150 grams
215
19
1
14
Egg white
150 grams
78
16
1
0
Oatmeal
50 grams
152
5
27
3
Unsweetened almond milk
240 grams
36
1
3
2
Strawberry
140 grams
45
1
11
0
Total
526
42
43
19
Workout
Postworkout Meal
Plain nonfat Greek yogurt
340 grams
201
35
12
1
Banana
136 grams
121
1
31
0
White bread
28 grams
74
2
14
1
Avocado
60 grams
96
1
5
9
Total
492
39
62
11
Lunch
Roasted dark meat turkey
250 grams
395
65
0
15
Carrot
100 grams
41
1
10
0
Pea
100 grams
81
5
14
0
White potato
200 grams
138
3
31
0
Total
655
74
55
15
Snack
Apple
182 grams
95
0
25
0
Total
95
0
25
0
Dinner
Farmed Atlantic salmon
220 grams
458
45
0
Brown rice
170 grams
615
13
129
5
Broccoli
150 grams
51
4
10
1
Total
1,124
62
139
36
Daily Total
2,892
217
325
81
Daily Target
2,900
218
326
81
If you haven’t already, make your first meal plan now.
Take as much time as you need—most people need thirty to sixty minutes to create their first meal plans and considerably less time going forward. Come back when you’re done, and we’ll continue.
If you’d like one-on-one help with creating meal plans (and everything else discussed in this book), check out my personal coaching service at www.muscleforlife.com/coaching.
How to Add Variety to Your Meal Plan
If you’re new to the Bigger Leaner Stronger method of meal planning, back-burner this bit. Eat the same foods every meal, every day, and you’ll be much less likely to accidentally overeat or undereat.
If the thought of that routine sends a shiver through your taste buds, you might be surprised at how easy it is when you’re eating foods that you actually like. You don’t get sick of them as quickly as you might think.
Furthermore, if you look at your diet now, you’ll probably find that you’re already eating a lot of the same foods regularly. Most people tend to rotate through a number of staple meals for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks. Creating a meal plan simply organizes this habit around a goal.
If you really want variety in your plan, however, or just feel up to the challenge, you can create alternative options for individual meals in your plan (breakfast, lunch, dinner, etc.).
The best way to do this is to work within the calorie and macronutritional restraints of the meals you’re replacing.
For example, if your breakfast currently contains 30 grams of protein, 50 grams of carbs, and 15 grams of fat, work with those numbers when creating alternative breakfasts. That way, you don’t have to adjust the rest of your plan for each meal option.
•••
You now know how to create a “miracle meal plan”—one that meets your calorie and micro- and macronutritional needs, that allows you to eat the foods you like, and that fits your lifestyle.
If we ended this part of the book here, you’d be well equipped to succeed with your diet. We have one more topic to talk about, however, and it’s an important one: “cheating.”
Specifically, how to “cheat” on your diet without ruining it. Let’s find out.
Key Takeaways
I don’t recommend “o
n-the-fly” tracking with an app like MyFitnessPal or “eating by feel” until you’ve successfully cut, lean bulked, and maintained with meal planning.
Meal planning is the simplest and most effective way to put everything you’ve learned so far into practice. So long as you’ve done your math right and stick to the plan, your body composition will change.
If a food came in a package, you can use the numbers provided on the label.
Most of your meals shouldn’t come in packages. They should consist of relatively unprocessed foods that you prepare and cook yourself.
The following websites are good resources for meal planning: CalorieKing (www.calorieking.com), SELF Nutrition Data (nutritiondata.self.com), and the USDA Food Composition Databases (ndb.nal.usda.gov).
Weigh everything you eat before cooking to determine its calories and macros, and when preparing multiple servings, weigh again after cooking to determine portion sizes.
When you measure by volume as opposed to weight (cups and spoons versus ounces and grams), small measurement inaccuracies can significantly skew your numbers.
Include in your meal plan absolutely everything you’re going to eat. Everything counts—vegetables, fruits, condiments, dabs of oil and butter, and every other bit of food that’ll go into your mouth every day.
The only way to “safely” include recipes in your meal plans is to total the calories and macros for each ingredient and divide the sums by the number of servings.
The best meal plan recipes are easy and fast to make, require relatively few ingredients, and allow you to prepare large amounts of food with minimal equipment and work.
If a recipe you like contains too many calories, there are several ways you can lighten it: if it’s not a baked good, reduce (or remove, if possible) the butter or oil, replace sugar with a zero-calorie sweetener of your choice, swap whole-fat dairy with low- or nonfat dairy, and swap fatty meats for leaner cuts (or poultry).
Generally speaking, the less you eat out, the better your results are going to be with your diet.
The body has no way to directly convert alcohol into body fat, which means that calories provided by ethanol (alcohol) simply can’t produce fat gain in the same way that calories from food can.
If you want to drink alcohol without interfering with your fat loss or accelerating fat gain, follow these three tips: don’t drink more than one day per week, lower your carb and fat intakes that day (eat more protein than you normally would), and try not to eat while drinking and stay away from carb-laden drinks like beer and fruity stuff (stick to dry wines and spirits).
When creating a meal plan, you want to be within 50 calories of your target intake when cutting and within 100 calories when lean bulking and maintaining.
If you’re new to the Bigger Leaner Stronger method of meal planning, eat the same foods every meal, every day, and you’ll be much less likely to accidentally overeat or undereat.
If you really want variety in your plan, however, or just feel up to the challenge, you can create alternative options for individual meals in your plan (breakfast, lunch, dinner, etc.).9
Wansink B, Sobal J. Mindless Eating. Environ Behav. 2007;39(1):106-123. doi:10.1177/0013916506295573.
Urban LE, Weber JL, Heyman MB, et al. Energy Contents of Frequently Ordered Restaurant Meals and Comparison with Human Energy Requirements and US Department of Agriculture Database Information: A Multisite Randomized Study. J Acad Nutr Diet. 2016;116(4):590-598.e6. doi:10.1016/j.jand.2015.11.009.
Yeomans MR. Alcohol, appetite and energy balance: Is alcohol intake a risk factor for obesity? Physiol Behav. 2010;100(1):82-89. doi:10.1016/j.physbeh.2010.01.012.
Gruchow HW, Sobocinski KA, Barboriak JJ, Scheller JG. Alcohol consumption, nutrient intake and relative body weight among US adults. Am J Clin Nutr. 1985;42(2):289-295. doi:10.1093/ajcn/42.2.289.
Flechtner-Mors M, Biesalski HK, Jenkinson CP, Adler G, Ditschuneit HH. Effects of moderate consumption of white wine on weight loss in overweight and obese subjects. Int J Obes. 2004;28(11):1420-1426. doi:10.1038/sj.ijo.0802786.
Kokavec A. Is decreased appetite for food a physiological consequence of alcohol consumption? Appetite. 2008;51(2):233-243. doi:10.1016/j.appet.2008.03.011; McCarty MF. Does regular ethanol consumption promote insulin sensitivity and leanness by stimulating AMP-activated protein kinase? Med Hypotheses. 2001;57(3):405-407. doi:10.1054/mehy.2001.1404; Ukropcova B, McNeil M, Sereda O, et al. Dynamic changes in fat oxidation in human primary myocytes mirror metabolic characteristics of the donor. J Clin Invest. 2005;115(7):1934-1941. doi:10.1172/JCI24332.
Siler SQ, Neese RA, Hellerstein MK. De novo lipogenesis, lipid kinetics, and whole-body lipid balances in humans after acute alcohol consumption. Am J Clin Nutr. 1999;70(5):928-936. doi:10.1093/ajcn/70.5.928.
Mattes RD, Campbell WW. Effects of Food Form and Timing of Ingestion on Appetite and Energy Intake in Lean Young Adults and in Young Adults with Obesity. J Am Diet Assoc. 2009;109(3):430-437. doi:10.1016/j.jada.2008.11.031.
Ibid; Malik VS, Schulze MB, Hu FB. Intake of sugar-sweetened beverages and weight gain: a systematic review. Am J Clin Nutr. 2006;84(2):274-288. doi:10.1093/ajcn/84.1.274.
20
How to “Cheat” on Your Diet Without Ruining It
Most champions are built by punch-the-clock workouts rather than extraordinary efforts.
—DAN JOHN
Sometimes it feels great to just let go. To stop striving and trying to control everything and just give in to our impulses.
You know . . . to just “be human” now and then.
When it comes to dieting, that means ignoring the plan and “cheating.” No counting calories. No guesstimating macros. And no worrying about what we are and aren’t “supposed” to eat.
There are quite a few opinions on cheating.
Some people believe that even mild deviations from your diet plan can prevent you from reaching your goals. Others are of the mind that you can stray so long as you don’t turn to certain forbidden foods. Still others say it’s okay to throw caution to the wind every week and gorge on anything and everything you can fit into your belly.
All these opinions are incorrect.
You certainly can have “cheat meals” without ruining your progress and you don’t have to stick to a short list of “approved” foods, but you can’t eat yourself unconscious every week without paying a price.
When done correctly, cheating can make it easier to stick to your diet and see results. When done incorrectly, however, it can cause considerable trouble.
In this chapter, you’re going to learn how to have your cake and eat it too—how to get maximum enjoyment out of cheating while minimizing the potential downsides.
What Is “Cheating,” Anyway?
When I talk about cheating on your diet, I’m not talking about eating sugar or dairy or some other food deemed “unclean” by one of the many pied pipers of the diet industry.
All you and I care about are the calories, macronutrients, and micronutrients of what you’re eating.
When you eat more calories than you planned on eating, regardless of what foods you eat, that’s cheating. And when you replace a large portion of your nutritious calories with nonnutritious ones, that’s cheating too.
In other words, cheating consists of eating a lot more calories or a lot less nutritious food than you normally would eat.
The drawbacks of cheating are obvious. Eat too many calories too frequently, and you’ll fail to lose weight as desired (or will gain weight too quickly), and disregard nutrition too frequently, and you’ll increase the risk of developing nutritional deficiencies.
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t
stray from your meal plan from time to time, however. You absolutely should if you want to, but you need to know how to do it productively.
This begins with avoiding the five most common mistakes people make when cheating on their diets.
The Five Biggest Cheating Mistakes You Can Make
Cheating itself isn’t a mistake or something to feel guilty about.
Occasionally allowing yourself to loosen up can make your diet as a whole more enjoyable and improve dietary compliance and long-term results.
That said, how you cheat matters. If you make any of the following mistakes, it becomes detrimental:
Cheating too frequently
Eating too much in a cheat meal
Indulging in cheat days, not meals
Eating too much fat
Drinking alcohol
Let’s take a closer look at each.
1. Cheating too frequently
This one is pretty self-explanatory.
Overeat too often, and you’ll erase either most or all of your calorie deficit and hamstring (or even halt) your fat loss. And if you’re lean bulking, you’ll balloon your calorie surplus and gain too much fat too quickly.
And on the nutritional side, neglect food quality often enough and you can erode your health and face a number of problems, including bone loss, anxiety and brain fog, fatigue and muscle weakness, and cardiovascular disease.1
2. Eating too much in a cheat meal
Many people don’t realize how many calories are in the foods they eat in their cheat meals.
This is particularly true when eating at restaurants, because a professional chef’s job is to produce delicious—not calorie-conscious—food. And when that’s the goal, butter, oil, and sugar are a cook’s best friends.
A good example of this is a study conducted by scientists at Tufts University that involved the analysis of 360 dinner entrees at 123 nonchain restaurants in San Francisco, Boston, and Little Rock between 2011 and 2014.2
They found that the restaurant dishes contained, on average, about 1,200 calories. American, Italian, and Chinese restaurants were the worst offenders, with an average of nearly 1,500 calories per meal.