6 COMMON FLEXIBLE DIETING MISTAKES - RIKI LONG (GUEST BLOGGER!)

Riki Long is a CrossFit and weightlifting athlete with accolades that include appearances at the 2014 North East CrossFit Games Regionals and the 2014 American Open (48kg). Additional to being a great athlete, she is a fellow flexible dieter and coach as well!!

I had the incredible opportunity to meet Riki while competing in Miami, FL at Wodapalooza and it sorta went down like this:

Tiffany sees Riki….(Damn it, don’t be a weirdo!)…(Posts on Riki’s Instagram, “Hey we were in the same heat for the last WOD and stood in line together, but I didn’t wanna be creepy and scream ‘I FOLLOW YOU ON INSTAGRAM!’…”)

Needless to say, Riki was able to look past my awkwardness because we have since been able to chat back and forth about flexible dieting and it has been such a great learning experience. I’ve asked her to share some of her knowledge for Eat Ice Cream Get Abs, so below are her 6 common mistakes that flexible dieters make.

Be sure to follow her on Instagram (@lil_riki_) and check out her website (www.LilRikiFitness.com) for more information on her and flexible dieting!

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Fitness and dieting. We all have our own methods. Dieting seems to be the hardest part though, right? I mean we spend hours upon hours at the gym, whether its globo gym or a CrossFit Box, but our gainz (and losses) are still not reflecting our gym dedication! “Why don’t I have pecs like Rich Froning?” “ I want to snatch as much as Morghan King.” –What gives?   Dieting is hard because we make it hard. I want to talk about the 6 common mistakes people make when practicing flexible dieting. Fix these mistakes, and you are well on your way to being a macro counting pro:

1. NOT measuring their food in grams- “But the package says 2 tablespoons of peanut butter is 16 grams of fat, 6 grams of carbs and 6 grams of protein.” Correct, but if you see the back label, there is a number in the parentheses that probably says 32 grams in weight. A peanut butter connoisseur’s single tablespoon would most likely be bigger than the average person’s tablespoon. For accuracy and consistency, measure it out in grams. You’d be surprised by how much your single servings should look.
2. Forgetting to track supplements- In the beginning I neglected this for a month. Most athletes take some type of fish oil. Oil. What is oil? Fat, so it needs to be logged in. Even fiber capsules need to be logged, yes its fiber but we count all carbs, not just the net carbs.
3. Calorie dense versus volume- This is where people start abusing the flexible diet. I will have clients complaining to me that they are starving and I need to adjust their macros. Sometimes they’re not even on a cut! So the first thing I ask is for their food log:  What you see above is poor planning and calorie dense foods. Now, there is nothing wrong with consuming any of these foods, but now this person only has 100 calories to work with for dinner. Perhaps instead of the rice at lunch, this person could have had broccoli and saved some carbs for later. A quest bar is fine, but for a person that is only consuming 1300 calories per day, this is probably not the best idea. Plan your days ahead of time, eat for volume, and make sure you get in your micros before picking out bagels and quest bars.
4. Not planning- See above! I’m serious guys. The reason why so many people fail on their diets is because of piss poor planning. Don’t just wing it and then get mad at your coach because YOU didn’t hit your macros. Plan!
5. Not double checking MFP- Beware, friends! Some people out there only count calories, or net carbs. There are so many entries for bananas in the My Fitness Pal app. Which one do you use? First, look at the entries with the most confirmations, second be sure you can measure it in grams (not cups, length, number of bruises, etc.), and lastly, research that it is correct using the interwebs. This goes for the scanner too. I have scanned a loaf of bread and the company used the same exact bar code on their hotdog buns apparently. You can’t trust anyone!
6. Food avoidance- I stayed a “clean” eater for about two weeks until I had my first doughnut on flexible dieting, ahem, first six doughnuts…Yeah, I went hard in the paint. It didn’t stop there either; I was on a sugar high and ate any sugary, gluten filled processed treat I could get my hands on. When you taboo a food, you usually crave it more. This is how the binge process comes about. Be a STRICT dieter, not a RESTRICTED dieter.

Have questions about some of this?? ASK AWAY!!