If Your Diet Requires Willpower, You’re Doing It Wrong
I couldn't have disagreed with my dad more.
He was telling a friend about my diet, and he said "he's just got an iron will." He meant it as a compliment, I know. But he's just flat out wrong (Dad, if you're reading this, you're just flat out wrong!)
The idea that "in shape" people hate what they eat but do it anyway is a massive misconception. I'm not that disciplined or mentally tough. I've just been learning and practicing intentional eating for 15 years. When you do it right for a long enough time, you enjoy your food and every choice you make is aligned with your goals. Eating is effortless.
Put another way - if your diet requires constant willpower, you're doing it wrong.
This doesn't make sense to most people. But once it clicks, your life will be changed (just ask any of my previous 180 online coaching clients!)
3 steps to get there:
1. Track your food and your weight for 3 months
So many people go through life with ZERO concept of how many calories are in different foods, and what their maintenance calories are (i.e. how much they need to eat to neither gain nor lose weight).
This is exactly like trying to accrue $1 million dollars, but you have no idea what you make or spend. Come on, you'd have no shot.
You want to get rich, the first step is to know what you make and what you spend. You want to get lean, the first step is to know what you eat and what you burn. You gotta have a solid grasp of the fundamentals. Accurately tracking your food and seeing how your intake impacts your weight, energy, and strength in the gym is the fastest way to get there.
Yes and yes, tracking food and weight is a lot of time and work. But the payoff is well worth it.
Here's how to get started with both:
Tracking food:
Buy a food scale, about 10 bucks on Amazon. Download a free food tracking app - I use Cronometer. Weigh and track what you eat.
Tracking weight:
Buy a scale, about 20 bucks on Amazon. Weigh yourself daily, first thing in the morning after using the bathroom. Open your notes app in your phone. Record your weight and the date.
How many calories should you eat? Use a basic calculator like this for starting targets. Then, stick close to those targets and see what your weight does on average over 10-14 days. If it's not going in the direction you'd like, adjust.
Calories are most important. In second, it's a photo finish between protein and fiber...
2. Get your protein and fiber up
Everyone should be eating a minimum of .7g of protein per pound of lean bodyweight, and 20g of fiber/day. The exact targets depend on your gender/size/age/goal/training history/activity level, but these are great minimums to start with.
We can't have you constantly starving and craving. Protein and fiber defend against that.
These past few weeks I was in Portugal and Ireland, eating way less protein and fiber than usual. It amazed me how hungry I was at meals, how snacky I was between meals, and how much more appealing the scones looked compared to the fish. When I'm on my protein and fiber game, this just isn't the case. My hunger is minimal and, when it does hit, I naturally look for protein/nutrient dense foods.
You need to have a rough idea of how many calories you should be eating. This is the sole driver of weight gain, loss, or maintenance. Packing your day full of protein and fiber make it infinitely easier to hit that calorie target without hating your life.
Once you've got steps one and two down pat, then you get to...
3. Have fun and adjust along the way
You can have pizza and ice cream daily and lose fat. These foods are not inherently fattening.
However, they can make fat loss or even maintenance miserable because they're calorie dense and protein sparse. If your targets for the day are 2300 calories and 180g protein, and you spend 1200 calories on pizza and ice cream and only get 20g protein, the rest of your meals that day essentially need to be pure lean protein and veggies (egg whites, chicken breast, spinach, etc.)
That framing may make it seem like you should never have fun foods. On the contrary, it's freeing.
Using that 2300 example, you can have 1800 calories of high protein and nutrient dense foods, and still have 500 left over for two slices of pizza OR a medium blizzard OR 5-6 Reese's.
We just can't be stacking all three, see?
Cool VS Life Changing
I'm between 10-15% body fat year round. I'm happy with how I look. I don't have pain. I have fun in the gym. I rest easy at night knowing my blood markers are in a good spot. My risk for chronic disease is minimal.
AND
I can eat whatever the heck I want, every single day, with zero guilt.
Plenty of people lose fat or gain muscle, and plenty of people help people lose fat or gain muscle. That's important and valuable. But the thing, for me, that takes what I do from cool to life changing, is the freedom I give back to people.
The freedom to:
Feel great about their food choices
Do whatever they want physically
Walk into any room with confidence
That's what you get when you change your body and learn the system to do it again and again, effortlessly.
AKA, make that million smackers and invest it in a low cost index fund, so it grows while you sleep.
That's what my coaching is. If any of the above resonated, book a free call with me to see if you'd be a good fit.
Best,
John
P.S. Portugal for the beautiful wedding of great friends, then Ireland with my family. What a couple of weeks 😍
3 Steps You Can Take
Apply for coaching - If you’re ready to start, you can fill out a coaching application here (it takes 90 seconds or less). Best case, you change your life. Worst case, I’ll help you draw up a road map to get closer to your goals.
Sign up for my newsletter - If you’d like to hear more, sign up for my mailing list here.
Keep learning - You can check out my other articles here. Nobody asked me to, but I’ve spent a ton of time researching everything from artificial sweeteners to saturated fat to testosterone and more, so you don’t have to.
