Well, it is a way to track your nutrition by tracking your macros. You track foods according to their fat, protein, and carbohydrate calorie content. You can calculate what your macros are online with available calculators. This is a flexible diet and is compatible with most other diets, such as Paleo or Whole30, because calories are still being tracked, or the foods eaten are accounted for. Many people prefer to break up the macros into thirds (30% protein, 30% carbohydrates, and 30% fats) and have 10% left over for “indulgences.” Depending on the type of diet you want to follow, you can adjust the macros to fit your needs. Like increasing the amount of carbohydrates while decreasing protein and fat intake on exercise days. Another example would be following a high-protein diet and adjusting the macros to fit. If there are dietary restrictions, one can adjust for this by adjusting the macros to fit. This allows the person to have almost anything they want as long as it fits into the daily macros.
Remember, at the end of the day, to lose weight, it is recommended to be in a caloric deficit compared to energy expenditure. This is not a simple process, and it varies from one person to the next. A person’s sex, weight, age, height, and activity level all play a role in how much weight someone is capable of losing, and the rate of weight loss also fluctuates. When there is a plateau, many feel the diet is not working anymore and will often stop before troubleshooting what could be the barrier to losing weight.
Another thought to remember is that your activity is not a license to just eat more food. For example, if you have a 1400-calorie diet per day and you have eaten 1300 calories so far, but you ran 4 miles and burned 300 calories, you did not get an extra 300 calories to add to your daily caloric intake.
I think for some, this type of diet can help them. It can help a person track their food in general. It is not restrictive and, on the surface, appears to be a sustainable lifestyle choice for managing nutrition. It takes some getting used to at the start. If you are struggling with weight loss and are in a plateau, this type of diet may be useful. Of course, please talk with your doctor about making changes and whether IIFYM is beneficial and safe for you.
