How to Maintain a Healthy Diet Without Tracking Calories

There are a few universal truths about getting and staying fit: move often, rest well, and maintain a healthy diet.

If you are looking for tricks to move more often and accidentally found yourself clicking on this post instead, head over here. I’ve got more than a few helpful articles and fun workouts for you to try.

Intent on learning some better rest and recovery techniques? This article will help: 5 Proven Workout Recovery Strategies To Maximize Results.

But if you are indeed in need of a new strategy to maintain a healthy diet without tracking calories (bonus), don’t go anywhere because you are in the right place.

How to Maintain a Healthy Diet Without Tracking Calories

Tracking your habits and actions is a simple, effective way to stick to your plan and get results. But that doesn’t have to mean tracking calories. Logging anything – whether it be water intake, veggies eaten, or daily consistency – reinforces positive actions, solidifies new habits and in the long run, helps you reach your goals faster.

Meal tracking isn’t for everyone. It has it’s benefits, but it’s also time consuming and detail-driven. If you don’t have the time, and you’re trying to move away from a food focus and towards a healthier, easier relationship with what you eat, tracking calories may not be right for you.

These five food tracking goals have nothing to do with calories. And yet, they are still super powerful!

The idea here is to tracking consistency, rather than calorie counts. Each day, and really each meal, you can ask yourself these simple questions as a helpful reminder to make conscious eating decisions. If you answer “yes” to each question, you can rest assured that you’re making good decisions and can maintain a healthy diet.

1 – Did I respond to my hunger?

Understanding your body’s hunger cues isn’t always as straight forward as it sounds. Most of us have spent years either eating when we’re told to (because it’s “lunchtime”), and/or constantly inundated by the sight and smell of food that tricks us into thinking we’re hungry. Throw in emotions like boredom, or stress, or anxiety and now there’s even more to deal with.

But you’re body is a great communicator. You just have to learn to listen for, and listen to, it’s message.

It’s starts with acknowledging the difference between hunger and appetite.

When you’re actually hungry you’ll sense hunger cues such as your stomach growling, low energy, trouble focusing, even headaches. These are physiological sensations. As opposed to appetite which is driven more by desire than need.

How do I respond to hunger?

First, hit pause before eating. Life is inevitably going to throw you into situations where food, sometimes delicious food, is an option when you’re not really hungry. Before diving in check in with yourself. Do your best to answer “am I hungry?”. Take a walk – giving yourself both time and distance to make an honest, conscious decision.

Second, remind yourself that you have unconditional permission to eat. Meaning, you can always say “yes”. But you don’t have to. That mindset shift alone has powerful, positive repercussions on your sense of control and confidence.

2 – Did I recognize thirst?

This is about maintaining a healthy diet. Why does thirst matter?

A couple of reasons…

Every metabolic reaction that occurs in your body relies on or involves water. Water is in every cell in your body. Your body requires an equilibrium of water and sodium and other electrolytes to function optimally. And while your body cannot make it’s own water – which means you must consume it, regularly – it’s pretty good at losing it (think sweat and waste).

Even minor dehydration – the loss of body water that causes imbalances in your system – can cause fatigue, weakness, muscle cramping, and nausea. All symptoms that can really affect your quality of life and health.

So beyond the very real physiological discomforts of ignoring thirst…

Is the fact that staying hydrated has a more direct impact on your ability to maintain a healthy diet.

Drinking water frequently naturally suppresses your appetite. Water takes up space in your stomach, signaling to your brain that you’re full, resulting in fewer cravings and reduced hunger.

Thirst is often mistaken as hunger. Drinking a glass of water before reaching for a snack is a good way to slow down enough to recognize that.

Finally, water helps fuel your workouts, albeit in a different way than say, protein or carbs. Proper hydration helps your muscles and joints move well. It helps your heart, lungs and other organs effectively handle the increased workload of exercise. Plus, a hydrated you is a more focused, energized you which means that as a whole, you’ll be able to put more into every rep, set and match.

What’s the best way to stay hydrated?

You’ll find what works for you but here’s what works for me:

• Start your day (yes, before coffee), with 1-2 cups of water. Hit brew on the coffee pot and then chug it down. Your body and all-day energy will thank you.
• Drink before, during and after exercise. Include electrolytes, especially if you’re a heavy sweater or live in a hot and humid area.
• Plan it and track it. Listen, I’ve been focused on drinking enough water for years now, and I still track my daily intake because I know that it’s easy to forget about – especially on those busy days!
  
  If you have trouble meeting your water needs, then plan for it. Plan on drinking half or more of your daily fluid goal by lunch time. You don’t want to be chugging water at bedtime and up all night proving to yourself that you did!

3 – Was I mindful of my satisfaction?

What maintaining a healthy diet without having to track calories comes down to is mindfulness. When you are able to choose foods, eat, and stop eating mindfully or intuitively – meaning with awareness and conscious decision making – then what and how much become less important than why.

Eating until your satisfied, but topping before you are stuffed. This is the key. And this is how you do it.

Slow down.

The benefits of eating slowly are clear:

• It takes roughly 20 minutes from when you start eating for your brain to send out “I’m full” signals. Slowing down allows your stomach the time to signal to your brain that you’ve had enough, and for your brain to tell the rest of you to stop eating.
  
• That in turn improves digestion. The longer you take to eat and chew, the more optimally your digestive system can operate. Better digestion means greater comfort, less bloat, and improved nutrient absorption.
  
• Meal satisfaction isn’t just about quantity. It’s also about enjoyment and at it’s basest level, the act of chewing (which is why a juice cleanse doesn’t satisfy the way a breakfast sandwich does). The flavors, colors, aromas and textures matter. The company you keep while enjoying a meal matters.

Here are some tips on how to slow down in a world that functions at high speed…

1. Decrease the distractions. Turn off the TV. Close your laptop. Put your phone on airplane mode.
2. Put your food on a plate and sit down at a table every time. No eating out of a box or bag.
3. Utensils down between bites.
4. Pace yourself to the slowest eater.
5. Time yourself! Set a timer to see how long it takes you to finish dinner. Tomorrow, add 2 minutes to that timer.

Eat until 80% full.

You know what stuffed feels like. It’s that post-Thanksgiving-dinner-but-can’t-say-no-to-pie, stretchy pants kind of vibe. It’s 110% full.

And you know what famished feels like. That oops-I-missed-lunch-and-skipped-breakfast 5 p.m. rumble in your stomach. Let’s call that 0%. 

80% is somewhere in between. No longer hungry, but not stuffed. Satisfied, but not unbutton-your-pants full.

You might not know what this feels like right away but with time, you will.

Here’s how…

p.s. Pick 1 strategy to try out at a time. The fewer things to focus on or change in your normal routine, the more likely it is to stick.

• Rate your hunger on a scale of 1-10 (1 being starving and being Thanksgiving stuffed), before, during and after your meal. You want to eat when you’re at about a 3-4, and stop when you’re at about an 8. Aka 80% full.
  
• Slow down (see above).

4 – Did I include protein, carbs and fats?

Macro tracking is not a requirement of healthy eating. But understanding what macros are, and why they matter, is important.

I’m not going to dive into a macro tutorial in this article because I already did that over here. But just to reinforce why including all of these nutrients in your diet is so important…

Macronutrients are the ingredients your body runs on. Carbs give your body energy. Protein helps to build and repair your body’s cells and tissues. Fats help your body absorb certain vitamins and minerals, helps balance hormones and improves satiety. Understanding the role macronutrients play in your healthy, vibrant and long-lasting life is vital to ditching the diet/calorie-counting mentality and shifting to a more flexible, well-rounded mindset.

Your body functions best with a mix of proteins, carbs and fats. Do you have to include every macro in every meal? No. But here are a few rules of thumb to follow:

• Include protein in every meal. Your body can’t store protein the way it can store carbs and fats but it needs protein to functions well, to maintain a healthy metabolism and to grow lean muscle. So eating it frequently is important.
  
  Plus, combining protein with fats and/or carbs slows the digestion time of that latter two macros keeping you fuller, longer.
  
• Your brain requires carbohydrates. In fact, studies show that your brain needs 130 grams of carbohydrates each day! That said, your brain doesn’t need crap carbs. What it thrives on are minimally processed, complex carbohydrates, fruits and vegetables.
  
• At least 20% of your calories should come from fat.

There are a few numbers in there but that doesn’t mean start counting. Just pay attention. Include a variety of macronutrients in your meals…every meal. And pick from a variety of foods from each category, too!

Feel free to swipe my Macro Sources PDFs from the files in my Facebook Group!

5 – Did I eat mostly whole foods?

On the note of whole foods…

The most fool-proof way to maintain a healthy diet without having to track macros is to simply stop eating crap, and start eating minimally process, whole foods.

Processed foods are hard to say “no” to. They are designed to taste good. Loaded with added sugars, fats, sodium to create tastes and textures that are addictive to your brain. But they’re also laden with preservatives, chemicals, colorings and other man-made junk that is not just not good for you, but can be straight up detrimental to your health and longevity.

Whole foods contain nature-made macronutrients that let you live. They contain vitamins and minerals to help you thrive. And whole foods have water and fiber that fill you up and keep you full. All the good. None of the crap.

When you ditch processed foods in favor of the minimally processed variety you’ll start to experience:

• Fewer cravings.
• Better weight management.
• Healthier hair and skin.
• Increased satisfaction.
• More energy.
• Fewer mood swings.
• Better sleeping habits.
• Improved digestion.
• Healthier immune system.

When it comes down to it, whole foods are an absolute life, physique and happiness game changer.