how to stay on diet



what's up, guys? jeff cavaliere, athleanx.com. today we've got to simplify nutrition. why?because most of the time people make it really complex. and when something is complex, you usuallywind up bailing on it pretty quickly because nobody can turn their nutrition into a secondjob and

how to stay on diet, have it be something they can follow for theentire year or for an extended period of time, and therefore aren't going to get sustainedconsistent results. and we all know how important nutrition is.i've said it before. i'll say it again. nutrition is about 70 percent of the equation, but ifyou can't follow it, we've got problems.

so, with athleanx and in my x factor mealplan, we have certain guidelines and rules that make following a meal plan a lot simpler. we remove all the calorie counting, and measuringand the macro counting because it doesn't have to be that complex. if you take your plate that you're going toeat on, right. right here, a normal sized dinner plate, and you divide it in your ownhead, or even physically as i'll show you rightnow, you can make your decisions on what goes on that plate way easier. so, what i do, again, one of the key componentsis i start every meal, i believe that protein

should fit into every single meal you have. obviously it's much easier when you're inyour supplementation, when you're having your protein shakes, or if i have my rx shake.that's a gimme. but when you're talking about your main mealsthen you need to have protein in there. and what we do is we start with, here for me again,an example, grilled chicken. so, i've got grilled chicken that was alreadymade up ahead of time which again is another idea that you might want to adopt especially here in the new year is bulk preparea lot of your meals so that you can dip into them, and it's a lot easier than having tomake it fresh every single time.

obviously i'm not talking about leaving thisthing for days, but just for a couple days. and i start with grilled chicken, and i'llput half of my plate full of protein, ok. so here is the amount of grilled chicken thati'll have. right there. half of the plate. that leaves this other half of the plate herefor you to deal with, ok. on this other half of the plate, we've gotcarbohydrates. now with carbohydrates you've got 2 major kinds of carbohydrates, or categoriesof carbohydrates. you have your starchy carbohydrates then youhave your fibrous carbohydrates. your fibrous carbohydrates are generally goingto be lower in calories than are your complex starchy carbohydrates.

it doesn't mean that you should be avoidingcomplex carbohydrates. i've gone to great lengths in this channel before of talkingabout the importance especially if you're a guy looking to buildlean, athletic muscle. you need starchy carbohydrates to do that unless of course you have some medical reason or intoleranceor gluten intolerance or insensitivity that steers you away from them. i believe thattheir importance is really, really high. that being said, if i'm a guy who needs tolose weight, we know again hypocaloric state will help us to lose weight. we can become hypocaloric by choosing lowercalorie sources of carbohydrates. so in that

remaining one half of the plate, you're going to want to steer towards moreof the fibrous carbohydrates so much so that 2/3 of that remainder of that plate, or evenup to the entire remainder of the plate, could be fibrous carbohydrates if your maingoal is to start to lose a lot of body fat, ok. so, if you did that, again, what i havehere is, we have like a, again, pre-prepared zucchinisquash mixed with some olive oil and onions. you would put that here on the plate and youtake up about 2/3. and that is again the general recommendationup to the full remainder of the plate if you're trying to really cut down on your calories.

now me on the other hand, i like the starchycarbohydrates, and again this is ironic coming from the guy that stays lean 365 days of theyear. there's not a video that i've done in thispast year or the year before or the year before that that i haven't been in this same levelof leanness. and that's because i eat this way guys. itmakes it so simple that it's easy for me to follow and i can stick to this, and i do havestarchy carbohydrates. so, in that case, for me, my plate would alwaysstart with a sweet potato because i love sweet potatoes. so, again, i take a sweet potato.i put it right here. and i still have room on this plate for pastawhich again italian heritage, i like pasta.

so, i'll put pasta on the plate also. here. and then i have my fibrous carbohydrates.so, i can take the zucchini mix or i can take, as i showed you before, edamame and i'm not scared about the occasional14 or 15 pieces of edamame as far as soy goes, guys. so i put my fibrous carbohydrates here, there'sreally not enough in that bag there. but you get the idea. this is what my plate wouldlook like, k. so we have the half protein up here with thechicken. we've got the starchy carbohydrates here. we have our fibrous carbohydrates again.

i would eat more than this here. i would probablyeat, if you want to show the real amounts, i'd add more. matter of fact, i'd probablyput this all over the top of my chicken. probably have more than that, but that's agood idea about the portion sizes but really it's the compartmentalizing of your plateinto these different constituents. yes, they're macros, but you're doing it ina much simpler way than having to measure out 42 grams of carbohydrates, 31 grams ofprotein, that's the kind of stuff that'll drive you nuts. that's the kind of stuff that will lead youto get off of your meal plan as fast as possible. it doesn't have to be that way.

not if you're using this compartmentalizationof your plate that makes it so much easier. and again, in terms of portion sizes, there'sa guy that's going to weigh 280 pounds. matter of fact i train guys that weigh 280pounds that are really lean. they're high level athletes. they're going to eat probablydouble the amount that i eat here. portion size is relative to the size of theperson that's eating. you're going to have a larger appetite, more muscles to feed thebigger you are. so that's all relative. but in the meantime, i wanted to give youthe main idea and a principle that you can adopt and start using that's easy that will start to help you to get over thefrustration of attacking a meal plan thinking,

'oh my god, i don't know what i'm going to,i gotta start measuring and counting and all that.' no. not at all. you don't do that ever in ourathlean x factor meal plan. we keep it simple. they're called guy-friendly eating plans because most guys can really adopt something thatsimple that doesn't require as i said in the beginning, a second job. so, if you guys are looking for a much simplerway to eat, and again, if you're looking for the exact way that i eat to stay lean 365days a year, there's no such thing as getting ready fora show, there's no such thing as trying to

look good for a certain period of videos andthen covering up for the others, the idea is looking good 365 days a year.this is how i do it. and you guys can do the same. at athleanx.com with our athleanx trainingsystem, you get the day-by-day eating plan. in the meantime, i hope you found this helpful.if you want more nutrition videos, of course

let me know and we'll make them. leave a thumb's up if you like this one. andwe'll keep making them in the new year. again, happy new year. i'll see you guys back here again real soon.