What's up everyone? Ali Khan here today we're going to talk about flexible dieting and explain what that is because flexible dieting is it's one of the huge benefits of taking a calorie counting and numbers based approach because it gives you a lot of leeway in what in the types of foods that you eat. But there's also some drawbacks, so we'll get into that. First, let's define it. Let's talk about what flexible dieting is basically, flexible dieting, also known as If It Fits Your Macros or if I am for sure, which is a popular acronym that you may have heard in bodybuilding circles, it basically means you can eat what you want, as long as what you're eating fits your pre determined macro targets, which we talked about earlier, is how to make your macros fit, you know your calorie target intake. So that's what flexible dieting is.

Now, there's pros and cons like I mentioned earlier of If It Fits Your Macros and flexible dieting, the Pro is that it improves compliance flexibility Improve compliance which is necessary to maintain a calorie deficit for a long enough period of time in order to see results, you know, you've got to you've got to stick with it, you can't just diet for a day and be in a calorie deficit for one day and expect to lose 10 pounds, it's just not going to happen. So you got to stick with it over time, which means you got to be compliant. The con though, is that it may encourage poor nutrition habits. So a lot of people think that you know, just because they, if all they're trying to do is hit their numbers, they can just engineer this like beef jerky and Twinkie diet and just eat that all day.

Well, I wouldn't necessarily recommend that because, you know, that'll be detrimental to your overall health, you know, over time in the long run, it'll catch up to you so you don't want to do that. So, so the question then becomes, how do you make flexible dieting work for you? So there's, there's a few strategies that that I like to use. But overall, I like to focus first on numbers since those are the most important thing for weight loss is you focus on the numbers, but you also focus on food quality, which is also very important for both for satiety and and just you know, enjoying your, your health and, you know, feeling good and energized and all that. So, if you follow these four steps, I think, you know, they'll go a long way to optimizing your weight loss and your overall health. So let's walk through those.

The first step is you want to set your macro targets, like I talked about earlier is and then you want to eat foods that you enjoy in order to hit those targets. So if you like strawberries, eat strawberries, if you like steak, eat steak. If you don't like brussels sprouts, then don't eat them. You know, just eat the foods that you like. But the second step is you want to make sure you're eating nutritious foods and you don't have to do this all the time. But make sure at least 80% of the time I think is a good rule of thumb.

You know you're eating nutrient dense Whole Foods, minimally processed and you know non white You know, not packaged and candy bars and stuff like that 80% of time you'll you'll be good to go. And then third, you want to become aware of any food allergies or sensitivities that you have a lot of people, you know, have issues with dairy or gluten, maybe not as many as you've been led to believe, uh, you know, you know, I'm perfectly fine with gluten so I don't mind having a piece of bread is not gonna kill me. So I just, you know, I just try to moderate my intake of dairy because I feel like I'm a little bit sensitive to dairy not just just if I have too much of it. So you want to become aware of these things. If they affect you, then you know, it's probably best to cut them out of your diet.

And then finally, step four is you want to enjoy those cheap foods that you love by making room for them in your numbers. So if you like ice cream, and you want to eat it, you know all you got to do is figure out how many calories and you know fit it into your macros and calorie targets and you can have it every day if you want, you know, there's, there's people that eat ice cream every day and get lean and stay lean. And you know, it's not like this forbidden thing that you know, you have to eat fruits and vegetables all day, every day. Otherwise, you're never going to lose weight. Or be healthy, you know, you can, you can include these cheap foods some of the time as long as you're making room for them. And a good example I like to use for this is meat safety.

He's a he's a personal finance expert. He also talks a lot about building businesses and careers and just living a rich life in general. So his example relating to personal finance is this idea called a conscious spending. Which basically means you know, you want to just enjoy the things that you love, spend money on those things that you love, guilt free, don't worry about it just as long as you're cutting mercilessly on the things that you don't care about. So if you apply That, that that same idea to dieting. It's a what I like to call conscious dieting.

You can do these things like just make room for cheap foods that you really love, enjoy them. If you If you really love ice cream, go for it. But maybe you're not so fond of like potato chips. And so that's something you can cut out easily because you know, you don't care that much so, so that's kind of the idea of flexible dieting, if it's your macros, how to incorporate the numbers and the calories and all that theory into into practice and into the real world. So thanks for tuning in. We'll see you in the next video.