Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 561 - Let's Simplify Your Diet
Episode Date: July 30, 2021We definitely get caught up in the weeds when it comes to diet and nutrition because we’re nerds for this kind of stuff, but today we wanted to simplify everything so you can start here and then get... lost in more complex stuff later. Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Special perks for our listeners below! ➢Marek Health: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off the Power Project Panel! ➢Eat Rite Foods: http://eatritefoods.com/ Use code "POWERPROJECT25" for 25% off your first order, then code "POWERPROJECT" for 10% off every order after! ➢LMNT Electrolytes: http://drinklmnt.com/powerproject ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $99 Subscribe to the Power Project Newsletter! ➢ https://bit.ly/2JvmXMb Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell
Transcript
Discussion (0)
what the fuck gets me every time and then and sema left his microphone next to the computer
so it's gonna be loud no much better get my element here i haven't had it this morning
and i know why i feel a little a little uh because i'm not hydrated
gotta get that hydration in. Yeah, man. Shoot.
I am.
I'll give you something tasty to drink, you know.
You get tired of drinking water all the time.
And then plus water can kind of dilute you.
So it's nice to get those electrolytes in there and get the sodium, get the potassium in there magnesium and uh you know i because i do like low carb and
uh some fasting i'm still able to get some good pumps in the gym get some good muscle contractions
without getting a cramp yeah how about that uh that vascularity after having some element
get them veins showing.
That's definitely one of my favorite byproducts of, you know, taking some element is doing a couple of bicep curls and all of a sudden it's like, hey, I am looking pretty good right
now.
It's a cool feeling.
You know what I mean?
What flavor did you go with?
It's Naranja.
You know what that means, mi amigo?
Yep.
It means lemon juice, right?
Shut up.
It's orange.
I thought it would go orange.
I'm sipping on orange myself as well.
Yeah, but, man, people that are in prep, just every athlete,
but it's so important just because it has such a direct influence on the
way that you perform in the gym not cramping up being able to actually send the right signals to
your muscles to contract like it makes a huge difference and like even i was like right before
this episode i was like hmm why am i feeling a little bit you know kind of kind of tired
i was like oh yeah that's why you't. I always usually have one of these in
the morning, but I didn't have one this morning. I just had coffee. So let's go, let's go.
Awesome. Yeah. I mean, it was, it was funny and Seema pointed this out, uh, not too long ago,
but we, I definitely have not gone a day without element since we partnered up with element. Um,
I, we definitely, we've all had them before,
but since partnering up with them and then having Element at the ready, it's something that I do not
miss and Seema doesn't miss. Mark doesn't miss. We have it every single day and it's just,
there's a lot of benefits to it. And some of the hidden benefits that we're learning through like
user experiences has been pretty awesome as well.
But for more information or to pick some up right now, head over to drinklmnt.com slash powerproject.
You guys will see a little bit more information about how we use it, what they're all about,
and again, some of the breakdown of what the ingredients are and how it's zero sugar hydration.
It tastes incredible, and it's a zero sugar hydration tastes incredible. And it's just, uh, it's pretty
awesome. The flavors that they're coming out with lately have been just spot on, but, uh, yeah,
hit, uh, head over there right now. You can pick up a free element recharge pack. You just pay
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That's at drinklmnt.com slash powerproject.
Make sure you guys head over there right about now.
Yo, peeps.
Let's talk about simplifying some nutrition.
Let's talk about just kind of implementing a food list.
And Seema, what do you think is a good place for somebody to start when it comes to embarking on a journey of getting in better shape?
Getting in better shape. shape okay so i think one of the biggest places where most people should be starting is with the
place that everyone likes to make fun of bodybuilders for protein everyone likes to be
like oh you're protein or you're having your protein this protein about a bit of protein yeah
honestly protein is where to start just because most people are under eating protein
it's you know it's the freaking building blocks of muscle. It helps you maintain muscle.
It helps you gain muscle.
And it helps you stay full, right?
Yeah, yeah.
So I would say start there
and make sure you're getting it enough
because a lot of people
are not eating enough protein each day.
And it plays a big role
in terms of how hungry they feel,
their body composition.
So having a good list of protein in terms of foods, I think we can start there.
That's why I'd want people to start.
Getting that protein can help manage hunger, can help push down cravings.
So very simply, you want to start with protein, be protein-focused,
have protein be the priority, and then you kind of just surround your diet with the rest of the macronutrients. just forms of protein. Then there'll be things like whole eggs and cheese and red meat, salmon,
things like that. There'll be some fat calories that accompany it. And so that kind of takes care
of the fat macronutrient. You don't have to go way out of your way to consume fat because it
kind of ends up in a lot of things. But you do want to make sure that you have some sort of fatty-ish food in there so that you're not eating too low of fat.
And then in terms of carbohydrates, I mainly get my carbohydrate sources from vegetables and sometimes some fruit.
And sometimes I don't eat either one of those.
So usually my sources of energy come from protein and fat.
And I think one of the most important things that people can work on is just to go off of a food list.
Create a food list, and we're going to go over that today.
Have a food list and have that be your shopping list.
have that be your shopping list and you don't have to really worry about nutrient timing you know what you eat right before you train uh what you eat after you train um you don't have to worry
about what you eat before you go to bed and when you wake up and all these different things you
don't necessarily be focused on fasting you can eat when you're hungry you can uh eat until you're
You can eat when you're hungry.
You can eat until you're satisfied enough.
And you can kind of just do that day in and day out.
And your calories will start to balance themselves out.
This is the stuff that I've been talking about for a really long half time.
Not that there's anything wrong with counting your calories.
Not that there's anything wrong with going off of like a, you know, somebody giving you like a meal, like kind of a plan meal plan.
But I'd rather be I'd rather see people learn how they can eat so they can incorporate it and it can run can run in concert with their lifestyle rather than have it be something that's like interruptive of their lifestyle yeah and i just want to go back to the the protein first thing and i have
my ceiling fan on super high because it's getting hot so let me know if it's like too loud into the
microphone or anything like that and i can tone it down a bit but um this comes from a conversation
i was having with my wife last night we We were just randomly talking about what junior high lunch looked like and what high school lunch looked like when we had a little bit more freedom to choose what we wanted to eat.
And the options were really bad.
And this was not – I mean, like the school lunches themselves probably had you know the standard american diet in mind or whatever but i'm talking about like the like the student store or whatever you want
to call it like the snack bar like that's where we spent our money and um you know both of us
everything that we ate was 100 carbs like little to no protein you know i'm talking like cookies, pizza, fries, just like just desserts and stuff.
And in regards to like, you know, having protein first, if I could go back and put protein first, it would set me up for amazing habits that would like really help sustain my whole my my nutrition habits for the rest of my life. And so I think, you know,
um, you know, cause you know, we, we have our little kiddo here and we have Jasmine who's now
13 years old and these are things that I want to implement in their lives and I want them to,
to learn as early as possible. And so that's why it was kind of heavy on our minds. But
in regards to putting protein first, like it can really just set you up for the rest of your life to never really even have to worry about being on a diet.
You know, you just you get your protein in and everything else will kind of land where it should.
And I just want to emphasize that thing, especially for anybody that has kids.
It's like, man, if we can teach them how to get protein in first and enjoy it,
they'll never have to worry about anything
as they grow up.
They might want to have a certain focus somewhere,
which once they get that protein in,
like I said, I sound like a broken record,
but once they get that part down,
whatever they want to do after that
will just come significantly easier then.
Absolutely. When I was growing up, my, that's, that's kind of why all of this is kind
of easy for me. Cause my mom kind of set me up really well. Um, she had quite a bit of meat in
my diet. She didn't stray away from me eating meat, but I ate a lot of whole foods. I didn't
eat a lot of prepackaged foods. I didn't eat a lot of snack foods. And I think that it's, it's interesting people like we all enjoy food. We all like food
to taste good. Um, but, uh, I think that sometimes we worry too much about something being so
palatable, um, and not what it can actually do. And you can make a lot of these simple foods, meat, rice,
all this stuff. You can make it taste really good. So it doesn't need to be something that
you don't actually enjoy. But I think it would be beneficial, especially if you're starting out,
to just stick to a few foods first. Stick to a few foods and venture out. Because it's kind of
funny. When I look at what I eat on a day-to-day basis, legit, I think I can put the amount of food types of food I eat. I can put that maybe
on one hand. I eat steak, um, different cuts. I eat eggs. I eat rice every now and then. Um,
I'll have a rant. I'll have some random fruit, but I don't have any fruit in the house. It's not like I think fruit's bad. It's just I haven't bought any in a minute.
So steak, eggs, rice.
I don't have any potatoes in a minute.
But I make this food taste really good.
I'm trying to think of what else.
I have Greek yogurt from time to time.
I have milk.
There's whey protein, right?
But it's like these are the things that I eat each day.
I get a good amount of day. I get a good amount
of protein. I get a good amount of carbs. If I need carbs, I get a really good amount of fat
since I eat red meat. I get some fish and some turkey and whatever because I have the eat right
stuff. But that's pretty much what I eat. And the funny thing is, again, I don't feel like I'm
dieting ever, right? I don't feel like I'm restricting either, even though the amount of foods I eat is so simple.
So if you can just make your food list pretty simple, and then when you get bored, you can start adding some things in.
If you're truly someone who's like, I'm bored of this or I'm getting tired of eating the same thing, then you can slowly just start to add things in.
But have a primary list that you turn to and say, this is what I eat.
And then even when you go out,
you can just make sure to get some foods on that list. So if you go to a potentially like a burger
joint or something like, okay, there's going to be a bun or whatever, but just get the foods on
the menu that are on your list and just stick to that for a little bit. This is a, you know,
there's many reasons on why I'm not a huge fan of counting calories, but to me, it's intrusive into my lifestyle, and it makes things like going out, it makes it more difficult.
I understand there's apps and stuff, and people can kind of track things that way and so forth. difficult to go out to any sort of restaurant and to eat anywhere without consuming a lot of
calories, without getting an abundance of fat calories coming from the different oils and
different stuff they're going to use on a lot of your food. But one of the things that's really
easy to do at any restaurant, you could do this at, I can't even really think of places where
you wouldn't be able to do this, but you can eat very low carbohydrate at nearly every single spot. So to combat the fact
that you're going to probably get a surplus of fat, to combat the fact that you're going to
probably really just love the flavor of what it is they're cooking with and how they cooked,
how they prepared the meal, because they're going to mix ingredients at restaurants.
You can kind of take a low-carb kind of style to it,
and you can order a salad.
You can get a steak.
You can get some vegetables with it.
You can fill yourself up really well.
And again, it was like you didn't have to bring a scale with you or you didn't have to type it into your app or whatever.
Because I think over time, if you stick to a food list, if you stick to specific foods, over time, you're going to learn to eat less anyway.
Over time, you're going to learn to eat less anyway.
The foods that you're used to eating, the foods that you're used to consuming, those are foods that are normally very hyperpalatable.
They're very, very easy to overconsume calories on.
I actually think that part of the allure of counting calories is to simply allow you to eat foods that you should not be eating anyway. So I've, this is why I've been kind of
preaching about this for a long time is, Hey, let's just, let's just really, uh, disconnect
from some of those foods that we shouldn't be eating. Uh, let's, they, they are more,
they are more detrimental than we even give them credit for the amount of things that these foods are doing to us, I don't think we fully comprehend
at the moment. And I don't want to sound like a nutrition freak about it or a fitness freak about
it, but I really do think that they are detrimental. It doesn't mean that there's not,
it doesn't mean you can't have room for them. But simply getting a food list together,
but simply getting a food list together my food list is very similar to enzimas i don't even really usually eat rice just because rice is just another opportunity for me personally to overeat
so i don't eat it i stick to the foods that i know that i'm not going to overeat another example
that would be like with something like yogurt. I don't buy flavored
yogurt because I know that I'll overeat on it. So I buy plain yogurt, which is kind of disgusting.
But I've learned to kind of just like it. Sometimes I'll throw protein powder in there with it.
And it's just more protein. I eat cottage cheese, various forms of meat, eggs, fruit, vegetables, and I'll have potatoes here and there.
Yeah, butter, sour cream, you know, stuff like that, just kind of occasionally.
But that's pretty much my food list. And I, and I stick to that. And I think just to reiterate a little bit more on what you said about your
list is very short.
So if you think about anybody that's new at anything or anytime we want
adherence with anything, when somebody goes in and they're re they're really
rehabilitating their elbow or their knee or their groin or whatever,
the hip injury or something like that.
Whenever those people are successful, they're usually just given one to three things to do
so that it keeps it simple. So it's something that they can stick with for a long period of time.
You want the exact same thing with your food. You don't want it to be so bland that you cheat every
couple of days, but at the same time, you want it to be, you don't want it to be so bland that you cheat every couple days but at the same time you want it to be uh you
don't want it to be complicated or complex because you're going to probably fall apart
and not really remember what to do or how to do it and so keep those keep that food list real short
and that should be a great way for you to be successful. Yeah, going back to the strictly photography days,
I used to call it hitting base hits.
I'd have a complex shoot or something
where we'd have tons of products, tons of models,
tons of movements.
And I had this idea of what I wanted to capture,
but I had to at least get some guys on base. I had to
hit a couple of base hits just to, so that way at the end of the day, if everything went to shit,
I at least had this product shot. I had this model shot. I had this movement shot. Like I had just
the basics. So I guess if somebody is listening, they're just like, man, like, but I love food.
It's like, dude, we love food too. too but like let's hit a couple of base hits with
some of these meals let's have whether it be monster mash whether it be you know just a hamburger
patty here and there whatever it is just yeah get get that so that way you always have that in your
back pocket so when shit does hit the fan you at least have that one go-to meal we're like okay
all right things got a little weird but i'm gonna'm going to hit my base hit and then we'll figure it out on the
next at bat. You know, one thing I think people should definitely keep in mind as far as when it
comes to when you're choosing all these foods, right? Be careful of one like you. We've talked
about this, but be careful when you mention like your carbs and your fat, because like for us,
for me, sometimes I'll have one to two meals, right? So for me, carbs are like
a supplement. And so if I feel a little bit tired on a certain day, I'll have some, a little bit
extra carbohydrates and that is for the next day. So I know when I'm feeling a little bit,
if I've been putting out a lot of energy, okay, let's have some extra carbs tonight for the next
day. But if you're someone who eats through the whole day, be careful of having quite a bit of carbs and quite a bit of fat in each meal, because we know that fat and
carbs on their own are not, you know, it's not, it's not a bad, it's not a bad idea. But when you
have a lot of carbohydrates and a lot of fats that drives you to eat more, it's like all, when you
think of all these junk foods that are out there, like pizza, ice cream, etc.,
all these are high-carbohydrate, high-fat, high-energy meals or high-energy foods.
So be cognizant of that for yourself. We always talk about, and all of us,
well, Andrew eats more carbs, which isn't a problem, but we're fairly low-carbohydrate.
And especially when you're dieting, you want to try to make sure that you're not super low fat no matter what you do.
If you want to eat moderate carbohydrates, don't let your fats be low because we know how that can affect your hormones.
It can affect your performance.
It can even affect like how full you feel.
So keep that in mind that you don't want to go high fat, high carb.
Kind of choose one as your main energy source.
kind of choose one as your main energy source. And even if you do choose to go more moderate carbohydrate,
make sure you have a minimum amount of fats that you get in each day,
no matter what you do.
Yeah.
And just simple.
Do your best to keep it simple.
Yeah.
Super quick clarification,
just because I think you just mixed up your words.
You said that having high carbs,
high fat,
it's not a problem. And then you said having high carbs high fat it's not a problem and then you
said having high carbs and high fat is a problem but i think you meant high protein high fat's not
a problem right did i say having a high fat high carb is not a problem yeah you said that combo is
not an issue but then the very next oh this is what no what i meant by that was being high carbohydrate or being high fat in terms of your diet is not an issue.
You just want to make sure that you're not trying to do both at the same time.
So within your same structure, being high carb and being high fat along with protein, that just equals a dreamer bulk.
So you're going to be putting on a
lot of fat if you do that. But again, you know, I think it's, it's, it's also how you frame all
of this. When you come in from a place that you haven't really ever dieted before your nutrition
is out of whack and you come and you start trying to diet, people feel, Oh, I'm restricting myself.
I want this. I want that. Which is why people, you know, they start to tracking your calories can give
you an idea of what you can fit in.
So you're not restricting so hard, but I feel like you should, we should all figure out
a way to reframe that because in the end of the day, even though we eat these limited
foods, I personally don't feel restricted at all.
I feel like this is super easy.
I get to eat foods that I literally like every single day.
And I have the tools to be able to navigate when I do eat out.
So I don't feel restricted one bit.
But I'm definitely not eating as many processed foods as I ate in the past when I was trying to get in shape and when I was trying to diet.
And back then, I felt more restricted than I do now.
Let's say you're somebody that likes to celebrate.
You like to have something to look forward to.
Maybe you can just reframe what you look forward to.
Maybe Wednesday night is for ribeyes.
Ribeyes are fucking delicious.
Maybe every Saturday, maybe you overeat.
Maybe that's a day where you kind of just get after it.
Maybe on some of the other days,
maybe those are days where you utilize some fasting or something like that. But maybe once or twice a week, you're like, no, I'm gonna
get a nice bump of calories on these two particular days. I'm going to eat some whole eggs and some
fattier meats and things like that. And just maybe not worry so much about how much you ate for that particular day but get your fill of what's actually on your food list but just get extra of it.
And maybe on the other days of the week, you are doing something more reasonable. I personally have found just kind of so much satisfaction out of sticking to particular foods and just really jamming in a lot of protein every single day rather than being super concerned about how many calories I'm eating or trying to limit the amount of anything that I'm eating.
trying to limit the amount of anything that I'm eating, I found it to be more useful to have good food selection. And in that food selection, eat pretty good amounts of food every day.
Yeah. I think one big thing to think about there too is this, it's like you mentioned,
you focus on eating a lot of protein, right? When you think about an individual who, when you intake a lot of
energy and from like fat and carbohydrates, and then you intake some protein, think about people
who like, when you don't work out, though, people that do that usually end up also holding a lot of
energy. You have a lot of energy on your body, but that's fat. Like you have a lot of energy, but when you see
individuals who eat a lot of protein and you intake some energy, you have to, they tend to
also be just be leaner looking individuals, right? So like that whole idea of like, you are what you
eat kind of falls directly in line with what you eat. You know, I mean, it's not a perfect science,
but when you think about it, yeah.
Like a lot of people eat excess carbs,
excess fats together, minimal protein,
and they're holding all that,
they're holding that on them.
So keep it simple, eat a lot of protein,
figure out what you want to focus on
in terms of carbs or fats,
and just keep a simple food list.
Single ingredient foods can be huge.
Obviously, you're not going to just only have single ingredient foods
because you're going to have like a base
and then you'll probably put salt on it
and you might put some seasoning on it.
But when we talk about single ingredient foods,
we're also kind of more referencing
kind of just not a lot of different macronutrients going on as
Ansema kind of pointed out the carbohydrate and fat combo those are combinations that
you can eat you can eat them in combination with each other but it's going to be something that's
going to most likely encourage you to overeat even something like the vertical diet which
talks often about eating
meat and rice together. Those are things you just want to be conscious of. You want to pay
attention to how lean is the meat that you're eating. If you're going to be eating large
amounts of carbohydrates each day, then you might want to pay attention to how lean the meat is that
is accompanying it.
So for each person, it's going to be a little bit different because certain people are leaner than others.
But in my opinion, if somebody is like 20% body fat and they're oftentimes talking about how they feel they need carbohydrates for their particular workouts, I would steer them away from that thought process.
I think a lot of people in fitness and especially the strength community are sabotaging their ability to get leaner by being grounded and thinking that they, quote unquote, need this particular meal to end up giving them a particular result. And that's
exactly what we want to steer you away from is let's not complicate stuff. Yeah, maybe,
maybe carbohydrates can assist your workout, but what's your main goal for now? Like let's,
let's, uh, if your main goal is to be strong and you don't really care about having some extra
chunk on you, then, then keep on keeping on i guess but
let's make a goal to get like a bicep vein i think that's reasonable i think every dude should have a
bicep vein going on and uh in order to get that bicep vein you don't necessarily need 250 grams
of carbohydrates uh before you work it out i don't think you need to stagger your carb days. In my opinion, there's
no reason to overcomplicate any of it. Create a food list. Eat those foods. Some days when you
have cravings and you feel a little bit more hungry, maybe address that and say, you know what,
I'm going to eat more tomorrow and see if that craving dies off. If there's still something that
you're still craving, then fulfill that need.
Eat those fucking cookies.
Eat some ice cream.
But get back on plan.
Get back on point.
If you can follow it 80%, 90%,
you're going to be winning.
And over time, you're going to continually teach yourself
how to have better and better eating habits.
It's going to take you a while, though.
So, I was going to ask, and you already alluded to it,
about the leaner meats versus, or sources of protein versus the fattier.
Other than picking whether you want carbs as your fuel source or fat as your fuel source, is there any benefit to going with one or the other if you are at that 20% body fat?
I personally think that people that have gotten themselves to be – people that are unhappy with their body, I believe they've gotten themselves there through eating hyper palatable foods that are processed and through eating things that are encouraging them to overeat.
So the way to reverse your way out of that is to completely do the exact opposite of what you've been doing with yourself for a while.
And that's to find foods that don't encourage overeating.
People are pretty, humans as a whole, we're pretty lazy people. And so you can kind of
play into your laziness by making the foods that you want to consume, you can make that a lot easier for yourself.
And the foods you don't want to consume, you can make that a lot harder for yourself.
Simply by not purchasing some of these foods and not having them enter your home is a good way of completing some of that mission.
some of that mission, but I would just, I mean, it's not a steadfast rule, but I would urge people towards eating the same way that you would feed your dog until you get yourself to a body fat
level that you feel is better off for you. And that would be you eat twice a day and pretty much feed your dog meat.
And that's what you should be rocking for a while until you get to the you get you, you know, get rid of that dad bod and start getting the body that you want.
thing about the interesting thing about all of that is because um athletes and throughout all of sport um there has been like this just like marriage to carbohydrate intake for performance
like you even think back to freaking Wheaties boxes right your favorite athlete was on a box
of Wheaties so if you want to grow and become big and strong, you eat your Wheaties, right? You eat this excess energy that's going to help you perform or whatever. But it's a really hard thing to, I guess, and again, we're not saying carbs aren't healthy and they're not good for you.
that to be able to feel your performance, that's something that you need to kind of experiment with and mess with a little bit and just learn how to lower that intake and do a few days, a few weeks
without any, just so you can really see how that feels. And also there's a time, it takes time to
become fat adapted because that was me my whole life. And I still performed at a high level when I was doing that, but my diet
habits were not as sharp. I always felt like I was, if I didn't have carbohydrates, I felt like
I was restricting myself. And it took me a while to get out of that. Now it doesn't matter if I
have extra carbs or no carbs. There's no restriction that I feel going on because I know that I can perform either way.
Yeah, I see some people with their meal plan and also the charts they get from people that help them.
And on one day, it will say 50 grams of carbs.
The next day, it will say 200 grams of carbs.
The next day, it will say 50 grams of carbs.
The day after that, it will say – so it's like three times a week they get to eat this like giant surplus of carbohydrates meanwhile their fat calories are being shifted around as well they got like 70 grams of fat
and then like 50 grams of fat and so forth and it's just to me it's madness and if you're looking
for nuanced stuff and you're going to compete in bodybuilding and get on a stage or you're doing something very specific, there's no reason to incorporate really specific shit.
If you're just trying to look good in a tank top or just trying to have your arms look good, you don't need to do any of that.
And I really urge people to just stop leaning towards those things.
I don't I just I don't think they're really effective.
I see so many people struggle with it.
And I don't think that coaches have a good understanding.
And I don't even think I have a good understanding of this because I was never obese myself.
I was really fat, but I was fat with a purpose, I guess you'd say.
I don't think people understand what it's
like to be someone who's obese. I don't think you can be, I don't think you can say, hey, yeah,
you could have, you know, a hundred grams of carbs here and there. I just, I don't think that's wise.
I would like to see people really focus in and hone in on protein and fats. And Andrew kind of
asked the question earlier,
is it healthier to do one way or the other? I think there's still a lot of research that
needs to go on with that. But I would just say most of the time, people are over consuming
calories and over consuming energy from the combination of carbohydrates and fat.
And so therefore, that leads me to believe that a lot of people,
like a large percentage of our population,
needs a low-carb slash maybe even a ketogenic-style diet
until they can get themselves in better standing.
We need a pendulum to swing in a completely different direction
than what everybody's been doing for a long time
because many people have gotten themselves
in a really kind of sticky situation.
Yeah, I guess I'll say that the counter argument
to kind of stick in with one fuel source and
kind of leaning towards the fats is like I've been hearing
a lot of people say like, oh, the, the fats is like, I've been hearing a lot of people say like,
oh, you can, you know, have whatever, have this in moderation. Um, you know, you can still have
your carbs and still lose weight, or you can still have your both and lose weight. So I guess
what's your guys' take to the counter argument of like, well, you can have whatever you want,
as long as you have balance. That's the term that I keep hearing a lot lately is like, well, you can have whatever you want as long as you have balance. That's the term that I keep hearing a lot lately is like, just have balance and you're going to be fine.
I would say that you can have whatever you want when you have reached your,
when you have reached the destination. You know, I don't see a lot of people like really just,
I do know that there's a lot of individual cases of, of people achieving success
in many, many different ways. But most of the people that I see talking about how you can eat
things in moderation are people that are already fit. The people that are talking about eating
cereal before their workout, they're usually already lean. They're usually already got the
bicep vein going. They're usually already in pretty good standing. They have really good habits in terms of how much energy output they have every day.
They have really good habits in terms of their nutrition and they have probably for decades.
And so while the message is a good one and while it does make sense, again, I think some folks are so into food that you give them a little bit and they're going to, you give them an inch and they're going to take a mile.
And I would just like to see people kind of not have to continue to go through that cycle.
So in my opinion, like one of the best things you can do to not get caught up in that carbohydrate cycle is to just try to get rid of them as much as you can.
There's something that we could think about doing here.
It's like if you've been eating a certain way your entire life, it would be a good idea to try something else.
Because we talk about trying new things all
the time on the show, right? So like we all grew up with food in our cupboards as kids. We never
had a day where we were truly hungry. That was not the norm. So we get into this thing where we're
doing sports, et cetera, and we always have food available, trying to diet, always have food
available, always eating when we're hungry. So we talk about fasting on this show and it's like
trying something that you're not used to. Okay. Not eating for hours of the day. That's weird.
But then we see how beneficial it is for our habits and the way that we look at food because
we grew up always eating when we were hungry. The same thing when it comes to like carbohydrates,
Um, the same thing when it comes to like carbohydrates, right? I grew up high carb all my life, right? So I always performed high carbohydrate. I always did sports,
bodybuilding, soccer, all of that stuff. Um, and switching and doing higher fat,
doing carnivore for a little bit, learning how it was like to train and, and perform with no carbs
and then reintroducing those carbohydrates. I've been on both sides and I
can see as an athlete for me what works better. So as much as people are saying, yeah, you can
lose weight and lose fat eating a moderate to high amounts of carbohydrates. Absolutely. People
have done it and people do it. You could do the same thing with high fat, but it's figuring out
which one is going to be more sustainable for you.
And you're not going to be able to understand which one is truly more sustainable
if you never actually try the other side of things.
You know what I mean?
If I didn't try what I'm doing right now with fasting, with high fat,
with low to no carb, I wouldn't know how good this side of things feels.
And I would consistently be like, high carb is the way to go because I can't perform without them.
And use flexible dieting type stuff.
And if it fits your macros, when you need to be flexible.
You know, when you're like, you know what, man?
Like when you feel you've lost enough weight to where it's kind of wearing on you, you're starting to get really fucking hungry.
Maybe take a week you
know i hate to say diet break because again like i try to be careful with my words with folks that
are heavier that have really struggled with their nutrition diet break means something totally
different to those people you know uh than it does to somebody that is on a fitness journey. But that's a perfect place to implement some moderation.
Say, let me have a little moderation for this week.
And by moderation, it doesn't mean start the day off with bagels and pancakes and stuff like that
and finish the day with pizza.
But it does mean during the week sometime, you can get some of those foods.
mean during the week sometime you can get some of those foods, but do so in a moderate way that's not going to cause any extra harm. I think ultimately that's what we're after whenever
we're trying to figure out nutrition. How do I cause no harm each day? Well, one way to ensure
that you don't cause any harm and stay very healthy is to make sure that you don't over
consume your calories every day. Yeah. And so, you know, we're kind of leaning more towards the high protein, higher fat,
low to no carbs. What are some things people should still avoid if they are going to go down
that route? My first thought is like, oh, I'm going to go high fat, so I'm going to start putting butter in my coffee with the goal of losing weight in mind.
So what are some things like that that people, okay, you got the green light to eat more fat, but that doesn't mean eat all of the fat, right?
I'd say after many years of doing keto-style diets, I've been messing with them since I was a teenager,
I would say that I'm not really a huge fan of a high-fat diet necessarily
after doing it for so long and after having quite a bit of practice with it.
The higher stuff can be satiating.
It can be satisfying to some degree.
But I think what we're really after is consuming good amounts of protein every day and just making sure we're getting nutrients that we need every day.
We need macronutrients and we need them in the form of proteins and we need them in the form of fats, dietary carbohydrates.
and we need them in the form of fats, dietary carbohydrates,
I would say utilize those sparingly and utilize those as a tool and maybe even as a supplement to maybe increase performance
because having a big output is also a big part of this.
If your output starts to suck, that's not great.
But, yeah, there's really no reason to go way out of your way to consume a lot of fat.
The fat will be accompanied by your protein sources.
And so I would say, you know, don't only eat chicken.
Don't only eat tilapia and just really lean fish.
Make sure you get in some ribeye.
Make sure you get in some salmon and things like that. Yeah, I totally agree. And the one thing I, yeah, that's, um, I'm happy you said
that because a lot of people, when they're like, okay, high protein, let me just go buy a bunch of
chicken breasts. You'll grab some tilapia. Like they'll still end up eating really low fat and
they'll be like, why am I feeling so tired and drained and worn down? Well, it's cause you're
not intaking energy. Like you, you're not intaking energy. You're barely getting
in any fat. I think we've had so many guests on this show and we've talked so much about red meat
that people know that as far as you're not eating the standard American diet, red meat is not bad
for you. You know what I mean? It's not bad for you at all. So that's, that's something to really keep in mind there. It's a big deal. There's probably not a lot of reasons to get like
2000 plus calories a day from your fat. You know? Um, I think like reasonable amounts of fat would
be anything between, you know, 75 would be on kind of a lower end, I believe. And, um, and I know
people are like, Oh, it depends on what you weigh and your muscle mass and stuff kind of on kind of a lower end, I believe. And I know people are like, oh, it depends on what you weigh
and your muscle mass and stuff.
Kind of.
Kind of does, but it kind of doesn't.
What I see from a lot of people is their requirements are all fairly similar.
You go approximately.
I mean, there's people that are going to be way off the charts
in one direction or another typically,
but approximately one gram
per pound of body weight in terms of protein. And just think about that. Like, you know, if,
if, if you weigh, you know, 200 pounds, you'll have 200 grams of protein. And then how much fat
you should consume could approximately represent about half of that, which would be a hundred
grams. I think for most people, if I said, hey, have 100 grams of fat every day,
have about 200 grams of protein every day, regardless of their body weight,
I think they would be successful.
Now, you might have to tweak it.
You might have to rearrange it a bit.
But I think that would work for a lot of people.
So the calorie thing is, I think that the whole calorie thing is just not
as touchy as we might think that it really is. Do you guys think that there's benefit if somebody
is making, they have a food list, they have their go-to meals, they have their go-to protein sources
and they're pretty much in line with their goals.
Do you think there's any benefit, especially at the start, to track some of those calories?
And my first thought right out the gate is that, yes, it is beneficial because then they'd be able to see what that caloric intake looks like as opposed to whatever else they were eating just so that way they can educate themselves.
I personally think so.
I think just, and I'm saying this because I have a bias.
I have a bias because, you know, when I started tracking, I learned a lot about like how much
is in certain foods.
I learned about like, oh, wow, salmon does have quite a bit of fat or, you know, this is what, you know, this is what this ground beef has.
And like I learned about fat and certain cuts of meat, just learned what's in food.
And it helped me so that now as I navigate things, I feel confident without any type of scale.
I don't need to track.
without any type of scale. I don't need to track. But if you build good food habits and make good food choices, you could as easily get the same type of progress. If you're like, okay, I'll have
some this much, maybe four or five full palmfuls of protein each day, or I'll have this, I'll have,
you don't have to track as long as you have good food choices and good food habits.
have this. You don't have to track as long as you have good food choices and good food habits.
And you're not necessarily overdoing it or overeating on anything. But I think for myself,
tracking did help me learn when all of this food is together, this is the caloric amount,
and this is what it does for me and how it affects me and my performance.
And it gave me that.
So I think it can be beneficial as long as you're not using it as a tool to try to fit in as much crap as you can into your caloric intake each day, which is the mistake a lot of people use.
They start tracking and then they're like, oh, I can make this fit.
I can make this fit.
I can make this fit.
And it's not doing anything for your goals or what you're trying to achieve.
It's more so drawing you back from the things that you actually should be eating.
So, yeah.
I think having more information can be useful when you're like a veteran, you know, when you're somebody that has kind of been doing it for a bit.
I think the more information, probably the better. Um, but if you're, if you're newer to it and
you're just, uh, you know, I, I don't think there's any reason to like overcomplicate anything,
but in this particular scenario where somebody already feels like they're built the way they
want to be built, they could either, you know, they could add more meals. Um, if they are
currently not eating, uh, much carbohydrate, they could add in some carbohydrate.
You could maybe experiment with surrounding some carbohydrates around like your workouts and stuff
like that. But again, I'm not just not a big, not a big fan of really overcomplicating it or making
it too specific unless there's something very, very specific that you're
wishing to do, like weigh a certain weight for a powerlifting meet and lift a certain amount of
weight, then maybe it might take a little bit more planning, a little bit more timing,
a little bit more math, a little bit more measurement for you to kind of figure those
things out. But for me personally, I've never really gotten into much of that.
I usually would just cut out a meal, intermittent fast more.
Or if I wanted to gain, I would just add a meal and kind of keep it at that.
Sorry, muted myself.
sorry muted myself um i we've already listed out like a a bunch or we've said a bunch of different food items and um and you know some some ideas on what people can be eating but can we list out
a couple of things that people can add to their food list like i don't know maybe let's try
to get five things that people can focus on and And then from there, they can get kind of creative with mixing and matching those certain foods.
So that way they can create their actual go-to food list.
Yeah, I mean, a lot of times for me, I eat like eggs and I eat steak and eggs pretty often.
I try to cook them together.
I eat salmon from our buddies at Eat Right.
I eat turkey.
I don't really mix a lot of stuff together that much.
My wife will make a dinner.
She'll make a chicken and green beans.
There's usually some sort of
chicken something and it's usually vegetables with it. I don't even like when it comes to
vegetables, when it comes to just any of it, I really, again, I try to keep it very, very simple.
I work towards eating some resemblance of vegetables every day, but they don't always
end up in the diet.
Uh, I normally eat some fruit, but that doesn't always end up into the diet.
I'll eat a potato like twice a week or something like that.
Cause I just don't cook them up that often.
And, uh, the rest of the time it's pretty much just meat.
cook them up that often and the rest of the time it's pretty much just meat and i think the more that people can get used to reframing what they're used to eating and the way that
they're used to eating i think a lot of times people would have you know breakfast they'd have
two eggs two strips of bacon some hash browns an english muffin and some orange juice you know
people like man that sounds amazing.
Like they get all that variety in.
But when you switch your, when you switch things over into consuming so much protein every day,
you're like, fuck all that, man.
I'm just going to cook.
I'm just going to take the easy route and cook up like just a couple of eggs.
And that's usually what your meal looks like.
So for me,
my meals are really simple.
It's usually like either meat and or eggs.
Uh, and sometimes they're together or sometimes they're separate.
And,
uh,
if I really want to,
I guess,
cook anything more special for myself,
I'll make like an omelet.
And that's about as far as I'll take it.
Um, I agree there.
I think, you know, I think I'm trying to learn about more ways of chefing things up a little bit.
So I'm adding some more things like mushrooms into what I do and other stuff like that just to carrots, just to add in some like add in some flavor.
Make a big difference i think yeah even
though i think my food tastes great but like hey if i have to cook for a lady if i just throw a
piece of meat in front of her she might not you know she might not be like i like it let's not
let's not go there andrew that's low-hanging fruit right there um but yeah like honestly like
no vegetables are really
off the table. We, we, we don't have a vendetta against vegetables. So if you, I mean, as far as
I know, um, there's nothing against vegetables, so you can have that in your diet. Just don't let
the vegetables be a vehicle. You've, you've said this before. Don't let the vegetables be a vehicle
for excessive calories. Right? So if you go, you take some, uh, some mushrooms or something
and you fry it up in a crazy amount of like oil and whatever, and then it ends up being super,
um, massive amount of calories. And then you eat that with some rice, right? Then you're kind of
defeating what you're trying to do, right? So it doesn't mean you can't fry up some vegetables,
but don't have, don't, don't use it as a vehicle for other, like other excess calories. Cause that's not what we're trying to do. Um,
but yeah, I have fruits too every now and then, but again, when it comes to the fruits,
I'm not, I'm not overdoing it. Like I'm not eating excessive amounts of it, but the cool
thing is also that fruits have fiber. And if you're, you know, if you're, if you're eating
them, you'll typically be able to get full pretty quickly.
Like it's going to be hard to go down on four apples.
Like no one's going down on four apples at a time.
So it's not that much of a problem.
It sounds exhausting.
But yeah, any types of meats, vegetables.
It's so simple like it just like like what else like there's there's there's there's a lot of things you can eat but if you keep it to whole foods and
and you focus on not you know having excessive carbohydrates or excessive amount of fats in the
same meal you're typically gonna be okay yeah one thing about human nutrition
has fucking changed we're designed to eat certain things and we haven't evolved to eat anything else
so we're not very good at it yeah yeah it's been the same it's been the same forever we we do well
with protein and fat and uh have some little bit of sugary stuff, carbohydrate type
stuff here and there. Seems to work really well for us as well. But anything outside of
kind of natural foods. Somebody sent me a picture the other day of, I don't know if they were trying
to give me a heart attack or what they were doing, but somebody sent me a picture the other day of uh these like grain-free chips and i'm just like chips are chips you know it doesn't fucking matter
chips are chips and so i'm not again i'm not saying that you can't ever have these things
i'm just saying that let's let's keep our nutrition uh where it's at you know let's let's
Let's keep our nutrition where it's at.
You know, let's eat meat and make sure we get in the nutrients that we need. And if there's a little room for play with some calories from some other stuff, maybe that's where you would use some calorie counting.
it sounds very reasonable to me that most people, as long as they can exhibit control on this,
a lot of people would be able to just say, you know what, I'm going to eat 300 calories a couple times a week of whatever I want or 500 calories. But again, that might cause an onslaught
of you going way overboard. So pay attention to those frankenfoods that are out there too those those
quote-unquote you know nutrition foods that are out there they're they're all it's all it's all
a trap and doesn't matter if it's our friends that uh you know quest nutrition or legendary or
whomever uh those are all things that are easy to overconsume, and they all put you in a very similar spot to junk food in the first place.
So be careful.
Yeah.
As somebody who, you know, I count calories.
I haven't been past two days.
But, you know, so the thought of overconsuming anything is like, well, no, the science says calories in, calories out.
If I over-consume, I'm going to gain weight.
And Mark's kind of been coaching me up about getting my protein a lot higher.
So one thing that I would like to add that you guys, not that you missed it, but it fits all in the same thing, but like I've been utilizing a lot of egg whites, um, because I would always focus on getting my protein,
you know,
in as high as I can in a certain,
uh,
caloric allotment without going too over too under on fat.
And now that I'm trying to load up just a ton of protein right now,
I'll have like four eggs and then I'll throw in like it,
like a full cup of egg whites.
And as somebody who like up until like two weeks ago even, I assumed that I had to have a lot of carbs in order to feel satisfied, in order to be satiated.
And here I am just loading up more protein via egg whites, and I'm getting very full, and I'm feeling very satisfied.
And I'm staying full longer, which is an awesome, awesome side effect of kind of going low-carb right now.
So I would encourage people to use something like that that's just like an awesome source of protein to kind of fill that void where you feel like, man,
I think I'm still going to be hungry. Like just, yeah, just pour some dump, some egg whites all
over whatever the hell you're eating. Cause it's just going to add more protein and it's going to
add more volume, especially if you like make it scrambled or whatever. It's a, it's going to get
fluffy and it's going to get big. And you know, it, it's, it's almost been like my carb source
is like adding eggs to just everything else.
It's really eye-opening.
It's been great.
It's important that it's cooked too.
Sometimes people are like, I'm going to add in tons of protein.
And they just try to get it just from liquid sources.
And I think that could be a big mistake.
I don't think that that's a great way of doing things.
I know some people have added like liquid egg whites to their protein shakes and stuff.
I think that it's harder to digest and assimilate and stuff like that.
But what Andrew is talking about works amazingly.
So I think people should give that some thought.
But just also just keep in mind people didn't used to count calories.
You know, we didn't used to have to used to be a thing that we didn't have to concern ourselves with at all because there wasn't such an abundance of food and there wasn't so many different things to.
I actually wonder even how long the practice has been going on for,
probably been going on for only like 30 or 40 years. Like it's probably not, probably not that
old. Um, I know that calories have been around for a bit and, uh, but like people like actively
weighing their food. I mean, um, it, it can work and it does work. And I'm not saying that like
we've gotten fatter from counting calories.
I would never say that.
But we used to not count calories.
People used to not have that technology to – you wouldn't like weigh your buffalo meat before you ate it.
But we also didn't have the technology of having all these hyperpalatable foods around.
So it makes sense to kind
of measure and weigh some of that to make sure we don't overdo it but if you stick to if you stick
to natural foods they're a lot harder to overeat as in semen pointed out with like the five apple
example i mean yeah i mean just think think about it. It's interesting that I can understand that if you have access to something, it's to tell yourself that you can't have it or it's – flexible dieting is much more – and even the classical sense of flexible dieting you're not supposed to have a crazy amount of processed foods but the idea that you can't fit in these fun foods consistently it's nice but i
mean again we're we still are not able to handle that stuff responsibly like we still not able to
handle that stuff and not have excessive amounts of it that's why you see a lot of people who
like there there are people who are very overweight and they have no control over
that because we can't unless we are unless we have a lot of structure and unless we're tracking
diligently and sticking to that, trying to just have good habits and fit a lot of that stuff in
is kind of difficult. I'm not saying that you have to totally let go of it, but just have it be such
a small amount of what you do or totally let go of it and it'll make everything as far as like your health so much easier um
it's just just keep that in mind we're still not used to this shit something that's been pretty
uh helpful to me is to understand and know that everything is on the table. Nothing is necessarily detrimental.
However, it's only at certain times.
So like for me, if I do want to eat something that's off plan, it's not like I need a schedule for it.
Because I am pretty rigorous with my nutrition.
If something was to spring up and I thought hey this could enhance this particular situation then I'm going
to somebody say I run into an old friend I go to a restaurant
and an old friend wants to buy me a beer and just
fucking talk I'm down I'm into it I'll figure it out
you know again if I think it's going to enhance that particular
situation then I'll grav it out. Again, if I think it's going to enhance that particular situation, then I'll gravitate towards it.
But I know that some people kind of get concerned about whether a food is good or whether a food is bad.
I do think it's okay to say that some foods are bad.
But I think it's overwhelming to think that you're not ever going to have access to those foods again.
Probably unreasonable to think that you're not ever going to eat those again.
They are just on specific occasion for specific times.
And possibly, this is also important to know, possibly for you, you should not eat these things for a while.
And it could be you might need to be sober from them for a while. You might need to fast away from things for a while. And it could be if you might need to be sober from them for a while.
You might need to fast away from them for a while
because these could be things that could be potentially ruining your life.
And it's a little bit of a trap to think,
oh, man, I just want to have that thing again
because I want that satisfaction or that impulse that you're drawing off of.
But sometimes it's
a trap could lead you down the wrong down the wrong path and for me personally just leaning
into what we've been talking about here more and more and more and more has given me kind of a
stronger foundation and a stronger structure to build everything else off of. What about those that are saying,
or the thought process of like, if I stray away from it, it's going to lead to binge eating on
whether that food or maybe similar foods. That's what I hear a lot of. And it's comes from,
you know, like the flexible dieters that are going to say, okay, maybe don't have that version of it.
Have like a low-calorie version that's similar that's going to get you, I don't know,
we'll say like it's not a 10 out of 10.
It's more like 6 or 7 out of 10, but it could satisfy that craving,
and then you'd be on your way.
I think most of the time anything that's going to kind of keep you in the game
I think most of the time, anything that's going to kind of keep you in the game is going to keep you kind of on the longer path is going to be the thing that will probably have the greatest result. So, you know, Stan Efferding kind of points out compliance is a science.
So being able to follow and follow through on something is, is massively important. So, um, and understanding
like, yeah, like your binge or, um, night, you know, eating in the middle of the night,
you know, things, things like that. I usually, what I usually suggest for people that really
struggle with things like that is to not try to eliminate them because when you try to eliminate them, it's very, very difficult to do and it's going to take
time. And so you can try to cold turkey it, but for most people I've found that doesn't really
work. Just try to, like you pointed out, Andrew, try to have a better option lined up. And as I
pointed out a little earlier in the show is have a better option lined up.
That's super convenient. And whatever is that trigger or whatever that other thing is,
keep that as far away from you as possible. You know, potentially don't even have it,
uh, in your house. So you don't end up on that binge, but I think restricting yourself to not
do something that you're so used to doing um is is very difficult
and it could take a while so that's why i kind of would push most people towards uh you know
instead of waking up in the middle of the night and eating cookies you know if you do wake up in
the middle of the night rather than just forcing yourself back to bed every single time uh which
might not work well. Maybe just have like
a protein shake or just something slightly different. So it's not encouraging you to
binge and clear out the pantry. I think along with that, there should be a, I think one of the big
goals that I've had was just never having the feeling of being controlled by my hunger or by food.
So it never feels good after a binge.
You don't feel good.
You feel like you lost control.
You feel like you didn't have a handle on yourself.
And all these things that you're trying to do in the diet as far as maybe not eating certain foods as much.
Or let's say that you do go for like a legendary pop tart which
are fucking great right so you don't go and eat a bunch of actual sugary pop tarts or whatever
that that's a win that's a win in and of itself but you do want to get yourself to a place where
you do have a full handle on it and you can just totally say no to those foods and
and not feel like you a certain way about it.
You don't feel like you are restricting.
You don't feel like you are missing out on anything.
And to get there, it is going to take some letting actual letting go of those foods for a period of time.
So there's nothing wrong with not fitting it into your diet.
There's nothing wrong with just getting it out because the goal is to never feel controlled by it again.
And the only way to do that is by not having it for a while.
And Seema brings up a really good point of like where did this behavior come from?
And so sometimes these things are like a deeper dive into some soul searching.
But this is stuff I used to do with my kids when they were little is I would try to figure out where this behavior came from.
You know, okay, you got my attention.
Why did you feel it was important to be disrespectful?
You know, and they're like, no, it's just an open conversation.
I'm not mad. I got my, I got my dad hat on. I'm,
um, you know, I'm open to listen. You're not gonna get in trouble for anything. Like why,
why, where did this behavior come from? And, uh, they could say, I don't know. I didn't feel like
doing it or whatever it might be. You know, always have some kind of usually like a lame excuse,
but when you come back and talk to them later, they'll kind of bring something else up. They'll
say, well, you were paying more attention to Quinn than you were to me. And you're like, damn, okay.
But you'll find that with yourself. When you start examining yourself more,
you'll uncover and discover shit. Like, why do I feel i need to do that i know i don't need to do
that i know i have a hundred pounds of excess body weight on me that i don't necessarily need
i recognize that's an energy source for the body i recognize that i'm storing that energy and that
i don't need to continue to to do that any. And so as hard as that kind of stuff is, it's great to kind of reexamine what that is and
try to break yourself free of that can be really, really liberating, but also very challenging.
And I think it goes back to what we said in the previous episode.
You know, if you're saying like, yeah, I do want to lose X amount of weight.
And then maybe you get some help from somebody.
And your first question is like, when do I get a cheat meal?
Like, let's change the mindset and let's really go for it, right?
Like, let's not try to find loopholes in the diet and, you know, get some of these.
I mean, I'm guilty.
I eat something weird almost every day except for, well, the past couple of days have been good.
But I'm definitely one to make the low-fat French toast and all these other weird foods because I'm trying to just kind of find that loophole.
But now I'm eating more whole foods, feeling pretty good. And it's been a pretty fun experience.
But I think if we get our mindset right and just understand that we're going to kind of,
you know, say peace to some of these foods for now.
And then once we actually get our shit together,
we can come back and really just have fun with it.
You're still on a pretty damn strong path of continually making progress, though, too, especially from what I've seen from you over the last couple of years.
You know, you're continually working on and towards.
And like, I think that's important for people to do.
And it just be in recognition like this fucking might take me five, six years.
It's kind of like trying to get a degree.
You know, how long do people go to school for?
Usually two years, four years, depending on what kind of degree you're looking for.
It takes a certain amount of time.
It takes time to learn nutrition.
There's some people that just, for whatever reason, were never really all that connected to food and they have
sort of a disconnect to it they don't have to really worry about it much and so maybe the switch
for them was quick and easy maybe they were able to get their degree a lot faster than uh you might
get yours but man i feel like i'm still working on it every day it It's, it's gotten easier. Like it's gotten way easier and way easier to
figure out, but it's, it's taken many, many years of lifting, you know, many years in the gym,
many years in the kitchen, many years of not being in the kitchen, you know, a lot of time spent
eating and a lot of time spent away from eating to like, you know, learn what Nsema said, learn a little bit more control.
Want to take us out of here, Andrew?
Sure will.
Thank you everybody for checking out today's episode.
If you found it helpful, if you think this can help somebody,
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know somebody that's struggling making their food list, maybe this will help them. Thank you element
for sponsoring today's episode. Uh, you know, give them, uh, give them, show them some love,
you know, head over to drink LMNT.com slash power project, along with some of the stuff we talked
about today, you know, sticking, uh, you know, changing that mindset. This can be one of those ways that can help you kind of get
through some of those cravings and help you with, if you do, do decide to fast, it just kind of,
it gives you a little something to look forward to every single day. Again, drink lmnt.com slash
power project links to them down in the description, as well as the podcast show notes,
follow the podcast at Mark Bell's power projectject on Instagram, at MBPowerProject
on TikTok and Twitter. My Instagram and Twitter is at
IamAndrewZ. And Seema, where you at?
I am Seema Inyang on Instagram and YouTube. I am Seema Inyang on TikTok and Twitter. Mark?
At Mark's Melody Bell. Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength. Catch y'all later.
Bye!