Gaining Muscle and Losing Fat (2015)

I'm still losing fat. The progress is slow and steady but it's burning off for sure. I've cut my drinking back quite a bit too so that should help out even more.

In terms of the home gym, I cleaned everything up the best I could and moved all the equipment back in there, despite the fact that there's no drywall on a couple walls. At first, I was all stressed out about it, but then it finally hit me that most gyms look like crap inside anyway so who cares? It's not like the damage is in the middle of the family room. I haven't missed any workouts but today was the first official day of working out in that room again. It was nice to get back in there for sure.

 

When it comes to eating right, most people I encounter still don't really know what to do. They think they do but their minds are still so clouded by conventional dining choices that they just function within the realm of what they know, which isn't usually much. So instead of going into a bunch of dietary theory, let's just look at one simple and proven way to drop fat.
Replace grains like bread and pasta with fruits and vegetables.

So let's say that you love swordfish. Instead of getting a swordfish sandwich, which most people would consider somewhat healthy, you replace the bread with some fruits and veggies. In the picture below, this is grilled swordfish with baby bok choy, cherry tomatoes, bean sprouts, sliced plum, and sliced dragonfruit. (I had this earlier today.)



One problem people often have with fruit is that they interpret fruit as "fruit juice". So the bulk of their fruit intake comes from juices and smoothies.

This is a big mistake.

When you drink juice, you are taking in way more sugar than you normally would if you ate the raw fruit, mainly because nobody actually eats the amount of fruit required to make a glass of fruit juice. For example, it usually takes about 3 - 4 apples to make an 8 oz. glass of apple juice. You can drink that glass of juice in seconds, but in the real world, you'd never sit there and just eat 4 apples back to back. Nobody does that.

Again, drinking fruit juice is how the average person thinks they're being healthy when in fact they are taking in almost as much sugar as they would when drinking soda. Not good. But when you eat the fruit, you also take in the fiber that goes with it, which actually makes you feel full and satisfied considering the small amount of calories that you just had. And that's the real trick. You want to eat things that make you feel full with a small amount of calories, instead of what most people do, which is eat things that have lots of calories but little fiber, which ultimately makes their feelings of satisfaction evaporate and causes them to go right back into the pantry hunting around for something else to eat within a short period of time. Of course, what they end up grabbing is a high calorie snack food, loaded with... you guessed it, lots of sugar and no fiber, and so the downward spiral continues.

So to sum it up, replace your grains like bread and pasta with vegetables and whole fruit, and always make sure your fruit intake comes from actually eating the raw fruit, and not from drinking the juice. Do this one thing, and you will feel satisfied from meal to meal on way fewer calories at the end of the day, and the result will be a lighter and leaner version of yourself.

 

No, I don't avoid them altogether, but that's because I've been in this game long enough to know when it's ok to eat them and when it's not. But for the average person seeking to lose 20+ lbs or more, what they need most is to replace bad dietary habits with good ones, so replacing grains with fruits and vegetables is the first step in the right direction.