This picture has absolutely nothing to do with today’s article.
I just love Homer, and I wanted to get your attention…although you might be eating a doughnut right now as you read this.
Let’s hope not.
Before I start, I want to let you know I’m not condoning zero exercise. But I’ll tell you that one of our best success stories, Tim, got injured and “couldn’t exercise” for six months.
And yet…he still lost 50 pounds:
Look, the RIGHT kind of exercise is freaking awesome and something you should try to do every day.
However, I am here to tell you that if your primary concern is weight loss, exercise is merely the icing on the cake. Or, the bacon wrapped around the asparagus, to be healthier.
90% of your waistline battle is won or lost in the kitchen (or at the restaurant table, or at the drive-thru window, etc.)
Warning: this will ask you to possibly make some substantial changes to your diet – are you up for it?
If you’ve struggled to change your diet in the past, or you’re stick of starting and stopping a diet, I’m here to tell ya you can stop starving yourself and getting frustrated. We’ve helped tens of thousands of busy people change their diets, like Tim above.
It starts by having an actual plan of attack and following it! We know everybody is at a different point in their life, so we created a 10-Level Nerd Fitness Diet that allows you to slowly change your nutritional strategy over time so you can have permanent success.
Grab our NF Diet Strategy Guide free when you sign up in the box below, and then get back to learning about how important your diet is!
Eat Real Food
I’m a huge fan of the food philosophy presented in books like The Paleo Diet
Because they make this diet thing so simple and logical even a caveman could understand it. My apologies if you’re a caveman.
If you’re new to the “Paleo Diet” concept, here it is in a nutshell. Rather than list what you can’t eat, here’s what you CAN eat:
REAL foods – veggies, lean meats, fish, eggs, fruit, and nuts.
Why does this work? Because you’re only eating foods that you’re genetically engineered to thrive on: high quality, high energy REAL foods. Not from a box, not from a bag, not from a window. Food from the earth. Yay nature.
We’ve written a 4,000-word monster article on the Paleo Diet that’s a must read if you’re going to start eating healthier, but I know this stuff can be overwhelming. We consider the Paleo Diet fairly difficult to stick with, which is why it’s one of the higher difficulty levels on the Nerd Fitness Diet.
Grab our strategy guide (sign up in the box below) along with a free guide on the Paleo Diet too so you can pick a level that doesn’t scare you first, and then slowly ramp up to it:
Cut Way Back on the Rest
Bread, cereal, pasta, fried food, rice, bagels, doughnuts, waffles, chips, tortillas, candy etc. – these things are all loaded with carbs (and if they’re processed – refined carbs and sugar), and I’ll bet a million Monopoly dollars they’re the cause of 99% of the population’s weight problem.
I’m not telling you to give all of this stuff up completely, I’m just telling you that this is probably the reason the weight isn’t coming off of your frame.
Here’s why:
Most grains, refined carbs and sugar were nonexistent way back in the day, which means our bodies never quite adapted to properly process them. They can wreak havoc on our gut, cause our insulin to spike and can lead to weight gain.
Here’s a great video to explain why refined carbs make you fat:
Today’s general recommended diet ratio of 50-60% carbs, 30% protein, 10-20% fat is quite far off from where your nutrition should ACTUALLY be.
This ratio has been pushed on the public for decades, and new “low fat” items continue to pop up every day…and yet the country continues to get wider and bigger and fatter.
Something’s not right.
How I Know it Works
Although I’ve recently added some grains back into my diet to bulk up (oats, flaxseed bread, and brown rice), I can attest to the fact that the Paleo Diet absolutely works.
In the four months that I switched to a Paleo diet (my ratio was probably 40% fat, 40% protein, and 20% carbs), my body fat percentage dropped from 12% down to 5%.
Besides myself, many NF readers have lost quite a bit of weight from making this change as well.
Guys like Saint who went full Paleo:
And women like Staci who also went full Paleo and started strength training:
Cut Out Liquid Calories
Soda, beer, juice, margaritas Gatorade, vitamin water, cappuccinos, fruit coolatas – avoid them whenever possible (except for beer on St. Patty’s Day…come on.)
These beverages are all loaded with sugar which immediately turn to fat in your system. And switching from a 12 pack of Coke to a 12 pack of Diet Coke might not solve your problems either.
Read my article why Diet Coke might make you fat, and our overall thoughts on Alcohol too
My advice: chug water like it’s your job, stick to black coffee, cut out liquid calories.
It will curb your appetite, keep your insides running properly, and give you an excuse to get up and go for a walk to the bathroom every thirty minutes.
No Paleo? No Problem. Eat Less Than Before!
Don’t want to change what you eat? Welp, you’re just going to count calories, and work on portion control.
It’s a pain in the ass, but it works – though tough to maintain over many years.
Here are the three equations you need to know:
- Calories consumed > Calories burned = weight gain.
- Calories consumed < Calories burned = weight loss.
- 3500 less calories per week = 1 pound of fat weight loss.
As explained in the video above about “Why you got fat”, the types of you food you eat is more important than these equations let on, but just creating a caloric deficit will still produce weight loss (although far less efficiently).
The challenges most people run into is that they eat poorly, and then expect a bit of exercise to make everything better! The reality is, eating poorly could mean you’d need to spend HOURS burning calories just to not gain any weight.
I just don’t have that kind of free time and I’d guess that you don’t either, so why not work smarter instead of harder, right?
Remember Tim above? He followed the nutritional strategy in our flagship course, The Nerd Fitness Academy and just went for a walk each day.
Because he really bought into the idea that “Nutrition is 90% of the battle,” he put his focus there, and lost 50 pounds in 6 months in the process:
So, work smarter, not harder, like Tim.
Rather than eating bad foods and spending hours working it off, instead eat GOOD foods, only do exercise that’s fun for you (hiking, playing with your kids, biking, yoga), and then enjoy the rest of your day.
Life’s too short to spend it doing stuff that’s just not necessary. But you DO need to fix your diet. If you are overwhelmed already with the idea of changing how you eat, counting calories, and how you can make progress in a way that doesn’t scare you.
Grab our 10-Level NF Diet Strategy Guide, pick the level you want to start with, and treat each level like a challenge you have to complete before leveling up. And you’ll lose weight and get healthier as a side effect – not too shabby.
The Choice Is Yours
I’m not going to yell at you and force you to only eat grilled chicken and steamed vegetables for every meal – I’m not your mom (phew, that would be weird). Besides, you’re a grown individual and you can make choices for yourself.
I AM, however, telling you that if you want to see results without spending hours upon hours in the gym, you need to get your diet under control, and this is the most efficient way for you to get there.
The more you can change to what’s been listed above, the quicker you’ll get to your goal weight.
Switching to a 100% Paleo Diet after years of eating bad carbs is a recipe for disaster and you giving up immediately! Instead, try finding a way to implement a change or two along the way until you start to see those results.
I realize this is much easier said than done, which means this isn’t really about your diet: it’s about your willpower and finding a good balance of changes that you can successfully manage.
Whenever somebody says “I can’t give up that food” or “I just don’t have time to prepare a healthy meal” all I hear is, “I don’t want it badly enough yet.”
I’m okay with that!
We all start somewhere, and we are all afraid of change deep down – it’s in our DNA. So let’s start with small changes.
Start at Level 1 of the Nerd Fitness Diet, and work your way up when you’re ready – no change should be one that’s too far outside of your comfort zone. Grab our 10-level guide when you join the rebellion in the box below:
If you’re not at that point yet to take control of your life, I’ll do my best to inspire and motivate you to get there…but the desire to change has to come from within you.
If you ARE at the point where you really want to make a change, I’m here to help, along with a community of people on our message boards who are there to support you.
Do we have any Paleo Dieters here? How did you successfully make the transition from a modern diet to a healthy one?
Do you have concerns about giving up carbs and eating more fat? I’m only writing from experience and my own research, but would love to hear some stories on your weight loss successes or failures and I know others would too.
Let’s hear it!
-Steve
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photo: Greg Easton Photography
