Those of you who know, work or train with me are most likely well aware of my hatred toward the IIFYM Diet otherwise known as the – “If It Fits Your Macros Diet”. I’m usually one to keep my opinion to myself unless asked, however when it comes to the topic of this so-called “flexible dieting” phenomenon that has gained huge popularity over these past few years, I refuse to hold back.

For those of you who don’t know, the IIFYM Diet is a nutrition plan that allows you to eat whatever you want, whenever you want as long as it fits into your daily macronutrients. The premises of the diet seems quite simple – Figure out what your daily caloric intake needs to be and stay within it to maintain your ideal weight, go below it to lose any unwanted weight or go above it to gain additional weight. The concept sounds great to the dieter as it allows the person to be more flexible with his or her food choices the he or she makes throughout their day and with no real restrictions, they will never feel like they are depriving themselves of the foods that they enjoy.

So what’s my problem? I mean if the plan apparently works, and people can either gain or lose weight while just staying above or below their daily caloric intake then I should be on board with this diet right?

Absolutely Not!

When I was younger, I never had a good grasp on nutrition. Like most teenagers I ate whatever I wanted and whenever I wanted to. My daily diet would consist of bagels smothered with cream cheese and/or chocolate chip muffins for breakfast, pizza, burgers and fries for lunch, followed by some kind of frozen microwaveable meal or fast food take-out for dinner. As an adolescent I was never really overweight. In fact, I was quite skinny. I was able to maintain my ideal body weight and could get away with eating anything and everything. Life was good. I loved food and I loved lots of food. I never noticed any serious health issues from my poor eating habits so I figured I was fine and therefore there was no reason for change.

As I entered my early 20’s my diet stayed pretty much the same. I had started to workout (or what I thought at the time was working out) and did notice a few slight changes with my physique. I became a more muscular and defined as well as a little bit leaner. All of this on a diet that consisted mainly of sugary snacks and fried foods. Not too bad eh? And this was before the IIFYM Diet was even made popular!

Unfortunately the fattening fun food ride was about to come to an end. By the time I was 22 my physique had stopped changing. No matter what I did in the gym, I just couldn’t get any results. On top of my lack of progress with my workouts, I had a constant feeling of fatigue and felt extremely lethargic for most of my waking hours during the day. I tried to do a a bit of cardio to spice up my routine and was shocked when I couldn’t even run 1 mile without losing my breath and having to stop. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with my body. I started to get headaches periodically throughout the week. I also noticed that I became irritable with others quite easily and let my emotions get the best of me at times with confrontations and fights with co-workers and friends over the smallest of issues. I became dependent on caffeine and sugar to help reenergize me just to get through the day. The short bursts of energy that I would receive from the sugar high would only make me crave more sugar which made me become more short-tempered and moody which I would find out later was because my insulin levels were on a non-stop roller coaster ride.

After doing a little bit of research I was shocked to learn that perhaps my diet was in fact the culprit for all the negative feelings and emotions that I was experiencing on a daily basis. How could food have such an impact on my mental state as well as my physical appearance though? I mean it was just food? And apparently “a calorie is just a calorie” so there’s no way that my diet was to blame. Or was it?

Don’t forget to check back for Round 2 of my blog due out later on this week as I explain why Junk Food and Working Out cannot in fact coexist peacefully in my world.

Yours in Good Health,

Nick Cosgrove