It sounds too good to be true…eating flexibly?
Diet and flexibility haven’t really been accustomed to the same sentence. Flexible dieting is a form of intuitive eating based upon someone’s internal hunger cues and natural cravings while consuming adequate amounts for their diet goals.
Essentially, with a caloric deficit or a calorie surplus in mind, flexible dieting serves as a way of eating all types of food choices that fit within their diet goal and their cravings.
A way to measure your dietary intake or to keep track of the quantity of food consumed in a day is to track your calorie and macronutrient intake.
This keeps in mind how much one consumes throughout the day and keeps them on track with their diet goals.
This way of monitoring food intake from the premise of intuitive eating can benefit a person’s relationship with certain food items that they once restricted.
Food restriction is the act of labeling certain foods as “bad” or “cheats”. This creates a phycological response to these foods of increased desire with the length of restriction time.
When a person restricts those foods for periods, they can experience a relapse or act of “cheating” on their diet goals by eating those items they choose to dodge.
People choose to restrict food items because society has built upon “healthy” foods being essential for a diet to work. “Bad” foods are instant sources of diet failure and weight gain. This could not be any farther from the truth of nutrition.
All food is equal in the sense that it all is broken down in the same processes depending on what the food is made of. All proteins are broken down the same way. Carbohydrates are broken down the same way. And all fats are broken down the same way.
These three constitute the three main macronutrients in food that provide energy sources measured by calories.
