Introduction

Welcome to the Flexible Dieting Guide. In this quick guide you’ll learn how to step out of the restrictiveness of eating only meals that are outlined in your meal template. With that said though, the meal template that you have includes a perfect base of healthy foods, which should be the ground staple of your diet. However, restricting yourself to eat only the foods that are in your meal template won’t be sustainable long-term and will likely not be 100 % enjoyable either. Ideally you should be able to include things like sauces, chocolate, candy, ice cream, cake and so on occasionally while you’re getting the results that you’re after. So, the goal of this guide is to make you able to move from a restrictive or exclusive view of dieting into an inclusive one instead, where you can eat things that you enjoy in moderation, while still reaching your goals. Sound good? Okay great, let’s get to it.

Introducing the Flexible Dieting

(IIFYM) Mindset

Before we look at how to count your macros and use the “method” of flexible dieting, let’s first discuss exactly what it is. You’ve probably heard about flexible dieting, sometime right? Or perhaps you’ve heard the acronym IIFYM? Flexible dieting is as it sounds; being flexible with your diet, by allowing yourself to eat all the foods out there and not limiting yourself to only certain types of food, which is very common in health and fitness circles. Now, IIFYM is an acronym for If It Fits Your Macros and came to life after months of discussions on forums surrounding flexible dieting. Where people asked; can I have this food, or can I have that food? To which the answer typically was; yes, you can if it fits your macros. The reason behind this answer is that calories and macros are what matters most when it comes to fat loss and building muscle. You can achieve a lean and muscular body eating junk all day long if you hit your macros, however it’s not sustainable or healthy. IIFYM unfortunately led to a lot of people misinterpreting flexible dieting as being a freeway to eating only junk foods throughout the days, as long as protein targets are hit. And that’s never what this concept was created for. Flexible dieting (IIFYM) is actually a mindset of being inclusive rather than exclusive with your diet. Meaning to not view foods as good or bad, because they’re not. No food is inherently bad for you, it’s your food habits that are bad for you. As you can see, this all comes down to lifestyle, if you want to be leaner and more muscular while also enjoying your life to the fullest, then you must find a way to indulge in the stuff you

like every now and then, while managing to stay lean, and more importantly staying healthy and feeling great! This simply comes down to learning how much “junk” is okay to eat and taking responsibility of your food choices. So, let’s look at what a healthy, yet enjoyable diet looks like.

WHAT A HEALTHY AND ENJOYABLE DIET LOOKS LIKE

You should create a solid and healthy base with your diet; upon which you can then build with foods that you enjoy! And this is how:

You’ve probably heard about the 80/20 rule before? Where 80 % of your diet should contain wholesome nutrient dense foods, and the remaining 20 % can be from lower quality foods.

For most people this diet setup seems to provide the perfect balance between feeling strong, healthy and performing well, while also allowing some room for enjoyable foods as well. So, here’s what to do:

1. Make sure that you hit your macros within reasonable ranges. 2. Then make sure that you get your base covered, meaning that your diet is composed of

80 % wholesome, nutrient dense foods. 3. Then if you want to, you can top of the rest of your 20 % with empty calories or “junk

foods” to have some enjoyment in the diet as well. Don’t worry, we’ll look at how to track your macros in a moment.

WHAT’S A HEALTHY AND NUTRIENT DENSE MEAL?

A healthy and nutrient dense meal means that the meal includes enough macronutrients, micronutrients and fibers for all your bodily systems to work optimally. Now the healthiest diet possible is one where all these nutrients is included in every meal throughout the day. But, that’s aiming for optimal, and optimal requires a strict approach, which isn’t necessary unless you’re a top performing athlete or bodybuilder. For you who has the goal to reach a lean and muscular “beach physique” while keeping your lifestyle. All you need to worry about is getting your essential nutrients in throughout your entire day, which means you should get it in most meals but not necessarily in each meal. Aiming for that is good enough and will keep you healthy.

Okay, so you got your healthy, wholesome and nutrient dense foods covered, now let’s look at…

WHAT’S A JUNK MEAL?

The definition of junk food is when your meal exclusively includes empty and often processed calories. This includes foods like chips, candy, ice cream, pizzas, burgers etc.

Now, does this mean you can’t eat things like pizzas, burgers, sandwiches (like subway) and so on? Absolutely not, again no food should be directly viewed as “bad foods” or “junk foods” and here’s why: Let’s say for example that you want to eat a frozen pizza. This pizza includes the following:

• 800 calories • 42 grams of protein • 30 grams of fat • 96 grams of carbs • 10 grams of fiber

By looking at the calories, macros and even fiber content, this pizza looks like a very decent meal. This should be no problem for you to fit in your diet with the help of tracking your macros, right? Well here’s the thing, this meal only includes calories, macros and fiber, which is great. But it includes very little of anything else, like vitamins and minerals, which is less great. And let’s say you are supposed to eat 2200 calories per day in order to lose fat, what eating this pizza has done, even if all your other meals include only wholesome foods, is putting you at 36% of calories coming from “junk foods” for the day. So, by having this pizza you’ve already exceeded your 80/20 % rule. That’s what directly makes the pizza an unhealthy food to eat, but it’s still not unhealthy indirectly, and here’s what I mean:

The Key to Eating the Foods You Like and Fully Enjoying Your

Diet

What if there’s a way that you can save this meal, that you can eat the pizza while staying healthy, strong and able to perform? What you’re about to learn now is the power of flexible dieting and macro counting when done correctly.

And here’s the seemingly simple, yet highly effective key that you can do with any food: Add a bowl of salad or vegetables and perhaps a fruit to the pizza. This is so easy to do, and it makes you able to have the cake and eat it too, (or in this case, have a lean, muscular and healthy physique and eat the pizza too). For example, by adding 150 grams of salad or vegetables, 1 carrot, tomato or bell pepper (ideally all) and perhaps an orange or any other low-calorie fruit. Then you would increase the caloric content with only like ~150 calories, but you would get a very healthy and satiating meal instead. With this little tweak the meal would simply go from being bad to being good. Now this strategy works well for pizzas, burgers, sandwiches, pancakes and other “unhealthy” foods, since these foods typically includes a lot of protein. All you do is turning an “unhealthy” meal into a “healthy” one. However, it’s trickier to do the same with chocolate, chips, candy, ice cream and so on since these foods don’t include lots of protein. So, these foods are best kept in the 80/20 % rule.

Finally, let’s look at a very common misconceptions surrounding flexible dieting (IIFYM), which is to use:

Multivitamin supplements

A multivitamin should never be used as a substitute for fruit and vegetable intake. Unfortunately, supplementing with multivitamins will make you miss out on different biologically active and beneficial compounds that can only be obtained through a proper and varied diet.

It’s important to not only think of micronutrients as essential vitamins and minerals, but to also think of them as containing important phytonutrients and antioxidants. These are compounds that doesn’t classify as neither vitamins or minerals but have the power to optimize health and counteract different diseases, and these cannot be found inside a supplement.

However a meta-analysis made on micronutrients by Jayson B Calton showed that people who are cutting (being in a caloric deficit) risk having deficiencies in different micronutrients, even though they take care of their diet well.

So, making sure the fruit and vegetable intake is on point is very important, especially when looking to lose fat. As this is also a time when a multivitamin can be beneficial to supplement the actual diet appropriately.

DAILY FRUIT AND VEGETABLES INTAKE GUIDELINES

Okay so finally, make the following list into a habit and you won’t have to worry about losing out on important micronutrients or fiber to stay healthy and strong, while you can also enjoy the foods you like.

• Think 80/20. • Eat one or two fruits every day. • Eat vegetables rich in fiber with most meals. • If you’re going for foods such as pizza, burgers, sandwiches, add vegetables/salads and

fruit to the meal. • Try to eat a varied diet of different fruits and vegetables. • If you’re in a fat loss phase, consider getting a high quality multivitamin supplement.

Okay, so that’s the flexible dieting mindset, let’s now cover the best way to actually track your macros.

Introducing MyFitnessPal

Let’s start by learning how to count your macros! In this guide we’ll be using the app MyFitnessPal to do this. To get started download the app from App store or Google play, it’s free!

STEP 1 – SETTING UP YOUR ACCOUNT The first thing that you’ll see when starting a new account in MyFitnessPal is a set up process where you create your profile and can set up your goal. All you should do now is just to set up your profile, email and name. Don’t give any attention to your goal, activity level, your measurements and so on just yet. We will do this correctly later once you’re in. So, for now just fill everything in without too much thought, we will change it later.

STEP 2 – SETTING UP YOUR CALORIES AND MACROS

Once you’re in you will see the starting page, which looks something like this:

Now press the menu tab in the top left, and press Goals.

Inside the goals page press Calorie and Macronutrient Goals.

Inside the Calorie and Macronutrient Goals page you are now going to change your calories and macros to the numbers you find in your meal template PDF, which is set up optimally by me to make you reach your goal quickly and effectively.

Note: the free version of MyFitnessPal only allows you to change percentages of macros, not grams directly. For that reason, you will deviate a bit from your exact grams of macros. But don’t stress up over that, these numbers will just be targets to make you easier stay on course. You will be able to fill in the exact amounts of macros once you add your foods later.

STEP 3 – NAVIGATING YOUR DIARY

Next up is to find your diary which is where you’re going to add all your foods. To do this, press the Menu tab in the top left, then press Diary.

Inside you Diary page, you will see:

• Your “goal” calories • The amounts of calories you have eaten above “food” • “Exercise” calories • “Remaining” calories you have left to eat during the day • “Breakfast”, “Lunch”, “Dinner” and “Snack”

Important Note: Ignore exercise calories. There’s an option inside MyFitnessPal to add the exercise that you are doing. But don’t do that - those calories are already accounted for by me in your daily activity that gave you the calories you added earlier from your meal template.

STEP 4 – ADDING YOUR FOOD Okay, so here’s the power of MyFitnessPal: It has a database of foods that people around the world adds to the app, this is amazing news for you! Because it gives you the opportunity to eat whichever food you like from everywhere in the world. All you must do is just search it up in the search-based database and adding it to your diary. Here’s how you do that: Press “+ Add Food” under any meal.

Tip: You can just add all the food you eat during the day under the same tab if you want, because what matters most is your total caloric and macro intake throughout the day.

Now to add your food you can either search the database for your specific food, or you can use the built-in camera barcode scanner, this option simply allows you to scan your packages barcodes and the app will automatically search and show you the exact calories and macros of the food you scanned. Super simple!

But for the sake of this example, let’s use the search bar to search for a food that usually doesn’t come with a barcode, such as potatoes.

As you can see, a simple search for potatoes brought a list of hundreds of results. Now all potatoes contain pretty much the same macros, so just pick an option that suits your way of measuring, like if you’re US based cups, ounces and lbs. are probably good alternatives and if you’re EU based liters, milliliters, grams and kilograms are probably good alternatives.

You will also find that people adds food in “portion sizes”, like in the example above, where the first option is 1 medium potato, which supposedly is 110 kcals. Now this isn’t the most accurate, even though it can work well if you standardize your portions, like we have done in the meal template. Now, I recommend that you are weighing your food to get your calories as accurately as possible. You will get much better results doing this, and you will also learn how much calories there actually are in different foods, which is a great skill to have. For this example, I choose the first option, and then under the serving size tab I changed from 1 medium potato to 100 grams.

The next step is to bring out your kitchen scale and just weigh your potatoes. For the example here, I went with 200 grams of potatoes.

So, enter 200 grams of potatoes into MyFitnessPal and voila, just press the “check tab” in the top right and you have now added 220 calories, 52 grams of carbs, 0.4 grams of fat and 6 grams of protein to your daily calorie and macro intake.

Weigh Your Food Raw or Cooked? The standard is to weigh all your foods raw and uncooked. This is because the nutrition labels are based on the food being in its raw state. So even if you’re meats are losing water weight as you cook them, they should still be weighed pre-cooked.

STEP 5 – VIEWING YOUR MACROS To view your daily macros, press the menu box and then press Nutrition.

Then press Nutrients and choose Today under “day view”.

On this page you will see the total macros you have been eating today, and the amounts you have left to eat to reach your goal. In this example there’s only 200 grams of potatoes, which resulted in these macros:

STEP 6 – HITTING YOUR MACROS

Now the final step is to actually hit your macros. And when you learn to do this correctly, your flexibility will go through the roof! Hitting your macros is the first step of making dieting, no matter the goal feel, extremely easy, enjoyable and predictable. But it needs a little initial practice and planning. So, here’s what to do:

1. Before you eat anything, preferably the night before you get started with your first day of counting macros, pre plan by adding all your meals that you’re going to eat into your diary.

2. Experiment by adding in typical foods that you already eat, that way you don’t change something to quickly. Then just change the amounts of food around until you hit your macros within fair ranges. For example: Perhaps you need to increase your protein sources to get closer to your

goal, and therefore must reduce your carbs or fats to account for more protein.

3. Don’t obsess over hitting your macros dead on, this is very important! Obsessing over such things can be stressful and make you fall into bad habits, habits that can potentially even be dangerous for your psychological health (causing eating disorders and so on). It’s totally okay to stay within +/- 10 grams of protein and +/- 15-20 grams of fats and carbs, what’s most important is that you hit your calories within +/- 50-100 kcal. You see having some leeway in your macros and calories are great, and it won’t matter if your goal is to hit 2600 calories and you hit 2700 one day and then 2500 another, it’s the average during the week that matters. And furthermore, you shouldn’t be in such a hurry that you get obsessed over your calories anyway, if you want a healthy and better looking body that you can keep long-term, would it really matter if you lose 0.4 kg instead of 0.5 kg one week? I wouldn’t say so. Stay patient and adopt the mindset that things will take time and create a lifestyle that’s sustainable instead. Don’t you agree?

Okay, so as promised, let’s finish of by looking at how you can include alcohol when dieting.

ALCOHOL AND BUILDING A PHYSIQUE

Since alcohol is such a huge part of our culture today and because it actually contains energy

(calories), I’ve decided to include a part about alcohol in this guide as well.

I do so simply because I believe in creating a sustainable and enjoyable lifestyle, and not being

able to enjoy some alcohol is going to remove a big aspect of an enjoyable lifestyle for a lot of

people.

First, let’s look at how we can use alcohol and actually even benefit from it if we drink

responsibly.

Moderate alcohol consumption is supported by many studies to be associated with all kinds of

health benefits, such as improved insulin sensitivity, lowered triglyceride concentrations and

improved glycemic control. Not just in healthy people, but also in type 2 diabetics.

Not only does a moderate consumption of alcohol have positive effects on insulin sensitivity,

studies also consistently show moderate drinkers to live longer than non-drinkers because of a

lowered risk of cardiovascular disease. Alcohol also contributes to a healthier and disease-free

life by protecting against rheumatoid arthritis, metabolic syndrome, Alzheimer’s disease, the

common cold, different types of cancer, depression and many other welfare diseases.

As you can see, there seem to be more benefits of being a moderate drinker than actually

having total abstinence from alcohol. However, this only applies when drinking in

MODERATION.

If you were to go further than the moderate consumption rate, these benefits can quickly

become negative to your health instead. The point where alcohol consumption goes from

healthy to unhealthy seems to be when you repeatedly go from just being tipsy to actually

being drunk. And anyone who’s been tipsy knows how hard it usually is psychologically to just

stop drinking when it feels like the night is just about to begin.

But, having a few small glasses of wine at dinner seems to be highly beneficial for our health.

How alcohol affects calorie intake

1 gram of alcohol has 7 calories, but only ~5.6 calories will be provided to the body because of

TEF (thermic effect of food). However, what’s interesting is that the calories from alcohol

works a bit differently than what the calories from the other three macros does.

As you know by now, protein, fat and carbs can all be used and stored as energy by the body.

But alcohol, even though it is a form of energy, cannot be stored by the body in any way.

What this means is that when you consume alcohol, the body immediately turns off your use

of glycogen and fat as energy and focuses solely on getting rid of the alcohol energy first. This

makes sense because the metabolic by-product of alcohol, acetate, is toxic. So, metabolizing it

takes precedence over everything else.

What ends up happening when you drink is that you postpone your fat burning until later

when the alcohol has been cleared from the body. Meaning that if you over consume food

during alcohol intoxication, you will store more fat during that time.

However, the law of energy balance still applies, meaning that the amount of fat that you’ll

store during food intake in combination with alcohol is only as much as the number of calories

the alcohol provides.

How to lose fat or at least maintain your physique when drinking

So, if your goal is fat loss, here are some guidelines on how you can set up your day to still be

able to lose fat, or at least maintain your physique if you’re going to have a night out:

1. On the day that you are supposed to be drinking, try your best to eat as little fat and

carbohydrates as possible while getting the bulk of your energy from protein. The way you

can do this is by setting up your meals to have mostly vegetables and lean protein sources.

2. Later as its time to drink, try to avoid alcohol sources that are rich in carbohydrates, such as

drinks made with fruit juices, sugary sodas or beer. Aim for drinking dry wines (which are

very low in carbs), whiskey, vodka, tequila, scotch, gin and cognac, all these include

basically zero carbs. If you don’t want to drink these straight, drink them with diet soda. Try

not to be super neurotic about this though, drinks should be enjoyed after all. Just be

aware that there are better and worse choices out there.

3. Avoid getting to the point where you become excessively drunk, when that happens, it’s

typically easier to lose judgment of your actions, it’s not uncommon that your hunger

signals get all messed up as well, causing you to overeat on junk food that you don’t

actually need.

Also, beliefs such as “alcohol makes you fat” are often just made up, people typically

indulge in all the junk they see when drinking because of a loss of judgment, not directly

because of the alcohol.

4. Moderate drinking is typically known as a few units; however, this depends on body size

and overall tolerance to alcohol. Someone who weighs 60 kg (130 lbs.) is going to tolerate a

considerably amount less alcohol than someone who weighs 100 kg (220 lbs.) Therefore,

it’s hard to give any definitive guidelines to the number of units to drink. Instead it’s better

to go after the “tipsy factor” meaning that getting tipsy and to the point of drunk is fine but

going much over that is typically negative to our health and physiques.

If you follow these guidelines that I just outlined, you can have a few nights out every now and

then without having to worry about gaining fat.

In fact, if you do it right, you might even be able to lose fat during these days as well. It’s

something that I’ve done and been successful with many times through my own fat loss

periods.

Just remember though, drink responsibly or all this information actually means the

opposite!

HOW TO COUNT ALCOHOL INTO YOUR DIET

As we just covered, alcohol contains 7 calories per gram, which basically means that the total

amount of energy that any alcoholic beverage contains must be calculated into your daily

macros as well, just as any other food.

And this is simple, just add the alcohol you’re drinking into MyFitnessPal like you would with

any other food. Remember though, that alcohol are completely empty calories, and provide

nothing that would support your physique at all, especially not muscle growth.

In fact, alcohol is directly poisonous to your body, which means that your body will prioritize

getting rid of the alcohol before every other task it has to do. And since the process of building

muscle, called muscle protein synthesis is a very energy dependent process, alcohol

consumption will lower your ability to build muscle as well, in direct correlation to the amount

of alcohol you’re drinking.

But if you are drinking moderately, which would mean a few drinks and not too often, it’s very

much possible to get a lean and muscular physique while also having a few drinks once in a

while.

The macro that you should exchange for alcohol calories would mainly be your carbs. This is so

you don’t drop your fats so low that it screws with your hormonal balance etc.

Again, just remember not to go overboard on your alcohol consumption. Go out with the

mindset to have fun and actually enjoy the physique you have worked so hard to build, and

don’t let a complete bender ruin your results, it’s not worth it!t