IIFYM, or If It Fits Your Macros, is a new fad diet based off of “flexible eating”. “Macros” stands for the three macronutrients, carbohydrate, protein, and fat. IIFYM gives a total calorie intake recommendation and breaks it down into what percent of total calories should come from each macronutrient category.
There are a handful of benefits to IIFYM that other fad diets don’t have. There are no specific food/macronutrient restrictions that could lead to aggressive cravings or potential medical complications. In other words, your food choices are “flexible” as long as they fall appropriately into your macronutrient ranges. This ability to eat any food you want as long as it falls within your macronutrient range is typically what attracts people to IIFYM. In addition, you are theoretically more likely to fall into the recommended macronutrient ranges than with straight calorie counting alone. In case you were wondering, the recommended macronutrient breakdown is below:
Carbohydrate – 45-65%
Protein – 10-35%
Fat – 20-35%
Just because IIFYM is a few steps above restriction fad diets doesn’t mean it is all good. IIFYM at its core is just calorie counting. It bases itself off of the calorie in/calorie out concept; if you burn more calories than you take in, you will lose weight. There are some serious flaws with that theory. The thing with calorie counting is that it isn’t as accurate as you think it is. Not nearly as accurate. Stated calories on packaging are allowed to be off by up to 20%. If you consume a bag of chips that claims to be 200 calories, in reality you may be consuming as low as 180kcal or as high as 220kcal. That is a huge margin of error. Tracking calories in produce is even more difficult, as fruits and vegetables can vary greatly in individual size. Bottom line, track your calories to get a ballpark range if you so choose, but don’t obsess over calorie counting.
The idea that counting your macros is “flexible eating” is ludicrous. It may sound appealing that you can eat whatever you want and still lose weight, but the time and planning it takes to properly measure, categorize, and track everything you’re putting into your body takes a considerable amount of energy. If the term “flexible eating” implies you don’t have to follow any rules around food, IIFYM seems to have a lot of rules to follow. You have to determine for yourself if the energy you're putting into macro tracking is really being directed in the most productive way.
Additionally, you should still be worried about the empty calories you’re consuming. There is a significant difference between tracking your macros while making sure to fill your plate with nutrient dense food, and following a diet of pizza and beer as long as it fits the diet. Just because you fall within a certain calorie range doesn’t mean you are eating well enough to fuel your body and get healthy.
Calorie counting, when used appropriately, can be used as a great educational tool. Although I would love for all of my clients to be naturally intuitive eaters who make healthy food choices based off of the signals their bodies are giving them, it is unrealistic to expect someone to immediately grasp the concept of intuitive eating when they have been conditioned against it their entire lives. It is also unrealistic to expect someone to understand portioning and calorie control when they have never taken the time to learn what foods are energy dense and which are not. Intuitive eating is an end goal that takes considerable time, self-reflection, and oftentimes developing a completely new relationship towards food. (For more information on intuitive eating, check out our blog post Intuitive Eating: The Non-Diet Approach to Wellness)
For this reason, I am a proponent of beginners taking the following steps to get a thorough understanding of how to control their meals. The first step is to learn the basics of what goes into a healthy overall diet; an abundance of fruits and vegetables, whole grains, lean protein, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats, etc. The next step would be to get a ballpark range of the daily calorie requirements to maintain your weight, and track your calorie intake for a few days to get a feel for how close or how far off you are from your goal.
The next step is crucial – once you have a general understanding of how many calories are in the food you eat, you should probably stop calorie counting. Calorie counting and/or macro tracking long term may lead to unhealthy food behaviors. If you are tracking your macros, and at the end of the day your app tells you to eat 30 more grams of carbohydrates and 5 more grams of fat, you may eat something you otherwise wouldn’t have despite your body not feeling hungry. This only leads to a disconnection from your natural satiety cues that understand your body’s needs better than any app ever could. Some days you may need more food than usual, other days you may need less, and they only way you’ll know is by responding to your natural hunger. If your goal is a lifetime of wellness, it's pertinent you don't become obsessed with the idea that you must perfectly track your macros to stay healthy.
Some people will claim that calorie counting and macro tracking work well for them, and that they are not bogged down by the time it takes to track their food to that level of detail. For those individuals, more power to them. Everyone is different and needs to find what method is best for them. For the vast majority, tracking macros takes too much time and energy to do well, and for that reason, is not sustainable long term. A diet is a diet. Be wary of what you see on social media, and be absolutely sure that whatever method of eating you adopt is one that you can sustain for a lifetime.