+5/-5 grams for tracking - the gold standard?

A 3min Read

Is +5/-5 grams really the gold standard for tracking?

Many people and companies believe in the +5/-5 approach to tracking and it certainly works but at PLT Nutrition we don’t believe it is needed or of any benefit.
The approach asks you to be within +5/-5g of your daily macro targets.
 
It’s benefits:

• It ensures accuracy

 
It’s negatives:

• Its restrictive. It takes a typically flexible diet and makes it less flexible.
• It asks a person to push through and eat even when not hungry. This blunts our body’s natural hunger signals. Eating beyond fullness is a part of why many people are overweight in the first place.
• It can easily become a stressor of a diet and worse, can uncover/ exacerbate obsessive tendencies and result in fatigue and disordered eating.
• It’s unnecessary.

Whether you track your daily fish oil, whether you track 3 or 7oz of broccoli, salad leaves, salsa, marinades etc isn’t going to impact your fat loss or general health goals. No one ever became overweight eating these things.
Yes they are part of your overall calorie intake; yes, you most likely underestimate the number of calories you eat, but whether you track these items isn’t of consequence.
It’s the other parts of your life that are the impactful areas, the parts that should be tracked and controlled.
Fat loss comes from reducing your calorie intake and possibly increasing your calories burned, that’s not likely going to come from reducing broccoli and if that’s your approach it’s the wrong approach.
Your tracking isn’t designed to be an expression of your complete calorie intake or your metabolism. It’s designed to identify the areas of your diet that can be improved and apply control to. If you do this, you can achieve your goals and track in a much more relaxed and fluid manner.
 
There’s nothing wrong with +/-5 if you enjoy that approach - PLT Nutrition just believes it’s unnecessary...
 
And this why we are THE “Really Flexible Dieting” company 💛
tks
Paul