DO'S AND DON'TS FOR FLEXIBLE DIETING

The following are tips (from personal experience) that will make this journey just a little less difficult:

DO’s

1. Do include your supplements that have macro properties into My Fitness Pal – Examples of this include fish oils, protein, etc. If it has macro’s, log it!
2. Do check My Fitness Pal: MFP has a way of changing your total calories on you as you lose/gain weight. For example, if you enter that you gained 2 lbs, and your goals in MFP are to lose weight, MPF will CHANGE YOUR TOTAL CALORIES in an effort to help you continue to lose weight. This is quite thoughtful, but drives a flexible dieter CRAZY!!! The point of macro tracking is to make sure you hit the same numbers every day, which is hard if MFP changes your total calories, thus changing your macro allotment.
3. Celebrate the little successes – So you haven’t lost weight, but you’ve hit 3 PRs (Personal Records) in the gym this week! FU*K YES! Or maybe you’ve gained weight, but you’re looking in the mirror and your stomach is looking flatter?! CELEBRATION!!! Don’t always think about the number on the scale- as cliche as that sounds. Take into consideration other things that are the result of your hard work and flexible dieting: how you feel, how you perform, what your friends are saying about how you look, etc… Take those WINS and celebrate!

DON’Ts

1. Don’t enter foods into My Fitness Pal that have trace amounts or 0 macro properties – For example, black coffee has 0 carbs, 0 fats, and 0 proteins according to MFP. So even though it’s 5 calories, it has no macro value and is therefore a waste of time to enter. Simply enter in the sugar and cream (if you do that)! Of course, you CAN add it if you WANT TO, but I tend to leave it out just because it won’t matter in the big scheme of things for me.
2. Don’t enter in your exercise to MFP – Adding exercise to MFP will add extra calories into your daily allotted calories which will change the number of macros you are allowed to eat (according to MFP). Remember the point of macro tracking is the hit the SAME numbers every day. If you enter in your exercise, you end up throwing those numbers off.
3. Don’t worry about total calories – Total calories is something to NOT worry about when tracking your macros. Theoretically, it should all even out and if you hit your macro numbers, your calories SHOULD read 0 by the end of the day, but sometimes it doesn’t. THAT’S OKAY. It’s okay for you to be under or over your calories, so long as you are hitting your macros. SO- IGNORE THE CALORIES (When did you ever think you could say THAT?!)
4. Don’t be too hard on yourself – Yes, it’s important to hit your numbers, but life happens. Take it all in stride and know that it’s not the end of the world to have a bad eating day. Flexible dieting is wonderful because it’s something you can end up doing for a lifetime, so one bad day among a lifetime of eating? NO BIG DEAL. Get back at it the next day… or maybe the day after… :)

Email me with questions as you have them! Coming soon: FAQs!

Interested in joining the next group? Email me! eaticecreamgetabs@gmail.com You should have a response within 1-2 days :)

ONE BAD DAY AIN'T NO THANG

I was talking with a friend of mine who’s also giving this whole flexible dieting thing a “go” and she was telling me how she was feeling a bit discouraged lately.

“This weekend was hard for me and I want to get back at it. I need to lose this dang weight. I’m so tired of being fat.”

I think we can all relate to this statement in some way or another. At some point, we’ve all felt like our nutrition wasn’t top notch, or our food choices were poor. How many times have we said to ourselves before, “I REALLY shouldn’t have eaten that…” Or “Ugh, I ate WAY too much…” Or even more recently, how many times have we been down on ourselves about our macros? “I SO did NOT hit my macros today!!”

It’s important to remember that bad days happen. While they can seem like they set us back by a mile or more, they happen. BUT at the same time, here’s another way to think about the whole concept of a new diet:

One day of good eating isn’t good enough to get you the results you want, right?  Well the same goes for bad days- one bad day of eating isn’t good enough to set you back. Whether you are eating right or eating poorly, your outcome is always going to be the result of time and consistency. Do you spend more time eating well? Or do you spend more time eating poorly?

On weekends, I tend to be looser with my macros sometimes and what keeps me feeling guilt-free is the fact that one or two messed up days aren’t going to set me back. On that same note however, one day of eating my macros down to the last gram won’t make me meet my goals either. Meeting my goals takes TIME and CONSISTENCY.

Time and consistency are the 2 things to keep in mind as you continue to follow a flexible diet. As long as you have these 2 things in mind, you can rest assured that you are at least always heading in the right direction.

TIME AND CONSISTENCY!!

HATERS GON' HATE

Yep… the second some of your friends see you bring out the food scale to measure that brownie you’re about to eat, you’re going to hear it.

“Dude, just eat the stupid brownie.”

“Uh…what. are. you doing.”

“Seriously? Why are you even weighing that? It’s not going to matter.”

“I can’t believe you even do that. I could never live like that.”

You’re going to hear it all. People who don’t understand your goals, ambitions, and priorities will NOT understand why you and your food scale have become BFFs. In all honesty, though, what they think shouldn’t matter… but you already knew that :)

What I’ve found to help me stay focused and successful with flexible dieting (other than not caring what people think about my food scale) is to surround myself with a good and healthy support system. You want to be around people that will lift you up and not bash you when you’re carefully pouring half and half into your coffee one tablespoon at a time. The last thing you want to hear when you’re trying something new and different is, “(eye roll) Really?” People who say those things are going to bring you down and make you more likely to make poor choices. Eyes on the prize, people!

I have had countless evenings of coming home, too tired from work and the gym, to prepare a meal on top of figuring out how many macros I had left to eat for the day. Luckily, my support system at home is just that – SUPPORTIVE- and encourages me to get my ass off the couch and helps me prepare a meal that fits my macros. During those times, I could easily say, “Fu*k it, I’m just going to heat up whatever’s left over in the fridge,” but I don’t. My support system could easily say the same thing to avoid dealing with me whining about my stupid macros, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t because he is supportive- and I encourage you to surround yourself with those people: positive, supportive, and healthy people.

If you have to, let your friends or family members know that this is important to you! It sounds cheesy, but seriously, you want to create an environment around yourself that is conducive to a successful flexible diet. Another way to create a good support system is to let them join you!! Have kids? Let them weigh their food; let them practice making good food choices! There are just countless ways to find good supports in all aspects of our lives.

So… let them roll their eyes and laugh. Let them call you insane. But when you’re chillin’ and relaxin’ with your ice cream and abs, they’ll probably end up asking you how you did it :)

TIFFANY'S TOP 10 REASONS FOR ALMOST QUITTING

As people get started with their new flexible diet, it’s easy to get discouraged because you run into a few bumps in the road. Here are my top 10 bumps that I dealt with when I first started and how I dealt with them:

1. I have so much fat left! WTF! – Avocado, heavy whipping cream, peanut butter, butter, coconut oil, chia seeds, flax seeds, hemp seeds
2. I have so much protein left! WTF! – Chicken, protein shakes, beef jerky
3. I have so many carbs left! WTF! – Carb shake (Karbolyn by Nutrishop), dried mango, sweet potato
4. I have to do so much math!! – I went through a LOT of changes with this whole math thing. Contrary to what my ancestors were able to do in the math world, this is NOT my forté, so measuring and weighing my food totally sucked. It was tedious and annoying. Overtime, though, I was able to really understand how to use My Fitness Pal and how my numbers were working. I went from writing everything down on paper for the whole day, to now just knowing how much certain foods are and entering them into MFP whenever I get the chance. It takes practice.
5. It’s been 2 weeks, I don’t see a change… – I had to be patient. 2 weeks wasn’t enough time for me to notice any change on the scale. What I DID notice after 2 weeks however, is that I felt WAY better. Better throughout the day, better in the gym, better overall. Just be patient and trust the process.
6. I’m way over protein – If you’re going to be over any particular macro, this would be the one to be over on. There’s no real way to have “too much” protein in terms of having negative side effects. You still have be careful because going over will of course make you go over your total calories, but as long as you are active, going over protein is okay.
7. My friends just invited me out to lunch – GO TO LUNCH. Don’t be that lame person who says no to a good social occasion because of a diet. Just make good choices and don’t go bonkers. Choose something around a good amount of protein FIRST, then choose your carbs and fats. If you’re at a chain restaurant, you should be able to find the foods on MFP. If you’re at a mom and pop place, look each item up separately and do your best. It won’t be exact, but it’s better than leaving MFP blank.
8. Meal prepping sucks – It does. But what sucks even more is waking up and rushing to pack a lunch and having no time to measure anything. To stay on track, YOU HAVE TO BE COMMITTED TO THE PLAN. This means planning ahead of time to make it easy on yourself. If you haven’t already checked out the blog post on meal prepping, GO :)
9. Everyone makes fun of me! – Screw everyone. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been made fun of or looked at funny for counting the number of chips out of the bag at a party, or asking the restaurant how many ounces of beef they put in a sandwich. But guess what- those SAME people are now asking how I did it; how did I get to looking like I do… and I don’t mean for that to sound conceited in ANY way, but I’m just trying to prove a point. That people will question your methods and think you’re weird. But you know  your goals, and you know what it takes to reach them. Don’t let these sillies get in your way!
10. OMG THIS IS HARD – Yes, this was hard. It still is hard sometimes. But just like anything that requires work…it gets hard! Wanting to lose weight, gain weight, perform better, etc… it all takes diligence and hard work, but when you finally start seeing the body you’ve been working for in the mirror, you’ll be realizing that this process is all worth it!

MEAL PREP

People hate meal prepping and the beauty of flexible dieting is that you don’t necessarily have to meal prep. For me, though, meal prepping is what helps me stay on track to getting my fuel for each day. I literally open the fridge in the morning, throw my pre-packed, pre-measured containers of food into my lunch bag and I am golden for the whole day until I come home for dinner. If you’ve never meal prepped before, this can seem like a daunting task at first- the planning, the cooking, the food packing, (SCREAM!)… but it’s not as bad as you think, and it totally gets easier over time.

Here’s what I do every Sunday: COSTCO. I stock up on the the essentials and then get to work. It takes me 3-4 hours on Sunday to meal prep, which sounds like a lot of time, but it actually saves me time in the long run. 3-4 hours on Sunday totally beats 1 hour to make dinner when I get home and then another hour to prepare for the next day. That would be like 10 hours of meal prep if I waited to do it each day! Here’s an example of what my meal prep looks like:

BREAKFAST PREP:

• Oatmeal – Make 5 servings and put it into 5 containers
• Bacon – Put a ton of strips on a cookie sheet and bake at 400 degrees for 15-20 minutes. This saves me SO much time. Cooking it in my skillet takes too much time and only cooks like 5 strips at a time. I put 4 strips on top of the oatmeal in their containers.
• Granola – Place a serving in 5 containers
• Milk – Place a serving into 5 mason jars

LUNCH PREP: 

• Steam a ton of broccoli- put 5 oz in 5 containers
• Pan cook a ton of cod (lemon, grass fed butter, and garlic)- put 5 oz in with the broccoli

SNACK PREP:

• 1.5 oz of dried mango in 5 ziplock baggies
• 1 cup plain greek yogurt (sometimes I add honey if I need carbs. If i want to save my carbs, but want sweetener, I actually add in some Splenda) into 5 containers
• Protein powder into 5 baggies
• 1 avocado

DINNER PREP:

• Bake 6-8 chicken thighs and store in a large container
• Bake 4-6 sweet potatoes and store in a large container
• When I get home during the week, I can just make a plate of food with these items that will balance what I have left to eat from the day. It also allows me to fit in a dessert if I need to also!

So obviously since I’m meal prepping for the week, I pretty much set myself up for eating the same thing everyday. For me, this works. I make things that I know I’ll eat. For others, this might be hard to do because imagining having to eat the same thing every day just sucks.  You’ve got to find something that works for you and makes tracking your macros as easy as possible.

Feel free to leave a comment and let others know what works for you!