Speaker A
Getting lean and ripped is one of the best ways to compensate for a lack of purpose, empathy, responsibility, and self-esteem.
Learn why getting lean is mentally challenging and discover practical diet tips like avoiding protein slop, tracking calories, and eating high-water foods.
Key Takeaways
- Sustained calorie deficits become exponentially harder over time, requiring mental strategies.
- Avoid processed 'protein slop' that promotes overeating despite being marketed as healthy.
- Accurate and consistent food tracking is crucial to prevent diet failures.
- High-volume, minimally processed foods help maintain fullness and reduce cravings.
- Incorporating water-rich foods and drinking water during meals improves satiety.
Summary
- Getting lean requires more than basic dieting; mental endurance grows exponentially over time.
- Many fail to get visible abs due to underestimating the increasing difficulty of sustained calorie deficits.
- Protein slop foods are marketed as healthy but often contain addictive additives and sugars that hinder fat loss.
- High-volume, less processed protein sources like tofu help with satiety without triggering binge eating.
- Tracking all food intake meticulously is essential to avoid diet slip-ups and maintain progress.
- Using technology like the Cal AI app can simplify calorie and macro tracking with photo recognition.
- Drinking water alone is insufficient for long-term hunger control; eating water-rich foods is more effective.
- Sipping water during meals helps food expand in the stomach, aiding fullness.
- Understanding the exponential nature of dieting difficulty helps prepare for mental challenges.
- Consistency and strategic food choices are key to beating the odds and achieving a shredded physique.
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
And while most people who try will succeed at losing weight using basic advice from the internet.
Speaker A
Most people will never get visible abs or defined muscles.
Speaker A
Why? Well, I have a theory that everything can be explained by a chart.
Speaker A
If you just have a little weight to lose, it's going to feel pretty easy.
Speaker A
But once you start going for multiple months, you need a whole different set of mental tricks and knowledge to get you to the end.
Speaker A
Just because it's easy to do a 300 to 500 calorie deficit for a day, doesn't mean it's easy to do for months in a row.
Speaker A
The difficulty builds up and people just don't anticipate the exponential increase in how hard the diet gets over time.
Speaker A
Someone once said, the greatest shortcoming of the human race is man's inability to understand the exponential function.
Speaker A
For example, if you have $1 of credit card debt that grows by 2% each day, here's what it would be after 30 days, 60 days, and five years.
Speaker A
Now apply that to weight loss.
Speaker A
It might be pretty easy and calm at the beginning for a few days.
Speaker A
It might even get easier as you adjust to the new diet.
Speaker A
But most people don't anticipate that by week five or week 10, they're literally going to be dreaming about food.
Speaker A
Luckily, it's actually pretty easy to beat the odds and get ripped.
Speaker A
Here are some methods you can pull out once it starts getting impossible.
Speaker A
The first one is avoiding or even eliminating these types of foods, which belong to a category which I call protein slop.
Speaker A
If you look at these, you'll notice a pattern.
Speaker A
Marketing.
Speaker A
In the world of marketing, protein is one of those words which you can slap on a package and instantly make people want to buy it.
Speaker A
And at least in the United States, almost anything is allowed on the package.
Speaker A
The FDA likes to pretend they could do stuff about stuff.
Speaker A
But they can't do anything about anything.
Speaker A
Even Kellogg's Special K could put a giant heart on the front of the package and say it's good for your heart.
Speaker A
You can put protein in big letters on your cereal box, even if it quite literally has more sugar than protein by weight.
Speaker A
But here's the thing.
Speaker A
Even if they swapped out all the sugars and carbohydrates for zero calorie sweeteners, fiber powder, starches, and more powder.
Speaker A
And the packaging says it only has four net carbs.
Speaker A
You cannot escape the fact that slop.
Speaker A
Designed specifically for you to eat multiple bowls of it in one sitting.
Speaker A
Not only that, but they want you to feel healthy while doing it so that you can go back to the store and rebuy it in bulk.
Speaker A
Protein slop does work pretty well for two types of people.
Speaker A
One, people who just started dieting and are replacing snacks with the higher protein, reduced sugar versions of that snack.
Speaker A
Or two, people who eat a bite of literally anything and feel satisfied.
Speaker A
For the rest of us, a double chocolate chunk protein bar that tastes like a sweet fudgy brownie is only going to make you crave another one from the box.
Speaker A
Or if you took out a mortgage to buy an individual protein bar.
Speaker A
Then you'll start craving something else sweet and fudgy.
Speaker A
People say fiber fills you up and protein fills you up.
Speaker A
But when it's in the form of a bunch of sweeteners, oils, gums, emulsifiers, isolates, concentrates, and additives glopped together to form a rectangle that can fit in your pocket.
Speaker A
You will eat in 10 seconds and still be hungry.
Speaker A
Whereas less processed sources of protein that actually take time to chew and swallow, that don't taste addicting.
Speaker A
And that actually fill up the space on a plate or a bowl will keep you full.
Speaker A
The key here is finding high volume food that does not taste addicting.
Speaker A
For example, tofu is pretty high volume and filling because it's mostly water and the rest is protein.
Speaker A
And even if you season it, it's not something that you want to eat multiple plates of.
Speaker A
I wouldn't call it a whole food or an unprocessed food.
Speaker A
Just watch a video of how tofu is made.
Speaker A
But I would still eat it to get ripped because it's high volume and it's filling.
Speaker A
Every protein source has a spectrum of how tasty it is versus how easy it is to binge eat.
Speaker A
Ideally, you want something that's filling, but should also taste good enough for you to not dread eating it.
Speaker A
Because that'll result in you giving up pretty early.
Speaker A
Think about this chart and for you, what foods fall in which corner?
Speaker A
So that you can figure out where to get your protein from.
Speaker A
The second tip.
Speaker A
Because you're trying to get shredded and not just lose a few pounds.
Speaker A
You pretty much have to track everything you eat.
Speaker A
I and many other people have learned this the hard way.
Speaker A
The moment you stop tracking your calories or at least stop being aware of them.
Speaker A
Is exactly the moment you start to fall back off the diet.
Speaker A
I used to use a food scale with the notes app to track my calories.
Speaker A
But it gets quite chaotic trying to weigh out everything, whip out the calculator, estimate calories, track outside food.
Speaker A
While tracking your macros, your weight and your visual progress.
Speaker A
So then I switched to chat GPT, today's sponsor.
Speaker A
Just kidding.
Speaker A
Chat GPT is terrible, it forgets everything you tell it and by the end of the day it's hallucinated an entire extra meal that you never ate.
Speaker A
It also doesn't know the date or time.
Speaker A
Mine still thinks I'm counting calories for May 3rd.
Speaker A
And it's December.
Speaker A
That's why I switched to today's actual sponsor.
Speaker A
Cal AI.
Speaker A
This app allows you to calculate the calories and macros of any food by just taking a picture.
Speaker A
You can also upload pictures from your phone, so at a restaurant you can discreetly pretend to take a picture of your food.
Speaker A
And people will think it's for an Instagram story.
Speaker A
In reality, you're going to upload it later into Cal AI.
Speaker A
The tracking is actually surprisingly accurate.
Speaker A
Roughly 90%.
Speaker A
You can always adjust it with a few taps.
Speaker A
It also lets you scan barcodes and nutrition labels since it has a full food database.
Speaker A
That does make it pretty convenient.
Speaker A
But I don't even worry about it being perfectly accurate.
Speaker A
I just want to make sure everything is tracked.
Speaker A
Back when I was using a food scale and the notes app, anything that couldn't be tracked like cookies or pizza at a friend's house or at a restaurant.
Speaker A
I would just eat way too much of, estimate the calories after the fact, realize I was 2,000 calories over my goal.
Speaker A
And then give up the next day because that was an entire week of progress.
Speaker A
Gone.
Speaker A
If you think you'd never get hungry enough to mess up that bad.
Speaker A
You fail to understand the exponential function.
Speaker A
You will get that hungry.
Speaker A
So it's nice to be able to keep track of what you eat while you eat in just a few seconds.
Speaker A
The app is also quite useful as a diet coach since you could pick how fast you want to lose the weight and it gives you a calorie goal and lets you track your progress for extra motivation.
Speaker A
A download link is in the description.
Speaker A
Make sure when it asks you for a code to use the code easy, which gives you three days free.
Speaker A
I hope it helps.
Speaker A
Next diet tip, number three, eating water.
Speaker A
Not just drinking it, but eating it.
Speaker A
I don't mean in the form of ice cubes.
Speaker A
I mean food that contains water.
Speaker A
Everyone's always like, oh, water has no calories, so when you're feeling hungry, just try drinking water.
Speaker A
And it'll fill the gaping void in your stomach.
Speaker A
But that's really only true when you're beginning a diet.
Speaker A
When you've been dieting for two months already, drinking water no longer fills the void.
Speaker A
I mean, nothing could ever fill the void.
Speaker A
But solid food is a good place to start.
Speaker A
It's a little known fact that water, even if it's sparkling or even if it's in the form of a sugar-free soda or juice or iced tea.
Speaker A
It all empties from your stomach in under 10 minutes.
Speaker A
So it might distract you from wanting to eat, but the liquid by itself is not going to fill up your stomach for that long.
Speaker A
But you can trick your stomach in two ways.
Speaker A
First, by sipping water while you eat so that it mixes with your food and makes it expand.
Speaker A
Or second, by eating solid food that has a high water content.
Speaker A
For example, cantaloupe.
Speaker A
That's rockmelon if you're Australian.
Speaker A
It's 90% water, but it'll actually fill the void in your stomach due to it being solid.
Speaker A
More examples, strawberries, blueberries, apples, oranges, watermelon.
Speaker A
Also most vegetables.
Speaker A
They're pretty much all at least 85% water.
Speaker A
Potatoes are also mostly water.
Speaker A
It doesn't seem like it, but it's there.
Speaker A
And that's why you can have a full potato for only 100 calories.
Speaker A
Most foods actually that you would think of as whole food, like fruits, vegetables, mushrooms, beans, meat, and dairy.
Speaker A
Are usually at least 50% water.
Speaker A
Whereas something like a Dorito is mostly made up of corn and vegetable oil.
Speaker A
Another method is soup.
Speaker A
Soup is mostly water, but especially thick soups or stews, you have to sit down and eat it with a spoon and it takes time to digest.
Speaker A
Or if not soup, maybe you like oatmeal.
Speaker A
Oatmeal absorbs water and expands while it cooks.
Speaker A
So if you add dry oats to a bowl, add water and microwave it.
Speaker A
Then you'll get cooked expanded oats.
Speaker A
Now add more water and microwave it again.
Speaker A
Now you have super expanded oats.
Speaker A
Now is where you might add in some dry protein powder to mix in.
Speaker A
But that's a wasted opportunity to add more water.
Speaker A
First, mix the protein powder, chocolate flavored, obviously, with a full glass of water.
Speaker A
And then pour that into your bowl of oatmeal.
Speaker A
Now you have a giant bowl of oat soup that is mostly water, but you have to sit down still with a spoon to eat it.
Speaker A
And it registers in your brain as a solid food.
Speaker A
This method is of course, not for the picky eater, it's for when you need something under 300 calories that'll fill the void in your stomach for five plus hours.
Speaker A
If you're dieting, you will know.
Speaker A
Next dieting tip, number four.
Speaker A
You'll have to take your mind off of food and eating.
Speaker A
Some people can naturally go about their day without even thinking of food.
Speaker A
In fact, they have to remind themselves to eat.
Speaker A
But if you aren't like that naturally, you have to change your whole setup and routine to be more like that.
Speaker A
Because if you only have, let's say, 1,800 calories to eat per day.
Speaker A
You can only achieve that by spending most of the day not eating.
Speaker A
Just watch any video of someone actually eating 1,800 calories in a day.
Speaker A
It's almost nothing.
Speaker A
The people in the videos are only eating.
Speaker A
Max three to four times a day, including snacks, including the small protein shake they had in the morning, including everything.
Speaker A
If you spend most of your day at home or in a place where there's a lot of available food, plus you're deep into a diet.
Speaker A
Then you'll naturally be thinking about eating every hour of the day.
Speaker A
And there's at least three solutions to this.
Speaker A
Number one, distract yourself with work or hobbies.
Speaker A
Number two, remove the food, especially trigger foods from your environment entirely.
Speaker A
And number three, get used to eating maximum three, maybe four times a day.
Speaker A
And if you have a snack, you should just eat it with one of the meals because even though it might seem better to spread everything out.
Speaker A
Hunger is like a gate that opens every time you start eating.
Speaker A
And it doesn't close until you're satisfied.
Speaker A
Next diet tip, number five, be patient.
Speaker A
This sounds like a generic advice, but it's really not.
Speaker A
It's not one of those situations where patience is just nice to have.
Speaker A
Patience is literally the entire mechanism behind getting ripped.
Speaker A
Usually on a diet, you only have a few things you need to do: wake up and weigh yourself.
Speaker A
Hit your calorie and protein goal for the day.
Speaker A
Workout, which honestly doesn't have to be a hard workout.
Speaker A
And sleep.
Speaker A
Then you just repeat this every day until eventually you end up ripped.
Speaker A
The main reason you would fail is because you run out of patience.
Speaker A
Either you think the results are not coming fast enough, or they're never going to come, or you think you get them faster and easier by buying protein slop at the store, which actually ends up being your downfall later.
Speaker A
Most things in life are achieved faster by obsessing over the thing.
Speaker A
But dieting to get ripped is one of those things where obsessing over it will make you fail.
Speaker A
You can take pride in it, you can even make it your entire personality if you want to.
Speaker A
But once you get to exponential levels of hunger, the last thing you want to do is obsess over all the things you could eat.
Speaker A
So might as well give yourself as few decisions to make as possible, which is the same thing as giving yourself as few chances to mess up as possible.
Speaker A
If that helped, I'm collecting donations in the form of subscribes to fund the next video.
Speaker A
See you guys in 20 weeks when my 10-week diet is over.
Topics:getting leanweight lossdiet tipsprotein slopcalorie trackingmental endurancehigh volume foodssatietyCal AI appexponential difficulty
