IIFYM

IIFYM stands for If It Fits Your Macros and macros are the three main macronutrients such as protein, fat and carbs. IIFYM is also referred as “flexible dieting” and essentially it is making sure everything you eat throughout the day fits your specialized macro breakdown. Everyone is different and the breakdown of macros depends on your weight, height, activity level, age and what your fitness goals are, whether you want to maintain, lose, or gain weight. I’ll cover more about the ratio later.

I follow tons of fitness profiles on instagram and a good half of them use the IIFYM diet. At first I passed it off mostly because they would eat healthy, while still having a pop tart or yummy treat and then follow it with “well it fits my macros.” I didn’t really understand it or cared to understand it, and mostly felt that what they were promoting wasn’t “healthy” and against everything they (and I) stood for. But as time went on I became more interested, especially when my favorite fitspo (fitness inspiration) instagram started following the diet as well. She struggles just like I do with keeping a healthy mentality while eating clean and IIFYM has helped her feel less guilty with indulging every now and then. 

I became interested and took to the internet to do my research. IIFYM.com has been the most useful and I was able to find out what my own macro ratio looks like using their IIFYM calculator. They also have a bunch of other health calculators such as BMR (what your body burns at rest), TDEE (what your body burns throughout the day), etc, which also help you figure out how many calories you should be consuming based on how many calories you burn.

So why IIFYM? I thought eating “clean” was good enough? Essentially yes, but also no. I used to be the same way. “As long as I am eating clean I’m ok,” BUT I didn’t know how many calories I was consuming and my amount of macros was different everyday. For example, before I went on vacation back in May I was hardcore (yeah I used that word) eating clean and would only cheat once a week. But after I came back from vacation and eating dirty food for 3 days I found it hard to bounce back and found myself gaining weight very very easily. Yeah I ate bad foods more frequently than before, but I essentially eat 90% clean throughout the week with exercise 4x a week so you would think I should be loosing weight and not gaining it right?

IIIFM.com explains, "Since our daily calorie intake accounts for the majority of what our bodies look like, it only makes sense that when we eat clean, we lose weight. Eating clean however is not the answer to fat loss, but is simply a trick or technique that helps those who don’t count calories or macros, to lower them. The biggest problem when we eat clean and have no idea how many calories we are actually ingesting (let alone how many our body requires) we end up starving ourselves, and line up our metabolism for a bounce back that is sure to have us putting on extra lbs. soon as we start eating “normal” again.” 

Puts things in a completely different perspective huh? I also used to be one of those people that thought I didn’t need to or I actually shouldn’t be counting my calories because again “I’m eating healthy so it doesn’t matter,” and I always thought it promoted an unhealthy mentality. When really keeping track of what I’m eating is a healthy mentality because it lets me know what I need MORE of, yeah I said more and not less. I use the My Fitness Pal app on my phone to insert my meals and it helps me stay on track with my macro ratio. It may seem like a chore to have to insert my food for every meal for every day but it really isn’t. It takes no longer than a minute and it saves previous used foods to I just have to tap the food I ate and save it. My Fitness Pal then breaks up my macros into a pie chart and shows what the ratio of what I’ve consumed that day next to my macro goals. 

Still interested? To calculate your specialized macro ratio go to http://iifym.com/iifym-calculator/ and it will do it all for you! It’s broken down in 4 different steps. 1) you put in your information, 2) select what your goals are, 3) select your nutrition plan (use iifym), and finally 4) view your results where you can choose how many grams of each macro you want. I picked 1 gram of protein, .40 of fat and then it leaves carbs for very last. Based on the amount of calories I burn a day (2100) my goal is to eat 1,725 calories with a macro ratio of 45/30/25 (carbs, protein, fat). It has only been a few days but my body is already reacting very positively. I suffer from “food baby syndrome” and “I promise I’m not pregnant it’s my food baby”, meaning I get bloated very easily from eating too many carbs. I’m still allowed to eat a fair amount but it is helping me not eat too much like I tend to. 

And guess what? At the end of the day if I have some macros or calories left over I can eat what I want as long as it fits! Say I have 30 grams of carbs left to meet my goal and I’m craving something yummy, I’ll eat a pop tart and it still meet my goals. Yeah I could eat a banana and it would do the same thing, but sometimes (or all the time) you just want a damn pop tart ;)