No one can take this away. Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of Find Your Model Healthy Official Podcast for those looking to optimize their long-term health and weight goals and understand how their body really works. I'm your host, I'm Shameen Lenny. I'm a nutrition and hormone-parapist, integrative health practitioner and certified uroologist.
I'm very happy to have you back with me for another piece of your day. So we're just carrying on with the dieting options before we head into the new year, just a few things I want you to know so that you know you have options in regard to your diet or your weight loss or fat loss plan in the new year. So the last episode we look at diet fatigue, diet is inhibition, diet refeeds and breaks and then diet reset. And in that podcast I said I would do one just on flexible dieting.
Before I go on I must remind you that the information in these podcast episodes is for informational purposes only and should not be taken as medical advice. Please consult your health practitioner before making any lifestyle changes. So like I mentioned in the last podcast conversation, flexible dieting is not for everyone. It really is individual.
It really depends on your mental state, your level of self-discipline and willpower. But what is flexible dieting? And I have spoke about this before if you're one of my clients you will recall, but flexible dieting is also known as if it fits your macros, IIFYM. And this is a dietary approach that focuses basically on achieving specific macro nutrient goals or targets rather than following strict food rules or restrictions.
So it basically allows you to eat, dare I say, whatever you want or any type of food, as long as it fits within your daily macro nutrient targets, which are usually calculated based on your body composition activity level and health or fitness goals. So there will be targets set along with calories set each day and you basically need to hit those targets or stay slightly below them. In some people they will just eat whatever they want. Junk food, take out whatever as long as it keeps them within their macro targets.
Then another aspect of doing flexible dieting is that you have your plan, you have your quote, clean eating plan or you're I suppose what we say healthy food diet plan. But if your macros allow it each day, you can fit in a treat or to a cookie or two or whatever your desired treat is. If it's into your macros, then you can fit that into your day every day. Now you can see where there is a quite an element of discipline or willpower required here because for a lot of people, especially when you consider what are the main reasons we have cravings for these treats or junk foods, it's usually because we're exhausted or we're very stressed or we didn't sleep well.
And because of that, our cravings increase. So then if you allow someone to have a little treat or a little bit of this or that, it is like opening Pandora's box. They have no willpower because they're exhausted and they're stressed. So instead of having that one or two cookies that they're allowed, now we've opened Pandora's box and they're having 10, 12, the whole pack of cookies.
So this is where it's very individual. Now you can get people of course who are exhausted and stressed all the time, but they still maintain a lot of self-discipline and willpower. And in that case, that may work for them. Then there's also the aspect of like sometimes I'll do flexible dieting, not often because I find it just, it disrupts how I feel inside.
I just don't feel as good as if I stayed 100% on my plan for six days of the week. I just don't feel my good self if that makes sense. But again, for some people, if they know they get a little treat each day, it helps them stay on plan. I remember one client mentioned if I could just have a small bowl of popcorn each day, it would help me stay on plan or motivated with the rest of my plan.
And that was enough for me to say yes, obviously I considered the popcorn is going to help with fiber as well. And popcorn is pretty low in calories. But that was one example. And then I know that specific client has got good self-discipline and she will stay on her plan regardless.
So you get this little bit of flexibility. I prefer the latter where you have your clean eating healthy food plan, whatever you want to call it, your diet fat loss plan. And not that if it fits your macros eating whatever you want isn't a fat loss plan because it actually can be when you're looking at just the calories. And you're in a calorie deficit, you will see weight loss.
But I prefer the latter because you're getting the other benefits from the good nutrition and feeding the microbiota, reducing inflammation and blah, blah, blah. And then you have a little treat each day that's why I hate to use the word reward. But for some people, they will see it as the reward maybe after dinner a little treat. Although I wouldn't do that because having sugar too late in the day is going to mess with your sleep.
But flexible dieting has been utilized and popularized for many years, especially throughout the like weightlifting community and the bodybuilding community. Just to make things a little bit easier, but those sort of people already have a lot of good willpower and discipline. And I mentioned in the last podcast episode that there was a study from Bill Campbell's lab that sought to directly examine the question of if it fits your macros versus using a very rigid meal plan like calorie restricted clean eating meal plan specifically for the purposes of fat loss. And the study was designed and conducted by some very smart people and it was done very, very well.
And what the study found and if you want to look this up for yourself, the study is titled Flexible versus Rigid Dieting in Resistant Trained Individuals Take Nailed There, seeking to optimize their physiques, a randomized controlled trial. So these were well trained people. You have to understand well trained people generally have good willpower and discipline. They also have the extra muscle that they can utilize these extra quotes or treats or fun foods a bit better.
Their muscle is going to suck that in a lot more and utilize it for performance and their weightlifting. They also generally, I mean, this is not set in stone, but generally will have a higher basal metabolic rate. But basically the purpose of this study was to compare Flexible versus Rigid Dieting on a weight loss plan in again, Resistant Trained Participants. And what they found was there was no significant differences between the two groups for either of the diet phases.
They both lost weight. But during the post-diet phase is where we saw a significant difference in that the people who did the more flexible dieting, they had gained a greater amount of fat free mass in comparison to the very rigid calorie restricted group. Basically what we would take away from this is that both options, all options, as long as there is a calorie deficit, they're equally effective for weight loss as long as there is some sort of calorie deficit. Depending on the foods of choice, there may be influences on the metabolic rate.
Like I mentioned in the last podcast episode, then there might be a greater gain in fat free mass as we saw in this study. And it doesn't narrow down exactly what the people were eating, but food choices along with calorie restriction. They're important. And flexible dieting for some people can be a valuable tool.
If you feel you've tried everything, except this, and like really you've tried everything. Maybe if you can have that self-talk, like could I do this? Can I discipline myself? Maybe this would be the way forward for you.
Again, there has to be a calorie deficit there. But how that calorie deficit is obtained as well is a completely different conversation. I mentioned my old podcast, not old, a podcast I did back in October on how a calorie deficit is needed. But there's other variables we need to understand.
Go check that out. But flexible dieting, another tool that maybe you haven't utilized. Maybe you'd like to try out in this new year, along with the other stuff I mentioned in the last podcast. There's so many tools.
Like I keep saying so many tools. You don't just have to restrict and be miserable. There's a lot of tools you can utilize. I hope you guys found this one helpful.
Just short and sweet. Let me know if you have any questions. You can reach out to me Facebook or Instagram under Shmane's Model Health. Or you can reach out to me through my website, chamenemodelhealth.com.
There's a connect with me button there. There's lots of resources on my website, like lots of tools to help you on your journey, lots of information obviously in the podcast, on my YouTube channel. I think if everyone really puts their mind to it, they can achieve their goals in 25. For sure, it's just like anything it's going to take work.
So please like, share and subscribe if you haven't already. And as it's the end of the year, if you would like to give me a little gift or say thank you if you're enjoying these podcasts and conversations, if you would leave me a review, that would be very helpful to me. Not only to help grow the podcast, but to help the podcast reach other people that may benefit from it. So by helping me, we are all helping others.
Anyway, happy new year to everyone. I'm sure I'll have lots more content in 2025. I'm actually interested to see what I'm going to do on 25. Have a great new year everyone and I'll chat to you guys soon.
Bye bye.