With the help of friends and family, I managed to untangle myself from calorie counting and started to eat more mindfully. It took years to unlearn the bad habits I’d picked up in my pursuit for better health.

When I first heard about tracking macros, I was cautious… and curious. The words kept appearing as I scrolled down my Instagram feed, and with every influencer banging on about this new flexible way of eating. So, I eventually decided to give it a go, re-downloading MyFitnessPal – the app that had caused me so much trouble in the years before. I began to work out my personalised macros for each day using an online calculator.

Predictably, re-focusing on numbers meant my unhealthy mindset from the past started to sneak back in. Despite my best efforts to stop my new diet from taking over, I couldn’t shake my anxieties. If I went over my macros even slightly, I felt like a failure. Unlike the influencers online, I didn’t find tracking enjoyable and I dreaded typing out the values of my portions after each meal.

Libby Horseley, a personal trainer who has personal experience of counting macros, recognises the potential problems with the diet – particularly for people who have previously suffered from disorder eating. “It can become very obsessive very quickly, and it can also be quite restrictive,” she says. “If you are counting macros, even simple things like going out for dinner can become a really difficult challenge because you can’t weigh out what is on your plate.”

Counting macros: “Ignoring macros is the best thing I've done for my mental health“