Why Food Logging Matters

Philip Pape 0:01

You're committed to fat loss and you know that tracking your food works . You've seen the results when you actually do it consistently , or you've heard about this . But every time you think about logging that homemade stir-fry or 10-ingredient recipe , you feel the familiar resistance , the mental friction of searching through databases , entering individual ingredients , trying to estimate portions for complex meals . So you skip it or you do it sporadically , and then you wonder why your results aren't consistent . What if food logging could become so automatic that you barely think about it ? What if it actually made you more aware of your intake , more consistent with your goals and better at hitting your calories and macros without the daily struggle ? In this episode , I'm showing you seven specific ways to eliminate the friction that is sabotaging your tracking consistency . Welcome to Wits and Weights , the show that helps you build a strong , healthy physique using evidence , engineering and efficiency . I'm your host certified nutrition coach , philip Pape , and today we're covering something that is going to save you serious time and frustration food logging . It does not have to be tedious , but first let's talk about why we track food at all . Most apps just give you generic calorie targets based on outdated calculators that can be off by hundreds of calories , and the app that I use . It's called Macrofactor , and I'm setting the stage with a specific app for this conversation , because it is the only one that does what we're going to talk about here . It actually learns your metabolic rate . That's what it does . It learns your expenditure from your data and then it adjusts your targets accordingly . So it's one thing just to log food . It's another thing to use that information to then hit your goals , and that's why your targets can be accurate , instead of these educated guesses and Macrofactor . The reason I love it is very fast . It's been tested as the fastest food logger on the market against 20 other apps measuring the number of actions required for common tasks against 20 other apps measuring the number of actions required for common tasks . And even when I polled our Facebook group , the average screen time to use it is about three minutes a day . Three minutes Now . That is less time that it takes to scroll through Instagram and probably far less than it takes many of you to scroll through social media . So , coming up , I'm going to cover seven core hacks that I love that will transform your logging efficiency , plus two bonus features that most people don't even know exist . They're fairly new and they could be a game changer and save you even more time . So stick around for all of those the seven hacks plus the two bonus hacks .

Philip Pape 2:36

Now , before we get into these , if you want to try the fastest , most accurate nutrition app available that I personally use , all my clients use , there's a reason I love it so much , just like I love the barbell for lifting weights . I want you to download Macrofactor right now . Use my code , wits and Weights all one word and you'll get two weeks completely free . Try it out , because if you don't like it , there's no risk . It is the only app that learns your actual metabolism instead of relying on generic calculations and , as you'll see , it is designed to make logging as effortless as possible , and that's my goal here is to make all this stuff that we do very simple .

MacroFactor (use code WITSANDWEIGHTS to try it free)

Philip Pape 3:12

So let's get into the hacks . Let's do it . First of all , most people are tracking their food like it's 1999 , right . They're either using something like MyFitnessPal , which is okay as a logger , even though it's slow and it has a ton of inaccurate database entries , but it also lacks the feedback loop of okay , well , how much should I eat for my goals , or they're using a notebook or some other way of logging . Now , I'm not against logging your food in some way . Some people don't even want to track calories and macros . Some people want to track biofeedback and nutrients and how they feel and their hunger signals , and that's fine . But if you're looking for a super high level of precision which I think we are we're trying to get a fat loss or body comp goal , then you want the right tool for the job , right ?

Philip Pape 3:57

So I think a lot of the frustration from using most apps is they either have to scroll a bunch of options and they can't find one that's correct . You have to type in a bunch of data for the food rather than quickly enter it , and you have to repeat it for every ingredient , every meal . It's hard to do recipes . When you're making a lot of things at home , you feel like you can never be accurate . When you go to a restaurant , it's hard right . There's just lots of points of friction and bottlenecks . As to why people quit tracking after a few weeks , it's not because tracking doesn't work . It's because they're using a tool or an app or an approach that makes it unnecessarily complicated .

Philip Pape 4:34

So again , this is why I like Macrofactor and why this episode is geared around that app specifically , I will say some of the tips today . They may exist in other apps , they may give you ideas if you're not using macro factor , and that's cool , um , anything that can empower you to get the job done . But look , I'm looking for something fast , that works well , that gives you my metabolism , that tells me the calories and macros I need If I'm trying to be in a , you know , 500 calorie deficit or , let's say , a 200 calorie surplus to build muscle . Okay , and I want to log my meal in like one minute 30 seconds , even 10 seconds , even , if I can . So let's start with hack number one , probably

Copy & Paste: The Time-Saving Hack

Philip Pape 5:12

the most common , but it is still my favorite and it's going to save you probably more time than all the other ones combined , and that is copy and paste .

Philip Pape 5:20

Okay , macrofactor lets you copy at lots of different levels that people don't even often realize . You can copy the entire day , the specific time , which they don't call it meals , but effectively it's like a meal if you logged it at the same time or specific foods , and so you can do it literally by tapping and then tapping where you want to paste . You don't even have to click , copy or paste . And so , if you eat fairly consistently . If you eat the same breakfast every day and that's something most of us do then every day you go in , you just tap . You tap , very simple . Or if you have an entire day that you want to use to replicate or you want to use as a baseline meal plan , you tap the whole day and you copy , you go to edit or you go to copy paste day , right , you can do the whole day for a specific meal , specific time , or the whole day .

Philip Pape 6:07

And when you're trying to plan ahead , this is really powerful because if you're trying to build tomorrow's meals tonight , copying from where you begin is a perfect place , because you're going to make small adjustments from there , right . And then your food log in your app becomes the meal planning tool and that ensures consistency . So you don't have to guess about how much you logged yesterday . If you've already logged it right , you kind of know okay , that's what I did and , yes , I hit my protein or I didn't . So tomorrow all I have to do is scale that up a little bit or add something in or make a swap . So I really like that kind of nudge based approach where you copy and paste your portions , your macros so that they're identical and then you can just shift them into a new direction . So that's a big one , and I realize that most food loggers let you copy and paste in some way . But I will say it's super , super fast and it's like two taps .

Philip Pape 6:51

Hack number two is to create recipes from your timeline

Creating Recipes From Timeline

Philip Pape 6:56

. So this is really cool because it turns a kind of messy meal log where you have a lot of different ingredients that you just put together and you spent maybe longer than you wanted to . You know , even with macro factor , you're going to have to take the time to log each thing or to weigh each thing and find it and log it . But once you've done that , if it's something you're going to typically make , like a stir fry with chicken , vegetables and rice , then you can select all the foods , say , create recipes , that's it , and then it's going to bundle everything into a recipe that you can then reuse in the future . And we don't have to be perfect about it too . Some people get hung up on that . If you do the stir fry next time and the ingredients are , the ratios are a little bit off , so what ? It's actually probably good enough and you can just log hey , this , this is my chicken and vegetable stir fry . Right Now , every time you eat the meal , it's one tap and you just change the amount . And when you do these recipes , if every ingredient is has its weight in grams , then the whole thing can be determined in grams as well . So the same thing applies even if it's not a recipe per se , but just kind of a complex meal that you have on a regular basis . Same idea , like if you have a curry that has 12 ingredients with spices and everything you can just do it once fairly accurately and then just save it as a recipe . That's hack number two .

Philip Pape 8:06

Hack number three is your nutrition breakdown and specifically , what I mean is the contributors to your macros and micros

Analyzing Your Nutrition Breakdown

Philip Pape 8:18

for that day . All right , a lot of people don't realize this happens . When you go to the dashboard and you scroll down , there are these little tiles in the nutrition section . So , for example , if you tap fiber , it's going to show you the biggest contributors to fiber today . Right , that's really , really powerful for optimization . It's kind of a reverse engineering of okay , this is what I've been eating , what is contributing the most to this particular ingredient or macro fiber or micronutrient like selenium or magnesium or what have you , and then you know , okay , I'm getting 80% of this thing from these two meals and not from the rest , and you can start to optimize or repeat what you're doing if it's successful , and so then you could start to balance your intake based on the things you're really concerned about . You know why am I always hungry between lunch and dinner ? All right , well , I'm only getting you know , 15 grams of protein and no fiber between there . Problem identified , problem solved . So again , go to your dashboard , scroll down , tap on any of the micronutrients , or fiber or macronutrients , and you can see what the biggest contributors are . So that's a really good tool .

Philip Pape 9:20

Hack number four is pre-logging and pre-planning using

Pre-logging: Plan For Success

Philip Pape 9:25

the app . This is just one of the best unsung hero type features that a lot of people don't take advantage of . But when somebody comes to me with a question like I'm really struggling to get enough protein but not go over my calories , and I'm like , well , why don't you go ahead and pre-log tomorrow and pretend that it's successful , what would it look like ? That's really it . It's like you're putting yourself in your future body and saying , okay , this is what I ate today to be successful , and you're pre-logging it and that's all you have to do ? You're basically going in and saying what do I have in my house ? Or what did I make today ? I'm going to paste it to tomorrow and then I'm going to tweak . I'm going to up the protein here , reduce the fat here , swap out the you know , the ribeye here for the sirloin here , whatever makes sense .

Philip Pape 10:09

You could also use this when going to a restaurant or going to a party or going somewhere where you're not quite sure , or maybe you can plan ahead . But either way , you can pre-log what you plan to eat . Right , if it's a restaurant , you can look at their menu or just the general foods that they have and say , okay , if it's a restaurant , you can look at their menu or just the general foods that they have and say , okay , I'm going to pre-log and yeah , it's going to be a 1,500 calorie meal . I'm really going to enjoy myself . How does that affect the rest of my day before the restaurant , outing Lighter meals , more protein , more vegetables ? Or you're just going to accept the fact that you're going to be 500 calories over for that day and then adjust the rest of your week accordingly ? So again , you're not trying to restrict , you're actually trying to be intentional . You're trying to be intentional .

Philip Pape 10:48

So if you're going to go to that Italian restaurant , you want to enjoy the pasta . Now you can make a conscious choice and maybe you decide okay , I'm going to have the meat sauce instead of the Alfredo sauce , because I noticed that'll save me 300 calories , but it'll still be super delicious . I'm going to enjoy myself . It's a big psychological benefit . It removes decision fatigue . It removes anxiety and guesswork from social eating . Even if you're going to a party , you could probably guess there's going to be a bunch of carb and fat laden foods , maybe some cake or some dessert , maybe alcohol . If you're going to choose to imbibe , you can pre-log all that stuff , okay . So phenomenal , very powerful tool .

Philip Pape 11:22

Now , real quick reminder if you want to learn more about how to use these tools , okay , whether it's macro factor , whether it's you're tracking your biofeedback , whether it's you're tracking your measurements , whether it's lifting weights , join us in Physique University . That is where we teach you how to leverage the tools . So , even if you're using macro factor and you've listened to my show and you're doing it on your own that's awesome You're going to get stuck . You're going to get stuck when your expenditure starts to drop or when you make a change and you're not quite sure why you're not losing or gaining weight or what have you . That is , that's what we help with , and so if you want to join us and get those tools link is in the show notes If you use my special link , you'll get a free custom nutrition plan that I personally build for you to get you off on the right foot as kind of an accelerator . That's my gift to you as a podcast listener . So again , wits and Weights Physique University , join us in there and I will continue on to the next hack .

Philip Pape 12:16

Okay , hack number five is basically to be more smart about logging with the Pareto

Smart Logging With 80/20 Principle

Philip Pape 12:25

principle . It's called the 80-20 . I'm not talking about 80% whole foods . I'm talking about when you have a complex meal which , if you're eating at home , sometimes that is the case you have a lot of vegetables , seasonings , whatever . Let's say you have a salad lettuce , tomatoes , cucumbers , peppers , onions , lots of things .

Philip Pape 12:40

Instead of logging every ingredient separately , look for options in the database like house salad or mixed green salad . Sometimes it's like with dressing , without dressing . And the database in Macrofactor is really good . It has common foods with lots and lots of these entries , you could even pick a restaurant food . So if you know you're going to eat something that's equivalent to Buffalo Wild Wings wings , no matter where you got them from , or even if you made them at home .

Philip Pape 13:06

You can do it that way as well . The idea is to represent what you're eating about 80 , 90% accurately instead of 100% . That takes way more time , right , it's a time efficiency tool . So again , if you have a bunch of berries like apple and blueberries and banana , maybe look for mixed berries or fruit salad and just do the stiff test of the macros . Look , right , you know , I did the cucumber salad the other day , but the cucumber had , or the salad had , yogurt in it and the cucumber salad was assuming vinegar . So it was like no calories . And I said , okay , that's not quite right . I need to find one that has a few more calories for the yogurt , or I'll just add yogurt separately .

Philip Pape 13:49

So this is really understanding when precision matters and when it doesn't . And the difference between logging something like vegetables as individual items as opposed to a group salad is like 20 calories , maybe two grams of carbs . It's so insignificant that the time savings is worth it , right ? That might not be the case for a much richer dish , right , you know ? Indian food , chinese food right , something like that , or something with lots of fats and oils and things , then you might have to get a little more precise , but even then , I'm going to suggest that you group like foods together and maintain reasonable accuracy while dramatically reducing the friction to log it right . Even if you're a perfectionist like me , I've found that it's still more than precise enough to get the job done , and that means you'll be more consistent , and consistency to me matters more than precision in this context . All right , so that's five hacks .

Philip Pape 14:32

Let's move on to number six , and remember , I'm actually going to throw in two bonus hacks after we get through the seventh one . So the sixth hack is about the feature that lets you scan nutrition labels

Scanning Labels & Tracking Trends

Philip Pape 14:42

. So what I like about this is if you're using a packaged food and you scan the barcode , sometimes it won't find it , or occasionally it'll find something and it doesn't quite look right . Right , and that's just the chances of inaccuracy in the database . It happens . So macro factor is actually able to scan the nutrition label itself and automatically pull out all the data from the label the calories , the macros , the micros , all of it and so you just point it , give it a few seconds , boom , boom , boom , it pulls it in even on like a wrinkled package . If you just kind of straighten it out a little bit , it's pretty good and it'll populate everything for you and you can save that . You could even connect it with the barcode itself so that that's what it shows up for you when you use the barcode next time .

Philip Pape 15:25

And this is what's called OCR technology . It's like optical character recognition , I think it stands for . It's an old technology , but I think they probably connect it to AI and it's really really fast . So this works for anything that has a nutrition label whatsoever . Maybe it doesn't have a barcode , maybe it's something you got at Whole Foods or a local , a local place where it's like it's just not going to be in the database . So that's all you have to do . It's really cool , all right .

Philip Pape 15:49

Hack number seven is really good Once you've started tracking and you're like I need to start optimizing for things . And this is where you can look at the nutrition overview . Okay , so if you go into your food log and you tap the macros at the top , it's going to take your nutrition overview and then you can select a time range today , one day , I think it's a week , a month , three months and a year , and one of my favorites for this is fiber , for example . You know , trying to get enough fiber . Well , look , if you look at the last month that's , it's going to give you the average of all your micros and macros , including including fiber , for example , and you can say you know what ? I've been averaging 18 grams , but I really want to be at 25 or 30 , right , and averages are good because you might have had a few high days where you're like really proud of yourself . That's awesome .

Philip Pape 16:35

But then you also come to reality to see that , on average , it's lower than you want it to be . And so , instead of thinking of just daily targets or no , you do think of daily targets but instead of thinking of just one-offs , you're thinking of more of the trend and the averages over time , just like we do with weight trends , just like we do a restraint progression , we're talking about progress over time . So , instead of stressing about being too low on something just today , which you might be , look at your averages . Maybe your averages are good enough and one day doesn't break the bank , or maybe it's indicative that you do have a goal of low-hanging fruit to pun intended if it's fiber to increase , and so this gives you the bigger picture , which , just like with weight training , it prevents the daily fluctuations from undercutting your confidence right ? One low protein day isn't a big deal if the weekly average is plenty , and it's kind of the only view in macro factor that really gives you that , and so I like to look at it on a regular basis . Now , when you tap into the nutrition overview , you will also see , just for today , how you're tracking against your macros , how you're tracking against your micros , and that is also powerful as well , in case you're a little behind on something . So patterns are fantastic , trends are fantastic . You can also look at weekends versus weekdays and really get some good insights here for your long-term habits .

Philip Pape 17:51

So those are my seven favorite hacks , and then , of course , I wanted to give you two bonus hacks that are based on much newer features that I'm still experimenting with .

Bonus Hacks: AI & Recipe Import

Philip Pape 18:00

So the first bonus hack is the photo logging with AI , and I'm still not 100% sold on it . Out for me . Now it has an option to do the picture with text . I would actually recommend doing that and just saying quickly the basic things that are there , and then it's going to do a reasonably good job most of the time of trying to figure out what's on your plate , and I tend to find that it's more conservative . In other words , it tends to estimate way more calories , which is probably what most people would want to do anyway , because the vast majority of people are trying to lose weight or lose fat and they don't want to under report their food . So I don't know if they designed it that way on purpose , but it seems to be the case . Sometimes it's way off and like it has no idea , it guesses completely wrong , right , like no , that's not a blueberry , that's a black bean , right . But in context of a whole dish , if you just give it a little nudge with some text , it can get reasonably close . So this is great .

Philip Pape 19:00

At like restaurants or when you travel , you know you can't take your food and you can't really estimate and you just need something to log . It's not bad . It's not bad . So I wanted to mention that I'm not a hundred percent sold on it yet , but I have been mentioning to folks who feel like they can't log at all for some reason take a picture , you can import the picture later , you don't have to do it in real time and try it out .

Philip Pape 19:19

And then the second bonus hack today is a brand new feature they just added , which is awesome . You can import a recipe from any website . So all you have to do , you go to create recipe and you paste in the link and it's going to import the ingredients , instructions , the serving , it's going to calculate the total weight so you can log it all and that's huge . Like if you're using recipes from the internet , it eliminates the tedious process of manually entering them the one time you have to enter it , which really isn't that bad . But again , we're trying to reduce friction as much as possible . So I really love this new feature . If you're the type of person who grabs recipes online , this will save you a ton of time to build a recipe library without manually entering it . By the way , kind of sub-hack . Number two is that you can export any recipe in Macrofactor and share it with anybody else who has it and they can import it and vice versa .

Philip Pape 20:11

So all of this stuff is just a really powerful way to use a tool that already exists to make the most of it and not feel like you know . Just a really powerful way to use a tool that already exists to make the most of it and not feel like , oh no , that's just another food logger , that's going to take too much time and then I'm not going to be consistent with my food . And when you combine all of these things together and pick , use the things that you need to save time , it's your system , it's part of your system of habits , of lifestyle , of tools that gets the job done right . Whether it's importing from a recipe , copying and pasting on a regular basis , pre-logging tomorrow's meal or this weekend's meal at the restaurant , looking at your nutrition overview to see how you're doing on fiber right On and on , any of these things could be a game changer for you . And it's not just about the saving time , it's also the precision and knowing how much you have to eat right , because by do what happens when you do all this ? Well , come Monday , the app is going to have a good idea of how many calories you're actually burning , based

Making Tracking Work For You

Philip Pape 21:03

on how your weight is changing and how much you've logged . That's the game changer , right ?

Philip Pape 21:07

So a lot of people think of tracking . Food is just recording the past , recording what happened , but it really comes up , becomes a planning tool and a proactive tool , and then one that allows you to know the how much and the when and the why . So the bottom line is , if food logging feels like a chore now , I don't think you're either using the right tool or using it as efficiently as you could , and there are places and opportunities to reduce friction . I wanted to make this episode for you to show you how you can do that to make things more seamless . And the goal is not to log perfectly . You can be off by 30% in either direction and as long as you're logging according to the evidence on this on on food logging that is actually sufficient to represent what you're eating and be consistent and have the right targets , believe it or not , versus not logging at all . Right , and I'll tell you what the people who are succeeding with tracking . They're not more disciplined than you .

Philip Pape 21:58

I've had people in Physique University who are like , oh , I hate tracking . And then I will have a conversation with them and say you know what ? Let's start with one simple thing , right , let's start with creating one day of food and using copy and paste . Tell me how difficult that really is and what you get out of it without changing your behaviors . And they're like oh my goodness , I didn't realize how enlightening it was to give me the information about how much protein I'm eating , what my food patterns are , how much . I went to McDonald's right and it gives you that awareness that you can make the choice and you have the power , and it's not some nutritionist , dietitian or influencer telling you this is how you have to eat .

Philip Pape 22:31

So if you want to implement these hacks and experience the same tool that I use which I'm a huge fan of it , obviously , which is why I became an affiliate , really from day one download Macrofactor right now . Use my code Wits and Weights . You'll get two weeks free to try it out . I'd love to hear from you on Instagram or by email how it's working for you . It's the same app I use with clients , the same app we use in Physique University with clients at the same app we use in Physique University .

Philip Pape 22:56

So if you plan to join us there and get help with it , get a head start by using it , and I have so many more hacks and tricks where that came from . So all you have to do is ask and the you know . I guess you can call some of these shortcuts . I call them more just intelligently using the features that are already there . All right , until next time , keep using your wits , lifting those weights , and remember that your dream physique is built through smart systems , not perfect data . This is Philip Pape and you've been listening to Wits and Weights . I will talk to you next time .