So, you’re on board with the idea of tracking your calories and macros to gain muscle and lose fat.
 
You read my “Macros 101” article and learnt how to set your nutritional targets.
 
You started tracking and saw some good results.
 
But then, a few weeks in, you think you’ve hit a plateau.
 
And now you’re wondering, “Do I need to change anything?”
 
To be honest with you, tweaking a client’s macros or calories is usually my last port of call.
 
Often, a much more effective solution is to review your approach to tracking. After all, you haven’t been doing it for that long, so you may have yet to master some tips and tricks to make this system truly work for you.
 
In this article, I’m going to share five tracking hacks that always help my clients overcome their first plateau.
 
If you’re ready to master tracking, keep reading.

​Do you struggle to keep on top of nutrition when you attend social events during a fat loss diet? Then this article is for you.
 
I’m going to cover two of my clients’ favourite go-to strategies, which also happen to be two of my personal favourites, when eating out without tracking calories. So far, they’ve been applied with great success to a range of different social events, including:
 

• Weddings
• Summer barbecues
• All-you-can-eat buffets
• Birthday parties
• Work lunches and dinners
• Restaurant meals with friends
• Special date nights

 
Here’s why these methods work, even without being meticulous about your calories:
 

• They’re simple to understand and remember
• They’re easy to put into practice
• They rely on basic healthy nutritional habits that you’ll have already been working on to make your diet both sustainable and successful

 
Are you sold on the idea yet? Then let’s get into it.

How do you take a break from your diet without losing progress?
 
Why would you even want to, if you haven’t reached your fat loss goal yet?
 
First of all, if you’re serious about dieting, it isn’t easy to do. Taking a one- or two-week break every six to 12 weeks of dieting, can give you some much needed respite to regain momentum and motivation to stick to the plan. (If you’re on a longer-term fat loss journey, lasting months or even years, you may want to consider maintenance phases in addition to diet breaks. Read this article to learn more.)
 
Moreover, life happens. You may go on holiday, move house, change job, or experience other life-changing circumstances, during which trying to diet is only going to backfire. This is a great time for a diet break.
 
Last but not least, you won’t be dieting forever (I hope). Once you reach your goals, you’ll need to maintain those results. This will be much easier to do if you practised maintenance in a previous diet break or two.
 
In this article, I’ll break down what to do, so you can enjoy your diet break without losing progress, by answering the following questions:
 

1. What can happen to your weight during a diet break?
2. How do you know how many calories to eat?
3. What foods should you eat?

Reflecting on the past two years of coaching people online and in person, I created a list of the advice that my clients have found most helpful in the pursuit of their goals, but that seems to be underrated in an online fitness space rife with detox teas and abs-blasting workouts.
 
This article breaks down these tips into the following categories:
 

1. Nutrition
2. Training
3. Habits
4. Mindset

​Training and dieting plateaus are normal to an extent, but they can cripple your results if they are too frequent.
 
Being able to assess your training in an objective manner and to identify why you’ve plateaued, is going to be essential to chart a path out of your current funk and to create a preventative strategy for the future.
 
This article breaks down the following common reasons for a plateau and the troubleshooting approach to each one:

1. The structure of your current program
2. Too much variety
3. Not enough variety

 
Start with the reason that seems most likely, apply the suggestions for that alone, then wait at least four to six weeks before re-evaluating whether you’re still “stuck”.

Why not try all of these solutions at once?
 
Though it might seem slower to produce results, this trial-and-error approach is the most effective in the long run. Altering too many variables at once will make it challenging, if not impossible, to figure out which change was the most helpful.
 
Now, let’s tackle the first reason: