Flexible Dieting 101

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We tend to treat eating and diets as one size fits all. But the human body is very personalized.
––Denise Morrison

​Flexible dieting marries some form of food tracking with a degree of flexibility (duh) that makes it a more sustainable approach than most current popular diets.
 
In this article, I aim to cover:
 

• What’s the problem with diets?
• What is flexible dieting?
• Where do you start?
• How do you calculate your macronutrient and calorie targets for maintenance?

 
The first three sections of this article are excerpts from my Quick Guide to a Balanced Diet. Sign up for my free monthly newsletter at the bottom of this page to read the full guide!

The problem with popular diets
 
In the context of weight loss, all the most well-known diets, from Atkins to Weight Watchers, work because they create a calorie deficit. However, most dieters regain all the lost weight and then some.
 
Why does this happen?
 
Because these diets aren’t designed as a long-term weight maintenance solution. They are “quick fixes,” nutritional band-aids slapped over the true issue, which lies in the lack of understanding of how to adopt a balanced diet to last you a lifetime.
 
In fact, dieters don’t regain weight because the diets failed. It’s because, once they complete the dieting protocol, they revert back to their original eating habits.
 
However, the way you were eating before the diet is the reason why you put on weight in the first place.
 
The only difference between a truly successful fat loss diet and your “normal” diet should be the portion size.
 
To achieve this, you need to educate yourself on what a balanced diet looks like in general and on what it could look like for you, based on your food preferences, budget, and lifestyle.
 
What is flexible dieting and how is it different from popular diets?
 
Unlike many dieting approaches, flexible dieting isn’t a military protocol that you either succeed or fail at, but a long-term way of eating that can be tailored to any goal, be it fat loss, muscle gain, or weight maintenance.
 
Furthermore, there are no hard and fast rules, so that your eating strategy can be modified to suit life events like holidays and social outings, or your increased nutritional knowledge and experience.
 
There are no “good” and “bad” foods, either. You don’t have to eat chicken salad at Thanksgiving dinner or refuse pudding at Christmas. You can have fruit, vegetables, and chicken breast, but also biscuits, pudding, and chips.
 
As a result, you don’t “fall off the wagon” because there is no wagon. Instead, there are food choices, and the decision you make will change depending on the situation.
 
For example, if you are tracking your calories, these questions might help you navigate a food choice:

• “How many calories can I expend on this meal without feeling excessively deprived and hungry for the rest of the day?”
• “What is the occasion? Is it more important to have a piece of cake at my best friend’s birthday, or to feel satiated and therefore opt for a more ‘wholesome’ meal?”
• “Can I make adjustments to my next meals so that I can still hit my calorie target for the day or the week?” For example, if you are thinking of having a 1000-calorie pizza for dinner, can you “borrow” calories from other meals so that you still hit your weekly calorie goal?

 
Flexible dieting usually involves at least one method of controlling your food intake: counting calories, tracking food portions, or eating according to hunger and satiety cues whilst taking into account the social context.
 
The specific strategy you employ depends on your current nutritional knowledge and awareness of what and how much you eat versus what and how much you might need to eat to reach a specific goal.
 
In this article, I will refer primarily to counting calories and macros, a strategy that lays the foundations for more complex methods, such as only relying on portion sizes or not keeping a food journal at all.
 
The premise of flexible dieting
 
Flexible dieting is based on the concept of calorie balance, which is the relationship between energy expenditure and energy intake.
 
We need energy in order to survive. We get this energy from food and use it to carry out a number of functions:

• To maintain the physiological processes that keep us alive
• To perform unconscious tasks, like breathing
• To perform conscious tasks, like moving

 
We measure energy using calories (kcals).
 
You are in a state of energy balance when you eat as much energy as you burn. This way, you will maintain your current weight.
 
If you eat more energy than you burn in a day, you will gain weight. This is called a state of positive energy balance (or calorie surplus).
 
If you are also eating adequate protein and engaging in resistance training, and your weight increases at an appropriate rate, this will be mainly muscle or lean mass. However, it is inevitable to gain a little body fat, too.
 
If you burn more energy than you eat, you will lose weight. This is called a state of negative energy balance (or calorie deficit).
 
If you are also eating adequate protein and engaging in resistance training whilst losing weight at an appropriate rate, you will minimise muscle mass loss and maximise body fat loss.
 
In the context of weight changes – maintenance, fat loss, muscle gain – food quantity (how many calories you eat) is more important than food quality (what kinds of food you eat).
 
However, food quality can impact:

• Potential nutrient deficiencies or lack thereof.

 
French fries, cake, cookies, and other highly palatable foods have a lot of calories, but not a lot of vitamins and minerals.
 
So, if they comprise 80% or more of your calories, you might be at risk of some micronutrient deficiencies, especially if you are on a calorie-restricted fat loss diet.

• How easy or hard the diet becomes.

 
For example, during fat loss, having all your calories come from donuts, burgers, and ice-cream likely means you will be forced to have very small portions to stick to your calorie goal.
 
As a result, you will always be hungry, and it will be very hard to adhere to the diet.
 
On the other hand, in a muscle-gaining phase, eating exclusively “clean” foods might result in an excessively high fibre intake, which can cause bloating, gas, and one too many toilet trips.

• The risk of muscle loss in a fat loss phase.

 
A diet that is high in protein will be more likely to help you retain muscle mass than one that is not.
 
Most highly palatable, nutrient-poor foods are high in fat and carbs, but low in protein.
 
Where do you start?
 
In general, a food journal is a great educational tool for beginners.
 
Someone who doesn’t have a good understanding of calories yet will see great benefits from simply writing down everything they eat and drink in a day, how hungry they felt when they ate on a scale from 1 to 10, and how full they felt afterwards.
 
After a period of “calorie-free tracking,” I would usually introduce MyFitnessPal or another calorie-counting app to replace the food diary.
 
You don’t need to count calories forever, but a few weeks or months will help you understand the calorie and macronutrient content of the most common foods you eat. In turn, this will help you guide your choices in the future, even when you stop tracking calories.
 
Calculating your maintenance calories
 
The first step to designing your own flexible dieting approach is to figure out how many calories your body requires to stay more or less at your current weight. In other words, your maintenance calories.
 
You have two options for this:

1. Use a formula.
2. Track calorie intake and weight changes for two weeks.

 
Option 1 is quicker, but much less accurate, whereas Option 2 takes longer, but is potentially more accurate.
 
If you go with Option 1, a quick Google search will reveal the existence of a great many formulae to estimate calorie expenditure.
 
Each one of them involves a certain degree of error and, most importantly, all of them will only give you a general estimation of your maintenance. Nevertheless, this is your starting point, not the end all or be all of your nutrition for the foreseeable future.
 
What I’m saying is that it isn’t so important which formula you choose, as you will adjust your macros and calories as you go.
 
If you prefer Option 2, keep a food diary on MyFitnessPal or a similar app to find out how many calories you eat on a daily basis for the next two weeks. Weigh yourself at least twice a week and keep a record of your weight fluctuations.
 
After two weeks, it’s time for a little math:
 

1. Add up all the weigh-in values at the end of Week 1 and divide them by the total number of values you have. For example, if on Day 1 you weighed 72 kg and on Day 2 it was 72.6 kg, the average for the week would be (72+72.6)/2 = 72.3 kg.
2. Do the same with the weigh-in values for Week 2. The two numbers you are left with are two weight averages for two different weeks.
3. Compare the two averages to see if you have lost or gained any weight in the past two weeks. For example, if you were 72.3 kg on average on Week 1 and 73.3 kg on average on Week 2, you would have gained 1 kg in one week.
4. Repeat the process explained in the first step with your daily calorie intake in Week 1 and 2. If you track for all seven days, which I would recommend, you would add up all of the intakes and divide them by 7.
5. Let’s say the average for Week 1 is 4000 kcals per day and for Week 2 it’s 3800 kcals. The average for the two weeks would therefore be (4000+3800)/2 = 3900 kcals consumed every day.
6. 1 kg can be roughly equated to 7000 kcals, which means that, by eating 3900 kcals per day (27 300 kcals per week), you are currently consuming 7000 kcals per week above your maintenance calories. Subtract 7000 from your total weekly calories and divide by 7 to obtain an average daily caloric intake for you to maintain your weight: (27 300 – 7,000)/7 = 2900 kcals per day

 
Based on this example, your maintenance is around 2900 kcals per day (20 300 kcals per week).
 
You can then aim to hit your calorie target plus or minus 100 calories if you are trying to lose fat; or plus or minus 150 to 200 calories if you are maintaining or trying to gain muscle. If you know you are going to be off by several hundred calories on one or more days, focus on your weekly target instead of going crazy over your daily one.
 
If your weekly calories are within your target range, then you will be making progress regardless of daily fluctuations in your food intake.
 
Calculating your macronutrient targets
 
Protein: Set this first, aiming for 1.6-2.2 gr per kilogram of bodyweight to maintain weight or gain muscle. To lose fat, the range is a little higher at 2.2-2.8 gr per kilogram.

For example, if you weigh 73.3 kg, 1.6 gr of protein per kilogram would be:
 
73.3 * 1.6 = 117.28 gr of protein per day
 
1 gr of protein and carbs has 4 calories, so 117 gr of protein per day contain:
 
117 * 4 = 468 kcals
 
Fats: These should be set at a minimum of 0.5 gr per kilogram for health-related reasons. 0.5-1.2 gr per kilogram is a good range to experiment with based on your personal preferences.
 
If you weigh 73.3 kg, 0.5 gr of fat per kilogram would be:
 
73.3 * 0.5 = 36.65 gr of fat per day
 
1 gr of fat has 9 calories, so 37 gr of fat contain:
 
37 * 9 = 333 kcals
 
Carbs: Your remaining calories should come from carbs, starting from a minimum of 1 gr per kilogram.
 
Assuming your maintenance is 2900 kcals, subtract your calories from protein and fat, then divide the remaining number by 4:
 
[2900 – (468 + 333)]/4 = 2099/4 = 524.75 gr of carbs
 
Finally, your targets will look like this:
 
Total calories = 3750
Total protein = 117 gr
Total fat = 37 gr
Total carbs = 525 gr
 
Your carbohydrate-to-fat ratio isn’t all that important for your fitness goals as long as you have your protein dialled in.
 
However, carbohydrate is the body’s preferred fuel source for resistance training activities and high-intensity endurance training, so you could play around with a higher carb intake before you attempt a higher-fat approach.
 
If you find that high-carb doesn’t work for you, then you could increase fats gradually until you discover the amount of both nutrients that appears optimal for your own needs.
 
Aim to meet your macronutrient targets within a 20 gr range for protein and carbohydrates, and within a 10 gr range for fats.
 
Perfection is not required
 
The reason why you should set yourself target ranges rather than specific numbers is that flexible dieting is supposed to be, well, flexible.
 
When aiming to hit your macros and calories on the nose every day, it’s easy to get stressed, obsessive, and frustrated.
 
These negative feelings can result in one of two unpleasant scenarios: you could decide “you’ve already fucked up” and turn a single unplanned cookie into a binge fest; or you could stop going out with friends and family for the sake of your macros and calories.
 
Either way, you aren’t going to feel good about yourself or your nutrition plan.
 
This is a list of nutritional strategies you can employ when life happens, ordered from the least to the most flexible:

• Hit your daily macro targets
• Hit your daily protein and calorie targets
• Hit your daily calorie target
• Hit your weekly calorie and macro targets
• Hit your protein target and use portion sizes based on the size of the servings you had on days during which you did track your intake

 
Choose the best strategy for your circumstances because you won’t be able to choose the best circumstances for your strategy.
 
In Future Episodes:
 
Next time I will cover an appropriate rate of weight gain or loss and how to calculate your calories accordingly.
 
Your Turn:
 
Have you ever tried flexible dieting? Share your experience in the comments!