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#157 - Calorie Swaps To Lose More Fat & Make Dieting Easier
20 Plays5 days ago
What if you could eat a lot of the same foods you already enjoy, make a few small tweaks, and go from gaining weight to losing it?
That’s exactly what calorie swaps can help you do. When you better understand food and calories, dieting starts to feel a whole lot simpler and less restrictive. More importantly, it becomes something you can actually stick with long-term, so your results last for years, not just a few weeks.
In this episode, you'll learn:
- What energy balance is and why understanding it is the key to losing, gaining, or maintaining your weight
- The most common eating mistake that keeps people stuck, and how to solve it
- How to make "unhealthy" food higher in protein and lower in calories to fit your goals
- Food swaps you can make today to save you thousands of calories per week, based on the most common foods we're all likely eating
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Transcript
Introduction to the Fit-ish Project
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome back to the Fit-ish Project with your host, Lathan Bass, where we make fitness and health simple for regular people like you and I. We got the weekly episode for you, as we always do. Before I get into that, if you can leave a review, if you have not done so, continue to share this out with people who you think get some value, help people look better, feel better, get healthier, all those good things that we all want.
Calorie Swaps for Sustainable Weight Loss
00:00:26
Speaker
The topic for this week, we're going to talk calorie swaps. This was something that really made weight loss and specifically being able to keep the weight off and not follow a miserable diet and really just make nutrition and dieting in general so much easier and more sustainable. So I'm excited to get into this one because I think this is a big unlock for a lot of people.
00:00:49
Speaker
Because when you hear about somebody losing weight or when you have the idea of getting healthy or let's say you have the goal that you want to lose 20 pounds, the first thing that you think about is likely something like you have to restrict and cut out your favorite foods. You can't eat this certain food. You need to cut out sugar. You need to cut out carbs. You have to eat clean, as people say.
Rethinking Dieting: Myths and Realities
00:01:10
Speaker
And I understand where people are coming from with these thought processes when weight loss is the goal or improving their health by cutting out things that aren't necessarily conducive to those certain types of goals.
00:01:21
Speaker
But I think a lot of people take this to a point to where it's not really sustainable. If you're the type of person who can cut out all processed food, you never drink alcohol, you never go out to eat, you never have sugar, then you probably don't need to listen to this episode. But if you're like most of us who do want to enjoy some ice cream, who do want to have some pizza, who are going to eat some processed foods, who are going go out to eat with family and friends from time to time, enjoy some desserts, all those different types of things.
Finding Enjoyable and Sustainable Diets
00:01:48
Speaker
then it makes sense to really get a better grasp on food rather than thinking about nutrition and dieting in this dichotomous way to where you think about food as this food here is 100% healthy or this food here is 100% unhealthy. I'm never going to eat the unhealthy stuff. I'm only going healthy stuff. That's just not very sustainable for a lot of people. And when you start to realize that food lies on more of a spectrum, it's not just yes versus no or healthy versus unhealthy. you start to create a better mindset around food. And this allows you to do things a little bit more flexibly. And this also allows for that long term sustainability, because I have told you guys many of times, I've lost 100 pounds, I eat ice cream, i eat pizza, I have all the things I drink alcohol, I go out to eat, I do all that kind of stuff. And it's because i understand the basics around nutrition. And I understand how to make certain swaps here or there and how to fit certain things within my diet while still being able to keep all that weight off, while still being able to look the way that I want to look, while still being able to have good health and be fit and all those different things that we want.
Flexible Dieting for Long-term Success
00:02:57
Speaker
You can do those things while being able to eat a diet that you actually enjoy and a diet that doesn't suck and doesn't make you miserable and doesn't feel like you're trying to willpower your way through it the entire time.
00:03:08
Speaker
Because as you know, if you want any of the results that you get through dieting and exercising to stick, you have to figure out a way to do these things for life. It's not something that you can just do for a little bit of time and then you go back to your old ways and those things stick. You have to find habits. You have to find a style of eating. You have to find a style of exercising that you really enjoy that you can do consistently most of
Understanding Energy Balance
00:03:32
Speaker
the time.
00:03:32
Speaker
The concepts that I'm going to share with you in this podcast, I think that is Super helpful for a lot of people because they do want this more flexible approach where their style that they eat in does fit within their lifestyle and they don't feel like they're always holding back or not able to eat certain things. And so getting into this podcast.
00:03:51
Speaker
A lot of people think that losing weight means cutting out everything that they enjoy eating. But when you actually understand things like energy balance, you understand some healthy concepts around food, like prioritizing more whole foods, more fiber, more high volume things.
00:04:09
Speaker
You understand that, yes, there are definitely some things that you want to do more of, but you also understand that you don't have to eat chicken and broccoli every single meal or eat boring meals or try to eat meals that you hate. when you understand something as simple as energy balance. And so when we talk about energy balance, all that means is that the calories that you are intaking are going to control your weight. So if you are somebody who needs about, let's say, 2,500 calories to just make this easy math to maintain your weight,
00:04:38
Speaker
As long as you're eating roughly in that range on average over time, you are neither going to gain weight or lose weight. Obviously, you're going to have the fluctuations on the scale, just like everybody does that fluctuates anywhere between three to five pounds in a day or in a week or things like that. but By and large, over a long period of time, if you were eating that 2,500 calories and nothing else is changing, your activity levels are the same, all that different stuff, your weight is going to stay within that five pound range.
00:05:05
Speaker
If you were eating less than your body needs, so say in that example of 2,500 calories, let's say consistently you're eating 2,000 calories, well now you are going to start to lose weight. So you are in a negative energy balance. You are consuming less calories than your body is burning on a daily basis, which means you're going to lose weight because your body needs to get that energy from somewhere in order to do all the things that it needs to do, like digest food, like move around, like exercise, like think, all those different things that it needs. It needs energy from somewhere. And if it's not getting it through the calories in food and drink, then it has to get it from somewhere, which it gets from your stored body fat or muscle.
00:05:41
Speaker
If you're eating more than that 2500 calories on a constant basis, now you're going to start to gain weight. So you're in a positive energy balance, your body doesn't necessarily need all that excess energy, but it's going to keep that around, it's going to store that so just in case at some point, maybe you don't have enough calories.
00:05:58
Speaker
it can dip into those fat stores and now you have that energy on your body. So super simple concept. If you're eating the same amount of calories, you're gonna stay the same. if you're eating less than your body needs, you're gonna lose weight. If you're eating more than your body needs, you're going to gain
Common Calorie Tracking Mistakes
00:06:12
Speaker
weight.
00:06:12
Speaker
When you understand this concept, you start to understand that calories matter a lot. They're not the only thing that matter because the quality of your food also does matter. But when you really start to understand the numbers and how calories work, you understand that you can incorporate some foods and still maintain your weight as long as your calories are in check.
00:06:32
Speaker
or even with losing weight. This is how you can do things like have ice cream or eat tacos or have burgers. As long as your calories are lower in that calorie deficit range, less than your body needs, you can have these things and still lose weight.
00:06:46
Speaker
Just like you could also gain weight by eating, quote unquote, all healthy food. So starting to understand this and starting to really retrain your brain to think about how you think about food and how you make choices around the things that you eat in your meals and things like that will help you out quite a bit.
Identifying Hidden Calories
00:07:03
Speaker
And so now that you have a good grasp about energy balance and calories and how important that is with how you manage your weight, how you maintain your weight, lose weight, gain weight, all those different things, I wanted to first just quickly touch on the most common mistakes that people make around nutrition and how you can avoid them. After that, I want to get into some of the most common high calorie foods that keep people stuck and how you can choose different alternatives. So talking about some of those calorie swaps and then give you just a long list of things that we often eat that we don't realize have tons of calories, give you some real practical calorie swaps so you can start using those literally today because going to list off some things that can save you quite literally in a single day, hundreds of calories and over the week, thousands of calories. So you can eat very similar foods. and change very little things and eat drastically less calories, which again, if you have goals around maintaining or even losing weight, and just being a little bit more healthy, this is going to help you out and make it so that you can eat a lot of the things that you still love to eat, but continue to monitor your weight or change your weight if that's something that you are interested in.
00:08:12
Speaker
So probably the number one mistake that I see with people who get stuck around like they're trying to lose weight, but they can't lose weight or they're gaining unwanted weight or they get stuck in a plateau, different things like that. It all comes back to the calories. So if you are eating too many calories, you're not going to see the results that you want to see. You're gonna gain weight or you're going to be stuck in a plateau. You're not going to lose weight. And oftentimes people feel like they're dieting or feel like they're eating healthy because they're eating certain foods that they would deem healthy.
00:08:42
Speaker
But when you look at their calories over a certain amount of time, so let's say multiple weeks, they're just simply eating too many calories. And I know that I've mentioned this multiple times, but the studies tell us that we are just really bad at estimating how many calories that we're actually eating.
00:08:58
Speaker
We often underestimate how much we're eating and we overestimate how much we're exercising or moving. which means that we are taking in more calories than we think, which leads to not being able to lose weight or even gaining weight, even if we feel like we're eating healthier, doing all the things that we need to be doing in order to lose weight. This isn't because you're lazy or because you're clueless. It's just because mindless calories, they really add up.
00:09:21
Speaker
Calorie dense foods are all over the place. Hyper palatable foods are all over the place, which just means that we're taking in a lot more calories than we ever used to. You're eating processed foods, you're going out to eat, you're having bigger portions, you're drinking liquid calories, you're doing all these things, and you're probably moving a little bit less than you used to when you were younger, which leads to, again, people gaining weight who don't necessarily want to gain weight or being stuck at a weight that they don't want to be stuck at.
Practical Tips for Calorie Control
00:09:48
Speaker
And just to give you some quick examples around how easy it is to just mindlessly eat and for these calories to add up, these are some really common areas that people have no idea that they're consuming these amount of calories. So when you think about how many people drink coffee on a regular basis, like how many people go through drive-through or have coffee in the morning and how many calories they could be adding into their day just from that one little thing. If you're having an actual coffee drink, you're not really getting that much that many calories in there, like say you're just having a black coffee, or maybe even having coffee with a little bit of milk or something like that, you could be adding a few calories. But when you really get into trouble is when people will go to like a Starbucks or some sort of coffee place and they're getting their coffee frappuccino with double pumps of this and sugar and all this other stuff. I don't even know what these things are called. But you can easily get 500 600 700 calories in
00:10:41
Speaker
These coffees, which aren't really even coffees anymore, they're more like milkshakes because of how many calories and how much sugar they have in them. And so liquid calories start to add up extremely fast. If you're drinking full sugar sodas or full sugar juices, like those things can have 200 to 300 calories in a single bottle or a single can of soda. So like these calories, they start to add significantly.
00:11:04
Speaker
very, very quickly. Other things like sauces and condiments, so like salad dressings, pasta sauces, things like that could easily add 100, 200, 300 calories in a single meal And now you start to multiply that across the week. Let's say that you're having a salad every day for lunch, and you're adding on 300 calories of this high fat dressing.
00:11:25
Speaker
Those are tons of calories that you could be adding on without even really realizing it. And you're eating a salad. So you're like, oh, I'm eating fairly healthy, a lot of vegetables, things like that. But you're adding on an extra 1500 calories throughout the weeks in this dressing that you don't even realize. Cooking oils, butter, things like that are also very calorie dense. So like this happens a lot when you think about eating out or having takeout, things like that. They're using cooking oils and lots of times high fat things, butters, because it makes the food taste better.
00:11:56
Speaker
And so they use these things in large quantities and they could be adding 100, 200, 300 calories. And again, in a single meal, it doesn't seem like a crazy thing. But when you start to add up multiple of these things throughout the day, that could be 500, 1000, 1500 calories in a single day that you don't even realize you're taking all this excess in. when You think about other things like fattier cuts of meat, there's a lot of extra calories there. Full fat dairy, there's a lot of extra calories there. Things like peanut butter or nut butters or nuts and seeds, things like that, that are very high calorie.
00:12:29
Speaker
All those things just really start to add up and start to really pile on the calories, which ultimately leads to gaining weight or not being able to lose weight. Even when people think that most of the choices that they're making are quote unquote healthy.
00:12:44
Speaker
and so this is where i'm such a huge proponent of spending some time tracking your food because unless you really start to look at like food labels on a consistent basis where you spend a little bit of time actually tracking out your food you have no idea what a portion size looks like for a lot of different foods you don't know how many calories are in certain foods which calories or which foods are very calorie dense or have a lot of calories versus don't have a lot of calories which dressings or condiments or drinks have more calories or more sugar than others. You don't know which foods are high carb or high protein or high fat. And all those different choices that you're making throughout the day, you don't really have a lot of knowledge behind those choices. You don't really actually know what you're consuming and what you're putting into your body. So again, it leads to that frustration loop, because even if you feel like you're eating healthy, you could be eating tons of extra calories and not really seeing the results that you
Mindful Eating in a Calorie-dense World
00:13:37
Speaker
want to see. And the crappy part about this too is now that more people are starting to become more health conscious about eating healthier and trying to make better choices. But the marketers also know this, the people who are trying to sell you food, they also know that people are more aware and want to feel like they're making healthy choices. So You may be grabbing something that by looking at the package looks like it would be very healthy, like it says high protein on it, or it says like some sort of like health messaging on it about how it's healthy. But then you turn it around and you look at the food label and you see this thing that says it's supposed to be healthy or says it's supposed to be high protein has seven grams of protein, but it's 400 calories. Like, how does that make sense? Or something that says it's supposed to be super healthy, but then you turn it around and it has 50 grams of sugar in it and 400 calories for like this drink. Like that is not going to help you to hit your goals because again, that energy balance is super key here. It's not that you can never have these things if you want to have those things, but it's just about becoming more conscious and aware about the things that you're putting in your body Because if you're not conscious and aware about those things right now, just the way that our environment is set up in the way that just calorie dense foods are everywhere, hyper palatable foods are everywhere. If you're eating some of these things without really realizing what you're putting in your body, it starts to add up over time. So it's not that you have to be obsessive about it but just really getting more aware and spending a little bit of time of just educating yourself about the things that you are putting in your body so the solutions to these things as i've already mentioned part of it is just becoming more aware so you can do this by tracking calories you'll learn a ton about food from tracking calories i think personally it's been one of the most impactful things that i ever did when it came to losing 100 pounds and being able to keep that off was tracking calories because Sometimes you'll hear people say like, oh, just listen to your body or, you know, just make these certain choices. But for me, if I listen to my body, I can just eat and eat and eat for days. And I could eat so many calories to the point where I would never lose a single pound. And I could easily be 300 pounds again if I really wanted to, because I can just eat forever. Like I enjoy food. I like eating a lot and I can eat just a crap ton. So for me, it was such an eye opening thing because I started realizing like,
00:15:55
Speaker
these are certain foods that just aren't helping me to get to those certain goals and i don't want to be this heavy anymore i don't want this to start to affect my health as i get older i want to get this weight off and so i just started to make different decisions and beforehand it's like i might have had some idea about certain foods that were very calorie dense or certain foods that weren't healthy but like i didn't actually know the severity of it you know that that old saying of like ignorance is bliss right like you don't actually know how many calories you're putting into things And I joke about this now with some of my friends or even like some clients, like once you know how many calories are in certain things, like you never look at it the same way. Again, there's a time and a place to just have whatever, like there's times where I'll eat something that's just like a crazy amount of sugar or a crazy amount of calories. Like I love desserts. So like I'll eat a piece of cheesecake or I'll eat a cookie that's a thousand calories and it is what it is. But once you know those things and once you really realize just how easy it is to start to over consume on calories, you start to look at food a little bit differently. And tracking calories is the tool that gets you there.
00:16:57
Speaker
Even if you're not going to track calories for the long term, I think there's a ton of value in it and doing it for at least a couple of weeks or 30 days or something like that just to get some good education and just more awareness around food. Or at the very least, just start looking at food labels regularly.
00:17:13
Speaker
That's something I never did when I was overweight. I never, ever looked at food labels, but now it's something that I do without even thinking about it. Like if I go grocery shopping or if I go to a restaurant, I always just check the calories and I just look at how much protein this has or how many calories this has, like what's all in this. And again, I don't know. I
Making Informed Food Choices
00:17:31
Speaker
don't obsess over it. I don't get like crazy. in the details about it or anything like that but i just want to know it's the same way like if you go to the store and you're buying something and you don't know the price of it you look at the price of it like if something is overpriced then you look for a different option or you pick something else or maybe in that moment it's worth it or you don't mind spending that much money on that certain item and so you buy it the same exact thing goes for food so like you look at something and it's a ton of calories and you're like Maybe it is for that time. It's worth it. But a lot of times you're probably just going to find something that's a little bit lower calorie, maybe a different alternative. Maybe you just skip on it for that day. i think about food and I think about money in very similar ways in that aspect. So just, again, becoming more aware of it.
00:18:14
Speaker
The second thing that you can do. So the second part of the solution after you you become more aware and just more conscious about the choices that you're making. is starting to make some lower calorie swaps to save you tons of calories. And so I mentioned this a little bit at the beginning of the podcast, but you can eat very, very similar meals by just making some very small tweaks within certain foods. So a lot of those foods that I listed towards the beginning, there's lower calorie versions of these things that you can eat. So you're still eating tacos or burgers or pizza or ice cream or different things like that but they're less calories which is a win-win you're still able to eat a diet that you actually enjoy but it's a lot less calories than it typically would be and so to give you an example like one of my favorite meals that i eat is a bergen prize like if i go to a restaurant love having a bergen prize and i just enjoy it like it's something that i really look forward to i like that meal if i go to a restaurant or if i get takeout and I get a burger and fries that could easily run me 1500 calories, which again, sometimes it's worth it. a lot of times though, i could just make that same burger and fries at home for 500 calories by using my own potatoes, by not using a ton of extra cooking oil or deep frying them in grease,
Enjoying Low-calorie Versions of Favorite Foods
00:19:28
Speaker
by using a lower calorie bun, by using some leaner beef, by not using the crazy high calorie sauces. I just saved myself 1000 calories. Or another thing that I really, really enjoy eating is pizza.
00:19:40
Speaker
If I go out and crush a whole large pizza, that's probably going to run me like 3,000 to 4,000 calories. I can make a homemade pizza, a homemade large pizza, the same size for anywhere between 1,000 to 1,200 calories, depending on the toppings.
00:19:55
Speaker
or pint of ice cream. If you follow me on any of my socials, you know that I absolutely love ice cream. I eat a pint of ice cream every single night and it's roughly around 250 to 350 calories. If I was to eat a pint of ice cream from most of the normal ice cream companies, like full fat, tons of sugar, all that kind of stuff, I could very easily be taking in 700 to 1000 calories from that single pint of ice cream. So nearly three times as many calories from the same amount of food. And so that's what calorie swaps do for you. You're able to find meals that you enjoy that still taste good, but now you're eating a diet that you actually enjoy and you're able to lose weight, which people oftentimes think that these two things should be
00:20:38
Speaker
mutually exclusive, like you shouldn't be able to eat a diet that you love and have good health and all these different things. And that's kind of just the way we've been conditioned, like the only way to be healthy is to eat chicken and broccoli or eat all this plain stuff or eat bland food, never eat processed food, never have sugar, all that kind of stuff. But again, back to the energy balance,
00:20:56
Speaker
understanding that and then also understanding there's ways to make some calorie swaps where you can still eat all these foods that you love and still be able to hit your goals. And I think that is a huge, huge thing for a lot of people once they have that realization that they can eat a diet that they enjoy. It's such eye opening thing. And I know, again, when I realized this for myself, when I finally had that breakthrough of realizing like, oh, I can have some of these things in moderation, or I can have these more macro friendly, higher protein, lower calorie type of foods or type of meals that actually really taste good. I knew that this weight loss and just being healthy was something that I would be able to do for my entire life because I enjoy the food that I eat. I look forward to the way that I eat. Getting into more of the practical side of this, some things or some places that you can actually start making some of these swaps on things that you're probably eating right now. like These are really simple tweaks that you can start to incorporate. You don't need to make every single one of these overnight or try to have like this huge overhaul to your diet right now. but Starting to just make minor tweaks can save you hundreds of calories, if not thousands of calories per week and get you on the right track. So when it comes to some popular things like drinks, mentioned those earlier, rather than drinking your full sugar drinks, stick to zero calorie type of drinks.
00:22:13
Speaker
Now there are so many different options on zero calorie or extremely lower calorie drinks, whether it be juice or sports drinks or flavored water or sodas that don't have calories. Now, like there's so many different options because, again, more people are becoming more conscious and aware and they want these things. And so the people who create these types of foods and all the people who market these types of things, they understand the need for it. And so they're creating more of these things. So now there's dozens and dozens of different zero calorie drinks and you can find whatever you want, like whatever flavor you like or different drink that you like. i promise you there's probably a low calorie version out there that you
Calorie-saving Strategies in Daily Meals
00:22:52
Speaker
can have in. When you think about this, cutting out, let's say, that Starbucks drink where you get a different lower calorie type of coffee drink in the morning, or rather than drinking your one to two sodas a day, if you cut those things out, you could be saving yourself 500 calories a day.
00:23:06
Speaker
You multiply that out throughout the week, 500 times seven, you have 3,500 calories. That's a pound of fat lost by cutting out one simple thing. when you think about protein sources so rather than having the fattier cuts of meat start to lean towards more of the leaner cuts of meat so super common thing is like ground beef so rather than getting like your 73 i think it's 73 27 i have no idea because i haven't bought it in so long or 80 20 i know is a common one But rather than getting some of those fattier cuts of meat, you stick to the 93.7. I know some people even go leaner than that. Like they'll go the 96.4. I typically stick to like 90.10 or 93.7. And I still think it tastes pretty good. But doing something like that can save you tons of calories.
00:23:51
Speaker
When it comes to like breakfast stuff, rather than having tons of whole eggs, and there's nothing wrong with eggs, but they can get calorie dense if you're eating, you know five, six, seven eggs. So rather than eating five or six eggs, you could do a couple eggs and then mix in some egg whites. So you're getting less calories, but you're getting all the protein. You're still getting some good nutrients from the egg yolks.
00:24:10
Speaker
when it comes to like sauces or just flavoring in general switching from regular high calorie sauces to low calorie sauces g hughes is one of my favorite brands of low calorie sauces but i know again there's dozens of different low calorie sauces now so just spending some time figuring out trying some different ones figuring out which ones you actually like because you can make really simple meals taste really good just by adding a good sauce and this is something that i do quite a bit if i don't want to spend a lot of time cooking which most times i don't i eat really simple type of meals but i'll just change it up with different sauces that taste really good And so I never really get tired of the food that I'm eating.
00:24:46
Speaker
Little bonus tip for like your sauces and flavoring, using seasonings and herbs is a great way to flavor your food without adding any calories. There's so many different combinations and different seasonings and different things like that. And if you don't want to play around with certain seasonings, just get yourself a couple of good multipurpose blends that are already mixed up for you.
00:25:06
Speaker
And just use those like there's tons of different ways you can make food taste good without adding tons of extra calories with like high calorie sauces or different things like that. Cooking oils, again, another very calorie dense thing. Instead of using like your olive oil under or stuff like that, you can just start to use zero calorie cooking oils. There's tons of options there.
00:25:27
Speaker
Dairy, I mentioned that one, but instead of having full fat dairy stuff, you can use low fat dairy or even nonfat dairy items with like milk, cheese, yogurt, cottage cheese, all those things. You can find very low fat type of dairy items.
00:25:40
Speaker
bread products. There's tons of higher calorie breads and things like that out there. You can start to swap some of these out for some of the lower calorie stuff or like lower carb type of breads or wraps, tortillas, all that kind of stuff.
00:25:53
Speaker
When it comes to like sweeteners, instead of just using like full sugar, you could use some zero calorie sweeteners. So again, these are just common things that I know a lot of people are using on a regular basis. you Start to make a couple of these tweaks, add two or three of these in, and you could, again, be saving yourself just hundreds of calories per week.
00:26:12
Speaker
When we think about the most commonly eaten things in the U.S., I looked up this list because I was curious because I was like, so what are the things that people are eating? the most of like what are things that people eat a lot of that they're probably getting a lot more calories than they realize from and are there macro friendly recipes for these things i was just curious about this so i looked and the list said sandwiches of burgers pizza bread rolls buns tortillas sweetened drinks and soft drinks so like pop and soda things like that bakery type food so like muffins pastries donuts cookies Savory snacks like chips, crackers, eggs and omelets, cereal, tea and coffee, and then like some mixed dishes like burritos, pastas, casseroles, certain things like that. And so looking through that list, I know that I have seen macro-friendly, more higher protein, lower calorie type of versions of all of these foods. And I've tried quite a few of them. Now, don't get me wrong. There's certain recipes out there that are just not good. Like if you try some of these like more, they're supposed to be like healthier, macro-friendly type of recipes. Some of them suck.
00:27:14
Speaker
But there are a ton of really good Instagram handles out there or TikTok handles that make all these recipes that actually taste really good that are super macro friendly.
Leveraging Social Media and AI for Dieting
00:27:25
Speaker
So if you have things on this item, like you're the type of person who likes pizza like me or you like burgers or anything, whatever your guilty pleasure is, you can find more macro friendly versions of these things. So if that's something that you want to eat more frequently, you can still have those things frequently and still be losing weight.
00:27:43
Speaker
Or every once in a while, if you want to opt for the higher calorie version of these things, you can do that as well. Like right now, I've been on this kind of protein pancake kick. So I have protein pancakes or protein waffles pretty much every single morning. but I found a more macro friendly version of this. So lower calorie, higher protein.
00:28:01
Speaker
I can eat that every single day and still hit my goals. I'm still in a calorie deficit. I mean, I've lost probably 12 pounds since the beginning of the year. And I've had those protein pancakes, I would say probably six out of seven days I'm having those. Like I'm just really on that kick right now. So that's kind of my thing. And so when you find these recipes that you actually look forward to and that you actually like,
00:28:21
Speaker
it doesn't feel like you're dieting anymore it's just a diet that you can actually look forward to so a couple of tips with all that that i just threw at you right there like you can find low calorie versions of any type of meal that you really like and again you don't always have to go for the macro friendly meal but most of the time like if you're really especially trying to lose weight or even just maintain your weight it makes sense to find that version of meal or that version of food that fits within your goal so two things you can do as i mentioned Go to social media and literally just type in like macro friendly recipes and you'll find tons of accounts that just put out really good recipes for this stuff. The
Consistency and Flexibility in Dieting
00:28:59
Speaker
second thing that you can do that I've actually been doing a lot is just to use AI for this. So if there's a certain version of food that I have or a certain meal that I want to have, I'll just throw in ChadGBT. I'll say, give me a higher protein, lower calorie version of this meal.
00:29:13
Speaker
Or if you want to get even more specific than that, you can be like, I have these certain ingredients. I want a high protein, lower calorie, tasty meal, and it'll give you options on those. So you can use AI to help you with picking out different recipes and making sure that you're able to stick to your goals.
00:29:29
Speaker
Using those type of things, I think can go a really long way because if you have meals that you actually look forward to that taste good and that allow you to hit your goals, like you found it, like you've checked off all the boxes that you need to check off because now you're not using that willpower. You're not like dreading eating broccoli and chicken for the sixth time this week. That just doesn't taste very good. You're looking forward to all those meals.
00:29:53
Speaker
Once you start to do this, once you start to make some of these swaps, once you start to become more conscious about the things you're eating, all this stuff becomes so much easier. You're able to eat less calories, higher protein, you feel less restricted, you have more flexibility, you're able to stay more consistent.
00:30:08
Speaker
And again, the number one predictor of being able to lose weight and keep it off or just maintain a healthy body weight is adherence, which means you're able to stick to the way that you eat for a really long time. And I think this style of eating right here, where most of the time you're eating high quality whole food type ingredients, some of the time you're finding those macro friendly swaps that you can add in there. And then every once in a while, you're just having the real thing or you're just going out to eat or you're just not worried about calories or you're eating the full fat dessert or you're eating a thing that's a thousand calories and has 200 grams of sugar in it like you're having those things every once in a while too because it's important to have those things too if you want it but i found that leaning towards this way and just realizing that you can incorporate all these things and still look the way you want to look feel the way you want to feel have really good health is that unlock for a lot of people. So hopefully you were able to gather some good nuggets out of this. I think just to kind of pull this all together and give you a couple good takeaways just to think about as we finish off here is just understanding energy balance determines whether you lose weight, you gain weight, or you maintain weight. So if you are trying to lose weight and you're not losing weight over a certain amount of time, there's a good chance that you're probably eating too many calories, whether you know it or not. Now you know you can go and track food for a while, you can start to make some of these calorie swaps, you can start to find some of these macro friendly meals to help you get into a calorie deficit to actually see progress and lose weight.
00:31:36
Speaker
But once you start to become more aware of these things and look at food labels, things like that, you're going to realize that there's a lot of things that you can do to help yourself out to make these goals a little bit easier. Third thing I would say is just start to look at your diet and find two to three simple swaps that you can start making right away to save you some calories. So maybe looking at your diet, you use a lot of high calorie sauces. So that could be one thing that you try to implement. Maybe you typically using the fattier cuts of meat. So you could start to try to incorporate some leaner cuts.
00:32:08
Speaker
Maybe you're using like butter or high calorie cooking oil. So you start to swap some of those out or you drink a ton of calories through coffee or soda or things like that so you start to make some swaps there just find a couple of ways that you can start to start swapping some things out to start to help yourself out saving some calories and over time that starts to make a big difference and then the last thing that i would say to you is just Continue this process and don't make this huge overhaul overnight because you don't need to try to change everything all at once. And oftentimes i will tell people not to do that because it just doesn't work for most people.
00:32:43
Speaker
I always tell clients that I work with that this is a trial and error process. There are some things that you're going to try. you're not going to like like you're going to try some certain calorie swaps you're going to try a recipe that you hate you're going to try some certain like healthy type of meal or food that somebody is promoting and you're going to think it tastes like crap and it tastes like cardboard and you never want to try again but trust me i have been doing this stuff long enough to realize that yes of course there's some crappy swaps out there there's some stuff that just shouldn't be made to be healthier quote unquote and it should just be the real thing But there's so many things now that you can try different meals, different foods, different swaps to make being healthy and just to make being fit and looking good and feeling good so
Final Thoughts and Coaching Offer
00:33:24
Speaker
much easier. So continue to try different things, try different meals, try different foods, because even if you have to spend a year, two years really dialing in your nutrition and creating a diet that you really love, that's much better than living out of shape, not feeling good, bad health for the next 40, 50, 60 years. So it's worth the time to just continue to play around with different things, make little tweaks here, try different meals here, incorporate different things there, rather than trying to just fit into some certain specific diet like a keto or something like that, where it's just not going to be as sustainable for most people. So With that being said, hopefully those are some actionable takeaways that you can start to implement from this podcast. As always, I appreciate you listening. You want to leave a review, share this with somebody who you think could get some value out of it. Appreciate that as well. The one-on-one coaching link for any weight loss goals or anybody looking to improve their fitness, feel better, look better, all that stuff. That link is in the show notes as well. I appreciate you listening and we will see you next week.