I’ve completed two intentional cuts in my life – one in 2023 about a year and a half postpartum with my first son Rafe, and another last summer when I was six months postpartum after weaning my second son Vance from breastfeeding.

When I’m in a cut or hosting a round of group macro coaching, I track very precisely. This approach allows me to know my efforts are well-spent and helps me coach my group members effectively because I’m doing it right alongside them.

One thing about me: I rarely ever miss my macro targets when I’m in a cut, and I’ve seen great results with both phases. My first cut in 2023 lasted eight weeks, and while I lost less than four pounds, the progress photos looked like much more. My second cut in 2025 resulted in about eight pounds lost, and my weight has stabilized just one to two pounds above that even though I’ve been eating maintenance calories for about 5.5 months now.

Here’s exactly what I do to nail my macros every single time.

1. Plan Your Meals for the Week on Sunday

Every Sunday, I pull out my paper planner – I love a pretty paper planner!! In it, I write down what meals I plan to make that week. This is something I go in-depth on in episode 7 of the podcast where I talk about the Sunday Setup that I follow.

After deciding what meals I’m going to make, I pre-log a “perfect” full day of eating. When I say perfect, I mean I hit my calories, I hit my macros, and I consume a minimum of 10 grams of fiber for every 1,000 calories I eat.

It’s like a game where I’m tweaking a little bit here and there to get those numbers as close as possible to my protein and calorie targets. My protein goal is about one gram for every pound I weigh. There are plenty of days I go over that, but I try not to overeat protein by a ton.

When you tell your macros where to go, you’re not left wondering where they went. Pre-logging removes the stress of logging things in the moment.

My best-case scenario is doing this on Sunday night, but sometimes I don’t get to it until Monday morning when I’m making breakfast.

2. Prelogging Your Breakfast, Lunch, and Snack

If I logged it, consider it eaten. I know it’s mentally harder than this simple statement when you’re in the thick of a cut, but that’s what I do – I log what I eat.

Everything I pre-log consists of foods I love, so there’s no dread or boredom when it comes time to actually eat those meals. This is crucial for sustainability.

3. Repeat Meals Until You’re Sick of Them

Since I’ve pre-logged an entire day of eating and I like what I ate (which I always do), I copy and paste that over into the next day. I do this for breakfast, lunch, and my afternoon snack.

They are the exact same foods at the exact same portions, day after day after day, until I get sick of them. When it comes time to eat, all I have to do is pull out my food scale.

For breakfast, I know I’m having a piece of sourdough bread, two whole eggs and 100 grams of egg whites, 50 grams of cottage cheese, and around 200 grams of berries. Since I have everything pre-logged, I just weigh that amount. If what I weigh is a few grams off, I simply edit those few grams of discrepancy in my food tracking app. Boom, done.

This applies to breakfast, lunch, and my afternoon snack, which is currently a caramel rice cake with almond butter. I think I’ve had that same exact snack right after lunch for a few years now.

Then when it comes time for dinner, I let that be my one variable meal. At that point, I’m well on my way to hitting my protein goal, so it’s really a matter of figuring out how many calories I can eat to still stay within my calorie goal for the day.

Based on what we’re having, I log dinner in advance. Let’s say it’s pasta with chicken, red sauce, and vegetables. I log the chicken first so I can consume my normal serving—usually six ounces or so. Then I log the pasta noodles. If I’m in a cut, it’s easiest for me to weigh the dry noodles separately and cook mine in a separate pot to ensure precision. You don’t have to do this, but I figure it’s just one extra dish to wash and why not be as accurate as possible? When I’m eating maintenance calories and loosely tracking, I definitely don’t do this.

Then I weigh out my veggies, once again making sure I’m eating a good amount but still staying within my calories. Sauce is the last thing I log, and I only use the amount that’s left for my calories that day. So if I only have 30 calories left, I’ll only use 30 calories of sauce and move on.

4. Use a Weekly Tracker Sheet Instead of Relying on MyFitnessPal

MyFitnessPal can be off by 20% in their calorie rounding, so I pre-log my day and then type those macros into my sheet to see what the actual calories roll up to. Sometimes it’s higher than what MFP says, sometimes it’s lower.

Typing these numbers into my sheet helps me be as precise as possible. Back to my dinner example – as I’m logging that last meal for the day, I’m also typing those numbers into my weekly tracker sheet to see if I actually have room to add a little bit more of that sauce because MFP was over on their calorie rounding, or if I need to cut back a little because MFP rounded calories lower and it’s actually more when I type it into my sheet.

5. Never Miss Protein or Fiber and Eat a Good Amount of Dietary Fats

These three things are game-changers. Protein, as we know, keeps you full and helps your body preserve muscle mass. When you’re in a cut, you want to tell your body, “Hey, lose fat, not muscle,” and protein is the traffic director making that happen.

Fiber is not a macronutrient, but it will also help keep you full. Dietary fats, outside of regulating your hormones, are going to keep you feeling so full and satiated. They help cut down on cravings because you feel satisfied.

6. Rarely Eat Out, Especially During a Cut

This seems extreme, but it wasn’t. I can’t remember any regular weekday meals out during either cut.

With both cuts, I had two vacations to look forward to where I knew I would be eating out, and I worked in diet breaks those weeks, which meant I was eating closer to maintenance calories. I actually didn’t track on my vacations, so I could have been in a slight surplus, but I was very mindful of my choices and brought a lot of my own snacks.

Keep in mind that a deficit isn’t forever, and if you truly want to be accurate, you can’t be eating out all the time. If eating out is just a normal part of your week, try to scale it back at least during your cut.

Since I was eating most meals at home, it allowed me to weigh everything I was eating on a food scale. This is already our normal – we don’t regularly go through the drive-thru and we don’t have planned takeout meals each week.

7. Have Planned Diet Breaks

Having those vacations and planned diet breaks scheduled gave me a checkpoint to make it to. Both vacations were already booked, so I planned my cut around those. It was a light at the end of the tunnel versus an indefinite timeline.

8. Eat as Many Calories as Possible While Still Seeing Results

In both cuts, I never dipped below 1,800 calories because I never plateaued. My weight loss was slow, but my progress photos showed otherwise.

The fastest to the bottom doesn’t win – you’ll just plateau sooner. Keep calories high until your body stops responding. This prevents you from being miserable and burning out.

This was just my personal preference when it came to calories. Especially in my first cut, I didn’t have a lot of body fat to lose to begin with – I just wanted to lean out some. If you have substantial body fat to lose, it can make sense to go into a deeper cut.

If you were reading this and had the thought, “Okay, yes, this all makes sense and I knew most of this, but I simply need the accountability to follow through with it all,” I want to encourage you to sign up for the waitlist for my newest offer that will be launching soon. It will add the layer of accountability and community you’ve been looking for to stay consistent with your macro tracking or weight loss goals.