Dieting always seemed confusing. From the clickbait articles of “10 Foods to Manage Diabetes” to obscure quack medications and myriad of supplement and “easy fixes”. We live in the internet age and good information has to be out there for anything you want to learn. Dieting should not have any mystique around it.
I’ve spent over 6 months digging for information. I’ve lost 40lbs! Here is what I would tell my younger self to get started. I condensed it down into 4 major steps:
Step 1 – Goals -Why do you want to diet?
The scale read 243lbs. Dizzy spells and random chest pain were the norm. Most days, my mind would shut down because my body was grinding to a screeching halt. If I stayed on that path, I am sure I would not be here now.
This was my reason for dieting in September 2022. I could blame the Covid pandemic. I could blame my job. But the truth was I let myself get this unhealthy. Not anyone else.
Everyone has more control over their life than they believe. From my own experience, most people kind of just walk into their problems by not paying attention to their decisions each day until the consequences show up! It happened to me. And this happens to most people when they end up with a bad habit that they need to fix!
The first thing you need to do is accept that your health is your responsibility. It is not the fault of your parents, society, your job, or your romantic partner. This is between you to your future self. Your future self will either thank you or curse you for your actions today.
I want you to write down your goals and ask yourself “Why are you going through the trouble of dieting?”. This needs to be ironclad or else complacency will get you.
So, why do you want to diet? If you’re not sure about your goal, just pretend a good friend is asking you for some more details. Write down your goal somewhere and take a look at what you wrote everyday.
Step 2 – Good Info -Which diet is the best one?
You may have heard of these diets:
- Keto / Atkins
- Carnivore
- Paleo
- Vegan/Vegetarian
- Pescatarian
- Mediterranean
- Weight Watchers/Nutrisystem
So which one do you pick? Here is the secret. They all work. These diets rely on cutting out junk and focusing on their own version of clean food.
Of course, there is a lot more information. Too many details actually.
So here is what I did. I asked myself: “If I had to pick someone that is successful with dieting, who would I copy?”
The answer, bodybuilders.
Bodybuilders focus 24/7 on their body at the gym and their diet at home to prepare and show off for a competition. Maybe not everything they do is healthy, but their effectiveness in dieting is undeniable. They walk the walk.
So what do bodybuilders have to say? What do they do?
Step 3 – Actionable Advice – Just do this
If you look at what a bodybuilder eats, you’ll find a lot of the diets I listed have these clean foods. Pick 1 or 2 from each section and slowly add them into your own diet.
1) Eat More Protein:
- Eggs or just the egg whites
- Greek Yogurt (highly recommend)
- Kefir (yogurt milkshake)
- Cottage cheese
- Protein Bars/Shakes
- Fish, Chicken, Lean Beef (Sirloin), Turkey
- High Quality Tofu, Chickpeas, Beans, Lentils
2) Eat Cleaner Carbs (adjust based on your activity level):
- Oatmeal
- Baked Potatoes
- Yams or Sweet Potatoes
- Sourdough or Whole Wheat toast (only 1 or 2 slices)
- Wild Rice
- Fresh fruit
- Fresh Veggies (Broccoli, Carrots, Cauliflower, etc.)
- Salads (Small amount of Olive oil, vinegar and salt only for dressing)
- Honey (small amounts)
- White Rice (small amounts)
- Pasta with extra protein (small amounts)
3) Eat Cleaner Fats (but not too much):
- Eggs Yolks
- Avocados and Avocado Oil
- Olive oil
- Butter from grass-fed cows
- Ghee
- Beef tallow
- 90%+ cocoa dark chocolate
4) Cut Out Junk:
- No Fried Food
- Little to no Alcohol
- Little to no mayo, salad dressing, vegetable oil, canola oil, corn oil, soybean oil, rapeseed oil
- Little to no empty carbs like candy, chips, soda with refined sugar.
5) Miscellaneous Tips:
- Go to the gym! A weight training program to build muscle makes you healthier, look and feel better. Plus as a bonus, muscles let you eat more! The more muscles you have, the more calories(energy) your body burns to maintain itself. This gives you even more flexibility with your diet.
- Go food shopping after eating so you’re not tempted to buy junk.
- Only shop the grocery section of your store (dairy, meat, produce aisles). Don’t walk anywhere near the chips and candy if you don’t have to. Don’t buy the candy near the register.
- Check if you have a farmers market near you. You can find cheap fruits and vegetables. Maybe even better quality or cheaper meat and dairy. Or farm fresh eggs.
- If you have an uncontrollable sweet tooth, you can get away with diet sodas and juice, and zero sugar gum.
- Cut down on alcohol. If you really want to drink. The best option I found is vodka and diet soda or seltzers. Or only drink once a week max. Otherwise, cut out drinking entirely.
Why does this work? Well, the goal of these diets is to get as much “nutrition” (vitamins, minerals, etc.) from your clean food while cutting down the calories (energy) your body doesn’t need right now (junk food).
The tips are to try and make you aware of your bad habits so you can avoid them or replace them with new good habits instead.
The next step is…
Step 4 – Audit – Am I Making Progress? Measure and Adjust
You lose weight when your body burns more calories(energy) than you eat in a day. If you do this, your body will slowly use the energy you have (fat in your body) to keep yourself going. That is how bodybuilders diet and they are pretty damn good at it.
But how to you measure your progress? Do an “audit”. You can just measure how much food your putting into your body, the same way you can keep track of your finances.
To do this, I’ve used to free version of MyFitnessPal on my smartphone (I also recommend My Macros+) and bought a $10 food scale from Walmart. Write down your weight, height, and goals on the app. Then start religiously keeping track of your meals.
Take an extra 2-3 minutes before each meal to write down what’s on your plate. One or two hardboiled eggs? Write it down.
Are you eating a few pieces of chicken? Put your plate on the scale. Turn on the scale. Put the chicken on the plate. Write the weight of the chicken in the app. Zero out the scale, then add your rice. Write down the weight of the rice in the app.
If you go out to eat, make an effort to choose the healthier option. Don’t buy fried foods. Pick out the coffee with fewer calories. Check if a restaurant menu has the calories for the meal written and put it in the app. But don’t stress out too much if you can’t stick to the diet 100% of the time. As long as it’s as close to 100% as you can reasonably get it, you’ll be fine.
Depending on how dedicated you are, you can lose 1/2lb to 2lbs per week! All it takes is measuring what you eat and going 100-500 calories under what your body uses up each day. Remember, the more slowly you adjust and then stick to your diet, the more sustainable it will be.
Measuring your foods can be tedious but it’s important. It’s like sitting down and getting your finances in order to clear up a credit card debt that keeps weighing you down. Your future self will thank you.
Eventually, you will get a feel for how much you are eating each day. Then you don’t have to track your meals. And if you stall out or start unexpectedly gaining weight again, then you can just start tracking your meals again because you already know how.
Conclusion
That’s all it takes to lose weight. It’s not glamourous. No secrets. And a lot of unnecessary information to sift through.
It just takes some dedication and responsibility to your future self. Write down your goals. Follow the people that know what there doing with dieting like a bodybuilder. Pick your nutritious foods that you want to eat, slowly add them into your diet, cut the junk, and track what your putting in your body. You will see your progress week after week on the scale in the morning.
There is a lot of information that I cut out. If you want to learn more on why the foods I listed here are “healthy”, I highly recommend the book Deep Nutrition: Why Your Genes Need Traditional Food by Dr. Catherine Shanahan (link to Amazon).
There are the even more details on the food each diet has and why people stick to them. I touched on exercise. I didn’t even mention quality sleep, grooming, sunbathing, or anything else that it connected with being healthy.
So after reading this far, I want you to start today. Why do you want to do this? Write down your goals. Get started. Then flash a bright smile to your future self.
All the best,
-Miguel
P.S. These steps don’t apply to just dieting. Any bad habit you need fixed or anything you want to improve about yourself can be tackled with this same framework and mindset. The only thing that changes are the details.
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