Food | If It Fits Your Macro's

 As many of you know over the last year I have lost just over 4 stone through running, lifting weights and changing my diet. I lost this over the space of 8/9 months so it was slow and I have managed to keep it off. However come Sept I hit a plateau, and have not lost any more weight since (thankfully I also haven't put it on). I hoover around the same mark give or take 1 or 2 lbs. I have noticed changes in my clothes and my body shape so all is not lost.

I am know deep into marathon training and have decided I really want to shift the last 28lbs before running, as I don't particularly want to carry any more extra weight around with me than I have to.

In the last couple of months my eating habits have slipped slightly. I am not putting as much effort into making home cooked meals and my chocolate consumption is just far to much. To tackle this I have stopped eating chocolate during the week, and only allow it as a treat at weekends.

I have decided to start tracking my macros.

‘Macro’ is short for Macro Nutrient, of which there are four plus one consideration*:

• Protein
• Carbohydrates
• Fat
• Alcohol (not much nutrition from this one, just calories)
• *Fiber

*Fiber is the consideration that we mentioned above. It is one of the components of the carbohydrate macro nutrient, though many in the nutrition community consider it a micro nutrient. For our purposes, fiber intake should be a major consideration when dieting, therefore we include it in with the other macros.
IIFYM speaks specifically to fat loss from a macro nutrition and thus a caloric stand point and is purely a means to improve body composition. IIFYM does not address health concerns of the heart, brain or other organs and does not put an emphasis on so called ‘healthy eating’.
Regardless if you like to eat pizza, or boiled chicken breasts, IIFYM teaches us that if you eat less calories than your body requires (while getting adequate protein, carbs, fat and fiber based on your goals and the energy needs of your body) you will lose weight at a steady and predictable rate. IIFYM makes fat loss that easy.All you have to do is stay within your daily macros and the fat will start melting off!

For more info visit: http://iifym.com/what-is-iifym/

Using the website I have calculated my macro's as below.

Total calories per day - 1852

                                  Carbs                 Protein               Fat             Fibre
Grams per day           117.2                    182                 72.8           36-46

This means I need to lower my carb intake (damn you delicious bread) & increase fairly drastically my protein and good fat intake. I am going to trail this for 4 weeks and see if it makes a difference.

I will keep you updated on what I'm eating.

 Cucumber, Tomato, Feta & Moroccon spiced bean burger w/ homemade dressing (greek yoghurt, lime juice, ginger)

 Before shot.