Episode 105: Hate Tracking Your Food? Here’s What to Do

Confession: I (Rachel, CEO of MindStrong) hate tracking my food (and I no longer do it!). If you feel this deeply, this is for you

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Transcript

 | Tracking Final Thu, Jul 31, 2025 12:58PM 16:09 SUMMARY KEYWORDS food tracking, human biology, intuitive eating, macro tracking, nutrition skill, ruminating,
 personal budget, calorie breakdown, portion sizes, eating habits, temporary training, skill mastery, body needs, consistency, tool bag SPEAKERS Speaker 1 
 | S Speaker 1 00:00 Welcome back to the becoming mind strong podcast, and I am very intentionally ending this season with a conversation about tracking your food. And here's why, if you've been paying attention, you've been listening to the past podcast. You know this just makes sense, right? It is human biology. 101, what I did not discover is Rachel's magic pill. What I discovered is welcome to the biology of a menopausal woman. It happens that that my superpower is educating. So I have built a program around making what can feel like a big, complicated subject, super pun intended, bite size and easy to follow, but what we teach just makes sense, because it's human biology. 101, now with that said, I have done this long enough to know that when I start talking about tracking your food, right? Because you've heard me say a million times, we give everyone the first same as first assignment, eat as you normally eat. Do not pay attention to their goals. Pop your food into a food tracking app, right? And then, if you're going through a healing stage, like we talked about in past episodes, we're going to slowly increase those numbers. All of that involves tracking your food. I've done this long enough to know that if I'm on, let's say, a live workshop, talking to few 100 women, and I say the word tracking your food, I can feel like 80% of them tense up and we hear things like that. Sounds so tedious, right? I already ruminate about food all the time. Isn't this going to make it worse? I don't want to do that. I just want to listen to my body. And what I want to talk about today is specifically the tracking part, because sometimes I tell people this and their jaw drops to the floor. I don't track my food anymore, and that's how it's bonkers, right? How you going to run a company based around macro tracking when you don't track. And to me, the point is not to track forever. Do we have women that that say the control this gives me, I'll track forever? Absolutely, to me, that's not the point. To me, macro tracking is a temporary training ground to get to a place where we don't need it anymore, and that's what we're going to dive into today. Check it out when I start tracking, talking about tracking food, you know, there's, there's a couple heavy hitter pieces of resistance that we hear time and time again, and I want to talk about a couple of them, and then I want to zoom out and talk about big picture. Why tracking? Why not something else? Right? The biggest one is this concept of rumination. I already think about food all day long. Won't this make it worse? And in fact, I have a past podcast all about this, but I want to touch on it. Want to touch on it lightly here. There is a massive difference between ruminating and mastering a skill. Rumination is our brains way of keeping us safe. It's repeating 

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a thought or an experience or a pattern over and over and over and over again, and it is mentally draining and it physically takes up our energy. It is exhausting and it is unproductive. It is it is a safety mechanism from our brain mastering a skill can actually energize you, right? If you've ever maybe you were studying for something, maybe you were learning a different skill, and you were like, yes, let's get our hands in the dirt. Let's focus on this. Let's master this in a nerdy way. That can be kind of fun, right? They are not the same thing. So what most of us have gone through or going through life doing when it comes to nutrition is the shoulds, the half dues, must right? I shouldn't eat that. I should eat this. I shouldn't have eaten this. I should be doing this. That's ruminating, that's exhausting, that will get you to the end of the day, hanging on by a thread. One of the things we hear from members time and time again is, I'm actually shocked how much fun this is. I call macro tracking, the nerdy game of Tetris. If you ever played the game of Tetris, it's all about fitting those puzzle pieces together, right? That's what we do with food. Once we know your personal budget, right? Because if you've been paying attention, you now understand to a greater depth why online macro calculators won't work. But once you know your personal budget, total calories, carbs, have protein. How do I eat the foods I love and fit them together like a little puzzle to stay within my budget in the nerdiest way, it's kind of fun. Those two things are not the same, temporarily putting your focus and attention on something to learn a skill, versus ruminating and the shoulds and the must and the have tos and the why did I not the same brain energy, not the same conversation. Now, tracking can sound tedious. It can sound like pun totally intended. Another thing on my plate, tracking to me, here's the whole point of this episode, and here's one of the most important things I can tell you about tracking your food. Tracking to me is a temporary training ground, a temporary training ground and a necessary training ground if we want to get to a place of genuine intuitive eating. Intuitive Eating is a very realistic goal. Intuitive Eating means I'm going to listen to my body and I'm going to give it what it's asking for. The problem is, if you have not, and you know, I don't like to speak in concrete station statements. This is a concrete statement, if you have not put in the timing consistency to learn what your body needs and given it some timing consistency for your brain and body to have some conversations. We're about to talk of that about that you are not eating intuitively. You are eating off habit. And I'm going to tell you my. Story. If you've watched my workshop, I always use this, this story. When I was a kid, I was not allowed to eat fast food. It side note, but it's kind of my parents find it hilarious that I work in the field of nutrition, because, like every kid, I loved Lucky Charms, I love fast food, and they would not let me eat that stuff. And now I work in the world of nutrition, maybe because I can teach women how to you can still have Lucky Charms once in a while. Anyway, I digress. But when I was a kid, back in the day, McDonald's did 29 cent hamburgers every Tuesday. Now, 

Speaker 1 05:30 

come Monday night, you can imagine little Rachel's mouth was drooling thinking about the hamburger coming up. If I were an adult, I would probably say something like, Oh, I must be low in iron because I'm craving a hamburger. I'm not. I'm not craving a hamburger because I'm low in iron. My brain has been wired that every Tuesday we have a hamburger. So of course, I'm craving it. That's habit. That's not intuition. If we want to genuinely eat intuitively. There are three non negotiables. Again, I'm going to speak in very firm statements here, because there's no way around this. Otherwise, you're just guessing. Otherwise, you're just eating off habit. We need to, number one, know what your personal personal body needs, and if you've been paying attention, you now understand to a greater depth again, why online macro calculators do not work. This has to be incredibly personalized. We need to know what your personal body needs total calories, break down a carbs, fat, protein number two, and just as importantly, we need to 

give it time and consistency. It is a very realistic goal for our brains and bodies to have conversations like, Hey, I think I'm a little low in protein today. Hey, I think I'm getting a little high in fat today. But if you don't know what your body needs, and if you haven't put in the time and consistency to to feel what that feels like for your brain and body to have those conversations, that is not intuitive eating, that's eating off habit. And the third one happens organically. You don't have to force this. One thing you're going to naturally learn is what's in your food, right? We're going to get better at eyeballing portion sizes, because for most of us, what we think is a tablespoon of peanut butter is not a tablespoon of peanut butter. And you'll start to think of things like, you know what? I'm feeling kind of snacky right now. I know I'm probably a little low on protein. What's a good snack that I can go to and grab that has a decent amount of protein? You don't have to force that part. You're going to naturally learn that through mastering the skill of nutrition. If you have not learned those things, there is no way for you to intuitively, and I'm going to say that definitively. But when you have put in the temporary training ground to learn what your personal body needs, you've given a time and consistency for your brain and body to have those conversations, and you've gotten better at learning what's in your food and eyeballing portion sizes. Absolutely, it is a very realistic goal to release the tracking and eat intuitively. Now, if you listen to my past podcast episodes, you've you've heard me talk very openly about that I believed at that time that I was someone who would track forever. We have a shocking number, and I say shocking on purpose, because as the years have gone on, there's been more and more and more, and I'm kind of surprised every time, but we have a shocking number of women who come to us and they're like, you know, I was really resistant to tracking, but the amount of control this gives me, I think I'll do this forever. And the answer is, cool, you gotta do what works for you, and you don't have to make the Forever decision right now, right? Years ago, I had spent almost a decade tracking macros, all data in my brain. Said I would do it forever. And then life shifted. My business started rapidly growing, and I wanted to serve more women. You know, I wanted to build my relationship. I wanted to focus on my home life. So I did a little experiment. I didn't say today's the day I stopped tracking. I just stopped tracking for a few days, and I felt okay. You know, my body didn't change at all. My workouts felt fueled. I've done this long enough to know what's in my food. I was like, You know what? This feels kind of kind of nice, like, what if I just keep it going? And so I stopped tracking organically. And now if I go on a vacation and I eat my body weight in pasta, and I come back and I'm like, I have no idea what my body actually needs because I ate nothing but pasta for a week. I don't have to remaster the skill. I don't have to relearn the skill. It's in my tool bag. I'll take it out. I'll track for three days. I'll get back on track. I put it back away. Whether or not you're going to be someone who tracks forever, whether you're going to be intuitive eater, whether you're going to do what most people do is kind of blend and dance through the two. Is not something you have to decide. But what we do have to know is that there's two options. We can wish and hope and pray and guess that something's going to work Zero out of billion recommend, or we can condense time fastest route from point A to point B. We get a plan. We learn what our body needs. We put in the time and consistency until our brain and bodies are having these conversations, we get better at eyeballing our food. And then down the road, we can do an experiment. Sometimes our coaches will do this with people who've been who've been tracking for a while, and they'll say, You know what, let's practice. Let's take a day. Let's take a day and see what it would feel like to eat intuitively. And if you want to be more exact with it, we can, we can literally track the data like, take a day. Don't track as the day. Goes on. Try to eat intuitively. And if you really want to, you can just go by how you feel, if you want, but if you really want to track it at the end of the day and see how close you got. And if it didn't feel good, if it felt scary, go back to tracking, if it felt great. Let's try it for two days, right? None of this has to be a switch that flicks on and off, but my favorite analogy that I will always come back to is this, because you've heard me say a million times differentiated learning is real. If I knew 10 approaches to nutrition that actually worked and 

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were sustainable, I teach 10, and say, let's figure out for you what the best one is. The reason that the only thing I have ever taught, and the only thing who knows in the future, but the only thing I can see myself teaching it's been almost a decade, is macro tracking is because of this analogy. Let's say that I'm in a world of debt, a world of debt, and my goal is to be wealthy. And I go to a financial advisor and I say, Hey, I have all this debt right now. I want to be rich. Can you help me that financial advisor? If that financial advisor says to me, Oh, sure, just spend less and save more. It's like, well, thank you, Einstein, like, if that were working, I wouldn't be here right now. I did not need to get that advice from you. I didn't need to pay you for that, that hokey advice. But if that financial advisor says to me, absolutely, let's get our hands in the dirt, let's come up with a plan. Okay, we're going to start paying attention to how much is going toward paying off debt, how much has to go towards bills, how much we're going to allocate for savings, where that saves where that savings is going to go? Let's come up with a game plan. There is a very solid chance that I am not going to stick meticulously to that budget for the rest of my life. What I'm going to do is get myself into a solid place. I'm going to get myself out of the hole. I'm going to start establishing a flow until, on a day to day basis, I'm just naturally, I have wired my brain to think about money in a way where I'm avoiding debt, I'm saving I'm acquiring wealth, right? I don't need to track meticulously every day to get there. I just need to, number one, learn what it looks like, and number two, get in that flow. That's what macro tracking gives us. Again, there are plenty of women who say, the control this gives me, I'll do it forever. Cool. You know, the more you stick to the quote, unquote, budget, the more effective it is, right? The more you math, the more the math is going to math. 

Speaker 1 12:12 

And for most of us, the goal is to release this. We just want to eat. And we want to eat knowing that we're hitting our goals. We want to stop thinking about this and have peace of mind that we're hitting our goals. And just like that financial plan, yeah, in the beginning, we got to get our hands in the dirt. We got to make sure the math is mathing. We need to know what our body needs. We need our bodies and brains to have those conversations. We need to learn what's in our food. From there, if you want to keep track and be more meticulous, cool, if you want to dip your toe into the world of intuitive eating cool, if you want to completely intuitive, eat cool, because when it's not a black or white decision, right? What happens for most of our members is when they go on a vacation, when life starts lifeing, and you get a little bit off, you're like, Oh man, like I tried to eat intuitively. This week, my kid had a graduation party, and then my grandkid had a birthday, and it was just off the rockers. You don't need to come back to me and say, Rachel, can you reteach me how to learn macros, right? The tool is in your tool bag. You take it out, you track for a couple days. You get back on track, you put it away. The whole point of this is to master a skill, right? I'm going to stick with this terrible tool bag analogy. But if you have a bag of tools, it doesn't mean you use every one of those tools every day of your life. But if the shower starts leaking, yeah, you reach in there, you grab your wrench, you fix the shower, you put it away until the next leak happens. It doesn't mean we'll have this tool a tool bag. This tool bag of tools, I have to use every one every day, and it's the same thing with our nutrition. The point here is to put yourself in the driver's seat. The point here is to master the skill of nutrition. So it's you've heard me say this in past episodes, if you know how to ride a bike, and I say, well, fall off that bike. That's really difficult to do. And it's the same thing with nutrition. We hear from almost every one of our members, the only way I could gain the weight back as if I consciously tried. Because you know how your body works now, and you have the decision not to flow with that if you wanted to, for whatever reason. But once you know how to works, you know try to fall off that bike. It's really difficult to do. What we do here is master nutrition as a skill is put that tool in your tool bag. Doesn't mean you have 

to use the tool every day. And when you want to use the tool, you go in there, you take it out, and you put it right back away. So I say all this to say it is not something you have to decide upfront. It is something that's going to happen organically as you flow with your journey. And if you are someone who's listening to this and who's been studying this stuff, and you're like, oh, it all makes so much sense, and I just don't want to track my food. What I need you to hear is it is a temporary training ground, and it is a necessary training ground, much like the conversation about if there was an option C to skip a healing stage right, I'd be throwing elbows to be front of the line. If there was a way to get to intuitive eating without this, Sign me up. Right? Because I know most women don't want to track I will say it's actually the amount of women that come to us, and I've mentioned this, but are like, I can't believe how much fun this actually is. Like, the game of Tetris is mastering a skill. Like, it's fun to learn new things. And I felt that way too for many, many years. And you know, if the thought of that, if you don't buy into that, if you hear that, you're like, No, that's not going to be me. That's never going to be fun for me, the peace of mind here is just like that financial advisor. It is a necessary path to get from point A to point C. If there is a way to skip, if there's a way to go straight to intuitive eating, Sign me up. There's not. And think about it logically, right? How the heck do we know what our personal body needs? How the heck do we know what it feels like to eat x grams of protein, X amount of calories every day. If we haven't put in the time and consistency, once you put in the time and consistency, then we can start to dip our toe into do I want to do this forever? Do I want to eat intuitively? Do I want to blend the two? It's not a decision we have to make upfront. But if the thought of tracking your food sounds daunting, the mantra is, it is a necessary and it is a temporary training ground to get to a point where I am genuinely intuitive eating for the rest of my life. You.