Last Updated on December 4, 2020 by TheMealPrepNinja

Flexible Dieting

Have you heard of flexible dieting? We all are looking for easy to follow diets that will help us lose that extra weight and make us healthy, but the most difficult part about dieting is sustaining it in the long run.

There are so many diet options in the market like Keto diet, GM diet, No carb diet that is confusing to choose one diet plan and stick to it for a long time.

Diet Restrictions

The majority of diets have so many restrictions and compel us to eat our not so favorite foods like plain green veggies and fruits. This type of diet is hard to sustain long term. And will only bring you temporary success.

Flexible dieting is Becoming Popular

That’s why, nowadays, flexible dieting is becoming a popular diet for weight loss. So let’s understand what it is and how we can follow it to attain our weight goals and continue to eat the foods we love.

What is Flexible Dieting

Flexible dieting allows you to eat whatever you want to, as long as you are tracking your consumption of macronutrients (macros) and achieving the macros required. Macros are nothing but Protein, Carbohydrates, and Fats that are essential for a healthy and fit body.

Macro Calorie Calculator

Now the flexible dieting plan does not consider any foods as bad foods and gives you the freedom to choose your sources of macros as long as your consumption is within permissible limits. You can figure out your Macro Calorie Calculator using our Calculator.

What Can You Eat

So it doesn’t matter if your protein comes from KFC chicken or a boiled egg as long as you hit your macros target. As this diet is independent of sources of nutrients, you do not have to wait for cheat days and can freely eat your favorite foods.

Balanced Diet

I would recommend eating a balance of both low-calorie dense foods and higher calorie-dense foods. You also would not want to eat anything but high-calorie dense foods because it will be harder to stay below your daily calorie number.

Crash Diets Don’t Work

In many cases, crash dieting plans, or plans with cheat days lead to overeating amongst the followers and can bounce back their weight quickly. Some of the restricted diets also affect the followers psychologically, resulting in anxiety and stress. So it is advised that you do not go for such restrictive dieting plans that can have negative effects on your overall well being.

Easier to Follow

As a flexible diet does not force you to stick to particular meal plans, it is becoming popular in young people who love to indulge in all types of cuisines.

Where to start with Flexible Dieting?

The first step in starting your flexible dieting is to calculate your energy expenditure per day and to determine how much macronutrients you need per day. This can be calculated easily by the use of a Macros calculator available on our website Macro CalorieCalculator, or you can do it yourself. Once you know your daily Macros targets or if it fits your macros, just make sure you stick to them to achieve the desired results.

What Are Macronutrients?

Typically the thumb rule is that there Fats are 9 calories per gm, Carbohydrates are 4 calories per gm, and Proteins are 4 calories per gm. Once you know how much calories you need in a day depending upon your level of physical activity, you can easily calculate your Macros. You can track your daily consumption of Macros using mobile apps like MyFitnessPal that determine macros for the type of food you eat. Your macros target will depend on your weight goals, so be clear with your weight goals. You can also use flexible dieting for weight gain by increasing your macros consumption than what is permissible.

Simple Macro Calculator

Extra Resources

If You are Looking for All Access to Nutrition and Fitness check Out Bobybuilding’s All Access.

Calculating Macros for Flexible Dieting

You can calculate your calories by using standardized equations that depend on factors like age, weight, height, and sex. Once you calculate your calorie needs, you can use them to calculate your macros distribution based on the thumb rule mentioned above.

What’s Next

After knowing your macros distribution, you can tweak it depending upon your weight goals by reducing it proportionately. All these standard calculations are available on our website Macros Calorie Calculator, and you can plug in your variables to get your customized macros distribution. Remember that it is necessary to track macros for every meal, including snacks, to get the right results.

Benefits of Flexible Dieting

Flexible dieting is very easy to follow and does not restrict you from eating your favorite foods. Calculating and tracking your macros intake is easy and can be done on the go, which makes it a DIY diet plan that does not need any professional help.

This diet program is suitable for our modern-day busy lifestyle and is more practical than the ones with fixed meals. Today’s generation tends to travel a lot and eat meals outside, so it makes a lot of sense to have this flexible dieting option that blends with our lifestyle.

Meal Prep and Flexible Dieting

When you meal prep, you can easily track your macros and calories compared to eating out. When you meal prep your own food you can add up all of your macros and calories in that dish and divide it by the number of servings you are making.

This makes it much easier than depending on the restaurant to give you accurate macro and calorie information. Sometimes you will have to look online or inside the restaurant to find the calorie information of the dish you are eating.

Flexible dieting and Protein

Sometimes it could be hard to meet your protein needs for the day. This is one complaint that you get from people who follow a flexible diet or if it fits your macros diet. One way to add more protein to your diet is to add a Protein shake or a healthy snack that has protein added. Bodybuilding.com has there own line of protein that tastes amazing and is much less expensive than most other brands.

Is Flexible Dieting Unhealthy?

Flexible dieting does not restrict dieters to fixed meal plans, so some of them may go full throttle and graze on processed foods, this behavior can lead to an unhealthy state. So if you are one of the dieters, make sure you keep processed foods and junk at minimum.

Also, flexible dieting focuses a lot on macronutrients but does not take care of micronutrients like vitamins and antioxidants, which is one of the downsides. Since micronutrients are essential for better immunity and proper metabolism, so do make sure that you are consuming the micronutrients along with your macros to stay healthy and free from diseases.

Whole Foods

Also, while focussing on your weight loss goals, do not neglect your nutrition. Calories are one thing, and adequate intake of calories does not guarantee adequate nutrition. So make sure you include lots of fruits, milk, eggs, and veggies in your meal. Don’t try to achieve far fetched weight goals as over dieting can lead to a lack of nourishment.

Goal the is to be able to meet all your weight goals, while still eating all the foods you love. The best way to do this is to meal prep your favorite meals and make the healthiest version of that meal.

For example, if you want to make a hamburger and fries. You can make a hamburger with lean 93% ground beef and cut your own fries and cook them in an air fryer instead of frying them in oil. If you make it yourself, it would be around 400-500 calories, compared to 900-1000 calories if you ordered a Hamberger combo at your regular fast food restaurant.

Is Flexible Dieting Sustainable

The hardest part about dieting is to sustain them in the long run. The majority of the strict diet plans have a negative effect on their followers, giving them stress and forcing them to drop out before the actual results are achieved.

But a flexible diet gives a lot of freedom to its followers, and that’s why it is easy to follow for the long term and also helps to sustain the results for a long time. Unlike some of the crash diets, it does not have short term results that make your weight immediately bounce back once you stop dieting.

Flexible dieting is more of a lifestyle that helps you to eat smart rather than forcing you into the standard low carb no-carb diets, so it’s more beneficial in long runs as it improves your overall eating habits.

Thus a flexible diet is a great sustainable option for attaining your weight goals and we hope you start following it and stay healthy. As they say, don’t lose your mind while you lose your weight!

What it Comes Down To

Flexible dieting or If It Fits Your Macros dieting is a simple and popular weight loss plan that allows you to eat the foods you love as long as you stay below your daily macronutrient targets.

This flexible diet lifestyle provides you the freedom to eat the foods you choose. There is no such thing as bad foods and good foods. This will help you lose weight over time and create a healthy relationship with food because you are not deprived of your favorite foods.

It is much easier to stick to, even if you are meal prepping at home or eating out at a restaurant. Most macro tracking apps can help you with calculating your macros at restaurants.

Staying Focused

It is important to stay healthy while following flexible dieting because it is easy to want to eat less healthy chooses. You will need to stay self-disciplined and make healthy choices and keep the junk food to a minimum.

If you think this flexible lifestyle is for you then figure out your daily macronutrient needs and give it a try. We have two other articles that will be a great resource for you.

Macro Calorie Calculator

If It Fits Your Macros

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