My 7 Favorite Food Logging Hacks with MacroFactor | Ep 371 - Wits & Weights | Fat Loss, Nutrition, & Strength Training for Lifters

Episode Transcript
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Philip Pape (00:01):
You're committed to fat loss and you know that
tracking your food works.
You've seen the results whenyou actually do it consistently,
or you've heard about this.
But every time you think aboutlogging that homemade stir-fry
or 10-ingredient recipe, youfeel the familiar resistance,
the mental friction of searchingthrough databases, entering
individual ingredients, tryingto estimate portions for complex

(00:22):
meals.
So you skip it or you do itsporadically, and then you
wonder why your results aren'tconsistent.
What if food logging couldbecome so automatic that you
barely think about it?
What if it actually made youmore aware of your intake, more
consistent with your goals andbetter at hitting your calories
and macros without the dailystruggle?
In this episode, I'm showingyou seven specific ways to

(00:42):
eliminate the friction that issabotaging your tracking
consistency.
Welcome to Wits and Weights,the show that helps you build a
strong, healthy physique usingevidence, engineering and

(01:02):
efficiency.
I'm your host certifiednutrition coach, philip Pape,
and today we're coveringsomething that is going to save
you serious time and frustrationfood 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 genericcalorie targets based on
outdated calculators that can beoff by hundreds of calories,

(01:26):
and the app that I use.
It's called Macrofactor, andI'm setting the stage with a
specific app for thisconversation, because it is the
only one that does what we'regoing to talk about here.
It actually learns yourmetabolic rate.
That's what it does.
It learns your expenditure fromyour data and then it adjusts
your targets accordingly.
So it's one thing just to logfood.
It's another thing to use thatinformation to then hit your

(01:49):
goals, and that's why yourtargets can be accurate, instead
of these educated guesses andMacrofactor.
The reason I love it is veryfast.
It's been tested as the fastestfood logger on the market
against 20 other apps measuringthe number of actions required
for common tasks against 20other apps measuring the number
of actions required for commontasks.
And even when I polled ourFacebook group, the average
screen time to use it is aboutthree minutes a day.

(02:10):
Three minutes Now.
That is less time that it takesto scroll through Instagram and
probably far less than it takesmany of you to scroll through
social media.
So, coming up, I'm going tocover seven core hacks that I
love that will transform yourlogging efficiency, plus two
bonus features that most peopledon't even know exist.
They're fairly new and theycould be a game changer and save

(02:31):
you even more time.
So stick around for all ofthose the seven hacks plus the
two bonus hacks.
Now, before we get into these,if you want to try the fastest,
most accurate nutrition appavailable that I personally use,
all my clients use, there's areason I love it so much, just
like I love the barbell forlifting weights.
I want you to downloadMacrofactor right now.
Use my code, wits and Weightsall one word and you'll get two

(02:54):
weeks completely free.
Try it out, because if youdon't like it, there's no risk.
It is the only app that learnsyour actual metabolism instead
of relying on genericcalculations and, as you'll see,
it is designed to make loggingas effortless as possible, and
that's my goal here is to makeall this stuff that we do very
simple.
So let's get into the hacks.
Let's do it.
First of all, most people aretracking their food like it's

(03:19):
1999, right.
They're either using somethinglike MyFitnessPal, which is okay
as a logger, even though it'sslow and it has a ton of
inaccurate database entries, butit also lacks the feedback loop
of okay, well, how much shouldI eat for my goals, or they're
using a notebook or some otherway of logging.
Now, I'm not against loggingyour food in some way.
Some people don't even want totrack calories and macros.

(03:41):
Some people want to trackbiofeedback and nutrients and
how they feel and their hungersignals, and that's fine.
But if you're looking for asuper high level of precision
which I think we are we'retrying to get a fat loss or body
comp goal, then you want theright tool for the job, right?
So I think a lot of thefrustration from using most apps
is they either have to scroll abunch of options and they can't

(04:04):
find one that's correct.
You have to type in a bunch ofdata for the food rather than
quickly enter it, and you haveto repeat it for every
ingredient, every meal.
It's hard to do recipes.
When you're making a lot ofthings 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 offriction and bottlenecks.

(04:24):
As to why people quit trackingafter a few weeks, it's not
because tracking doesn't work.
It's because they're using atool or an app or an approach
that makes it unnecessarilycomplicated.
So again, this is why I likeMacrofactor and why this episode
is geared around that appspecifically, I will say some of
the tips today.
They may exist in other apps,they may give you ideas if

(04:44):
you're not using macro factor,and that's cool, um, anything
that can empower you to get thejob done.
But look, I'm looking forsomething fast, that works well,
that gives you my metabolism,that tells me the calories and
macros I need If I'm trying tobe in a, you know, 500 calorie
deficit or, let's say, a 200calorie surplus to build muscle.
Okay, and I want to log my mealin like one minute 30 seconds,

(05:07):
even 10 seconds, even, if I can.
So let's start with hack numberone, probably the most common,
but it is still my favorite andit's going to save you probably
more time than all the otherones combined, and that is copy
and paste.
Okay, macrofactor lets you copyat lots of different levels that
people don't even often realize.
You can copy the entire day,the specific time, which they

(05:28):
don't call it meals, buteffectively it's like a meal if
you logged it at the same timeor specific foods, and so you
can do it literally by tappingand then tapping where you want
to paste.
You don't even have to click,copy or paste.
And so, if you eat fairlyconsistently.
If you eat the same breakfastevery day and that's something
most of us do then every day yougo in, you just tap.

(05:48):
You tap, very simple.
Or if you have an entire daythat you want to use to
replicate or you want to use asa baseline meal plan, you tap
the whole day and you copy, yougo to edit or you go to copy
paste day, right, you can do thewhole day for a specific meal,
specific time, or the whole day.
And when you're trying to planahead, this is really powerful

(06:09):
because if you're trying tobuild tomorrow's meals tonight,
copying from where you begin isa perfect place, because you're
going to make small adjustmentsfrom there, right.
And then your food log in yourapp becomes the meal planning
tool and that ensuresconsistency.
So you don't have to guessabout how much you logged
yesterday.
If you've already logged itright, you kind of know okay,
that's what I did and, yes, Ihit my protein or I didn't.

(06:30):
So tomorrow all I have to do isscale that up a little bit or
add something in or make a swap.
So I really like that kind ofnudge based approach where you
copy and paste your portions,your macros so that they're
identical and then you can justshift them into a new direction.
So that's a big one, and Irealize that most food loggers
let you copy and paste in someway.
But I will say it's super,super fast and it's like two
taps.

(06:51):
Hack number two is to createrecipes from your timeline.
So this is really cool becauseit turns a kind of messy meal
log where you have a lot ofdifferent ingredients that you
just put together and you spentmaybe longer than you wanted to.
You know, even with macrofactor, you're going to have to
take the time to log each thingor to weigh each thing and find
it and log it.
But once you've done that, ifit's something you're going to

(07:14):
typically make, like a stir frywith chicken, vegetables and
rice, then you can select allthe foods, say, create recipes,
that's it, and then it's goingto bundle everything into a
recipe that you can then reusein the future.
And we don't have to be perfectabout it too.
Some people get hung up on that.
If you do the stir fry nexttime and the ingredients are,
the ratios are a little bit off,so what?
It's actually probably goodenough and you can just log hey,

(07:36):
this, this is my chicken andvegetable stir fry.
Right Now, every time you eatthe 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 wholething can be determined in grams
as well.
So the same thing applies evenif it's not a recipe per se, but
just kind of a complex mealthat you have on a regular basis
.
Same idea, like if you have acurry that has 12 ingredients

(07:59):
with spices and everything youcan just do it once fairly
accurately and then just save itas a recipe.
That's hack number two.
Hack number three is yournutrition breakdown and
specifically, what I mean is thecontributors to your macros and
micros for that day.
All right, a lot of peopledon't realize this happens.

(08:20):
When you go to the dashboardand you scroll down, there are
these little tiles in thenutrition section.
So, for example, if you tapfiber, it's going to show you
the biggest contributors tofiber today.
Right, that's really, reallypowerful for optimization.
It's kind of a reverseengineering of okay, this is
what I've been eating, what iscontributing the most to this

(08:41):
particular ingredient or macrofiber or micronutrient like
selenium or magnesium or whathave you, and then you know,
okay, I'm getting 80% of thisthing from these two meals and
not from the rest, and you canstart to optimize or repeat what
you're doing if it's successful, and so then you could start to
balance your intake based onthe things you're really
concerned about.

(09:01):
You know why am I always hungrybetween lunch and dinner?
All right, well, I'm onlygetting you know, 15 grams of
protein and no fiber betweenthere.
Problem identified, problemsolved.
So again, go to your dashboard,scroll down, tap on any of the
micronutrients, or fiber ormacronutrients, and you can see
what the biggest contributorsare.
So that's a really good tool.
Hack number four is pre-loggingand pre-planning using the app.

(09:25):
This is just one of the bestunsung hero type features that a
lot of people don't takeadvantage of.
But when somebody comes to mewith a question like I'm really
struggling to get enough proteinbut not go over my calories,
and I'm like, well, why don'tyou go ahead and pre-log
tomorrow and pretend that it'ssuccessful, what would it look
like?
That's really it.

(09:45):
It's like you're puttingyourself in your future body and
saying, okay, this is what Iate today to be successful, and
you're pre-logging it and that'sall you have to do?
You're basically going in andsaying what do I have in my
house?
Or what did I make today?
I'm going to paste it totomorrow and then I'm going to
tweak.
I'm going to up the proteinhere, reduce the fat here, swap
out the you know, the ribeyehere for the sirloin here,

(10:08):
whatever makes sense.
You could also use this whengoing to a restaurant or going
to a party or going somewherewhere you're not quite sure, or
maybe you can plan ahead.
But either way, you can pre-logwhat you plan to eat.
Right, if it's a restaurant,you can look at their menu or
just the general foods that theyhave and say, okay, if it's a
restaurant, you can look attheir menu or just the general
foods that they have and say,okay, I'm going to pre-log and

(10:30):
yeah, it's going to be a 1,500calorie meal.
I'm really going to enjoymyself.
How does that affect the restof my day before the restaurant,
outing Lighter meals, moreprotein, more vegetables?
Or you're just going to acceptthe fact that you're going to be
500 calories over for that dayand then adjust the rest of your
week accordingly?
So again, you're not trying torestrict, you're actually trying
to be intentional.
You're trying to be intentional.
So if you're going to go to thatItalian restaurant, you want to
enjoy the pasta.

(10:51):
Now you can make a consciouschoice and maybe you decide okay
, I'm going to have the meatsauce instead of the Alfredo
sauce, because I noticed that'llsave me 300 calories, but it'll
still be super delicious.
I'm going to enjoy myself.
It's a big psychologicalbenefit.
It removes decision fatigue.
It removes anxiety andguesswork from social eating.
Even if you're going to a party, you could probably guess
there's going to be a bunch ofcarb and fat laden foods, maybe

(11:14):
some cake or some dessert, maybealcohol.
If you're going to choose toimbibe, you can pre-log all that
stuff, okay.
So phenomenal, very powerfultool.
Now, real quick reminder if youwant to learn more about how to
use these tools, okay, whetherit's macro factor, whether it's
you're tracking your biofeedback, whether it's you're tracking
your measurements, whether it'slifting weights, join us in

(11:35):
Physique University.
That is where we teach you howto leverage the tools.
So, even if you're using macrofactor and you've listened to my
show and you're doing it onyour own that's awesome You're
going to get stuck.
You're going to get stuck whenyour expenditure starts to drop
or when you make a change andyou're not quite sure why you're
not losing or gaining weight orwhat have you.
That is, that's what we helpwith, and so if you want to join

(11:56):
us and get those tools link isin the show notes If you use my
special link, you'll get a freecustom nutrition plan that I
personally build for you to getyou off on the right foot as
kind of an accelerator.
That's my gift to you as apodcast listener.
So again, wits and WeightsPhysique University, join us in
there and I will continue on tothe next hack.
Okay, hack number five isbasically to be more smart about

(12:22):
logging with the Paretoprinciple.
It's called the 80-20.
I'm not talking about 80% wholefoods.
I'm talking about when you havea complex meal which, if you're
eating at home, sometimes thatis the case you have a lot of
vegetables, seasonings, whatever.
Let's say you have a saladlettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers,
peppers, onions, lots of things.
Instead of logging everyingredient separately, look for

(12:42):
options in the database likehouse salad or mixed green salad
.
Sometimes it's like withdressing, without dressing.
And the database in Macrofactoris really good.
It has common foods with lotsand lots of these entries, you
could even pick a restaurantfood.
So if you know you're going toeat something that's equivalent
to Buffalo Wild Wings wings, nomatter where you got them from,

(13:04):
or even if you made them at home.
You can do it that way as well.
The idea is to represent whatyou'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 bunchof berries like apple and
blueberries and banana, maybelook for mixed berries or fruit

(13:25):
salad and just do the stiff testof the macros.
Look, right, you know, I didthe cucumber salad the other day
, but the cucumber had, or thesalad had, yogurt in it and the
cucumber salad was assumingvinegar.
So it was like no calories.
And I said, okay, that's notquite right.
I need to find one that has afew more calories for the yogurt
, or I'll just add yogurtseparately.

(13:49):
So this is really understandingwhen precision matters and when
it doesn't.
And the difference betweenlogging something like
vegetables as individual itemsas opposed to a group salad is
like 20 calories, maybe twograms of carbs.
It's so insignificant that thetime savings is worth it, right?
That might not be the case fora much richer dish, right, you
know?
Indian food, chinese food right, something like that, or
something with lots of fats andoils and things, then you might
have to get a little moreprecise, but even then, I'm

(14:11):
going to suggest that you grouplike foods together and maintain
reasonable accuracy whiledramatically reducing the
friction to log it right.
Even if you're a perfectionistlike me, I've found that it's
still more than precise enoughto get the job done, and that
means you'll be more consistent,and consistency to me matters
more than precision in thiscontext.
All right, so that's five hacks.

(14:32):
Let's move on to number six, andremember, I'm actually going to
throw in two bonus hacks afterwe get through the seventh one.
So the sixth hack is about thefeature that lets you scan
nutrition labels.
So what I like about this is ifyou're using a packaged food
and you scan the barcode,sometimes it won't find it, or
occasionally it'll findsomething and it doesn't quite
look right.
Right, and that's just thechances of inaccuracy in the

(14:56):
database.
It happens.
So macro factor is actuallyable to scan the nutrition label
itself and automatically pullout all the data from the label
the calories, the macros, themicros, all of it and so you
just point it, give it a fewseconds, boom, boom, boom, it
pulls it in even on like awrinkled package.
If you just kind of straightenit out a little bit, it's pretty
good and it'll populateeverything for you and you can

(15:16):
save that.
You could even connect it withthe barcode itself so that
that's what it shows up for youwhen you use the barcode next
time.
And this is what's called OCRtechnology.
It's like optical characterrecognition, I think it stands
for.
It's an old technology, but Ithink they probably connect it
to AI and it's really reallyfast.
So this works for anything thathas a nutrition label

(15:39):
whatsoever.
Maybe it doesn't have a barcode, maybe it's something you got
at Whole Foods or a local, alocal place where it's like it's
just not going to be in thedatabase.
So that's all you have to do.
It's really cool, all right.
Hack number seven is really goodOnce you've started tracking
and you're like I need to startoptimizing for things.
And this is where you can lookat the nutrition overview.

(16:00):
Okay, so if you go into yourfood log and you tap the macros
at the top, it's going to takeyour nutrition overview and then
you can select a time rangetoday, one day, I think it's a
week, a month, three months anda year, and one of my favorites
for this is fiber, for example.
You know, trying to get enoughfiber.
Well, look, if you look at thelast month that's, it's going to
give you the average of allyour micros and macros,

(16:23):
including including fiber, forexample, 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 aregood because you might have had
a few high days where you'relike really proud of yourself.
That's awesome.
But then you also come toreality to see that, on average,
it's lower than you want it tobe.
And so, instead of thinking ofjust daily targets or no, you do

(16:44):
think of daily targets butinstead of thinking of just
one-offs, you're thinking ofmore of the trend and the
averages over time, just like wedo with weight trends, just
like we do a restraintprogression, we're talking about
progress over time.
So, instead of stressing aboutbeing too low on something just
today, which you might be, lookat your averages.
Maybe your averages are goodenough and one day doesn't break
the bank, or maybe it'sindicative that you do have a

(17:07):
goal of low-hanging fruit to punintended if it's fiber to
increase, and so this gives youthe bigger picture, which, just
like with weight training, itprevents the daily fluctuations
from undercutting yourconfidence right?
One low protein day isn't a bigdeal if the weekly average is
plenty, and it's kind of theonly view in macro factor that

(17:28):
really gives you that, and so Ilike to look at it on a regular
basis.
Now, when you tap into thenutrition overview, you will
also see, just for today, howyou're tracking against your
macros, how you're trackingagainst your micros, and that is
also powerful as well, in caseyou're a little behind on
something.
So patterns are fantastic,trends are fantastic.
You can also look at weekendsversus weekdays and really get

(17:49):
some good insights here for yourlong-term habits.
So those are my seven favoritehacks, and then, of course, I
wanted to give you two bonushacks that are based on much
newer features that I'm stillexperimenting with.
So the first bonus hack is thephoto logging with AI, and I'm
still not 100% sold on it.
Out for me.
Now it has an option to do thepicture with text.
I would actually recommenddoing that and just saying

(18:11):
quickly the basic things thatare there, and then it's going
to do a reasonably good job mostof the time of trying to figure
out what's on your plate, and Itend to find that it's more
conservative.

(18:31):
In other words, it tends toestimate way more calories,
which is probably what mostpeople would want to do anyway,
because the vast majority ofpeople are trying to lose weight
or lose fat and they don't wantto under report their food.
So I don't know if theydesigned it that way on purpose,
but it seems to be the case.
Sometimes it's way off and likeit has no idea, it guesses
completely wrong, right, like no, that's not a blueberry, that's

(18:52):
a black bean, right.
But in context of a whole dish,if you just give it a little
nudge with some text, it can getreasonably close.
So this is great.
At like restaurants or when youtravel, you know you can't take
your food and you can't reallyestimate and you just need
something to log.
It's not bad.
It's not bad.
So I wanted to mention that I'mnot a hundred percent sold on
it yet, but I have beenmentioning to folks who feel

(19:12):
like they can't log at all forsome reason take a picture, you
can import the picture later,you don't have to do it in real
time and try it out.
And then the second bonus hacktoday is a brand new feature
they just added, which isawesome.
You can import a recipe fromany website.
So all you have to do, you goto create recipe and you paste
in the link and it's going toimport the ingredients,

(19:34):
instructions, the serving, it'sgoing to calculate the total
weight so you can log it all andthat's huge.
Like if you're using recipesfrom the internet, it eliminates
the tedious process of manuallyentering them the one time you
have to enter it, which reallyisn't that bad.
But again, we're trying toreduce friction as much as
possible.
So I really love this newfeature.
If you're the type of personwho grabs recipes online, this

(19:56):
will save you a ton of time tobuild a recipe library without
manually entering it.
By the way, kind of sub-hack.
Number two is that you canexport any recipe in Macrofactor
and share it with anybody elsewho has it and they can import
it and vice versa.
So all of this stuff is just areally powerful way to use a
tool that already exists to makethe most of it and not feel
like you know.
Just a really powerful way touse a tool that already exists

(20:17):
to make the most of it and notfeel like, oh no, that's just
another food logger, that'sgoing to take too much time and
then I'm not going to beconsistent with my food.
And when you combine all ofthese things together and pick,
use the things that you need tosave time, it's your system,
it's part of your system ofhabits, of lifestyle, of tools
that gets the job done right.
Whether it's importing from arecipe, copying and pasting on a

(20:38):
regular basis, pre-loggingtomorrow's meal or this
weekend's meal at the restaurant, looking at your nutrition
overview to see how you're doingon fiber right On and on, any
of these things could be a gamechanger for you.
And it's not just about thesaving time, it's also the
precision and knowing how muchyou have to eat right, because
by do what happens when you doall this?

(20:58):
Well, come Monday, the app isgoing to have a good idea of how
many calories you're actuallyburning, based on how your
weight is changing and how muchyou've logged.
That's the game changer, right?
So a lot of people think oftracking.
Food is just recording the past, recording what happened, but
it really comes up, becomes aplanning tool and a proactive
tool, and then one that allowsyou to know the how much and the

(21:18):
when and the why.
So the bottom line is, if foodlogging feels like a chore now,
I don't think you're eitherusing 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 episodefor you to show you how you can
do that to make things moreseamless.
And the goal is not to logperfectly.
You can be off by 30% in eitherdirection and as long as you're

(21:40):
logging according to theevidence on this on on food
logging that is actuallysufficient to represent what
you're eating and be consistentand have the right targets,
believe it or not, versus notlogging at all.
Right, and I'll tell you whatthe people who are succeeding
with tracking.
They're not more disciplinedthan you.
I've had people in PhysiqueUniversity who are like, oh, I
hate tracking.

(22:00):
And then I will have aconversation with them and say
you know what?
Let's start with one simplething, right, let's start with
creating one day of food andusing copy and paste.
Tell me how difficult thatreally is and what you get out
of it without changing yourbehaviors.
And they're like oh my goodness, I didn't realize how
enlightening it was to give methe information about how much
protein I'm eating, what my foodpatterns are, how much.

(22:22):
I went to McDonald's right andit gives you that awareness that
you can make the choice and youhave the power, and it's not
some nutritionist, dietitian orinfluencer telling you this is
how you have to eat.
So if you want to implementthese hacks and experience the
same tool that I use which I'm ahuge fan of it, obviously,
which is why I became anaffiliate, really from day one
download Macrofactor right now.

(22:42):
Use my code Wits and Weights.
You'll get two weeks free totry it out.
I'd love to hear from you onInstagram or by email how it's
working for you.
It's the same app I use withclients, the same app we use in
Physique University with clientsat the same app we use in
Physique University.
So if you plan to join us thereand get help with it, get a head
start by using it, and I haveso many more hacks and tricks
where that came from.
So all you have to do is askand the you know.

(23:03):
I guess you can call some ofthese shortcuts.
I call them more justintelligently using the features
that are already there.
All right, until next time,keep using your wits, lifting
those weights, and remember thatyour dream physique is built
through smart systems, notperfect data.
This is Philip Pape and you'vebeen listening to Wits and
Weights.
I will talk to you next time.

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My 7 Favorite Food Logging Hacks with MacroFactor | Ep 371

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}My 7 Favorite Food Logging Hacks with MacroFactor | Ep 371