Health and Fitness

What’s a “Good Enough” Diet? (Steve’s 80% Solution)

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I’ve identified certain mental models and rules that help me make sense of my day without being overly neurotic, still have fun with friends, and ALSO allow me to reach my strength training and physique goals.

Here’s my personal “80% of the time, it works every time” strategy:

#1) Skip breakfast. I don’t eat breakfast. My first feed happens after my 11 am workout. Yup, sometimes I’ll eat brunch on a weekend or have a bagel/donut, but that’s rare. I love Intermittent Fasting, it works for me, and I’ll probably do this for the rest of my life.

#2) Eat real food most of the time. I know what real food is. I try to only eat real food. If you hate veggies (as I used to), here’s how I learned to love them. Yup, I still eat rice and potatoes.

#3) Know my calories. I skip breakfast, and I eat the same lunch every day, and I know the basic quantities and calories of foods I normally eat. This means I generally know how many calories I’m eating every day with minimal effort. This is done more strictly if I am targeting certain goals.

Alternatively, we can learn portion sizes, as we cover in our “Healthy Eating” guide

#4) No unnecessary liquid calories. I drink black coffee, unsweetened black tea, or water. No soda. No juice (which is pretty much sugar water). I do put whole milk in my Powerbomb smoothies, which I drink specifically to help me overeat on training days to build muscle. I still drink whiskey (neat) or good beer when the occasion calls for it!

#5) Never eat two unhealthy meals in a row. If I eat an unhealthy lunch (pizza and wings and beer), I either make my dinner healthy or skip dinner entirely. If I eat an unhealthy dinner, my lunch the next day is going to be healthy. I know myself, and when it comes to momentum-killing, 1 bad meal is a speed bump, and 2 is a brick wall.
Before I help you come up with your own rules, I want to address the elephant in the room.

Okay, now that I’ve addressed him, let’s talk about vegetarians and vegans!

Will Being a Vegetarian (Or Vegan) Help Me Lose Weight?

I considered including Vegetarian or Vegan mental models in the above sections, as I know we have plenty of plant-based folks in the Rebellion.

Here’s why I didn’t: neither option satisfies

Rule #1 (“By following this strategy, you will most likely lose weight”). Allow me to explain.
Yes, as a vegan or vegetarian, you can ask yourself: “Is this Vegan/Vegetarian? Yes or No” (Rule #2), which does make it a mental model in that respect.

However, for you to lose weight and be healthier on either mental model, you need to be very aware of the foods you’re eating and how many calories they have—which introduces more complexity.
Pizza, fettuccine alfredo, bowls of sugary cereal, grilled cheese sandwiches, and calorie-bomb burritos can be vegetarian.

Donuts, pasta, and bread can be vegan.
Plant-based? Technically, yes.

Healthy? Ehhhh.

Just like you can do Paleo or Keto incorrectly, you absolutely can be an unhealthy vegetarian or an unhealthy vegan.

The same is true of going gluten-free

Long story short: if you are thinking of going vegetarian or vegan for whatever reason (nutritional, moral, religion, this new person you’re dating is vegetarian, etc.), go for it!
It might work for you! It might not.

It might help you lose weight! It might not.
It all depends on what foods you are eating in addition to being vegan or vegetarian.
So, if going plant-based ALSO helps you educate yourself on what you’re putting in your body if it helps you make better food decisions, and changes your relationship with food for the long term, and gets you the health/physique results you’re after, great!

KEEP DOING IT!

Just don’t fool yourself into blindly believing what you’re doing is healthy just because you cut out meat without actually analyzing what you’re replacing it with.

If you are vegan or vegetarian and planned on emailing me angry words for not including them as healthy options above, this concludes my cover-my-ass explanation. We’re cool, right?

Also, yes. I have read the China Study.

Lastly, if you are contemplating moving to a vegan or vegetarian diet, make sure you check out our massive guide “How to Eat a Plant-Based Diet: A Scientific Look at Going Vegan Safely” for tips and tricks to make it work.

Going Plant-Based: Following a Vegan Diet for Fitness


How to Pick the Diet That’s Right For You (Next Steps)

Those are the rules I’ve picked above that fit MY reality. I adjust based on my progress from month to month, whether or not I’m making progress in the gym (and in the mirror!).

Here’s how you can determine the best diet for you: Throw the concept of the “perfect diet” out the window and staple this to your forehead: “The perfect diet is the diet I can stick with.”
Don’t staple that to your forehead. It’ll be backwards when you look in the mirror and that will defeat the purpose.
Instead, do this – Be a badass scientist:

#1 – Do some research, just enough to get started, and pick the diet or the rules you want to start with. Pick the rules that you can live with. Then, start. Now.

Here are some sample yes/no rules to get you started outside of the mental model diets. Note the difference in challenge/healthiness – pick the ones at YOUR level:

I can’t drink more than 5 sodas per week (instead of my normal 10). It’s up to me when I drink them.
I don’t eat fast food Monday through Friday.

I eat a vegetable with every lunch and dinner.
Once per week, I’ll do a 24-hour fast.

I don’t drink alcohol on Sunday afternoon through Friday afternoon. Other than that, all bets are off.

#2 – Track your adherence to the diet or rules. It can be very simple (“Yes I was compliant today”/“No I wasn’t”). A spreadsheet, a calendar where you write Xs on the days where you were compliant, an app, a friend you check in with, etc. Your rules can be “Only drink 5 sodas this week,” “eat two vegetables per day,” or “eat under X amount of carbs.” Pick rules that line up with your life.

#3 – Track your progress, assess your strategy. Compare photos, measurements, and/or lifts in the gym at the end of the month. Are you better off than you were 30 days ago? Do you feel like you can stick with the rules for another few months? Were you able to stick to the plan more than 80-90% of the time?

#4) Stay the course, or course-correct:

Compliant with your rules and you lost weight? Great! Do it again for another month.
Couldn’t stick with your rules? Great! Adjust your rules to be less rigid so you’re more likely to stick with them.
Stuck with your rules but didn’t lose any weight? Great! You identified that your rules weren’t aligned with your goals. Adjust them.

#5) Repeat! Forgive yourself if you don’t succeed (each month is a new experiment). Even “failure” gives you information on what diets DON’T work for your situation.
You will need to follow these 5 steps every month for the rest of your life, so better get used to it.

That’s what we call “life.”

Because life IS change and chaos.
Success comes from learning to navigate through the muck!
Your body will change in the coming years, and so will your rules. You might get pregnant or go through menopause. You might get an injury change jobs or discover a food allergy. You might have kids move cross country or go on vacation.

Each month, do a quick evaluation of where you are. Decide if you need to stay the course or make adjustments.
Do this consistently, and you’ll eventually arrive at the perfect diet FOR YOU. You are a unique snowflake in an environment and situation that is unique to you.

So again, I do not follow a paleo lifestyle. I don’t even recommend Paleo as the option that’s best for everybody.
What I recommend is treating life like an experiment, and using the resources and community here at Nerd Fitness to identify the rules and strategy that works for YOUR reality.

The Mental Models of Paleo, Keto, Slow Carb, Intermittent Fasting, Vegan, Vegetarian, or other eating models may be able to help you get started, and MIGHT even get you results!
But it’s gotta fit your life and ultimately be sustainable to have any real chance at long-term success.
So I recommend that YOU take control over finding the perfect diet for YOU.

Pick a mental model and incorporate it into your life. Lean on your friends or this community for support. Learn from people who have succeeded in the way you want to succeed. Track your compliance and progress. AND KEEP EVOLVING.

This is why I started Nerd Fitness: to help people cut through the crap and start to make progress that can stick even as the rest of their life goes through change.

If you’re somebody who is super overwhelmed or has struggled with yo-yo dieting for years, you’re not alone! This stuff is tough, and finding a way to navigate a constantly changing, chaotic life while following brutally strict rules ain’t easy.

This is why we created three different paths forward. The next step so you determine the “right diet for me.”
Pick the option that best aligns with your goals:

#1) Our 1-on-1 Online Coaching program: a coaching program for busy people to help them make better food choices, stay accountable, and get healthier, permanently.
You can schedule a free call with our team so we can get to know you and see if our coaching program is right for you. Just click on the image below for more details:

#2) Check out NF Journey, our fun habit-building app that helps you exercise more frequently, eat healthier, and level up your life (literally).

#3) Join The Rebellion! We have a free email newsletter that we send out twice per week, full of tips and tricks to help you get healthy, get strong, and have fun doing so.

I’ll also send you tons of free guides that you can use to start leveling up your life too:
Healthy Eating Ultimate Guide: Start Eating Healthy Without Being Miserable

So you want to start eating healthy, eh?

Amazing!

We’ve helped hundreds of thousands of people like you transform into actual superheroes, and we focus on proper nutrition to do so.

These are the exact strategies we teach our Online Coaching clients, and we’ve used these tips to help them lose weight and get in great shape without being miserable.

The Truth About Healthy Eating

It’s really easy to give people the following advice:
“To lose weight, just eat more REAL food.”
“Just eat less fast food and junk food.”

“Try to eat more organic vegetables watered by unicorn tears, farm-to-table meals served by centaurs, and kale omelets made with eggs from chickens that you raised since birth.”

Okay so maybe people don’t say the last one.

But it’s not far from what healthy people say to people who can’t seem to get healthy.
In my opinion, these positions are completely out of touch with reality and it makes me plum dog mad.
For starters, fast food is crazy delicious and dirt cheap, and often the only way that many busy parents can feed themselves and their kids.

Next, applying morality and guilt to food consumption (“I’m being ‘so bad’ by eating this cookie”) creates an emotional rollercoaster – my least favorite kind of roller coaster.

I mean come on, we don’t need to be told that freshly grown fruits and veggies are better for us than junk food.
We don’t need to be told that organic grilled chicken and kale salad is healthier than a Double Whopper with Cheese.
We all know this!

So rather than “trying harder” to eat healthier, we’re going to use things like “science” and “human psychology” and “excessive quotation marks.”

Cool?

Here’s what you need to know: If you’re just trying to be healthier and maybe lose some weight, there’s no need to start funneling kale smoothies, mainlining chicken and broccoli, and abandoning your loyalty to Burger King.
You can lose weight and be healthy while still eating these foods occasionally.
Heck, people have lost weight by eating Twinkies drinking soda, and eating at McDonald’s 3 times per day.

I share this info not to promote those foods, but rather to make a big point:

If you are terrified of giving up all “junk food”…
You do not need to give up fast food if it brings you joy.
You do not need to feel shame for eating ice cream.
You do not need to use terms like “cheat meal” or “guilty pleasure” when talking about a chocolate chip cookie.
Food isn’t good or evil, my dear friend!
It’s just food!

Let’s bring it all together:

If we have certain health goals, we can give ourselves the best chance of success by getting strategic about what foods we say “YES” to, and what foods we say “SOMETIMES” to.
These YES foods give us more energy and have fewer calories on average than “junk food,” which means we’re likely to eat fewer total calories without realizing it.
And thus, we end up with the Triforce of Awesome:
A longer lifespan.
A smaller waistline.
A happier, healthier existence.
So what are these magical foods we’re talking about?
I thought you’d never ask.

What is Healthy Eating?

Removing all the morality and science of food, let’s talk about a realistic definition of “healthy food”:
“Foods I can eat frequently that give me enough fuel to get through the day AND don’t make me miserable.”
Most doctors, websites, and books have generally the same list of “healthy foods”:
Protein like poultry, meat, low-fat dairy, and legumes.

Fruits and vegetables.
Healthy carbohydrates like rice and quinoa.
Healthy fats like almonds and olive oil.

Occasional full-fat cheese and dairy.

Why is it that these are the foods that happen to end up on every list on every website when it comes to “healthy eating?”

Simple.

They are full of vitamins and minerals while also being lower in calories than ultra-processed foods that are easily overconsumed.

They also fill us up, making us feel satiated, and keep us under our calorie allotment for the day.

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