A Walk Down Dieting Lane

My take on dieting evolution + my practical approach to successful dieting.

This article provides:

• A fun look at the evolution of dieting.

• A brief explanation of calories and macros.

• A common success-killing diet mindset.

• My recommended nutritional priorities.

• My practical approach to successful dieting.

The Early Days

In the beginning, dieting was as simple as eating less. If a person wanted to lose weight, they just ate less and lost weight. Of course, they often took a drastic approach, borderline starving themselves. Their reduction in food intake created a calorie deficit, which caused weight loss.

Likely, they didn’t track a single calorie, but it still worked because they created a calorie deficit whether they understood it or not. This was the early, uneducated, approach to dieting.

This early approach worked because of the calorie deficit, but it placed no importance on daily energy levels, athletic performance, or maintaining overall health. Basically, it was caveman-level dieting.

The Crowning of King Calorie

Fast forward to the next era, when science and research began to shed light on topics such as how different foods and daily calorie intakes affect health markers, how foods and calorie timing affect athletic performance and daily energy levels, and how varying degrees of calorie deficits and surpluses result in varying levels of fat loss/gain, muscle loss/gain, and short and long-term health effects.

In this dieting era, the calorie was king and people started to become aware of their daily calorie intakes. ‘Count your calories’ was the new ‘eat less’ when it comes to losing weight. People actually started acknowledging the nutrition facts of the foods they bought and the dieting game changed forever.

Companies like Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig arose and became knights in shining armor to those struggling to lose weight. At their foundation, they just pushed people to eat less, but the methodology was improved. People were given a calorie goal, something to go after. Total daily calorie goals were more reasonable, straying from the crude earlier days of people starving themselves in the name of eating less. The degree of the calorie deficit mattered, albeit still not with an approach as developed as we use today. Alas, things were improving.

Calorie-based weight loss programs dominated the dieting scene, but evolution continued alongside science. As humans, we strive to perpetually improve and understand, so we began dissecting total calorie intake and breaking it into multiple calorie sources.

Calories & Macros

A calorie is a unit of energy and our bodies are able to obtain energy from three different food-based sources. We can obtain energy from proteins, fats, and carbohydrates. To go a bit further, here is a basic breakdown of how much energy we can obtain from each of these three sources:

• 1g of Protein - 4 Calories

• 1g of Carbohydrate - 4 Calories

• 1g of Fat - 9 Calories

These three calorie sources are known as macronutrients, which most people call ‘macros.’

Macros are essential nutrients the body needs in large quantities to remain healthy and function. Specifically, macronutrients are proteins, carbohydrates, and fats.

It’s worth mentioning micronutrients as well, which are vitamins and minerals needed by the body in very small amounts.

The King Was Overthrown

Where were we again in our dieting timeline? Ah yes, the age of IIFYM, an acronym for If It Fits Your Macros. King Calorie had been slain by the three-headed macro beast and everyone seemed to worship their newfound leader. IIFYM famously stated that as long as a food fit into someone’s allotted daily macros, it was free game.

Here’s an example; say someone hired a nutritionist and was given a goal of consuming 150g of protein, 250g of carbs, and 60g of fat per day, 2140 calories in total. There are endless combinations of foods they could eat and still reach those specific numbers each day.

IIFYM was appealing because it’s users often promoted their use of junk foods to reach their personal macro goals. In our example, with all of those macros to work with, imagine the possibilities! I remember IIFYM Facebook groups packed full of people posting pictures of ice cream topped with handfuls of children’s cereals and Pop Tarts, always accompanied with the infamous #IIFYM. Below is an actual IIFYM promotional graphic.

In fact, the Pop Tart quickly became the poster child for IIFYM, with it’s seemingly endless varieties. Oreo Pop Tarts, Cotton Candy Pop Tarts, S’mores Pop Tarts, and the list goes on. The protein/carb/fat creations being posted to social media were wild and people were eating it up, literally.

It was like it became a contest and the person who could pile the most ice creams, cereals, pastries, candies, and Pop Tarts together was the winner! Bonus points were awarded if they could make it high-protein.

Junk food was suddenly perfectly fine to eat ‘if it fit your macros.’ It seemed too good to be true, and when something seems too good to be true, it usually is. The macros might’ve been tracked, but major problems surfaced.

• Junk food is calorically dense, meaning it is jam-packed with calories per bite, and even in small portions, those calories add up very quick. On top of that, we all know having ‘just a taste’ of junk food is nearly impossible. Just one of those calorie-dense #IIFYM junk food creations could easily eat up half, or more, of a person’s allotted macros for an entire day. With little to eat and many hours left in their days, people were unsatisfied and falling off the wagon.

• While junk food may be calorically dense, it’s micronutrient content is generally trash. It’ll give you abundant calories, but vitamins and minerals, especially naturally occurring, will be sparse. I don’t know about you, but I feel my best, on short and long-term time scales, when I’m meeting my macronutrient and micronutrient needs. People ate junk and felt like it too.

• Junk food is also not very satiating. Not only would people eat up a huge portion of their daily macro allowance with these junk food-laden meals, they wouldn’t stay full for long. Of course, this also led to more food and over-eating, which led to more instances of dieting failure.

The foundational concept of IIFYM, and how badly it was being abused, ended up causing many of it’s users to fail in their dieting endeavors.

Today’s State of Dieting

Enter the present era. Science continues to dig deeper into the micro-aspects of daily nutrition and the fad of junk food-filled IIFYM dieting seems to have come and gone. In my opinion, the current evolution of dieting has two major tenants.

1. Balance and flexibility with food choices increases long-term adherence and success.

2. Focusing not just on total calorie intake, but individual macronutrient counts, in the name of improved daily energy levels, training/athletic performance, and overall health.

You know I’m going to break these two tenants down, so without wasting any time…

1. Balance and Flexibility with Food Choices

Balance is preached by smart experienced coaches who understand that long-term dieting success requires a continual ‘give and take’ process.

People need to ‘give’ effort toward calorie/macro tracking, portion control, and making healthy natural food choices for the majority of their meals. At the same time, they need to ‘take’ opportunities to eat their favorite junk foods from time to time and forget about tracking for a meal here and a meal there. This give and take leads to a more manageable and satisfying dieting experience, hence the increased success.

Through researching and living through multiple dieting eras and learning from the past mistakes, failures, and successes of others, we can conclude that if we want to consistently look and feel our best, eating micronutrient-dense natural foods the majority of the time, alongside junking it up from time to time, is huge for dieting sustainability and long-term success.

One thing never fails to remain true; when we’re expected to be strict nutritional robots who never stray from a plan, we fail because we aren’t robots, we’re people.

2. Individual Macronutrient Focus for Advanced Benefits

It’s safe to say that dieting’s most basic form of progress is weight loss or gain. When it comes to weight loss or weight gain, you truly can eat any food types and succeed, as long as their combined calorie counts fall near an effective total calorie goal per day. Remember, this is why calorie-counting programs like Weight Watchers will work if you stick to them. Calories in versus calories out works.

However, evolved dieting isn’t solely focused on weight gain/loss. Evolved dieting is smarter and more advanced, utilizing individual macronutrient goals.

With evolved dieting, daily energy levels, athletic performance, and overall health are considered and prioritized, along with moving the body in the goal direction.

By personalizing protein, carb, and fat intakes, it is possible to experience all of those benefits and make progress with your fat loss, muscle gain, or body recomposition goal at the same time.

The Ugly Side of Evolved Dieting

Up to this point, I’ve really only talked about the benefits of each new diet evolution. The shift from simply eating less to lose weight to paying attention to individual macro counts is a huge positive. We’re healthier and stronger for it, but there are common downsides that tag along for the ride. I’d like to address one of them and then provide a practical solution.

The downside I’ll talk about is rooted in the degree of tracking needed with a macros approach. As dieting evolved, the number of items to track increased. Think about it, tracking in the early days didn’t really exist. People just knew to eat less, so you could say they tracked their portions and that’s it. Not a single calorie was tracked and life was simple.

During the reign of King Calorie, a variable to track showed up. Instead of reducing portions and taking fewer bites, people had to keep a running calorie total. They had more control, and were better off for it, but they did have a little more work to do.

Finally, once macros hit the scene, the number of variables to track blew up. Tracking calories alone turned into tracking protein, carbs, and fats.

For the minority, this is no big deal. But for the majority, this introduces daily underlying stress, pressure, and even guilt. For some people, obsessing over perfectly hitting their macros each day becomes their highest priority and an unhealthy relationship with food ensues.

By nature, macro tracking is more complicated and involved than calorie tracking. That’ll never change. It just comes with the territory of tracking multiple variables instead of one.

If increased complication and added levels of involvement are aspects that can’t be removed, focusing on simplifying these aspects, while keeping the diet effective, is how we can aim to reduce the stress and problems associated with multi-variable macro tracking.

There are people who download a nutrition app or sign up for nutrition coaching, receive their goal macro set, and proceed to drive themselves crazy thinking they need to hit their exact protein, fat, and carb numbers every day. They view deviance from their assigned macros as failure.

This outlook is a great way to end up hating the process and quitting. It's unrealistic and impossible to hit all three macros perfectly every day, so why hold oneself to an impossible standard? On top of that, it isn’t even necessary for incredible success! Seriously.

If someone doesn’t realize this, and puts the pressure of perfectly hitting their macros on themself, they're going to see failure more often than not. Sure, they may have a day here and there where they nail things down perfectly, but those days will be the outliers, and it won’t be fun. Before long, they’ll end living one of two outcomes.

1. They’ll hate the tracking process and fall off the wagon completely.

2. They’ll hate the tracking process, but continue trying to stick to it, and be miserable.

In either situation, the outcome is negative. It's crazy how a single incorrect line of thinking could be the difference between someone’s success and failure with tracking macros and having control of their body.

Change Your Outlook, Change Your Results

Tracking macros is a great way to obtain and maintain control of your body, and for many people, it's a smart move to obtain your own personal set of macros. You can lose fat by tracking macros. You can gain muscle by tracking macros. You can maintain your weight by tracking macros.

The important thing to remember, and the main takeaway message of this section, is that, although you may have a set of macro numbers for your specific goal, you don't need to hit them on the dot each day in order to make incredible progress.

That line of thinking is responsible for more dieting failures than successes and educating people like you, who are reading this, is my way of fixing the problem.

In summary, obtaining a macro set is smart and something I recommend to almost anyone interested in their personal nutrition. People believing they need to adhere to their macro set 100% to make progress is where things go wrong.

A Practical Approach to Macros That Works

I try to give you something you can use with each new article. Here comes the goods for this one! This section will provide you with an outlook towards your macro set and hitting your goals, that works with real life. It’s about two things; prioritizing the important numbers and understanding that you don’t need to diet perfectly in order to have the body you want.

If you do these two things, and stay consistent, I promise you’ll be successful.

Prioritizing the Important Numbers

Here’s how I recommend ranking the important dieting numbers in terms of priority:

1. Daily Calorie Intake

2. Daily Protein Intake

3. Daily Fat Intake

4. Daily Carb Intake

If we use this daily nutrition totem pole, we can simplify our lives and force progress, based on science.

Daily Calorie Intake

First and foremost, prioritize getting as close to your recommended daily calorie intake as possible. Remember how the crude nutrition approach worked because it was inherently rooted in calories in versus calories out, whether it was realized at the time or not? Remember how Weight Watchers worked by focusing on calories too?

Calories in versus calories out works every time. This is why daily calorie intake is at the top of my nutrition priority totem pole.

Daily Protein Intake

Next comes protein intake. A large portion of our bodies is composed of proteins. It’s more than just our muscles, but when we’re focused on building a great body, muscle is always a priority. Muscle looks the best, feels the best, is useful for life, is metabolically active, and we need adequate protein to build new muscle and maintain current muscle.

Do your best to meet your goal protein intake each day. Overreaching and consuming over your goal amount is fine, but try to avoid landing under it.

General protein recommendations for optimizing muscle growth range from .75 to 1.25 grams per pound of lean body mass.

Daily Fat Intake

Our third priority is fat intake, which one could argue is just as important as protein intake. This may seem counter-intuitive, but it’s only because fat has an undeserved negative stigma around it. Not only is it a physical descriptor of obesity, it’s also been demonized in earlier dieting eras. For awhile, it was thought that fat made you fat. We now know that this isn’t the case. It’s the over-eating of fat that makes you fat. There’s a huge and important difference there.

So why is fat intake up there with protein intake when it comes to my nutritional totem pole? Fats are important for the function of our nervous system and they’re also precursors to our hormones…including hormones that support muscle growth, strength, and fat loss. Without consuming a variety of fat types, our nervous systems won’t function properly, nor will we maintain healthy hormone levels. Clearly, these are two areas we need working properly if we want to feel and look our best.

To benefit from fats, it’s wise to diversify your fat sources. There are four types of fat; polyunsaturated, monounsaturated, saturated and trans.

It’s widely recommended to consume fat sources that provide saturated, polyunsaturated, and monounsaturated fats. Aim to eliminate trans fats in your diet.

It’s also recommended that fat calories make up between 20 and 35% of total daily calorie intake.

Daily Carb Intake

And finally we come to the lowest rung on the priority pole, daily carb intake. Carb intake is the least essential in terms of our three macronutrients and the amount of carbs we can consume and still function, feel good, and perform physically is highly variable.

In terms of muscle gain, diets containing a minimum of 1.35 grams of carbs per pound of bodyweight win out over keto or very low carb approaches. 1.35 is also the low end of ideal muscle growth carb range. The upper end of the range falls around 3.5 grams of carbs per pound of bodyweight. If you ask me, these are important numbers to keep in the back of your mind.

Carb sources exist in three primary categories; starches, sugars, and fiber. Aim to obtain all carb types by consuming a variety of fruits, green leafy vegetables, and starches such as rice, oats, beans, whole grains, potatoes, and other starchy vegetables.

To optimize muscle gain, aim for a daily carb intake between 1.35 and 3.5 grams per pound of bodyweight.

Would you like me to work for you as your nutrition coach? If so, please fill out the following form for a free assessment.

The Approach

Earlier I listed two things you need to do in order to succeed in dieting and maintain a healthy relationship with food.

• Prioritizing the important numbers/variables.

• Understanding that you don’t need to be perfect with your macro intakes in order to have the body you want.

The points below summarize everything I laid out above, in respective priority order:

1. Total Daily Calorie Intake - Maintain proper energy balance for your goal (a calorie surplus for weight gain and a calorie deficit for fat loss).

2. Total Daily Protein Intake - Consume between .75 and 1.25g per pound of lean body mass for optimal muscle growth.

3. Total Daily Fat Intake - Ensure your total fat calories make up between 20 and 35% of your total daily calories.

4. Total Daily Carb Intake - This is the most variable macronutrient and carb intake is commonly used to manipulate total calorie intake. To optimize muscle growth, aim between 1.35 and 3.5g per pound of bodyweight.

If you noticed, the last three priorities allow for variance in daily intake. This is where understanding that you don’t need to hit your macros perfectly to be successful comes into play.

When ranges are optimal, hitting specific pinpoint numbers just isn’t necessary. That’s kinda the meaning of a range…it isn’t a specific single point. It’s many points that all work.

So now, when you approach the macro set you received from your coach or app, which provides you with four specific number goals (total calories, protein grams, fat grams, and carb grams), just know that as long as you’re hitting your goal total calorie mark at the end of each day, science says that stressing out over hitting your macros right on their marks just isn’t necessary.

Keep them within their optimal ranges, stay close to your total goal daily calorie intake, relax, and enjoy your newfound practical approach to dieting success. It really works, I promise.

Joke time! Why go to the paint store when you’re on a diet? To get thinner.

Thank you for your time and if you’d like me to be your coach, I’ve been providing services to clients for 15 years and am happy to provide you with a free assessment. Text SUBSTACK to 919-671-8585 or email your inquiry to ryan@trainingwithryan.net.