You should have a basic understanding fat loss science thanks to Skinny-Fat Secrets.
From here, the “gold standard” is (a) calculating how many calories you should eat on a daily basis, (b) delegating those calories across the three macronutrients, (c) creating meals in accordance to your macronutrient numbers, (d) develop different meal plans for different days of the week, etc…
If you’re drop-dead serious about changing your body composition, you will find your way to the gold standard.
But.
You can squeak by without such a stiff collar. For a little while. And that’s what I’m going to show you how to do right now, just in case weighing and tracking your food intake sounds less enjoyable than getting a blowjob from a crocodile.
I’m going to show you how to “nerf” fat loss nutrition, which is to say: I’m going to show you some simple and practical things that will trigger fat loss.
Even if you intend on going “gold standard,” you should read through these “nerfed” suggestions. You will learn some important things that will resurface later.
Let’s begin.
First, eat mostly Mother Nature’s food.
As mentioned in Skinny-Fat Secrets, food is more than energy. Food is also nutrients. Your body needs both. For fat loss, the name of the game is avoiding “empty” calories, which are foods that contain a ton of energy and very little nutritional impact. I’m talking about “junk” foods, like candies, chips, crackers, and cakes.
If you load up on energetic foods that don’t have much nutritional yield, you’ll be on the fast track to belly blubber. Not to mention, “junk” foods are made in a lab and designed to hack your tastebuds and make you prone to overeat. There’s a reason the Pringles don’t stop once you pop.
This isn’t to say you can’t eat “junk” foods ever again, just that you should be eating mostly Mother Nature’s food.
Mother Nature’s food tends to be nutrient plentiful. And eating Mother Nature’s food is the best way to handle the sub-macronutrient situation without obsessing over the sub-macronutrient situation.
Question:
What the heck is Mother Nature’s food?
Unfortunately, there’s no universal definition for “Mother Nature’s food,” which makes categorization impossible. Here are two useful heuristics to keep in mind:
YES TO NATURE
Mother Nature’s food can be found in nature. Things that run, hop, jump, and fly. Things that once had a heartbeat. Things sprouting from the ground. Things growing from trees. Things like: fruits, meats, organs, eggs, fish, berries, nuts, seeds, roots, grains, and vegetables.
NO TO INGREDIENTS
Mother Nature’s food doesn’t have ingredients; Mother Nature’s food is ingredients. What are the ingredients of a chicken pot pie? Chicken is one of them, but there are more. What about a peach pie? Peaches are one of them, but there are more. What are the ingredients of a peach? Of a hunk of chicken? There are none, save for the food itself.
These heuristics aren’t perfect (no heuristic is). Sugar doesn’t have ingredients, yet you shouldn’t stuff sugar into your mouth. Poison ivy is found in nature, yet you shouldn’t eat position ivy.
Still, it’s a decent start… and pinning an exact definition on Mother Nature’s food isn’t the end of the world, because no food (to my knowledge) will permanently halt fat burning or muscle building.
Which is why I don’t say you can’t eat junk food. Think 80-90% Mother Nature’s food (and her limited processed variants). The other 10-20% can creep into processed world if needed, in whatever way best suits your personality (more on this later).
You should be eating fresh foods in favor of processed Frankenstein foods. You should also be…
drinking mostly water. Or, at minimum, beverages without calories. Most sugary soft drinks are chock full of calories. Not good. Especially considering drinking things is much different than eating things.
Liquids bypass most of our satiety circuitry.
- There’s chewing.
- There’s ingestion time.
- There’s volume.
- There’s visual presentation.
This is why I’m not a huge fan “healthy” drinks, like green smoothies. Sure, the ingredients are good. And you are getting nutrients, which is also good.
But imagine reverse engineering a smoothie. Laying all of the ingredients on a table in front of you. Now imagine eating them all as they are, raw, at once, as a meal. You probably wouldn’t, would you?
If you drink a small bottle of Mountain Dew with dinner, you’re shoveling fourteen spoonfuls of sugar down your throat alongside your meal. You can go further: what the heck does fourteen spoons of sugar look like as a different food? It’s like eating two potatoes!
When solid foods become liquid foods, you shove things into your body that you otherwise wouldn’t. This is why liquids, for my money, are the at the heart of the obesity epidemic.
It’s hard to chow down 10,000+ calories of solid food day in and day out. But if you liquefy most of those calories? It’s much easier.
There are sensible low calorie beverages that aren’t water, like…
black coffee and plain tea. Beyond this, we enter the land of sugar free sodas and artificial sweeteners, which is a sticky place.
Most people that use artificial sweeteners are obese. This is a fact. The question is whether (a) obese people are using artificial sweeteners because they are obese, or (b) obese people are obese because they are using artificial sweeteners.
If you need to drink diet sodas or artificially sweetened things, drink ’em. They may not be ideal, but not everything has to be ideal. Personally, I’ve gone through stints of drinking flavored seltzer waters, like LaCroix and Ugly, to help with hunger.
Drinking water and eating non-Frankenstein foods are, I dare say, no-brainers.
Then again, based on the number of people I see eating CLIF bars and Gatorade, well, maybe not. Next lesson, well do some less obvious nerfing.