How to Live a Healthier and Happier Life With Flexible Dieting

How to Live a Healthier and Happier Life With Flexible Dieting

We’ve all heard that the key to a lean, muscular, and healthy physique is food selection. Eat grilled chicken instead of fried chicken. Eat brown rice instead of white rice. Don’t eat ice cream or pop tarts. Now, what if I told you that what we’ve all heard is simply not true.

What if you could eat ice cream, fried chicken, cake, steak, or cookies and still maintain a very lean, muscular, and healthy physique? That’s certainly a lot more attractive than just eating brown rice, baked chicken, and green vegetables all day, isn’t it? Well, that’s exactly how flexible dieting works!

Flexible Dieting Lets You Eat What You Enjoy

The key with flexible dieting is moderation. When you eat, you aim for macronutrient (i.e. protein/fat/carbohydrates/fiber) targets that fit the needs of your body and your fitness goals instead of food selection. For example, my current daily targets are 225g protein, 81g fat, 380g carbohydrates and 30-60g of fiber per day. I try to consume a healthy portion of vegetables, fruit and quality protein in order to meet those targets. However, I also sometimes factor in beer, ice cream, lasagna, fried chicken, etc.

The downside to this approach is that you have to count calories by virtue of counting macronutrients. But the benefit is that you can have the body that you want and still eat the foods that you love. In my opinion, this lack of restriction on food selection far outweighs any inconvenience imposed by tracking macronutrients. And in the era of the smartphone, there are tons of apps that dramatically simplify macronutrient tracking!

Can You Really Eat Ice Cream And Stay Lean?

Yes, you really can eat ice cream and stay lean! However, if you are hitting your target macronutrient values then you certainly can’t eat ice cream all day long. That’s where the checks and balances come in. If you did eat ice cream all day then you would hit your fat target long before you hit your protein target. And for flexible dieting to work, you have to hit everything and you have to be consistent. So, having some ice cream is fine. But it has to be balanced with other foods like lean meats, fruits, vegetables, grains, and other foods in order to hit your daily targets.

What’s more interesting is that when compared to rigid diets that restrict the consumption of certain foods, flexible dieters tend to stay leaner. That’s right! Not only can you maintain a lean physique with flexible dieting, but you are actually more likely to do so than you are with more rigid dieting practices [1].

What About Cheat Meals?

The great part about flexible dieting is that you don’t need to cheat because you already get to eat foods that you love on a daily basis. Other diets that restrict food selection often promote cheat meals or cheat days as a way of keeping your sanity due to spending most of your life restricting food choice to the point of near madness. But while they might apply the label cheat meal or cheat day, what they are really doing is giving you a license to binge. And sadly, some people take advantage of this license to the point of developing eating disorders [2].

Since flexible dieting eliminates the need to cheat, it also improves your chance of dieting success. How many times have you heard people bemoan their diet? And how long do you think those same people are going to stick with a diet they are unhappy with? The point is this: You can have what you believe to be the best diet in the world. If you aren’t happy with it then you won’t stick with it. And if you won’t stick with it then it’s not going to do you any good [3].

How Well Does Flexible Dieting Really Work?

I would be one heck of a hypocrite if I didn’t practice flexible dieting myself. I used flexible dieting in 2012 to drop over 30lbs and go from over 230lbs to 195lbs. I also used flexible dieting in 2013 to successfully compete in 3 bodybuilding competitions. And I use flexible dieting still to maintain a lean and muscular physique.

I have tried other types of diets in the past that were more restrictive in terms of food choices. And every time I ended up in the same place: off of my diet. With flexible dieting, I can diet year round, I never have to cheat, and I am much happier with my diet because of it. And the reality is that for most people (baring any medical condition), whether you eat ice cream or oatmeal, if you hit your targets consistently then it will end up having the same net effect on your physique, and likely your health too. But the catch is that if you are hitting your targets consistently then you won’t end up eating junk food all day, anyway.

References

[1] Mela, David J. "Determinants of food choice: relationships with obesity and weight control." Obesity Research 9.S11   

      (2001): 249S-255S.

[2] Stewart, Tiffany M., Donald A. Williamson, and Marney A. White. "Rigid vs. flexible dieting: association with eating

      disorder symptoms in nonobese women." Appetite 38.1 (2002): 39-44.

[3] Smith, C. F., et al. "Flexible vs. Rigid dieting strategies: relationship with adverse behavioral outcomes." Appetite 32.3 

      (1999): 295-305.

Posted by Clayton Long