Looking for help with IIFYM

selfnola

Just set everything up for my macros. Wanting to learn exactly how to use it

cwolfman13

selfnola wrote: »

Just set everything up for my macros. Wanting to learn exactly how to use it

I'm not sure about what you mean by "how to use it"...IIFYM is just the concept of flexible dieting...the notion is that you aren't demonizing certain foods or groups of foods or macros...you hit your macro targets and your calorie targets and that's it.

As far as actual macros go, they're pretty individual...there is no singular, optimal macro ratio. If you're using that website/calculator, just be aware that they're simply capitalizing on the concept...it was born out of the body building industry, so it tends to be high on the protein side...but like I said, macros are pretty individual.

Spliner1969

If you mean the iifym website, it's fairly easy. Just fill in all the information on the iifym calculator to get your macros at the end. Then you can adjust your macros from what they suggest (I usually do).

So here's how I do it over at iifym using the iifym calculator:

Set your gender
Enter your age
Enter your height
Enter your current weight
Select "Total Body Weight Formual" because unless you are a member of their site you can't choose "Lean Mass"
Select Sedentary (I do this because I have a desk job, if you have a different type of job/activity level, adjust accordingly.
Enter your days per week exercising and the number of minutes per day.

This is the part where you need to be pretty accurate, because it adjusts your TDEE based on exercise. If you are going to be entering exercise into MFP using apps or as you perform it, then you want to leave this at 0 days per week and 0 minutes per day. Why? Because otherwise it'll figure in exercise calories into your overall daily calorie rate, and you don't want that. Me, on the other hand, I work out 5 days a week for 90 minutes a day without fail. I also am in maintenance, so I like my calories being the same every day, and not lighter on days I do not exercise. For this reason, I enter 5 days per week exercise, and 90 minutes per day exercising. Then, when my apps enter exercise for me each day, I simply delete the exercise as they are added. My friends on my feed see that I did exercise and can comment, but once deleted from my exercise diary it doesn't add calories I don't want into MFP. The drawback to that is that if I manage to do more exercise one day, I don't get those extra calories, or if I do less, I might be eating a bit more than I should, but I'm in maintenance so it all averages out for me.

Last, enter how intense your exercise is...

I choose "Intense" because I do 35 minutes of cardio at an anaerobic heart rate as a warm up, then transition to circuit training for another 55 minutes without rest, and with no rest in-between circuits. I am usually able to keep my heart rate between 115-140 the entire time, higher even with the warm up cardio. If you, however, walk for instance, or do something less strenuous, or maybe just do weight training, you'll want to estimate that level based on what they show on the choices. Mine is set for "Don't talk to me, don't look at me. I'm here for a purpose and I might die today." lol.

Scroll down a bit and it'll give you your TDEE, or if you want to be in a deficit, you have the option of selecting -15%, -20% or -25%. Or if you are bulking you can do +5%, +10%, or +15%.

Then click "Calculate" You'll have to enter your name and email address here, it's a free site and they'll probably spam you a little bit telling you that you can pay for their service if you want, it's not been bad though.

So my TDEE is around 2027 calories a day without any exercise added in. On the next page, you can adjust your macros. By default I think it selects .8g/lb of your body weight for protein (this is pretty standard), .40g/lb of body weight for fat, and the rest in carbs. You can go with those numbers if you want. There's a catch though...

If you are using the free version of MFP and want to plug in those macros you have to enter them in increments of 5%. So, you can't enter 28% protein, but you can adjust it to 25% or 30% based on the slider they give you. Once you adjust it (mine are currently set at 25% protein, 25% fat, and 50% carbs) you simply go to MFP goal settings, edit your daily nutrition goals, enter the number of calories it gives you (for me that was 2027), and put in the percentages you chose on iifym (for me that's 25% protein, 25% fat, and 50% carbs). Click save changes on MFP and you're good to go.

If you are using the paid MFP version, then you can enter whatever you want for macros by the gram and it adjusts the percentages for you (nice feature by the way).


Since I enter my exercise into their calculator at iifym, I come up with an actual amount of daily calories around 2800 per day for me (based again on 5 days a week 90 minutes a day of added exercise calories added in and averaged). This way I can eat 2800 calories a day all 7 days of the week as long as I keep up my regular exercise schedule and be happy because I don't lose weight or gain weight (other than the obligatory +/- 3 to 5 lbs of water weight that is normal). I typically finish my day somewhere between 2600-2700 calories so I am still losing a little bit of fat here and there slowly by completing my day under my calorie goals. This keeps me in recomposition so I can work on leaning out slowly over time while doing my best to preserve or even develop some muscle.