There is one thing that is important and that leaves us pondering about it: what amount of “junk food” can we fit into our ideal calorie and macro nutrient goals?

Of course the typical response you’ll get from “clean eaters” and “old school bodybuilders” is that flexible dieting can’t work.  This is because they have a misconception about what flexible dieting is, and that it’s just a way to fit “junk food” into our diets.

SEE ALSO: HOW TO LOSE FAT QUICK AND EFFECTIVELY!

Obviously that is not the case. The truth is that that is a practice avoided by most flexible dieters, but still the myth states that all flexible dieters do is try to complete their macros with chocolates, cakes, fried food, pizzas and donuts. We can firmly state that that is not what we do, and certainly not what our clients do. Of course you can see us eat some food considered of the “junk” persuasion but, for the bulk of the pack, this constitutes only a small amount of our diet.

Still the question remains, what is the acceptable amount of “junk” that we can fit into our diet? Well, when flexible dieting started being used, the method was revolutionary because no other diet had ever stated that you could lose weight this way. All of them foresaw the elimination of a large portion of the calories ingested, an almost total elimination of fats from the diet, strict meals based on specific foods considered “magical” for fat loss and a whole other lot of bull cr*p. Later on, the concepts on which diets were based started to allow certain “goodies”, as long as calories, protein, carbs and fats were controlled daily.

That was when pictures of flexible dieting followers started emerging, where they were eating all sorts of “junk food” but displayed much better results than those who followed restrictive diet plans. With the popularity of these photos largely growing on Facebook, Instagram and all sorts of fitness websites, the general audience started to get the idea that you had to include “junk food” in flexible dieting in order for it to work, so respect for “healthy food” started to diminish, since the general opinion was that the bulk of the daily calories was made up from “junk food”. Truth be told, very few are the followers of flexible dieting that deviate their nutrition focus from unprocessed foods to “junk food”. Of course all of us have certain foods of which we don’t want to give up eating altogether. Some prefer pancakes, others pizza, ice cream, chips, burguers… Be it whatever food it is, we know that each person should adjust its  diet, regarding calorie and macro nutrients counting, to allow the consumption of these foods that provide satisfaction and mental well-being. The quantities ingested will vary of course, depending on each person’s goals, being that we should never take that consumption to an extreme.

What are our goals? For example, if we’re in a phase of weight gain where we increased our macros up to 500g of carbs and 100g of fats per day, we can perfectly eat a cheese burguer and fries and have many calories left to eat unprocessed, healthier food. Most people need a meal like this, not much food but high in calories. Making this a regular practice is hard, but many times necessary because obtaining all those grams of carbs and fats from healthy food would be practically impossible. When it comes to “cutting” in our diets, the story differs because we would still be able to eat “junk food”, but the amounts would be quite different. If we’re eating 250g of carbs and 70g of fat, we could still eat that burguer and fries, but it wouldn’t be feasible because our daily requirements of carbohydrates and fat would be complete with just that meal. That would mean the remaining meals of the day would have to be based around grilled chicken, canned tuna, salad and vegetables.

Still, it’s better for us to find balance by eating a turkey burguer with no cheese to economize on the fats, or exchange the fries for vegetables. This way, we could still eat “junk food” without that meal compromising the rest of our meals throughout the day. From a physical standpoint, the only “junk food” we shouldn’t eat is the one to which we will have a bad reaction, like a person who is lactose intolerant having a milkshake. But that doesn’t mean that a certain food is bad, it just means that if you don’t react well to it, you shouldn’t eat it.

Another thing, if there is a certain food that we know that we simply can’t eat just a tiny bit of, we shouldn’t include it in our diet. It’s better that we exclude it completely so that it doesn’t constitute a problem.

SEE ALSO: WHY SHOULD WE EAT PIZZA?!

After all, what is the amount of “junk food” we can really eat? As a rule, we should assume that we can go up to an 80:20 ratio, meaning that 80% of our daily calories should come from nutrient dense foods, while the remaining 20% can come from “junk food”. Of course we should always bear in mind our goals, that can vary throughout time.

If we are in a weight gain phase and we need to increase our ingested calories, there is no problem in increasing that ratio to 30% “junk food” because we will still be able to ingest plenty of fiber, vitamins and minerals from the remaining 70%. It will be easier using this method to achieve our daily goals. If, on the other hand, our goals is to “cut calories”, the easiest thing to do is reduce the ratio down to 10% “junk food”, so that we eat more healthy food that will make us feel fuller longer.

So as a rule we can conclude that, as always, we should do what works best for each of us, as long as we’re happy with the results we achieve.