When I explain how I track macros many people look aghast. “You weigh what you eat all the time?” Initially yes, now I do estimate some of the time, but weighing out my dinner and prepping my breakfasts and protein for easy meals each week has become second nature.

Here are my tips and tricks to make tracking your food a breeze!

The revelation for me was weighing my food. I am a terrible estimator, knowing how much I was actually eating made an incredible difference in my body weight and composition. Thus a kitchen scale is an essential purchase: weighmax food scale I am a big fan of this one because the bowl makes it easy to measure fruits, veggies, nuts and other loose items. A cool 12$ on Amazon, you can’t go wrong. It fits inside the bowl to make it easy to pack when traveling.

A good bathroom scale gives you a benchmark each morning when you get up of how you are progressing. However, it is important to remember that it’s not always about the number on the scale. Taking weekly measurements with a tape measure helps make body composition changes obvious.

I am never caught off guard when I eat out or want to eat something unknown at school because I have a handy pocket scale. A former student had to count carbs to manage his diabetes and had this scale, so I knew when I started WAG I needed one! It fits right in my clutch next to my wallet. Another 12$ on Amazon well spent: Blade digital pocket scale

Meal prep is a life saver and essential to hitting my goals. I am a big fan of setting aside time on Sunday afternoon or evening after I lift to put together some containers of protein, yogurt and berries for breakfast, salads for lunch, whatever I am in the mood for that week. My favorite containers for food prep are fit&fresh. They are easy to source on Amazon or at HomeGoods. When portioning protein I used Post-It tape and a Sharpie for easy labeling! When I get home from the gym around 8:45 and am in need of dinner all I have to do is figure out how much protein fits my remaining macros, throw in some frozen veggies and boom: dinner.

My go to breakfast this school year is 7.0 oz Fage plain Greek yogurt, 2.0 oz raspberries, 30g blueberries, and 30g Trader Joe’s cinnamon roasted almonds. I make each container for the week on Sunday and throw the almonds in a snack sized bag to add as the topping the morning of.