How To Add Flexible Foods To Your Diet

Key Points:

• You can lose weight eating flexible foods
• Dieting sucks only as much as you make it
• Full-on restriction never works for long term success

Remember the great lengths you’d go to to hide your porn collection from your mom?

The careful planning.

The perfect hiding spot.

Trying to not make it obvious you don’t want her to clean underneath your bed?

Thankfully working in “bad” or “non-diet” foods into a calorie deficit so you can still enjoy those foods and lose weight isn’t that hard.  (Going forward I’ll refer to these types of food as flexible foods because I detest the terms bad or non-diet to categorize foods)

With the 30 Days of Drinking, I was able to work in flexible foods I enjoy (Scoops, candy, and the obvi alcohol) and all that was needed was a couple minutes of planning each day.

So without further ado, here’s how to incorporate flexible foods into your diet while still losing fat.

WHY YOU NEED TO EAT FLEXIBLE FOODS

Imagine a rubber band stretched between your thumb and index finger for a second.

If you pull the band one way it snaps back to the other. The harder you pull the more that son-of-a-bitch hurts when you snap it on someone’s shoulder…Come on I can’t be the only one to have done that.

Keep that in the back of your head for a sec.

Ok, now let’s talk binges or yo-yo dieting.

Usually people really start dieting when something bad happens.  Either they get a bad check-up, they really see themselves in the mirror or pics or there’s something else that makes them realize that their weight is an issue.  

You’re hit with a ton of motivation and go full-on diet mode swearing off anything with flavor and committing to a life of salads and bland ass boiled chicken.

Which is all well in good for a day or two then the motivation wears off and you realize how much dieting like this sucks a fat one.

With making all the foods you enjoy off limits you’re putting it on a pedestal.  It becomes the carrot at the end of a stick.

The more you refuse to eat these foods the more you want them until one day all hell breaks loose you go all White Goodman on ‘em.

To come full circle and bring back the rubber band analogy, while you’re refusing to eat flexible foods you’re stretching that band further and further each time you say no. Then in a moment of weakness due to life stress, being tired or aggravated, that rubber band snaps back in the form of you eating like a teenage boy that just hit a growth spurt.

You blame willpower and start thinking maybe dieting isn’t for you.

Hellen Keller can see this isn’t a recipe for success and she’s dead. (Too soon?)

Which is why you should keep those foods you love in your diet while trying to lose weight.  It removes those foods from the pedestal  which helps reduce cravings and the intense feeling of FOMO.  Plus it makes dieting a bit more enjoyable.

BUT FLEXIBLE FOODS MAKE ME FAT

 A common misconception is that foods are either good or bad and the bad ones make people fat.

Not true.  If it were I would have never been able to lose 7 lbs drinking everyday or have gotten photoshoot lean eating scoops.

And my clients are eating Oreos, Cheetos, and other flexible foods while losing weight every damn week.

So here’s the downlow on flexible foods.

A calorie is just a calorie.  It doesn’t matter if it comes from a Snickers bar or chicken breast.

Which in the grand scheme of things is true.

250 calories = 250 calories.

Calories are a unit of energy, just like a mile is a unit of distance. You wouldn’t say one uphill mile is longer than a downhill mile would you?  It might seem it, but the distance is exactly the same.

Now when it comes to how those calories are used in your body, that’s a completely different animal. This brings up the Thermic Effect of Food (TEF). Basically, how many calories are needed to digest the food you just ate.

Each macro requires a different amount of calories to digest. ⠀

P: 20-30%

C: 5-10%

F: 0-3%

So if you ate 100 calories of pure protein, it would take 20-30 calories to digest it. ⠀Likewise, if you ate 100 calories of pure fat, it would take 0-3 calories to digest it.

No one can intelligently debate that a chicken breast has a ton more protein than the Snickers bar so it’s going to take more energy to digest it. So overall you have less net calories than you would eating chicken than a candy bar.

With me so far?

Increasing protein and keeping overall calories the same is a cool hack I use with clients to help them lose weight while not dropping overall calories.

Now when it comes to dieting overall calories matter the most.  Regardless if it comes from Twinkies and candy bars or from broccoli and chicken breast.  Calories equated there’s no difference from a fat loss perspective.

NOW.  

If you don’t want to feel like a bag of dicks due to a lack of nutrients or be hungry all the time…. That’s when you want to look at food choices.  With vegetables and fruits and basically all non processed foods they pack fiber which along with protein help you feel fuller longer plus the nutrients and all that other good stuff along with it.

Both fiber and protein take time to digest which makes them stay in your stomach longer which causes you to stay fuller longer.  I go deep into this in this article so if you want more info, I suggest you check it out.

ADDING FLEXIBLE FOODS INTO YOUR DIET

So, now comes the tracking portion.

How tha fudge do you add flexible foods into your diet intelligently.

For that, I recorded this video to go through the exact process I do every single Saturday.  I’m going to show you how to do that in a video.  Below the video I outline all the steps for quick reference.

Here’s what I did:

1. Figure out what you want by checking the menu before you go out.  This new contraption called Google is bad ass for doing that.
2. Type the meal/food you want into MyFitnessPal.
3. Paying attention to serving sizes take the top 3-4 options and go with the middle one based on calorie amount.
4. Add that to your MFP.
5. Fill in the rest of the foods for the rest of the day so you can hit your calorie/macro goal for the day.

PRO TIP: Start by focusing on protein then figure out carbs and fat.  Odds are the meal/food you want is carb and fat heavy unless you’re getting a steak.

Yep, that’s it. ⠀

From there, it was all about executing a plan.

Being successful with weight loss is all about knowing how to weave your flexible foods in within your constraints.  And in this case, your constraint is calories. Also having a plan is always a good thing so you don’t have to react when you’re hungry.

^^This process can be done with any flexible food from full restaurant meals to Oreos to alcohol.

If you’re tired of restrictive diets without results, apply for online coaching and get a customized nutrition plan that emphasizes flexible foods while still getting the results you want.