Theory Behind the Meal-Plan: If It Fits Yor Macros

"If it fits your macros", or IIFYM as it's referred to in bodybuilding circles, is a meal plan that centers around figuring out what you body needs to achieve your fitness goals, and filling those needs every day. You calculate your macronutrient requirements (protein, carbs, fats) and eat enough food to fill each of those macronutrient requirements. IIFYM is also referred to as "flexible dieting".

Source: doyoueven.com

When trying to adhere to a flexible dieting meal plan, there are things to keep in mind. First, you need to figure out roughly how many overall calories you need to attain the body composition you are looking for. You can figure this out by typing in and finding a "calorie calculator" into google. There are many of these online, and a lot of them work well for ballparking where you should be. Personally, I like the one you can find on www.freedieting.com. Keep in mind that everyone is different (different gender types, food sensitivities, metabolism types), and you may need to add or subtract a few calories to get closer to your body composition goals. This is just used as a nice starting point to see how you progress week to week. The calories that you are given (via the calorie calculator) as your calories used throughout the day are considered your "maintenance calories". These calories are the calories that, given you do the exact same thing every day, you will burn without exercise given the demographics and lifestyle patterns that you put into the calculator.

Once you figure out your caloric needs, you need to figure out what your protein, carbohydrate, and fat requirements for the day will be. If you've read my nutrition section (located here), you'll know how to do that. To summarize though, you roughly need your bodyweight in grams protein for bodybuilding, about 30% percent of your bodyweight in grams of fat, and the rest of your calories filled with carbohydrates. That's if you're bodybuilding. Different fitness goals could have completely different macronutrient goals.

Source: breakingmuscle.com

Theories and Protocol to IIFYM

* Meal frequency doesn't matter. You simply need to fill your macronutrient needs for the day, regardless of how many meals you eat in a day or how frequently you eat.

*Macronutrient sources don't necessarily matter. Any protein source qualifies as protein, any carb source counts as carbohydrates, and any form of fats qualify as your fat requirements for the day. (This is at least how I understand it...correct me if I'm wrong).

*Eating above your maintenance calories will cause you to gain weight, eating below those calories will make you lose weight. When you want to "bulk up" consistently eat over you maintenance calories, and when you want to "cut up" you consistently eat below your maintenance calories.

Source: menucost.com

That's pretty much the basics behind IIFYM. Think of your body as a bank account. Adding more cash will make your account grow, while spending more than is available will put you in a deficit (except in bodybuilding this can be a good thing haha). Of course, you can be more advanced with the protocol by timing your macros at specific times of the day, or choosing cleaner foods to fill your macros. You can even incorporate protocols and theories from other diets when doing flexible dieting (this can apply to all of the meal-plans I'll discuss on this blog actually).

My one gripe with IIFYM is this: flexible dieting tends to lead those who choose to do this meal-plan to believe that all calories are the same. That fried chicken is the same as chicken breast so long as you are still hitting the equivalent macros in your diet. This is where the draw to IIFYM comes in. A lot of people like it because they are lead to believe that all calories are the same. I have a hard time buying that. I think that clean bodybuilding foods will have a much different response on your body than highly processed foods, or "junk" foods. There's no real way to escape clean eating from my viewpoint.

However, in my opinion, this is the meal-plan I buy into the most. I've been using IIFYM (with theories from other diets mixed in a bit) for a while now, and I haven't really seen any negative gains or real difference in body composition than when I was eating multiple times a day. I also like the idea of eating the amount of food that works best for MY lifestyle. IIFYM lets you do that. From my perspective, you should always choose a diet that works the best for YOUR lifestyle and puts you in the best position to see the best gains. Flexible dieting lets you do just that because it's......well flexible. So long as you are hitting your macros each day, and not going well over or well under those requirements, you should see positive gains from the perspective of what you are trying to achieve.

Let me know if you've had success with this meal-plan. Let me know if you have any other thoughts or comments on this meal-plan below!

-Jtrain

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------*Have a question about natural bodybuilding / fitness / nutrition / stress? Need some advice? Email me at jtrainfitness@gmail.com and I will answer it on this blog! Be sure to enter your email to receive alerts for when the next blog post has come out, and be sure to tell your friends about this blog! Follow me on twitter @jtrainfitness and tell your friends to do the same!*
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