Another IIFYM question

Despite everything I've read on here, sometimes I still can't shake the feeling that IIFYM (or flexible dieting or whatever you want to call it) might be too good to be true. Here's what I ate today (bulking at 2900 cals):

Multivitamin
3 Fish Oil caps (30 cals)
1 lb lean turkey breast (494 cals)
Chicken burrito bowl from Chipotle (680 cals)
3 Tortilla Factory low carb high fiber tortillas (240 cals)
Banana (75 cals)
Carrots (35 cals)
Bowl of Fiber Plus Cinnamon Oat Crunch (170 cals)
6 Hershey Kisses (133 cals)
1 pint B&J Karamel Sutra (1040 cals)

197g protein, I'm guessing at least 60g fiber, and pretty sure I got all my micros covered between the veggies and the multi. Am I missing something?

Well normally people wouldn't recommend almost ~40-50% from ice cream and chocolate daily

[QUOTE=AlwaysTryin;1001911053]Well normally people wouldn't recommend almost ~40-50% from ice cream and chocolate daily[/QUOTE]

The largest problem people have with composing any diet is common sense apparently! This^^X 3!

Ya I'd say 1/2 a cup of ice cream maybe a cup. Half the chocolate. The majority should be your typical bodybuilding foods IMO but not so strict that u can't function socially and at restaurants every once n a while etc

[QUOTE=AlwaysTryin;1001911053]Well normally people wouldn't recommend almost ~40-50% from ice cream and chocolate daily[/QUOTE]This.

You can reach your goals with foods you like. HOWEVER, it's no excuse just to see how much ice cream, treats, whatever you can fit in while still hitting macros. There's gotta be a dash of common sense in there somewhere.

The thing is though, what does "common sense" mean? Does it mean just blindly adhering to the vague nutritional advice that has been drilled into all of us since childhood, that certain foods are "good" and certain foods are "bad"? The diet I posted contains all essential nutrients. If that much ice cream is unacceptable, what are the specific reasons why, other than "common sense"?

I should add that I don't normally consume this much ice cream.

[QUOTE=tom626;1001919243]The thing is though, what does "common sense" mean? Does it mean just blindly adhering to the vague nutritional advice that has been drilled into all of us since childhood, that certain foods are "good" and certain foods are "bad"? The diet I posted contains all essential nutrients. If that much ice cream is unacceptable, what are the specific reasons why, other than "common sense"?

I should add that I don't normally consume this much ice cream.[/QUOTE]

Do you really think that is a reasonable amount of vegetables/fruits?

[QUOTE=rand18m;1001920153]Do you really think that is a reasonable amount of vegetables/fruits?[/QUOTE]

There were some veggies in the burrito bowl, plus I took a multi. But suppose for the sake of argument I replaced the bowl of cereal with 170 additional cals of fruits/veggies, and maybe 100 cals of the turkey (would still be plenty of protein). What then?

[QUOTE=tom626;1001922563]There were some veggies in the burrito bowl, plus I took a multi. But suppose for the sake of argument I replaced the bowl of cereal with 170 additional cals of fruits/veggies, and maybe 100 cals of the turkey (would still be plenty of protein). What then?[/QUOTE]

Go for it!

your diet is fine. i ate similiar and made great gains

[QUOTE=ZMan45;1001915593]This.

You can reach your goals with foods you like. HOWEVER, it's no excuse just to see how much ice cream, treats, whatever you can fit in while still hitting macros.[/QUOTE]

if you're still hitting your macros, then there's no problem in seeing how much ice creams and treat you can fit
if you can hit 60% ice cream and still hit your macros, there's no reason to avoid that
the point is that there's no way to eat a lot of junk or 60% ice-cream and still hit your macros
in other words, trying to fit your macros will automatically force you to have common sense since in order to hit your macros you can't eat only fatty/sugary foods this proves that people don't understand IIFYM, it's a mathematical thing, there's no need for an extrernal source of "common sense" since the "common sense" is implied in the math itself

[quote]The thing is though, what does "common sense" mean?[/quote]

what would you normally eat? IIFYM is eating what you would normally eat while trying to fit your macros
it's kind of istinctive eating and my instinct would never tell me to eat 2 pounds of honey because I would throw up
so you shouldn't force yourself to eat something just because "you can" but you should eat in a normal flexible way

people think they would eat oreo the whole day if they could, but that's only because they have strong cravings because of strict dieting
but no one would eat nothing but oreo everyday, I have been there and when you're free to eat whatever you want you crave veggies, fresher foods, fruits, leaner meats expecially if you have feasted on fatty pork meat and extremely sweet foods

I understand the term. I wasn't referring specifically to him. I was referring to people in general that think they can eat any and everything just because it fits their macros. And those people that brag about it online constantly.

[QUOTE=JaredPunch;1002021733]
if you can hit 60% ice cream and still hit your macros, there's no reason to avoid that[/QUOTE]really
You dont think eating the majority of your food from junk could have detrimental health implications over time???
This is the problem with IIFYM posters

[QUOTE=ZMan45;1002027883]I understand the term. I wasn't referring specifically to him. I was referring to people in general that think they can eat any and everything just because it fits their macros. And those people that brag about it online constantly.[/QUOTE]I remember the days when people in the nutrition section cared about nutrition
This forum should be re-labeled the "Macro" forum

aren't there some posters here who really also ate "bad" foods but still stuck to macros and worked ? JasonDB and josef rakish (sorry for spelling) come to mind

and meh nowadays i don't eat veggies anymore not so much. not that i'm advocating it though lol

[QUOTE=alejandroPH;1002040673]aren't there some posters here [b]who really also ate "bad" foods but still stuck to macros and worked ?[/b] JasonDB and josef rakish (sorry for spelling) come to mind

and meh nowadays i don't eat veggies anymore not so much. not that i'm advocating it though lol[/QUOTE]

"worked"?? You can lose weight on twinkles as we know, doesn't mean it's healthy

[QUOTE=AlwaysTryin;1002069013]"worked"?? You can lose weight on twinkles as we know, doesn't mean it's healthy[/QUOTE]

well i guess that depends on OP's goals though. is it just general health, or to be aesthetic ? because if we take josef rakich as an example, i remember him claiming that he got a good physique eating mcdonald's everyday but making it fit into his macros. so does that mean he's "unhealthy" ?

not tryna sound a smartass here btw, am genuinely curious. i feel bothered by this question a lot actually that people can potentially get ripped while fitting "junk" foods into macros

[QUOTE=alejandroPH;1002099423]well i guess that depends on OP's goals though. is it just general health, or to be aesthetic ? because if we take josef rakich as an example, i remember him claiming that he got a good physique eating mcdonald's everyday but making it fit into his macros. so does that mean he's "unhealthy" ?

not tryna sound a smartass here btw, am genuinely curious. i feel bothered by this question a lot actually that people can potentially get ripped while fitting "junk" foods into macros[/QUOTE]again
yoyu dont get it
ripped doesnt = healthy

[QUOTE=determined4000;1002039863]really
You dont think eating the majority of your food from junk could have detrimental health implications over time???
This is the problem with IIFYM posters[/quote]

I haven't seen any evidence of that being the case with people eating mostly junk while stying lean and maintaning better health than most here
The bottom line from the majority of studies is that it's that "not fitting your macros" has detrimental health implications not food choices
As Lyle McDonald explained many times, it's fat gain and excessive food per se that causes inflamation, high tryglycerides, insulin resistance and it's
fat loss per se, not food choice, that improves health and allow diet gurus to claim their diet cures people while it's actually losing fat that does it.

I can think were stupid extremes would be a exception to this rule, like getting all your calories from sugar, but then it would impossible to get enough proteins and fats. Overall, in order to fit into the correct amount of proteins, fat and carbs and calories, while training weekly it's impossible to have a diet which is extremely devoid of nutrients since it's impossible to fit "extreme example of bad diets" into one's macro

[quote]ripped doesnt = healthy[/quote]

ripped = healthier than most
I have seen no evidence that food can make people healthier except from the effects of losing fat has on health
From 1960 there have been a lot of books and gurus making people healthier by eating organic, vegetarian, natural-hygiene, macrobiotic, weston-price and you had real miracles there with people feeling better at 40 then they had ever felt as kids and getting perfect blood profile after years of diseases and such. But it was always the effect of losing fat, hence getting rid of cellullar resistance, systematic inflamation, hormones all over the place, arterial plaques, hypercholesterolemia and so on

[quote][QUOTE=alejandroPH;1002040673]aren't there some posters here who really also ate "bad" foods but still stuck to macros and worked ? JasonDB and josef rakish (sorry for spelling) come to mind

and meh nowadays i don't eat veggies anymore not so much. not that i'm advocating it though lol[/QUOTE]
worked"?? You can lose weight on twinkles as we know, doesn't mean it's healthy[/QUOTE]

the guys who ate mostly twinkles and exercised lost a lot of fat and maintained muscles and at the end of the "experiment" he was
extremely healthier, a lot healthier than the average 30 years younger students of his. He had perfect blood profile, better blood sugar than ever in spite of eating a lot of sucrose, better triglycerides, even better iron (inflamation caused by excess body fat and cellullar resistance leads to poor nutrients absorption) and even commented on feeling better, having more energy. So it's losing fat that makes people healthy, not what food they eat (excep for seriously retarded extremes)

[QUOTE=JaredPunch;1002103953]I haven't seen any evidence of that being the case with people eating mostly junk while stying lean and maintaning better health than most here
The bottom line from the majority of studies is that it's that "not fitting your macros" has detrimental health implications not food choices
As Lyle McDonald explained many times, it's fat gain and excessive food per se that causes inflamation, high tryglycerides, insulin resistance and it's
fat loss per se, not food choice, that improves health and allow diet gurus to claim their diet cures people while it's actually losing fat that does it.

I can think were stupid extremes would be a exception to this rule, like getting all your calories from sugar, but then it would impossible to get enough proteins and fats. Overall, in order to fit into the correct amount of proteins, fat and carbs and calories, while training weekly it's impossible to have a diet which is extremely devoid of nutrients since it's impossible to fit "extreme example of bad diets" into one's macro



ripped = healthier than most
I have seen no evidence that food can make people healthier except from the effects of losing fat has on health
From 1960 there have been a lot of books and gurus making people healthier by eating organic, vegetarian, natural-hygiene, macrobiotic, weston-price and you had real miracles there with people feeling better at 40 then they had ever felt as kids and getting perfect blood profile after years of diseases and such. But it was always the effect of losing fat, hence getting rid of cellullar resistance, systematic inflamation, hormones all over the place, arterial plaques, hypercholesterolemia and so on



the guys who ate mostly twinkles and exercised lost a lot of fat and maintained muscles and at the end of the "experiment" he was
extremely healthier, a lot healthier than the average 30 years younger students of his. He had perfect blood profile, better blood sugar than ever in spite of eating a lot of sucrose, better triglycerides, even better iron (inflamation caused by excess body fat and cellullar resistance leads to poor nutrients absorption) and even commented on feeling better, having more energy. So it's losing fat that makes people healthy, not what food they eat (excep for seriously retarded extremes)[/QUOTE]

Yeah, in the short term the act of simply losing weight will make a lot of people have better bloodwork because they're leaner.

In the long term, this is not a good idea.

No evidence that food can make people healthier?? Da hell did I just read??

If you can agree that certain foods can you LESS healthy, you are therefore agreeing that other foods make you MORE healthy by implication...

The problem here is with the way in which 'IIFYM' is interpreted; the acronym doesn't help, but it seems that since advocates of it have started stressing the role of micros others have decided to take the extra step of thinking 'well, I can eat lean protein sources and get most of my micros from eating a lot of veggies then still have a lot of calories left over to get most of my carbs/fat from junk foods'.

I think that this problem is caused, at least in part, by the black and white thinking which is encouraged in the fitness industry. When you've become used to receiving advice from so-called 'experts' which is given solely in absolutes (All carbs are bad! All sugars are bad! All starches are bad! Eat 100% 'clean'!), it can be difficult to get back into what was probably intuitively obvious to most people to begin with; allowing yourself a small treat daily and maybe something bigger every so often is fine within the context of a healthy diet, but getting most of your daily intake from these 'treat' foods isn't a good idea.

Applied correctly flexible dieting allows you to eat what you enjoy without feeling guilty or like you're 'cheating', which in turn makes a lot of people more likely to stick to their diet. It also allows you to lead a normal social life and is a good way of explaining how certain foods which are traditionally seen as 'dirty' (ie pizza) are often actually more nutrient dense than foods which are seen as 'clean' by the same people (ie gainer shakes), and are therefore arguably a better addition to their diet provided that portion control is correct. What it shouldn't be seen as is an excuse to eat as badly as possible whilst still hitting the right numbers, even if micros are adequate.

This is basically just a long winded way of saying 'use your common sense', I suppose. The problem is that black and white thinking seems to be so ingrained in people's psyches now that they're just going to keep coming up with stupid examples of what are obviously bad diets which still hit macro targets and claiming that they 'prove IIFYM doesn't work'. Maybe the problem with the term 'IIFYM', and even others such as 'flexible dieting', 'discretionary calorie allowance' and whatever else is just that all are so open to interpretation.

Off-topic, I know, but since the debate has meandered around the "bad" food argument, let's look at the actual ingredients in the B&J Karamel Sutra ice cream:
[color=white].[/color]
[color=white].[/color][indent]Cream, Water, Condensed Skimmed Milk, Sugar, Reduced Lactose Sweetened Condensed Milk, Glucose Syrup, Cocoa Powder, Free Range Egg Yolk, Vegetable Fat, Milk Fat, Pectin, Guar Gum, Carrageenan, Soya Lecithin, Vanilla Extract, Sodium Bicarbonate, Citric Acid, Salt, Coffee Extract.[/indent][color=white].[/color]
[color=white].[/color]
Which specific ingredients, in the dose consumed, would be "bad" in context of the OP's daily diet?



NOTE: I'm [B]not[/B] advocating composting ~33% of one's diet from ice cream, but nor will I condem it sans an objective review of total nutrition intake. What I do advocate is composing a diet with properly calibrated energy intake that also ensures micro/macronutrient sufficiency, preferably achieved from consuming the (vast) majority of one's diet from whole and minimally processed foods.

[QUOTE=WonderPug;1002179303]Off-topic, I know, but since the debate has meandered around the "bad" food argument, let's look at the actual ingredients in the B&J Karamel Sutra ice cream:
[color=white].[/color]
[color=white].[/color][indent]Cream, Water, Condensed Skimmed Milk, Sugar, Reduced Lactose Sweetened Condensed Milk, Glucose Syrup, Cocoa Powder, Free Range Egg Yolk, Vegetable Fat, Milk Fat, Pectin, Guar Gum, Carrageenan, Soya Lecithin, Vanilla Extract, Sodium Bicarbonate, Citric Acid, Salt, Coffee Extract.[/indent][color=white].[/color]
[color=white].[/color]
Which specific ingredients, in the dose consumed, would be "bad" in context of the OP's daily diet?
[/QUOTE]

people would probably say sugar but I disagree
many says that sugar caused lot of health problems of modern life and causes diabetes
but there are actually studies showing people with diabetes improves their health by eating a lot of sucrose, which is considered a cure for diabetes by some

[QUOTE=JaredPunch;1002183053]people would probably say sugar[/QUOTE]Would those same folks object to the OP's consumption of a banana because of it's "sugar content"?

Heck, some folks take supplements that are pure "sugar" (dextrose comes to mind). And I've noticed that those are the same folks to most vigilantly object to the consumption of foods like ice cream, often because it contains sugar.

Anyway, my point is simply that we should look at the actual composition of one's diet, not the names of the foods consumed, but the actual ingredients consumed in specific doses as to determine total nutrition intake and then evaluate if that nutritional intake is appropriate or not.

Hey Pug, guess what this is!!!



Ingredients
Carbohydrate Blend (Glucose Polymers, Fructose, Sucrose, Waxy Maize Starch), Protein Blend (Hydrolyzed Whey Protein Isolate, Micellar Casein, Egg Albumen, L-Leucine, L-Isoleucine, L-Valine), Cocoa(Processed With Alkali), Natural And Artificial Flavors, Salt, Lecithin, Sucralose.
<b>ALLERGEN INFORMATION:</b> Contains Milk, Egg, And Soy (Lecithin) Ingredients.


That's right, it's a popular "post workout recovery shake" except it's not frozen and called ice cream!!!

Many that would condemn ice cream for the sugar content and it's moniker as an "unhealthy food" also have to have something like this post workout, because it's good for them and stops muscle catabolism and rebuilds glycogen stores and supports insulin secretion, which is then anabolic, which then builds muscle even when the body wants to do the opposite because of the cortisol boogie man that showed up during the workout!

So to simplify, a post workout shake, that is hard to tell from ice cream when looking at the ingredients, is a cortisol defender and super hero because it's called a shake, poor ole ice cream is a body destroyer!!

Just because a food is calorie dense does not make it specifically bad for you. That lack of nutrition per calorie does. If one has ate all the micros they need for the day, then eating the rest of the macros they need should be up to them.

I fail to see how the fat/sugar/protein in ice cream is different than the fat/sugar/protein in typical cereal or a "chipotle burrito bowl".

You could argue about insulin blah blah blah but he is on a bulk and could use this to his advantage.

[QUOTE=rand18m;1002189743]Hey Pug, guess what this is!!!



Ingredients
Carbohydrate Blend (Glucose Polymers, Fructose, Sucrose, Waxy Maize Starch), Protein Blend (Hydrolyzed Whey Protein Isolate, Micellar Casein, Egg Albumen, L-Leucine, L-Isoleucine, L-Valine), Cocoa(Processed With Alkali), Natural And Artificial Flavors, Salt, Lecithin, Sucralose.
<b>ALLERGEN INFORMATION:</b> Contains Milk, Egg, And Soy (Lecithin) Ingredients.


That's right, it's a popular "post workout recovery shake" except it's not frozen and called ice cream!!!

Many that would condemn ice cream for the sugar content and it's moniker as an "unhealthy food" also have to have something like this post workout, because it's good for them and stops muscle catabolism and rebuilds glycogen stores and supports insulin secretion, which is then anabolic, which then builds muscle even when the body wants to do the opposite because of the cortisol boogie man that showed up during the workout!

So to simplify, a post workout shake, that is hard to tell from ice cream when looking at the ingredients, is a cortisol defender and super hero because it's called a shake, poor ole ice cream is a body destroyer!![/QUOTE]

Exactly! If its not marketed to bodybuilders its junk food! When it is, its the next best thing! So silly!

[QUOTE=4g64fiero;1002194153]You could argue about insulin blah blah blah but he is on a bulk and could use this to his advantage.[/QUOTE]I'm not directing this at you, as I know you know this, but I'm just making a point:

Are you saying that ice cream will not raise insulin levels enough?

Keep in mind that the GI of premium ice cream is <40, which is lower than brown rice!!!

[i]Folks that label foods "good" or "bad" based on their names often suffer the pains of cognitive dissonance when confronted with facts.[/i]

Thanks for the responses guys. Glad to see some interesting debate going on. Once again I want to emphasize that this is not typical of my daily diet, just wanted to use it as an example to generate discussion.

It all comes back to the fact that everyone's idea of "common sense" is different. To an orthorexic who is convinced that only "bro" foods are acceptable, it would be common sense to avoid any ice cream, chocolate, etc at all costs. But to a prehistoric caveman who was suddenly presented with a treasure trove of B&J pints, it would be common sense to binge on that stuff like there's no tomorrow, since food was scarce and we're hardwired by evolution to crave calorically dense sweet foods. Obviously these are the two extremes, but there are many shades of grey in between, and the issue is much thornier than some people realize.