Beach Season Is Coming… Fat Loss Eating 101

Look, it’s March…that gives you PLENTY of time to be Jacked, if not TAN, by the unofficial start of summer… Memorial Day.

But there are some rules you have to follow: (in order of importance)

1. Nutrition
2. Diet
3. Food Intake
4. Macronutrient Breakdown
5. Workouts
6. Doing “other” stuff…just moving around more

Hopefully you’ve used your powers of deduction to ascertain that..

WHAT and how much of WHAT YOU STUFF IN YOUR FACE IS IMPORTANT.

Like, very….for realllzzzz.

Basic Nutrition Rules: 

1. Don’t eat sh@t.

Stick to:

• Lean Meats
• Vegetables
• Fruits

I know some people are all like,

“Don’t eat fruit, it makes you fat”.

1. How many fat people do you know that eat fruit?
2. This is only true if you’re below 10% body fat for guys, 14% for chicks, then it may have some affect.
3. Lets worry about the 98% that matters…thanks.

Yes…this is basically the “Paleo” diet.

It’s also what was called “Clean Eating” for about 100 years before it got marketed as something new and exciting and ground breaking.

Lesson kids: Packaging and Marketing matters…

2. Limit Carbohydrates:

Aim for less than 100 for guys and 75 for gals and you’ll probably lose body fat. FAST

Thing is, for a lot of folks, low carb sucks and they feel like junk. Sometimes this goes away after 4-9 days. Sometimes it doesn’t. You’ll have to try to find out.

Yes this includes fruits…Most vegetables however are free (not counted) and eat as much as you like.

3. Don’t Drop Your Calories Too Much:

Dropping too many calories too quickly is VERY disruptive to the body and WILL result in the body doing whatever it can to defend its previous weight and FAT STORAGE.

This means burning muscle for fuel eventually. We want to keep as much muscle as possible….obviously.

The larger you are the more you can drop.  Don’t just use a 1,000 cals or 500 cals or whatever, remember percentages matter.

• For a 200lbs guy (10-15% body fat) who’s very active and getting 3,500 cals a day dropping to 2,500 is fine. 31% decrease in calories
• For a 120lbs woman (13-19% body fat) who;s active getting 2,000 cals a day to go to 1,000 is NOT. 50% decrease in calories. In this case 1,500 or 1,700 would be better.

How to find out how many calories you use in a day:

take your body weight and multiply it by the number that corresponds to your activity level.

Sedentary: 10
Moderately Active (30 minutes of moderate intensity exercise a day): 11
Active (30-60 minutes of moderate intensity exercise on most days): 12-13
Very Active (45-60+ minutes of intense exercise on most days): 14-15

Example: 205lbs x 12= 2460 calories for a 205lbs active person per day.

You need to be BELOW your number of calories per day.

REMEMBER: Your body is striving to maintain homeostasis, the easier, more progressive the transition the less stressful it is on the body, the less stressful it is the BETTER YOUR CHANCE FOR LONG TERM SUCCESS.

4. Healthy Fats are Good…But Not too Much:

You need more Omega -3’s….so take your fish oils, but you don’t have to drown everything in Olive Oil, it’s still a fat.

Don’t go overboard.

5. Alcohol: 

If you start now a couple of drinks on a couple of nights will be fine.

Alcohol has LOTS of calories and almost no nutritional value…and turns to acetate in the body, which the body has to burn…before it burns ANYTHING else.

So while acetate is in the blood stream no body fat is burned….and ANY other calories are STORED..as FAT

We’re looking for the biggest bang-for-your-buck with the calories we CAN consume, remember we’re looking to RESTRICT calories here, so empty calories are bad news and “crowd out” the good muscle promoting calories we can consume.

From my personal experience once people reign in the alcohol good things happen.

6. 90%-95%

Get things right 90% of the time. 95% and you’ll get there faster. <—-this is totally taken from Precision Nutrition

If you eat 6 meals a day that means you get 4.2 slip ups a week @90%.

That doesn’t mean you get to eat a whole pizza and drink a six-pack 4.2 times a week. That means you get 4.2 Nutritional Servings to screw up on.

Things that are screwups (just examples, there are LOTS more):

• Skip a meal
• Glass of wine
• Pizza (one serving)
• Cookies (one serving)
• Cake (one serving)
• Starbucks 1,0000 calorie giant foamy whipped cream thing (you’re allowed one serving per slip up, so I guess 3-4 sips or 12-16 if you want to use them all at once)
• Otis Spunkmeyer Muffin (you can eat approx 1/3rd of this…ONE serving these things are like 1,200 calories for an entire muffin..)

Get it?

Anything that doesn’t fit into the perfect plan is a SCREW UP and goes against your percentage.

7. NO Liquid Calories 

NONE…that simple.

Diet stuff is fine, and don’t believe the hype that it’s dangerous or makes you eat more..

1. There is NO established CAUSAL relationship between diet liquid (soda, tea, etc) consumption and negative health outcomes….it’s ALL correlation and that’s a waaaay different thing…btw, correlation isn’t proof…
2. YOU decide what to put in your mouth…don’t blame it on a soda.

And don’t use the “artificial sweeteners are not natural” argument…mostly because it’s very stupid illogical.

Here is a quick list of things you shouldn’t eat but can and all are “all natural”:

• coal
• arsenic
• mercury
• rocks
• dirt
• poop
• urine
• poisonous animals (snakes, fish)
• poisonous plants (oak, sumac)

See, all natural and will F you up…like, you can die…

Here’s a quick list of un-natural things that you can consume and can help you:

• Antiboitics
• Tylenol
• Aspirin
• Most Pharmaceuticals (yes, as a society, we are over-medicated…but you ain’t curing AID’s with broccoli crowns)

Two exceptions:

1. Protein shakes: Workout nutrition and getting adequate protein is paramount, especially if you’re training. think of these as MEALS, not drinks. 
2. Crystal Light or any other drink with 5 or fewer calories per 8oz serving: stuff has like 5 calories a serving so maybe 40 calories in a pitcher…I mean, really, how much are you gonna drink?

8. Number of Meals Doesn’t matter

3 vs. 6 vs. 10

It doesn’t seem to matter….ON THE WHOLE…

That said: I know that, for me, myself and I, 6 meals works best… it keeps me from eating too much a feeling sluggish, hungry or having big blood sugar dips that I get from meals that are separated by 6+ hours.

If you work best on 3 bigger meals…do that.

All-in-all it comes down to not making excuses and being an adult….if you want to lose weight, run a marathon, gain weight  whatever, your:

Actions = Outcomes

So it doesn’t hurt to have some solid principles to help guide those actions. Stick to these principles and you’ll be on the fast track to a good fat loss diet, losing body fat, maintaining muscle and totally jacked…and tan…. by summer.