Introduction

If you have cruised social media, you may have come across the hashtag #IIFYM, which is short for If It Fits Your Macros. You might have heard your fellow gym goers or even read snippets about it in one of your health magazines or heard other gym goes talking about it. So what does this actually mean? At first, you might think this is just another fad, but the results are well documented. In short, macros are short for macronutrients, which are your fats, protein and carbohydrate. Unlike other diets, these transformations are sustainable.

I don’t blame you, diets are discouraging and with so many coming out and everyone swearing by them, how do you know which one is best for you? Typical dieters mindset is to try what’s trending – what is the new hot diet of the moment? What are all the Instagram influencers doing? Typically, the reason these diets are so popular is because they’re simple: it’s simple to cut carbs out, who needs that cookie and bread anyway? It’s easy to buy those weight-loss teas that promise to shed those pounds. It’s easy to buy a waist trainer and take some fat burner pill after you favorite Instagram influencer posed with it. If dieting was this easy, why doesn’t everyone look like those influencers? The issue is that most of these solutions have unfounded results, not sustainable and most of all, not personalized.

In reality, counting macros is not a diet; it’s more of a lifestyle change. It allows you to be more flexible in what you eat, while still staying in the boundaries of your diet. Understanding the fundamentals of macros are important and will help you successfully implement it into your every day eating. Many people get discouraged because it seems may complicated, and give up. The reason being is that this process is not cookie cutter. We are all different: between age, height, sex and weight, so what we eat needs to match accordingly. But don’t worry, I am going to guide you and help you understand the fundamentals of the macro diet.

When trying to building muscle and burn fat, the portions and/or nutritional content of what we eat are more important than the actually food we eat. Sometimes eating diet food such as chicken and brown rice can cause us to gain weight, whereas eating foods that are not typically “diet food” will make us lose weight. This is why some people on diets such as the Keto Diet don’t get results; they may not be eating carbs, but they unknowingly may be eating too much for what their bodies can actually handle. Typically, dieters struggle with figuring out which is more

important, quality or quantity. In terms of the macro diet, it is quantity > quality. It is more important to keep track of the “how much” and not some much the “what.”

Before we start on building your personalized macronutrient, or flexible diet, we must breakdown the most important factors. Certain guidelines must be followed at all times in order to achieve results, but there are others that will help, but you can be flexible with them. One of the things we are going to do is to better understand and learn to gain control over your metabolism (it’s not all genetics!), to better understand calories in versus calories out, how macronutrients contribute to those calories, and to ultimately making you confident in building eating habits and having a better relationship with food.

Metabolism

Building your metabolism is your first step towards to achieving results with flexible dieting. Metabolism is the chemical process within the body of burning calories for energy to sustain life. Think of your body like a steam-engine train: your metabolism is that fire that creates the steam to keep the train moving. The goal is to grow that fire and to keep it running at fastest speed we can. If that fire is small, we need to slowly feed that fire some coal to make it grow. Now imagine your metabolism being that fire. When you are not eating enough, your fire is small, and your body is running, but not as fast as it should be, causing your metabolism to slow down. As you slowly add food to your diet, your metabolism will start picking up. But just like a fire, if you throw too much all at once, you would smother the fire and burn it out, and with your metabolism, completely overwhelm it and not produce results. By incorporating more food into your diet slowly, we will help build your metabolism to the best and fastest it can be.

Unfortunately, popular culture has taught us to eat less, which ultimately sabotages your metabolism. Many of my clients come to me asking for fat loss results. When I ask them about their eating, they typically say “I really don’t eat that much” – their metabolism is not nearly where it should be. If you eat a yogurt for breakfast, a sandwich for lunch and a salad for dinner- this might yield short-term weight-loss results. But if you consistently eat this amount of food every day, your body ultimately gets used to it. So where can you cut from there? From the example above, there is not a lot of wiggle room to take make adjustments to shock your body, hence you stay stagnant.

It is important to know that there are certain factors that impact your metabolism that our out of your control, such as your age, height, sex and your current weight With weight, although this is something we are targeting to bring down, this is a factor of you’re your metabolism is working at present time. As you lose weight, your metabolism does naturally slow down.

Calories #1

What exactly are calories and why do we put so much emphasis on how much you consume? The simplest way to explain a calorie is that it is a unit of energy used to fuel the basic functions of your body including powering your daily activities, facilitating hormone production and aiding in muscle growth.

Calories in/calories out: The food you consume is your source of calories. The amount and portions you eat will supply you with different amounts of fuel. The problem is that many times, people are consuming too many calories, beyond what your body requires to function. When this happens, extra calories are being stored for “reserved energy” and is deposited as body fat. Think about a bear in the summer time, eating calories in the summertime in a surplus to be able to store the energy to be able to hibernate until the next summer. We are not that bear- we do not want to store these calories as fat for later use. We want to burn what we eat so we don’t store the calories as body fat…unless you’re that caveman in the Geico commercials. The calories we eat should match what is needed to fuel our activities in order for our bodies to not store it as fat.

Your basic metabolic rate, or BMR, is the amount of calories your body needs to do the very basic functions to sustain life such as breathing and sleeping, but also includes keeping your organs functioning. This is the amount you need to eat just stay alive with no activity all day, like if you just lay around and binge-watch Netflix all day.

But most of us are not just laying around all day, and are expending calories above our BMR, and we need to take that into account when calculating your daily caloric need. This will definitely vary with your lifestyle, not your body type. So- someone who is landscaping or doing construction 8 hours a day is going to need more caloric intake than someone who sits at an office desk for those same 8 hours. Someone who trains 7 days a week as opposed to a weekend warrior will need to take more. These are just two examples of either end of the spectrum. So when trying to achieve fat loss results, you must take into consideration the calories in vs. calories out and your body needs.

The problem that many people face is that they have actually not been eating enough, and their metabolism is suffering because of it. In this case, a metabolic reset is what we need here to get you on the right path. Think of it as warming up before the start of a race. Referring back to crashing your metabolism earlier, we must rebuild it first to what your body needs. In doing this,

it is important to understand that physical results are not the #1 priority here. If you have not been eating enough, then how will you allow yourself the deficit to burn the excessive fat that you have lingering? Given a clients history, a metabolic reset can take anywhere from 3 to 6 weeks to achieve. In this process, it is important to monitor for any weight gain or loss, physical changes, but most

importantly, your hunger between meals. At first, it may seem like you are eating excessive, going from not eating enough to eating exactly what your body needs within its limits. But I will tell you this, 100% of my client that go through this process can testify to acclimating to the given calories as well as building a need for more just to stay satiated.

Remember that bear analogue? Your body wants to hold onto that fat for future energy as it is always preparing for survival mode. Your metabolism is constantly changing depending on your caloric intake. Our task at hand is to consistently keep the body guessing, ultimately this will help us break through any plateaus in weight loss.

Breaking through plateaus:

Since the body is always preparing for survival mode, it causes your metabolism to fluctuate depending on how many calories you intake. It is trying to take some of the calories you intake and store it as fat for doomsday. If you eat 200 calories less than what you’re supposed to eat, this will obviously yield results…but for how long? Your body will eventually acclimate to this number as well. Burning fat and dropping pounds will lower your basal metabolic rate and in turn, it will also slow your metabolism. When your metabolism slows, fat will start to accumulate and without consistent observation, you will put on weight while being in a caloric deficit. This is why shocking the body by slowly removing calories from the top rather than slashing an extreme amount is important. All that will do is crash your metabolism again. The smaller increments of calories taken away, the more we are able to break through the plateaus.

Macros

Macronutrient Calories per 1 g of macronutrient % of Total Caloric Intake

Protein 4 calories 20- 30%

Fats 9 calories 15 -30%

Macros are what calories are broken down into. The three macronutrients are protein, fats and carbohydrates, which are the only components that make up our caloric intake. When trying to reach our goals, we can do it in multiple different ways by manipulating our macronutrient ratios. So how do we determine those ratios? This will be decided through varying factors including your body type and physique or training goals. Based on the desired outcomes, we can determine how to personalize the amount of protein, carbs and fats that are incorporated and distributed into your diet throughout your day. If you hit your macronutrient targets, you will hit your goal caloric intake.

Protein: The Building Block of Muscle Proteins are the basic, undigested form of amino acids, which are the building blocks of muscle. Once ingested, your body breaks down these types of calories into amino acids and are then shuttled into your muscles to repair and rebuild. This helps make your muscles bigger and stronger. Generally, you should start by eating about 1 gram of protein for every 1 lb of body weight, accounting for 20-30% of your caloric intake. Given your goals and your tolerability of protein intake, we can adjust this. There are 4 calories for every gram of protein.

Dietary Fat: The Hormone Powerhouse Fats play a big role in hormone production within the body. Dietary fats are converted into hormones such as testosterone, estrogen, growth hormone and thyroid hormones. Despite their importance, dietary fat has had a bad rap in the past- but it’s nothing to be scared of. This is mainly due its high caloric density and how easy it is to go over calories as a whole with just a small amount of fat. As with anything else, accountability will allow you to incorporate higher fat foods without feeling guilty…as long as you count them! Let’s make this clear, fat does not make you fat when incorporated into a balanced diet. A good place to start with fats is 0.3 – 0.6 g for every 1 lb of body weight, accounting for 15-30% of your caloric intake. There are 9 calories for every gram of fat.

I do want to highlight that not all dietary fats are created equally, and the type of fat you intake should be accounted for.

First, we have our saturated fats. This type of fat is

Carbohydrates 4 calories 30-50%

usually supplied by ingestion of animal fat such as meats, high fat dairy and eggs. It also includes such vegetable fats such as coconut and palm oils. Saturated fats are the most utilized type of fat for hormone production. This should make up 40% of your total daily fat intake.

There are also mono and polyunsaturated fats. We tend to hear about these as being “healthy dietary fats” and are consumed through foods such as avocados, nuts, fish and other oils such as olive, peanut and canola oils.

And then there are trans-fats, especially the artificial trans-fats. These are the fats you find in fried foods and baked goods. Trans-fats are produced from oils that are heated at high temperatures, like French fries. These types of fats should be avoided at all cost, due to its instant conversion rate from dietary fat to body fat.

Carbohydrates: Your Body’s Preferred Fuel Source Your body WANTS to burn carbs. The conversion rate from carbs to energy once ingested is easier and faster than from any of the other two macronutrients. On the other hand, it is the only macronutrient that is not required for survival, and your body will depend on fats and proteins for the energy if carbohydrates are not avaiable. This is why we can manipulate carbohydrates more than the other macronutrients towards reaching your fat loss goals.

The process in which your body utilizes carbs is called glycolysis. Once ingested, your pancreas releases insulin into your bloodstream, binding to those carbohydrates, which then shuttles it, along with amino acids and other nutrients into your muscles for stored energy. When there is no accountability for how many carbohydrates are being ingested, there is an overflow of stored glucose, which then will be distributed throughout the body as “stored energy” aka body fat. When carbohydrates intake is minimized, your body’s metabolism will start burning body fat, which is stored energy, as fuel. The issue is, when you completely cut out carbohydrates from your diet, it can lead to low energy, sluggish workouts, and crashing of your metabolism or plateaus. That is why a slow taper of carbohydrates is suggested.

Carbohydrate sensitivity can be determined by body type, fitness levels and most of all, past dietary choices. It is important to keep a proportional carbohydrate ratio to allow room to make small adjustments for either losing fat or building muscle as well as increasing the speed of your metabolism. Along with small adjustments, body weight and body composition should be

monitored weekly and will determine macronutrient adjustments and caloric intake. You should start by eating about 1- 2 gram of carbohydrates for every 1 lb of body weight, accounting for accounting for 30 -60% of your total caloric intake. Its not unlikely for lean individuals to build there metabolisms up strong enough to handle and utilize up to 4 grams of carbs per pound of bodyweight! More carbs equals a stronger metabolism every time. There are 4 calories for every gram of carbohydrate.

The Right Ratio for Your Personal Goals Macronutrient ratios can be adjusted to meet your goals. Lower carbs would tap into your body fat stores for energy, which will ultimately reduce body fat. Higher carbohydrate diets would be utilized for muscle growth and bulking faces, and also to increase metabolism. Although there are preferred ratio to start on your macro-dieting, these numbers will and should consistently change in order for your body to break through metabolism plateaus.

Small adjustments for big results It is important to not make drastic cuts to your macronutrient/caloric intake. By doing this, you have less room to make future adjustment to shock your body’s metabolism to reach your ultimate goal. So lets say, your goal is to loss 30 lbs- if you were to cut your macronutrient intake so drastically up front, you may see a quick reduction of body fat and weight loss, but you will end up plateauing, and once that happens, where would you go? It is important to allow room for multiple smaller adjustments vs. large slashes in caloric intake. This will keep your body guessing and keeping your metabolism firing on all cylinders while keeping caloric intake as high as possible.

Micronutrients

Micronutrients may not be as important as macronutrients and caloric intake, however they should not to be ignored. These are elements that are still essential for survival. These are elements that are found in common foods, but it still may be beneficial to supplement. The two main micronutrients that are beneficial to monitor during your flexible dieting are sodium and fiber.

Sodium Most people can ingest 1500 – 3400 g of sodium per day with little health implications. However, the higher end of that spectrum may cause significant water retention, bloating, as well as other health problems like high blood pressure. Sodium does not just enter your diet by shaking the salt shaking over your food. It is found in processed foods, such as canned vegetables and deli meats.

Fiber Fiber is important for gut health and digestion. It also helps aid with nutrient absorption. Your main source of fiber would be your green vegetables. Although vegetables are low in caloric density, they are high in fiber as well as viatins and minerals and are great for satiability and sustaining low caloric diets. If fiber is missing from your diet, it can cause bloating, constipation, and decrease nutrient absorption. Women should get anywhere between 20-30 g per day and men should get 30-40 g per day.

Nutrient Timing

It is important to remember that caloric intake will always be #1. Macronutrients a close second while micronutrients play a small, but still significant role. Utilizing nutrient timing is a great way of giving your flexible dieting that extra edge. By timing the intake of certain macronutrients, we can further trick your body into burning fat and building muscle. You may have heard people cutting carbs at night- this is a basic idea of nutrient timing. The majority of carbohydrates, or your energy, will be around your workouts or daily physical activity, as well as the surplus of carbohydrates post

workout to aid of growth and recovery of your muscles.

The three key things of nutrient timing: 1) breaking the fast 2) anabolic window and 3) priming your body for fat burning.

Breaking the fast This is an ideal time for fat intake due to your body’s natural spike in testosterone, important for both men and woman for lean body mass and bone strength, and growth hormone. Eating fats in the morning also helps keep you satiated longer. Proteins will help shut down any catabolic, or break down processes your body overcomes from a lack of calories overnight. Carbohydrates will be essential if strenuous physical activity is done with 60-90 minutes of breakfast, but is not always necessary in surplus otherwise.

Anabolic Window This is that 30-60 minute window of time after completing a workout. After strenuous exercise, glucose/carbohydrates are depleted, and muscles need to be refueled. Think of your body as a sponge for carbohydrates during this time of the day. Up to 40% of your total daily carbohydrate

intake should fit into this window, for higher glycemic carbohydrate sources. This will spike insulin, shuttling those carbohydrates into your muscles to aid in recovery and muscle growth. This should be done with a substantial amount of protein from easy absorbable resource, such as protein powders or egg whites. Dietary fat should be minimized due to higher caloric density and slower digestion rates, which will cause a slowdown of the carbs and proteins to be digested slower.

Priming Your Body for Fat Burning Carbohydrates are your body’s preferred source of fuel, and will benefit you in aiding workout intensity, recovery, and metabolism. But what about when we aren’t active? During these times of day, carbohydrate intake should be minimized, and high fiber, lower glycemic carbohydrate sources should be utilized. By doing this, your metabolism will start burning stored body fat for energy during sedentary times of the day. In turn, manipulating carbs before exercise is another good way to speed up the process of fat burning through caloric depletion. If I wanted to burn as much fat as possible, you would want to ingest less carbs before your workout so your body is more likely to burn fat, but you will sacrifice energy and intensity during that workout. If your goal is to build muscle, you would want to ingest more carbohydrates, which allow you to increase workout intensity and keep energy elevated as well as keeping you prone to building muscle.

Supplements: The Extra Edge

The very last factor in achieving your flexible dieting goals is proper supplementations. Although this is has the least impact of the five factors, I feel the basic fundamental supplements are essential for closing the loop in terms of achieving your goals. There are some supplements that are not as essential, but give you the extra edge depending on your specific goals.

The Essentials Certain supplements are absolutely necessary to aid in proper body function and fill in whatever gaps your balanced diet isn’t able to fulfill. These supplements may not be the highly branded and marketed supplements that are being pitched to you by your favorite body builders or fitness models. Yet their roles in a balanced diet are vital and should not be neglected.

- Multivitamin: it is near impossible to fulfill your essential vitamin requirement strictly through dietary choices and helps supplement you with a wide spectrum of vitamins and minerals into an already balanced diet. This should be taken once a day with foods that contain some fat.

- Probiotics: Your digestive track contains good bacteria that helps break down carbohydrates and toxins, while keeping any bad bacteria ingested at bay. Probiotics is a supplement of your good bacteria, which is a living organism, and helps keep your gut healthy. This should be taken once a day with food. Since it is a living organism, you will find these in the refrigerated isle of your supplement store.

- Digestive Enzymes: It is a protein enzyme that aids your body with breaking down the macronutrients. The supplementation will boost your natural body’s ability to break macronutrients, while helping with indigestion. This should be taken with at least 3 meals a day.

- Glutamine: This is an amino acid that is also produced naturally in the body and is also found in many foods. It helps facilitate intestinal health, muscle recovery and natural sleep patterns. I recommend taking 5 – 10 grams post working and before bedtime.

- Branch Chain Amino Acids (BCAAs): These are three amino acids that are not produced naturally by the body: leucine, isoleucine and valine. BCAAs aid in muscle growth, decrease muscle fatigue and soreness as well as reduce muscle wasting that may be experienced through high deficit diets and cardio activities. I recommend you take 10 grams before, during and/or after any exercise activities that increase your heart rate.

- Omega-3 Fatty Acids: There are many health benefits to omega-3 fatty acids, including reducing inflammation, improved joint recovery and reducing bad cholesterol. Omega-3 fatty acids are considered a polyunsaturated fat. Unless your diet is full of foods high in omega-3 such as salmon and eggs, it would be optimal to incorporate these supplements into your routine.

Fat Loss Supplements: Fat loss in the nutrition and supplement industry is the most popular category of supplements in the market. Let’s make this clear; there is NO quick fix for weight loss and obtaining that six pack. There is a fine line between achieving results in a healthy way using fat loss supplements and the health risk that come with some of these supplements.

- Fat Burners: Most fat burners are not 100% transparent in what is in them due to the proprietary blends. Many contain unfamiliar ingredients and do not listing dosages versus other supplements that will. It is not something I suggest you take for more than 4 – 6 weeks at a time, using only at the final stages of your fat loss journey. Overuse of fat burners will build a tolerance to them and other major health risks such as increased heart rate, irregular heart beats and crashing your metabolism. Although results can be achieved using fat burns, minimal usage is advised.

- L-Carnitine: This is the safest and most cost effective fat burning supplement available. L-Carnitine is an amino acid that increases metabolic function by utilizing fat for energy. It is also naturally found in red meats. Supplementing is the only way to get necessary amounts to see the fat loss benefits. It is suggested to take 1,500 to 3,000 mg pre-workout or before any physical activity.

- Conjugated Linoleic Acid (CLA): This is a fatty acid found in meat and dairy products. A number of studies have demonstrated that CLA will reduce fat mass, increasing lean muscle, reduce appetite and burn extra calories. It is suggest to take 3 gram 2- 3 times a day with food. It is important to understand that this is a type of fat, and should be counted towards your macros.

Building Those Muscles: Even though you can only truly build muscle through a caloric surplus, supplements can give you a wide variety of benefits to aid muscle building. Everything from recovery to increased blood flow can be achieved with the right supplement.

- Preworkouts: Although these are great for aiding muscle, you have to be careful with which one you chose, as you can have the same issue as with fat burner supplements. Many preworkouts are proprietary blends and you will not know exactly what is in them. If you know what you are looking for, some of these preworkouts hold true to how effective they are. Some things to look for when choosing the right preworkout are: citrulline malate, agmatine sulfate and arginine. These are great vasodilators and will aid in achieving that pump you are looking for. Taurine and minimal amount of caffeine can aid in focus and energy during your workouts. Some preworkouts also include BCAAs and glutamine, however they are provided at optimal doses, and the individual supplements should still be taken.

- Creatine: Creatine helps replenish lost energy in the muscles, in turn will help increase the capacity of the muscles in uploading energy and allowing for a high intensity exercise. It will also allow for faster muscle recovery between high intensity bursts of exercise. It is suggested to take 5 gram of creatine post workout to supplement what was lost during the workout.

Calculating YOUR Basel Metabolic Rate

Now that we’ve covered and fully understand the concept of Flexible Dieting, Macros and a Metabolism in general we are ready to utilize the tools learned and began constructing a plan to achieve our best physiques! First things first. We need to know where we stand…..and weigh. Jumping on a scale to find your weight is not that simple. Ideally it should be done first thing in the morning on an empty stomach and after using the bathroom. This will correlate to a dry weight, and the only weight the should be documented for further adjustments in diet and cardio.

From here, there are only 3 more factors remain when finding your BMR. You may want to check your driver license to locate you correct age. From there, as long as you haven’t undergone any growth spurts since you license was renewed, check your height. After that id hope your sex would be a no brainer. And from there we are ready.

The simple formula is the basis for nutritionists around the world to find an accurate Basel Metabolic Rate for their clients and now you too have that formula. Be aware that in time yes, you will get older which will cause you BMR to drop and lets not forget that dropping or gaining weight can also cause your BMR to fluctuate which means continually updating your BMR maybe beneficial to stay more accurate. Yet one of the biggest factors in metabolism will always be your current a past (3-6 months) eating habits. But no worries. This can be fixed with a simple metabolic reset. But before that…..Total Daily Caloric Expenditure.

Total Daily Energy Expenditure

Now that we have your BMR or how many calories your body needs to survive while zero energy expenditure is accounted for, we will need to factor in the amount of calories YOU will be burning everyday while including your daily physical needs like the amount of weight training we will be doing for the week. An extremely physical job like construction or landscaping should also be accounted for being that the calories burn are much higher than normal lifestyle. This number will make up your TDEE or Total Daily Energy Expenditure and will be your “maintenance “ number of calories you will use to reset your metabolism.

Once you have factored in all your physical activity for the week its important to understand that this number is not set in stone. It will change as your body changes, and as you add or subtract caloric output (exercise) your caloric intake may or may not also change.

As for when it changes, now is not that time. Remember, this is warm up for the marathon. The metabolic reset. You do not know how much you’ve been eating but but now we know how much you should eat, and we have to make your body accustomed to that number.

It may take anywhere from 2-5 weeks to achieve a full metabolic reset. In this time certain factors should be observed and tracked like weight gain/loss, energy levels, and appetite.

Although the scale is really irrelevant in this phase, and drastic weight loss/gain (more than 5lbs) shouldn’t occur and if so calories should be adjusted accordingly. Energy levels should significantly increase due to the probability of eating more when compared to previous dietary habits. And as for your appetite. This will be the most important factor to observe being that the hungrier you become before and after meals, the faster your metabolism is burning through those calories. Ive heard clients complain about not being able to eat all the calories required on the first week of a reset, while in the weeks to come they are begging for more food because their metabolism has picked up that they are always hungry.

This is what we want! Now that you are eating so much more calories then your previous eating habits allowed, while utilizing them for energy and not fat storage, we are in the ideal state to make adjustments in the direction of our goals!

Macronutrient Percentages: Where Do I Start?

The exact amount of calories we, as an individual should be eating has been calculated and we have our starting point. Or do we? Calories matter but how are these calories broken down into macronutrients? Thats definitely a huge factor in the equation as well.

Let’s not forget the most important variable in your plan is caloric intake, and yes without tracking macros and just monitoring this number we can get great results. But….without tracking we can’t fully utilize all the tools at are disposal to achieve and continue to keep achieving results in our physique goals. And wouldn’t we want to?

Finding the correct Macro Percentage for you can be some what trial and error. Obviously this number will change (mainly carbs) as you push towards your goal and break through plateaus. As with your maintenance number or starting point, carbs should be somewhat highly as to give you room to make adjustments or drop in the months to come.

As described early your protein intake should be around one gram per bodyweight, with a slight increase to 1.2-1.3 when at a low total caloric intake to help counter muscle breakdown. Fat should range from 0.3-0.6 grams per pound of body weight with the number being adjusted in reverse to carbohydrates (carbs go up fats go down and vise versa) depending on your goals. Carbohydrates again will fluctuate the most out of the other two macronutrients but a good starting point would be 1-2 grams per pound of bodyweight depending on activity levels and body composition. If you can tolerate higher carbs, doing moderate to high intensity training 3-5 times weekly start at the higher end. Higher in body fat with a lot to lose, only able to train 2-3 times weekly? Then maybe the lower end is a good start.

As far as exact percentages, using the guidelines above will direct you to your correct numbers, but anywhere from 15-30% fats, 20-35% protein, and 30-60% carbs would be around whats needed to bring someones metabolism back up to par from there previous eating habits.

Whatever the case, again trial and error will always be necessary. But remember caloric intake will truly determine results so its best to not overthink. Find whats working best over time and apply!

Dieting In The Right Direction: Deficits and Surpluses

Once we have found our BMR and factored in our Total Daily Energy Expenditure. We have reset our metabolisms to be in tuned with that number in the weeks past. Now its time to decide our goals and make adjustments towards them!

Most of you out there are looking to drop body fat so i feel it best we start with that. You are eating and you are hungry, but not starving. That is the key, to just be hungry enough. And dropping calories to low too fast is going not only cause us to starve but also crash our metabolism, burn muscle and drop energy levels all at the same time. Yes you may lose unwanted lbs faster. But drastic cuts in calories is what got our metabolism here in the first place, and we want to keep burning those calories we are eating (not storing them) as well as burn fat in the process.

This is why small drops in calories will always work best. 50-150 calories each cut is perfect with the majority of those cuts coming from carbs.This will help keep your metabolism firing on all cylinders without even much noticing the drop, but also be enough to burn through the calories eaten, then into fat stores to supply what lacks due to deficit. When to drop calories could be just as important as how much to drop. Slashing calories exponentially every week will do nothing more than bring to a drastically low caloric intake sooner. Adjustments should be made only when results stop and plates are hit. losing .5-1.5 lbs a week is more than enough to continually achieve results while maintaining the strongest metabolism possible. Any more weight loss in that time could cause you to burn muscle which will in turn slow metabolism and lead you right back too where you started. Small Adjustments only when needed while achieving continuous results is the way to go!

Now on the flip side, many gym goers out there are striving to put on some weight and add quality muscle. This is when a surplus come into play. Eating more calories then burned is the only way to naturally put on muscle. The problem lies in overdoing it!

Now just like going into a deficit and burning fat may cause one to burn muscle along with it, going into a surplus can cause that same to put on unwanted body fat along with that hard earned muscle. The key again is to making small adjustments while tracking the results.

You hear stories of bodybuilders and athletes eating buckets of fried chicken and whole pizzas during a bulk season to put on extreme amounts of muscle mass in a short period of time. This maybe the most counterproductive approach to your end goal. Doing this will surely increase your overall body fat as well as being extremely unhealthy all around. The best approach is a conservative one.

Slowly increasing your metabolism and caloric intake into a surplus will put you in the most anabolic (muscle building) state necessary to achieve your goals. The added calorie should again be coming mainly from carbohydrates which will help you replenish and refuel your muscle after

intense training. About 400-500 calories should be about the maximum amount of calories needed on top of your TDEE to slowly build muscle while keeping body fat levels to minimum.

Once you’ve reach a surplus of about 500 calories its important to hold this number through the bulking phase while also watching bodyweight. More than .5-1 lbs a week is more than enough to hold a number without needing to make adjustments. Now its important to understand that you cannot exponentially add 1 or even .5lbs of muscle every week forever. So its important to not be intimidated into going higher in surplus. You will not add more muscle with more food. Only fat.

Making Flexible Dieting Easy with My Fitness Pal

After taking in all this information and fully understanding how to control your metabolism with Flexible Dieting, you’ve got to ask yourself “How the hell am I gonna actually keep track of all this”? And yes, it would be a lot of work to have to write all your food down, find the caloric intake of each one, then add the numbers to make up your total daily caloric needs. But here’s the thing, you don’t!

This is the future ladies and gentleman! We have iPhones and internet at our disposable and best of all Apps. One app in particular thats changed the way I’ve dieted fyeverever. My Fitness Pal calorie counter and fitness tracker. And using it has never been similar. Im going to show you how.

Setting Your Macro Goals: Unless you’ve been living under a rock the past 10 years the first step here is obviously downloading the app and setting up your account password/username. It may ask you if you’d like to download premium for am annual $50 fee. I wont push anyone here but i will suggest its worth it. Plenty of added feature to make your life and diet plan as easy as possible. But again not 100% necessary to achieve results.

After that it will go ask about all those factors we used to come up with your BMR and TDEE which it will use to do the same. Complete this but we will be making our own adjustments. The numbers maybe similar but using our own equation will always be more accurate, especially when breaking up the macronutrient ratios. Its Important to turn the Step Tracker(found in settings) on this app OFF, as well as never input exercise. This will add calories to your caloric intake which can throw things off.

Once your profile is set the next step is factoring in your caloric intake and adjusting your macros. First go to “Settings”, then find “Goals.” After that under the title “Nutrition Goals” go to the tab the says “Calories, Carbs, Proteins and Fats Goals” and which will bring you to the main page all adjustments will be made now and in the future.

Here is where the Premium subscription can help. Adjusting macros by grams as opposed to percentages is way easier when factoring in number by grams per bodyweight. If you have premium, use the guidelines described in the fourth paragraph of the above section “Macronutrient Percentages: Where Do I Start”? If you don not have premium, the 5th paragraph in the same above section should help you reach the recommended exact number by gram.

Understanding and Utilizing the App: The My Fitness pal App has tons of feature to make it easier on your quest towards your ideal physique but first its best so simply learn how to navigate it. There are a few things you must always pay attention to and other not so much. Even a couple I’d like you to ignore completely. After couple weeks of constancy, you will be able to utilize the app with complete confidence in the knowledge we’ve learned.

First off, the single page you will be using about 90% of the time when operating My Fitness Pal will be the diary. This is obviously where you log your food in per meal everyday. At the top is your dashboard where certain factors are labeled. The ability to customize those factors comes along with premium. Ideally a macros focused dashboard would be selected so you could simply monitor them from here.

Below you will see each meal tabs with an “add food” tab below. You guessed it, this is where you will plug your food in. Again some other features are available with premium on this page like benefit of seeing your macro ratios and grams per meal displayed (not too important), as well as “smart copying” meals from previous dates, and the ability to added more meal tabs as well as label them (Meal 2, post workout, etc.). Again not having premium still allows for huge advantages to getting results, just having it makes it that much easier.

The second and last page you will find yourself referring to daily on the My Fitness Pal App is “Nutrients” Page.There is no need to refer here with premium unless micronutrients are huge concern as with the macros dashboard explained above will give you all the info needed from there.

If you don’t have premium you can locate this by tapping anywhere on the dairy dashboard. This will pull up 3 page tabs actually with “Nutrients” being right in the middle, “Calories” to the left, an “Macros” to the right.

Lets focus on the “Nutrients” page and only that. Here you will see all your nutrients lined up looking very similar to the Nutritional facts on the back of a box of food. Everything From your

3 macronutrients (protein, carbs, and fats) to your many micronutrients are listed. Remember the macros are your main focus and should match accordingly at the end of the day. The rest should be kept under watch with some flexibility.

You will see three categories labeled Total or the amount of food you have eaten already for the day with 0 being that you haven’t plugged anything in yet. Then “goal” or the amount of food you are supposed to be eating everyday. Along with “Left” or what you have left to eat. As you input food, check on this page to make sure you haven’t gone over. Or Plan everything the night before so you have complete control over your macros before you even eat them.

Back to the other two tabs we spoke of earlier. This is where certain pages are of little or no importance. “Calories” should totally be ignored (being that if macros number are hit, calories should also match accordingly and are irrelevant). And then the “macros” tab which is basically a pie graph of your ratios eaten compared to your goal (which if the macros match on the nutrient page , the graph should already correspond). Don’t confuse yourself with these and just stick to you “Diary” and “Nutrients” Pages explained above.

A Sample Day of Eating: Getting Accustomed Flexible Dieting is the only structured nutritional plans that literally allows you to partake in eating ANY and All foods…..as long as you’re aware and accountable for the macronutrients its composed of. Yet this can be tricky and even overwhelming to someone thats not familiar with the method. Having to change and rearrange your food to meet your macros everyday is not the way to start flexible dieting. First we must get comfortable with the Fitness Pal App while these first couple weeks pass as we reset our metabolism and we do this by making it as easy as possible.

With that being said. I prefer to build a sample day of eating with each one of my clients using food selections they are familiar with as well as an eating schedule that coincides with their lifestyle. From here I’ll have them continue on for a week or two eating exactly what we’ve planned with that sample day and logging it in just like they would when making adjustments in the future. Once accustomed i’ll encourage them to change maybe and ingredient in their breakfast like oatmeal instead whole grain toast for example (carbs for carbs), or a piece of mani for dinner instead of chicken (protein for protein). And in time whole meals or even entire days of eating can be completely different while still hitting those numbers. And your body will never know the difference!

Plugging and Playing First things first. We need to have the Diary page open on the Fitness Pal App. From there I like start with my post workout meal (assumimg hopefully you are working out) and ill utilize one rule when planning everyones diet. Forty percent of all carbohydrates for the day will be placed into and eaten as your post workout meal. This follows along with nutrient timing and will be extremely beneficial at spiking insulin quickly and shuttling carbs to into your muscle for stored energy instead of being stored as fat. Once your body has been depleted of these stores through

strenuous exercise your muscle respond to carbs like a sponge to water. These carbs can come from a higher glycemic carb source such as a sports drink, or some dried fruit. But this is the only time of day a carb source such as this one should be eaten to avoid the opposite effect of being stored as body fat. Along with that about 20-40 grams an easily digestible protein source such as whey isolate protein powder or egg whites is ideal. Restrict from fat intake at this time. With the higher density of calories per gram this will slow the absorption of the other two more beneficial (at the time at least) macronutrients.

On none training day (preferably no more than two a week) you can substitute this meal from some with with carbs of a lower glycemic index like rice or potatoes and a more dense protein source like chicken or fish.

As far as the other meals for your day, depending on how many you may have. You can evenly disperse the rest of your macros throughout them. I will prefer to keep the majority of my carbohydrates in the morning or and midday when activity is higher and calories are needed. Then at night stick to a protein higher in fat such as steak or salmon and something with less carbohydrates such as green vegetables. These slight adjustments will not yield results without a structured macronutrient plan incorporated but along with it can add a beneficial “edge” to your flexible dieting.

Tips and Tricks: Free and Premium The My Fitness Pal App has yielded amazing results to myself as well as many clients without having to purchase the premium version but now that I know what i do and the convince it brings I’d be wrong to not recommend it or better yet show you why I would.

Lets start with setting your macro goals. As mentioned before the benefit of adjusting your macros by gram instead of percentages is a huge when making adjustments exact adjustments. Percentages adjustments drop by 5% at a time which is too broad of a number when it comes to the precise grams.

We did not mention the lower half of the screen titled “Set Daily Goals” as this is more advanced and is to utilize carbohydrate cycling. This is the method of cycling between high and low carb days to shock your metabolism. I don’t like to incorporate carb cycling until the very end of a cutting phase when calories are low to add again another “edge” to the equation. This topic unfortunately is for another time.

Yet, if you want to try incorporating carb cycling into your flexible dieting then this is the feature that will save the day. Being able to set your macros per day at the beginning of the week will save you loads of time when carb cycling. For this premium is a must.

The next few features are all about convince in visability and overseeing your meal plan. Some of these things really don’t matter when reaching or goals but just help make navigating the app a little easier. First is the home screen dash. This will display your “Macros Focused” dashboard

when selected and is ideal for keep track of your macros. this will minimize having to visit the nutrients page to check your macro intake. You van also view your protein, carbs, and fat by grams and percentages in the meal title. Ideal for nutrient timing especially for post workout nutrition.

The last couple features ill explain will help you when tracking and logging in your food. The first one in particular is ingenious and makes the whole idea of tracking that much easier. and the best part is it comes free!

The barcode scanner can be pulled up when clicking the “add food” tab under your selected meal and is located at the top right hand side. By using your phone camera you can now scan thousands of different kinds of foods to find the macronutrients and incorporate them in your diet. Pretty amazing right!

Since we are on the add food page located the next 5 titles right below the barcode scanner. The first “recent“ while pull up recent food you plugged in. Next is “frequent” for food you consistently plug in. Both are convenient but free.

The the third is “my foods’ and below you will see the "create food” tab. This tabs is perfect for creating plugging in items that you aren’t able to scan but know the macronutrients. Many meal delivery services include their meals macros right on the container. With this feature they can now create custom meals the can use over and over gain in their diets. Also a free feature.

The last two are “Meals”, and “Recipes”and although don’t use myself can be ver helpful. Meals is simply saving meals you have plugged in to reuse over again. Like a breakfast you want to save and repeat a couple times a week. Next is recipes. This will allow you to include each of your ingredients of a recipe for something like say chili for example. Then is divides it up into calories/macros per your serving. A great part about this feature is that you can actually pull whole recipes online right from the app. No need to input anything! And its free with the app!

Back to the “add food” tab before this page. if you’ve been logging your macros in the days prior to this you’ll the option to “swipe right to add meal from 1 day ago”. Which helps when most of your meals are the same and eaten at the same time. You have the convince of going back days to find a meal as well.

Last few Premium features ill explain again, just like the others, make it easier but aren’t essential. You can “quick add’ calories right under the add food tab which lets you simply p[lug in protein, carbs, and fats, with no extra questions asked. You can set food time stamps to keep track of when your eating certain kinds of foods and how you respond. And you can set calorie goals by meals. Something that I’ve honestly never used being that total daily caloric count is most important. But its available.

With All the great benefits that come along with the My Fitness Pal App its hard not to say that Flexible Dieting and Tracking Macros isn’t as easy as its ever gonna be. If youre not utilizing this app or another like this one to reach your fitness goals then you are missing out. Its time to jump on the bandwagon!

Final Thoughts: Making it a Lifestyle

The science behind it has been learned. The tools have been given. And a plan has been cultivated. Now all thats left is to apply the Flexible Dieting lifestyle to your own and trust the process. As easy as this sounds it may not be for everyone. It involves structure, accountability and some level of discipline. Without truly wanting to reach your goals it can be easy to get distracted or lazy when it comes to tracking and maintaining your diet. But whether its Flexible Dieting or some other method of dieting you have tried or may try in the future. Results all start with you and your own will to achieve. Just like anything else. If your not consistent. It won’t work.

But if you do decide to commit to tracking your macros daily and living the Flexible Dieting lifestyle you can be one of the thousands of people of out there that are enjoying themselves while being in control of their metabolisms and diets while reaching their physique goals!

I want nothing more than to debunk and prove to everyone how twisted and confusing the nutrition industry is and how to truly understand what nutritionalists and health coaches have been doing with their clients for years. If you know anyone struggling with confusing diets and misleading nutritional information then advise them to look into Flexible Dieting!