I tried a non-detox healthy-yet-flexible diet?

I went on a macros diet. In the past I’ve tried to eat healthy-  even going so far as to be a raw fruitarian for a little while. The idea of nutrition affecting your whole life is something I really resonate with. I think if you eat whole unprocessed foods you feel a lot healthier, happier and have a lot more energy. But – law school makes it hard to follow an unprocessed diet. 

Typical fruitarian spread

My law school is literally five minutes from the nearest dominos – and they don’t charge delivery to the law school library so you know pizza is my life source when it comes to exam time. And sadly, all that processed food took a much heavier hit against my body than I realized.

Noticing that I was more sluggish, and had way less motivation to get things done than usual I determined that I should go on a detox. I started doing a bit of digging to find the best detox for me – having such an affinity for fruit I was keen on a juicing diet – but there’d been a lot of discussion around me about a bone broth detox. But the more reading I did – the more hesitant I became – about both juice cleanses and bone broth. Lately there’s been some hit back against detox diets, with nutritionists claiming that a healthy body can detox itself – and these diets are just a new form of starvation diets. I’ve linked in that sentence an interesting article from “the conversation” which I thought was a good starting point for research into detox diets.

By the end of my research spiel I’d definitely wiped going on a detox off my mind – but I still felt anxious going into a grocery store to try and figure out what exactly was going to make my body healthy and ready for another semester of law school. Because I wasn’t really looking to lose weight, mere calorie restriction didn’t seem like a reasonable option – especially since you can eat anything on calorie restriction – it’s just how much or little of it you eat.  I was more interested in fueling my body on for study – and there’s not a lot of ‘diet plans’ for that.

So after a bit more prodding around (admittedly on the fitness side of youtube and Instagram) I found out about an eating lifestyle called ‘if it fits your macros’. Often shortened to IIFYM is a modern day way of eating that focuses on three key nutrients known as macros – fat, protein and carbs. These three nutrients are essential for your body and help you live a healthy life.

An easy way to try this method out is to download the myfitnesspal app on your phone and simply enter in the foods you eat. It’s basically like a more advanced style of calorie counting – but unlike calorie counting I was looking at the nutritional value behind the foods I was eating. Because I was paying more attention to nutrients it wasn’t so much that I could eat processed junk through the whole day-  because I’d run out of fat and carbohydrate quickly.

As of writing this article I’ve been on IIFYM for about five months. It’s been okay – it’s definitely a learning curve. When I first started I had to drop about half the amount of fruits and vegetables I was eating – which I thought was super counter intuitive because obviously fruits and vegetables are good for you.

However – they don’t have a lot of fat and protein.  So I had to turn to pintrest to find some alternative recipes to hit the optimal amount of fats and proteins for someone like me. To increase fats and proteins I found myself eating a lot more fish, beans, tofu, kidney beans and avocado. These healthy options for fats and proteins added a lot more variation to my non exam time diet – and most of time I’m not really interested in eating out.

foods I actually ate while doing IIFYM

When it comes to eating out – the app on your phone is the most amazing invention since the dawn of time. My fitness pal (not sponsored) has a great inventory of restaurants and take out foods like pizza, sushi, pasta and dumplings so when I ate out I just entered roughly what I ate and had a good idea of the nutritional break down of the food.  – I could even track my weekly take out night and over time I learned how to eat in the week so that one night of heavy sodium pizza didn’t leave me feeling sluggish and headachy.

An interesting feature of macros dieting that definitely confused me at first is that it is highly individualised. For example a law student may need more proteins and fats because proteins are important for making hormones and enzymes, and fats help the absorption of certain essential vitamins like A, E, and K. While carbohydrates are less useful overall as not so much energy is expended throughout the day. However, an athlete will need to consume more carbohydrates and proteins to help repair tissue and fuel their body to replace the energy they’ve expended. Additionally, your macro requirements may vary from day to day – for example I exercise everyday except for during exam time. So pre-exam time I need more proteins and carbohydrates to fuel me throughout the day, but during exam time I need more fat to help store energy and absorb vital nutrients to fuel my brain.

Unlike a detox the IIFYM diet is intended to be a way of living. It is design to fuel your body well and allow you to indulge in treats because you wish to and not because you’re desperately craving them. I’m still doing the IIFYM lifestyle – and hoping to continue it for a lot longer. I may have struggled to lose some of my fruit intake in the beginning – but I definitely don’t regret it!