Nutrition Guide
Why this guide exists
To teach you the basic nutrition principles you need to know to build muscle and lose fat.
Once you understand these key concepts, you will have the answers to most of your questions.
TL;DR: Your Calories In vs Calories Out & how well you stick to hitting your recommended calorie target is what will ultimately determine if you achieve your goals. The best way to do this is by tracking your calorie or food intake. It is possible to build muscle and lose fat without tracking by following the SAS nutritional principles laid out in the “Abs Are Made in the Kitchen” video but if for any reason you stall in progress for more than a week or two it simply means your calories are not on target.
If still have these questions or other similar ideas from all the health tips you’ve heard over the years without realizing that none of these matter when it comes to achieving your goals if one key factor doesn’t exist, then you need to hear this:
At the end of the day all that matters for changing your body composition long term (how much of your body is fat/muscle) are your calories in vs. calories out.
Calories are a unit of energy, specifically the amount of energy needed to heat 1 gram of water by 1 degrees celsius. Food has energy. You use this energy to be alive.
In other words how much energy you consume via the food/drink, vs how much energy or food you burn day to day.
Thats it.
Now are calories the only thing that matters? No. But ultimately your success will depend on the differences between your calorie intake and calorie expenditure.
Let’s take an extreme example.
You can eat a diet that consists entirely of jalebi(I don’t recommend this) and if you don’t eat more calories than you burn, you will not gain weight.
Alternatively if your diet consists entirely of jalebi and you eat less than you burn, you would lose fat/weight.
Moreover, you could choose to eat all of this in one sitting and you would get the same results based on the overall quantity you ate. Because quantity is what matters the most.
To sum it up*:
If you eat more calories than you burn in a day (eat higher than your TDEE), then you’ll gain weight (fat and/or muscle) – this is often termed a “caloric surplus” or what we do during a muscle gaining phase or “bulk”.
and
If you eat less calories than you burn in a day (eat less than your TDEE), then you’ll lose weight (fat and/or muscle) – this is often termed a “caloric deficit” or what we do during a fat loss phase or “cut”.
*Note: recomposition can occur in small deficits or surpluses as well as in beginners to exercise
Junk Food Diet?
Now here’s the cool part.
What this means is that, you can eat whatever you want (to an extent), whenever you want, and still achieve your fat loss and muscle building goals. Why?
Because calories matter the most.
Least Important
“The Hierarchy of Nutritional Importance”
Most Important
Macros
The next most important factor after calories is your macronutrient intake. Macronutrients being your:
-Protein
-Carbohydrates
-Fat
To optimize your results and health you need to figure out the right ratio of these molecules in your diet that is best suited to your goals and preferences.
In the extreme example with jalebi above, your diet would consist almost entirely of Carbohydrates(sugar) and Fat and you would likely end up with health problems due to a protein deficiency not to mention muscle loss however you would still lose or gain weight overall, just not the kind we want.
Protein is king
The most important part of optimizing your macronutrient ratio for your goals will be your protein intake. If you meet your protein and calorie goals consistently the proportion of fat vs carbs in your diet doesn’t really matter!*
That said, your carbs and fat macro counts can be adjusted to be optimal for you based on your dietary habits and preferences.
For example, if you’re vegetarian you will find it a bit harder to eat a low carb diet since you’re already eating less protein dense foods so your carb intake will likely be a bit higher to make sure you are satiated.
Conversely some non-vegetarians may be ok eating less carbs since they are eating so much protein rich food (which is very satiating) and so you can adjust your carbs even lower and allow for higher fat in your diet from fattier protein sources.
You don’t have to worry about this too much though since your macro targets will be set for you in the app! Although the carb and fat ratios can be further tweaked based on your personal preferences.
Find what works best for you
To your body there is no difference between simple and complex carbs (sugar vs starch), simple carbs just tend to crash your blood sugar and can lead to overeating
Ultimately while keeping this all in mind you will have to find what works best for you. For example eating too many carbs (which South Asians in general do)can tend to make you hungrier since it leads to more frequent blood sugar spikes and crashes and this can lead to overeating. If you find this is the case, lower your carb intake and increasing protein or fat might be helpful.
Bottom line: Calories are the most important factor in your diet, the second most important is protein. Everything else is a low level optimization. Find out what works best for you by making small changes and seeing how you feel.
The rest of the guide will cover tips and culturally tailored guides to help you eat the right amount of calories and macros in your daily meals using desi foods as well as a FAQ at the end.
To Track or Not to Track
This is probably the most important part of this guide yet the part that most people will skip/avoid/screw up on.
The reason this is the most important is that unless you somehow track your food intake (for a few weeks at the very least) it's unlikely you will get results long term.
Most people are unaware of how much they actually eat and always underestimate. Which is why tracking is so important. To build awareness of our daily dietary habits so that we can understand them and then bring about change.
That said if you don’t track there are ways to succeed in your fat loss journey and I will cover them as well.
Tracking Made Easy
Just track these three ingredients and you’re pretty much done
All you need to do to accurately track your meals is think of each meal and
track 3 ingredients.
Your main protein source(s), your carb source(s) and your fat source(s).
Aka your macros.
If you log these the ingredients that are contain the highest sources of these accurately you will have captured most of the info you need to accurately track your entire meal.
This is probably the hardest meal to track, especially if you didn't make it.
Lets use Desi Food as an example:
1.Your typical calorie dense carb source in a meal will be the starch, you will eat with it ie. rice/roti etc and/or the legumes (daal, beans)
2.Your typical calorie dense fat source will be the oil/fat you used to cook ie. ghee (and any fat in your protein source)
3.Your typical calorie dense protein source will be the meat/fish/eggs/dairy or soy product, which will often also contain fats (sugar as well in dairy)
Thats it, track these three ingredients accurately and you will have captured most of the calories/macros in the meal.
Sometimes certain veggies like tomatoes, if in high quantity in a recipe will have a significant amount of calories like sugar/carbs so track these as well. But a good rule of thumb is if any ingredient has less than 10 calories per what you would eat in a normal serving(take the whole meal and divide by number of servings) than you can ignore it if you want to.
You do NOT need to track every spice, garlic, and ginger used for cooking. The calories are negligible in spices and herbs, so ONLY enter the main calorie- containing items: Carbs, oils, proteins, and veggies(sometimes).
In the harder example in the image, you would track the Daal for its carbs(would also have some protein), the Roti for its carbs, the Yogurt for its protein (also has some fat) and lastly the cooking oils you used in each to cook. Just 4 ingredients and you have tracked most of the calories and macros accurately.
The cucumbers are pretty much nothing and the vegetables in the vegetable sabzi probably won’t contribute much but if there are peas or potatoes in there you will want to track those since those are calorie dense.
Eating and cooking at home:
If eating and cooking at home I recommend weighing everything that is calorie dense on a food scale before cooking. Measuring everything by volume with measuring cups/spoons works too, you may just have to find a different entry in your tracking app.
This will ensure your macro and calories are accurate. Then simply search the individual ingredients in your preferred tracking app and record how much you ate.
For example, if making Chicken/Tofu Curry with Rice.
I would weigh the total amount of uncooked rice
before cooking, the total amount of raw
chicken/uncooked tofu and the oil used as well as any
tomatoes in the curry (or sauce/paste) or yogurt in the marinade if used.
Lets say you ate half of this, you would simply take half of each measurement and log it. Those 3-5 ingredients and you will have accurately logged your email. Better yet you can save this as a recipe after logging for quicker logging in the future.
Making Recipes:
If you make certain recipes often you can then save the meal for easy access so you don't have to keep adding individual ingredients.
After adding a bunch of ingredients to a meal I made I like to save it as a recipe for easier logging next time
Otherwise your app will show you foods you eat often in the “Recent” tab and you can add them from there.
Eating Out
If eating out at a chain restaurant usually you can find their menu items in your tracking app by searching the part of the name of the food item along with the brand's name. Simply record these in your journal.
If eating out at a non-chain restaurant the best way of estimating your food intake will be to try and add the individual ingredients in each dish by estimating(including an estimation of cooking oil, use 3 tsp to be safe). See the estimating guide on page <insert page number here with hyperlink>
Estimating ingredients:
Here is an easy way to estimate ingredients when you are eating away from home:
To see if your estimate is accurate or to save time you can also try searching up similar meals in the app database and logging/comparing those.
You will usually see many options and can use these to double check if you are in the right ball-park with your estimate.
You can also just log one of these meals to save time.
If you choose to go with one of these meals make sure to pick one that is somewhere in the middle when it comes to the total calories and make it sure it has the macronutrient details filled in(some don't) and they seem accurate.
Discrepancies
Many foods have macronutrient details that don't add up to the total calories (Protein = 4 cals per gram, Carbs = 4 cals/gram and Fats = 9 cals/gram) so you may have to quickly do some arithmetic to check. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but close enough(with 10-20 calories)
**Once you have been tracking food long enough you will be able to look at a dish and estimate fairly accurately what the proportion and amount of each macronutrient roughly is (for example based on the amount of meat or rice present in a dish) and this will help you make a more accurate selection in the database.
Scan and Save
Lastly if you are eating packaged food or any food with a barcode simply scan this barcode using your app and adjust the portion size if needed and you are set.
Other tips and tracking examples:
For grains and meats: If you measure your food raw, use the RAW measurement in your app. If you measure it after cooking, use the COOKED measurement in your app. For example: If you measure 1/4 cup of rice uncooked, find a value in your app that specifically states "1/4 cup rice, uncooked."
Raw is usually better than cooked since different duration and methods of cooking can change the water content of a cooked product and affect the weight resulting in slightly inaccurate logging.
If you're cooking at home, use measuring cups, spoons, or a food scale to be more accurate--especially for high-fat items like oils and nuts. "Just a splash" of oil might be more than you think!
Do not "eat back" your exercise calories. Calorie tracking apps and watches are notoriously inaccurate. They have incredibly high margins for error when telling you how many calories you burned in a workout. Your initial calorie targets should always take into account your activity levels and average energy expenditure. If you are using an app to track, turn OFF the feature that tells you how many calories you burned in a workout or via steps and adds that back into your daily targets.
I Don't Want to Track
If you really don’t want to track your food but still achieve your goals, then the strategy you follow will depend on the calories that were set for you based on your current progra focus. Follow the advice that applies to you.
If your program focus is currently Fat Loss:
The easiest way to ensure you are roughly eating the right amount is to eat half the carbs you normally do at each meal, and double the protein, and fill up on veggies until you are about 80-90% full.
How Your Plate Should Roughly Look. Vegetarians can eat a bit less protein and more starch
I call this the SAS Eating Principle and it will take you far. You can probably achieve 80% of your desired results just making sure you eat this way at every meal.
The key here is stopping eating before the point you feel super “full”, always leaving a little room in the tank, like you could eat more but are mostly satisfied.
If you are mildly hungry at the end of the day this is a good sign you are in a slight deficit.
The Hunger Scale
For Body Recomposition aim to be between a 2-7, eat when slightly hungry so you are not so ravenous you overeat, and stop when you are mostly full but have a little bit of room, the energy from the food that would take up this extra room will be supplied by your body and you will burn off your bodyfat.
If your program focus is currently Recomposition:
The easiest way to ensure you are roughly eating the right amount is to 3⁄4 of the amount carbs you normally do at each meal, and double the protein, and fill up on veggies.
If you feel full after each meal and aren’t “stuffed” this is a good sign. 1-2 healthy snacks a day is fine.
If your program focus is currently Building Muscle:
The easiest way to ensure you are roughly eating the right amount is to eat the same amount carbs you normally do at each meal, and double the protein, veggies are optional.
If you are slightly forcing yourself to eat a bit more protein or carbs than you normally would at each meal then this is a good sign. Don’t do this with high fat foods though or you’ll likely go over.
Feel free to have a bit of dessert or liquid calories in the form of a shake though if you have trouble eating extra protein.
Modifying Your Plan
Want to eat all your calories in one meal a day?
Go ahead.
Want to only eat takeout?
Sure thing.
As long as your calories and macro targets are achieved on average each week you can then customize all other aspects of your diet to your dietary preferences and lifestyle.
That said if you are having trouble sticking to your current calorie and macro goals there are a few adjustments you can make.
You can eat at any takeout place you like everyday too if you really want to, just follow the SAS Eating
Principle above
You may find that by sticking to the guidelines in your nutrition plan you are eating
more or less carbs/fat/protein than usual and would like to modify these ratios. That’s completely fine.
I have set these in a way so that they can be achieved by almost anyone with as minimal changes as possible to your normal style of eating. But there is still room for adjustment.
Macro Adjustments:
Fat and carbohydrate
The most common adjustment people will want to make is adjusting their fat and carb goals.
The good news is if your calories and protein are on target these can largely be set to personal preference however there are still some rough guidelines to follow.
Common Sources of Carbs and Fats
If you want to adjust your Carbohydrate intake, start by raising it by 5% and lowering Fat by 5%.
If this is still hard to stick to, feel free to do this another 5%.
Technically you can keep doing this as long as fat doesn’t become less than
20% of your diet, since it supports proper hormonal function.
Going the other way if you want to do a low carb approach feel free to lower your carbs as much as you’d like but I wouldn’t raise fat to more than 50% of your diet, which means that your carbs would be set around 45-50% at this point depending on if you’re veg or non-veg.
To lower carbs further you will then have to increase protein.
You can technically keep doing this until your carb amount is basically 0 since carbs are not essential but I don’t recommend this since your performance in the gym will likely suffer. (plus you can’t eat many tasty South Asian foods!)
Instead I would set a minimum threshold for your carb intake at 10-15% of your diet.
*Some of these adjustments will be available in the onboarding form in the future and we can give you your target numbers but as of now you will have to keep track of these yourself or use another fitness app where you can set your macro %’s such as My Fitness Pal”
Protein
If you would like to increase your protein intake... great!
I have intentionally set the protein lower than most fitness programs recommend(which are set arbitrarily high) on purpose to make the diet easy to follow without a reliance on supplements/”diet foods” etc. but raising your protein intake through either of these means is fine.
No protein powder/shakes required!
More protein is not at all necessary based on research for muscle growth but there is no harm in eating more and anecdotally many people report better gains keeping their protein high.
(high protein is not bad for your kidneys in case you are wondering, that is a complete myth unless you have specific kidney issues...)
Feel free to bump your protein as high as you’d like and adjust your carbs and/or fat lower to compensate.
Adjusting calories
*Note: Before adjusting your calories please consider the strategies we cover in the “Managing Hunger” chapter later in this guide. Any calorie adjustments will alter the timeline of your transformation. **
If you are in a deficit and are having a hard time eating less:
If you are eating at roughly your macro targets most of you should feel full due to the extra protein but if not, you can raise your calories.
Start by raising your calorie intake by 100 calories.
If this doesn’t do the trick, raise them further in 50 cal increments until it does.
Note that no matter what, you will almost always feel a bit hungry in any calorie deficit. To learn why and how to deal with this, go to the “Managing Hunger” chapter.
If you are in a deficit and want to speed up your weight loss:
Start by lowering your calories by 100, try to do this mostly from lowering your carb and fat intake.
Do this to a maximum of 1.0% of your bodyweight in weight loss per week if you are between less than 20% bodyfat
And upto 1.5% of your bodyweight in weight loss per week if you are higher than 20%
To calculate the weight loss per week take subtract you new calorie intake from your TDEE and divide that by 500. You can find your TDEE and rate of loss at your current intake levels in the email sent to you after onboarding or your last nutrition update (every 4 weeks).
If you are in a surplus and are having a hard time eating more:
Try adding liquid calories in the forms of shakes with added calorie dense ingredients like oats, peanut butter etc.
Its best if you can eat whole foods but if you’re find this tough try adding some dessert or “junk” foods.
Start with more protein dense versions of these such as those found in the desserts section of the recipe book.
If you are in a surplus and want to gain muscle faster:
Try adding an extra 100 calories to your diet in the form of protein first, carbohydrates second and fat last, although this does not have to be followed strictly.
Your rate of weight gain should not exceed more than 0.5% of your bodyweight per week in order to avoid putting on excess fat.
Note:
I only recommend increasing your surplus if you find your recovery and/or performance in the gym gets better. Any adjustment where it doesn’t will likely result in additional unwanted fat gain since muscle “building” (anabolism) rates are likely maxed out.
Supplements, Necessary?
You do not need to have a supplement store in your cabinet at home.
If you recall from the pyramid of nutritional importance, supplements are at the top of the pyramid, and represent the smallest factor in your success.
If the base of your nutrition plan, your calories/macros etc. is not in check, supplements will do nothing for you.
That said, they can be useful.
These are the supplements I recommend. They are also optional, especially for non-vegetarians as your diet is more likely to have more protein and certain micronutrients.
(Note:Links to recommended products can be found in the ‘Links’ chapter of the ecourse)
More Optimal Less Optimal
Although some proteins are better than others choose the one that's best for you.
Protein Powder - I typically recommend a whey based protein powder first and egg based second, as animal based proteins are more bioavailable. But if you are intolerant to any of these you can do your favorite vegan protein.
Creatine - If you are eating enough meat you probably only need 3g of this per day and it should help with performance in the gym and therefore muscle gain. If you are vegetarian I recommend 5g a day.
Zinc - Unless you are eating pumpkin seeds oysters weekly you are probably deficient in Zinc, which plays a crucial role in hormone production, especially testosterone. I recommend eating those foods 1-2x weekly or taking a zinc complex.
Magnesium - Pretty much everyone today is deficient in magnesium as it has been leached out of our soils and no longer shows up in our food to a high degree as it used to. I would recommend taking 500mg of Mag. Bisglycinate daily.
Pre-workout - I only recommend stimulants if that’s the only way you can get yourself in the gym, and even then you shouldn’t need much more than a cup of coffee or about 100mg of caffeine.
You can also just take a caffeine pill. I recommend pairing this with L-Theanine in a 1:2 ratio of each respectively to take the edge off the caffeine.
Shilajit - A natural alternative to pre-workout or can be used in addition to it everyday to boost energy, testosterone, mood, motivation and treat many different ailments.
Shilajit is a natural mineral resin (sticky-tar like substance that tastes like metal) found at high altitudes in mountain ranges all over the world. The best stuff comes from the Himalayas above 16000 ft in altitude. Note if you have any cardiovascular problems taking shilajit is not recommended.
Known popularly as 'Indian Viagra' but useful for much more than just that and for both men and women.
Ashwagandha - Known as Indian Ginseng ashwagandha is a [powdered root that is known for helping with stress and anxiety by reducing cortisol, the body's stress hormone and thereby boosting testosterone slightly. I recommend it if you have a high stress and busy lifestyle although you should take a 2 week break every 4 weeks of continuous use.
Remember, supplements are the thing you should be least concerned with, although they often get the most attention.
There are no quick fixes, use them as tools when you’ve got the rest of your nutrition sorted out.
Take it from someone who used to spend way too much money on them.
Hunger Games
Hunger is often psychological and driven by habit and emotion rather than a real need for food
No one really talks about it but at the end of the day those who are successful at losing fat are those who are good at being (a little) hungry.
TLDR: Mild hunger is not to be avoided. It means you are probably in a calorie deficit and if you're not mildly hungry at the end of the day you might not actually be in a deficit. Embrace it and learn what the different types of hunger are to manage
There are many tips and tricks and foods you might have heard of where you can eat less while not feeling like you are eating less but your body is not stupid.
Your physiology has been shaped by millions if not billions of years of evolutionary forces with one clear purpose, survival.
It does this by trying to maintain homeostasis, which is basically a stable state it has adapted to based on your current conditions in order to best survive. Whenever you deviate from this state to one that seems less advantageous to your body for survival it will let you know and try to bring you back to previous state.
So if you start eating different/less food than you are used to, your body will let you know by giving you a signal.
This signal is Hunger.
Now if you’re trying to lose fat as a part of
your body recomposition, you are essentially
trying to change your current state to one Your body employs a negative feedback loop
less advantageous for long term survival, to prevent long term weight loss, which we since fat is primarily long term energy storage are trying to overcome.
in case of food shortage in the future.
So your body will work against you, because it was designed for survival in an ancient environment when food would often be scarce. (This is true for all animals.)
Our modern environment though is abundant, and having extra body fat is not an advantage for survival anymore. But your body doesn’t know this. So we have to work with it.
How? By understanding what hunger is, when to avoid it and when to embrace it.
In our overfed society we have forgotten what real hunger is.
Hunger was a feeling our hunter-gatherer ancestors felt more frequently than anything else.
They lived in a state of constant hunger, not always knowing where their next meal would come from and this drove society to adapt and survive and eventually develop agriculture and technology to better meet its needs, to the point where we
now live in an era of extreme abundance.
Hunger used to be a constant companion, and now its an infrequent annoyance, barely tolerated, and quickly fixed at your nearest drive through or refrigerator.
'World's Fattest Man' from 1910, now this level of obesity is a common sight in developed countries.
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We’re gonna make it our friend again. Why? Because its not that scary, and necessary to your success.
They key is understanding the two different types of hunger, psychological hunger and physiological hunger.
The top right is real physical hunger that should be satisfied to avoid muscle loss, the rest are psychological.
Psychological hunger is from your mind and usually driven by habit.
We feel hungry at the times we normally eat, and what we normally eat due to our body being used to having that food around this time. This can be adjusted fairly easily within a few days of adopting new habits such as Intermittent Fasting or by snacking less.
Less easily adjustable are things like emotional triggers and environments which lead to poor choices. Emotional eating is a form of psychological hunger when you get the desire to eat to deal with various typically negative emotions such as boredom, stress, sadness or loneliness.
This is because eating certain foods make us feel good (dopamine) and has a pain relief effect. These foods are typically high in sugar and/or fat ie. chips, cookies, pizza, desserts etc. and hence calories. The key to managing this form of hunger is keeping healthy snacks on hand such as fruit, nuts and dark chocolate, keeping junk food out of sight, and practicing stress management techniques such as deep breathing, walking and meditation.
In any case, psychological hunger usually comes on suddenly and can make us crave specific foods. This is the type of hunger we want to become aware of and manage if we want to succeed in our fat loss goals.
Physical hunger on the other hand, is a “deep” hunger you feel in your gut, such as when your stomach “rumbles” or makes noises.
This is a real signal that you should respond to by eating a balanced meal or healthy snack if you want to optimize your body recomposition.
Excessive hunger is highly associated with muscle loss, which we want to avoid.
Some signs of physical hunger include: Increases gradually
Can be fulfilled by a piece of
fruit
You can wait to eat, but need to soon
Occurs in response to a sensation in your body, i.e. a rumbling stomach
A deliberate choice of food, eaten with awareness
A sense of satisfaction after eating
No guilt
Whereas Psychological hunger:
Comes on suddenly
You want a particular type of food
You need food with a sense of urgency
Occurs in response to an emotion, i.e. boredom, stress, sadness or loneliness
An impulse choice, eaten quickly without much thought
You still want more or a different type of food
Feelings of guilt, regret
Are you hungry? Is an apple appetizing? If not you're probably not hungry.
A good way to differentiate between these two types is the Apple Test.
The next time you think you are hungry or are craving a snack, ask yourself if all that you had available was an apple* would you eat it?.
If the answer is yes, then you are most likely feeling physical hunger. If not, you might actually just want dopamine by craving a certain food or you may be acting on an emotional trigger and would benefit from taking the time to reflect on what you are feeling at that moment.
*any plain unseasoned food works here such as boiled eggs, plain chicken breast, unsalted roasted almonds etc
AKA Physical and Psychological Hunger
By spending time reflecting and becoming aware of the different ways your body works (sometimes against you) you will be able to make better decisions about your day to day food choices.
This will make you more likely to stick to your nutrition plan and achieve your goals!
The Best Ways To Manage Hunger
If you only ate high satiety foods it would be pretty much impossible to overeat.
Here are some practical ways to manage hunger:
Make sure each meal is balanced in terms of macros(Try to match your daily target!)
Eat high satiety foods (see pic above)
Eat veggies with every meal and prioritize protein.
Stay hydrated. Sometimes when we are craving something we are just thirsty, try drinking a glass of water and see if you still want that food!
Keep easy to eat food and snacks out of the house! Control your environment.
Have healthy snacks/food options at home and in your work/school bag.
Reduce processed foods, these are designed to be hyperpalatable and make you overeat
Reduce carbs/sugar, carbs beget carbs, eating high carb meals/snacks can often make you crave more, especially when combined with fat (potato chips, cookies etc.)
THE HUNGER SCALE: PREVENT OVEREATING
Starving: You could eat anything in sight. "Hungry."
Just a little hungry
EAT WHEN JUST A BIT HUNGRY...
Neutral
Satisfied, but not stuffed
...STOP AT SATISFIED, NOT STUFFED
Stuffed. You definitely overate.
Don’t Deprive Yourself, feeling deprived can lead to binging for some, if this is you, make sure to find ways to work your favorite foods into your diet (see our “cheat day” guide)
Manage stress, high stress can be a trigger for emotional eating, and raises the stree hormone cortisol which increases carb cravings, I recommend 5-10 mins of meditation (try the headspace app for free) every morning and 200mg of L-Theanine(especially if you have caffeine)
Sleep enough (7-8 hours minimum), lack of sleep causes cortisol to rise, which leads to carb/hunger cravings. Not to mention you have more time in the day to eat!
Go for a walk! Exercise reduces hunger, you will notice you are probably not hungry for about an hour after your workout. Walking also makes you feel good and lowers stress.
Identify your triggers and plan a strategy. Whether its pushy relatives, stressful meetings, or long commutes, find when you are most likely to deviate from your plan and figure out how to mitigate these situations.
Eat mindfully (see our guide)
Embrace mild hunger, as a sign that you are achieving your fat loss goals! You should always be between 4-7 on the scale below.
Lastly, if you’ve just eaten a meal or hit your calorie target for the day but are still hungry, wait 20 minutes to see if the feeling subsides.
Hunger has momentum and there is a delay in your body sending your brain the signal that it has had enough.
Take a bit of a break from eating and you’ll often find you’re not hungry anymore.
If you are and its mild, embrace it, if it's significant, have some more protein and veggies to start, its best to exceed your protein targets first and then carbs.
By understanding hunger you are now much better equipped to navigate the daily signals from your body and how to best respond in order to achieve your body recomposition goals. However if you find mild hunger/cravings too hard to deal with there is one more strategy you can try
If all else fails
The 16:8 or 'Lean Gains' fasting method is one of many popular forms of Intermittent Fasting
Even with all these strategies you may still find trouble sticking to your calorie and macro intake recommendations to achieve your current goals.
There is one additional strategy that I like to use as a last resort.
I use it sparingly because it's so powerful you often miss out on all the other important ways to gain awareness of your relationship with food and it tends to be unsustainable in the long term.
But it works.
You may have heard of it.
It’s called Intermittent Fasting.
Basically you only eat within a certain window of time each day. Outside of that window you consume little to no calories.
A typical eating window for IF is 16/8, where for 16 hours of the day you fast, and for 8 you can eat.
For example, lets say you eat your last meal by 9pm, you wouldn’t eat any more
food until the next day, 16 hours later and 1pm.
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Now if you’ve been told breakfast is the most important meal of the day this may come as a shock to you, but it isn’t.
In fact breakfast in ancient times was often delayed until around noon anyways unless you were a laborer or soldier, or sick and weak.
Not that important unless your day-job involves labour
You could also argue our hunter-gatherer ancestors ate like this but its likely that they snacked during this period as the modern Hadza do.
Regardless, the feast-famine model of eating, where you eat less during the day and more at night, comes somewhat naturally to humans which indicated it's perfectly ok and natural to do.
The SAS way to do IF
Practicing IF at least for a short period of time will get you really good at understanding the nature of hunger, and the difference between physical and physiological hunger.
To find the eating window that works best for you try this:
After you wakeup, only have water and coffee/tea with minimal milk/sugar.
You might get a spike of psychological hunger in the morning when you’re used to eating breakfast, but if you bear with it, you will find this quickly recedes.
Later in the day you will get a much stronger signal that you know is physiological hunger because your stomach will be rumbling.
This is when you eat.
A splash of milk/cream and upto 1 tsp of sugar is probably fine, keep it under 30 calories total
Going forward you can set this time to the start of your feeding window.
During your feeding window try to keep your meals in line with the SAS principles of prioritizing protein and limiting excess carbs, but you can probably eat a bit more than you usually do since you won’t be eating as many meals overall.
In a day I typically recommend 2 meals and a snack for men
And 3 meals and a snack or 2meals and 2 snacks for women.
You want to stop eating about 2-3 hours before bed so that you don’t impact sleep quality.
Women tend to do better with a slightly shorter fast of 14 hours.
In terms of the feeding window I recommend 14-16 hours of fasting for men and 12-14 for women.
The secret benefit to I.F. is since you spend less time eating, you spend less time meal planning/prepping and are usually more productive throughout the day since you’re not weighed down and digesting!
Be sure to have some meals ready for when you do eat though so you don’t eat the first thing in sight out of hunger!
I.F. is a useful tool, one I recommend everyone try atleast once in their life for a period of time, but it’s not magic your calories and macros are still what matter in the end you’ll just have an easier time sticking to them in a deficit when you spend less time eating.
That said, awareness of your eating habits will probably be the biggest component in your long term success and avoiding rebound. Which we’ll talk about next. 32
What Are You Cheating On?
Ah Cheat Days. If you’ve ever tried to lose fat by ‘going on a diet’ in the past then you probably lived for these days where you could temporarily eat your favorite foods after limiting yourself for so long.
But are they really necessary?
If you’ve learned anything by now it should be that you can technically eat whatever you want all the time and as long as your calories and macros are on target, you will still achieve your goals.
How 1-2 unhinged cheat day's can destroy a whole week of progress
Now I don’t necessarily advise this strategy as the common junk foods many of us like to eat are often designed to be hyper palatable with lots of sugar, salt and fat which leads to us overeating and craving more. Instead you will almost always get better results eating mostly whole, minimally processed foods that existed >100 years ago BUT you don’t have to do this all the time.
But that isn’t the main lesson here.
The problem with the idea of cheating is that it’s based on absolving guilt, for foods you desire but are resisting eating. This guilt is not helpful, and shouldn’t be there in the first place.
Why are we guilty about eating certain foods?
Because we are judging them. We have this idea in our head of foods that are “healthy” or “not healthy” or good/bad.
When we eat them we tend to feel the emotion we’ve associated with them ie. feel bad/guilty whenever we eat “not healthy” foods and (at best) “good” when we eat “healthy food”.
The problem with this idea is the idea of healthy/not healthy is mostly an abstract concept with no real basis. Food is essentially
calories and macros, saying certain ratios and amounts of these are good/bad is entirely context specific.
For some people a high fat high carb meal
might be useful for building muscle and for some
not as useful for losing fat, but again this does not determine what outcome you achieve without an even greater context of what else you’re eating.
Ditch this concept of “healthy” and “unhealthy foods” and the guilt associated with it, outside of a few ingredients that are actually toxic or you’re allergic to, its not helpful.
Better labels: 'Easier to fit into your nutrition plan' and 'harder but perfectly fine'
Battling your urges is not a smart way to achieve your goals, you'll want to eat even more of said food to feel good and ease the pain from the
Guilt = Binge conflict.
Now that said guilt may also arise when we eat foods that don't align with our goals
because it may make it harder to achieve our calorie/macro targets.
This is an entirely valid point, it may indeed make achieving your goals harder. But this guilt is also not helpful.
Why? Because the feeling of guilt can actually lead to eating more than you initially intended.
This is how it starts, you eat a food that you think you shouldn’t, you feel guilty about it, to relieve the pain of the guilt, you eat more of it.
Maybe you stop here, ok you went over a bit but not that much, or maybe you think “f*** it, I already messed up, lets go nuts, and eat the entire pizza/cake/box of cookies etc. (what also happens is eating a bit of these foods makes your body want more because they are probably loaded with sugar/fat/salt)
Either way the outcome is not helpful.
A Better Way to Indulge
The main point I am trying to get across is that you should NEVER feel guilty about the food you eat. Our body is wired to overeat, this is a natural desire that evolved for our survival. However we now have the wisdom to realize that this is not helpful in our modern environment and we have goals we want to achieve.
So what’s a better way forward?
To consciously choose to eat the food we want to eat and enjoy it, while
keeping our goals in mind.
This leads to no guilt and its associated binging.
Instead of limiting these foods, find ways to incorporate them into your daily/weekly meals while still staying on target (the SAS meal plans are built this way for a reason).
Here are several ways you can enjoy the foods you love while staying on track with achieving your goals:
Not a healthy relationship with food. Unless those are protein pancakes (see recipe guide)...
.
Adjust your macros, for example if you want to have a bit more carbs that day, lower the fat first, protein second.
Adjust your calories, if you want to indulge further, you can raise your calories a bit, up to the maximum which is your TDEE or maintenance calorie intake.
...continued on next page 35
If you’re under 15% bodyfat I actually recommend a weekly “refeed” day where you eat upto your maintenance calories once every 7-10 days as a mental break from dieting (more info in the FAQ).
Even with all the strategies above, life sometimes gets to you, and you may have fallen off the wagon harder than you would like. The first step is to feel no guilt, then figure out how to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Rebound
Plan to include some less calorie friendly food in your diet on purpose and track it.
If you ended up eating large quantities of foods that don’t align with your long term goals for an extended period of time chances are you are not happy with your results.
But you’ve learned not to feel guilty, are acknowledging it happened and are determined to move forward.
The first step in moving forward and achieving long term success this time around is to figure out what happened, why it happened and how not to let it happen again.
Sit down for a minute and think.
What triggered this? The root cause.
Is it a big deal? Did it really derail my long term plans? Am I ok with it happening again?
If not, what steps can I take to avoid this in the future?
Don’t just get right back on the horse, figure out why you fell off in the first place so that it doesn’t happen again.
Then take action.