Clean Eating vs Counting Macros
Do you have to count calories and macros to get results?
Is it better to eat only “clean foods” or to eat whatever you want as long as you count it?
Clean Eating VS Counting Macros
The debate is REAL.
Should we be focusing on eating only healthy foods in whatever quantity satisfies us or is it better to eat whatever we crave, so long as it fits our macro needs???
This is a topic that’s been debated fiercely in the fitness community and I’m sure we’ll get a good discussing going here too.
Some people say that as long as you’re eating “Clean” you’ll have no problem losing weight or maintaining a healthy weight, yet the definition of what’s clean or not is often very fuzzy.
Is whole wheat bread clean or dirty?
What about fruit? can we eat unlimited fruit?
what about dairy?
Remember when butter & bacon were unhealthy?
People used to believe that coconut oil would clog our artery’s because of the saturated fat.
Different people have different opinions about what’s “clean” making it confusing to follow.
The other draw back is that you can become obsessive about the quality of your food, like ONLY eating what’s organic, or has no GMO’s. or believing that sugar is “toxic” & forbidding yourself from ever eating a piece of candy again.
Things like this make you feel like a social outcast and may drive you crazy more than helping you.
Brad and I have both been through our super obsessive nutrition phases and while we both agree we learned A LOT, we are glad to be on the other side of it. Nobody wants to hang out with people who can only eat certain particular types of foods at certain times of day. That makes you too much of a diva, and you go from being a fit person to a fitness freak!
Then, there’s the other side of the spectrum called IIFYM which stands for If it fits your macros. In this school of belief, you can eat ANYTHING you want, including pop tarts, candy bars, Big Mac’s, and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, so long as you stay within their calorie, protein, carb and fat goals. But it’s not as simple as that. Most people who follow IIFYM eat a mostly nutritious diet with a few junk items mixed in. It’s not pop tarts and captain crunch cereal 24/7. Those just happen to be the posts you see on Instagram because they’re more exciting than yet another plate of chicken and broccoli.
Technically you could say this flexible dieting is what we do because of our weekly cheat meal. But honestly I’d say we do a bit of both.We eat MOSTLY clean foods and we don’t count our macros every day, but from the days when we did we have a good understanding of the values of foods and how much we need to eat to fulfill our needs and not go overboard.
To summarize the live lean way of eating it’s like this:
First do your homework. Knowledge is power. Get familiar with the values of foods. Buy yourself a food scale and measure out your portions for a day or a week to give yourself an education on how much you’ve been consuming and how much you should be consuming.
THEN once you feel comfortable with your understanding of what and how much you should be eating to reach your goals, you can eyeball and guesstimate your portion sizes.
If you ever feel frustrated with your results you can always come back to measuring and “dialing it in” which is what we call it when we get serious about nutritional goals.
Once you’ve reached your body goals and you enter maintenance mode you can then start working cheat meals into the mix and have more variety and freedom with your diet.
The most helpful aspect of flexible dieting & understanding food values is that you gain a freedom of variety. You become able to enjoy meals out & socialize more, yet still have control over your body shape and fat content.
If you prefer NOT to do any of the math then yes, sticking to only healthy foods will give you a better result. Of course if looking and feeling lean isn’t important to you then you can eat whatever you want as much as you want. I’m pretty sure we’ve all been on that diet at least for a while in our lifetimes. When you pay zero attention to your eating habits you probably won’t like the results.
For us the best of both worlds is to eat good Quality food MOST of the time, fulfill our macro and calorie needs MOST of the time, and Enjoy food and life ALL of the time.
We’re putting together a new diet program for you that focuses on the core 20 healthy ingredients that allow us to live lean all year around.When following this diet you’ll learn to understand the values of foods because the macros are listed not only for meals but for each ingredient. Then you’ll have no problem fitting in some delicious cheats here and there, knowing that the majority of your diet is on-point.
We’re doing our best to make live lean eating EASY for you so you don’t have to go through the hard times that we went through, learning in the dark.
If you’re ready to “dial in your nutrition” and change your body for good then go to https://www.livelean20diet.com/ and sign up for the Pre-Launch Discount
Can’t wait for you to see this book, we’ve been working hard on it and even including videos of each easy to make recipe.
Thanks for your comments, & KEEP! Living Lean!
To see how I stayed fit throughout pregnancy check out my pregnancy training guide: LiveLeanPregnancy.com
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