IIFYM

Learn about the If It Fits Your Macros approach and how to calculate what you eat

If It Fits Your Macros (IIFYM) or flexible dieting centers on your daily consumption of proteins, carbohydrates, and fats. Read this post for a breakdown of the three basic macronutrients. The idea behind IIFYM is that you don’t have to omit certain foods from your diet to achieve your goals, you just have to be conscious of how much you’re eating.

To me, IIFYM seems similar in concept to Weight Watchers and other diet plans that assign points to food. For example, you can have that slice of cheese cake, but it may cover half your points for the day under a Weight Watchers approach or it may cover your entire carbohydrate allotment for the day under an IIFYM plan. Instead of assigning points to food items, IIFYM provides a template to construct meal plans on your targeted macronutrient ratio.

A helpful way to build an IIFYM plan is to first start with your daily caloric intake.

How do you determine your daily calories? To begin, you can just track your food for a few days without making any effort to change what you eat and see how many average calories you consume in a day. There are a ton of calorie counter apps available. I’ve used the standard MyFitnessPal app in the past. I would also highly recommend purchasing a food scale. You can find those online or at many retail stores for a little over $10.

You can also figure out your Basel Metabolic Rate (BMR) which essentially is the number of daily calories you need to stay alive. There are a ton of calculators online to figure out your BMR, which takes into account your height, weight, and age. Basing a meal plan on your BMR may result in too low of calories for people especially those who are active and on their feet all day. I personally believe the best approach is to simply track your normal eating patterns for a few days and figure out the average amount of calories you consume and how you feel.

How do I figure out what macronutrient ratio to follow? Let’s say you tracked your calories for a few days and figured out that you consume an average of 1,800 calories a day. Perhaps most of those calories are in the form of processed carbs and that when you eat this way, you experience constant crashes in your energy level. You’re looking for a more balanced diet to experience more consistent energy throughout the day.

In the bodybuilding world, people typically build their diet plans around one macronutrient – protein. The standard goal is to hit 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight. Hitting those protein goals on a daily basis may be difficult and unnecessary for your optimal diet. However, you can start with this goal and adjust the dials until you hit a ratio where you feel best.

To illustrate this approach, let’s use the 1,800 calorie consumption listed above using a 35-year old women who weighs 145 pounds. Her protein goal would then be 145 grams per day, which is equivalent to 580 calories. She can then split the remaining 1,220 calories between fats and carbs. Since her goal is to have more consistent energy, she can start by making her fat and carb allotment more balanced. For example, she can split the remaining calories down the middle and allot each half to fat and carbs. By meeting these goals, she may have to raise her fat intake. She can then build a diet plan around these macro targets and monitor how she feels. As part of the plan, she can also swap out some of the processed carbs for complex carbs, such as trading a bowl of cereal for a bowl of oatmeal, and see if that results in an improved and longer lasting energy throughout the day.

I put together a very basic gram counter in an excel spreadsheet that can tell you how many grams of each macronutrient you would need based on your daily caloric intake and desired macronutrient ratio.

I realize all of this may seem cumbersome and I personally have not kept up with tracking my macros and counting my calories on a daily basis, but it gave me a great tool to use for making adjustments to my diet and figuring out where I get the best results.