What it Looks Like When You're the Only One in Your Household Tracking Macros

One of the questions I received quite a few times after my success is, what does it look like if I'm the only one eating macros in my household? And honestly, it's a great question to ask!

Doing this for quite a while now as the only one in my household, I can tell you that it's different, but 100% doable! Yes, I don't eat the exact same thing as my family. Yes, it takes a little bit of extra prep (since I work from home and don't do standard meal prepping). However I love it, and think this way of flexible dieting could definitely work for you too. Let's dig in! 

What are Macros?

Macros is short for macronutrients. In a nutshell, it's broken down to tracking how you're consuming three things: protein, carbs and fat. Most people utilize this way of lifestyle in order to achieve a specific goal, such as gaining more muscle, losing fat or even maintaining a certain weight. People also use this way of eating to hit specific fitness goals, such as a bodybuilding competition or new personal record in the gym. I initially started tracking macros to lose fat and perform better with movements in the gym. 

Why are they so important? 

Macros are important because it's where you get most your energy from. It also helps you to understand exactly where those calories are coming from, as not all calories are created equal. Although they can help assist in meeting your goals, they can also help with the quality of your diet, as most tend to choose food quality versus calorie content while following this type of lifestyle. For me, I didn't realize until I started tracking how small of protein portions I was eating, and how much fat I was actually consuming per meal. My body needed so much more of one, and so much less of the other.. and I had no idea.

How does this change family mealtime?

In my experience, I've found that it changes everything for me, but not my family. Instead of preparing one course, I have the kids eating one thing and myself eating the other (and we'll get to my husband in a second).

Basically, it's a lot harder to calculate and track a casserole portion, or really anything shared. Since tracking macros, I tend to do something similar to what my family is eating, but not the same. An example is family pizza night. No way my numbers aren't going to be way out of whack eating a greasy, full of cheese (and amazing good!) pizza! So, they get the good stuff, and I make myself my version of pizza. A lot of times we'll eat together, but completely separate meals. My kids are also young (two and five at the time of writing this), so they're just happy for food at the table while Mickey Mouse is on in the background. 😂

What happened at my house!

I started dabbling into this way of eating quite a while ago, one small half of a pinky toe in. I would do it for one meal, maybe the second. I would start a fat loss phase, and then venture a lot on the weekends. Honestly, it was me just getting comfortable with the portions, what foods I should consume, etc. Even though I wanted to lose the weight, I wasn't disciplined enough to go through fully until last Summer when I completed a fat loss 85 day phase at 100% compliance. 

At first, my husband was probably like, whatever. After all, I've done this before. I wouldn't blame him for thinking it was another ambitious attempt in his wife's book. It wasn't until I really started to make the changes and consistently work on achieving the end goal that he started to notice. He's competitive, so what happened in my house... is that he decided to firm up and lose a little bit of weight too! Although a totally different process from what I was doing, he was able to lose 10+ pounds (and gain his ego back). Lol. He looked good before, but now looks and feels good, and performs a ton better in the gym. Not that he bragged about finishing first in the workout today. 😉

So what I'm saying is, even if you're the only one doing it, people start to notice. You may start and your spouse jumps in. However, they may not, and that's totally okay. Bottom line, at the end of the day, you have to do this for YOU! 

I'll leave you with one of my favorite reminders: 

It takes four weeks for you to notice a change

It takes 8 weeks for your friends to notice.

It takes 12 weeks for the rest of the world to notice a change.

It takes one day to decide that you are enough.

Is day that day?

I hope this helps. Let me know if you have any questions in the comments!