IIFYM

IIFYM or if it fits your macros, now you probably know all abut this, or maybe your thinking what are you going on about?

Lets break it down food is made up of macronutrients called fats, carbs and protein, all of them make up the calories in the food you are eating or drinking.

Fats are 9 calories, carbs and proteins are 4 calories.

So your probably sat there thinking so what? well our bodies take in the macronutrients, everybody's break down is different and I will get to that in a minute, but you have probably all heard of don't eat carbs after 6, make sure you only eat x amount of protein. Well truth be told our bodies don't know if its 6pm or 8pm so you can eat carbs after 6, and for protein our bodies only use a certain amount at a time so its best to break up protein and spread it out through the day.

As long as you eat roughly the right amount of macros that are set then you are going to loose weight/gain weight or what ever your goals are, as long as you hit your calories through your macros then you will be fine.

IIFYM makes life easier for you, you can eat cake or ice cream as long as it fits your macros, it means that you don't have to deprive your self any more, if you fancy a bowl of cereal at 9pm have a bowl of cereal as long as it fits your macros..

The downside is everything needs to be weighed to get accurate results, so if you are new to this it will take a little while to get used to it, however you will probably be shocked at portion sizes when you weight things properly as I am sure I am not the only one that over estimates a 30g bowl of cereal, once measured out it really is about two mouthfuls and this will explain how some people cannot lose weight because they are not eating the correct portion sizes.

Once you have been doing it a while you wont need to measure out some foods as you will be able to do it by eye, but it does take time and practise, do make sure you do not get obsessed with it though because it is flexible dieting and it does mean you can be more relaxed and start to enjoy foods again, and if you stress about it not only will it effect your results it will effect your mentality and you will start feeling guilty again.

I want people to enjoy food, it as taken me a long time to enjoy food and realise eating more foods is actually a good thing, you cannot gain muscle if you don't eat foods, and the more muscle you have the more fat you burn. Also carbs are not your enemy, I will do a post on carbs.

Now lets work out your macros, this is a basic calculator and I am no expert so you will need to play around to find what suits you, as some people are more sensitive to carbs and need higher fats whilst others work better lower fat higher carbs, basically give it 2 weeks on the numbers before playing around.

First we need to work out your calories that are needed each day we are going to use the basic formula which is the Mifflin, M.D, St Jeor formula

For females 10xweight (kg) +6.25 x height (cm) -5 x age (y)- 161=REE
males is 10xweight (Kg)x height (cm) -5 x age (y) +5=REE

ill do mine to show you 10x50+6.25 x 157- 5 x 28 - 161 = 1180 basically that's how many calories my body needs if I was to lie in bed and not move for 24 hours

next we need to work out if your sedentary- office job, little walking (REE x 1.2)
light activity- light walking, activity that burns 200-400 a day (REE x 1.375)
mod activity- waitress, on feet for most part of the day (REE x 1.55)
very active - professional sports person, or a manual labourer (REE x 1.725)

Heres mine: 1180 x 1.55 = 1829 so basically if I want to maintain weight I eat this amount, if I want to loose weight I eat less etc.

Now we need to work out proteins, and fats and carbs:

Protein is the fixed number, you either eat .8 to 1g of body weight, if you haven't been eating much protein then start at 0.8 and slowly add protein in overwise you could get stomach problems

so .8xbody weight = RDA of protein or 1g x body weight

For me I do 1g x 109 = 109g protein so that's my protein macro sorted

Now lets look at fats, fats are essential for hormones and brain function and every body takes to fat differently lets look at body structure,

Ectomorph: naturally lean person, about 25% of your diet

Endomorph: naturally heavier person, so more likely to utilize fats from diets, so about 35% of daily diet

Mesomorph: average body type and is inbetween the other two so about 30% of daily diet

Ectomorph = TDEE x .25
Mesomorph = TDEE x.3
Endomorph = TDEE x.3.5

Mine example would be 1829 x .25 = 457/9= 50 g fat

To find carbs its TDEE - protein- fat

1829-436-457= 936/4 (4 g of carbs to calorie) = 234 g of carbs

If you have any questions just ask, or you can go to iifym calculator to get it done for you