Im sure by now all of you have heard or seen something on IIFYM. Alot of you question this method, Even the famous Bostin Loyd has bashed what is to be proven science. So how does this method work? It works by having a balanced macro nutrition diet allowing you to have your favorite foods and still get results! Now of course having these foods has limitations.The whole point of this diet and every other diet out there is to be in a caloric deficit in order to lose that fat. There are many cookie cutter plans out there such as 40% carbs 40% protein and 30% fat. Steer far away from these plans. Although you will still see results, we are all different and require close monitoring and manipulation of these nutrients throughout our prep. Although this is a good base point to start off with dont forget that this wont stay constant and will require changing. So dont waste your money on those internet fools offering contest prep diets with these cookie cutter methods. If weekly monitoring and diet adjustments arent offered, walk the other way.

So how should we start our approach? For starters we need to figure out our caloric maintenance. To do so we must have a consistent caloric intake for a minimum of 2 weeks. Its crucial that your caloric intake is on point every day. The further off you are with this the less accurate our maintenance number will be. 1 weigh in must be done before and after to see how much weight was gained or lost. I recommend weighing yourself once in the morning and once at night and taking the average. Now it takes about 3500 calories to make up a lb of fat, or lose a lb of fat. We want to take the amount of calories gained or lost over those 2 weeks and divide that by 14 (days) That number is how many calories you were above or below your maintenance each day.

Lets put this into numbers for you to better understand
For 2 weeks we kept our caloric intake at 3500 calories every day
After the 2 weeks we gained 1lb of fat
We divide 3500 (amount of calories we gained) by 14 Which comes out to 250 calories. This means over those 2 weeks we were 250 calories above our maintenance. So we now know that our maintenance is 3250 calories. This is going to be our base point.

Now that we have our maintenance number we need to understand how our metabolisms work. Over the centuries our metabolisms have adapted for survival. Caloric intake is the main factor controlling this. If we didnt have a metabolism we would all be extinct. As our caloric intake decreases so does our maintenance level. Which is the main reason why most competitors struggle to lose those last few lbs a couples weeks before their shows. So how do we prevent our maintenance level from dropping to allow us to eat as much as possible while still losing weight?

Our metabolisms change based on caloric change from day to day and the duration of that caloric change. So this is what I like to call the reassurance method. We need to reassure our bodies that we are not stranded on an island and struggling to find food. It is crucial that we have (refeed days) at minimum every 4th day. A refeed day is a day of being slightly above our caloric maintenance. We dont want to exceed any more than 100 calories on our refeed days. Having a refeed day every 2-4 days is optimal depending on how much time we have left before our show and how much weight we have left to lose.

So lets put it all together. With a maintenance of 3250 calories we want to consume around 3000 calories for no more than 4 days at a time. If we prolong that deficit our body will read this and survival instincts will kick in by dropping our maintenance level. We want to avoid that! Again your caloric deficit and duration is completely dependent on you and the amount of time you have. To break down things even further. Macro nutrition is completely irrelevant in terms of fat loss. You could eat nothing but fat all day every day and still see the same results to the guy that has perfect macro nutrition(In terms of fat gain or loss). Now I highly advise against this because this is not the healthiest approach. We still need all of our essential nutrients to function properly.

Me personally, for my contest prep I only monitor my caloric, fiber and protein intake. I just use my better knowledge to balance my fat and carbs out. For those of you that are natural and dont take any steroids, it is crucial you closely monitor your fats to support healthy testosterone levels. But for those of you who arent you dont have to worry about your natural test levels dropping because they are more than likely already shut down.

With this information you are not ready to take first place at your next competition!