If you were to geek out and come up with a KPI to track dietary compliance, how would you approach the relative importance of
calorie intake vs target
protein intake vs target
carb intake vs target
fat intake vs target
day to day variability In the past, you’ve said “I don’t think micromanaging meal macronutrients is high yield for most unless it leads to higher compliance with calorie intake overall.” I hear you, but if I’m gonna geek out anyway, then that sentence would lead me towards weighting calorie compliance more heavily in a weighted formula than macro proportions. But at the same time, you tend to treat a minimum protein intake as a prerequisite.
So for example’s sake, I currently track 2 metrics:
avg P within +/- 10g of target = green, +/- 25g = yellow, outside of 25g = red
avg kCal within +100 of target = green, +200 = yellow, more than 200 over = red ( I’m trying to lose weight, so no penalty for undershooting calories) These are averaged out over a week, thus I’m getting 2 color scores per week, which I guess I mentally treat as equally important. These thresholds seem overly loose, overly tight, reasonable? This probably all seems like so much navel-gazing to some, but I find that it really does drive my behavior, like “I’ve had 2 weeks of double greens. Do I really want to blow my streak on that double burger, fries and shake?”
To go along with the somewhat geeking out. Is there a percentage range where you would say is acceptable around the target, i.e. 5%, 10%? Given that calorie intake is 80-90% of the importance, would you say that if you happen to have gone over on carbs or fats, that you should hold back some protein to meet the calorie target at the end of the day? Or would you say that it’s more important to hit a minimum level of protein, even if it means going over on calories for that one day?
Context matters here and I should be clear that my answer would change given different scenarios.
That said, if someone is trying to lose or maintain their weight then calorie intake is the most important thing and all other daily nutrition goals should be sacrificed to make the calorie intake appropriate.
Thanks. That’s directly relevant. I’m frequently in the spot where I’m very close to total calorie target for the day, but I’m 40g short on P, and wondering whether or not to pound a shake. Sounds like not.
So yeah, in terms of defining “close”, 80/20 rule? Or is that too loose? For a weight loss target of 2200 cal, going only 20% over would be 2640, which seems like not really very close.
To confirm, this doesn’t mean you’ve changed your recommendation that carbs/fats should be skewed towards carbs, but only that micromanaging carb/fat targets on a day-to-day basis is mostly meaningless, correct?