Tracking food can cause a lot of stress an anxiety. Some of us get caught up on trying to stay below a certain calorie number. We end up not eating enough and the cycle begins. You know the one I am talking about. Not eating enough for a few days, getting super hungry and irritable, and then eating more on the next few days to quell your hunger. Basically, this is ridiculously difficult on the body.

So what is the answer?

If tracking food on an app leads to over restriction, binging, or obsessing over foods you “can” and “can’t” eat then here are some helpful tips!

Use a Different System

The hand method from Precision Nutrition can be extremely helpful! Now you are using your hand as a guide to get in enough food and as a result, you are no longer falling into the cycle of starving and overeating!

Why does this work?

• Hands are portable: Your hands go with you everywhere so there is no need to remember a measuring cup or scale
• Hands are a consistent size: Since your hands are always the same size this means your measurement will be the same each time
• Hands scale to the individual: Most of the time smaller people will have smaller hands and larger people will have larger hands. This is helpful because we need different calories and nutrients based on our body size.
• Less stress: Hand-size portions can help you track without the time consuming weighing, measuring, and tracking food in an app can have

Where to start

Try this out for a few days for each meal and see how it goes!

1-2 palms of protein dense foods: meat, Greek yogurt, eggs

1-2 fists of non-starchy veggies: broccoli, lettuce, bell peppers, egg plant

1-2 cupped handfuls of carb dense foods: potatoes, rice, fruits

1-2 thumbs of fat-dense foods: nuts, butter, cheese

Ready for more Info?

Check out a few of our nutrition blogs here and here

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