Confessions of a recovering clean eater

IIFYM is awesome! May not be everyone's cup of tea but I like it. One can only eat so many meals of chicken, broccoli and brown rice lol

I just don't get it when it comes to US food customs. " Clean eating " ( which is a stupid term ) and IIFYM have nothing to do with each other. One is all about how we eat and the other is what we eat. I know several people who eat whole foods and also do IIFYM. What's with the premise that in order to live a happy life one has to eat also junk and processed foods and that that is what a " normal " person really wants ?
Eating according to IIFYM does not automatically mean that one eats only " dirty " ( no matter if it's just a bit dirty or really dirty all the way ) and that it is necessary to live a happy and fulfilled life..
I understand that IIFYM means " eat whatever you want once your macros are covered ". What about the billions of people on this planet who just don't want to eat crap after their macros are covered, because it's just not part of their food culture and because they enjoy whole foods all the time ?
I could easily do IIFYM and I still would not eat fast food, go to Chipotles or the Olive Garden ( for example ) and eat any kind of processed food. I never have and I am not going to start now.

Agree totally with your argument, however I doubt there are billions of people who do not want to eat cake. Not least because there are only 7 billion people in the world, and many of them are suffering from malnutrition and therefore have no choice!

Meh. I eat something "unhealthy" every single day. I try to eat unprocessed foods most of the time... my meals don't include any boxed or canned anything, but sometimes you gotta say F it and eat some banana bread. I also don't pay any attention to my "miconutrients" The only things I watch are my calories and my protein. Lol.

your micronutrients matter. take a daily multivitamin with foods that contain fat. add some fruits and vegetables and grains and dairy to your weekly intake. that should cover them. you never really know if you're micronutrient deficient unless you get your blood work done. so anyone who insists that their dietary regimen gives them everything they need, they are really just guessing. lots of vegetarians and vegans have trouble getting certain micronutrients from their foods and are forced to use supplements.

I read the lady's blog from the original post. I can understand why she is so against the diet she was on. She did a very poor job of balancing her diet. She crammed herself into a monotonous corner of the same stuff day after day. Anything would have been better. Dirt, leaves and cow tongue would have been better. Eating healthy isn't something one should have to recover from, but poor dietary balance is. She went from one extreme to the other. I'm not an advocate of the all or none mentality. There needs to be compromise to find a middle ground.

If your goal is weight loss then IIFYM is just as good as eating clean. If your goal is health and nutrition then it's completely different.

It's possible your not quite familiar with IIFYM?

Educate me then? Everything I've seen and read on here is eat anything you want if it fits in your Protein, Carb, Fat macros or some people think it means just as long as you don't go over your calories. Or I hear a calorie is a calorie is a calorie, it doesn't matter what it is.

How can eating clean and IIFYM be the same nutritionally? A Big Mac from McDonalds might fit your macros but nutritionally it's no where near the same nutritional value of the same amount of calories of vegetables, fruits and whole foods. Am I thinking too simple?

***no hostility going on here, I'm just learning***

McDonalds burgers don't fit your macros easily, that's the point. If you eat nothing but fast food, you'll be waaaaaaaaay over on carbs and fat before you get enough protein, so it doesn't fit your macros, it's a nutritional fail and you can't eat like that (rare occasions you can and get away with it, but you certainly can't do that day in day out). So the fact you have to fit everything into your macros totally limits how much of the foods clean eaters consider "unclean" you can eat. So if you do IIFYM you can have fast food in moderation, i.e. as much as you can actually fit in your macros, which isn't much, and you have to eat a bunch foods that clean eaters consider "clean" to get your protein levels up while keeping your fat and carb levels low enough to make room for all the fat and carbs in the McDonalds. The goal is you don't go over on fat, carbs or calories, and you don't go under on protein.

The result is you get the right amounts of protein, carbs and fat in your diet, still meet your fat loss (or muscle gain or maintenance) goals same as if you did the whole "clean eating" thing, just that it's a lot more flexible and you have room to include a little of the foods you really didn't want to give up.

And yes, it is important to ensure you're getting sufficient amounts of micronutrients too, although they're not so critical on a day to day basis, but over the course of a week you should be getting the right amount of all the micronutrients too. For that I try to follow the British health service's recommendation of 5 servings of fruit or veg daily, in combination with trying to eat a wide range of fresh fruit or veg (but will freely admit to eating way too many berries and not enough of other fruit... but I eat a lot of veggies too)

I understand that IIFYM means " eat whatever you want once your macros are covered ". What about the billions of people on this planet who just don't want to eat crap after their macros are covered, because it's just not part of their food culture and because they enjoy whole foods all the time ?
I could easily do IIFYM and I still would not eat fast food, go to Chipotles or the Olive Garden ( for example ) and eat any kind of processed food. I never have and I am not going to start now.

Those people get gold stars because they're far superior to everyone else with their iron will and pure taste buds lol. How awful would it be if they had the occasional cookie or slice of pizza! The horror!

Who are these billions of people?

The starving ones- once their macros are covered by eating donated grain, they can eat all the sand and dirt and flies they want.

I do think that people don't have to eat "clean" all the time, I eat only an abundance of fruits and veggies, and sometimes I can have something other than that on reward day. IIFYM is a great thing for some people, only if they do it right. People have been using IIFYM as an excuse to eat tons of nutritionally deficient foods, and thus, most people are doing IIFYM "wrong", in my opinion, IIFYM is only a stable diet for bodybuilders. Also clean eating doesn't have to be boring, and that's why most people switch to IIFYM. If somebody wants to partake in IIFYM, the right way to do it is by eating a paleolithic diet, not the modern american diet. Don't hate on me, this is just my opinion, and if anyone doesn't accept it, just move on.

1. there's a whole world of different diets in between "modern American diet" and "palaeolithic diet" - somewhere in there, there's a happy medium where people can enjoy a varied diet consisting of all the foods that they want to eat, but with careful portion control so they can avoid health problems caused by an excess of certain types of food

2. the "paleo" diet of internet gurus does not even closely resemble any actual palaeolithic diets

3. if confronted with actual palaeolithic foods, most modern people would be too grossed out to actually eat it

4. evolution hasn't stopped; post-neolithic people have evolved the ability to digest post-neolithic foods. This tends to vary according to ethnic group as it's happened in the last 10,000 years and we all share a common ancestor from about 60,000 years ago, but it's happened, and it doesn't make sense for people to avoid foods that they can digest without difficulty, even if someone from a different ethnic group can't digest that particular food. There are better approaches to adjusting the diet to accommodate for food allergies and intolerances than the "paleo" diet.

5. it's impossible to eat tons of nutritionally poor foods on IIFYM, because they don't fit your macros. You go way over on one nutrient (usually either carbs or fat or both) before you get enough protein... therefore **it doesn't fit your macros and you can't eat like that** You can fit a little of whatever you want into IIFYM but in order to actually meet your macro goals on a daily basis, you have to eat mostly foods that clean-eaters would consider "clean".

IIFYM is awesome! May not be everyone's cup of tea but I like it. One can only eat so many meals of chicken, broccoli and brown rice lol

I just don't get it when it comes to US food customs. " Clean eating " ( which is a stupid term ) and IIFYM have nothing to do with each other. One is all about how we eat and the other is what we eat. I know several people who eat whole foods and also do IIFYM. What's with the premise that in order to live a happy life one has to eat also junk and processed foods and that that is what a " normal " person really wants ?
Eating according to IIFYM does not automatically mean that one eats only " dirty " ( no matter if it's just a bit dirty or really dirty all the way ) and that it is necessary to live a happy and fulfilled life..
I understand that IIFYM means " eat whatever you want once your macros are covered ". What about the billions of people on this planet who just don't want to eat crap after their macros are covered, because it's just not part of their food culture and because they enjoy whole foods all the time ?
I could easily do IIFYM and I still would not eat fast food, go to Chipotles or the Olive Garden ( for example ) and eat any kind of processed food. I never have and I am not going to start now.

Very well said.

Sarcasm....lol. Your looking awesome .

Thanks, I bust my a** to look like this.

Love this thread. I love the idea of IIFIYM but I have an insane appetite and find when I do try IIFIYM I end up eating 3000+ calories because I'm RAVENOUS.

Clean eating can definitely be disordered.

Love this thread. I love the idea of IIFIYM but I have an insane appetite and find when I do try IIFIYM I end up eating 3000+ calories because I'm RAVENOUS.
Clean eating can definitely be disordered.

What do you mean you're ravenous? Are you saying the food you eat on IIFYM isn't as filling so you find yourself hungrier? Ironically I find its easier for me to eat clean when I do IIFYM. When I do clean eating I find myself obsessing over everything I can't have. It's like someone telling you not to think of pink elephants. Guess what you'll thinking about lol. I begin looking forward to cheat days and meals way too much, and when I finally indulge sometimes I end up binging and I feel more justified in doing so because I've been good. With IIFYM just knowing I can eat that slice of pizza or cookie turns down the whole forbidden me want real bad thing to null and I find I just naturally make healthier choices because that's truly how I want to eat and not because I feel I have too. And then if I do have a slice of pizza on occasion I'm able to enjoy it without feeling guilty and like I've blown my diet. This prevents me from saying illogical things like I've ruined my diet I might as well have 3 slices lol . This is just why I personally like IIFYM.

A lot of peoples definition of clean removes fat and quite a bit of protein, and if your eating veg all day that would do it. Just speculating.