60-Day Challenge
My lazy fat loss approach can take you a long way, but there is merit in being more meticulous. For a more accurate look at what you should eat for safe and sane fat loss, enter your weight into the calculator below.
The 🥩 symbol represents 25 grams of proteins, which is around one hockey-puck-sized portion of protein-rich food (lean protein and chubby protein).
If you weigh 180 pounds, you need 7 🥩:
🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩
The ⚡ symbol represents 100 calories of energy, in the form of fats, starchy-sugary carbs, or non-lean proteins.
If you weigh 180 pounds, you need 9 ⚡:
⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡
The 🥦 represents non-starchy carbs. You can eat as many non-starchy carbs as you want; the calculator accounts for a high(ish) non-starchy carb consumption.
And so, if you weigh 180 pounds, this is your skeleton:
🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩
⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡
♾️🥦
Keep in mind, this energy intake assumes you're eating 100% lean proteins, which you may not be. Chubby proteins contain energy, so remember this:
LEAN PROTEINS = 🥩
CHUBBY PROTEINS = 🥩⚡
Chubby proteins, at their worst, contain just as much energy as they do proteins, so this symbolization is rather accurate. For every 25 grams of proteins (100 calories), you’ll get around 100 calories of energy.
How do you take these numbers and symbols and turn them into a tangible quantity of real food?
This is not an exact science and is very subjective, but here’s a framework you can follow:
First, set your frequency.
Meal frequency (how many meals you eat), meal timing (when you eat meals), and peri-workout nutrition (eating different types of foods around training times) aren’t NEARLY as important as you think they are.
When I first started, I ate 6-8 meals every day. Now I only eat 1-2 meals every day. What matters most is your overall daily food intake. As such, you should make your feeding framework convenient and familiar. Adjusting meal timing is a huge behavioral modification. If you are a devout breakfast eater (as I once was), then any kind of plan that eliminates breakfast will be met with considerable resistance. Not worth the hassle.
Usually, the most lifestyle-friendly strategy is the one you’re already using. If you’re currently eating three meals, stick with three meals. If you’re eating six and you enjoy eating six, stick with six. If you’re still confused by this and hoping a third example will make things clearer, I don’t have high hopes for you.
Second, spitball foods.
Make a list of foods you can see yourself buying and eating on a regular basis within each category. You can see my genuine answers below.
Lean proteins: canned tuna, chicken breast, ground turkey
Chubby proteins: cottage cheese, ground beef, eggs, yogurt, chicken thighs
Fats: cheeses, oils, nuts
Starchy-sugary carbs: fruits, rice, pasta, potatoes
Again, this is subjective. These are foods I enjoy eating that also fit my budget. If your list(s) didn’t look different, I’d be worried.
Third, spitball meals.
You know how many meals you’re gonna eat and when you’re gonna eat them. You also know what foods you’re gonna eat. Now you need to create meals.
I don’t know what you enjoy eating. I don’t know your financial situation. I don’t know what foods are readily available around you. I’m not gonna give you cookie-cutter templates with shopping lists and recipes.
Centering every feeding around proteins is a good rule of thumb, but your meals can vary based on whatever helps you stay consistent. Let’s say I’m eating four meals. I weigh 205 pounds. This is my daily allowance:
🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩
⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡
♾️🥦
I could split my intake up rather evenly like this:
Breakfast: 🥩🥩⚡⚡⚡🥦
Lunch: 🥩🥩⚡⚡🥦
Dinner: 🥩🥩⚡⚡⚡🥦
Snack: 🥩🥩⚡⚡🥦
But I like eating a bigger dinner, so I’m better off keeping my energy intake throughout the day low(er), which would look something like this:
Breakfast: 🥩🥩⚡🥦
Lunch: 🥩⚡🥦
Dinner: 🥩🥩🥩⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡🥦
Snack: 🥩🥩⚡⚡🥦
In the end, however, it doesn’t matter how you split things up.
For me, meals generally follow a rather simple template: PROTEINS+PLANTS+OTHER, with “OTHER” being either starchy-sugary carbs or fats. I’m not anti-fat or anti-carb. Both are energy. That’s all they are. Neither will prevent fat loss; the only thing that matters is keeping your energy under control, to the point of creating a consistent calorie deficit.
In the name of fat loss, you generally want to keep OTHER to a minimum, so many meals start as PROTEINS+PLANTS, with OTHER as an afterthought… especially considering OTHER usually finds its way into my meals non-deliberately. The grease put in the pan before frying eggs is ⚡. The chicken thighs I bake for dinner contain ⚡…
So you're not left in the dark, here’s an example of how I’d put my symbols into three meals.
Breakfast
Six eggs cooked with olive oil 🥩🥩⚡⚡
Banana ⚡
Lunch
Can of tuna 🥩
Whey protein shake 🥩
Apple ⚡
Carrots 🥦
Dinner
Two chicken thighs 🥩🥩⚡⚡
Steamed veggies 🥦
Small bowl of rice ⚡
Cottage cheese 🥩🥩⚡⚡
Blueberries ⚡
There’s a lot of nuance within this “bland” example. I'd use spices, herbs, and condiments to make these meals tastier.
Spices and herbs have minimal calories. Same can be said for some condiments, like hot sauce and mustard, but some condiments are chock full of calories. Salad dressings, for instance, are usually full of fat and sugar.
You have to account for EVERYTHING you eat, which is one of the reasons eating restaurant food is “dangerous.” You can’t really tell the difference between potatoes fried in one tablespoon of oil versus ten tablespoons of oil. You never really know how a food is prepared, which means you never know its caloric yield.
Cooking your own food is your best bet, as is keeping most of your meals consistent. For instance, eat the same breakfast and lunch, but vary your dinner. This creates a routine and fosters consistency. You know what to buy at the supermarket every week. You find out how to prepare and cook your meals in a time-efficient matter. Everything becomes more habitual, and thus easier.
Of course, this is just a suggestion and by no means law. What matters most is eating your allowed quantity of food within each category on a daily basis. How you do it matters less than doing it; the category is more important than the food (for now).
If this seems overwhelming, you can weave these ideas into a lazier approach.
Use the symbols to decode your current meals. For instance, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich looks like this:
400 calories of peanut butter
⚡⚡⚡⚡
Two slices of bread
⚡⚡
Jelly
1/2 ⚡
As you can see, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches aren't a great option for fat loss. Regardless, once you decode your meals, you'll have an idea of how much energy you currently consume. And, chances are, you'll be able to gauge your current fat loss potential based on how many ⚡ there are relative to how many ⚡ you're allowed.
If there's a huge disparity, you can eliminate ⚡ or replace ⚡ with 🥩 and/or 🥦 without making huge changes to your current diet. Of course, there's a chance your current diet deserves to be in a dumpster; you may not be able to tweak your way to six-pack abs.
The last concern with a proper diet pertains to “cheating.”
“Cheating” is the colloquial term for eating something you know you probably shouldn’t — something with minimal (or no) nutritional value. As mentioned, 80% of your intake should consist of fresh(er) foods from Mother Nature. The remaining 20% can creep into “junk food” territory in a way that best suits your personality.
There are two ways you can do this.
First, give yourself a small allowance every day. According to the calculator, my 205-pound self should eat 2500 calories, which means I have 200ish calories at my disposal, to eat something that’s less about nourishment and more about enjoyment. In other words, I can use two of my lightning bolts ⚡⚡ on Moose Tracks ice cream (or whatever).
Second, use your 20% one day of the week. This is known as a cheat day. You stay rock-solid six days of the week, eating 100% nourishing foods. One day, however, you let loose and eat mostly junk foods, although you should still (try to) respect your calorie ceiling.