My Step-By-Step Process for Pre-Tracking

This is the biggest most important tip I’ll give you, PRETRACK! I cannot stress this enough. In order to set you up for success in your journey to becoming proficient at macro counting, I really urge beginner macro counters to pretrack your macros the night before.

I always do this in bed instead of scrolling Instagram. I plan the next day based on what’s in my cabinets/fridge, what on the schedule for the next day or what I’m craving. I can always tweak it the next day, but you can get your portions down pat and not completely miss the mark or try to overeat/force-feed at night if you’re under on your protein macro. 

I have a million reasons why I feel this way, but pretracking is so important, but the biggest reason is because you are learning. You are tailoring your daily menu to YOUR life, foods you like and your lifestyle. If you track as you go in the beginning, you’re more likely to miss the mark and be way under your protein goal or over on your carb goal and even now with all my years of tracking, tracking as I go can be difficult.

You will want to make sure you get your macros after adding in your daily meals to the app, to as close to 0 or within 5 grams of each macro. I call triple 0’s unicorn days, they are rare and that’s ok. Again, perfection is not the goal! You don’t have to be perfect to get results. Don’t stress the 0’s, but do make sure you pre track the night before, and eat from what you’ve pretracked like a menu the next day. Do what works for you but please know that a miss can be discouraging and make you feel like you are “failing” and will also slow reaching your goal. 

Pretracking is the best and fastest way to set yourself up for success.

Important note:

When pretracking, it’s important to track every single thing you put in your body. Everything. Condiments, coffee creamer, drinks, cooking oils, gum! I mean everything. There are no empty calories. You will learn over time that spices usually are negligible, and as you learn what doesn’t affect your macro numbers you can stop tracking those things (like spices), but for the purposes of getting used to what we’re trying to accomplish here, rule of thumb is to track EVERYTHING. Also total calories should be +/- 100 calories, but within 5 of each macro. The calories in MFP rarely ever add up exactly, as Its an app, and it rounds to the nearest whole number, etc,the calories don’t always add up exactly and that’s ok.

Step One:

The first step in planning out the next day is to put in your “must haves” first so we can be sure they fit. Maybe that’s dessert, coffee creamer, or your protein bar that helps you get through your day. I also like to track lots of snacks. A serving of nuts, a light & fit yogurt, apple, etc. These help get me to my next meal. It doesn’t matter if I eat them between meals, with a meal, or late at night. These are your flex meals that you can have whenever you need. In fact, it doesn’t matter when you eat any of your pretracked macros. If you want to eat your dinner for breakfast, lunch for dinner, snack for lunch, by all means go ahead! You just want to eat everything on your daily “menu!”

Step Two:

Track your protein. Add your breakfast protein, lunch protein, and dinner protein. Don’t worry about serving sizes until the end. Let’s say eggs for breakfast, grilled chicken for lunch and Salmon for dinner!

Step Three:

Track your carbs and fats, around your protein. Add some rice to dinner, fruit to breakfast, veggies to lunch etc. (This doesn’t have to be brown rice if you hate it! Track what your love! I prefer Jasmine rice and digest it better, and the macros are the same as brown rice, so I do Jasmine here! Do you!)

Step Four:

By now your goal numbers are probably haywire up top and freaking you out. Now is the time to tweak these serving sizes to fit your macro budget. I like to change the setting to decimals when adjusting them. It’s just so much easier than fractions. But do you! Up the protein servings, lower the carb servings. Play macro Tetris. Maybe have half a bagel instead of a whole, and instead of 2 eggs and cheese on top, using all your allotted fat grams in the morning, try egg whites and cheese. Play with foods you track to make them fit and get as close to 0 or within 5 grams of each macro goal. Refer to the lists below as well, if you have too much fat in the day and not enough protein, check the below lists and substitute what you need. Some days, you may not be able to fit everything you want, that’s normal!

Step Five:

Once you’ve pretracked your food, and you’re ready to eat the next day, you will open your app and begin. MEASURE out the foods you’ve pretracked. This is where the food scale comes into play. If you have pretracked 100 grams of egg whites, measure out 100g of egg whites on the scale. If you have pretracked 6oz of grilled chicken, weigh out 6 oz of chicken.

Additionally, if you track ketchup, salad dressing, butter, hummus or anything, and track it as 2 table spoons, or a ¼ cup, MEASURE THESE OUT when eating! A lot of times in life we eyeball “2 table spoons” coffee creamer, then we actually measure out what two tablespoons looks like, and you realize you’ve been drinking a ¼ cup twice a day for years and how many actual calories and fat that is! Measure everything!

Another quick note:

The serving sizes on packages are the for exact form whatever inside of the package is in. FOR EXAMPLE: If you have a package of raw chicken breast, and you track 8oz of chicken, the Macros are for the raw chicken. Once you cook it the water will cook out and therefore the meat will become denser. If you were to weight it again after it would be cooked it might be 6oz or so. So the rule of thumb is, to always track in the way in which you weigh it. My fitness pal will have “Purdue chicken breast” as an option. Unless it says otherwise in the raw form, or however it is packaged. Weigh in the raw form, then eat those exact pieces. OR track “GRILLED chicken” and weigh your meat once it’s been grilled. WHATEVER WAY YOU MEASURE IT IS, THE WAY IT HAS TO BE TRACKED TO BE ACCURATE.

Another example is Kodiak pancake mix. The serving size is a ½ cup. This is for WHAT IS IN THE BOX, which is just powder. Even though it says add milk to make a batter. You are not tracking the batter though. The label is for WHAT IS INSIDE THE BOX. How to measure and track it correctly would be to measure the ½ cup of pancake mix, and track it as exactly that in MFP, then add 1/2 cup almond milk and track that separately, in the meal in the app.

Have fun! Get creative! Experiment! But also remember you get more bang for your buck with whole foods and will fuel yourself longer with fiber rich foods, and feel fuller. Technically you can have 2 Oreos as a snack! Great! But is 2 Oreos going to hold you over you as a snack for 2 hours until dinner? Or is a whole entire yogurt parfait with granola, berries and honey going to fill you? You get where I’m going with this!