60-Day Challenge
This 60-day challenge is designed to drop body fat, which means you need to create a calorie deficit. At the same time, to facilitate potential muscle growth, you need to keep your protein intake high.
- Energy intake for fat loss
- Nutrient intake for muscle growth
Both of these objectives conveniently intersect, but fat loss comes first.
Creating a calorie deficit for fat loss is easy.
You can do this easily by starving yourself. If you stop eating, you’ll create a calorie deficit rather quickly.
Don't starve yourself.
There are many reasons you shouldn’t starve yourself, one of the bigger ones being food is more than energy. Food is also nutrients. And nutrients are just as important as energy for survival. Even pants-pooping preschoolers know pirates died of scurvy and not starvation.
The list of nutrients your body needs is long. The ones that get the most press are known as the macronutrients. The macronutrients are the talk of the town because they’re the only nutrients that contain energetic material, with the rule of thumb being:
- Proteins: 4 calories / gram
- Carbs: 4 calories / gram
- Fats: 9 calories / gram
People love micromanaging their macronutrient intake with the precision of a spider spinning a web, meaning they strive to eat a certain amount of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates every single day. In some sense, micromanaging your macronutrients is the gold standard, but the process can be rather overwhelming.
Training is easy. You block off a ten-minute portion of your day and do the work. Diet is hard. Food is tied to so many parts of your life. This is why I begin with a lazy approach, which has three pillars.
First.
Drink mostly water.
Or, at minimum, beverages without calories. Most sugary soft drinks are chock full of energetic material. Not good. Drinking things is much different than eating things. Liquids bypass most of our satiety circuitry. This is why I’m not a huge fan of “healthy” drinks, like green smoothies. The ingredients may be healthy, but you’d never eat the ingredients of a smoothie the way you drink them.
Here’s the recipe for a green smoothie:
1 cup pineapple chunks
1 ripe banana
1 cup frozen mango cubes
1 cup coconut milk
4 cups baby spinach
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3–4 tablespoons flax meal or chia seeds
You blend these ingredients and suck down the resultant liquid without thought. Would you ever eat all of these solid ingredients as a meal? Doubt it…
Turning liquids into solids is fun. If you drink a small bottle of Mountain Dew, you’re eating fourteen tablespoons of sugar. Eating fourteen tablespoons of sugar is similar to eating two potatoes, from a macronutrient standpoint. People drink Mountain Dew as they eat dinner. Would you eat two potatoes as you ate dinner?
When solid food becomes liquid food, you put things into your body you otherwise wouldn’t.
Water is ideal, but realistic beats idealistic. There are sensible low-calorie beverages that aren’t water, like black coffee and plain tea. There are also sugar-free sodas and flavored seltzer waters. Studies show artificial sweeteners aren’t the wretched hive of scum and villainy people once thought they were.
Question:
Take a look at what you drink. Are you staying hydrating? Is your pee a pale yellow color? Or are you drinking energetic material and peeing neon mustard colors and radioactive Oompa Loompa colors?
Second.
Eat mostly Mother Nature’s food.
There’s no hard definition of Mother Nature’s food, which makes this more confusing than it should be. Here are two useful heuristics to keep in mind:
First, 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, fishes, berries, nuts, seeds, roots, grains, and plants.
Second, Mother Nature’s food doesn’t have ingredients, mother nature’s food is ingredients. What are the ingredients of a peach pie? Peaches are one of them, but there are more. What are the ingredients of a peach? Or a chicken thigh? There are none, save for the food itself.
These two heuristics aren’t perfect. Poison ivy is found in nature. Sugar doesn’t have ingredients. You shouldn’t make tea with poison ivy leaves. You shouldn’t sweeten everything you eat.
Being unable to discretely define Mother Nature’s food isn’t the end of the world because no food (to my knowledge) will permanently halt fat loss… but eating ultra-processed foods will make it harder to lose fat.
If Mother Nature’s foods are on one end of the spectrum, ultra-processed foods are on the other. Ultra-processed foods are Frankenstein foods designed to hack our taste buds for perpetual consumption. They are (usually) manufactured in a lab and don’t resemble the ingredients from which they are created. Like, uhh, protein bars! And cereals, chips, candies, cakes, and crackers…
Current research suggests you’re more likely to overeat ultra-processed foods. You’ll have an easier time getting lean if you eat mostly Mother Nature’s food. Also, Mother Nature’s food tends to contain a variety of nutrients. You need nutrients… unless you want to grow a goiter.
In general, 80% of your food intake should consist of Mother Nature’s food (and her limited processed variants). The remaining 20% can creep into the overly processed world if desired and in whatever way best suits your personality.
Question:
Take a look at what you eat. Are you eating fresh fruits? Plants? Meats? Fish? Nuts? Or are you eating laboratory experiments stuffed inside of vacuum-sealed plastic bags?
Third.
Eat leans and greens.
Underneath the umbrella of Mother Nature’s food, there are certain foods that contain more energy and certain foods that contain less energy. Based on the calories-per-gram breakdown of each macronutrient, you’d be inclined to say proteins and carbs contain less energy; they have less than half the energy as fats.
You’d be right.
You’d also be wrong.
Overt calorie yield doesn’t tell the whole story. For instance, the chemical soup leftover after your body digests proteins isn’t ideal energy recycling material. Your body can and will use the broken bits and bytes for energy when necessary, but, when given the choice, your body would rather use carbohydrates and/or fats for energetic purposes.
Proteins also have a higher thermic effect than both carbs and fats, which is to say: proteins require more energy to digest. In other words, fats and carbs yield more calories than proteins, even when eaten in the same (exterior) caloric quantity.
Eating plenty of proteins will help you control your energy intake.
Unfortunately, you can’t eat proteins. Macronutrients aren’t foods. There’s no such thing as “protein.” There are only foods.
Some foods contain proteins. Many of these same foods also contain “other.” Proteins may not be easily converted to body fat, but “other” probably will be. Peanut butter is a great example.
Wellness websites with pastel color schemes often list peanut butter as a good source of protein, but the overwhelming majority of peanut butter ISN’T protein. Here are the specific nutrition facts, according to Google, per one serving (two tablespoons):
Fat: 16 grams
Carbs: 6 grams
Protein: 8 grams
In order to get 100 grams of protein via peanut butter, you’d have to eat around 12 servings (two tablespoons is one serving), which would also amass 192 grams of fat and 2256 total calories.
Peanut butter contains protein, but it’s not protein-dense. In order to keep energy yield low and food intake high(er), you should stick with lean proteins.
Lean proteins.
Foods that contain mostly proteins are lean proteins.
Here are examples of lean proteins: white meat chicken breast, tuna, lean turkey (breast), buffalo, elk, mahi-mahi, pork tenderloin, venison, scallops, shrimp, 90% lean or higher beef, greek yogurt, etc…
Chubby proteins.
Foods with a decent amount of proteins alongside a decent amount of energetic material are chubby proteins.
Here are examples of non-lean proteins: pulled pork, dark meat turkey, cottage cheese, dark meat chicken, sardines, salmon, plain unsweetened yogurt, eggs…
Purgatory proteins.
Foods that contain a small number of proteins alongside a decent amount of energetic material are purgatory proteins.
Look at black beans:
- Serving: 1/2 cup
- Calories: 114
- Protein: 8 grams
- Fats: 0 grams
- Carbs: 20 grams
Look at almonds:
- Serving: 1/4 cup
- Calories: 170
- Proteins: 6g
- Fats: 15g
- Carbs: 5g
Eating these foods for proteins is rather silly from the outside looking in, although it may not be as silly as it appears on paper thanks to fiber.
Fiber.
Fiber is a type of carbohydrate your body can’t digest, which means fiber can’t be used for energy-recycling purposes. There are 20 grams of carbs in 1/2 cup of black beans, but 7 of those 20 grams come from fiber. In other words, black beans only have 13 grams of “useable” carbs, which means they don’t yield as many carbs (and thus, calories) as the raw numbers suggest.
(Still, even after accounting for fiber, black beans are still a non-lean protein…)
Carbs.
Since you’re (now) familiar with fiber, this shouldn’t be surprising: not all carbs are equal. When you think of “carbs,” you probably think of starchy-sugary carbs.
Examples of starchy-sugary carbs: potatoes, oats, rice, grains, starches, pasta, bread, flour-based products, corn, apples, bananas, oranges, lemons, limes, kiwis, grapefruits, kumquats, berries, pears, pineapples, grapes, etc…
There’s a big difference between starchy-sugary carbs and non-starchy carbs.
Examples of non-starchy carbs: broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, cabbage, lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, celery, eggplant, onions, asparagus, sprouts, lettuce, mushrooms, spinach, zucchini…
Non-starchy carbs are complex fibrous carbs with a skewed volume-to-energy ratio.
Check this out:
- 200g raw broccoli = 68 cals.
- 200g red potatoes = 178 cals.
You can eat three times the amount of broccoli (in volume) as you can potatoes, for the same caloric yield without even factoring out fiber. Chances are, if you go H.A.M. on broccoli, you’re going to hit a substantial point of fullness (or boredom) before you’re able to amass a bunch of energy.
Most non-starchy carbohydrates follow the same trend: They have a low energy yield per their volume and they’re loaded with fiber and other beneficial nutrients. You can eat a lot of them without worrying about amassing excess energetic material.
If you eat lean proteins and non-starchy carbs you will keep your energy consumption to a minimum.
Sort of like how you’ll automatically keep your spending on a leash if you shop at DollarTree instead of Best Buy.
Question:
Are you eating plants and proteins? Specifically lean proteins? Or are you plowing a bunch of energy into your piehole?