Why a Food Tracker is Better Than a Diet for Weight Loss

Have you tried just about every diet under the sun only to find yourself frustrated, angry, and disappointed with the results? Or rather, lack thereof? You’re not alone. According to the research, 95% of those who attempt to follow a diet fail. That’s a staggering number. That means only 5% of the people who diet in an effort to lose weight will actually succeed. You might as well play the lottery! What if there was a better way to achieve your weight loss success? There is. It’s a tool called a food tracker.

Now, you might be wondering exactly how a food tracker is going to help you drop those unwanted pounds or even wonder how much time you’re going to need to dedicate to using a food tracker.

First off, using a food tracker doesn’t take much time at all once you learn the platform and how to use and navigate through it. When it comes to the results and how it’s going to help you reduce stubborn body fat, that’s what we are going to talk about below.

When you have tools at your disposal, such as a food tracker, it can have many benefits and help increase your success rate. Below, you will find many reasons why a food tracker is your secret weight-loss weapon and why you should consider using one.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and is not meant to treat or diagnose any condition. It is recommended that you speak with your doctor before starting any exercise program, changing your daily nutrition, or adding any supplements to your regimen.

7 Reasons Why a Food Tracker is Better Than a Diet for Weight Loss

7 Reasons Why a Food Tracker is Better Than a Diet for Weight Loss

Not using a food tracker on your weight loss journey? Here’s why you should!

1. A Food Tracker is FREE

Whether you decide to utilize the old-school pen-and-paper method or a new fancy app you can put on your smartphone, implementing a food tracker is free. If you are looking for a food tracker with the highest ratings, you should consider downloading MyFitnessPal on your phone.

MyFitnessPal is loaded with a ton of useful tools to help you achieve your weight loss success and make sure you stay on track. The key? Actually using the app consistently.

2. A Food Tracker Holds You Accountable

Most people fail because they either eyeball their portions and, at the end of the day, have no idea how many calories they’ve consumed, or they are utilizing a diet that doesn’t align with their lifestyle. While a food tracker won’t alert you if you eat something unhealthy, it WILL show you just how bad for you it was when it crunches the numbers and plugs them into your daily calorie and macronutrient log.

A food tracker will help hold you accountable for every bite, lick, or sip you put in your mouth (assuming you’re honest and record it — which, if you don’t, you’re only lying to yourself).

One great strategy to use with your food tracker (such as MyFitnessPal) is that you can invite and connect with your friends and family members. Ultimately, you have a network as well as additional ways to be held accountable.

When you have others join in with you, the network works as a team and wants to see the others in the group be successful in their weight loss journey. Those who you invite will be able to see how you did on a given day, if you hit your numbers and even how your weight loss progress is going. Want to make it fun? Use it as a challenge and challenge those you invite to see who can get the best results in a certain timeframe.

4. You Have Actual Data to Look At

There are so many great quotes to insert here, such as, “You don’t know what you don’t know” and “You don’t know where you’re going unless you know where you’ve been.” These ring so true with weight loss. If you aren’t using a food tracker, how do you know how many calories you are consuming? To lose weight, you need to eat fewer calories than your maintenance in order to put yourself in a caloric deficit.

Related Article: Is the Nordic Diet Worth Trying for Weight Loss?

For instance, if your maintenance calories are 2,000 per day, you would need to eat under that amount to see any weight loss (or at least include exercise that would burn extra calories to put you under that number).

With a food tracker, you actually see the numbers as you input them into the program, so you can see how many calories and individual macronutrients you’ve consumed, as well as how many you have left for the day. The take-home here is… Know your numbers!

5. There Is No One Else to Blame for Failure

If you use a food tracker to help you lose weight and drop body fat, you don’t have anyone to blame if you don’t see the results you desire. The hard pill to swallow is that you have all of the tools in front of you to hit your numbers and watch the number on the scale go down.

Should you eat in a surplus every day, even though the food tracker is telling you that you’re over, that result ultimately rests on your shoulders. No one told you to keep eating, and per the data that the food tracker shows you, it’s providing you with the information showing you’re close to your daily goal and need to pay attention to your next food choices.

6. All-In-One Easy to Use and Record Platform

When you first log into a food tracker such as MyFitnessPal, it will help set everything up for you. There will be some information that you need to complete, such as your age, your sex, your weight, your goal (weight loss, maintenance, or weight gain), how quickly you’d like to hit that goal, along with some other questions. Once you submit all of your information, MyFitnessPal will plot everything for you, from how many calories you should be consuming each day all the way down to your macronutrient breakdown.

Now, if you want to change your macronutrient ratios, you have the ability to go into the app and change it to your preferred ratios. For instance, if you would rather consume higher amounts of protein and fat while decreasing your carbohydrates, you can change it within your personal settings of the food tracker.

The app even allows you to sync with a Bluetooth scale for seamless weight recording, or you can input your weight yourself, and MyFitnessPal with graph your progress so you can see how you’ve been trending.

7. You Can View Any Nutritional Deficiencies You May Have on the Food Tracker

This is where a food tracker can truly shine. For instance, if you don’t currently use a multivitamin supplement, a food tracker can expose any micronutrients you’re deficient in. Should you see consistencies where you aren’t hitting your daily requirements, then you know you need to fill the gap with a multivitamin supplement.

If you were to see that you’re having difficulties achieving your protein intake for the day, you know you either need to consume some high-protein snacks or even supplement with something such as a protein powder or a protein bar.

A food tracker is a great tool to utilize to ensure you are consuming all of the nutrients your body needs to perform optimally on a daily basis. Look at a food tracker as an invaluable tool rather than a nuisance.

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Why a Food Tracker is Better Than a Diet for Weight Loss

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