What’s better for sustained Fat Loss? Eating a Meal Plan with a designated free meal or Flexible Dieting (If it Fits Your Macros as it’s called in some gym circles)  I’ve done both and  in my opinion, what works for sustainable Fat Loss is Flexible Dieting or you may have heard it called If It Fits your macros.  What happens is that you’re given the amount of calories you’re supposed to eat along with the macros of the diet.  Macros are Protein, Fat, Carb

For example a Fat Loss Plan may be 1800 calories made up of

40% Carbs 30% Protein 30% Fat

Your job is to eat within those boundaries.  You can eat frozen yogurt or graham crackers as long as it fits within your macro budgets

I use the app My Fitness Pal where I can log food and set macro budgets.  Remember nothing is ever 100% foolproof and how you digest calories depends on your internal environment but it does give you data to work with.

The Pros

  • You can eat a wide range of foods and your diet doesn’t have to be boring and repetitive
  • It allows you to develop an eating routine and strategy that works for YOUR LIFESTYLE.  Generally people are told to time their carbs around their workouts.
  • It’s not focusing on Restricting but rather what you CAN eat
  • You can live your life while doing this.  You can go out to eat and it’s more of a lifestyle than something you do for a little while
  • It allows you to figure out what works for YOUR body and you’re able to adjust as necessary as you go along.
  • It allows you to work your treats in rather than waiting for a specific day to gorge on a cheat meal.  I’ve found with this method, I’m not counting down the days to the free meal because I get so much variety that I am not focused on restriction.

Cons

  • Harder to Prepare/Plan for:  When I was on the meal plan, I knew what I was going to eat every day and it made it super easy to prepare and plan for the week. I had everything ready whereas now sometimes I get struck with the mood to eat something and not have it to prepare for.
  • Harder to figure out what’s working.  Since my diet is so varied while still staying with the macros it’s harder to adjust if my body isn’t responding to something but I do find that playing with the macros does help.

No it doesn’t mean you should eat Donuts, pop tarts and Oreos

One of the things I HATE about the If it Fits your Macro crowd is that you’ll have people posting stuff like, “I have 600 calories left.  Gonna eat Donuts,  Pop Tarts and Oreos! #shredded #IIFYM”

For one thing, I don’t think anyone should be eating  Donuts, Pop Tarts and Oreo as part of their daily diet.  IIFYM or not. Frankly I think it’s garbage.  Most of us will not get #shredded eating Pop Tarts and Oreos especially if we aren’t enhanced.  Yeah there’s that.

What you can do is work in treats for yourself.  I like to have some FroYo as dessert on Fridays and it’s really easy to work it into my food strategy for the day.  No harm and no foul but thumbs down on the Pop Tarts and Oreos.

Would I ever do a Meal Plan ever again?

If I were to do a traditional Meal Plan and One Day Cheat meal then I would only do it for the maximum of six weeks and I can’t  even really see myself doing that because If it Fits Your Macros is so much easier and so much better for your sanity.

I am still against dieting and I have a No Dieting rule so I can’t see myself ever doing a Meal Plan again unless it was for a very specific purpose such as a Doctor told me I have to.