Scott Abel on IIFYM

Bigger Stronger Leaner
1

Some good points, and some points I’m not fond of. It appears he takes the IIFYM concept and offers criticism because of the extreme IIFYM can be taken to (eg, literally eating whatever one wants over the course of a whole day without regard to high quality, nutrient dense foods). I also don’t know what he means by, “It hasn’t been proven”. I consider Jay Cutler eating rice cakes, drinking sugary coke, and eating instant, flavored oatmeal and Dorian eating chocolate on a pre-contest diet and Layne working ice cream into his diet as PROVERS.

PS: I like Scott - a lot.

2

What trainer or coach worth his salt would go to the extreme of telling someone eat anything you want all while ignoring high quality protein, EFA’s, vegetables, and fruits? And they ALL know this is not a matter of just calories!

3

His whole premise is flawed.

Eating whatever you want or tons of a specific item (like his popcorn example) isn’t IIFYM.

If you completely over indulge you would be exceeding your macros. That’s where he’s off IMO. The idea that it can be a difficult diet to stick to because of how your body responds to “hyper palatable” food makes sense but not that IIFYM is wrong.

4

[quote]BrickHead wrote:
What trainer or coach worth his salt would go to the extreme of telling someone eat anything you want all while ignoring high quality protein, EFA’s, vegetables, and fruits? And they ALL know this is not a matter of just calories![/quote]

I never read a lot of the early stuff but, Keifers carb-backloading seemed to be just that. At least most if the followers thought so.

5

I would imagine if you get a majority of your macro’s (80-90%) from solid, nutrient dense food, I don’t think the remaining matters. So for the examples of the huge bodybuilders eating chocolate and stuff, I’m sure most of their diet is nutrient dense food and topped off with some fillers.

6

[quote]gregron wrote:
His whole premise is flawed.

Eating whatever you want or tons of a specific item (like his popcorn example) isn’t IIFYM.

If you completely over indulge you would be exceeding your macros. That’s where he’s off IMO. The idea that it can be a difficult diet to stick to because of how your body responds to “hyper palatable” food makes sense but not that IIFYM is wrong.[/quote]

x2

7

Heard that point before and wholly agree. Glad he’s spreading the health and appetite regulation stuff to the bodybuilding world. IIFYM works for cheat meals and/or tiny portions of your diet. But if you take it beyond that it crushes your efforts. The base must always be made of whole nutrient dense food.

My only exposure to this guy was from the articles he wrote here on T-Nation. And while I loved some of the things he said , I can’t forget that his stuff also seemed convoluted and never getting to the point of what to do. It’s as if he was reluctant to give away info and just buried the trail.

One of the coolest things I recall from Scott Abel is the notion of the best weight is the one you can handle well and do some work with, instead of the most you can lift. Very true for growth.

8

[quote]Majin wrote:

My only exposure to this guy was from the articles he wrote here on T-Nation. And while I loved some of the things he said , I can’t forget that his stuff also seemed convoluted and never getting to the point of what to do. It’s as if he was reluctant to give away info and just buried the trail.
[/quote]

Oh yeah? Check out his earlier stuff from the '90s and early 2000’s; you might have no idea what he was talking about. Overall he’s a good guy, but his writings drove me nuts sometimes.

9

3264×1840 1.58 MB

IIFYM could use some work and is not be for everyone. I will go back to it strictly if I compete. Right now I’m somewhere between IIFYM and eating instinctively. I love it - it makes me think less about food, increase calories while staying lean, and enjoy eating while making progress. To me it makes 0 sense to worry about factors that aren’t very important to my progress, but again you have to look at someone’s diet as a whole and how it fits their psychology. That will make all the different imo.

reference pic and vid attached

10

I think IIFYM has a place in compliance. If I have that Skinny Cow once every couple days it keeps me from losing my mind and binging on crap. The rest of the time it’s mostly healthy, nutrient dense, whole foods. The easiest thing to do is just not be around junk, but that just isn’t possible for all of us.

Where I don’t agree with it is when junk, even if it’s staying within your macronutrient limits, comprises the bulk of your intake. I think the majority of IIFYMers just use it as an excuse, and aren’t truly dedicated to their goals. That or they just don’t understand the impact those foods have on things like hormones, inflammation, and general health. I also think that there are those with phenomenal genetics that get can away way with it, but they make some of us mere mortals think that they can get away with the same. As a formerly obese guy, I know there’s just no way I’d be where I’m at now if I had been chowing down on pop tarts the whole time.

And what is it with IIFYMers and their obsession with pop tarts anyway?

11

It depends on who you are I guess. I see nothing wrong with hitting your macros by throwing in a cheat every now and then, but I don’t see hitting your numbers with crap. I don’t see how you could, you would be imbalanced somewhere. And people like myself have to count everything cause I’ll easily gain some fat without a problem if I’m not consistent at least 6 days a week.

12

I love pop tarts. I think the IIFYMers who eat anything they want are probably the ectomorph population. People who have a difficult time putting on weight.

13

I couldn’t check the video (blocked on my work computer), but I think a lot of people don’t quite understand the flexibility of dieting that seems to be widely adopted these days.

A shredding diet (or even a ‘lose a few lbs’ diet) doesn’t have to consist soley of grilled chicken, steamed broccoli and oatmeal in order to reach your goals. Yes there seems to be a contingent of folks out there who almost relish the suffering, and anything that could be deemed as less than hardcore can’t be optimal, but that doesn’t mean it’s actually the case.

The thing is, as long as you’re addresing what you truly NEED in terms of maximizing your performance (performance in the gym is a key factor in muscle retention), you usually have a certain amount of latitude with the remainder of your daily #s. This however is the point that many IIFYMers can overlook. Sure you can customize your diet with all sorts of food choices and hit your prescribed amounts of prot, carbs and fat, BUT if you’re lagging in the gym, not sleeping well, or just ending up generally unhealthy from your choices, then it’s not really something that I would recommend.

@GJ_Jim: You have to understand that no one in their right mind is indiscriminantly chowing on poptarts every day if they really comprehend what they’re doing. A couple of rationales for incorporating such wonderful delicacies would be:

-A relative low fat, high carb food that is easily carried and stored

-In terms of satiety, no one ever has trouble forcing in more poptarts to reach their #s on a high carb day (Try eating 400g of carbs from just oatmeal and whole wheat bread)

-Mentally, it’s an amazing break from what may be an otherwise boring, bland, and even lethargic day. Having something to look forward to is a huge motivator for people undertaking serious physique composition changes

-With all the cool new flavors coming out, who wouldn’t start getting a little childish in their anticipation of a new limited edition flavor? :slight_smile:

A couple of examples where said pastries have been excellent ‘tools’ in body recomp:

-Had one particular client lose 50 lbs last year from January to October. We had one seriously high carb day each week (with the other days fluctuating mildly), where he was usually eating on the job. Not being able to sit down to meals could have been an issue for some people. I had him downing about 8 poptarts each day, usually with just small amounts of protein (half chicken breast or protein shake) while he was going about his work. I can’t even describe to you how much he looked forward to that day. Did he come down with horrible health related diseases? Nope. Gym performance suffer from all that horrible ‘processed’ food? Nope. Did he get all fat? Obviously no.

-Worked with a Defensive Tackle from a fairly well known east coast NFL team. He was having a difficult time maintaining his playing weight because at about 290 lbs, he had been given a diet with choices that made him feel bloated and lethargic, and didn’t even factor in body composition and maintaining lbm while allowing for some loss of adipose tissue (I was actually very surprised when he first showed me the diet the team gave him to follow). In trying to keep his food choices more in line with nutrient density, and less actual volume, we had to switch out various protein and carb choices.

Of course we didn’t just “dirty” everything up, we took into account when certain changes would best influence his performance during practice and in games. Bottom line, he kept his weight up, and shifted his body composition to more muscle and less fat,… all while eating some strategically placed poptarts.

S

14

Do IIFYMers pay attention to sugar intake? I feel like if most of your carbs come from “dirty” foods (and you aren’t going over board with fats) than you are bound to take in a good amount of simple carbs.

15

IIFYM’s =/= eat anything you want

Honestly IIFYM is only ‘fun’ if your macros are high. Unless you have a bird appetite, no one is going to probably feel satisfied eating only pop-tarts, whey, and butter. No body does that. All IIFYM’s says that IF someone did it, hitting their macro numbers using those items vs chicken, rice, and VCO would not result in that much of a difference in body composition.

Yeah being devoid of micronutrients would likely result in bad health, which could lead to worse gym performance, which then could lead to less gains. But most old school BB’ing diets result in people eating the same foods every day, with not much variance, so that can lead to micro deficiencies if utilized incorrectly, JUST LIKE ANY DIET.

@SeraphimX – That isn’t CBL. That’s how it’s ‘advertised’ to basically get attention, and Kiefer gives ways to do CBL gluten-free, with ‘clean’ sources, or with ‘dirty’ sources. CBL is really just a meal timing strategy + rules on types of carbs to eat.

16

It’s called IF it fits your macros. ON THE CONDITION THAT IT FITS YOUR MACROS, then you can eat it. For some reason the common criticism is that “well people don’t fit their macros derp”. Then they’re not doing IIFYM. They’re just eating whatever the fuck they want lol.

It’s a fair point to say it might be harder to fit your macros eating “dirty”, because it will lead to less satiation, more cravings, opioid centers in the brain etc but that’s something you’ll just have to experiment with and see for yourself. For me I don’t have that problem except with soda. I end up drinking 3 cans instead of just 1 so I usually don’t drink it. The convenience of IIFYM makes it WAY easier to stick with consistently and for the long term.

I’ve lost 58 lbs so far eating fast food most every day lol. 2000 calories, after 200g of protein per day and the carbs/fats that go along with getting that protein, really doesn’t leave much room for pop tarts, candy, chips, soda etc. Usually a double whopper and water is all I can do. People are terrible at counting/estimating calories/macros, so unless they’re weighing it then they might be getting more like 2500 or even 3000 calories when they think it’s 2000. Also, I suspect fast food restaurants lie about the caloric content found on their nutrition facts. It’s probably a good idea to add 10-20% to their calorie total (assume all from fat).

As Stu said, there is some weird sort of religious asceticism that permeates the diet industry. If you’re using nutrition as a spiritual endeavor, to purify your soul, practice self-discipline or reach enlightenment then by all means do your 6 meals with exact identical percentages (or if you’re injecting insulin, steroids etc). For those of us that just want to be healthy, look good and perform athletically, all you have to worry about with diet is net calories, macros, micros and fiber. Figure out what you need, and hit those numbers on a daily or even weekly (for more flexibility) basis.

What you put in your body is an emotional thing. Just as much as money, politics and religion. So stop taking advice from people with eating disorders. Your body doesn’t say “this molecule of glucose came from soda, so it’s BAD and we will make him fat and fuck his hormones. But this other glucose molecule (they’re all the same…) came from brown rice, so we will use it to fuel muscle growth”.

I wish I knew this shit years ago. It’d have saved me from unnecessary strict diet/binge cycles and I’d have made a lot more progress.

17

[quote]The Mighty Stu wrote:
I couldn’t check the video (blocked on my work computer), but I think a lot of people don’t quite understand the flexibility of dieting that seems to be widely adopted these days.

A shredding diet (or even a ‘lose a few lbs’ diet) doesn’t have to consist soley of grilled chicken, steamed broccoli and oatmeal in order to reach your goals. Yes there seems to be a contingent of folks out there who almost relish the suffering, and anything that could be deemed as less than hardcore can’t be optimal, but that doesn’t mean it’s actually the case.

The thing is, as long as you’re addresing what you truly NEED in terms of maximizing your performance (performance in the gym is a key factor in muscle retention), you usually have a certain amount of latitude with the remainder of your daily #s. This however is the point that many IIFYMers can overlook. Sure you can customize your diet with all sorts of food choices and hit your prescribed amounts of prot, carbs and fat, BUT if you’re lagging in the gym, not sleeping well, or just ending up generally unhealthy from your choices, then it’s not really something that I would recommend.

…

S[/quote]

x2 to all of this (and what the guys above said while I had left the “post message” window open for the last two hours)

I don’t know what it’s like so much for the guys, but the number of women out there that think they have to prep on 800 cals of tilapia and asparagus is disturbing (and by that I mean I’ve heard this more than once). Some of the meal plans I’ve heard about go beyond boring and bland and can be downright dangerous to follow for 10-20 weeks.

It seems like there are a lot of people out there that act like their very rigid clean diets are somehow magical…(lazy) coaches don’t want to make food substitutions and act like it you can’t handle eating some nasty ass fish every 3 hours you “don’t want it bad enough”…dieting turns into a battle against you body and mind and people act like they’re warriors or martyrs or something for suffering through 16 weeks of boiled chicken and broccoli.

I follow a few fitness pages on FB, most of which promote balance and moderation, but even on those pages there has extreme outrage over “unclean food”. A coach shared a “healthy” low fat cookie recipe that was supposed to be great to share with the whole family. It called for a half of a box of yellow cake mix. Many people liked it, but a very vocal minority was pissed that a coach would tell people to eat such unhealthy processed food.

Apparently anyone who eats cookies made with toxic sugar and white flour is going to immediately become fat and ugly and die of cancer. And giving you kid a cookie is child abuse…Some people really take clean eating to an extreme and I think that many from the IIFYM crowd are rebelling against that type of thinking.

People share these crazy IIFYM meals (skinny cows sandwiched slathered with PB and sandwiched between 2 pop-tart all sitting on top of a big bowl of frozen protein sludge and drizzled with WF syrup and marshmallow fluff…seriously, where do people have time to come up with this crap and calculate the macros for it?) and I think they do that for a variety of different reasons–including but not limited to: to challenge the “suffer to be lean” mentality, inspire other IIfYMers with their “recipes”, and to brag–but for the most part, their intentions are good.

The problem arises when that’s the sort of stuff you only ever see in relation to IIFYM. I think that a lot of the people that talk about their poptarts also eat fibrous veggies, healthy fats, and lean grilled meats a majority of the time, but those meals aren’t nearly as fun to post on Instagram so they don’t. As a result, people get this idea that “IIFYM” actually stands for “the junk food diet”. Maybe there are people out there that eat processed crap all of the time on their diet and it works for them, but I don’t think a majority do it that way.

I’ve always logged my food and hit a daily cal/macro target on my “diets”. I never called it IIFYM but that’s pretty much what it is. This allowed me to have variety in my diet and for the most part eat what I wanted (though not necessarily as much as I wanted, or how I wanted it) even while getting stage lean. My diet was mostly “clean” because it was easier to track, it allowed me to eat more, and as much as I love junk food, I feel best when I avoid it. I think most people take a similar approach to IIFYM but a lot of the time they are not giving that whole story.

As far as the video itself, I think Abel makes a good point about the highly palatable meals. I know that it’s harder for me to control portions on the treats than it is on the regular meat and veggie meals. No matter what or how much I ate, I always want another ice cream sandwich. That’s not much of an issue with chicken breast.

You measure it out and you get what you get, but I can see how that could lead to a binge for someone that is already prone to bingeing. And as far as being obsessive about counting, that can certainly happen, but it can also reduce the need to carry Tupperware or baggies of proportioned meals when you’re not home. Or allow you to eat at social events while sticking to your diet. Just like any other decent diet or training program, IIFYM is great for some but it’s not for everyone.

18

I just had this thought: aren’t all diets essentially “IIFYM”?

If you’re dieting or reverse dieting you have a set number of calories and macro nutrients that you’re supposed to hit right? So you go though and plug in food choices that get you to that calorie mark and fill those macro requirements.

It’s all IIFYM lol

19

[quote]gregron wrote:
I just had this thought: aren’t all diets essentially “IIFYM”?

If you’re dieting or reverse dieting you have a set number of calories and macro nutrients that you’re supposed to hit right? So you go though and plug in food choices that get you to that calorie mark and fill those macro requirements.

It’s all IIFYM lol[/quote]

No! IIFYM is something new and revolutionary!!

I guess its a “new” approach for people that are used to getting specific meal plans from a coach?? Of course, the meal plan is still (hopefully) based on one’s dietary needs, but if someone else has always told you how much and what to eat, I could see how this would seem different.

20

I really dont understand the poptart obsession