How flexible are you?

Many of us at some stage come to a point where we want to lose bodyfat for some reason - be it a bodybuilding/fitness model contest, a holiday or even for health reasons.

How hard do you have to be on yourself with your diet? Does your daily nutrition have to be "squeaky clean" with food only from wholesome sources and nothing at all processed in there or you are doomed to fail?

I had posted recently when I had been dieting too hard, overdoing the cardio and fat loss came to a standstill. Daily calories had to be increased with a reduction in activity to lose more bodyfat and also to prevent metabolic damage from occurring.

There is a lot of debate around at the moment about "flexible dieting" whereupon your diet doesn't have to be completely from wholesome foods as long as you are meeting your daily calorific requirements to gain, maintain or lose weight.

There is also the concept of IIFYM (If It Fits Your Macros) whereupon you meet your daily calorific needs from any sources as long as you meet the protein, carbohydrate and fat numbers that you set for yourself.

I think there is a balance, a completely clean diet can leave you miserable, it could even leave you more likely to give up and you could begin to crave what you deny yourself. Being unable to ever eat anything processed or "dirty" could also lead to obsessive behaviour, I have seen this with some people.

I think you can though to a certain degree be flexible with your diet, however this doesn't mean you can eat whatever you want with large portions or have high fat/sugar content regularly.

You can still be in control of what calories you consume each day by using nutrition tracking tools such as myfitnesspal and allowing yourself some flexibility be it a chocolate bar a day or something you like within reason. You would be meeting your daily numbers each day with most of it coming from wholesome sources and still knowing what you are consuming fairly accurately.

To meet your daily calorific requirement with any type of food source (IIFYM) however, could mean you are missing out on vital essential nutrients.

Some may disagree but I have a day off my "diet" every Saturday where I eat what I want and I feel this boosts leptin levels, maintains sanity and makes dieting down more likely to be sustainable and achievable. I have always been able to meet weight loss targets this way and know I would struggle if denied myself this.

So do you need to be hard on yourself or can you have some flexibility in your diet?