Imagine if your bank statement only reported some transactions and not others. And then you get this huge shock at the end of the month when you see your actual balance. Well, you might be doing the exact same thing with your diet, and then the big shock is oh no, I gained 10 pounds. How did that happen? We're going to talk about that on today's Quick Wits. Welcome to the Wits and Weights podcast. I'm your host, phillip Pape, and this twice a week podcast is dedicated to helping you achieve physical self-mastery by getting stronger, optimizing your nutrition and upgrading your body composition. We'll uncover science-backed strategies for movement, metabolism, muscle and mindset, with a skeptical eye on the fitness industry, so you can look and feel your absolute best. Let's dive right in. Welcome back to another Quick Wits, where we cut through the nutrition confusion.

Today we are tackling a common but critical error in dieting, and that is you're tracking your food, but you don't track everything. You use partial food tracking. Picture this you diligently log your breakfast and lunch, but you forget to log your dinner because enter excuse here, you're too tired, it's too tedious, you forgot. Maybe you don't log some of your snacks and you're grazing. Maybe you go out on the weekends to a restaurant and you don't log that In. Some days you're really good about logging and some days you're not.

All of these quote unquote transactions with your diet are now off the record. Imagine if your bank did the same thing to you. You see some deposits, you see some small expenditures in your online statement, but then a big transaction like grocery shopping or a trip you took on the weekend are just totally missing from your statement. Would you be surprised if your balance didn't match your expectations at the end of the month? It's really the same thing If the bank said here's your balance at the end. You just dropped $2,000 this month and you had no clue. That's exactly like not logging your meals. They are the equivalent of financial splurges that you're not accounting for, because, when it comes to psychology of human beings, the things that we are most, let's say, guilty about or don't want to track because they're going to reveal some truths about ourselves, are often the ones that we leave off. If you're using an app like Macro Factor, there really is no incentive to cheat yourself like that and it makes sense to log everything. In fact, there's an article they wrote where, if you cannot log certain meals for the day, just leave the entire day blank. Otherwise, log everything within 30% and you're golden. This avoids any shocks that come down the road, because now you have data from which to identify your metabolism, your food habits, your food quality, whether you're getting the macros you're trying to get, and you have clarity and you have awareness, and that's what we're going after.

Consistency with your tracking is going to be really crucial here, just like with your budgeting. The untracked dinners, the weekend treats, the little handful of nuts you nibbled on. They add up and when you're not logging them, you're only seeing half the story of your intake and then it's just completely useless. To be honest, it's not just about avoiding surprises, right Like the 10 pounds that I joked about in the teaser. You also get these valuable insights along the way very quickly.

Within the first few days of tracking, you start to see your eating patterns, areas for improvement, you start to hold yourself accountable. I see this with clients all the time. We start together and they are amazed at how they are discovering about themselves things they never knew and are able to jump forward in the process, and then I, as their coach, can work with them to accelerate that even further. As we move forward. Remember the importance of tracking everything.

If you're going to track just as you would track every expense in your bank statement, or would want the bank to report that to you, it's the complete picture, it's the full awareness of your nutritional intake, and then, with that full transparency comes real progress. Until next time, stay tuned and stay true to your tracking and to your goals. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Wits and Weights. If you found value in today's episode and know someone else who's looking to level up their wits or weights, please take a moment to share this episode with them and make sure to hit the follow button in your podcast platform right now to catch the next episode. Until then, stay strong.