In early stage dieting for any goal counting and tracking macros may well be above the level complexity required to make first steps progress, hence why people may start with a simple commercial diet or food plan purchased online and make progress.
That is all well and good as long as sound principles are laid out and it helps that person take steps forward and actually progress.
Unfortunately many of these plans are becoming more illogical and fail to follow basic sound principles and push dogmatic views and mythical ideologies.
Sometimes they may work for a while, sometimes not.
However if these "plans" work essentially you just got a little lucky because it's not measured therefore any progressions or regressions are a guessing game,
at some point invariably this approach stalls and frustrations occur and people jump from diet to diet or search for the missing supplements,
but the fact that it's not measured means it couldn't be managed.
So in simple terms, take the guess work out of it, at some point when very simple approaches cease to work nearly everyone will benefit greatly from applying some tracking and management of food intake at some point.
Yes some people tell me this is a pain, but the pain of simply spending all of 5 mins a day tracking food is a lot less painful than starving yourself and wondering why your current approach isn't working.Tracking food intake not only takes the guess work away and lays it out in front of you exactly why you aren't progressing, it will show you what needs to be done.
Keeping a log and tracking is a great tool to take some of the emotional connection and rash decisions out of the process.
Dieting can be simple, it's the human element that we need to manage
and any strategies that minimize stress, maximize progress and longevity.
