If your goal is to lose fat and you struggle with your nutrition, then sit down, shut up, grab a pen and paper. Class is in session. now? I'm not an expert or anything, but what I'm about to teach you will work for anyone. It's as simple as it gets. And it's worked for thousands of my clients over the past five years. all right. So there are three things that affect your body's daily energy expenditure. the first is the total calories that your body burns at rest just to keep you alive and breathing. This number varies from person to person, and it's influenced by things like your age, your gender, your activity levels, your genetics, your muscle mass, your hormones, any health conditions that you have, and even your daily habits. This number is called your BMR or your basal metabolic rate. The second is the energy that you expend doing things throughout the day. When you wake up and brush your teeth, when you go for a long walk on the beach, or if you're a fucking man, the work that you do outside building and fixing stuff. This is called your NEET or your non exercise activity thermogenesis. The more you move throughout the day, the more energy you burn. And the last thing is the energy that you expend exercising. Like when you're in the gym, lifting weights or playing sports, or doing jujitsu. This is called your eat or your energy activity thermogenesis. Now check this out. The way that we give ourselves energy is through the consumption of food. And the metric that we use to measure the energy that we get from that food is called calories. So what I do is I take all those numbers and I add them up, my NEAT, my EAT. And my BMR, and I get a number called TDEE, which is our total daily energy expenditure. so this is how weight loss and muscle gain works. When you use more calories than you consume throughout the day, Your body is forced to use fat stores as a source of energy. This is called being in a calorie deficit. when you consume more calories than your body uses, your body will store the extra as fat to be used for later. This is called being in a calorie surplus. But when you're in a calorie surplus and you're lifting weights, your body is going to use the extra resources to build muscle. This is why you see bodybuilders eating so much to get big. So to make this even more simple, if you eat less and move more throughout the day, you'll lose weight. But, if you do that and you eat enough protein, you'll lose body fat. the protein consumption preserves your muscles. Then if you do those things and add weightlifting in, not only will you burn fat, but you'll also build muscle. One of the major factors that influences your BMR is your muscle mass. So as you build more muscle. You burn more calories throughout the day. now? I'm sure you're probably thinking, whoa, that's way too much. Why don't you just tell me how much to eat? No problem. There are two schools of thought on this that I follow. There's the way with training wheels and there's the way without training wheels. I start all of my clients with training wheels. And the way that we do that is we use a fancy macro calculator, which you can find on my website. You put in all of your data, like your age, your gender, your height, your weight, your activity levels, and what that calculator will do is it'll spit out your daily calories, separate it out by the different macros that you should be eating, which are protein, fat, and carbs. that will be your starting point for food consumption. then all you have to do is just make sure you eat as close to that as possible every day and measure your progress. You always want to make sure that when you measure your progress, you don't just use the scale. because if you're eating enough protein and lifting weights, you could also be building muscle. so if your goal is fat loss and you're, burning body fat, but at the same time building muscle, you may not see much progress on the scale. and there's of ton of other things that also influence your scale weight, like how much water you drink and how much salt you're consuming. so make sure you also add a tape measure and measure your waist as well so you can make sure that you're losing inches, even if you're gaining muscle. And about every two weeks or so, if you don't see the progress that you're trying to see, just reduce your food by five to 10 percent and continue to do that until you start seeing the results that you want. Then when you plateau, you do it again and continue to repeat that process until you finally get where you want to go or your goals change. So what will happen is if you do this for long enough, eventually, you're going to develop the skill of knowing exactly what your body needs, when you should be eating, how much you should be eating, and how you perform and feel when you're eating right. It becomes much easier to follow that routine. So then, you can just take the training wheels off, aka stop meticulously tracking your calories, and do it with. 80 percent or so accuracy without having to worry about falling off the wagon or off track. This is what I do because it removes the stress of feeling like I have to be meticulous and tedious when I'm trying to eat healthy. Macro Counting I Look at as just one of the many tools that I have in my toolbox for seeing the results that I want to see. And I don't feel like it's something that I should have to do forever, but if for whatever reason my goals change or I start to travel too far off of the path, I can always go back to macro counting to get myself back on track. It's no problem. Now, I'm sure your next question is, well, how many meals should I be eating? How often? What about things like intermittent fasting, keto, or one meal a day? And what I'll tell you is that any coach or trainer that tells you one way is the absolute best, you should probably unfollow or get rid of. The best way to do this is whatever works for you. What I like to do is align my meals with periods of activity. One of the hardest things to do for a lot of people is to get your protein target every day, especially when you're eating whole foods. So typically what I'll do is I'll decide how many meals I'm going to consume throughout the day based upon my schedule. For most people that's between 3 and 6. Happy medium is typically 5. So you'll eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and then snacks in between. And I split the protein evenly throughout all the meals. Then I also split the fats evenly. And then the way I do it is I put the carbs during the times of the day where I'm going to be most active as a way to fuel myself for that activity. So for me, as an example, I typically like to lift weights and exercise in the afternoon and the evenings, so I don't typically eat anything until about 11 or 12 o'clock in the afternoon, and then my last meal is around 9 or 10 p. m. That's okay, but my last meal is lower in carbs because I'm not really going to be doing anything other than sleeping after that point. but my first meal is high in carbs because that's going to be the thing that gets me going as I go into the high activity periods throughout the day. This may not be the same for you if you're the blue collar type who follows me, your periods of the highest activity typically happen in the morning. So what you're going to want to do is you're going to want to front load most of your meals, especially your high carbohydrate meals to the beginning of the day so that you can fuel that activity for yourself. This is variable from person to person and what you have to do is find out what works for you. but what I've found works best for everyone is using the carbs as a slider and looking at them as a source of fuel that's going to give you immediate energy for the high activity periods of your day. Understand that intermittent fasting and one meal a day and all these other strategies that you see out there are just mechanisms for achieving a calorie deficit. That's all it is. And as long as you can find a strategy that works best for you and your priorities in your lifestyle, it's going to work. Great. Understand that you're not beholden to that specific strategy and you can change it based upon your preferences or your priorities at any given time. The goal is to be in a deficit, not attach yourself to the strategy that got you there. One of the other things that I'll suggest that you do is always make sure at a minimum you're taking a multivitamin because those supplements account for gaps in your nutrition that are caused by preference or lifestyle. All right, last thing to touch on. If you believe that you barely eat anything, but still gain weight, and you know that you're in a calorie deficit, I want you to message me personally because we need to study you. You, as a human being, are single handedly defying the laws of physics. And we need to find out how you, by only eating a single leaf of lettuce, can gain four pant sizes And a surplus of blood sugar high enough to kill a fucking grizzly bear. Why? Because if we can find out why God made you differently than the other billions of people on the earth, then we can save every starving child in Africa. The truth is, is you are either eating way more than you think you are, or you're drinking all of your calories. And that concept also applies to the guys who say, I eat so much, but I'm not building muscle. Look, man, the truth is, if you were eating more than you burn, you're either going to get fat or you're going to build muscle if you're lifting weights. Period. it's literally impossible for you to consume more than your body burns and have those calories go nowhere. So look, I know that sometimes the internet and people out there can make things way more complicated than they need to be. There's always a fitness guru out there trying to find new ways to scam you with new programs or supplements. The reason why most people fall for that is because they're looking for a shortcut or an easy path to getting the result that they want to get. You will never get the outcome when it comes to your physique and your body and your health unless you put the work in. There is no shortcut. There's no easy path. And even if you do buy the supplements and the steroids and the gear, you will not get the result without doing the work. so if there's anyone who ever promises you that you're going to get an outcome without the effort, they are lying to you. And if you're watching this and you still need help, it probably has nothing to do with the fact that you lack knowledge. It's very likely that you lack the mental resilience or the self control. to practice your impulses related to your food and your health habits. And that's a completely different problem that we have to solve that I address specifically with my coaching, which I'll drop in the description somewhere around this video. So if you do want help, I can be there to get you there. Oh, and one more thing, if you have questions that you want me to record more videos on, do me a favor and drop them in the comments below. Talk soon.