Discover Your Perfect Diet
When it comes to dieting, it can be absolutely difficult, stressful, overwhelming, time consuming, boring, and a pain in the ass.
It’s no wonder dieting pushing people away from trying or causing them to quit prematurely!!
As a coach, this frustrates me beyond belief. How can I get my clients to adhere to a long term diet plan??
Noticed how I said long term? Here’s the truth, it’s one thing to prescribe a 30 day fat burning program that will give insane physique defining results, yet what next? What will happen after the 30 days are over?
When working with clients to determine their nutritional gameplan, there are many factors I consider before simply prescribing macros. A few factors I take into consideration are their diet history, eating preference, lifestyle, work and home stress, and social life.
All these aforementioned factors are important to consider, yet what if I tell you the most important factor to a successful diet isn’t just calories.
Yes… really.
Now before you exit out of the article, give me 5 minutes to explain myself. In fact, this just might change how you view your diet.
Without question, we know that fat loss ultimately comes down to calories in, calories out for decades. This is scientifically proven and we live in an age in which it’s easier than ever to self educate yourself on how to lose body fat.
Frankly, it’s completely overwhelming. South Beach. Ketogenic. Paleo. Whole30. There are hundreds and hundreds of different name brand diets out there, however, people are failing their diets now MORE THAN EVER!
So what’s going on?
From my experience as a coach helping people achieve their fitness goals for close to a decade both in person and online, I’ve found there’s one critical factor missing when individuals choose their diet….
Choosing a nutritional strategy that you both enjoy and can sustain!
This means that we want to prioritize adherence and enjoyment over everything else when it comes to creating your ideal diet.
Forget “most-optimal” as that doesn’t mean anything if:
The best “macro split” is worthless if you won’t consistently track your macros.
A restrictive low-carb diet will create MORE yo-yo dieting if you can’t see yourself giving up carbs long term.
A higher carb diet will probably make fat loss more challenging if you prefer the keto lifestyle.
You get my idea.
We are individuals, with different goals, preferences, lifestyles, cultures, food preferences, etc. with thousands of other factors to consider what foods make us feel best and how this impacts our bodies.
You see, I’ve built my nutritional coaching philosophy on the belief that there is no single “best” diet.
I firmly believe that the best diet is the one that you can consistently adhere to while making consistently objectively defined results. As your coach, I want to help you find the ideal diet
However, I’ve found 4 diet structures that work for the majority of my clients while providing consistent objective-based results and enjoyment.
Diet Structure #1: 3 Meals, 2 Snacks Method
I know what you’re thinking, “I only get to eat one plate of food per day?! OMG, what is wrong with this guy?!”
So let’s address this; no you won’t have just one plate of food per day. Instead, you’ll be using your plate to determine what and how much you’ll be eating. If you want a super easy, simple meal plan template for weight loss, then you cannot beat the One Plate Method. This diet structure helps to control your total carbohydrates as well as your calories with each meal.
I know that a lot of people absolutely hate the idea of counting their calories. Words like "annoying", "obsessive" and "time-consuming" get thrown my way all the time. Regardless, I firmly believe that everyone should count their calories for a few months to develop a better awareness of food. Despite my best wish intentions, some people just absolutely hate that idea or they cannot consistently follow their macro based-nutritional plan.
Enter the 3 Plates and 2 Snacks Method
With this diet structure, you’ll have three meals and two snacks per day. Each meal will fit onto one plate (hence the name)
Each plate will be a standard 9 inch plate. Larger plates mean larger servings, aka more calories. Conversely, smaller plates mean smaller servings and potentially lead to depriving and starving yourself. Use a ruler or tape measurer to measure the plate’s diameter (edge to edge).
With this diet structure, each meal fits onto one plate by matching the following criteria:
➡️1/2 of the plate are non-starchy veggies
➡️1/4 of the plate is a protein
➡️1/4 of the plate is carbs/fats
For your snacks,
➡️ each snack fits into the palm of your hand
➡️ your snack item is a fruit, protein, or veggie
This would just be a starting point and would change based on your feedback and progress.
Non-Starchy Veggies
There are so many non-starchy veggies to choose from. You can absolutely mix two or more types or just double up on one type. Here are my recommended non-starchy veggies:
Asparagus
Broccoli
Brussels sprouts
Carrot
Cauliflower
Celery
Cucumber
Eggplant
Green beans
Greens (e.g. spinach, endive, arugula, etc.)
Lettuce
Peppers (sweet, hot, etc.)
Radishes
Snow peas (young sugar snap peas)
Spinach
Squash and zucchini
Tomatoes
A quarter plate of a high protein source:
At Mack Performance, protein is stable within our nutritional program. A high protein source is a food item that has a high percentage of protein or predominately made of protein. Generally speaking, most high protein food items will have somewhere between 15- 20+ grams of protein per serving (with some exceptions). This means these food items will be loaded with protein and usually are packed with other vital nutrients such as vitamins, and minerals.
Recommended High Protein Sources:
Quarter Plate of Carbs/Fats:
As a general rule of thumb, you always want to prioritize minimally, processed whole food items as it contains less calories than its counterpart. You can absolutely mix two or more types or just double up on one type. Just make sure it makes up a quarter of your plate.
Recommended Carb Sources:
Recommended Fat Sources:
Also, these recommended food items are not just limited to the one plate method! All these recommended food items apply to all diets listed within this article. At Mack Performance, I firmly believe in focusing on what you can eat rather than what you cannot eat. This simple mindset change makes the world of a difference for staying consistent on your diet.
Diet Structure #2: The Handful Diet
The reality is some individuals just hate the thought of tracking their food, which I totally understand. Tracking your macros just isn’t something some clients want to deal with. However, you need some structure and accountability to ensure you're in a caloric deficit.
Enter the Handful diet. With this diet structure, the only measuring tool you’ll need is your hand!
The Hand Size Methods Works for a Few Reasons:
Hands are portable. Unlike food scales, your hands will always be with you at home, work, restaurant, social gathering, etc.
Hands are scaled to the individuals. Generally speaking, bigger people need more food and tend to have bigger hands, therefore they get larger portions. Smaller people need less food, tend to have smaller hands, and therefore get smaller portions.
By using your hands as a guide, it will provide reasonable amounts of nutrient dense foods and their specific macronutrients (protein, carbs, and fats) and calorie needs without having to weigh your foods or using an app, like myfitnesspal.
This diet is pretty easy to stick to without the “obsessive”, “anal-retentive” nature of tracking calories.
All your meals are based on portion sizes, measured by your hand (hence the name). As mentioned above, your hand size typically scales with your body size, so this works well regardless if you are an NBA player or an average Joe.
Here’s a real quick visual representation of the Hand Portion Control method.
Typically, my online clients start here for 3-4 meals, yet this can change based on their individual needs and fitness goals.
Protein: 1-2 palm size portions
Carbs: 1-2 cupped hand sized portions (typically around workouts)
Veggies: 1-2 fist sized portions
Fats: 1-2 thumb sized portions (less around workouts)
Again, this is just a baseline as these numbers will adjust as we watch your body measurements, biofeedback, and training performance. We’ll add or subtract a serving of carbs or fats based on your feedback and objective measurements.
For more information, check out my in-depth article on the Handful Diet.
Pros of the Handful Diet:
——> Works extremely well with beginners to nutrition: for many clients that are completely new to nutrition, we can make a huge step forwards by simply prioritizing whole, minimally processed filling foods.
This is known as dietary displacement - we aren’t even focusing on avoiding certain foods, yet making sure you adhere to the following guidelines. If you are typically following a “western diet”, you’ll find yourself consuming far less food WHILE feeling much more full and eating fewer calories than before.
——> Not Calorie Tracking: Again, some individuals just hate the idea of tracking and that’s completely OK!
——> Life Long application: Even if you are consistently tracking your macros, you’ll eventfully want to stop. No matter the situation (beginner or burnout from tracking macros long term), this diet teaches you how to identify which foods are a good source of each macronutrient and understand appropriate portion sizes.
Cons of the Handful Diet:
——> Requires more prep work: The biggest positive influence of the handful diet is the fact it pushes you to eat a lot of single ingredients whole foods. The con, however, is it’s harder to work in mixed ingredient foods (foods with a mixture of protein/carbs/fats). These mixed foods do require checking the labels and figuring out how to distribute your “handfuls”
——> Less Flexibility: the big part of any diet requires your diet to be sustainable in the long term i.e social gatherings, work trips, parties, etc. In these situations, we’ll transition into tracking calories + protein to create education around these social events. Once the social event is over, we’ll transition back into the Handful Diet.
——> Harder to measure accurately and make specific adjustments: Without question, the total caloric intake from the handful diet is really just a ballpark estimate. There’s a lot of room for errors when measuring with your hand instead of a food scale. Two different palms sized serving of protein can vary depending on the protein source.
However, if you are new to nutrition and don’t want to deal with the “obsessive” process of tracking your macros, the handful diet works. This diet works very well for client’s wanting to prioritize more on the “lifestyle” of nutrition, but doesn’t provide the quickest results.
Diet Structure #3 - Tracking Calories and Proteins
Most people think they’re doing everything right, yet can’t figure out why they’re not losing body fat. This missing puzzle piece can only be found once you start tracking your calories. Maybe the culprit is that extra scoop of peanut butter or that extra syrup pump you’re getting into your Starbuck coffee.
I will not lie, tracking your nutrition can be a deciduous task. However, it does help develop better overall awareness and allows you to have a more flexible dieting approach. Unlike the Handful Diet which provides general calorie estimates, actively tracking your nutrition can get you better results.
If your goal is getting lean and confident while creating a simple and sustainable lifestyle, you can get great results by simply focusing on your overall calories and protein.
By tracking your calories, this will help create the necessary awareness on how to “budget” your calories. By knowing what your “budget” is you can strategize where and how you’ll spend your calories to make your social event work while still hitting your “budget goals” (i.e. calories and protein).
With this approach, you’ll be using a food tracking app MyFitnessPal. When you start coaching, you’ll do a 3-5 day nutritional assessment in which you’ll simply record and track what you normally eat.
After completing your nutritional assessment, I’ll have the ability to hop into your MyFitnessPal food diary to get a sense of where to start your nutritional goals. In addition, this nutritional assessment gives me an idea of what nutrients your body needs more for better health, recovery, training, and what foods we could be ADDING to your day to day life.
Upon completing the nutritional assessment, I'll assign you a calorie and protein target goal. Your only task is to hit those targets daily from mostly whole foods. Don’t worry about carbs or fats, just focus on hitting your calorie and protein targets.
Pros of Tracking Calories and Protein:
——> Flexible Lifestyle: This is one of my favorite approaches for those that really want a flexible lifestyle and enjoys going out for food and drinks. By tracking your calories, this will give you your biggest weapon in long term success - awareness. Most people struggle with finding a middle ground so their diet works with their lifestyle. This is why overall restrictive diets don’t produce long term results. Those restrictive diets lack the self-awareness and education necessary to learn how to make your nutrition sustainable
——> Education: Again, tracking their nutrition helps provide the self-awareness and education necessary to learn. For example, if you are always craving around 2pm, you can look at your MyFitnessPal food diary to see if you are getting enough protein and/or fiber to keep you satiated. This is an educational tool to help you sustain your results long term.
——> Results: This is short, because by actively tracking and hitting your calories and protein budget goals, you will see results and learn how to sustain those results.
Cons of Tracking Calories and Protein
——> You have to track - As previously mentioned, some clients are either just against the idea of tracking their food or just burnt out from tracking everything.
——> Too Flexible - This is a common problem with this approach. These individuals are trying to be too “cute" their dietary budget by trying to hit their budget goals with too many restaurants, cheese-its, poppy seeds muffins, etc.
Let me be crystal clear - none of these foods are bad! There really isn’t such a thing as bad food, so let me explain each point.
For restaurant foods, you don’t know exactly what ingredients were used or the exact portion sizes. Restaurants are notorious for having extra fats in their foods to increase the taste. While you can still go out is a huge aspect of why this diet works, it works against you when it becomes a daily habit.
The more processed food becomes (i.e cheese-Its, poppyseed muffins), the more you’ll crave them. Processed foods are specifically designed to make you crave them more, plus they just aren’t that filling. You can lose weight as long as you control calories, yet controlling your calories becomes much harder.
Diet Strategy #4: Tracking Macros
Finally, we have tracking macros.
For this diet strategy, you’re assigned a target intake for the three macronutrients
——> Proteins
——> Carbs
——> Fats
Your goal is to consistently hit your macro totals to be within 10 grams of protein and carbs and 5 grams of fat daily. For most people, this is what they think when it comes to tracking their nutrition. Truth be told, tracking and actively hitting these macros are more reserve for individuals preparing for physique related shows and/or wanting the “quickest results”
The overall process of tracking, assessing your intake, and establishing your targets is exactly the same as previously described in the previous diet strategy.
Pros of Tracking Macros
——> Specific Goals: By tracking your macros, this allows us to become very specific with your nutrition. This approach is ideal/required for individuals that want a very specific result (i.e. photo shoots, bodybuilding shows, etc.)
——> “Most optimal and/or “Quickest Results”: As previously mentioned, the “most optimal” approach really depends on what you can adhere to and enjoy. However, if you’re able to adhere and maintain to this plan, you allow us to achieve the best and quickest results possible by optimizing everything - carbs, fats, specific nutrient timing, refeeds. Etc.
——> Education: To piggyback off the last point, this approach allows us to really learn how your body responds to each nutrient and how to optimally fuel your training and recovery, and how to adjust macros for satiety.
Cons of Tracking Macros
——> Tracking: Again, you have to track. However, this approach requires you to dial in everything, rather than just calories and protein. For most people, this isn’t a good option, and can quickly become overwhelmed. Usually, this is what people think “tracking” entails and are immediately turned off by this idea.
——> Less Flexible: This approach is far less flexible than tracking calories and protein due to having to hit specific carbs and fat targets to hit.
Here’s the honest truth - regardless of which diet you choose, your overall success will take planning, preparation, and consistency. No one has ever just “wing it” onto their way to success.
Regardless of which dietary approach you choose, you can make significant progress in achieving your goal by planning, preparing, and making consistent daily action towards your goal.
There is no better time than right now to start getting your nutritional habits dialed in. Choose which method best suits you and run with it.
The Next Step:
The goal of this guide (and online coaching) is to empower you through education.
I want to help you stop guessing when it comes to making sustainable progress and start achieving the results you desire.
So, what is your next step?
Realize that all the knowledge you’ve gained from this guide doesn’t equal real change.
If you’re fed up with how COVID fucked up your year, invest in a coach.
If you’ve read LITERALLY DOZENS of guides like this in the past and still haven’t made the change nor the confidence you want, invert in a coach.
If you’re overwhelmed by the content in this article, invest in a coach.
If you cannot be consistent with the strategies within this article, invest in a coach.
If you are ready for a change, I’m here to coach you.