IIFYM IF IT FITS YOUR MACROS

IIFYM stands for If It Fits Your Macros. The word ‘Macro’ is short for Macro Nutrient. The major macro nutrients are protein, carbs, and fat.

The concept behind IIFYM is that it doesn’t matter what food sources you choose, as long as you hit your target macro levels at the end of the day. This idea throws the who idea of “CLEAN” eating on its head as it has been proven that one can eat a little “DIRTY” and still get in contest shape.

IIFYM isnt for everyone though. While you are able to eat more exciting foods during the diet, it isn’t a free for all. Everything in the meal is still counted and monitored. Making some of these meals fit in your diet can be a challenge in terms of the daily math. In addition, some people just aren’t ready mentally for such flexibility. Give them the green light to have a pop tart within their macros, and next thing you know, the box is gone. For these two reasons, I don’t recommend this style of dieting to beginners.

A common misconception is that these “cheat” style meals are eaten all day long. This is far from the case. If these meals were eaten all day, macro counts would surely end up out of whack. The key is striking a balance between traditional “clean” eating and the new world of IIFYM.

My solution is to have my IIFYM meal as my pre workout meal. I like to limit it to this, because if I do more, the calculations just get tedious and complicated. Furthermore, I have noticed that whenever I have an exciting IIFYM meal at any other time, I tend to get an energy surge and crash. Stacking it as pre workout seems to work best for me. Other than that the rest of the eating should be geared towards traditional clean food dieting.

I strongly believe that certain foods are inherently better for the body, regardless if the math adds up on both sides. This is why I eat all the traditional healthy and clean foods majority of the time. My body feels and runs much better as a whole. The IIFYM meal is great for feeling free, limiting boredom, and the preworkout surge.

Here are exmples of some of my IIFYM Pre-Workout meals….

Nutrabio Whey Isolate, whole wheat bacon pizza bagels.