What is Flexible Diet
First at all, flexible diet is more of a lifestyle than a diet. What matters is how many calories you eat and the proportion of macronutrients in your diet.
What are the macronutrients and some Examples:
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Carbohydrates
- Bread, pasta, quinoa, rice, couscous
- Starchy vegetables (potatoes, corn and pumpkin)
- Beans and pulse (chickpeas, baked beans, lentils)
- Some dairy foods (milk and yogurt)
- Fruits, sugar and honey
Protein
- Meat and meet products(beef, chicken, lamb, pork, kangaroo)
- Fish and sea food
- Dairy food (milk and yogurt)
- Eggs
- Beans and pulses
- Soy and tofu products
- Nuts
Fat
- Meat fat
- Peanut oil, palm oil and cottonseed oil
- Full-fat dairy products
- Butter
- Chips, biscuits, cake
Keep in mind that some food have more than one macronutrients such as milk (carbohydrate and protein), nuts (protein and fats), beans (protein and carbohydrate).
How to Get Started
Define what you want: lose fat, maintain weight or gain muscle
- If want to lose weight, you need to eat less than what you burn (cutting).
- If you want to gain muscle, you need to eat more than what you burn (bulking).
- If you want to maintain weight, eat the same amount of what you burn (maintenance).
I'd say that before you start to use Flexible Diet in your daily life, track for 2 weeks how many calories you are consuming. This way, if you want to lose weight, you will see after you calculate how much you burn if you are eating less than that or not.
Useful Tools To Do The Flexible Diet
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All these tools are optional, but they can definitely help you achieve your goal faster.
- You need a Digital Food Scale to weigh your food.
- A Wireless Weight Scale can be helpful. This one has 13 body composition analysis such as, body weight, BMI, body fat, water, skeletal muscle, fat-free body weight, muscle mass, bone mass, protein, basal metabolism, subcutaneous fat, visceral fat and body age.
- You can also get a Body Tape Measure. Before you start the this diet, you can measure your waist, hip, bust, arms, etc. Every week or 2, you can measure again and see how much progress you made so far.
- Get MyFinessPal App! You will love this app! With this app, you can keep track of how many calories you are having, target what you want (lose fat, gain muscle, maintain weight), set goals (lost 0.5 kg per week), learn about the composition of the foods, save common meals and much more.
Calculate How Many Calories Your Burn Every Day and Your Macronutrients
We all have heard and probably calculated our Body Mass Index (BMI). You calculate it by taking your weight in kilograms divided by height in meters squared. If you want to use English measurements, pounds should be divided by inches squared. This should then be multiplied by 703 to convert from lbs/inches square to kg/meters square
The table below show BMI ranges for overweight and obesity.
| BMI | Classification |
|---|---|
| 18.5 to 24.9 | Normal weight |
| 25 to 29.9 | Overweight |
| 30+ | Obesity (including extreme obesity) |
| 40+ | Extreme obesity |
This is a good indicator to estimate if you are overweight or have obesity, but it doesn't tell you much.
Since muscle weigh more than fat, sometimes you have a BMI of 25, which you would be considered overweight but you don't look overweight.
You must be asking then: Is there any better way to evaluate your overall health and set a goal?
Yes! You can use TDEE Website to calculate your maintenance, cutting and bulking calories and choose your macronutrients proportion (moderate, lower or higher carb).
Photo by Tero Vesalainen from Pixabay