Flexible Dieting Part 2 - No Restrictions, No Hunger Pain, No Sad Faces

As far as I'm concerned, there are two main aspects to flexible dieting; nutritional requirements & nutritional guidelines.

Nutritional requirements are like ‘rules’ of flexible dieting. For example you must meet these in order to see physique development & progression. Without doing so, you’re wasting your time. Playing the guessing game as to how much protein, carbohydrate & dietary fat you’re consuming means you’re basically guessing as to how your results will turn out. Don’t waste your time. Each day, you will need to hit correct amount of protein, carbohydrates & fats, that’ you’ve calculated (See here on how to calculate your macros).

This will mean your body is essentially receiving the same nutrients each day & will allow you to tweak your intake accordingly in an educated and calculated manner, moving forward in order to see continual progression. It will also assist with maintaining & improving performance.

The nutritional guidelines of flexible dieting are the things that you ‘should be doing’ whilst meeting your macronutrient guidelines. Obviously we want to improve our physic, but at the same time we also want to be healthy. Therefore, it’s important to be mindful of our insides too such as digestion, gut health, bodily functions, and energy levels, moods, training intensity and performance for example. A healthy body is always going to perform better than one fuelled by processed food. Not to mention you’re more likely to stay fuller for longer on more nutrient dense foods such as fruit and veggies because you can eat more of them, as they have less macros in them! When meal prepping, you should include the following in your plan:

1-2 serves of fruit per day.
 3-4 serves of vegetables per day.
50-60ml per 1kg of body weight in fluid per day.
 15-20g fibre per 1000 cals as part of your carb count.

Now then, here’s the fun part! Tracking your intake doesn’t have to consume your entire day! All you actually have to do is keep a reasonably accurate & up to date food diary. Personally, I use MyFitnessPal to scan in all the meals I’m eating because it has an extensive list of supermarket items as well as popular restaurant meals too. Eventually after a few months, you’ll actually learn what nutritional quantities are in what and if you’re anything like me then you’re likely to eat the same sorts of things across the week so this will save you manually tracking it. Also, If you’ve meal prepped, then you can enter this in for the week in one go and that’s you done! It really couldn't be any easier – just make sure you've weighed the ingredients and selected the correct quantities, you want it to be as accurate as possible after all.

& finally, you need to be consistent and track your progress too. You might have calculated your macros and realised that your body actually responds differently to certain foods and calorie intakes etc… so over a few months you will need to consider tweaking your plan to keep seeing results. For me, I'm currently starting my reverse diet (more on this in my next few posts) until March, when I will then start cutting for the summer. Over these different time periods, my calories will increase and decrease accordingly and I will be making these changes in correlation to my progress and my future goals.

& for the doubters out there, check out this flexible dieter & her results! NikkiBlackketter