I think you’ll agree with me when I say that shoving your face with cheeseburger all day won’t get you shredded. You HAVE TO take responsibility for your nutrition. After reading this article, you’ll walk away with 7 actionable bits of advice for losing fat & creating effective nutrition for weight loss
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: there is no one “best” diet. Keto fuckweasels will claim there is but this always happens with extremists…
The fact is, the best diet is the one you can stick to. Studies show1, minor differences in diets, such as the macronutrient ratio, specific food choices, or what type of carbohydrates you eat don’t matter a click if a caloric deficit is applied.
So instead of getting bogged down on the details of the latest FAD diet, focus on the COMMONALITIES between effective eating approaches.
If you’re wondering what those commonalities are, here’s a rundown of what we are going to talk about:
1. Nutrition For Weight Loss Is Sustainable
Have you ever tried any of these?
- Eliminating all carbs;
- Or fats;
- Eliminating animal products;
- Avoiding gluten, sugar, toxins, soy, processed food;
- Cutting calories to the inhumanely low 1200.
You need to realize that achieving significant weight loss is not the end goal. The ultimate goal is the MAINTENANCE of the results.
If you can’t sustain the methods you used to lose weight, then weight regain is inevitable. If you lost weight eliminating carbs, you should be doing the same until the end of your days (a pipe dream…).
Your nutrition plan should help you eat fewer calories, fewer junk foods, and more whole foods. But in a way that fits around your life as much as possible because sustainability is literally the make-or-break factor in the success of ANY diet.
Sustainability is the cornerstone of a BALANCED diet that allows you to both enjoy the way you eat and also achieve your weight loss goals. Take a look at this picture showing how you can enjoy “fun“ foods without feeling like you have sold yourself to weight loss slavery:
Continuing in this vein, here are ways to improve sustainability that I talk about in How To Lose Weight In 40 Pages book:
- Individualized Food Choice
Long-term adherence to a diet is impossible if you eliminate foods you like. This seems like a “well, duh” statement, but it’s often overlooked;
- Individualized Macronutrient Distribution
Fat and carbohydrate intake should be determined by your personal preference and not by the DIET! If you prefer carbs, restrict fat intake and vice versa;
- Educate Yourself
Increasing education levels in nutrition was associated with higher adherence in at least two studies that I know of.
Read this article on how to create your own diet plan that’s SUSTAINABLE.
2. Nutrition For Weight Loss Controls Energy Balance
I don’t give two shits about the fact that I’m like a broken record repeating myself in every article that calorie deficit is KEY. If you don’t have this in your diet, nothing else matters. It’s that important.
There hasn’t been a single case of someone disproving the first law of thermodynamics since the dawn of time. If there was, the Nobel prize would be guaranteed. You lose weight by burning more calories than you eat. Period.
Sure, some charlatans will try to convince you that it’s all about ketosis, fasting, insulin or carbs.
Because of people like these, we now have an entire generation of dieters swearing off dairy, wheat, sugar because it “should” aid in weight loss. As a result, behaviors like binge eating and overeating are on the rise in seemingly healthy people.
With that being said, do yourself a favor and take the LAW of energy balance seriously. This is the one thing that you can’t violate if you wish to drop pounds from your frame.
If you don’t know how to create negative energy balance or have no clue how much you should be eating in the first place, shoot me an email at info@abscience.com and we’ll figure it out together.
For more about that read the “order of priorities for fat loss” article.
3. Nutrition For Weight Loss Gives You Nutrients
I talk A LOT about food quantity being the key driver for weight loss but this doesn’t mean that you can eat like you are on your way to an electric chair.
Quality AFFECTS quantity.
You also hear me preaching on the 80/20 rule. It states that 80 percent of your nutrition should be whole and minimally processed foods you like. 20 percent can come from “fun” foods.
This number isn’t just out of the blue. World Health Organization states that even with 20-25% of your daily calories coming from highly processed foods, you are still able to get nutrients your body requires.
So, you want your diet to be based mostly around whole foods or, as James Fell calls it, “foods that love you back”. You need to love food that loves you back.
Food that loves you back is food that tastes good, is filling, fuels physical activity and doesn’t cause you to overeat. Food that does not love you back is not filling and you have a hard time controlling intake.
My approach is about focusing more on the former and much less on the latter.
4. Nutrition For Weight Loss Helps You Feel & Perform Your Best
Have you ever tried lifting weights on a low-carb diet? Well, I did. It’s rubbish! Not to mention I was a shitnugget to the people around me. It’s safe to say the low-carb diet isn’t for me.
Unsustainable, therefore, rubbish.
If you jump on one of those FAD diets and feel seven different kinds of shitty, drop it! It’s not for you. Just because you want to lose weight, your diet shouldn’t be unbearable suffering. You don’t have to file it in under “shit happens” and try your best to suffer through it.
If there was enough flexibility in your diet, you wouldn’t have to deal with cravings, binge eating, and overeating that I talked about in a “binge eating” article.
Have your workouts declined once you started dieting? Bring back carbohydrates.
Are you constantly in a shitty mood, sleeping poorly? Bring back carbohydrates.
Are you binge eating? Your diet is too rigid or you have fallen for dichotomous thinking toward food.
Proper nutrition should not only help you eat what you like but it should also take into account your social and family life as well as progressive workouts.
5. Nutrition For Weight Loss Involves Awareness
Weight loss is a learning process. Learning what your body prefers as a fuel source, what calorie intake is sufficient specifically for you.
It’s also a process of educating yourself about calories, macronutrients, hunger and appetite control, tracking food intake.
Like I said in my book, that’s exactly why I am not a fan of keto diet as a weight loss tool. Yes, it forces you to eat fewer junk foods, more whole foods, and often fewer calories, but it teaches you NOTHING.
Also, keto isn’t superior for weight loss…
It only asks for you to eliminate carbohydrates and stuff your face with fats. That’s it. All you’ve got left with are the rules and restrictions that you can’t break or else ketosis will be a type of miracle like an image-of-the-Virgin-Mary-in-a-grilled-cheese-sandwich miracle.
You learn nothing about portion control, eating out or the way your body reacts to certain ratios of carbs and fats.
That’s why love flexible eating. It’s based on the things you love eating and it doesn’t delineate between “clean” or “dirty” foods.
Don’t like kale? Don’t eat it. Do you prefer white potatoes over sweet potatoes? Perfectly fine. There are no hard rules except a few general guidelines:
- Eat mostly (80%) whole foods;
- Prioritize protein intake;
- Eat in a caloric deficit (if your goal is weight loss).
As I said, there is no “best” diet. There is no one-size-fits-all approach for each person.
However, flexible eating is as close to that as any diet approach will ever be. It teaches awareness of what’s in your food, proper food portions, the importance of energy balance. It also takes into account your social, cultural and religious ideologies.
Over my 10 years of coaching, I have never had a client who couldn’t stick to it long-term. NONE!
If you are lost in rigid dieting and don’t know where to start with flexible eating, reach out! Get in touch with me at info@absscience.com
6. Nutrition For Weight Loss Promotes Regular Exercise
I mentioned my attempt to go low-carb (which ended up miserably).
That was way back when I was still in college. As I said, since I eliminated carbs, my workouts suffered. Weights went down. Big time. I wasn’t looking forward to going to the gym, to say the least. It was so bad that I wished to just speed up global warming and get it over with.
Proper nutrition should reinforce exercising, which improves diet, which… creates a virtuous cycle. When it comes to health and fitness, would you rather be in a virtuous cycle or a death spiral?
I would rather jack my dick off with sandpaper than go low-carb ever again!
Learn from my failure and eat in a way that would help you progress in the gym. In a way that you would be able to recover from your workouts.
Focus on foods that give you ENERGY (carbs) and promote RECOVERY (protein). Adhering to that kind of eating is a cakewalk.
7. Nutrition For Weight Loss Is Outcome-Based
We know that your goal is to lose weight, right? That said, nutrition should be tailored accordingly. You can’t just eat “healthy” and expect to get ripped. It’s pure fantasy. Way too many dieters failed miserably doing this.
Since the outcome you want is weight loss, nutrition should provide tools to achieve exactly that. Here is what you would do:
- Make sure you are eating fewer calories than you are expending consistently over time by making better dietary choices;
- Get enough protein;
- Lifts weights and do a little cardio frequently;
- Get more active outside the gym;
- Find a way to do the above that’s as easy, convenient, practical, and SUSTAINABLE as possible.
If your goal is to get as strong as possible, you won’t be following keto diet.
Want to prepare for a marathon? Carb loading would benefit.
Build muscle? Focus on protein and carbs. A cookie-cutter diet like keto won’t do (unless you’re a complete beginner).
If you google “nutrition for weight loss,” you get 813 million results that highlight words such as “magic” and “miracle,” plus Dr. Oz flogging octopus spleens to burn belly fat.
Truth is, proper nutrition for weight loss can only be achieved when MULTIPLE factors are taken into account. It’s not just “cut carbs” or “follow keto.”
Incorporating these 7 strategies into your nutrition will make it nearly IMPOSSIBLE to not follow it long-term. After all, life is too long to spend most of it on a miserable diet.
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