Eat More Food To Lose Fat

Earlier this week I had good friend of mine reach out and wanted me to confirm that she’s not crazy.

Not crazy as in ‘she doesn’t like Chipotle’ crazy. Rather, she wanted to make sure that she wasn’t crazy for not liking the answer she received, by two different people, when she complimented them on their “cut, in-shape look”.

Both of their responses: “Honestly, I’ve just been eating less and that’s really it.”

After hearing two people tell her that they saw progress by “eating less”, she immediately reached out and wanted to know my thoughts.

First, before getting into some specifics, I agree with my friend. I’m not a fan of the “I’m just eating less” response. At all.

These individuals aren’t necessary wrong though. In order to lose body fat, you need to be consuming less calories OR you need to be exercising a significant amount more.

Most people, especially adults, have more control over what they eat rather than the amount they work out. Being conscious of what you’re eating is significantly more efficient for your life than working out three hours per day.

However, eating less calories doesn’t mean you have to eat less food.

Most items that people eat on a regular basis are extremely calorie dense. There’s physically not that much food to eat but the food contains a significant number of calories. To give some examples, here are some of the most popular food or beverages in the United States and how many calories they have:

• Pizza (Two slices of pepperoni): 600 Calories

• Soda (One can): 150 Calories

• Potato chips (One serving – 17 chips): 160 Calories

• Dessert coffee (16oz Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Frapppuccino): 320 Calories

• Muffins (Blueberry Muffin from Panera): 460 Calories

• Fried Chicken Sandwich (From McDonald’s): 510 Calories

• Fries (Medium order from McDonald’s): 340 Calories

• Oreo Cookies (One serving of 3 Cookies): 160 Calories

One could argue that you can simply limit your portion sizes for these different items. And I agree….to a point.

But for each of those items, I already listed a smaller serving size and they still contain quite a bit of calories.

Also, I’ll be the first to admit that once I start eating pizza, chips, or Oreos, it’s pretty challenging to stop at one serving.

You can limit your portion sizes for these calorie dense foods, and lose weight, but you’re likely going to be insanely hungry and not satisfied if that’s all you’re eating.

In theory, “eating less” to lose body fat is simple and works.

But in your real day-to-day life…..Yeah...Not that easy. You need foods that are satisfying, allow you to eat less total calories so that you accomplish your goals, and actually fill you up.

The solution: Eating more lean sources of protein and nutrient dense foods.

By doing this, you can eat a substantial amount more food, while still taking in significantly less calories.

Examples of lean protein sources include:

(“Lean” meaning they are high in protein and low in fat, and therefore lower in calories):

• Chicken Breast

• Shrimp

• Tilapia

• Ground Turkey/Beef ( at least 93% Lean)

• Egg Whites

• Protein Powder

• Greek Yogurt

*Side note and fun fact: peanut butter isn’t a very good source of protein but we’ll talk about that another day.*

Additionally, examples of nutrient dense foods that are lower calorie include:

• Cucumbers

• Raspberries

• Asparagus

• Strawberries

• Broccoli

• Blackberries:

• Bell Peppers

That’s the greatness of lean proteins, along with fruits and veggies. You can eat a lot of them while keep calories in a good place.

Now, let’s put it into practical use.

Below are four popular meals/snacks and a substitute showing how much more food you can eat, while still taking in lower calories:

Popular Meal #1:

Muffin with a seasonal latte: 770 Calories

Lower Calorie Substitute #1:

Two egg white breakfast sandwiches, one banana, and a black coffee:  520 Calories

Popular Meal #2:

Fried chicken sandwich with a side of fries: 850 Calories

Lower Calorie Substitute #2:

Two grilled chicken sandwiches with a side salad: 780 Calories

Popular Snack #1:

3 Oreo Cookies: 160 Calories

Lower Calorie Snack Substitute #1:

Strawberries (Entire 1 pound container): 145 calories

Popular Snack #2:

Potato chips (1 serving - 17 chips):  160 calories

Lower Calorie Snack Substitute #2:

Raw Veggies: 2 cucumbers (60 calories) & 2 bell peppers (70 calories): 130 calories

If you’re more of a visual person, I have you covered as well:

Calories are the name of the game when it comes to losing weight. The more low-calorie, nutrient dense foods that you eat, the better your fat loss progress will be. Additionally, because they are so low calorie, you’re able to eat a lot more of them.

For people that enjoy eating and snacking (ME!), it would be next to impossible to stay consistent with just “eating less food”. That’s where prioritizing protein and vegetables comes strongly into play.

Not only does simply “eating less” sound miserable, but in practice you can and should be eating more volume of food to lose body fat.

Biggest Workout Mistakes (And The Solutions)

First, I’d like to say that if you’re hitting the gym on a regular basis, I will applaud you harder than I applaud LeBron. And that’s a lot. Building the habit of making time for the gym each week is challenging as you get into your adult life.

If you are going to the gym consistently, or if you tried it out and fell off because you didn’t notice results, these six workouts mistakes may be what is holding you back from becoming stronger, looking better, and feeling your best.

Mistake #1: Not Having A Plan Of Attack

This is the biggest mistake. If you're not sure what you're going to do when you step in the gym, you: won't make much progress, won't actually do a full workout, won't feel confident in what you're doing, and ultimately won't stick with it.

If there isn’t a plan in place when you step into the gym, it’s very easy to take 15 minutes trying to figure out where to start and then another 5 minutes between each exercise determining what to do next.

Think about trying to do your job if you didn’t have a plan in place for the day, week, or month.

For an example, my dad is a sports writer. With sports, you can’t plan what stories you’re going to write nine months in advance because certain teams may be significantly better/worse than anticipated, a certain player may have a fantastic game, or a coach may take a new job.

It is a little bit more of a reactive job. However, each week, he plans out what stories are going to go into the paper each day of the week. Sometimes, he has to leave space to allow for some flexibility. But that’s okay, there’s still a general plan in place.

Having a plan of action is necessary to stick with anything and make progress. Working out is no different.

Solution

Figure out a plan that fits your goals, your gym experience level, and your lifestyle.

If you want to generally get in better shape, then a three day per week plan where you’re doing full body workouts, hitting one exercise for each body part, along with some cardio, sounds great.

If you want to put on a decent amount of muscle and strength, then try doing a five day per week program where you are hit each muscle group multiple times per week.

After you know what you want to accomplish, look up or figure out what exercises to do. You can do a search on YouTube or Google and find endless results. From there, you can craft your specific plan.

Mistake #2: Trying to Emulate Pro Athletes

Social media is fantastic. I love it. Without social media, you wouldn’t be reading this right now.

However, through social media, everyone ends up seeing snippets of professional athletes’ workouts. Like the portion of the workout where LeBron is doing dumbbell curls while balancing, on his knees, on a giant, bouncy exercise ball.

Whatever LeBron is doing is clearly working for him. But for 99.99 percent of humans, you should not be doing that.

Just because you see LeBron, Tom Brady, or Serena Williams doing a certain exercise, doesn't mean you should do it. They're training for their specific sport. Most of us are training to simply look and feel better. Also, most athletes have the basics mastered, thus they begin incorporating more challenging exercises.

Solution:

First, train for what your goals are. If your goal is to look better by gaining muscle and losing fat, LeBron’s workout isn’t going to be the most effective thing for you to do.

If your goals are sport specific, then you still need to start with the basics. Master basic movements and slowly implement new aspects to it.

Mistake #3: Changing Up Your Routine Too Often

Okay, you know the old saying “You need to change up your routine every workout so that you can confuse your body and see more progress?”

Yeah, that’s stupid.

When you completely change up your routine each week, you don’t give yourself a chance to actually make progress with a certain exercise or workout.

This would be the equivalent of trying to start a business but each day you’re operating the business, you try a new marketing strategy. You want to attract more clients but you by advertising in a new way, to a new clientele every day, you would likely get zero new business.

Changing up your routine too often will make it extremely hard to actually see progress because you’re not getting better at any certain movement or exercise..

Solution:

Stick to one program, or least a handful of movements for a significant amount of Executing and improving on a handful of movements for 8 weeks or more will be the most beneficial. The other exercises you do after your main focus can switch around a little bit more frequently to keep it exciting.

Mistake #4: Only Doing One Type of Rep Range

While you should focus on mastering a few movements at a time, the amount of reps you do for different exercises should vary. At least a little bit.

I’ve seen a lot of different ‘sample workouts’ on Instagram/Pinterest/Around the block, where the entire workout is: 3 sets of 10 reps or 4 sets of 12 reps.

There are certain exercises, along with the order of the exercise (beginning or end of the workout), where certain rep ranges are better than others. If you're doing 12 reps (arbitrary number) for your entire workout, it's not the best strategy.

Solution:

There’s a rule of thumb when it comes to rep ranges that is efficient for most humans: Perform higher weight, lower reps in the beginning of your workout and higher reps, lower weight towards the end.

This allows you to have the most energy for movements you want you to improve and get stronger with (discussed in Mistake #3), while allowing you to mix in higher rep ranges at the end when you will need to be using lighter weight because you are more fatigued.

Mistake #5: Always Testing Your 1 Rep Max

Obviously, with lifting/strength training, the goal is to gradually get stronger. Unfortunately, some gym-goes want to prove to themselves, their friends (that don’t REALLY care), and boost their ego by improving the maximum amount they can lift.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s insanely cool and fulfilling to be able to do something you’ve never accomplished before. Especially lifting a really heavy weight. That’s amazing.

However, on a day-to-day/week-to-week basis, you want to build your strength, not test it.

If you're testing your strength every week, your strength won't be increasing too much.

Solution:

Have a plan in place. Work on building your strength with a specific movement for many weeks at a time. Let’s say you build, build, build for 8 weeks, then you max out. That’s a lot better strategy, where you will actually see some progress, instead of throwing on your previous one rep max and adding 5lbs to start every workout.

Mistake #6: Not Working Out After A "Bad Day" of Eating

I’m putting you in the game. You’re LeBron in the fourth quarter of Game 7 of the 2016 NBA Finals.

You just missed your last three shots which would have gave you the lead and would probably help you win the NBA championship.

Instead of getting down on yourself (you being LeBron – cool, right?), on one of those missed shots, you sprint back on defense and block a shot which helps your team win the game. Just because you sucked on offense didn’t mean you completely gave up on defense.

Also, congrats. You just won the NBA Championship. Cleveland, this is for you.

There are two sides of basketball – offense and defense. When you suck on offense, you can step it up on defense and still do some good things to help. Or at least mitigate your lackluster offense.

Diet and exercise are the same way.

Even if you ate terribly (we've all been there), the calories you're burning during the workout will balance out the excess food a little bit.

Also, the extra energy from those extra calories might just help you hit a new PR in the gym.

Just because you had a bad day or two of eating, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t work out.

Solution:

I want you to know that it’s acceptable to not be 100% on your game with nutrition at all times. Also know that by working out after a “bad day of eating”, you are helping yourself tremendously.

If you have a day of eating 5 pieces of pizza, 4 pieces of cake, and a large order of fries anddddd also skip out on your workout, you’re taking multiple steps backwards instead of just one.

Obviously, you can get back on track at any time. However, try to make it a rule for yourself that if you have a day where you go overboard with too much “fun food”, you get a workout in.

You will feel better now and thank yourself in the future.

If you find yourself struggling to make progress with your workouts, one of these reasons may be why. Start to implement some of these solutions and let me know what you think.

Losing Fat Is Like Winning A basketball Game

If you’re like me, LeBron James and March Madness consume a large portion of your life. I enjoy most sports, but basketball is my favorite. I’m enthralled with the basketball year-round. Thanks, Twitter. Most of my attention shifts to basketball posts on Instagram. Sorry friends.

I like basketball. I get basketball. There are some complex strategies to the game but overall, there are a few simple things, that if done correctly will allow you to win. You know...like not letting the other team score. And scoring some points for yourself.

As basketball fans, we have grown to understand basketball and the fundamental ways to win a game.

Fully understanding how losing fat works, is a different beast.

Sure, LeBron is one of the best basketball players ever. Most humans on earth know that. Basketball fans can dive into the reasoning that he’s one of the best.

Similarly…

Sure, if you eat “healthier” foods, you’re going to lose fat. But why or how does fat loss work? That explanation is something that people often struggle with.

If you’re a basketball fan (or understand basketball more than fat loss), this is the start of understanding how fat-loss works, through basketball comparisons.

Let’s jump it off…

There’s No Clear-Cut Method To Being Successful

First off, a basketball game is not won by reaching a certain amount of points before the other team. They don’t throw the ball out there and play until a team scores 100 points to determine the winner.

Losing fat isn’t black and white for every person. There aren’t objective things that you can do, that absolutely guarantee fat loss.

Sure, just like basketball, there are strategies and methods that may allow you to be successful. But just by doing those things, winning the game is never guaranteed.

Not every person can do the exact same things and lose fat, just like not every basketball team can score 100 points and be guaranteed a win.

You Have A Set Amount Of Time To Execute

There is a set amount of time that teams have to play their best. Teams have to do the right things within the allocated time frame – four, 12-minute periods (NBA) – in order to win the game. In life, you get 24 hours each day to make progress with fat loss.

The actions you take within those 24 hours, as a whole, dictate if you’re successful.

Mistakes Don’t Mean You Lose The Game

In basketball, mistakes are made every game:

• Turnovers
• Throwing up a string of missed shots
• Losing track of the player you’re guarding

With fat-loss, it’s difficult to be perfect for an entire day. There are going to be some areas that aren’t ideal:

• Eating two donuts at breakfast
• Missing your workout
• Having an extra beer with your weekend lunch

If these mistakes compound into having a day/game full of mistakes, you’re not going to win.

However, the great thing about your day-to-day life when it comes to fat loss (and for your favorite basketball team), is that the outcome is not determined on that one mistake made. You have a period of time to be your best. One mistake doesn’t cause a loss, unless you let it compound into multiple mistakes.

It’s a long game filled with plenty of ups & downs. There is hardly ever going to be a day that is absolutely perfect. Mistakes happen for every human trying to lose fat and every team trying to win a game. The important aspect is that you’re doing the “right” things most of the time and not letting the imperfections compound into a loss.

The Offense & Defense of Fat Loss

A girl that I used to date said it best:

 “All they need to do is make their shots and stop the other team from scoring.”

When you say it like that, it makes basketball quite simple.

To take this one simple step further, making shots is what you do on offense and stopping the other team from scoring is what you do on defense. Simple.

There’s an offense and a defense to losing fat.

What I’m about to say is going to be the most difficult to understand in this entire post. So stick with me.

To lose weight you need to be in a calorie deficit. 

Think of a calorie deficit as winning a basketball game.

To win a game, you need to make shots than the other team, or stop the other team from scoring as much.

In order to win the fat loss game (be in a calorie deficit), you need to either:

1.      Eat less calories than are needed to stay at the same body weight

OR

2.      Burn enough calories, from exercise, that puts you into a calorie deficit.

**Hint: Those most successful with fat loss typically have a combination of both.**

Offense equals Exercising

In basketball, when you focus on offense, you are focused on getting the basketball in the hoop.

Being a good offensive team is beneficial because the more you can score, it becomes less important to play stingy defense at all times.

The more you do it/practice it, or better you are at it, you don’t have to be as strict with your nutrition (defense) in order to see results.

There Are Different Strategies

Every basketball team plays offense differently. Some focus primary on shooting three-pointers, others want to get closer to the basketball more often, and some are a balanced mix of both.

Similar to offense, you can exercise in many different ways. You can focus more on lifting or cardio, or a balanced mix of both. There is truly not one singular way to exercise that is objectively better than the other. It’s more about what you can stick with, and enjoy, to be successful.

You Still Have To Play Defense

However, it’s risky to put all of your focus on offense because there are games where you’re simply not going to make shots.

Putting all of your focus on workouts, and not really worrying about nutrition (defense) is risky. There are days where your workouts just aren’t going to be that good, or miss a workout. If you don’t put any focus on nutrition (defense), and put all of your efforts towards offense (exercising), you’re going to be easily defeated when things don’t go as planned.

Defense equals Nutrition

In all actuality, you could do a minimal amount on offense and if you don’t let the other team score, you can win the game.

Realistically, you could do zero exercise and if you’re nutrition is strict as hell, you’re going to lose fat.

You Have To Take Something Away

On defense, you’re trying to limit the other team from going over a certain amount of points, by taking away something they do well.

When you’re dieting, you have to take away some “unhealthy” items from your diet in order to see progress.

Here’s an example…

You’re playing a really good three point shooting team. In order to limit the points they score, you need to try to stop them from taking as many three point shots.

When you’re trying to lose fat, there are going to be some items that are slowing your progress. Like pizza. To lose fat, you’re going to have to take away a portion of that pizza from your normal routine.

It’s Not Easy

You have to be able to play good defense even when you are going against an elite player. You have to game plan, focus in, and be disciplined to slow that player down.

There are unexpected events that get thrown into your life, that could interfere with your fat loss progress. To name a few, think about these: weddings, a night out with friends, Friday donuts at work, a big bowl of chips and salsa at your favorite Mexican restaurant. The list could go on longer than LeBron has been in the NBA.

Despite the different situations that you are put in, discipline comes in to play.

It’s easy to say “Hey, don’t get James Harden drive to the basketball with his left hand”. It’s a lot more challenging to go out there and actually do that on a consistent basis.

Similarly, it’s easy to come up with a game plan for what meals you’re going to eat throughout the day. However, that game plan becomes difficult when you actually get to your favorite Mexican restaurant and they bring out the chips and salsa before you order.

It’s not easy to be disciplined in these challenging situations. But to be successful, it’s a must.

Finding A Balance:

The level of perfection required to see success by focusing solely on either offense (workouts) or defense (nutrition) is unrealistic to expect on a regular basis. Find some type of balance between the two is essential.

In order to win a game, you need some balance of offense and defense. Obviously, you can be focused more on one aspect than the other. But to win the game, you have to score and you have to play some type of defense.

Sure, your defense (nutrition) could be impeccable or you could be the best three-point shooting team ever (aka a workout beast). But if you are completely neglecting one side of the equation, then you’re going to be in a bad position when things aren’t going your way.

And for that, playing both sides of the game is important.

Summary: Keys To Success

• In order to establish yourself as a good team, you have to win more games than you lose. To be successful with fat loss, you have to string together more good days than bad days to see progress.
• There is not one objective way to lose fat or win a game. Every single person/team is different.
• You are given a certain amount of time each day to be successful. It’s about what you collectively do throughout an entire day that determines your success.
• Mistakes happen. Your response to those mistakes, specifically making sure they don’t compound into large scale mistakes, are more important than being perfect.
• Exercising is like offense. The better you are at it and/or the more often you work on it, the less you have to worry about defense (nutrition). But this isn’t the best strategy. It’s not ideal to leave your entire fat loss journey up to exercise. Also, not that sustainable either.
• Nutrition is like defense. If your defense (nutrition) is perfect, you can win the (fat-loss) game without offense (exercise). This isn’t the best plan of attack either, but it’s true.
• Having a good balance of offense and defense (workouts and nutrition) makes for the easiest path to success.

Now that we have the basics covered, I’ll be diving into more specific strategies of nutrition, training, and general fitness goals in my next few write-ups. Of course, the basketball comparisons will remain for the foreseeable future. Hopefully you’re a basketball fan!