Why I Ditched Clean Eating

The first time someone told me about the concept of flexible dieting I laughed in their face.

Like, straight up belly laugh.

You see, up until this point I was what’s known as a “clean eater”.

My daily diet consisted of all the classic bodybuilding staples; chicken, rice, broccoli, and protein bars which tasted like broken dreams.

Hey, it sucked but I knew it worked, and the mere suggestion that I could achieve the same level of results while eating so-called “normal food” seemed implausible.

But here’s the thing…

I was fucking wrong!

How I Fell Out Of Love With Clean Eating

I was so deep into the clean eating lifestyle that I could not see the damage I was doing to myself.

Several changes had occurred without me even realizing it:

• I’ve always enjoyed big family get-togethers but I started skipping them to avoid being around tempting foods.
• If I surrendered to my cravings I’d spend several days beating myself about it.
• Despite the fact I was in good shape, I was unhappy as fuck.

If that sounds familiar, read on.

Because while I knew this wasn’t a very healthy or sustainable way for me to live, I wasn’t aware that there was any other option (at least, not one which would enable me to keep the kind of body I like to have!).

That’s when I was introduced to flexible dieting, and everything changed!

Back in 1999, researchers at Louisiana State University showed that people who follow a more flexible eating plan tend to experience greater feelings of satisfaction, lower anxiety, and a lower risk of depression. They were also more consistent in hitting their daily nutrition targets (which the researchers attributed to their increased satisfaction), so not only did they match the fat loss results of a clean eating diet, they actually outperformed it. (1)

Holy fucking fuck, right?!

This was the first study ever to show that the “old-school bodybuilding way” might not be the only way, it seriously blew my mind!

Yet still I felt hesitant to put my results on the line and try it, so I waited, and three years later we saw a follow-up study from researchers at the same university.

This time around they’d dug even deeper and were able to highlight a clear link between so-called “rigid clean eating” and a tendency to experience body dysmorphia, mood swings, and disordered eating patterns – all things which I had personally experienced while following clean eating – and then show that when participants switched to a more flexible nutrition plan all of these things were greatly reduced, and they actually lost more weight. (2)

So the biggest question I had now was:

“How can these motherfuckers get the same (or better) results without eating the foods which we’ve always been told we MUST eat in order to look good????”

The answer is that we were misled.

You see, when I was growing up fitness and bodybuilding magazines preached that your meal plan had to be choc-full of chicken, rice, broccoli, etc if you wanted to get in the kind of shape we saw the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger in. They never spoke about moderation, or variety, or the stack of “Vitamin S” most of the fitness models were on.

So yes, their recommended way of eating was very hard, but we believed it was part of the sacrifice of being in great shape, so we accepted the suck.

THEY. WERE. WRONG.

It turns out the body sees calories as calories, protein as protein, fat as fat, and carbs as carbs. It doesn’t give a fuuuuuck if those 30-grams of protein arrived via a chicken breast or a whey protein shake, nor whether those 40-grams of carbohydrates arrived via a bowl of pasta or two slices of bread; it’ll use it to do the job that needs done regardless.

This discovery takes the old notion that you need to eat a pre-set list of foods or stick to a rigid meal plan and puts it straight in the bin, because suddenly all that matters is that you hit your daily nutrition targets!

An Unquantifiable Term

Before we go further, I want to re-iterate that I’m not saying clean eating is bad.

I’m saying we fucked it up.

Because at it’s most basic level, the term “clean eating” describes a lifestyle where we eat lots of lean meat, and plenty of fruit and vegetables.

That’s actually a pretty good way to eat, isn’t it?

The problems started when we began adding a bunch of unnecessary rules and regulations on top of this, and “clean eating” started demonizing whole food groups (e.g. carbohydrates) and encouraging us to categorize foods into lists of “good” and “bad” (or “clean” and “dirty”), leading to an unhealthy relationship with food.

And the more rigid the rules became the more people struggled to see results, and the more they failed to stick it out the greater the risk that we develop mental health issues as a result of punishing ourselves over and over again (see the studies above).

As per researchers from Harvard:

“Clean eating, especially in its more rigid form, can become less of a diet and more of an identity for some, and could definitely contribute to disordered eating patterns.”

Layne Norton, PhD, also offers an interesting take:

“One of the biggest flaws in the concept of so-called “clean eating” is that it’s an ambiguous term.

For example, a bodybuilder will say that brown rice is clean, but somebody on the paleo diet will say that’s a dirty food, because they consider grains to be evil and prefer a diet of nuts, seeds, and meat. Now in comes a vegetarian; “What’s so clean about animal products?”, because they would say clean foods are fruit, beans, and legumes. And so it rages on!

There’s no proper definition of clean eating because the term is unquantifiable, but what CAN be quantified is calories and macronutrients.”

– Dr. Layne Norton, PhD

Flexible Dieting 101

Which brings me to flexible dieting.

Now, I’d like to explain from the outset that flexible dieting doesn’t mean eating as much junk food as possible.

I’m sure you’ve seen those silly adverts from gimmicky trainers claiming they can show you how to “eat ice cream all day and still get awesome results!”.

Yeah, that’s all bullshit.

Your diet will still consist mostly of the foods you already consider to be healthy (e.g. lean meat, fruit, vegetables, starchy carbs, fish, etc), it’s just that now you have the freedom to choose because you’re no longer trapped in a cycle of eating the exact same thing at the exact same time every fucking day until you feel madder than a dwarf with a yo-yo!

We now know that your diet is a pure numbers game, so you can incorporate as much variety into your meal plan as you choose – and that includes your favourite treat foods – without fear, without worry, and without guilt!

That should be a fucking game-changer for anybody who previously struggled with the rigidity of traditional diet plans associated with building muscle and burning fat.

So now you have a different way of doing things, and if you believe that holding 250 calories aside each day so that you can absolutely violate a Creme Egg after work will help you stick to the rest of your diet, then you fucking do it!

Fast-forward to 2013, and after successfully using the principles of flexible dieting on myself for a few years I began rolling it out to PT clients and eventually website members.

I found that about 75% of people who tried it absolutely loved it, and the other 25% preferred the old-school bodybuilding formula.

Two years later, a study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition hammered the final nail into the coffin of so-called “clean eating” by publishing the results of a trial which replaced whole grains with refined grains (yikes!) and pointing out that, astonishingly, there were no differences in result as long as participants adhered to their nutritional targets. (3)

This was the study which finally eliminated the idea that certain foods are “better than others” when it comes to dieting, and showed us that it really is just all about hitting the numbers.

“So now when someone asks if they could swap 1000 calories of wholegrain rice for 1000 calories of jelly sweets without there being much difference in weight loss results, you can legitimately say “Yes and here’s the reference.” Not that we’re saying you should look for junk food, of course, but this shows us that nutrition is ultimately numbers based; so you haven’t necessarily ruined your progress just because you ate a chocolate bar!”

– Martin Macdonald

However, flexible dieting isn’t always the best option.

In the last section I mentioned that 25% of my clients actually preferred the old-school clean eating approach. That’s because some folks fare better when they have less choice and less freedom. These are the same people who excelled at clean eating back in the day. Helping them get the needle moving on the scales via a pre-set diet can be a great motivational tool to keep them going in the early stages of a diet while they start getting to grips with more important nutritional behaviours like learning how to control their appetite, new portion sizes, and proper food selection.

See, there are no wrong ways, only different ways!

“The best diet is the one you can stick to!” (4)

Further Reading:

If you enjoyed this blog, then you’ll probably also like reading these.

>> Can Diet Coke Make You Fat?
>> Detox Supplements: The Dark Side Of The Fitness Industry
>> The Rules To Ripped

References:

1. Smith C. F., et al. Flexible vs. Rigid dieting strategies: relationship with adverse behavioral outcomes. Appetite (1999).
2. Stewart T. M., et al. Rigid vs. flexible dieting: association with eating disorder symptoms in nonobese women. Appetite (2002).
3. Karl J. P., et al. Substituting whole grains for refined grains in a 6-wk randomized trial favorably affects energy-balance metrics in healthy men and postmenopausal women. Am J Clin Nutr (2017).
4. Howell S., et al. “Calories in, calories out” and macronutrient intake: the hope, hype, and science of calories. Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab (2017).