I must admit that I am in love with the If It Fits Your Macros site. It has a lot of great information, and they answer a lot of tricky questions about how your body uses food, the impact and possible diet-related causes of various medical conditions, and when different types of exercise programs make more sense for your needs.

They also have a succinct newsletter that whets your appetite, so to speak, to delve more into the information on their site.

However.

The one glaring issue is their “easy” program. And it all sounds simple, too. Until you pay money. Then you find out that you’ll basically have to live for eating for the next 30 days … buying fresh food daily (or every few days), carefully weighing your food to the gram to enter into a program that calculates the nutrients so you know what else to eat, and so on. And the only way to get your money back is to prove you’ve done the program for thirty days and that it didn’t work for you. There’s no provision for “I can’t do this program”, such as I just had a medical procedure done on my hands and can’t do the necessary food prep and documentation.

The program includes a blueprint that matches your body’s needs (based on your size, shape, age, activity level, health conditions, and gender) to the latest health science. For a much larger fee, they also have coaches available to help guide you through and stick to the program.

In short, if you want a lot of great info, I highly recommend the site. If you’re ready to dedicate a few hours each day to meal planning and preparation (not including exercise), this seems like a good program that matches your needs to real science.

But if you have any conditions that limit your ability to shop for, measure, prepare, and document your food and physical activities, you’ll need to wait until those conditions are cleared up, or have someone available every day to perform those functions for you.

On the one hand, I “wasted” money on a program I can’t use. On the other, I get my money’s worth just by reading all their content a couple times a week.