Don't worry Homer, we'll get you there

Alright people.  You’re starting to work out, you’re ready to get in shape, but you’re terrified of doing the whole ‘diet’ thing.  Diets get a bad reputation because all you hear about is how terrible they are and that they don’t work.  WTF?  I don’t know what the hell kind of diet these people are on, but the ones that actually work are pretty normal.  Remember, your diet can account for at least 80% of your success when it comes to weight loss.  Here’s five rules you should follow if you want to lose weight:

1) Double the number of meals you eat every day -  You want your metabolism to be constantly working, and you want your body to have a constant supply of fuel and nutrients throughout the day. By eating six times a day instead of three, your metabolism will always be working instead of start-stop-start-stop.  Obviously, this goes without saying: EAT BREAKFAST. After sleeping for eight hours, your metabolism is in hibernation-mode and needs to be kick-started right away.  After that, you’re going to want to eat every two to three hours.  Breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner, snack. Simply figure out how many calories you can eat per day for weight loss, divide by 6 – pronto. There’s your meal plan.

2) Eat protein and good carbs with every meal – You might think eating 6 times a week is going to make you get even bigger.  Wrong, because you’re going to eat 6 good meals.  You want to make sure you get protein in each meal, because protein will build lean muscle (and lean muscle speeds up your metabolism).

Pick a protein.  Pick a carb.  Add a vegetable.

To see more information on how to create the perfect meal, read my blog from yesterday where I go more in depth on proteins, GOOD carbs, and vegetables.

3) Cut out the liquid calories - According to Men’s Health, the “average person consumes 459 calories, most of which come from sugar, in the beverages he or she drinks each day.”  You know all those sodas, juices, beers, etc. you drink every day along with your meal?  It’s the sugar that gets ya:  it jacks you way up, and then turns to fat.  If you can find a way to cut those out of your diet completely, you can lose close to an extra pound per week (500 less calories a day = 1 pound of body fat lost).  The best cure I’ve found for this is to just drink a lot of water.  Think about it: if you’re drinking water you’re NOT drinking something else.  Water is good for you, has zero calories, and doesn’t cost money (hit up that office water cooler people!).

4) Keep Track of what you eat – If you have to write down/type every single thing you eat, you’re going to be far more likely to make better choices.  Now, I hate writing things down and I’m terrible at keeping track of stuff…so I use the wonderful internet to help me out.  I keep track of all my meals and workouts (although I did slack last week) on Gyminee.com , and I’ve found that on weeks I pay attention and write it down, I stay on track, and when I start to slack and forget to input my meals the results for that week aren’t nearly as good.  I’ve recently been introduced to another website, www.aidiets.com – where you put in your diet goals and it will generate a meal plan for you (complete with recipes).  I haven’t got a chance to mess around with it too much, but I love the idea of putting recipes in there because I can’t cook anything but I can follow directions pretty well.

5) Eat whatever the hell you want one day a week – Body For Life recommends it, Tim Ferriss (the man) recommends it, jury’s still out for me, so I’ll leave this one up for discussion.  Your stomach will recommend it too.  Pick one day a week, and eat whatever the hell you want: Twinkies, Gatorade, Mountain Dew, Taco Bell, donuts, whatever.    If you want to eat an entire family size pag of peanut M & M’s…okay that might be too much.  When you eat all this crappy food, your metabolism will have to work extra hard because it’s used to getting 6 good meals a day.  All of a sudden you throw a Domino’s bread bowl at it and it doesn’t know WHAT to do, so it works overtime.  The next morning, when you go back to eating healthy, your metabolism will KEEP working overtime and you’ll burn more calories.  Woot.  During the week, when you see that two week old birthday cake sitting in the company fridge, you can tell yourself “not til saturday.”  Plus, once you start eating healthy, you can use this One Day a week to reward yourself for being good..and eventually the food that used to be so appealing to you (and so terrible for you) might not seem so great.  This one is probably more of a mental edge than physiological, but I think it works for lots of people.  This one is up to you.  If you just want to go all out and stay dedicated for the whole week, more power to ya.  Here’s a great article laying out the pros and cons.

So there you have it.  6 meals a day.  Protein and GOOD Carbs in each one.  Drink water.  Keep track of what you eat.  Give yourself one day off.

Make it happen.  I’ll see you at the finish line.

-Steve