Let me preface this by saying I am not a Registered Dietitian. Just a competitive athlete who has tried every diet in the book. As a college swimmer, usually my policy was eat as much as possible as often as possible, but most of us can't get away with that. I began my search for answers in college, when my obsessive mind wanted to find ways to tighten the screws, lower body fat, and increase performance and efficiency. That took me on a 5 year journey to where I am now. I've tried "clean eating" (to the best of my knowledge as a 20 year old), Paleo (for two weeks, I hated it), Zone (this got me through much of my 2-year crossfit career), carb cutting to cut weight two weeks before USAW nationals (yeah not doing that again)..............
..........and now IIFYM.
So what is IIFYM? IIFYM = If It Fits Your Macros. What are macros? It's short for macronutrients. There are three main macronutrients that your body uses: protein, fat, and carbohydrates. With IIFYM, you start with a set number of each macro, and you try to meet that number every day.
Does your body need all three of these macros? The human body is an amazing machine. If you were a caveman thousands of years ago, and all you had access to for months were tomatoes and berries, you better believe your body found a way to survive on tomatoes and berries. What if you were an Eskimo? Fat and protein were the two main staples in your diet (think LOTS of fish).
But we're in the here and now. I'm assuming if you read this, you live in the United States, a first world country where we have access to almost every imaginable food. Just because people can survive on no carbs and have lost weight (notice I said weight, not body fat alone) does NOT mean that's how you should go about trying to lose body fat. If your body is at an enormous calorie deficit (namely by taking out an important macronutrient, such as carbohydrates), your body will eventually lose weight, but at what cost? Will some of that be body fat? Sure, but that process is not simple and has some pretty nasty side effects. If you go to the gym, any muscle you've gained will be converted to energy if you aren't eating enough carbohydrates. Your organs (including your brain) use glucose (what carbohydrates are converted to) as energy. I don't know about you, but I use my brain a lot at work. I can't afford to feel fuzzy or sleepy because I'm not fueling myself properly.
How does IIFYM work? (White Buffalo style) I set my clients up with a set of macros. Then they follow them. My set of macros are 164C 154P and 62F. I am on a conservative cut. It's conservative because I'm in need of muscle building but I want to lower body fat at the same time. This requires patience and an idea of the bigger picture. If I can't see myself sticking to this for more than a month, there's no point, I won't reach my goals. When I DO reach my goal weight (75kg), I will then go back to maintenance calories, and continue to count macros.
How do I know what macros to give people? It depends on your activity level, body weight, height, and age. There IS a calculator online, but there is a certain finesse to knowing what your inputs are. There is a lot of freedom to set things up however you want, and I do it by feel. If you are lifting weights? We need to make sure you're getting enough protein to build muscle mass. If you are running long distances? We need to make sure you're getting enough carbohydrates, especially in the hours leading up to your long run.
How do I get started? Those numbers I give you. You should be trying to meet them every day. I use My Fitness Pal to track my food. Almost any food you can think of is in their database. Track it. At the bottom, it will track your macros (protein fat and carbs). There are a couple ways to do this. There's my approach where I eat the same effing thing every day, and tracking my food every day isn't super important. Then there's the more flexible approach where you eat something different every day and track religiously and try to hit your numbers by the time you go to sleep that night. EITHER IS OKAY! IIFYM is sometimes called flexible dieting for this reason.
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| Here is a sample day for me. I made my "Your Daily Goal" custom to me (I had to use an addon to my browser). Notice how each food tracks each macronutrient and totals it at the bottom of every meal AND at the end of the day. It does the work for you! |
What are some common mistakes?
Just to name a few that clients have come across.
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Not tracking their food. And I mean everything. That sweet potato that claims it's 130g? It's not. Depending on the size it could be as large as 250g. You just unintentionally ate more carbs than expected for lunch. Weigh your vegetables instead of measuring them by volume. Most nutrition facts have a weight stated for the serving size (for example, my Fiber One bar has a serving size of 1 bar (28g)).
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Entering in their exercise in MFP and eating back their workout macros. I account for activity level in your macro setup. Every day of the week you should be hitting the same numbers. Even rest days.
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Not weighing yourself every day. Yeah yeah, I know, there are articles all over the internet about how you shouldn't weigh yourself every day. You shouldn't weigh yourself every day when you have no knowledge of what you're putting in your body. Then it's a crap shoot. What's it going to be today? If you collect weight data WHILE AT THE SAME TIME tracking your food meticulously, you'll start getting a better understanding of how your body works. For me? (and most people I'm assuming), my weight fluctuates about 1-2lbs throughout the week. Once I hit a new low, the weight will almost always go up again the next day. If I know this, I won't freak out when this happens, I'll just track it in my excel sheet, and move on with my day.
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Only following your macros a certain number of days of the week. That should be enough right? Wrong. If you only follow IIFYM Mon-Fri then loosely follow it on Sat/Sun, you will not meet your goals and you have a lot of fuzzy data on the weekends that you aren't tracking. I find when I loosely follow my macro goals on the weekends, I eat way more carbs than usual, or I eat way more calories than usual. This is a lifestyle, not a "diet." Because when you meet your weight goal, we adjust your macros a little higher, then move forward. Expect to be eating like this for a long time. :)
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Not realizing that certain things can cause temporary setbacks in weight, and in turn throwing in the towel early. These include creatine or other supplements, sodium intake, hormone fluctuations (ladies, track this too so you know when any typical weight gain is, and know this is only water weight), and extra carb intake. If you go way over one day in carbs, don't panic! your weight will most likely go up the next day, but only because you're carrying extra weight in carbs, and for every gram of carbs, you carry 3-4g of water. You didn't gain back 1.5lbs of fat over night because you had some dessert last night, just wait for it to subside in a few days.
There is a progression. I think the biggest appeal to counting macros is the flexibility. The fact that you can have birthday cake on your birthday and you can still make it fit. The fact that you don't have to give up all those "bad" foods right away. But you should still make it a long term goal to move in the direction of cutting out "bad" foods. Cutting out sugar can be like kicking an addiction. Your brain is wired to like sugar. You CAN eat sugar while counting macros, but I'm going to tell you now, your body digests it much faster than vegetables (also a carb) and you will be left hungry in an hour. Think blood sugar spikes then crashes. The slower digesting your food is, the less you'll be hungry. If you don't really get hungry? Cool, maybe this isn't a NEED but it should still be a goal. The cleaner we can get, the better. And by clean I mean meat proteins, eggs, dairy (sorry paleo lovers), fruits, vegetables, and some sugar before a workout is not a terrible idea. Again, this is not a huge priority when starting out with IIFYM, but it can be a long term goal to move in this direction.
Then there are eating disorders. Eating disorders are about control. They are about addiction. Yes, you can become addicted to being healthy too, so much so that it consumes everything (ever heard of orthorexia nervosa?). I find that if you follow IIFYM, and you know WHY, the likelihood of an eating disorder developing becomes much smaller. We also have cookies over here on the dark side, which means you can throw that "clean eating" mentality out the window every once in a while, and you know you'll be fine. Also, on IIFYM, every day is a new day. If you screwed up yesterday? Note the fluctation in your weight report (put in a note that you had a hankering for pizza), then get back in the saddle. In a sense you DO have control, but the scale and the mirror are much more reflective of your hard work. I think the disordered eating comes when you follow a diet only a percentage of the time, binge eat on Saturdays, then wonder why you aren't losing weight. Or you starve yourself and wonder why your metabolism has slowed down. We do these crazy things to ourselves because we're human and it's the logical thing to do right? Cut calories you'll lose weight, right? And the more calories you cut, the faster you'll lose weight right? If you only binge once a week, your body can't absorb all of that food at once, right?
WRONG. Follow IIFYM 100% of the time, and you WILL see results. I guarantee it.
Give me 4 weeks. If you follow your macros to a T (give or take 5g of each macro every day), and you don't see results? I'll give you your money back. That's how confident I am. Don't believe me? Try it for yourself and prove me wrong.
