you can also work it round your normal life. Whatever works for you.
BACK TO THE QUESTIONS?
Back to the main question, how do you go about a diet break? Well, it is simple in principle but you have to make sure that your internal stress and worry doesn’t take over and you just start eating your normal diet. So for me, I make sure I have a breakfast that is different from anything I might eat. Do I weight ingredients? Only if I have to for a recipe? Do I make sure I am getting enough protein? This is a tricky one because I have been tracking long enough that I know how much protein I need, and how much is in food. So I will naturally eat a high protein diet. I am not too worried about this. I don’t find myself stressing about protein consumption.
The first time you have a diet break you will naturally stress out, but what you need to remember is that nothing is going change and not to go crazy and binge out on everything. Learn to eat when you are hungry and everything will be fine.
HOW LONG TO STOP TRACKING CALORIES?
Next big question is how long should you stop tracking for? The answer to this question all depends on how you adjust, cope and also how far off you are your daily calories anyway. Another important factor is if you are still active. Are you going to the gym, still going running etc? If you are still moving and burning calories then you will be able to do it for longer.
Another thing to keep in mind is that you might find yourself not needing to track. You know how many calories, roughly, you are eating in a day, you know how many you need to eat a day and thus you can make a relatively good guess, and for most people, this will be fine. If you are very active and have tracked for a while this will be a good alternative. Not tracking in an app but tracking mentally (Only roughly).
Also, when you stop tracking calories, it won’t have an imitate effect on your progress, however, the longer you go on “eating what you want” and not tracking, the more likely it is to effect your progress. So you have to be careful about this. Eating 1000 calories over your daily intake won’t affect you much for 1 or 2 days, but start doing it more often, and you will start to see a negative impact.
The best way to put it is that you want to have a break for as short a period as possible. Long enough to relax and refresh yourself but not long enough you fall from your goals and start going backwards. You are the only person that can answer how long that is. I don’t lie to go for more than 3 days. Again, that all depends on how “off-plan” I will be going.
WHAT ABOUT PROGRESS?
We mentioned above about progress. How much will it affect progress going on a diet break?
If you are staying active and it is just your food that is changing then you won’t notice any difference. You might find yourself not as “lean”, but most of this will be down to water retention and also the increase of carbohydrate in your system. You will be in effect doing a carb load. Great for pumps. But if you are still burning a high amount of calories and training then the effects will be near zero. Not being active could have a bigger impact as you won’t be burning anywhere near as many calories as you normally would. You will be increasing calories and also decreasing output. This will be fine in the short term but for extended periods could have effects.
If you are only planning to go on a diet break for a few days, you won’t need to worry about your progress at all. You aren’t going to gain much weight. As mentioned above you might hold onto a bit of water (causing the scales to go up) but nothing major. Your progress in the gym won’t be affected to much either. Remember, it takes weeks/months to diet down and get lean and it works the other way. You can’t lose weight instantly so you won’t put it on again instantly.
CONCLUSION
At the end of the day, if you aren’t prepping for anything or don’t NEED to diet, a few days off isn’t going to affect your progress, but it will do you the world of good. If you stay on track and are strict 50 weeks of the year, do you think 2 weeks are going to make a difference?
A diet is a perfect way to get a body or the weight you want to. However, it is important to make sure you have control of your diet and that your diet doesn’t control you. Dieting for extended periods and effect you mentally and physically. This is why we think most people should think about a diet break and to stop tracking calories.
Did you have a break from your diet this Christmas? Do you believe in diet breaks? Let us know over on our Instagram! We would love to hear what everyone thinks on this subject!
If you want to know how to Make your calories go further and even how to get extra calories then check out our blog post on Flexible Dieting
Written by Kieran Blacker
Kieran is the CEO and Founder of Sets & Reps. He decided to make an application that helped people get a gym workout when not at the gym. He designed, Coded and built the application himself.