If you want to learn how to build muscle, burn fat, and eat ANYTHING you want, you need to read this post about Flexible Dieting.
Dieting sucks.
There’s nothing worse than a restrictive diet.
Diet literally has the word ‘die’ in it. Which is probably why it feels like you’re dying when you diet.
There are many reasons why diets suck:
For starters, diets make you feel hungry all the time. No one enjoys that feeling. Diets leave you constantly unsatisfied, never fulfilled. And, diets deprive you of your favorite foods, taking joy out of your life. this leads to unbearable cravings.
And that’s why most diets fail.
Traditional diets require super-human will power to work. Although I have to admit, in theory, most diets should work.
But in the real world, theory means nothing. The temptation is too great. The biological drive to eat is too strong. Our will and reason is quickly overpowered by our limbic need to consume. Eventually we cave, and get dragged back to square one to start over. Only this time, more beat up and depressed.
Flexible Dieting is different.
It’s less of diet and more of a party. It completely flips the script. In stead of sticking to a list of foods you can eat, flexible dieting doesn’t tell you you can’t eat anything.
Instead of a mindset of “Why am I eating this.”, the question becomes “why not eat this?”
With Flexible Dieting, all you do is set a few numbers, and eat anything you want. The only caveat is that you cannot exceed any of your numbers.
Your numbers are your ‘Macros’, or macronutrients. You pick your daily allotment of macros and eat anything you want, as long as it fits your macros.
‘If It Fits Your Macros’
‘If It Fits Your Macros’ is the slogan of Flexible Dieting.
Not sure if you can eat something on the flexible diet? Well, if it fits your macros you can!
If someone says to you, “Yo, why are you eating that donut? I thought you were on a diet.”
You can say “Hey, if it fits your macros. Now mind your own fucking business, Chad.”
And yes, you can eat donuts on a flexible diet. More on that later. But first, let’s take a look at the many other benefits of Flexible Dieting.
The Benefits of Flexible Dieting
The benefits of flexible dieting far exceed those of other diets. That will become apparent as you read this section.
Flexible Dieting is Easy
You only track three numbers. And there’s an app to help you.
After a while you get good at “ball parking” what you eat. And tracking every macro becomes non-essential.
Flexible Dieting is Sustainable
You can stick to Flexible Dieting long term.
Flexible dieting evolves with your goals. It can change with your tastes. It’s never bland or stale. It’s as robust as you make it.
Educates You about Nutrition
Being healthy is becoming a skill. Good health is not a given anymore.
You must think about what you are eating. There’s too much ‘bad stuff’ out there to chance it.
Most of our food is polluted. Flexible dieting requires you to learn about calories and macro nutrients. Those are the basics of nutrition. Having a solid understanding of the basics is over half the battle.
Once you have a handle on your daily calorie and macronutrient requirements, you’re well on your way. In my experience, the improvement only continues from there.
Flexible Dieting is Fun
Flexible dieting ‘game-ifys’ dieting and makes it kind of fun.
It shifts dieting from a traffic cop that throttles your eating pleasure, into a puzzle game where you win every time.
Unlimited Variety of Foods
Anything is on the table. You can eat any food you want.
When I say you can eat anything, I mean literally anything:
Ice cream, cake, potato chips, key lime pie, Double-Stuft Oreos, hot dogs (gross), donuts, cheeseburgers, cheesecake, milkshakes, french fries, steak, cream brûlée, cannolis, beer, deer, steer, buffalo, bison… You get the idea.
There’s no set diet, so you don’t have to eat the same thing every day.
Flexible dieting is a great way to explore different foods and try new things, without worrying about going overboard.
Customizable Diet
Flexible Dieting is unique to you. You pick the marcos that work best for you.
Building muscle? Eat more protein.
Want to lose fat? Eat less carbs.
Need more energy? Eat more fat.
More on Flexible Diet customization later…
You Can Eat Whatever You Want
Cake and steak, quinoa and donuts, fried chicken and ice cream – it’s all fair game.
You can eat all of your favorite foods – it doesn’t matter what you eat, as long as it fits your macros.
Don’t Have to Starve Yourself
Flexible dieting isn’t a crash diet. You just reduce your calorie intake just enough to lose weight gradually without feeling tired, run down, or crabby.
Flexible Dieting Part Two: Macro Calculation and Counting Macros
In part one we covered why flexible dieting is awesome. Now let’s get into the gory details so that you can start flexible dieting today!
In this sections we will cover:
What are macros?
How to you calculate macros to loss weight or gain muscle
The best foods to eat while Flexible Dieting
Sample Flexible Dieting meal plan
How to Calculate Macros
The secret to Flexible Dieting success is finding the right amount of Macros for you.
First, let’s answer the question: what are macros?
What are Macros?
Protein, Fat and Carbohydrates are the three macronutrients, or ‘macros’ for short.
Macros provide calories, and calories are your body’s fuel source.
Every calorie you eat or drink comes from one of these macronutrients (except alcohol, but that’s a different animal).
The amount of calories contained in each macro is as follows:
1 gram of Protein = 4 calories
1 gram of Carbohydrates = 4 calories
and 1 gram of Fat = 9 calories
Protein
Protein builds and repairs body tissue. It’s also the main component for building muscle.
You need protein everyday to recover from workouts, build muscle, and get stronger.
Protein literally means ‘most important’. That’s because it’s critical for your body to function properly. Every cell in your body contains protein. Protein is required for good health, growth, and development.
Protein sources: Beef, chicken, fish, eggs, duck, lamb, turkey, yogurt and cottage cheese.
The best protein source is fresh animal meat.
Carbohydrates
Carbohydrates (carbs) are your body’s preferred energy source. Upon ingestion, carbs breakdown quickly and are readily available for your body to use as fuel.
Without enough carbs you might feel tired or lethargic.
Carbs literally hydrate your muscles by bringing in water and nutrients to make you feel ‘pumped’ and strong.
However, not all carbs are created equal. Avoid refined carbohydrates and simple sugars. These are technically carbs but terrible quality. I always advocate eating whole, natural foods.
Eating the right amount of fat keeps you full and energized all day long.
Don’t think you’re doing yourself a favor by using margarine instead of real butter. Foods made with real animal fat are infinitely better than their chemically engineered counterparts.
Fat should not be avoided! Fat does not make you fat automatically. Eating more calories than you burn makes you fat, regardless of the source.
You need fat to produce testosterone and other sex hormones. High testosterone = high muscle building potential. Fat, including saturated animal fat, is essential for building muscle and staying healthy. Building lean muscle mass also makes it easier to stay in shape.
Fat sources: Whole eggs, olive oil, animal fat, beef, fatty fish like salmon, nuts, coconut oil and real butter.
How to Get Started with Flexible Dieting
Now that we’ve covered the macros, we’ll talk about how to get started with Flexible Dieting.
For this section, I will assume the following:
You workout
You want to lose fat
and you would like to increase lean muscle mass
With Flexible Dieting you pick your daily macro ‘numbers’. Remember, you can eat any food that allow you to reach, but not exceed, those macro numbers.
You can eat whatever foods you want IF it fits your macros.
Getting Started with Flexible Dieting
Flexible dieting is suitable to gaining weight and losing weight. It all depends on your goals. I used flexible dieting to get lean. I lost 10 pounds in about 6 weeks without starving myself.
Find Your Daily Calorie Allowance
To find your metabolic baseline, multiply your bodyweight by 12.
Your metabolic baseline is how many calories you burn just livin’.
Now, we need to find your daily maintenance calories. Maintenance calories are the number of calories you need to stay the same weight.
Maintenance calories can be found by adding your basal metabolic rate with your calories burned with exercise.
So, here’s what you do:
Determine your activity level on the bullets below
Multiply your weight in pounds by the multiplier
Bodyweight Maintenance Calculator
Activity Level | Multiplier
Sedentary – 15 minutes of activity a day | 12
Light Activity – 1-2 hours of weights and/or cardio per week | 13.5
Moderately Active – 3-5 hours of weights and/or cardio per week | 15
Very Active – 6-7 hours of weights and/or cardio per week | 16.5
Extremely Active – 7+ hours of weight and/or cardio per week | 17+
So if you’re 200 pounds and sentry, you need 2200 calories to maintain you current weight.
Now, subtract 500 calories from your final number and this is your maximum calorie allowance each day.
At this rate you will lose 1 pound every week. That’s because a pound of fat contains 3,500 calories.
How to Track Macros
Download the My Fitness Pal app. It will walk you through everything.
You basically start with your calorie requirements based on your fitness goals and activity level noted above.
Then you pick your macro proportions, starting with your protein requirements.
If you want to build muscle, then you need to eat at least 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight.
Then pick your carbs macros. If you workout hard every day I would aim for 1.5-2x your bodyweight in carbohydrates. If you don’t workout at all, then reduce carbs to 1 gram for every 2 pounds of your bodyweight.
The balance of your calories will come from fat.
Make sure you track everything you eat. That’s the only way it works. Not only are you educating yourself about nutrition, you’re also likely to adhere to eat healthy because you’re investing time into tracking your progress.
Why Flexible Dieting Works
Flexible Dieting works for several reasons. One reason it works is because it’s measurable.
Everything you eat is accounted for. You know exactly what you’re eating.
I was shocked when I started counting macros. I thought I was getting more than enough protein and eating way less fat and carbs.
I was way off. I was only eating 60% of my required protein per day, and I was significantly overeating carbs and fat! No wonder I wasn’t getting anywhere, even though I worked out every damn day.
Flexible dieting holds you accountable. You track everything so you face the facts and see how your body responds.
At times I didn’t eat something just because I would have to track it in my calorie counting app. So this helped me cut down on mindless snacking and eating just because food was there.
Flexible Dieting makes you think twice about everything you eat, and that’s part of what makes it effective.
The sustainability aspect of Flexible dieting is also a major reason it’s so effective.
You’re not bound to a list of diet foods or meal plan. You customize your meal plan to your individual needs and tastes.
Quality Foods
It’s hard to overeat or eat poorly with flexible dieting.
You have to eat healthy in order to hit your macros. That means all your calories are quality calories.
At the same time, Flexible Dieting typically allows you to enjoy a snack or two a day.
Flexible Dieting is a good way to build awareness about the food you eat. It makes you educate yourself on what’s healthy and what’s not. Education is a huge factor on why people’s eating habits are so bad.
How to Train with Flexible Dieting
In order to make muscle gains without getting fat you need to eat clean.
This is where Flexible Dieting shines.
This mean get just enough food to recover fully from your workouts. That way you have all the nutrients you need to gain maximum muscle and nothing extra that gets stored as fat.
Decide if you want to gain or lose weight
If you want to gain weight allow yourself more calories per day.
If you want to lose weight reduce the number of calories per day.
You can tweak your calories up or down depending on what happens.
Note: it’s critical to weight yourself every day. Or at least every week. You need to see how your body responds to your calorie intake, macros, and activity level. This is data that you use to adjust your numbers accordingly. So make sure you have a bodyweight scale to step on daily.)
Determine your activity level
If you’re very active add more calories per day. Add in an extra 200 calories if you jog a mile. If you train hard with weights add in 500 calories. Make sure the majority of those calories come from protein sources.
Try this out for a few days and adjust your calorie intake accordingly.
Pick Your Macros
After you determine you calorie needs (in the earlier section), it’s time to divvy up your calories into marcos.
For illustration purposes I’ll use an old diet I’ve used:
Protein makes up 35% of the calories in my diet, carbohydrates make up 45% and fat makes up 20%.
Do the math and you get 1,084 calories from carbohydrates (271 grams x 4 calories) and 468 calories from fat (52 grams x 9 calories).
Add it all up and you get 2,352 calories a day. If you work out moderately 3-4 times a week this should be enough for you to make some nice lean gains.
Track your calorie intake
Hey, have I mentioned you need to track everything you eat?
Make sure you track everything you eat each day.
Tracking your intake is important because it’s easy to stray from your diet.
Tracking your macros is necessary to stay, well, on track.
I use the My Fitness Pal app because it’s free and easy to use. It even has name brand food items and fast food items so you don’t have to look everything up, you just search for it.
Seriously, even if you thinking tracking your macros is an inconvenience, just do it for 30 days at least. You’ll notice a difference and you’ll keep doing it after seeing the benefits.
Sample Flexible Dieting Meal Plan
This is the meal plan I used for several weeks to lose fat and maintain muscle mass.
The graph above show one day of eating where I was very close to nailing my macros.
Below I provide a sample flexible dieting meal plan by showing one full day of eating.
Total Calorie Goal: 2,618 calories
Macro Goals:
Protein = 215 grams
Carbs = 300 grams
Fat = 62 grams
Breakfast
2 Large Eggs (hardboiled)
Greek Nonfat yogurt (Black Cherry)
Greek Yogurt (Key Lime)
Lunch
Cottage Cheese – 2 1/3 cups (2% milk fat)
Pineapple – 2 cups
2 Large Eggs (Hardboiled)
Dinner
Chunk Light Tuna – 8oz with 1 tbsp of Olive oil mayonnaise
Pretty close to my goal (I consider it even better than hitting my target because I got a little extra protein in the mix. As you can see I was able to snack and eat real food without having to starve myself.
Flexible dieting works for a lot of people and it allows you to live a little. You can eat things you really enjoy and don’t have to stress about your meals as much.
Personally, I think it’s an extremely effective diet if you do it right. The best thing to do is try it for a month and see what you think.
Need some help getting started with for meal plan ideas? Check out my grocery list for some inspiration.
If you’re having trouble meeting your daily macros try meal prep for healthy meals that will help you build muscle and stay lean.
After you count calories for a while you will get good at ‘eye-balling’ portions. You’ll know how many ounces of meat of bread is in a meal.
It’s fun to try to find new combinations of food that work within your macros. It’s like a real life puzzle game. It causes you to make conscious eating decisions.
Flexible Dieting Before and After
Me before and after Flexible Dieting (8 week transformation)
This section contains my 8 week transformation. I’ll talk about my calorie intake, macro breakdown and the foods I ate during that time.
I know for a fact that flexible dieting can make you shredded.
I lost nearly 40 pounds during my eight week fat loss transformation.
During this first 5 weeks, I ate between 1800-2500 calories. Then I realized I wasn’t losing fat fast enough so I reduced to 1500 calories a day.
My Macros for 2,500 calories a day:
Protein 313 grams – 50% of total daily calories
Carbohydrates 63 grams – 10%
Fat 111 grams – 40%
Somedays I went over carbs and fat, and some days way protein was low. But I never exceeded 2,500 calories a day.
On the other hand, there were an equal amount of days where I came in low on carbs, fat or both. So overall it balanced out.
My 2,500 Calorie Meal Plan
Breakfast
6 ounces ground beef 90% lean
2 whole eggs
Lunch
8 ounces Boneless skinless chicken breast
Broccoli – 150 grams
Cauliflower – 150 grams
Dinner
Beef and vegetable stew – 1,244 calories worth. About 1/2 a large crock-pot.
Snacks
Protein Shake
Chocolate Peanut Butter Cream Pie (1/2 slice)
For week 6-9 I reduced daily calories to 2,000. I adjusted macros accordingly.
My macros for 2,000 calories a day:
Protein 250 grams – 50% of total daily calories
Carbohydrates 150 grams – 30%
Fat 44 grams – 20%
I always hit my protein numbers, either fat or carbs were high or low, and exceeded 2000 calories total a couple times. But still averaged 2,000 calories every day.
When it was all said and done I weighed into my competition at 186 pounds. Not bad for 220+ just 9 weeks before.
Mind you, I worked out HARD 7 days a week for 7 weeks straight.
The Verdict on Flexible Dieting
Flexible dieting works. What else can I say?
It might take some time to get used to but once you understand the macros that work best for you, you are set.
It does take a little After that, you experiment to find your optimal macronutrient intake and you have a truly flexible diet that you can use for life. Find the right macros for you that lead to balance and harmony, health and happiness.
It helps you get in shape while eating anything you want.
Other diets outright condemn certain foods but flexible dieting allows you to eat what ever your heart desires.
People that fail miserably with their diets find salvation in flexible dieting. Flexible dieting gives you room to indulge. It also ensures you get the right amount of calories needed to gain or lose weight.
You can have the best of both worlds with flexible dieting. You can get in great shape and eat anything you want – but there’s a small caveat:
The truth is, you really can eat anything you want.
The whole truth is, you can’t eat as much as you want.
I cut weight extremely fast. Some would say too fast. but let the record show, this was me before and after flexible dieting.
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