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Flexible Dieting/IIFYM
Flexible Dieting, also known as If It Fits Your Macros is more of a lifestyle than an actual diet. This means there’s no pressure to create stringent meal plans or to impose food restrictions on yourself.
This puts the control in your hands, meaning you can eat whatever you want and still lose weight.
When you’re following a flexible diet, your calorie and macro needs are based on how much weight you want to lose (or gain), and the time frame in which you want to achieve it.
Firstly, you must determine your TDEE (total daily energy expenditure) and macronutrient needs before beginning the diet. This can be done by using one of the many apps and websites that promote flexible dieting, or you can do it yourself!
If you like to do a little math, I’ll show you how.
Calculating Your Energy Needs
Total daily energy expenditure consists of REE (resting energy expenditure): the number of calories you burn at rest and NREE (non-resting energy expenditure): the calories expended during exercise/daily activity/the energy required to digest food.
Resting energy expenditure accounts for more than 60-70% of a person’s total daily calories burned (who’d have thought it, eh?)
Non-resting energy expenditure includes calories burned during exercise, standing, shivering, or just regular ol’ fidgeting, as well as the energy your body uses to digest your meals!
Calculating your daily energy expenditure can give you a clearer idea of the number of calories you burn in a given day.
Most flexible dieting promoters recommend calculating total daily expenditure with the equation below;
Men (10 x weight in KG) + (6.25 x height in CM) - (5 x age) + 5
Women (10 x weight in KG) + (6.25 x height in CM) - (5 x age) - 161
The number you’re left with is then multiplied by an activity factor for your total calorie needs:
Sedentary (little or no exercise): x 1.2
Lightly active (1-3 days per week): x 1.375
Moderately active (6-7 days per week): x 1.55
Very active (every day): 1.725
Extra active (twice or more per day, elite athletes): x 1.9
Based on this equation, my personal daily expenditure is 1,061 cals. Then when multiplied based on my level of activity to estimate my total needs, the number I am given is 2,484. This is the number of calories I can ingest in a day to maintain my current body weight based on my daily expenditure and activity levels.
To lose weight, we would then subtract a percentage of calories to create a caloric deficit. I would recommend up to 20%: From my 2,484 calories I would subtract 497 per day, leaving me with 1,987 calories per day.
To gain weight, we would add a percentage of calories to create a caloric surplus. Again, I would recommend up to 20%: I would add 497 calories to my existing 2,484 per day, which would give me an intake of 2,980 per day.
You can decide your own deficit or surplus based on your individual goals and activity levels; this is just an example of how.
Alternatively, you can track your current weekly intake and adjust by 350 cals each week, spread across 7 days, allocating more calories on training days and less on rest days.
How To Calculate Your Macros
So, we’ve determined our calorie goal, and we need to calculate our macro needs.
Macros, or macronutrients, are the nutrients your body needs in the largest amounts: carbohydrates, proteins and fats. These provide calories and have multiple important functions in the body.
-Carbohydrates: 4 calories per gram, typically account for 45%-65% of total daily calories.
-Proteins: 4 calories per gram, typically 10%-35% of total daily calories.
-Fats: 9 calories per gram, typically 20%-35% of total daily calories.
As mentioned above, many websites promote flexible dieting/IIFYM and many of these offer macro calculators wherein you input your height/weight/age/activity level and are given a custom macro distribution, but again this is something that we can do ourselves, based on our specific goals. And even better, we can tweak and adjust our macro ranges based on our lifestyle, changing goals and needs. (ie if we’re trying to shed significant weight, we may choose a lower carb range, whereas an athlete may opt for a higher carb range).
It’s also important to track your fibre intake, despite it not being a macronutrient. Fiber is a type of carbohydrate that the body cannot digest. Men are encouraged to consume 38 grams of fiber per day, while for women, 25 grams is recommended.
How To Track Your Macros
Now that we’ve figured out our caloric and macronutrient needs, all we need to do is track it! Most food tracking apps have inexhaustible databases that allow us to search any food, alter portion sizes and determine out calories in/out within mere seconds. This is super helpful and will allow you to track any food, anywhere, without needing to carry a notebook around for a more old school food diary. The most popular app for tracking for everyone I know is MyFitnessPal. This is the app that I use for my tracking and with my clients.
Pros Of Flexible Dieting
Once we’ve done all the math, it’s pretty much plain sailing! The diet is easy to follow and there are no strict recipes, no food plans or lists upon lists of restricted foods. This can also be super convenient for people who have specific macro needs to meet their goals, and those of us with specific fitness goals can calculate our macros based on training; higher intensity days = more food!
Unlike stricter diets, which tend to negatively impact the people who follow them (and their psychological well-being), studies have shown that followers of the IIFYM/flexible dieting plans that allow greater food choices and less restriction are more successful at keeping the weight off!
Nothing is off limits! There’s no need to cut out bread (because bread makes you fat, right?) or chocolate or your favourite sugary drink, no more turning down dinner plans because everything on the menu has carbs involved. With simply making more sensible food choices and staying within your target range, you can still eat whatever you want. Flexible dieting is adaptable; even if you go over on calories on one day, you can adjust your calories over the next week to account for that. No biggie!
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