Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Can IIFYM Wreck Your Health, Physique, and Relationship with Food?

Episode Date: August 19, 2019

What if you could eat hamburgers, pizza, and ice cream every week—hell, maybe even every day—and still have abs?    Such is the rallying cry of many people who subscribe to the “If It Fits Your Macros” (IIFYM) style of dieting.   Others claim the principles of IIFYM shouldn’t be used to merely get and stay lean while eating like a spoiled child. Instead, they should be used to look and feel great while eating a wide variety of foods including those verboten by more traditional, restrictive forms of dieting.   For instance, this might mean regularly eating foods like pasta, bread, dairy, and sugar while also maintaining a healthy intake of more nutritious foods like lean meats, fruits, and vegetables.    Who’s right?   Often the most accurate answer to such questions is “it depends” or “somewhere in the middle,” but in this case, there’s a clear winner: moderation.   In other words, IIFYM works best as a more flexible, accommodating approach to “clean eating,” as opposed to its polar opposite, where you follow meal plans that emphasize whole, nutritious foods while allowing for less wholesome indulgences.   And in this podcast, you’re going to learn why and get simple, science-based answers to all of your questions about IIFYM, including . . .   What is IIFYM? Does IIFYM work as well as people say?  Is IIFYM healthy? What’s the best way to use IIFYM principles? Should you follow the IIFYM diet? And more.   Let’s get started.   5:46 - Do calories count? 18:55 - Will IIFYM wreck your health and physique? 30:10 - Does IIFYM promote eating disorders? 41:07 - How do you use flexible dieting and IIFYM principles correctly?   Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter!   Click here: https://www.legionathletics.com/signup/

Hey, Mike here. And if you like what I'm doing on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives, please do consider picking up one of my bestselling health and fitness books, including Bigger, Leaner, Stronger for Men, Thinner, Leaner, Stronger for Women, my flexible dieting cookbook, The Shredded Chef, and my 100% practical and hands-on blueprint for personal transformation inside and outside of the gym, The Little Black Book of Workout Motivation. Now, these books have sold well over 1 million copies and have helped thousands of people build their best bodies ever. And you can find them on all major online retailers like Audible, Amazon, iTunes, Kobo, and Google Play, as well as in select Barnes & Noble stores. Again, that's Bigger Leaner Stronger for Men, Thinner Leaner Stronger for Women, The Shredded Chef chef and the little black book of workout motivation. Oh, and I should also mention that you can get any of the audio books 100% free when you sign up for an audible account, which is the perfect way to make those pockets of downtime,

like commuting meal, prepping and cleaning more interesting, entertaining, and productive. meal prepping, and cleaning more interesting, entertaining, and productive. So if you want to take Audible up on that offer, and if you want to get one of my audio books for free, go to www.legionathletics.com slash Audible. That's L-E-G-I-O-N athletics slash A-U-D-I-B-L-E, and sign up for your account. Hello, boys and ghouls. Welcome to another episode of Muscle for Life. I am Mike Matthews, of course. And this time around, I want to talk to you about IIFYM, if it fits your macros and specifically a few of the common arguments against it.

A few of the common things that gurus and experts out there say to criticize IFYM or discourage people from doing it. Now, as you know, I am a big advocate of understanding energy balance and macronutrient balance and micronutrient balance as well. And so when you approach dieting in that way, there are different terms for it, right? IFYM is one of them. I like to promote flexible dieting more than IFYM because IFYM has a different connotation. It is generally perceived as a way to eat a bunch of junk food and still have abs. Whereas flexible dieting, that term has been around for a lot longer, and it has a different flavor to it. When people talk about flexible dieting,

they are usually talking about a more reasonable, balanced, and nutritious way of eating that allows you to enjoy the foods you like to eat, but acknowledges the importance of calories in and calories out, and understanding the difference between calories from protein, carbs, and fat, as well as acknowledging the importance of eating nutritious foods, the importance of getting most of your calories from relatively unprocessed foods that you make yourself. Whereas again, IFYM, if you just search the hashtag on Instagram, you'll see what I mean. Search the hashtag for IFYM versus flexible dieting. And there's a very obvious difference. IFYM is going to serve up

a lot of junk food and people talking about how cool it is. They can eat this junk food and look the way they look. Whereas flexible dieting will serve up a lot of images of more healthy stuff. And by healthy, what I really mean is nutritious is nutritious right foods are not inherently healthy or unhealthy except for maybe in the case of trans fat if a food contains a significant amount of man-made trans fat that is because you do find some some natural trans fats and meats but those are different so the man-made stuff is in just junk food like cereal and microwavable dinners and microwavable desserts, stuff like that, that's bad for you. There's no question. Trans fat is just straight unhealthy. But beyond that, foods are not particularly healthy or unhealthy. They are nutritious or not nutritious. So with all that said, the point of this episode is, again, to address three common criticisms of IFYM or flexible dieting.

Many people do use those terms synonymously. I don't. Again, I think there is a distinction. But these three criticisms are often leveled at both IFYM, which is, let's say say the more extreme version of flexible dieting and just flexible dieting in general, the more moderate version of, you know, eat what you like and pay attention to your calories, pay attention to your macros and try to eat a fair amount of nutritious food, but you can eat the quote unquote bad stuff too. So these criticisms are one, that calories do not count or they're just too hard to track. Like practically speaking, calorie counting is unworkable, at least for most people.

The second common criticism is IFYM or flexible dieting is just going to wreck your health and eventually your physique. And the third is that IFYM will wreck your relationship with food. All right, so let's talk about each of these. So let's start at the top here, which is calories don't really count or they're just too hard to track. So this is the most unscientific and quite frankly, the most absurd argument that is made against the IFYM. Many gurus and experts out there, they say the calories are just not as important for weight loss as many people think, or as we've been told, as they have been telling you. What matters more, these people say, are avoiding certain toxins in food, like lectins, for example, or preventing key nutritional deficiencies or minimizing your

carbohydrate or your sugar intake or maximizing your fat intake. Keto is all the rage right now, right? Or optimizing your hormones or other such misdirections. And the story usually goes something like this. You can restrict calories all you want, but if you do not follow my precise and seemingly, which is actually arbitrary dietary instructions, you will probably fail to lose weight. And even if you do lose weight through calorie restriction alone, you will almost certainly gain it all back when you stop restricting your calories and you try to just go back to normal living. And a variation on that pitch is the acknowledgement that restricting calories does indeed cause weight loss. If you do maintain a calorie deficit over time, you will lose weight, but this is a fool's errand for

most people because they cannot do it reliably or sustainably. And to get to the bottom of all of this, we need to start with a quick discussion of calories in and calories out and how it relates to your body. So if you are familiar with this already, if you are familiar with energy balance and just skip forward a little bit, but if you're not, let's talk about it quickly. So your body burns a certain amount of energy every day to stay alive. And this is driven mostly by your resting metabolic rate or your basal metabolic rate. Those are not interchangeable. Basal is if you just sat there and did nothing all day, how much energy did your body burn? That's your basal. And your resting metabolic rate is similar. It just assumes that you are going to do some basic things like eat some food, which results in some energy expenditure and small amounts of physical activity.

Think of it as a very lazy Sunday. That's your RMR. Bedridden with no food is your BMR. So anyway, back to energy expenditure. So your body is burning a certain amount of energy every day. There's a certain amount of energy it needs to just stay alive. And then we're moving around, we're eating food, and these things burn energy as well. Now you can measure that amount of energy.

It can be expressed in terms of calories. Now, technically speaking, when we're talking about calories in this context of energy in versus energy out, one calorie is the amount of energy that is required to heat one kilogram of water, one degree Celsius, right? So it's an energy potential there. And the energy that's contained in food, of course, can be measured and expressed in the same way. Now to lose fat, you need to consistently feed your body less energy than it's burning over time. This is a calorie deficit. That's the technical term for it. When you do that, you are creating a calorie

or an energy deficit, and that forces your body to tap into its fat stores to get the energy that it needs. So body fat is your body's go-to source for energy when it doesn't get the total amount of energy that it needs from food. So for example, if you burned 2,500 calories in a day, but you only ate 2,000 calories, where did that other 500 calories come from? Most of it came from body fat. And if you do this frequently enough, you will significantly decrease your body's body fat stores because they will just get whittled down lower and lower as your body is doing what it has to do to stay alive. If it couldn't do this, if it couldn't tap into body fat or anything else that it has for energy, then a calorie deficit would actually kill us. An energy deficit would kill us. There'd be a point where food energy runs out,

the body has nowhere else to go for energy, and it would just shut down. All cellular activity would stop abruptly because there's literally no more fuel left to run the machine. Now, that doesn't happen, of course, because our body can tap into fat stores, and it also can tap into muscle stores as well. It can tap into tissue. It can break tissue down if it really needs to for energy, but it doesn't want to do that. It actually does want to use its fat stores

because that is one of the main reasons our body has fat stores is to make sure it can survive in between meals. And at one time, a long time ago, that might have been days. We had to go for extended periods of time without food. And then finally, we would kill an animal and we would feast. And then it might be another three, five, even seven days before we really get to eat again. Now, the other side of this coin is an energy surplus. What happens if you eat more calories than you burn consistently? Well, your body stores a portion of those calories as body fat to better prepare itself for future periods when food is not so plentiful. And that is how you increase body fat levels.

Now, of course, this isn't just theory. It's not my opinion. We have a century of metabolic research under our belts now, and this has conclusively proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that this relationship between calories in and calories out, technically referred to as energy balance, is the basic physiological mechanism that regulates weight gain and weight loss. weight gain and weight loss. And if you are skeptical and you want to dig into that specifically, head over to legionathletics.com and search for energy balance. And you'll find a long article I wrote on, I believe the title is like how to use energy balance to lose fat and gain muscle or something like that. And I will record a podcast on energy balance specifically, but it is not up yet. So I can't tell you to go listen to it. However, I do have

a pretty long podcast on weight loss. I'm trying to remember the exact title. Maybe it's like the most effective way to lose weight rapidly or something, or for rapid weight loss. If you search my podcast feed for weight loss, and if that doesn't pull it up, lose weight rapidly or something or for rapid weight loss. If you search my podcast feed for weight loss, and if that doesn't pull it up, lose weight, you will find the episode that I recorded on that. And I really dive into energy balance there. But for the purpose of this podcast, I'm going to leave it at this. While you don't have to count calories to lose weight, you do have to understand how calorie intake and expenditure influences your body weight and you have to eat accordingly.

When it comes to body weight, energy balance is king. Now, that is why IFYM or flexible dieting or any other diet that reliably controls calories and allows you to keep your calorie intake beneath your expenditure works every time for every person under all circumstances. And it doesn't matter what foods you're eating. Hence the IFYM hashtag gallery. If you went and looked and you see people who are losing lots of weight, eating a pint of ice cream every day, or eating Pop-Tarts every day, or maintaining a very low body fat percentage doing that. The only reason they can do that

is because they are paying attention to their calories. I don't think that's a smart thing to do because nutrition does matter. Long-term health matters. And we're going to get into some nutritional stuff actually. I believe it's when I address the third criticism that certain nutritional deficiencies not only can impact your general health and wellbeing, but they can directly impact your body composition as well. But I'm getting ahead of myself. So let's get back on track here. Let's talk about the naysayers now. I've said what I have to say, and there are people that they concede that restricting calories does indeed cause weight loss and that overeating does indeed cause weight gain, but they also claim that you can't really make good use of that information because you can't

estimate your calorie intake or expenditure with enough accuracy and enough certainty to really make profitable use of it. So they say it's an interesting piece of science, but it doesn't translate well into real world practicality and results. And they often say that it's better to just rely on intuitive eating for weight loss and maintenance, following good rules and good guidelines. And if you want to learn more about intuitive eating, head over to Legion Athletics and just search for it. I have an article on it. I don't think I have recorded a podcast on it, but that would be a good idea. So I'm going to make a note right now. These people, however, are wrong because you do not need to calculate your energy expenditure for IFYM to work. All you have to do

is calculate your energy intake and then raise it or lower it based on how your body is responding. Now, I do recommend that you also calculate your energy expenditure because you can use that information. You can get close enough to find a really good starting point, but you actually don't have to even try to guess at your calorie expenditure if you just start with your intake. And that is very easy to track accurately. Another point here that's worth noting is if you are going to calculate how many calories you're burning, of course, there's always a margin for error. It is a moving target. You're never going to get it exactly right, but you can get close enough to get results consistently and to get considerable results, to make major improvements in your body composition.

And it's not hard to do. And what you'll also find when you do that is not only will you make big improvements in your body composition, you will also inevitably experience and learn an important lesson, which is that intelligent application of IFYM or flexible dieting principles sensitizes you to your body's energy balance and its natural appetite cues. And this enables you to effectively wean off the food scales and spreadsheets and food tracking apps and into an intuitive approach to eating where you're not tracking or weighing anything per se, but you have a very good idea of about how much food your body needs to maintain its current state. And if you eat a bit more than that, you can actually feel it and you're aware of it. Not that you have to feel bad about it. You just know that you ate quite a bit

more than you needed to today. And on the flip side, you also just get a good sense of what it feels like to be in a calorie deficit and how much food that generally equates to. And so then when you come off of the scales and the apps and so forth, and you're just eating in the day to day, you have a good sense of that as well. You'll know, I mean, if you're in the gym regularly, you'll know if you've been consistently under eating because your workouts just get inexplicably harder. The weights start to feel heavier and heavier, but even before that happens, you can know more or less right away. At the end of a day of eating, you can, with a fair amount of accuracy, determine if you were in a deficit that day, at least a significant

deficit, or if you were somewhere around maintenance, somewhere around the amount that you burned or in a significant surplus. Hey, quickly, before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast, would you please help spread the word about it? Because no amount of marketing or advertising gimmicks can match the power of word of mouth. So if you are enjoying this episode and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well, please do tell them about it. It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say thank you. You can find me on Instagram at Muscle for Life Fitness, Twitter at Muscle for Life, and Facebook at Muscle for Life Fitness. Okay, so let's move on to the next common criticism, and that is that IFYM will

wreck your health, and that will eventually wreck your physique. Now, this one is particularly popular. This is a favorite straw man among IFYM critics. Now, what they often say is, yeah, sure, you can get shredded eating Pop-Tarts and cereal and candy, but eventually it's going to destroy your health and that's going to destroy your beloved physique. And yeah, no shit. Of course, if you are using IFYM or flexible dieting principles to eat like a Veruca from Willy Wonka, yeah, you're going to experience a number of negative consequences that are going to get worse and worse over time. And the reason why I say this is a straw man criticism is based on my experience working with thousands, it might even be over 10,000 now, men and women over the years who have read my books, read my articles, listened to my podcasts

and reached out, asked for help. And then with many of these people, I just would hear from them regularly and was able to keep tabs on the progress, tweak things for them, et cetera. I have found that the vast majority of people do not eat like that and would never want to. Instead, they use IFYM to just make quote-unquote healthy dieting more effective and more enjoyable by accounting for energy balance and by accommodating their personal food preferences. And yes, that includes some indulgences and treats. That's how most people use IFYM. So despite the noisy exceptions, you know, the muscular lean IFYMers on Instagram who love to gloat about all the junk food that they eat. Most people are not doing that.

And now for the people who are doing that, okay, we can all acknowledge that that's not a good idea, but how bad is it really? Is that really going to destroy their health and their aesthetics? Maybe, but it's probably going to take quite a bit longer than you'd think and than many IFYM critics would like to admit. You see, most research indicates that so long as your diet is generally nutritious, and that's pretty flexible in terms of what it really comes down to. flexible in terms of what it really comes down to. If you're eating some vegetables and some whole grains and maybe some fruit and some lean protein, your diet is maybe not great, but it's really not that bad when you're looking at it objectively, when you take the ideology out of it and just look at the specific micronutrients and macronutrients that our bodies need and how much of each they need and how much are being provided through the various foods that

we can eat. And so long as you're doing that, as long as you're doing okay, including junk food in your diet is just not likely to negatively impact your health or your body composition. Now, if you have some sort of medical condition that would indicate otherwise, okay, fine. That's an obvious exception, but I'm just talking about for your average healthy person who exercises and who isn't extremely overweight, who doesn't have any metabolic disorder and so forth. Now, a good example of this comes from a study that was conducted by scientists at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center. And what these researchers did is they had six overweight men consume one unhealthy meal and

two healthy meals that look like this. So the unhealthy meal was a Big Mac, was some French fries, McDonald's French fries, and root beer that was sweetened with high fructose corn syrup. And there was a healthy beef meal, which was a hamburger made with certified organic grass-fed beef cheddar cheese and a hamburger bun made with unbleached all-purpose flour and natural ingredients, organic mayo, ketchup, lettuce, onion, and dill pickles. The meal also included organic french fries and root beer that was sweetened with cane sugar and then there was a healthy turkey meal which was a sandwich made with free range antibiotic and hormone-free turkey breast cheddar cheese organic lettuce mustard mayo and 60 whole wheat bread made with natural ingredients

and this meal also included some granola that was made with organic and all natural ingredients. And this meal also included some granola that was made with organic and all natural ingredients and some orange juice, organic orange juice specifically. So what we have here is a fast food meal, two mostly organic, all natural meals made with beef or turkey. And as far as the calories and macros go, the unhealthy meal had 1,044 calories, 28.2 grams of protein, 53 grams of fat, and 151 grams of carbs. The healthy beef meal had 1,154 calories, 28 grams of protein, 60.2 grams of fat, and 163 carbs. And the healthy turkey meal had 1,260 calories, 34 grams of protein, 49 grams of fat, and 170 grams of carbs. And all of the participants in the study ate the same control breakfast at 8 a.m. So the results wouldn't be affected by what they ate for breakfast and then had their assigned

lunch at 12 p.m. And then each participant ate all three of the lunches with a week in between each test. So this was a crossover study. Now, after each of the lunch meals were eaten, the scientists took careful measurements of the subject's blood levels of glucose, insulin, free fatty acids, ghrelin, leptin, triglycerides, and LDL and HDL cholesterol every 30 minutes for the first four hours and then every 60 minutes for the next two hours. The result of all of this was the researchers found there was no difference in insulin, glucose, leptin, or HDL cholesterol levels between the different meals. The blood triglycerides were slightly higher after eating the healthy turkey

and beef meals and slightly lower after eating the unhealthy meal. Ironically, it is possible though that this is because the unhealthy meal contained the fewest calories. It's just worth noting. It doesn't necessarily mean that McDonald's is better for blood triglycerides than an organic turkey sandwich. As far as ghrelin goes, which is a hormone that stimulates hunger, the scientists found that ghrelin levels were suppressed equally between the meals at first, but rose higher five hours after the unhealthy meal than the healthy meals. after the unhealthy meal than the healthy meals, which indicates that the healthy meals did a better job of suppressing appetite, which of course would discourage further eating, which makes it easier to not overeat. LDL cholesterol levels also decreased slightly more after eating the healthy meals than the unhealthy one. Now, you might be thinking, what about glycation, Now, you might be thinking, what about glycation, oxidation, inflammation, and other big bad buzzwords that certain health gurus love to use to scare people away from not just IFYM,

but even just eating entire food groups like carbs. Well, to all that, I say humbug. It's mostly humbug resulting from carefully cherry-picked and mostly misunderstood or misrepresented research. So for example, I recently saw an interview with a fitness influencer and online coach who claimed eating broccoli could improve your physique thanks to a molecule in it called indole-3-carbinol. Now, while a few studies have shown this compound may decrease the concentration of molecules in the body that stimulate estrogen production, no research has been done to explore how this may or may not influence body composition. And given the effect size that has been seen in research so far, there's no reason to think that it would. And it's also worth noting that the studies that have been done on indole-3-carbinol

involved giving people synthetic concentrated forms of it, not broccoli. Naturally, that didn't stop the interview guest from stating conclusively that simply eating broccoli will reduce estrogen production enough to help you shed body fat faster. My point is simply that a single unhealthy meal has almost no impact whatsoever on your body. And what really matters are your chronic eating habits. It's the same with exercise, of course. Missing one workout has no impact on your body composition. Missing a bunch of workouts does. So as far as your diet goes, there are a few questions to reflect on. Like, are you using

energy balance to maintain a healthy body composition? Are you getting most of your calories from whole foods like lean meats, fruits, vegetables, legumes, grains, and so forth? Are you eating enough vegetables in particular, four to six servings per day, including at least one serving of leafy greens? If your answers to those questions are yes, yes, and yes, and if you are also exercising at least a few hours per week, no amount of occasional cheat meals of even the most nutritionally bankrupt fare can bring you down. Something else to keep in mind is many people who use IFYM to eat copious amounts of highly processed sugar laden food are in their fitness honeymoon phase. After years of bouncing

from one type of highly restrictive diet to another with little to show for it, they have discovered the holy grail of dieting and they just want to take full advantage of it. In most cases, however, the novelty wears off in a couple months and they get bored of just eating piles of junk food every day and welcome the return of some nourishment. And that naturally leads to the adoption of a more normal, healthy, balanced, sustainable diet that may include but doesn't revolve around the food court of your local mall. What if their honeymoon never ended, though? What if they just kept on going that way? Well, then, yeah, there's no question that problems are on the horizon. A diet severely

lacking in vitamins, minerals, fiber, and other nutrients and stiff with sugar, chemicals, and refined oils will undermine your health, vitality, and longevity. This isn't exactly news, though. This is on par with the connection between smoking and drinking and health and the risk of various diseases. food and even promote eating disorders. Now, there is a kernel of truth here because IFYM does naturally encourage you to start viewing food through the lens of just calories and macros, which can lead to some pretty odd and unappetizing meals to just hit your macros. Again, go check out the IFYM hashtag on Instagram and you'll see what I mean. Right now, before recording this, I went and looked and I'm talking about stuff like boiled chicken breast and white rice, like cooked together, boil them together, lunch meat, raw cucumber slices, and goldfish crackers, low calorie Oreo pudding, protein

powder, and peanut butter all mixed together. Actually sounds kind of good, but strange, right? I'm talking about the types of meals that kind of take you back to your college days, or maybe even your kindergarten days when you kind of ate like a third worlder for one reason or another. Now, why are IFYMers keeping this tradition alive? In most cases, it's just convenience or laziness. Creating and cooking tasty, nutritious, macro-friendly meals takes time. It takes know-how. It takes work. Whereas throwing together some foul but macro-friendly frankenmeals is a cinch. That is not IFYM's fault, though.

You just blame the people who are too lazy to cook or find some healthy, macro-friendly recipes. And yeah, you could say that IFYM is an enabling factor here, that without it, these people wouldn't be able to commit such dietary sins without at least sacrificing their body composition, which would probably deter many of them in the first place. But by that logic, then sugary foods lead to obesity and condoms cause promiscuity and driver's licenses are to blame for DUIs. So in other words, IFYM merely allows you to eat more freely without gaining fat or losing muscle. But if you abuse that freedom, that's on you. With great freedom comes great responsibility, right? Another common criticism of IFYM is it leads to an almost neurotic obsession

with meal planning. And since it does allow for unlimited food choices, some people do spend inordinate amounts of time coming up with new stuff to eat and new places to try. In some instances, more time than you can spend in the gym. Yes, that's a bit weird and it can go too far and become psychologically unhealthy, but this is not an inherent flaw in IFYM, but simply in how some people are practicing it. If you use it intelligently though, if you use it moderately, there's no reason why it can't be part of a healthy lifestyle. And that specifically, a healthy lifestyle is what I want to comment on last in this podcast. because as you probably know, what you eat is of secondary importance. If we're talking body composition, the carbs in the Twinkie ultimately turn into glucose and glycogen, just like the carbs in the broccoli, right? And the protein in the five guys burger

contains the same amino acids as the protein in the wild caught fish or the plant protein powder. And the fat in an Oreo blizzard is digested and absorbed in more or less the same way as the fat in the grass fed organic steak. And so yes, if you hit your macros every day, and that also would mean hitting your calories, of course, if you hit your macros, if they are set up properly, you will also hit your calories. You can eat any and all of those foods regularly, the quote-unquote good or the quote-unquote bad ones, and lose fat and build muscle. But that does not mean all foods are equally conducive to health and well-being because food is more than just a source of calories, protein, carbs, and fat. than just a source of calories, protein, carbs, and fat. It's also our source of vital nutrients, you know, vitamins and minerals that support our body's many physiological functions.

So a major problem with candy and other sugary treats, including just overly processed foods in general, is they are deficient in micronutrients. And similarly, a major benefit of eating quote unquote clean is it provides your body with an abundance of micronutrients because we only have so many calories we can eat every day. And if too many of those calories are coming from junk food, and then that means too few are coming from nutritious foods, we can develop vitamin and mineral deficiencies that can cause many different health problems. But that is just too far beyond the horizon for many people, and especially those who are currently enjoying the near invincibility that comes with youth. While their dietary misdeeds will catch up with them eventually,

one day, that's a problem for future them to contend with, not present them. Present them is going to eat junk and get shredded. Now, what these people don't realize though, is a crappy diet can and will catch up with you long before you start receiving your social security checks. For example, research shows that a high intake of highly processed carbs and sugars is associated with an increased risk of various types of chronic disease. Eating too much low quality processed meat products may increase the risk of cancer. And the more trans fats that we eat, the higher our risk of heart disease, diabetes, infertility, and more. So remember, being jacked loses its luster if your hormones are whacked,

your immune system is compromised, and your body is literally starving for nutrients. Furthermore, while you do not need to eat a high quality diet to lose fat and gain muscle, it does make it many times easier. For instance, a diet that is deficient in various micronutrients can make it more difficult to lose fat. Take zinc, for example, which is one of the most commonly reported nutrient deficiencies among bodybuilders in particular, and which is required in adequate amounts for optimal thyroid function. Now, as thyroid hormone heavily influences metabolic rate, when thyroid levels drop, weight loss can slow. And a good example of this comes from a case study that was conducted by scientists at the University of Massachusetts. Researchers took two zinc deficient college women

and gave them 26 milligrams of zinc per day for four months. And they also took careful measurements of the women's resting metabolic rate and zinc and thyroid hormone levels at the beginning of the study. And then after two and four months of supplementing daily, and what the scientists found is within four months, the women's RMRs increased by 194 and 527 calories per day, respectively. And yes, you heard me right per day. That is significant. That is the energy equivalent of about 30 to 60 minutes of moderate to intense cardio, or to put it differently, an increase of about one half and one pound of fat loss per week, purely from correcting a zinc deficiency caused by a poor diet. Now, could these women have lost plenty of

fat and then stayed lean, maintained their new leaner body composition without correcting their zinc deficiencies? Yeah, of course. But as you can imagine, it would have been quite a bit more difficult and it would have been a lot easier with the zinc deficiency resolved with adequate zinc in their diets, which can be obtained, of course, from foods. You don't need to be supplementing with zinc necessarily. Meat, shellfish, and beans, for example, are good dietary sources of zinc. Another body composition benefit to eating mostly

whole, minimally processed foods is they produce a higher thermic effect of food, which means that the body burns more calories digesting them than it does highly processed foods. So for example, research shows that whole grain bread with cheddar cheese has a TEF, thermic effect of food, of about 20%, which means that about 20% of the calories in the food are burned during digestion. So if the meal in this case contained, let's say 200 calories, about 40 of those calories are burned automatically thanks to TEF. On the other hand, a slice of white bread and processed cheese has a TEF of only 11%. So 200 of those calories only cost about 20 to process. Now, a difference of 20 calories in a single meal, of course,

isn't going to make that big of a difference. But if you add that up meal after meal, day after day, it can become pretty significant. So let's say you're getting half of your calories from highly processed, low TEF foods. You might be able to burn a couple hundred more calories per day by just swapping most of those highly processed foods for less processed ones. Yet another thing to consider in the relationship between the quality of your diet and your body composition is your fiber intake. If you are not eating enough fiber, not only are you increasing your risk of various types of disease, you are also going to find yourself hungry. And if you eat adequate fiber, you are not only going to reduce your risk of various types of disease, you are

also going to find yourself generally fuller, which of course makes it easier to not overeat. And that is the name of the game when it comes to diet. Unless you want to overeat, unless you are intentionally keeping yourself in a calorie surplus to maximize muscle and strength gain, you want to avoid overeating. Whether you're trying to lose weight, then it's just obvious. But even if you're trying to maintain your weight, of course, you can never eat exactly how many calories you're burning every day, but you want to be close. You want to be a little bit, inevitably, you're going to be a little bit above certain days, a little bit below on other days, but you want to avoid

major bouts of overeating and eating enough fiber regularly is going to help tremendously with that because it's going to help you control your appetite. All right. Well, those are the main points I wanted to discuss in this episode. And I'll just leave you with this. To use IFYM or flexible dieting principles correctly, all you have to do is four things. One, get at least 80% of your daily calories from minimally processed and highly nutritious foods, and make sure you like them to eat foods you like. Second is create a meal plan that you can stick to unless you are more advanced and you know how to create meal plans and you find that you can eat intuitively effectively. If you're not there yet, though, meal planning is a great place to start because one, it guarantees results. And two,

it's a great way to familiarize yourself with the foods you like, the calories, the macros, and also with how much food you need to eat to maintain your body composition, to lose fat, to gain muscle, at least to maximize muscle growth, right? A calorie surplus. If you spend, I would say at least six months working with meal plans, you will come away an enlightened eater. You will find it much easier to eat intuitively, effectively. My third tip for IFYM implementation is make sure that you make some room in your meal plans for treats. And yes, those treats can contain sugar. Remember, at least 80% of your calories from highly nutritious foods, the rest, do what you want. Fourth and final tip is to make your meal timing work for you.

When you eat is not very important. So eat when you like to eat and meal composition is not very important. If you like to have a small breakfast, have a small breakfast. If you like to have a big breakfast and smaller meals later in the day, do it that way. If you like to skip breakfast and start eating at lunch, maybe have a big lunch and then a big dinner and then a pre-bed meal, do it that way. As far as bottom line results go, any and all approaches to meal timing and meal composition are going to work more or less the same. I say more or less because if you are someone who's really trying to get the most out of your training, you're really trying to maximize muscle and strength gain, I would recommend eating at least three servings of protein per day, but ideally five separated by a few hours because research shows that that approach is likely better for long-term muscle gain than fewer than three. So for example, two large servings of protein per day is probably going to result in less muscle gain over time than five smaller servings per day. And those five smaller

servings, of course, would be separated by less time than the two larger servings. So you'll find two larger servings, for example, in the intermittent fasting space, that's common, where people are basically skipping breakfast, they have a lot of protein at lunch, and then a lot of protein at dinner. Some people try to just jam all their protein into one meal. Some people try to eat just 150 grams of protein at dinner, for example, because their lunch, they want it to just be high carb. They want to eat, I don't know, some pizza or something for lunch, and then they figure they can just get all their protein at dinner. There's no question that that approach, one serving of a lot of protein per day is inferior to three to five,

but it's also likely the case that that is true with two servings of protein separated by often about six hours than three to five separated by less time. So that's it. If you follow those four simple tips, getting at least 80% of your daily calories from nutritious foods that you like, creating a meal plan you can stick to, making room for treats and making your meal timing work for you, you can do very well with IFYM and flexible dieting. Hey, Mike here. And if you like what I'm doing on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives, please do consider picking up one of my bestselling health and fitness books, including Bigger, Leaner, Stronger for Men, Thinner, Leaner, Stronger for Women, my flexible dieting cookbook, The Shredded Chef, and my 100% practical and hands-on blueprint for personal transformation inside and outside of the gym, The Little Black Book of Workout Motivation. Now, these books have sold well over 1 million copies and have helped thousands of people build their best bodies ever. And you can find them on all major online retailers like Audible, Amazon, iTunes, Kobo, and Google Play, as well as in select Barnes and Noble stores. Again, that's Bigger Leaner Stronger for Men, Thinner Leaner Stronger for Women, The Shredded Chef, and The Little Black Book of Workout Motivation. Oh, and I should also

mention that you can get any of the audiobooks 100% free when you sign up for an Audible account, which is the perfect way to make those pockets of downtime, like commuting, meal prepping, and cleaning, more interesting, entertaining, and productive. So if you want to take Audible up on that offer, and if you want to get one of my audio books for free, go to www.legionathletics.com slash Audible. That's L-E-G-I-O-N athletics slash A-U-D-I-B-L-E and sign up for your account.