I started watching what I ate when I was fifteen. It was just after I joined the cross country team in high school, almost solely to lose weight…weight I didn’t even have. I was skinny but wanted to be lean and hard – I thought I was too squishy and that I could easily change that. I became vegan that year for the same reason – and I would eat super “clean” and run off every calorie I took in on my daily three to seven mile run. Guess what? I gained weight.

I hear girls and women talk about weight loss and “health” like I talk about space…clueless. Eight years since my obsession with my body composition (disguised as a love for “health” and “fitness”) began, and I can finally say that I know what I’m doing. I have never been over weight, but the mistakes I made when I was younger to desperately try and change my body completely ruined my metabolism and mentality.

I finally have a healthy state of mind when it comes to how my body looks and how I should be eating and exercising to achieve my desired body composition without obsessively over exercising and under eating/ eating only “clean”, and I finally felt not only comfortable but proud to strut around in a bikini all day on vacation this year. Only took me eight years to realize how to get there.

The Secret? Count your macros and lift weights. Lifting weights won’t make you big if you eat a diet that consists of the proper balance of the three main macronutrients – Carbs, Fats, and Proteins.

I have been tracking my macros for about five months now and I have diligently kept track of my progress and it has allowed me to continually add more food/calories to my diet and still lose weight. After talking to all of my friends and countless women at work/my mom/my boyfriend’s mom, etc., I talked about eight women to begin counting their macros and all have proved to lose fat while eating more than they are used to in a very short amount of time.

The reason this works is because our bodies are machines. The arguments that:

1. We look a certain way depending on the amount of calories we take in versus the amount of calories we burn and,

2. We need to eat clean – no seasonings, salt, butter or cookies for you,

are wrong. We are not a balloon filled with calories, causing us to inflate and deflate depending on how much we put in and take out. We are muscle, tissue, bone, and fat and we each need a specific balance of macronutrients to either sustain, lose, or gain weight – depending on your activity level, age, height, and current body composition. I’m no nutritionist and I’m not saying that this is the way to achieve total “health”, but I do know that it works in terms of sustainability and body composition and aesthetics, only because I’ve seen it happen to me and every single person that I’ve helped.

How does it work?

(It’s free by the way…this is not a program, or even a “diet”. “IIFYM” or “If It Fits Your Macros” is just a concept that became a popular hashtag often used interchangeably with “Flexible Dieting”. This essentially means that if you eat according to IIFYM, you can eat literally whatever your little heart desires, as long as it fits into your daily macro allowance.

Example: I can eat 200 grams of carbs, 60 grams of fat, and 150 grams of protein a day. If I eat a piece of chicken – I will calculate that and know that it contains approximately 26 grams of protein, five grams of fat, and zero carbs. For the rest of the day, I can eat absolutely whatever I want – it just has to fit. So I can eat cake every day if I want, but it will probably take up a good amount of my carb and fat allowance for that day, so I will have to eat mostly protein.

How does it work?

To learn your recommended macros, go on IIFYM.com and hit “calculators”. Here, you will need to create an account (it’s free). Fill in all of your information on the IIFYM Calculator (height, weight, level of daily activity, etc.). You will be asked to put in your goals. Do you want to lose weight, gain muscle, or maintain your current weight? I always recommend starting at a maintenance level, even if you are trying to lose fat, because your balance is probably so off to begin with that even following IIFYM on maintenance will cause you to drop weight rather quickly. Once you choose your goals, you will see the recommended macros you should be eating daily to reach the goal you selected.

How do I track my macros every day?

Most people (and I) use the MyFitnessPal app. You will need to go to
“Goals” and change your Macro/Nutrient info to match the numbers you were given for Fats, Proteins, and Carbs on IIFYM. MyFitnessPal uses percentages though, so your numbers can be slightly different than the IIFYM numbers, but that’s okay.

Now you can start tracking. Use the MyFitnessPal app to track every single thing you eat. You can scan bar codes or type in what you ate and it will allow you to keep a food journal and will show you how many of each macros you can eat the rest of the day.