I am sure we are all familiar or have heard of IIFYM.
If not IIFYM stand for If It Fits Your Macros, this is the idea of being able to “diet” while still enjoying the foods that you love.
Personally I don’t agree with that statement because it is basically subliminally giving you lead way to “cheat” yourself out of a healthy & fit body.
Now I am no expert with IIFYM, because I have only just started, in fact today it is my first day at it, so I am using myself as an experiment to conclude as to wether IIFYM works in conjunction with my clean eating antics.
I was using MFP (my fitness pal) to keep track of my calorie intake, however I found that I was severely under eating and constantly stalling my progress. Not to mention the mood swings, constant hunger and obv the binging….
My Fitness pal can be a great tool, if you know how to use it correctly.. No human being can survive long term on a 1200 calorie, especially if you like myself is overly active on a daily basis.
Let me lay this out for you, MFP put me on 1600 cal daily for “weightloss” now I am not trying to loose weight but more so cut the fat I have gained whilst “bulking”- The art of eating at a calorie surplus to gain muscle whilst training- Unfortunately regardless of how clean you keep your diet you are bound to gain some fat during a bulk.
Anyways for the past 2-3 months I have been struggling with getting my body to lean out and I believe this all has to do with my Calorie intake, as well as macro nutrients and so forth. Not wanting to go to a competition diet ( which put me in a very bad physically sick place AS well as it being overly restrictive & not healthy ) I am sorting through my own research and resources to regain myself accomplished physical built.( I training and diet on my own, no coaches.)
So, upon reading on the success of various athletes and fellow fitness enthusiasts I have decided to give IIFYM a go.
So first things first I headed to http://www.iifym.com & used the IIFYM Calculator to divulge my BMR & TDEE- Just as an example here are my stats :
Now I used the most simplest form because unfortunately I do not know my lean mass therefore, I cannot get a straight calculation.
I selected 6 times as week as I do in fact, train Monday – Saturday some days twice a day, using my mornings for a light cardio session and night to either weights or Crossfit. I do burn quiet a lot of calories in my sessions so I know that the next step where it shows my calories required for fat loss see somewhat more accurate rather then My Fitness Pal suggestions.
So the next step is calculating my Calorie intake for fat loss as shown below:
Now I have selected to remove 20% of my TDEE which has equalled to 1823 calories daily, as you can see that is a pretty dramatic increase in calories from my suggestion on MFP. I am pretty happy about that because I have quiet an appetite and boy am i going to be able to fit some mammoth meals in there!
Now without further adue Macro calculations
Selecting your nutrition plan, based on your goals, IIFYM gives you a pretty good outlay of different types of diets like the zone and so forth however I have selected the IIFYM for simplicity and recommendation purposes.
I have left it as it was , because I figured I would thrive best within the recommended ranges of IIFYM, but if you feel confident that a higher protein lower carb lower fat diet may work then I suggest you adjust your nutrient requirements from there.
End results of requirements:
Be careful to select in however many meals you wish to split your macro, I know this goes against many fitness experts and so forth But I chose to eat 2 main meals a day with a pre work out snack in between & if I can fit a snack at night time. The reason for this is because I also do IF- Intermittent Fasting as per Lean gains.
** Intermittent fasting is the act of one purposely engaging in the absence of food for a certain period of time. One is to consume all their calorie intake within the “feeding window”, for example purposes only I do a 16:8 Fast, which has me fasted for 16 hrs a day and 8 hrs spent in the feeding stage, this allows me to break up all my meals evenly within 2-3 hrs from one another as well as, having my dinner early enough so that I do not go to bed on a full stomach. This method works perfectly with my work and work out schedules… I might also add that I lost roughly 20 cms all over my body as well as 2 kgs which I was pretty ecstatic about, but it did stall since I feel like I was over eating certain nutrients more so then others, Hence why This has led me to IIFYM. Anyways moving on.
As you can see IIFYM has adjusted all my macronutrients required , for a steady fatloss, I am pretty happy with those numbers so, now moving onto MFP to adjust my goals and so forth.
Going onto myfitnesspal.com , I’ve made myself an account, if you are wondering my username is sgfgpatty. As you can see my original goals set by MFP are pretty lousy to be honest…
Now I am not one to be afraid of carbs, but I feel like them not being evenly spread between nutrients just had me all out of whack when it came to entering my food in , I often Overloaded on carbs , because not eating meat had me sourcing protein from other foods like beans, rice and quinoa & soy… Also 33 g of sugar per day is a little ridiculous because even though I don’t eat added sugars (other than in some treat condiments, which I will have more on down the track)but majority of the veggies and fruits I eat contain it and well keeping it under that would be pretty disaterous…
Anyways, now changing your goals within MFP is pretty easy even though it wont give you exact numbers as per IIFYM you can estimate once you are entering them is.
So if you are unfamiliar with how to change the settings this is how to do it:
Step By step:
1: Select My Home
2: Select Goals
3: Select Change Goals
4: Select Custom Goals
5: Customize your goals
I basically just re entered my Calories and adjusted the percentages of my Protein, carbs and Fat Intake.. the remainder I left as it was because I don’t think they really matter.
As below:
They aren’t exactly as per IIFYM, but that can be adjusted when logging in my food.
Which Now I can show you how I eat on a daily basis, I often pick the same meals everyday for a whole week, in order to save me time, money & head aches having to work out portions everyday… I personally don’t have time for that, although I make my meals fresh ( steamed veggies) every night the remainder like the beans and rice/quinoa is kept safely in the fridge for the whole week. If you have spare time on your hands then great but, I also find it easy to keep track this way…SO here is this weeks meal plan & Macro nutrient consumption:
As you can see I am a little below my intake, so I can afford something extra like maybe a protein shake or something with that amount of calories, carbs – my fat intake though is a little high but no matter in my eyes a couple of grams is no reason to stress and start pulling hairs out.
Also this is without my exercising included on MFP- but again IIFYM calculated my intake after “training 6 days a week”, I train vigorously so I am not worried as to wether I am burning enough calories to sustain that or not, this is where your motivation & determination sets you apart, don’t slack off ladies & gents. But just for example purposes during my training sessions both combined I can burn up to 1200 Calories, depends on workouts and so forth.
I will post progress pictures as i go on on here & instagram so keep a look out ❤
I hope this has been helpful and I will check back with you guys once I feel like I have made enough progress and share my new learning's and mistakes .
Until then Keep fit & peace out ❤
Patty xx
For other posts that include, workouts, food recipes & just general living connect with me via:
Instagram is:
Skinnygrlfitgrl
& once again My Fitness pal:
sgfgpatty
skinnygirlfitgirl 