Read This Before You "Eat More To Lose Weight"

This might seem like something of an ironic post coming from me of all people. 

After all, I'm the guy who's been saying "we need to fuel people for best performance and condition, not try to starve weight off them" for the past few years, when no one else seemed to be.

The message finally appears to be catching on, and more people are beginning to realise that slashing calories ever lower is as damaging as it is unsustainable. But before we arbitrarily replace the blanket statement of "eat less (and less) move more (and more)" with it's polar opposite, let's assess the situation to ensure that this time, we're actually giving advice that is good and helpful.

First though, let's bust some myths. 

Myth: You need to eat clean. It is the quality of foods that matters, not the calories. You don't lose weight eating "junk food", and any of the "wrong" foods will make you gain weight.

Nope. 

• Twinkie diet helps nutrition professor lose 27 pounds.
• Teacher lost 56 pounds eating only McDonald's.

Of course we should all try to make sensible choices and include many healthy options, but your total energy intake is what influences your body weight.

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Myth: Low Carb & Keto Diets are the best / only option for weight loss.

Nope.

• Low Carbohydrate versus Isoenergetic Balanced Diets for Reducing Weight and Cardiovascular Risk.
• Comparison of Weight Loss Among Named Diet Programs in Overweight and Obese Adults. 
• Long-term effects of a low carbohydrate, low fat or high unsaturated fat diet compared to a no-intervention control.
• Calorie for Calorie, Dietary Fat Restriction Results in More Body Fat Loss than Carbohydrate Restriction in People with Obesity.
• Energy expenditure and body composition changes after an isocaloric ketogenic diet in overweight and obese men.
• Comparison of Weight-Loss Diets with Different Compositions of Fat, Protein, and Carbohydrates.
• Similar weight loss with low- or high-carbohydrate diets.  
• Differences in Insulin Resistance Do Not Predict Weight Loss in Response to Hypocaloric Diets in Healthy Obese Women.
• Consuming energy primarily as carbohydrate or fat for 3 mo did not differentially influence visceral fat and metabolic syndrome in a low-processed, lower-glycemic dietary context.

Even more as of February 2018:

• Low-fat vs low-carb? Major study concludes: it doesn’t matter for weight loss - report on Examine.com. Amusingly, this is yet another study funded by Taubes' NuSI organisation.
• Does high-carbohydrate intake lead to increased risk of obesity? A systematic review and meta-analysis: On the basis of the current study, it cannot be concluded that a high-carbohydrate diet or increased percentage of total energy intake in the form of carbohydrates increases the odds of obesity. Amusingly,  the authors of this study thank Noakes for his assistance in the design.

More Still: April 2020

• Comparison of dietary macronutrient patterns of 14 popular named dietary programmes for weight and cardiovascular risk factor reduction in adults: systematic review and network meta-analysis of randomised trials. 

This was probably redundant after the previous section anyway, but there's no benefit to low carb or keto dieting over balanced diets of the same energy provision. Some people sure do seem to like them, but personally I would see VLC & keto diets as disadvantageous for most people with an interest in long term adherence for sustainable results.

Again though, the facts are that if you go from an excessive regular energy intake and lack of physical activity to less excessive energy intake and more suitably active, you'll lose weight. Whether you cut back on carbs, on fats, or cut back across the board... from more excessive to less excessive energy intake, and especially from inactive to suitably active, you will lose weight.

Update: Upon demonstrating that Low Carb approaches are not required or preferable for weight loss, it is almost inevitable that a special pleading, goal post shifting argument will be made of the "but if they have Type 2 Diabetes..." variety. Let's knock that one on the head while we're about it, too.

• Low-carbohydrate, low-GI, Mediterranean, and high-protein diets are effective in improving various markers of cardiovascular risk in people with diabetes and should be considered in the overall strategy of diabetes management.

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Myth: When Weight Loss Stalls, Add More High Intensity Calorie Burning Cardio Workouts.

Nope.

• Constrained Total Energy Expenditure and Metabolic Adaptation to Physical Activity in Adult Humans.
• Physical activity did increase energy expenditure as expected, but only up to a point.  

As stated above, from inactive to suitably active is a very good idea indeed, but let's assume we're talking about people who are already quite active and participating in training. Adding more and more non-productive high intensity activity to burn calories is not only impractical, but the links above show that it will offer no benefit.

Take home point here: train productively, for enjoyment and for the specific benefits of the choice of activity. Not "to burn calories".

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  Myth: The 5:2 Diet, Intermittent Fasting, Meal Frequency & whatever else.

Eh...

• After one year, weight loss in the alternate-day fasting group (6.0 percent) was not significantly different from the daily calorie restriction group (5.3 percent), according to the results. 

Again; "energy provision vs energy requirement" is the rule that matters. Forcing yourself onto a different meal schedule may mean that you eat less, but it is still the change in amount of energy intake that influences body condition, and not the change in timing of energy intake.

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So far, all of this supports "eat more to lose weight". Should you really though?

Active people require a certain amount of energy and resources in order to be able to recover and adapt to training. If you're restricting to a low level of energy intake with the misguided "calorie deficit" approach, a lack of progress is likely to be due to falling well short of that amount. Introducing more "calorie burning" activity only squanders what resources you have made available in an unproductive manner.

• "Chronic starvation = increase in body fat percentage". Applies to male and female athletes.
• Three weeks of food restriction not only suppressed resting metabolism, but also decreased nonresting energy use by nearly half.

Bottom line here: being under fueled and over worked is not conducive to good results, even when weight loss is a significant aspect of your goal.

Is that what is actually happening though?

As the saying goes; the first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool. 

For inactive people who are not involved in sports or training, even a "normal" amount of food will be in excess of an amount that you are putting to use, which means weight gain. In this circumstance, "eat more to lose weight" would almost certainly result in rapid gain of an even greater amount.

Here's where it gets complicated and the issue becomes contentious.

Actually not a myth: Humans are extremely likely to under estimate food / energy intake and over estimate activity levels.

• Discrepancy between self-reported and actual caloric intake and exercise in obese subjects.
  
  Conclusions: The failure of some obese subjects to lose weight while eating a diet they report as low in calories is due to an energy intake substantially higher than reported and an overestimation of physical activity, not to an abnormality in thermogenesis. 

• Validity of U.S. nutritional surveillance:National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey caloric energy intake data, 1971-2010.
  
  Results: These results are indicative of significant under-reporting. The greatest mean disparity values were -716 kcal/day and -856 kcal/day for obese (i.e., ≥30 kg/m2) men and women, respectively.

• A comparison of the accuracy of self-reported intake with measured intake of a laboratory overeating episode in overweight and obese women with and without binge eating disorder.
  
  Conclusions: Findings confirm that those with BED consume significantly more than controls during a laboratory binge and controls tended to be more accurate in recalling their intake 24 h later.

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It is important to include these studies for two reasons, the first of which is that people who are fixated on the calorie deficit model are likely to show you them with the inference that they prove that "the problem is that they're eating a lot more than they think they are. If they were eating the amount that they think they are, they'd be in deficit and therefore they'd be losing weight".

Yes, but no.

It's important to notice that these studies are not of athletes or on people of less excessive weight who are participating in sports or training. In my years of experience as a coach, when active people come to me and report that they are working to restrictive and low targets without seeing progress, I tend to believe them and we consistently see much better results as we increase first towards an adequate and then closer towards a more optimal total energy and macronutritient provision... including when weight loss is a goal.

Regardless, we do know that a disparity between perceived and actual intake is very common, so unless we are actually working to a plan to hit our current targets, we can't assume that we are. Intuitive eating is awesome IF you're still making progress, but if your eating habits are erratic, unscheduled, unmeasured and inconsistent... we have no reason to consider the total energy provision to be anything other than an unknown and random amount.

On a related note...

• Irregular meal-pattern effects on energy expenditure, metabolism, and appetite regulation.

To my way of thinking just adding "more" to a random amount isn't much better than slashing below an unknown amount. Where you end up is anyone's guess.

Let's cut to the chase.

If you're overweight and inactive, first and foremost you need to become suitably active.
People who are already active, assess your consistency at training. If you're working to targets based on requirements for 5 sessions per week but you've only been making 2 lately, eating more is not likely to have the desired effect.

Now, if you're training consistently and especially if you're progressing from a beginners level to an intermediate level, from lower intermediate to upper intermediate and so on... your fueling requirements will increase as the demands on your body to perform, recover from, and adapt to training are greater.

If you have a set of intelligently determined targets for intake, but you've just been winging it as described above, you will need to start actually planning your daily intake in advance to ensure adherence to those targets, and then assess the results.

Good performance at training, good energy levels outside of training and improvements in condition might suggest that your targets are appropriate all along but you just weren't hitting them. If you had "beginner level" targets but you're not really a beginner anymore and you see no improvement in condition, that might be a good sign that you need to recalculate with your new level of consistency and proficiency in mind.  If you last 3 or 4 days and then find you are ravenous and eat everything in sight... are you thinking "start over again and this time be more disciplined" right now? Screw that. It's a sure sign that you need to recalculate and increase daily intake accordingly.

When you're training consistently and seeing good progress without paying much attention on the nutrition side, you can safely assume you're getting it right either through good intuition or because you've practiced the appropriate habits for long enough that your appetite is well tuned to your requirements and your body trusts you to listen when it tells you that it needs more. When you're not seeing progress, you need to go back and plan in advance to meet appropriate targets, and then assess the situation.

Best results will always come when training is both consistent and strategic, and fueling is closer to optimal rather than further into deficit. At the very least, you must be working to exceed a minimum adequate requirement. A couple of times with more advanced athletes I have only set a minimum requirement with an official "no maximum limit", and the results were nothing short of amazing.

• Eating more and moving more appears to be better for fat loss than eating less and moving less.
• Homeostatic regulation of body weight is more effective when energy intake and expenditure are both high.

Here's a new one circa January 2020:

• Our results suggest that composition of weight loss may have functional importance for energy balance regulation, with greater losses of FFM potentially being associated with increased weight regain and appetite.

Bottom line: best long term results will come from consistent participation with a strategic and productive approach to training, and anticipation of increased fueling requirements as performance improves.

A little update:  if you're looking to get started with an introductory training program & fueling guidelines, see the weight loss tab on my blog right here.

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Ending the unhealthy obsession with calorie deficit.

Always take a selfie.

I'll try to make this as clear as I can. Calories In / Calories Out is definitely a thing, but people need to STOP worshiping this idea about "calorific deficit", because it's stupid.

Now, don't get me wrong... and in fact I'll address this pre-emptively before the inevitable strawman attacks start: you cannot lose fat in a calorific surplus. If you take in more calories than you can put to use, that energy gets stored as body fat. Calories from any source as well, mind you.

However... the EMPHASIS on being in calorific deficit is all wrong. Note how I used to capital letters to emphasise the word emphasis just now. I'm not saying "take people out of deficit". I feel like I can't just say what I'm saying any more, I have to specify what I'm not saying as well, every paragraph or so. I'm going to go ahead and predict that a few people will still miss that and make stupid comments all the same once I share this to facebook.

Why not focus on being in deficit though?

As a profession coach and trainer and a specialist in Flexible Dieting with an interest in eating disorder awareness, recovery and avoidance, I've had active and athletic people come to me on... one particular example that I have in mind is a female athlete who came to me a few years back on 1300 calories a day and quite unhappy. She is now well aware that she REQUIRES a 3000 calorie a day minimum in order to see best results and performance at training, and to remain injury free.

That's something of an extreme example with very high fueling requirements, but it is quite common for me to reverse diet a female athlete from as low as 1100 or even 900 calories per day all the way up to 23, 2400, maybe 2600 calories per day subject to the amount they actually require to facilitate good results at their level of prowess at training.

Predicting an amount that is in deficit is easy. Literally, it's any amount that's less than would support current mass (including fat mass) and activity levels. All of these programs and diets where you just have an arbitrary amount like 1200 calories to restrict to, that's just about being in deficit and it's stupid. Some "macro plan" that doesn't end on a round number? Also stupid. Those "these are the only foods you're allowed to eat" type plans? They're not even smart enough to understand that how you'd lose weight on that plan is because you would be in deficit.

Now, on a personal level, "I just eat these foods and avoid those foods" is fine if people are happy with the food choices they're making and the results  they're seeing. I don't mean to insult people for not having a working knowledge of nutrition... other than the ones who are trying to enforce those choices onto others, and especially if they're charging money for it.

I have digressed. Where was I?

Picking an amount that is in deficit is easy, but it's not what is good.

As a coach who is giving sports nutrition advice, you need to be focused on how much people require, AKA how much they can utilise. That is, how much they can put to good use to fuel performance, to recover, and to adapt to training with the creation of lean mass. FKN IDIOTS WHO ARE BOUND TO SHOW UP TO TRY ARGUE WITH ME PLEASE NOTE: "how much they can put to use" does not translate to "a calorific surplus that would preclude fat loss", no matter what way you try to twist it.

Going back to those examples of mine from eariler: As a coach, you're never going to find out that your athlete requires 2400 or 2800 or 3000+ calories per day while you're thinking "results come from being in deficit, if you were in deficit you'd be seeing results". You won't have the BRAINS OR THE BALLS to raise their targets that high, so long as you're still married to and they're still enslaved by this brain dead notion of being focused on "calorific deficit". Rather, you're likely to slash intake targets even lower, clutch at straws about "not eating clean", or accuse the client of lying about their intake. These are the sort of things I keep getting told about, anyway.

Understand this: Not seeing fat loss does not necessarily automatically infer that you are "not in deficit" or that eating more would mean "going into surplus". While in deficit, tapping into fat stores is only one of many adaptations the human body might make and not necessarily it's preferred option. The further you go into deficit of an adequate amount, the less energy and resources the body will make available for other functions in order to preserve those fat stores.

Bottom line? If you're an athlete (and by this I mean anyone training with an interest in improving performance and body composition) you need to be fueled in a manner to facilitate performance and maintain condition. You can't build or maintain lean mass without making those resources available.
If you're a coach... if you're a trainer, train people and fuel them for results. We're supposed to be qualified professionals, stop trying to starve people thin with the same sort of logic I'd be dismayed to read on some kind of pro-ana blog.

You're not doing IIFYM if all you're doing is calculating a deficit, much less if you're just slashing further and further below some arbitrary amount.

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Your coach only *thinks* he or she is doing IIFYM.

Well, maybe not your coach. Hopefully your coach is great. Maybe I’m your coach or someone I’m friends with is.

There are a few good ones out there, but for the most part I see a lot of people appointing themselves coaches and entirely butchering the concept of IIFYM.

The difference between how I do things with my Flexible Fueling strategy vs how most people seem to do things with what they think is an “If It Fits Your Macros” strategy is as follows:

Most people are calculating a DEFICIT and working to that, while I am interested in calculating a target for best performance and condition.

When people are focused on calculating a deficit, the question is “a deficit from what?” and also for that matter “a deficit of how much?”.

Often it’s a deficit from “however much you’re currently getting, on average”. So, you track your intake for a few days, work out how many calories it is, average it out… there’s your “maintenance”. Subtract some amount (it might be 500 cals for example) and there’s your new target to be in deficit.

Bullshit.

If you’re not working to any targets to begin with, your current intake is just some random amount. Subtracting an arbitrary number from this random amount and assuming the result will in some way resemble an appropriate (forget “optimal”) target for performance, recovery and adaptation to training is … :\ … I was going to say “overly optimistic” but it is actually just flat out illogical.

That’s not IIFYM, it is just calorie counting and calorie restriction based on the conditioned assumption that you’re eating too much to begin with and the entirely illogical premise that you can best build a lean, strong and healthy body by depriving it of the energy and resources that it requires. It’s still just an attempt to starve weight off although people feel like they’re being more scientific because they’ve done some poorly applied mathematics first.
The thing with calorie counting and restriction is that… like we discussed in my popular rant on facebook yesterday, you’re just training your body to run on less fuel and still somehow get through training and get through your day.

Regardless though, if it is not restricting to a dangerous level you may still see results BUT the reality is that most people (myself included) don’t really have it in them to dial in strict adherence indefinitely. At best people will be motivated to dial it in hard and tight for a few a months… individual mileage will vary but let’s say 12 weeks is a reasonable amount of time before someone will either start to become a little complacent even if they’ve had good results or say “this is bullshit and I quit” if they have not had good results.

Now this won’t be half as bad as compared to someone who has done some of the more common very low calories + restricted food choices “clean eating” type nonsense but STILL… if you’ve trained your body to get by on an inadequate level of fueling, when you get complacent and drift back towards less structured eating habits it’s likely to be a greater energy intake than you’re used to getting, and I don’t have to tell you what happens to that energy that you’ve trained your body not to require.

Rather than that, consider this.

Twelve weeks building up towards higher, optimal, maximum usable energy and macronutrient targets to facilitate best performance at training, best recovery from training, and promotion of lean mass at the expense of fat stores as an adaptation to training.

Now, for the people who want to clutch at straws and try to pull me up on semantics; YES, obviously “the most you can put to use” is less than an amount at which you would not draw on fat stores due to energy intake being beyond your requirements. So indeed we are still “in deficit” but there is very real difference in the results of calculating our energy and macro targets intelligently with a focus on “how much we can put to good use for best results” vs “how far into deficit”.

You require a certain amount of energy just to be alive, to run your organs and regenerate skin cells and all manner of functions you’re not even really aware that you’re doing. Then you require a certain amount to get through your day able to tolerate… I mean, to interact with others and perform your job at work or at study. We burn a certain amount at training although the real value of training is not the energy that we expend but in how we adapt, and we require a certain amount further to all these other requirements to facilitate this recovery and adaptation to training.

Being at a strategic deficit can be advantageous as we will tap further into fat
stores to make up for the shortfall in energy provision vs energy requirements.
However, being too far into deficit simply means not providing the necessary resources to do all of those good things we talked about in the paragraph above, and running yourself into the ground while actually hampering fat loss at the expense of lean mass. The opposite of what you are actually trying to achieve.

So let’s wind this up.

Let’s say similarly to what we discussed earlier, 12 weeks of building up towards optimal, maximum useable, sports nutrition targets for best performance, recovery and adaptation to training. During that 12 weeks the challenge will be in eating enough to meet your requirements even when you’re not feeling hungry. Beyond that 12 weeks, depending on the individual you might find some people decide “this is bloody great and I can keep this up as long as feel like it and keep driving towards better and better performance and results”, which is great.

Other people are likely to think “that was great but I think I have a pretty good handle on this now and can just make good choices to eat when I’m hungry, confident that I’ll be getting it close enough most of the time” aka “intuitive eating” and that is also great.

My observation of that latter option is that intuitive eating after a period of working towards maximal targets will come in at a slight deficit due to no longer doing the “eat even if you’re not hungry” part. What happens when we’re at a slight, strategic deficit? As discussed a couple of paragraphs earlier, we tap even further into fat stores to make up the balance.

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I don't do meal plans. I do Custom Flexible Dieting Guidelines.

Pretty average photo from training
yesterday. I thought my shoulders were
looking good though.

I just don't, and I won't no matter how much someone asks or how much they offer to pay me. I just don't feel comfortable telling other people what to eat. The idea stresses me the hell out, to be honest.

If you really do want a meal plan via me, I will crunch the numbers as I always do via my Flexible Fueling system and then forward those guidelines to a real dietitian to talk to you about your food choices. I haven't had one for a while, but I do still from time to time get told "no I want you to do it"... well, that aint gonna happen.

Now if you were considering looking for a meal plan online, or if you were looking to hire a trainer who'll tell you what you are allowed to eat and what you are not allowed to eat, here's what I think you should keep in mind.

What makes for a good meal plan?

Purely from a nutritional point of view, a meal plan is good if it provides everything that you need and no excess. So enough total energy, enough protein, fiber and a good spread of micronutrients suitable to maintain good health, an appropriate weight range, and good performance and results at training.

That's what you need in a meal plan purely on nutritional grounds.

A lot of the time you might see meal plans on offer from trainers or even less qualified "wellness guru" types, and they're kind of a one size fits all proposition with a bunch of healthy foods listed, and the inference is that since they're all healthy foods it's a good plan and you'll be getting everything you need. This is often far from the case as just throwing together a list of "healthy foods" in no way ensures meeting an adequate energy intake for performance at sport or adequate protein for adaptation to training.

Often this is the case with "clean eating" type plans for sale or available for free online. There is simply no consideration given to energy and protein requirements, and they may fall dangerously short of a suitable amount for an active person. Anyone can throw together a list of healthy foods... and most of the time that's all you're getting. A list of healthy foods and perhaps another list of other foods that are banned for no legitimate reason is a long way from being a decent sports nutrition plan that will ensure results. It is probably the opposite.

Now assuming you do have a plan to meet your individual requirements in terms of total energy, protein, and plenty of vitamins and minerals via healthy & nutritious choices, that's great. However, there is more to a good meal plan than simply being nutritionally appropriate.

A good meal plan is one that not only delivers everything that you require, but even more importantly is one that you can stick to long term. A plan that has designated meal times or meal frequency that does not suit you as an individual, you won't stick to for long. A plan that includes mostly foods that you find unappealing, you won't stick to for long.

If you're anything like me and a lot of other people, if you don't like the foods you probably won't even attempt the plan. Because you know it is unworkable. Assuming you do try, you're likely to put off eating for as long as possible and then end up having something else instead and probably way too much of it. Or you might force yourself to try the scheduled meal and lose your appetite half way though as you're not enjoying it. This would mean either you go underfueled defeating the purpose of having a plan in the first place, or again you end up ravenous at some point later on and over eat something that isn't on the plan.

None of this is conducive to good results or to a good relationship with food.

This is a very simple point that seems to baffle a lot of people who for some reason believe they are in a position to give advice to others.

A plan that is "good" in terms of providing everything that you need is worthless if it is not conducive to enthusiastic adherence. If it is unworkable due to meal schedules or food choices... it might be a good plan for someone else, but it's not a good plan for you. The plan needs to fit the person. It is not a failing on your part if you can't force yourself to work with an unworkable situation.

Now if this plan does indeed provide all of the nutritional resources that you require, the assumption is that we actually know what those requirements are. What amounts of various resources such as total energy, protein, fiber and so on. If the person providing the plan can't tell you what those are, then it's just a stab in the dark and they are full of shit. We don't know your requirements, we don't really how much this plan provides... but it's all good food so obviously it does provide exactly the amount you require and no more or less. 

That's unreasonably optimistic, in my opinion.

Certainly though, a competent professional (such as myself) can determine those requirements with reasonable accuracy. So, rather than a plan that is basically an "eat it, it's good for you" proposition that may or may not deliver everything that you need, we can plan to meet all of those nutritional requirements with a variety of our preferred choices of foods that will be suitable to long term adherence. More to the point, we can also create a new plan whenever we feel like it, based on whatever foods we feel like eating that day.

Obviously you can't just abuse the concept and still expect to end up meeting all of your targets, but with a little planning and preparedness you most certainly can produce great and sustainable results with whatever choices of foods best suit you.

This is what Flexible Dieting and IIFYM is all about. In my Flexible Fueling system, I give you the targets and simple guidelines to assist you to build your own plan that you'll be enthusiastic and optimistic about sticking to.

And it's pretty easy.

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Origin story for benefit of the new people.

As you might be aware I’m a qualified trainer, with a special interest in “relapse avoidance” via productive training rather than calorie burning, and flexible dieting rather than restrictive fad diets or extreme calorie restriction.

Eating disorder recovery is no trivial matter and for the most part it is best managed by qualified specialists in psychology. What I am qualified to do and what I have become very good indeed at doing is to provide a training program and nutritional guidelines that will allow people in recovery to pursue their goals without an increased risk of relapse, and even to further their recovery as they see improvements in performance and body condition as a direct result of leaving restrictive and disordered measures in the past.

Of course this is also more than suitable for anyone else who wants to get into fit, strong and leaner shape without restrictive and destructive approaches, as well.

How and why did I end up doing this though?

To try to make a long story short; because people asked me to.
I’d been a trainer for a couple of years, had been quite successful with a small number of clients both locally and online, and I had started joining some industry networking groups to learn how to market better so that I could become more successful in business and help more people.

Well. Everything I kept getting told was hard for me to accept. I need to get all of my clients to eliminate all grains from their diets, all processed foods for that matter. Not too much fruit either, because of the sugar. No legumes either for some reason no one had an explanation for, and soy products too because GMOs are bad.

People had different labels for what everyone should be doing…. “elimination diet”, “paleo”, “clean eating”. Much the same rules and restrictions but just different labels depending on who you were getting lectured by, as far as I could tell.

Now right there, I had a problem because I’ve just described my own diet as the “half arsed vegetarian” that I am, and I was in stronger and more athletic shape than a lot of the people lecturing me about clean eating. Not to mention I’d had some clients getting very, very good results indeed without cutting out any of those food choices, either.

Apparently, I couldn’t possibly though. Because working to calorie and macronutrient (aka IIFYM) targets “just doesn’t work”, because the real issue is the hormonal chaos caused by the inherent badness of these particular foods and ingredients. Yep, including fruit and legumes.

So, this doesn’t add up because you’re telling me that something I’ve done personally and helped several others do to “can’t be done” the way I’ve done it. But maybe I am misunderstanding. Perhaps what you mean to say is that there are certain medical reasons why someone might need to cut out these foods, and unless they do so the regular stuff that works for most people won’t work for them? In which case, surely they should be diagnosed by their GP and seek specialised nutritional advise from a real dietitian, rather than by a trainer?
Nope. I was told these restrictions were required for all people, and that I should keep GPs and dietitians out of the process as they don’t know about this stuff.

Well. That’s a pretty big red flag right there.

Obviously I couldn’t accept any of this. I was open to the idea that it might be something I should learn about for the benefit of “some people, in certain circumstances, as per doctors orders”, but I’m going to need to be convinced with some strong evidence. Just a blanket diagnosis for everyone who walks in the door just wanting to trim up a little in time for their summer holiday? Nah uh. Especially since it couldn’t possibly be true.

People all over the world have been “not obese” through out history while eating varying diets including some or all of these food choices. People have lost weight and gotten into great shape while still including some or all of these food choices. I’ve done it myself. You can’t possibly expect me to accept that no one, anywhere, at any time, has ever been “not unhealthy and obese” other than on this particular restrictive diet that you’re trying to push on me. The idea is ridiculous.

And of all things, the idea that fruit isn’t really a “healthy enough” choice of a snack that people can enjoy regularly? I remember saying “it actually sounds like you’re just trying to give everyone an eating disorder, making them afraid that any or all of these quite nutritious every day foods will mean they can’t be healthy and won’t see results from training.”

Then the pressure and the guilt started.

This is the direction the industry is moving in, so you can either get on board or be left behind. If you cared about your clients you’d set a better example by cutting out bread and cereals. Even though you really enjoy them and are getting great results while eating them.

I got really angry at this point, but at the same time what I started to realise was that most of the people arguing with me were victims who’d been sucked into this idea that if they wanted to be a trainer, they needed to be this shining light of dietary virtue, never eating anything “unclean” or indulgent, and so on, with every individual meal or snack choice chosen solely on micronutritional value plus some kind of “moral value” rather than on taste, enjoyment or convenience. So much of their self worth was tied up in their dietary choices, because not living up to those impossible standards would make them a fraud who had no right to be coaching anyone else towards a healthier lifestyle.

There were a couple of guys at the very top, mostly in the UK, who had made a hell of a lot of money from putting these ideas into people’s heads, and the people bought into it almost religiously. So for me to refuse to buy into it was offensive to them, and for them to try to use guilt and shame tactics to pressure me to get on board after failing to provide a logical reason to do so that held up to scrutiny was offensive to me.

I got to the point where I thought “well, if it’s a choice between being a part of this or failing in business… I guess I’ll go back to putting people on their arse for a living”. AKA security work.

At some point though… I must have ranted a bit about this all on my personal blog in frustration and anger at what was going on. People started to write to me saying, “that’s actually how my eating disorder started. Being given a restrictive diet, being afraid to eat everyday foods and being made to feel guity and ashamed if I ever ate something that wasn’t clean”, and so forth. Some of the stories I heard, and the depths of what eating disorder can do to a person, and the lengths they will go to to avoid eating or digesting something that’s “bad” were… well, you probably can’t even imagine.

And the senseless part is that all of these restrictive measures were the only thing stopping these people from actually seeing results from training. For that matter, a lot of the time I only really heard about the bad stuff 3 months after I’d given someone a program, in the context of “here’s what I didn’t tell you before we started. I’m not doing any of that anymore. I feel great and I love the results I’m seeing”.

When you find that you’ve been able to help someone like that, you want to help more people. Simply by giving people a training program that is actually effective, and emphasising that results will come from putting in enough nutritional resources to get stronger and healthier, and not by withholding those resources and restricting energy intake. You cannot starve or force your body into a healthier, stronger, more athletic state. That can only happen by utilising more energy and resources to adapt favourably to training.

When you’ve helped people like that and have heard their stories, you get angry with the people who are responsible for putting those ideas into their heads in the first place. And every time a new one appoints their self the new “health and nutrition guru” pushing more of the same nonsense to more people, you get pissed off all over again.

Now 5 or so years later and I am happy to report that the fitness industry is changing, and more and more people and organsiations are promoting positive, moderate and flexible approaches. Unfortunately though, we now have more mainstream and celebrity promoters of pseudoscientific, disordered nutritional nonsense on the public at large.

Fortunatley though, as these charlatans continue to align themselves with anti-vaccine activists, anti fluoride activists and any number of other variety of scare monger, conspiracy theorist and tin foil hat wearing nut jobs… they erode any facade of credibility they might have had.

The tide is turning and ethical, evidence based practitioners will win out in the end. But the battle is far from over.

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Dieting: From One Extreme To Another

I had a bit of an idea the other day about comparing what is “recommended” vs what is “good enough to get the job done” in terms of approaches and adherence to dieting. What is recommended varies wildly from one source to another.

What probably should be recommended is something a bit better than simply “good enough to get the job done” in terms of weight loss or conditioning goals.

There should be some attention on good health, as well. With that said, what is often recommended by certain elements of the health and fitness is so extreme that you end up with the somewhat paradoxical situation of being unhealthy due to an unhealthy level of obsession with avoiding anything that is unhealthy, at all times and at all costs. When you lift the bar on what counts as “healthy” to an unrealistic level, well… it’s really not good, is it?

I had the idea to try to create a graphical representation of this, and here’s what I have come up with.

It isn’t so much a scale from “unhealthiest to healthiest”, so much as a scale of the level of attention to detail that someone might pay to their diet; from reckless indifference to extreme and unhealthy obsessiveness.

Now, anywhere within that black range towards the centre of the graphic is about what I would consider “good enough to get the job done” in terms of your body condition and composition goals. The range there is from “absolute bare minimum” to more fine tuned plans for the highly motivated and enthusiastic advanced level athletes who may require them. Anything in the red represents what is inappropriate through to what is actually unhealthy or destructive at the extreme ends of the scale.

Either extreme is unhealthy and not recommended, that’s the real take home point here.

Let’s take a look at all the points on the scale and I’ll give you my impression of each label. Cut me some slack if my interpretation is not precisely and exactly what you associate with each label, you can still get the point I’m trying to make, I am sure.

Actually Unhealthy

The obvious example would be just no attention to diet at all, vastly excessive over all intake, while still being low on important nutritional resources such as fibre, vitamins and minerals. One could arrive at this state of vastly excessive total intake either just through consistent over eating, or perhaps by “forgetting” to eat at some times and massively over eating later.

Just Inappropriate

This label probably applies to the majority of people. Their eating habits are not really so unhealthy as you’d actually expect serious health complications or reduced life expectancy, but they’re certainly not conducive to any weight management, sports performance or body composition goals, either.

Belligerent IIFYM

You know. Think of the most ridiculous negative stereotype of some IIFYM gym bro deliberately making a point of choosing all the most highly processed, least wholesome, nutrient sparse foods, somehow managing to squeeze them into a plan that meets suitable total energy and macronutrient ratios, and in an obnoxious voice proclaims to anyone within ear shot “I don’t give a fuck bro! IIFYM bro! I’m getting shredded bro!”

I don’t think anyone in real life actually does that. It’s certainly not what anyone recommends, as far as I’m aware anyway.

You know what though? As much as I would not, can not, and do not recommend it, this approach actually is “good enough to get the job done” at least a good portion of the way.

Flexible Dieting

Flexible Dieting is something of an upgraded, more “responsible adult” version of what IIFYM was supposed to be. You need to hit your appropriate total energy intake and have a suitable balance of macronutrients, but not while neglecting other important nutritional resources such as … well… you know, vitamins and minerals and fibre.

Now, different people may have a different take on this but for the sake of differentiating from the next point, let’s assume here that we’re not terribly concerned about avoiding processed foods and so on… and it’s more like “appropriate macros + enough fruit and veg”.

That’s actually how I do it, anyway. “Do better if you can but appropriate macros + enough fruit and veg is more than enough to get the job done”.

What Real Dietitians Recommend

I happen to follow, be followed by, collaborate with, and try to learn from some highly qualified “real” dietitians via social media. My observation of their recommendations tends to quite similar to Flexible Dieting, but with less emphasis on the numbers (as in macronutrient percentages and so on, which is more of a “sports nutrition” thing), and more of an emphasis on “a variety of foods, less (but not a total avoidance of) processed foods, more fruit and veg, and to a total intake that is neither excessive nor insufficient”.

Quite sensible and not terribly unrealistic really, isn’t it?

So quite appropriately, those two previous classifications fall nicely into the middle of my graphic, and there’s a reason why those are the recommended approaches of responsible and qualified professionals. It’s what is suitable to promote good health within an appropriate weight range, while enabling performance and results from training (where applicable), while still being non restrictive, flexible, and relatively simple to adhere to so long as you are being mindful and paying a little attention.

Let’s continue though. I am building up to an important point here, believe it or not.

Advanced and Elite Level Athletes

Obviously, when you get to advanced levels of human physical ability, you need a more advanced fueling strategy. Greater total energy intake, perhaps more precise macronutrient percentages, you may find that a particular schedule and particular foods before or after training benefit your performance or recovery. Some athletes increased total energy requirements mean that they can indulge on more of the less nutrient dense foods, others perhaps not so much.

Exactly what is required varies from one athlete to the next. It is not unreasonable to say that what is required is a little (or a lot) more attention to detail than would be necessary for the rest of us.

Contest Prep

Contest prep is an interesting one! I do know there are at least a handful of a really good contest prep coaches who achieve tremendous results through healthy and flexible methods. Obviously though, the high level of attention to detail and adherence is still necessary.

More typically though, contest prep is strict and inflexible, and extremely demanding physically and psychologically. I read an excellent blog entry the other day giving people the heads up of what is really required in contest prep, and that really it is the ultimate in extreme and restrictive dieting, and people need to really be honest with themselves as to whether it would be a rewarding or disastrous experience.

What is important to note with contest preparation is that it is ultra fine tuned dieting for a period leading up to a specific date where the contestant wants to arrive in an unsustainable condition in terms of low body fat and high lean mass. This is not a level of dietary adherence OR physical condition that people are attempting to maintain permanently.

That is so important to realise.

As a side note, people are always suggesting or asking me why I don’t do a contest myself. Let me make this clear first, I have nothing but the utmost admiration and respect for the athletes who put in the work and pull that off. For me though? Screw that! You’d need to want it really badly to put enough pressure upon yourself to adhere to such a strict protocol with so much discipline, and I’m not even entertaining the notion of deluding myself about how well I would hold up under such pressure and how much discipline I would be able to maintain.

Backing up 3 or 4 levels on our scale here, that “Flexible Dieting” level along with some consistent and effective training is really all that is required to get into a shape you’ll be more than happy with. So that is all I ask of myself, and all I ask of my clients as well.

The Next Level

We talked about contest preparation being in many cases an extreme, restrictive and not particularly healthy process. We emphasised that this is a temporary situation, to come in on one particular, specific day in peak shape as far as the judging criteria goes. The well advised contestant will also have an exit strategy in order to recover physically and mentally from such a taxing experience.

What if people really did think such an extreme and restrictive approach was required at all times though, with 100% adherence? And not just to be in contest shape, either; but simply to avoid being obese and unhealthy?

Unfortunately… scandalously, really, that is the message and the recommendation of many aspects of the health and fitness community.

Certainly it is good advice to encourage people to include more healthy, nutrient dense and naturally produced foods on a regular basis. When people are told that their health, their results in weight loss or conditioning from training, and even their worth as a human being are all dependant on the strictest of adherence to the highest possible levels of “clean eating” according pretentious food snobs and dietary elitists, there is a big problem. When people are taught that even fruit, for example is “not healthy enough”, there is a huge problem.

Ironically in these situations, the diets actually become so restrictive that there can be issues with deficiencies in certain micronutrients, as the list of “allowable” foods because so short. Deficiency in total energy intake is also a potentially serious problem.

So. There is the “rough and dirty version” of what will get the job done, there is “what responsible professionals might recommend” as the most balanced, flexible and sensible way to get the job done, and then there is the extreme, restrictive, impractical and unhealthy bordering on the obsessive and disordered approaches that certain aspects of the health and fitness community endorse, and use scare mongering, guilt and shame to encourage.

Looking back at my chart, you can see there is a wide area there representing various approaches to diet and nutrition that will “get the job done”. Contrary to what many would try to scare you into believing, there is not just one acceptable or effective set of eating habits that will allow you to achieve good health and goal condition, with any even slight variance spelling doom.

You most certainly can achieve your goals, be healthy and happy with your physical condition through whatever approach best suits you, providing the focus is on appropriate total energy intake, adequate protein, and enough fruit and vegetables.

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If It Fits Your Maths

Post by Dave Hargreaves Personal Training.

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Establishing healthy eating habits for success in your weight loss and fitness goals.

Here's something I posted elsewhere last night, along with a link to my "Just eat healthy. What does that mean?" entry from a while back.

Don't set the standard too high as to what level of "healthy eating habits" you need to adhere to. Appropriate total intake, enough protein and fiber, your required serves of fruit and veg... other choices as best suits you. That's healthy enough. 

Now... we can think of any number of extra "but shouldn't they also?" type points as well, which are probably advisable. There's probably no limit on the amount of suggestions we could make for eating habits what would be helpful, beneficial and just simply put "a pretty damn good idea". Does that mean that any, much less all of them are crucial, though? Will the whole house of cards come tumbling down if we slip on just one these beneficial points, resulting in chronic ill health and out of control weight gain?

Absolutely not. Bizarre though, that we see such suggestions made so often and so frivolously on so many health and fitness type blogs and pages. It is highly irresponsible.

In my professional experience, I don't ask for any more than those few points listed in the first paragraph, and I consistently find that people will naturally gravitate towards including a greater amount and variety of the healthier choices of their own accord. As they see results from training due to now being adequately fueled, enthusiasm and self belief increases, so they start to adhere even more consistently, and start aiming for more "optimal" targets rather than merely "adequate". This is clearly a much better situation than clients being bullied and badgered into eating things they are not enthusiastic about, and made to feel guilty or ashamed if they fail to adhere.

My observation is that many coaches (or individuals without coaches) set impossible (and unnecessary) standards, and the end result is the opposite of what anyone wants. There are studies (damned if i can find the link right now) that confirm this; the more restrictions you put on people, the more likely they are to end up binging on one or more of the banned choices. This is counter productive, obviously.

Now if you are in the habit of "by default" hitting that appropriate total intake mostly from the more healthy choices that you find suitable... you're going to get results. You're meeting your requirements, so you're not going hungry and likely to give in and over eat later. You're meeting your requirements from choices that appeal to you, so you're not testing your willpower needlessly abstaining from enjoyable meals. It is merely a matter of getting organised, planning a day in advance, and before long your habits are in line with your requirements and you can do it on the fly by intuition. The odd day when you do go off the plan due to whatever circumstances is irrelevant in the context of habitually meeting appropriate intake by default the majority of the time.

In other words don't psych yourself out treating every choice, every aspect of your nutritional habits as "make or break, do or die". Set out to do the bare minimum, and you will succeed in your goals.

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Why do people get fat? Because it's easy.

I have had a few ideas for some articles recently, but I've felt kind of disillusioned at the moment like trying to talk sense just gets lost in all the noise and idiocy that is rampant everywhere else.

I had this idea though for a "why people get fat" article.

Everyone's looking for like a "root cause" like it's a mystery. We argue about whether the issue is with total calories or with choices of foods irrespective of calories... and then there's some bizarre ideas going around about "over eating doesn't make people fat, being fat causes over eating" and so forth. Crazy.

There are borderline orthorexic theories as if certain foods are impossible to not over eat, crap about sugar being "more addictive than cocaine", and nonsense about certain foods instantly being stored as fat just because they're "bad" for some reason due to being processed, or transported long distances, or including GMOs or whatever.

All nonsense and taken to extremes, potentially harmful as people start to get neurotic about which choices of foods are "ok" and which ones aren't. Don't get me wrong though, it's a good thing that people are considering the underlying, root causes and trying to treat the cause rather than just the symptom.

So then. Why do people get fat? 

BECAUSE IT'S EASY.

It's easy to get fat. Most of us have no need to perform any strenuous activity or even move around much in our daily lives. Therefore a "normal" amount of food is enough to make you gain weight. It's easy to consume a way above normal amount too if you're not a little bit mindful especially in regard to snacking and choice of beverages.

It's no mystery. We get fat because it is easy and truthfully, unless you take a few steps to make up for an otherwise inactive modern lifestyle, it's not just easy... it is the most likely outcome.

The issue IS with total calorific intake. You can either resolve this by limiting your choices of foods to ones with a really good satiety to energy content ratio (meaning they fill you up without a lot of calories),  or by simply planning to meet your requirements with appropriate (and therefore non excessive) amounts of whatever foods you fancy.

You'll be well aware by now that my preferred course of action is the latter. Since appropriate calorie intake is the key, you might as well ensure success by determining and planning to meet your requirements. I see the other option as something of a shot in the dark, and if you don't see the expected results you're really left guessing as to what adjustments you need to make. Are you making all the most wise choices of foods, but still eating too much of them? Or are you making all the most sensible choices of foods, but with a total intake that is insufficient, forcing your body to compensate and conserve energy? It's certainly not down to any one off individual choice of a more indulgent meal, although this is what people tend to assume, leading to more of that neurotic fear of "unclean" foods that we touched on earlier.

So then. What to do?

It's pretty simple. Sort of.

An excessive intake of energy above the amount you require will result in excessive weight via increased body fat. Therefore, simply consume an appropriate amount rather than an excessive amount.

There's a problem though. This will work, but it's not terribly efficient. In most cases people have gained weight gradually, almost without noticing. When trying to lose weight, we want to see consistent results, or we lose interest.

Bigger problem. You have psychological needs as well as just energy and micronutrient requirements. On a total intake suitable only for an inactive lifestyle, there's just not enough room in the plan for much indulgence or enjoyment. We can address this somewhat by increasing activity levels, but simply by "moving more" we're still left with a fairly inefficient strategy that it isn't much fun to stick to.

So then. What to actually do?

The same thing I always say. We need to do more than just "move more", and apply some strenuous effort in the context of a more strategic training program. A program that is designed to promote the increase and maintenance of lean mass... specifically increased bone density and muscle tissue, at the expense of body fat stores.

Following a program such as this, your energy requirements are increased significantly, and continue to increase as you make progress and improve performance at training. Within these requirements there is plenty of room to base your nutrition plan on the choices of foods you enjoy, secure in the knowledge that all of the resources those foods provide will be utilised to good effect in building your healthy, athletic goal body condition at goal weight.

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Just for the record though, on paleo and clean eating and so forth

Different things will work for different people. On a psychological level. Something like a paleo diet for example, if it results in a total calorie intake more suited to maintain your goal body condition and fuel your activity level, you'll be successful. Of course, that's not guaranteed... and if your progress does stall you're going to have to figure out whether you're still at an excessive intake or whether you are in fact at an insufficient intake to allow continued progress.

The issue with these diets though, is that they're rarely promoted in terms of "here's a healthy diet based on sensible choices that should result in a suitable intake without the need to track calories". They're promoted in terms of fear mongering about the foods that are excluded from the diet, and there's also an implication of moral or intellectual superiority over those who still indulge in more... well, more indulgent choices that aren't considered "clean" or whatever.

So. Some people are good at following a strict diet and will do just fine with this approach. But they are not "better" than other people who require a more flexible approach. Results come simply from appropriate intake relative to the type and amount of activity you participate in, not from some karmic system where you're rewarded with a "good body" for being a good person who eats good food, while all the shit people eating shit food get nothing. Right?

It should be enough to say "I like doing it this way, and it works for me", without needing to feel that it is also the ONLY way to do things, or the moral judgement as if anyone who does it another way is cheating the system somehow and doesn't really deserve whatever success they've managed to claw out for themselves.

The other issue here is that while it is possible and perhaps you could argue it is quite likely to achieve a suitable total intake on these more strict diets without tracking calories, it is far from a guaranteed outcome. This can be very problematic. As an example, an insufficient total intake will prevent further progress just as an excessive total intake will. A person who has stopped seeing results from training due to an insufficient total intake, but is lead to believe that their lack of progress is due to failing to adhere to the strict requirements of their dieting protocol 100% of the time, because they're "not a good enough person with willpower and dedication" is... well... you guys know I do a lot of work with eating disorder recovery, right? This is where a lot of the trouble starts.

So the issue is with the idea that nothing else will work, and 100% adherence is required. The issue is with the idea that achieving a suitable energy balance is not important, and the (entirely imaginary) moral quality of your food choices is. The issue is that some people have more trouble than others in sticking to a strict plan, and some people have issues with food and simply cannot eat the way they are told to. Those people then are effectively... no, they're quite literally told that there is no hope for them and they don't deserve good health or happiness.

BTW the 100% adherence idea is "orthorexia" and pushing it upon other, vulnerable people who just want to be healthy and happy and confident in their appearance makes you a shit human being. The people I described with limited food choices may or may not be effected by "Avoidant / Restrictive Food Intake Disorder". Consider this before your next ignorant "why can't they just grow up and eat clean real food" rant on facebook, dickheads.

I can not emphasise this point enough. The very simple truth is that your weight is determined by total calorie intake. For those who deny this, how do you explain why there are so many successful IIFYMers and Flexible Dieters out there? Certainly many people have also failed to achieve or maintain results via calorie counting, but this is due to either having inappropriate targets or simply by losing motivation. Even with an Avoidant / Restrictive Intake problem, you can certainly try to make the best choices that are acceptable to you, and include those in a plan to meet your total energy requirements.

Everyone has the same potential to succeed providing they follow the approach that is best suited to them as an individual. If a more strict approach choosing unprocessed, clean, paleo, whole foods works for you then by all means go for it. But it doesn't make you better than anyone else.

Not being a cunt, and being happy to see other people succeed even if they do so with a different approach to your own is what will make you a better person.

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Common sense look at IIFYM, continued.

Read the previous entry first, it's all about the If It Fits Your Macros approach to nutrition planning for weight loss.

For long term results, all diets either succeed or fail due to providing the appropriate amount of calories. I always talk about “appropriate to maintain your goal weight” to rule out unhealthy over restriction, but as long as you are consuming less than is required to maintain your current weight, you will lose weight.

Regardless of absolutely everything else, at the end of the day you're either getting the right amount or you aint. It really is that simple.

Well... almost.

Appropriate calories is the top priority, but we also need to pay attention to the ratio of calories from protein, carbohydrates and dietary fats as well. Contrary to popular belief, all of these macronutrients are important, although ideal ratios will vary from one person to the next.

By now you can probably imagine how this theory on nutrition got its name. Someone asks “I'm trying to lose weight, is it OK to eat [insert particular food choice here]?”, and the answer invariably is “if it fits your macros”. In other words, if overall intake is suitable to fuel, recover and adapt to exercise while maintaining your goal weight, individual choices of foods do not matter.

Now quite often the particular food that they might be asking about is a perfectly healthy, normal choice of foods that there's no good reason to avoid. With that being said though, even the healthiest foods will cause weight gain if eating them means that you end up consuming more calories than are necessary to maintain your current weight. Similarly, even a less healthy food choice will not cause weight gain unless you exceed your maintenance level of calories.

So, does this mean people can eat junk food and still lose weight?

It depends. Junk food tends to pack a lot of calories into a small amount of food, and usually those calories are predominately from sugars or fats. Junk food also has that addictive quality where (if you're anything like me) even though you say “I'll just have one”, you end up going back for another 6, or until there's none left. So, while it's possible to include some food purely for enjoyment rather than for nutritional content, it makes it a lot harder to end up meeting your targets for overall calories and macronutrient ratios at the end of the day.

Why IIFYM is the logical choice for weight loss.

OK! Going back to that list of common diet tips from earlier, astute readers might have picked up a couple of references to some legitimate approaches in amongst a lot of stuff which is pretty much nonsense. So if you're offended because you think I'm talking about favourite approach, or something your favourite body builder uses, or for any other reason because you think I'm saying “that's no good, that won't work” hold up for a moment while I explain.

First up, I'm not in competition shape and I do not coach people in contest preparation. If anyone out there wants to tell me that specific meal timing or frequency (some of the other stuff too) gives them an edge in contest preparation I am happy to take their word for it. With that said, the body builders I follow and attempt to learn from mostly just talk in terms of “this macro ratio for off season, and this ratio for contest preparation”.

 

Either way, we're not talking about nutrition plans for contest preparation here. What I'm interested in is taking people from overweight or obesity into amazing shape, and getting the best results possible with the simplest possible approach.

So in the case of an overweight or an obese person who may have tried to lose weight without lasting success several times already, the last thing they need is a complicated plan that focuses on the minute details rather than the big picture. They most often already have a bad relationship with food and have formed any number of negative beliefs about their ability to lose weight (“I can never stick to a diet” or “I don't like healthy food”, for example).

The last thing these people need is some complicated set of rules that is at best fine tuning for elite level competitors, and at worst entirely irrelevant.

Instead, what if you could build your own weight loss diet based on foods you will actually eat, and timed to fit your schedule? As long as it actually does fit your macros, how could you possibly go wrong?

Making it work.

Obviously it's not just a matter of choosing your favourite foods and going to town on them. We need to determine our target calorie and macronutrient guidelines first, and then start developing a meal plan to suit. One option would be keep notes on all meals, snacks and beverages consumed in a day, and then tally up the macronutritional content. From here it is easy to see which are the bad choices that are putting you into surplus calories (which means weight gain), and swap them out for some more appropriate choices. In many cases it may not require a particularly drastic change in eating habits.

Oh, you still want more?

Drop your details in the box at the top of the page, and there'll be a whole heap of quality, free information coming your way. Alternatively you can visit the brand new Flexible Fueling website instead, and subscribe there.

I've been writing about this IIFYM stuff for quite a while now, way before it went mainstream. Here's one of my earliest articles about IIFYM, and another comparing IIFYM with conventional weight loss dieting.

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IIFYM - Common Sense Approach To Weight Loss

It is a little ironic and unfortunate that while the motivation to lose weight may come from wanting to take better care of their health, the average overweight or obese person seems to adopt an unhealthy weight loss strategy more often than not. Usually this means extreme calorie restriction in the form of a crash diet, whether in the form of one of the many popular fad diets, meal replacement products, or just plain old “not eating”.

I would hope that anyone reading this article with an interest in health and fitness would agree that “food avoidance” is never a healthy option, even as a short term measure. Restriction leads to conservation, and it should be common knowledge by now that crash dieting invariable leads to weight gain as soon as the dieter returns to their usual eating habits. Not just gaining back the weight that they lost by starving themselves, but actually ending up heavier and more unhealthy than they started.

Perhaps even more damaging than the physical weight gain though is that each failed attempt to lose weight can reinforce negative and incorrect beliefs such as “I can't lose weight and I'll always be fat”, or even worse “eating makes you fat, not eating makes you lose weight”. Although there is a growing industry in products that take advantage of and propagate these messages, as fitness professionals or enthusiasts and decent human beings I'm sure we can all agree on how important it is that we combat these negative and untrue beliefs with practical, common sense advice on dieting, and the message that all human beings can get into shape and be healthy and happy through appropriate nutrition and exercise.

So that's crash dieting well and truly ruled out, forever!

What are some better options though? Our hypothetical overweight or obese person may be fortunate enough to have a friend or co-worker who knows (or at least, thinks he knows) something about training and nutrition who they can turn to for advice. Or, perhaps they get online and start researching the latest in legitimate dieting strategies as used by fitness models or body builders in contest preparation.

Depending on who's advice they follow, the dieting tips may be some or all of the following:

• Eat a particular number of meals per day.
• Eat only at these times of the day.
• Only eat these types of foods, never eat those types of foods. 
• Never eat these types of foods at the same time as those types of foods.
• Only eat these types of foods in the morning, and only eat these types of foods in the afternoon. 
• Avoid anything with a high glycaemic index.
• Cut out carbs.
• Cut out fats.
• And perhaps my personal favourite; “Just eat clean”.

What's missing from this list?

Let me put it to you another way. Imagine I get an email, or I have a conversation with a member at the gym and they tell me “Dave, why aren't I losing weight? I'm eating 6 small meals a day, nothing after 7pm, I've cut out this, increased that, and I'm eating pretty clean. I should have lost more weight by now. What gives?”

What do you think I am most likely to ask them before I can hazard a guess at why they are not seeing results?

Simply put: How many calories are you getting in a day?

Let me break it down for you this way. There are four ranges of calories that a person could be consuming on average, as follows:

• Excessive to current requirements, resulting in weight gain through increased body fat.
• Suitable to maintain current weight. 
• Suitable to achieve and maintain a healthy goal weight. 
• Insufficient for good health, with unpredictable results that may include weight gain.

There would be some grey areas in between, but in short “you are either consuming an appropriate amount of calories to maintain your goal weight, or you are NOT consuming an appropriate amount of calories to maintain your goal weight”.

Continue to the next entry on IIFYM For Weight Loss.

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IIFYM vs other weight management strategies

First off, conventional crash / starvation dieting. We all know by now that this doesn't work. You might even know this from personal experience. By definition, when you talk about "going on a diet" the implication is that it is a temporary measure, and a temporary measure can only produce a temporary result... unless you count the actual long term result which is actually GAINING weight when you come off the diet.

There's about 8 million different versions I've seen people (coworkers when I was a corporate square) go on and off. Soup diets, yogurt diets, cabbage diets... the list goes on and on but they're all boil down to the same thing; eating as little as possible. Also known as "starving yourself to lose weight". Something we all shake our heads and say "oh isn't that terrible" when there's a story about teenage girls with eating disorders, but as grown adults we'll adopt the same unhealthy, unsustainable and self-destructive habits in order to shed some weight.

I've already talked about the VLCD (Very Low Calorie Diet) products as well, which also push this false notion of "eating as little as possible to lose weight". As I've said, it's not a good strategy for weight management in the first place, and it's a TERRIBLE idea if you are remotely interested in being healthy and / or happy.

Here's another article I've published about why conventional weight loss methods and in particular Very Low Calorie Diets are dangerous and ineffective. If you could give it a rating of "awesome" when you're done reading, that would be nice.

Since you're here reading about how to lose weight through sensible nutrition and exercise I'll go ahead and assume that you're not interested in these phony "quick fix" products anyway so we'll move right along.

What is IIFYM, anyway?

IIFYM stands for "If It Fits Your Macros". Macros being short for "macronutrients", better know as Proteins, Fats, and Carbohydrates. The idea is pretty simple; at the end of the day you are either (a) consuming the appropriate amount of calories (and appropriate ratio of Proteins, Fats and Carbs) or (b) you are NOT consuming the appropriate amount of calories to achieve and maintain your goal weight.

So when people might ask "is it OK to eat [insert particular food here] while I'm trying to lose weight?" the answer is "if it fits your macros". In other words, will eating that food mean that you end up consuming too many calories over all? If it won't, then it is OK.

There's an article on my business site about how to reach your goal weight with IIFYM dieting, so if you go and read that one it will save me from repeating myself too much here.

To summarise though... there's a lot of talk about needing to time your meals in this way or that way, not eat certain foods at the same time, not eat certain foods are particular times of the day, glycemic index and so on... let me put it to you like this:

Let's say I have a client who needs to lose 20kg to get down to our primary goal of BMI 23, which for the sake of example we'll say is 60kg. So I crunch the numbers and come up with a plan of 1700 calories with 40% from protein, 40% carbs and 20% fats which should be about right to support a healthy 60kg and get results from training. Now, you're trying to tell me that's not going to work unless she spaces her meals precisely 3 hours apart, and we can forget the whole thing if she eats a fucking potato after 4pm?

Ridiculous! If your body requires x amount of calories and you do not exceed that amount, it is going to utilise those calories regardless of what time of day you consume them. Especially when we're eating at a calorie deficit (ie - less than required to maintain current bodyweight), as if your body is going to say "wow I could really use this fuel for energy and recovery from that workout this afternoon, but it's late in the day so instead it goes straight to the love handles". Preposterous.

What about "clean eating" though?

Absolutely. If you're currently indulging in high calorie junk foods, and you "clean up" your diet by eliminating these and replacing them with more nutritious choices you are quite likely to lose weight. Of course no matter how "clean" you eat, too many calories is too many calories. And I must reiterate that too few calories is no better than too many. Personally I want to be certain. I want to do the maths and come up with a plan and be 100% confident of success.

The other issues with "clean eating" are that (a) it is such a vague and subjective term, and (b) people can get far too carried away with it and it becomes something more like orthorexia.

Remember; results come from what you do habitually.

This is important because it should take some of the stress and pressure out of dieting. If you are in the habit of consuming the right amount of calories to support your goal weight, the results will come. So having a small slice of cake at your friend's birthday party doesn't spell the end of your progress even though it might mean that you exceed your targets on that particular day. Even if you do go a bit overboard, as long as you get back on track the next day it is barely even a bump in the road.

Keep it in perspective.

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