In my previous post, I laid out how one should set up the underlying basics to a fat loss diet. It went into macros and calories, how to determine them, how to adjust them, all that good stuff. But what’s wrong with this picture? It doesn’t tell you what to eat. This is the difference between theory and practice, or in more colloquial terms: know-that and know-how. Knowing that you should set up your diet to have these and these macros with so many calories is only a small part of actually setting up a meal plan. Knowing how to set up a meal plan is an entirely different game, that would involve something like recipes and knowledge about certain foods. In this post, I will attempt to provide a few key strategies and ingredients that have helped me set up my meal plans. I’ll mainly focus on a fat loss phase, but of course, the same methods equally apply to a maintenance or bulk phase as well.
Unyielding Zealot or Adaptable Neoteric
I’m an advocate of flexible dieting in at least 3 or senses, flexibility with respect to: diets, food choice, meal plans, and macro targets. Flexible Dieting is also known as If It Fits Your Macros (IIFYM). In its most basic, reductionist form, you set your calories and macros, and anything that fits within your macro targets for the day is fair play. In theory, you could eat only twinkies and beef jerky, and have a successful fat loss phase. There’s a famous example of how Mark Haub, a nutrition professor at Kansas State University, ate only twinkies and multivitamins, and lost some 10 kg of body weight. He was illustrating the point that weight loss comes down to a caloric deficit; quite an effective demonstration.
Diet flexibility
The most important thing about any diet – especially for fat loss – is adherence. If you can’t stick to a diet, it’s useless. It’s therefore paramount to find the diet that works for you. If you don’t want to count calories, maybe keto or intermittent fasting will work for you, but in all likelihood calorie and macro tracking will be a big part of any diet. A diet is, by definition, restrictive; you’re trying to eat less than what your body actually needs. Usually, a successful fat loss diet comes down to picking the one that feels the least restrictive to you. If fat loss is the goal, the only thing you truly need to achieve is a calorie deficit. Although, if muscle retention is also your goal, protein intake needs to be sufficiently high. For fat loss purposes, there is no difference when it comes to how fat and carbs are proportioned in the diet. However, gym performance may be affected for some people by a small carbohydrate intake.
Food choice flexibility
Physiologically, there’s no need to restrict yourself from any food, not even during a fat loss phase. Psychologically, it may be different. Considering that adherence is by far the most important determining factor to fat loss success, it just goes to show that dieting is as much – if not more – a psychological game than a physiological one. Not everyone can have a single twinky and put the box away. Not everyone can measure out a correct tablespoon of peanut butter when on a cut. Ultimately, you have to find something that works for you. That can mean staying away from certain foods, engaging in “cheat meals” only once a week, or having half a donut every afternoon. Whatever works for you and gets you to lose weight is valid.
Flexibility in food choice is nice, but there are some small caveats, which are valid for any circumstance, be it weight loss, gain, or maintenance. For overall health reasons, it’s recommended to stick to a varied diet with plenty of fruit and veggies, and sufficient oily fish. Moreover, it’s best to try to get your micronutrients in from whole foods rather than supplements. Supplementation is only necessary if there’s a deficiency in your diet.
Meal plan flexibility
Dieting is, really, a very personal thing, because if you can’t stick to a diet, it’s worthless. The knowledge and skill needed to diet effectively comes down to knowing what foods satiate you, which means listening to your body. Some people get really full and stay satiated from oatmeal, others don’t. But not only that, also meal timing can be a tool. For instance, some people are starving when they wake up, for others it takes a while before they get hungry. It’s therefore important to be flexible with respect to your meal plan as well. So many different things have been shown to work just fine when it comes to a fat loss (and muscle retaining) diet. For example, intermittent fasting in pretty much all forms, including its most extreme forms like One Meal A Day and Alternate Day Fasting, produces perfectly fine results.
If some fitness guru tells you that you cannot go without a pre-workout meal consisting of oatmeal and a banana and a post-workout protein shake, in the most charitable reading, they’re grossly exaggerating. But even if they’re right, if you can’t stick to it, it’s never going to be optimal. Conclusion: adapt your meal plan to your personal needs and feelings. If you feel like you have to force food down in the morning while going hungry in the evening, switch up your meal plan: shift some calories over to later in the day, add a meal or a snack in the evening, try skipping eating in the morning altogether. As long as you’re eating sufficient protein, it’ll pretty much work.
Target flexibility
The human body is a highly variable and robust system. In both the short term and the long term, it can adapt to all sorts of circumstances. In fact, fat loss itself is precisely such an adaptation; the body adapts to low energy availability by burning body fat as fuel. The point is that there’s no real sense in adhering unerringly to exact calorie and macro targets. There’s quite a large amount of fudge, as it turns out. It’s more useful to think of the calorie and macro targets as ranges. For instance, if you’ve calculated that you need 200 grams of protein as your daily intake, 199 grams or 201 grams is fine too; hell, 190 grams or 210 grams is probably fine. How strictly you want to adhere to the targets specifies the size of the range. A fine range to try to aim for is 10%. But maybe you’ll feel more comfortable with a 5% range or a 15% range; that’ll be fine too. Feeling comfortable is the key: if you’re stressing out every day over every gram of protein, consider loosening up the range; if you feel nervous because you think your ranges are too loose, tighten them up a little.
Bonus flexibility: Off-plan eating
If you’re using a calorie tracker app like MyFitnessPal, you have the possibility to adjust a meal plan on the fly. I don’t recommend this to anyone new to calorie and macro counting. If you’re already a bit experienced, you can make minor adjustments to your meal plan when the need arises. Say you’re out with your friends, and they suggest getting a bite. Rather than just sitting around and watching them eat, you decide to have a salad. No big deal, just log it as accurately as you can and adjust your plan for the day accordingly: skip a meal you had planned, make it a bit smaller, or get in a bit more exercise to burn it off. These are all valid options. My advice if you’re new to counting calories and macros: try to stick to the plan as best you can, and don’t worry too much about the occasional off-plan snack or meal. If you’re making your weight goal over the course of weeks – be it weight loss, gain or maintenance – you’re doing great.
Ultimate flexibility
Currently, I’m in a maintenance phase, and the luxury of having a fairly large calorie budget is very welcome after several months of cutting. My approach is very simple: I have some lower limits that I need to hit, and other than that I’m only looking at calories. I’ve set a minimum fat intake and a minimum protein intake I want to hit every day. Other than that, I basically don’t care too much how my macros turn out, as long as they fit within my caloric budget. Perhaps ironically, my eating habits and preferences are pretty much so that I end up hitting a fairly consistent 30/20/50 percentage split for protein/fat/carbs.
Ingredients
Let’s talk ingredients and foods that are useful to keep in the back of your mind when we discuss what to eat and how to set up a meal plan. The easiest way to do this is to look at the three macros individually and basically just provide a small list of useful examples.
Protein
Let’s start by mentioning some good protein sources. I will list a few options subdivided into three different categories: omnivorous, vegetarian and vegan options. None of the lists I provide are by any means inclusive, so feel free to use your own protein sources. A protein is, chemically speaking, a polymer of amino acids. There are some 21 amino acids common to life, 9 of which are essential; meaning they cannot be synthesized and must be obtained from food. A complete protein is a protein source that contains all amino acids, including the essential ones. Animal sources of protein tend to be complete; the only exception I can think of is collagen. Plant sources are typically not complete, though there are exceptions.
Clearly, lean meat is a great source of protein. Some options include:
- Chicken breast.
- Pork tenderloin.
- Sirloin steak.
- White fish like tilapia, pangasius or cod.
Some vegetarian animal sources are:
- Zero-fat Greek yoghurt or Skyr (Icelandic yoghurt).
- Fresh cheeses such as cottage cheese.
- Egg whites.
I’m not too familiar with the criterion of something being vegan (I’m confused by nutritional yeast and marmite) but some that I’m aware of:
- Legumes and beans:
- Kidney.
- Black.
- Broad.
- Pulses:
- Chickpeas.
- Lentils.
- Peas.
- Green beans.
- Mushrooms.
- Quinoa and amaranth.
- Soy beans and soy products:
- Taugeh (soy sprouts).
- Edamame (young soy).
- Soy flakes.
- Soy milk.
- Tofu.
- Tempeh.
It’s important to note that the vegan choices typically run into some issues: most vegan protein options are not complete; and most come with a quite hefty contribution from the other macros. The first issue is mostly negated by eating a varied selection of protein sources and veggies. For instance, if you’re making vegan chili, just use four or five different kinds of legumes and some mushrooms on top of rice, and you’ll probably be fine. As another example, grains, which we’ll discuss as carb sources, often have a complementary amino acid profile to legumes and pulses. So combining rice and peas, for instance, provides a complete amino acid profile. Such combinations are known as protein pairings, which you only need to worry about if your diet is not sufficiently varied. A final, but significant, note: soy beans and quinoa, and their derivative products, are a complete protein.
A highly convenient resource that deserves special mention is protein powder. The most (in)famous of these is of course whey. However, they come in all sorts of varieties, including vegan options such as soy-based powder. It’s not necessary at all to include protein powder in your diet, but it’s a very practical ingredient to have around, as they tend to be almost pure protein and can typically be consumed with just some water. It’s just super easy to have that shaker bottle around and get a bunch of protein in after a workout. But also in terms of designing a meal plan, protein powder is just very helpful for hitting your macros.
Fats
Fats are, as I mentioned in my previous post, absolutely necessary for healthy functioning of the human body. There’s a threshold for any one individual that they shouldn’t venture below too much or too long. There are multiple kinds of fat types, and I won’t go into it too much, because I’m by no means an expert. Broadly speaking, there’s saturated and unsaturated fats, the distinction being most obvious in whether they’re liquid at room temperature. If some fat source is solid at room temp, it’s most likely a saturated fat. In general, unsaturated fat is considered healthier than saturated fat, but the jury is still out, I believe. Then there are further distinctions whether unsaturated fat is poly- or monounsaturated, one being again considered healthier than the other (I don’t know which is which). I’m by no means an expert on any of this, but what I do know is the following: eat a varied diet, and you’ll be plenty healthy. For instance: eating oily fish twice a week pretty much negates the need for supplementing with fish oil (something that seems to be extremely popular); or eating whole eggs helps with adequate testosterone production in males.
That said, there are loads of options for getting your fats in. For brevity, I won’t go into distinguishing between omnivore, vegetarian and vegan sources. A good way to get fats in, is by using a combined protein and fat source, for instance:
- Minced beef.
- Bacon.
- Whole eggs.
- Oily fish, such as salmon, mackerel, herring, or trout.
- Some cheeses. To name a few: ricotta, parmigiano or halloumi.
- Soy products. Examples: tofu or tempeh.
If you prefer lean protein sources – not everyone does – or you wish to avoid some of these foods for whatever reason (for instance cutting down on saturated fat), then you’re probably going to need to include some foods high in fat. Clearly, cooking oil adds some fat back to your diet, but not a whole lot. Some great cooking fats are:
- Butter.
- Olive oil.
- Coconut oil.
- Avocado oil.
- Sesame oil.
Cooking fat – yes, you should track it as part of your macros – will sometimes not cut it when it comes to getting your fats in. Hence, some excellent sources high in fat and lower in other macros are:
- Full-fat Greek yoghurt.
- Cream and cream cheese.
- Seeds:
- Chia.
- Flax (also known as linseed).
- Sesame.
- Poppy.
- Pumpkin.
- Nuts and nut butters:
- Walnuts.
- Pecan.
- Cashew.
- Peanuts.
- Macadamias.
Whereas the list of cooking fats are foods made up almost entirely of fat, the second list tends to have a small contribution from other macros as well. For instance, nuts and seeds are generally high in fat and moderate in protein.
Carbs
I imagine most people will know what foods are good carb sources – carbs, and especially sugar, being so vilified in popular culture – though for completeness let me discuss it briefly. A basic distinction here is between simple and complex carbs. There are three elementary sugars: glucose, fructose, or galactose (you can spot them by the -ose suffix). All other carbs are polymers of combinations of these three. For instance, disaccharides are composed of two simple sugars: maltose consists of two glucose molecules stuck together; lactose is made of one glucose and one galactose molecule; sucrose combines glucose and fructose.
Fruit is generally considered to be a pretty healthy, as they contain lots of fibre, vitamins and other micronutrients, and water. Besides from this, they serve as an excellent source of simple carbs, predominantly fructose. Some fruits that are commonly available almost everywhere:
- Apples.
- Pears.
- Bananas.
- Berries, such as blueberries, blackberries or raspberries.
- Mangos.
- Kiwis.
Some of these fruits are considered more healthy than others, usually for complicated reasons. Fruit is typically also pretty filling per calorie due to their high fibre and water content.
Complex carbs are longer polymers of simple sugars; they take longer to digest and as a result produce less of a blood sugar spike. They tend to release their energy over a longer period of time compared to simpler carbs. Some examples of complex carbs are maltodextrins and starches. To name a few foods high in complex carbs:
- Potatoes and sweet potatoes.
- Grains (and bread made of them):
- Wheat,
- Spelt.
- Rye.
- Corn (maize).
- Oats.
- Rice.
- Barley.
- Pasta and noodles.
The legumes and pulses (and also quinoa) I mentioned previously as protein sources, are also great sources of complex carbs.
Interestingly, as the polymer chains of a carb become longer and longer, the carb is digested slower and slower. Even to the point of something being completely indigestible. A great example of this is wood, which consists for roughly 50% of cellulose, a very long polymer of glucose. The point being that there’s a blurry line between fibres and complex carbs. Fibres are really just very hard to digest – or even indigestible – complex carbs.
Micronutrients: fruits, veggies, supplementation
Let’s just briefly discuss the importance of micronutrients. Various vitamins and minerals are absolutely crucial to the proper functioning of the human body. Fortunately, for most of them it’s super easy to hit a good range, as any surplus tends to get excreted very easily. This, however, depends on what micronutrient we’re talking about. Some aren’t excreted at all and can cause quite some problems when taken too much. Still, I’m not going to give any ranges to aim for; I’m just going to tell you to eat a varied diet with plenty of fruit and veggies. Most health sources will advise something like two to three servings of vegetables per day and two to three pieces of fruit. Besides from this, the other common recommendation is to eat oily fish once or twice a week.
Here’s the trick, if you eat a diverse range of fruits and veggies, you’ll be almost sure to get a good amount of micronutrients in. For instance, if you eat three pieces of fruit per day, just eat three different ones. On top of that, you can get some variation from just going along with the seasons, making sure to get fresh produce. For vegetables, try to vary throughout the week. If you’re not into vegetables and just try to get away with the bare minimum, focus on dark leafy greens, as they tend to be higher in micronutrients. Some excellent choices are:
- Spinach.
- Green beans.
- Kale.
- Rocket salad.
- Cabbage.
- Broccoli.
If you follow these general recommendations, you’ll pretty much set up for micronutrients, and you don’t really need supplements. You can if you want to; maybe it makes you feel better, there’s something to be said for placebo effects. Your body, however, will mostly store or excrete the surplus without any harm done.
One possible exception to this is vitamin D. A lot of people don’t see enough sunlight to get their daily vitamin D dosage, and so supplementing by a small amount can be beneficial. Recommendations vary from country to country, or even between states, due to the dependency on latitude. If you can get enough sunlight, chances are you don’t need to supplement. For example, I live in Northern Europe, where winter months tend to be dark and overcast. Supplementing in the winter months with a small amount, some 10 micrograms per day, is recommended around here. Strangely enough, most brands put way too much vitamin D in their supplements, which can produce some very nasty side effects in the long run. I suppose they try to push the “more is more better”-philosophy that is all too common in capitalism. Either way, to a large extent surpluses of vitamin D are stored in the body without any harm, but don’t go overboard on supplementation.
How to set up a basic meal plan
First off, plan your meals. Trying to hit your macros on the fly, for instance by tracking using MyFitnessPal, is not a great way to go. As I mentioned in my previous post, I typically plan out my meals a day ahead; for me, this is the best compromise between flexibility and planning. When you plan out your meals, make sure you get your protein and fat needs met and, if you’re dieting, try to keep the total calories near your goal. To set up a meal plan, there are various strategies. I’m going to assume here that you’ve already decided on some diet, it doesn’t matter which one. As long as you have a set of macros and the number and timing of your meals, this method will work. If you haven’t figured out your macros yet, see my previous post.
If you’re going with the macro profile I laid out in the previous post, then one method to construct a meal plan is to fill in protein first, then fat, then carbs (not surprisingly, this is also the order in which we calculated them in the previous post). I realize that if you’re doing keto, or whatever, the best order may be different; for keto I would recommend filling in the order protein-fat-carbs, for instance. Regardless, it’s generally best practice to fill in protein first, and to distribute it fairly evenly between meals. The point is to even out the protein synthesis rates over the day, though there are some indications that this is not completely necessary. At the same time, it would be a bit silly to have all your protein in one meal, only to have none of it in the others. Also, there’s the fact that satiety is typically increased when eating a good balance of macros together. The next order of business is to fill out fat. This order is especially useful if you’re using fattier protein sources, such as oily fish or tofu. Finally, add in your carbs. It’s considered best practice by many to get some carbs in pre-workout, so their distribution over the day may be a little skewed towards that particular meal. However, research on this suggests that pre-workout carbs can give a psychological boost, so take that as you may.
I’m not going to give you an example meal plan here, there are loads of those out there already. But I will tell you how and when to adjust it. Some reasons to adjust your meal plan and/or macro-split might be: nutrient timing, hunger issues, or palatability. Suppose you find yourself not performing as well as you could be in your workouts, then you might want to adjust your nutrient timing: try having some more carbs pre-workout. Perhaps you notice that you’re typically more hungry towards the end of the day, while you hardly need breakfast in the morning at all. Try moving some calories over from breakfast to later in the day, or cut out breakfast completely, breaking your fast in the afternoon. Or maybe you notice you just don’t sleep very well when you’re not getting any carbs in before bed. Shift some carbs to your pre-bed meal. Finally, maybe you just like eating a big rib-eye steak every now and then, but this puts you over your fat goal for the day. No worries, just try to compensate by eating fewer carbs; as long as your calories work out, you’ll be fine.
I’ve experimented quite a bit with my meal planning during my cut. At first, I was just eating smaller meals, which didn’t really suit me. I found myself not satiated by my meals, only to be hungry until the next one, which was once again too small to satiate. I figured having bigger meals would satiate me, although I’d probably also be hungrier in between. So I decided to break my fast in the afternoon, so that I could shift all those calories over to later meals. This worked great for a while, but I made another adjustment recently due to my sleeping habits having shifted. It was hard to get to bed in time, due to my meal plan, so I cut out my evening snack. However, this made me much hungrier after waking up, so now I do have breakfast in the morning again. You see, a meal plan isn’t written in stone, you should adjust and adapt to your personal circumstances and preferences.
Strategies for fat loss
According to Wikipedia, a strategy is ‘a general plan to achieve one or more long-term or overall goals under conditions of uncertainty.’ This is a fine definition for us to work with. The general goal we should consider is fat loss whilst preserving muscle, given that we know how many (or rather few) calories to eat. The uncertainty comes from our desire to avoid negative effects such as feeling hungry, lethargic, or any unwanted side effects of low energy availability.
Most strategies when dieting come down to choosing foods that are highly satiating and/or highly filling. Now, these things often go hand-in-hand, but there’s a distinction to be made. Filling foods make you, as the name suggests, feel full. However, any food in sufficient quantity makes you feel full; food is considered filling if it has a large volume per calorie. Satiety is slightly different, as it has to do with the duration of hunger-suppression; more or less how long something takes to digest. As I mentioned, for most foods these two are nearly identical, but there are some counterexamples, like water. Water has 0 calories, and is therefore quite filling. You chug two or three litres (or quarts if you use freedom units) of water, and I guarantee you’ll feel full. However, it doesn’t really suppress hunger, because there’s no digestion involved, and that feeling of fullness quickly goes away. Another counterexample is, for instance, steak or chicken breast. A 200 gram piece is not terribly large, but it will probably satiate most people for a while, as it takes quite a while to digest.
Dieting strategies therefore also consist of two categories: focussing on foods that take a long time to digest (satiety), or foods that have a large volume per calorie (fullness). When it comes to satiety, we can order the macronutrients as follows: protein, carbs, fat. Protein and carbs both have roughly 4 calories per gram, while fat has approximately 9 calories per gram. At the same time, protein is slightly more complicated to digest than carbs, while fat is relatively easy to digest.
It should be noted that satiety is also a bit of a personal thing. There’s something called the satiety index (see here, for instance), which categorizes common foods according to how satiating they are. However, these are statistical values based on average scores of laboratory test subjects. So take ’em with a grain of salt. You might find some foods much more satiating than their index would suggest. And something similar actually holds with macros in general. For example, I don’t think fat is very satiating at all; I’ve never understood how people can find French fries or quesadillas “heavy on the stomach,” and I have comfortably eaten 1500 calories worth of a full English fry-up in the past. I have a strong suspicion that keto wouldn’t work nearly as well for me as it does for people who advocate it.
Perhaps it goes without saying, but foods that have both low satiety and fullness are often (hyper-)processed. Things like potato crisps, candy bars, sugary breakfast cereals, donuts, you name it. All score incredibly low when it comes to satiety and fullness. No wonder, therefore, that most diets avoid these foods altogether. Let’s give an example of a high-volume food: 650 grams of iceberg lettuce (a humongous bowl) contains roughly as many calories as 15 grams of peanut butter (about one tablespoon). Clearly, the lettuce will make you feel full, but it will probably also keep you satiated longer.
To understand this, we should include another dietary component in our list, namely fibre. There are two kinds, soluble and insoluble fibre. Out of these, insoluble fibre is indigestible, so that means 0 calories, while soluble fibre has roughly 2 calories per gram. As we saw earlier, the lines between complex carbs and fibres are blurry, and soluble fibres are merely sugar polymers that are long enough such that we can’t digest them directly. However, the symbiotic bacteria living in our gut can still deal with soluble fibres generally speaking, and we can have their scraps. As such, soluble fibre takes a long time to digest and gives only very little energy. To go back to our peanut butter versus lettuce example, lettuce contains a lot of fibre and so will take a long time to digest. It not only fills you up, but it will also keep you satiated longer. That tablespoon of peanut butter will do next to nothing for fullness, although it might do something for satiety.
Now we have the high-level idea going that per gram, the order of most satiating components is: fibre, protein, carbs, fat. As an aside, satiety is also increased by having meals with a decent balance of macros. There are various transportation mechanisms in the gastrointestinal tract, and they tend to interfere with each other (not all, there are exceptions). For instance, having a bit of fat with your protein slows down the absorption rate of both. Anyway, with this order of satiation in mind, we see that we should look for foods that are highly satiating by having a high fibre content. Such foods often also have a large volume per calorie. There are then a handful of strategies that emerge: swapping out low-satiety foods for high-satiety foods, recreating low-calorie versions (especially popular for dessert, pastry and other sweet dishes), and adding high-fibre food (for instance salad) to smaller meals.
Swapping
Swapping is a very effective strategy, as you can basically continue eating your usual diet, provided it’s already sufficiently varied and pretty much hits your protein and fat macros. This assumption basically comes down to saying: your diet is fine, you just need to reduce carbs to hit your calorie goal. If that’s the case, you can start making substitutions. If you use loads of cooking fat and drench your pasta in olive oil, there’s definitely some room to lower fats, and swapping isn’t the first thing you should try. When it comes to swapping, there are tons of options, so let me give a very much non-inclusive list.
- Instead of rice, use:
- Cauliflower rice.
- Broccoli rice.
- Parsnip rice.
- Instead of pasta, use:
- Slivered zucchini.
- Egg noodles (long thin strips of omelet, basically).
- Konjac noodles.
- Instead of potato, use:
- Daikon.
- Celeriac.
- Turnips.
By the way, I think this is pretty much where the “carbs make you fat” myth comes from. It’s of course bullshit. Too many calories make you fat, regardless of the macros. No single macronutrient will make you fat, not even dietary fat. We have keto to attest to that. Only if you’re getting too much food in, i.e., too many calories, will your body start storing energy in body fat. Eating something low-carb means the carbs are replaced by fat and protein, but what the simplicity of the myth fails to understand is that the goal is to lower total calories. Overall, you’re getting fewer calories in, because you’re cutting down on total carbs, while keeping total protein and fat the same.
In general, you swap a high-carb food with something that feels roughly similar, especially for satiety, but is much lower in carbs, such that the end-result is fewer total calories. Typically, the swap is also higher in fibre; it often comes down to swapping a starchy food for a fibrous vegetable. The above-mentioned three examples will get you quite far, but they might be a little extreme. For example, in some cases, just switching from white rice to brown rice (which has higher fibre content) is enough to increase satiety per calorie such that you can make do with less rice.
Low-calorie or alternative versions of common foods
Another strategy is to look for, or come up with, low-calorie or alternative versions of certain foods. Swapping with fibrous vegetables is effective for some, but not all foods, for instance bread or tortillas. Again, assuming your protein and fat needs are pretty much taken care of, it’s the carbs that are the issue. A good way to look for recipes that do this is to look for terms such as: food hack, keto, low-carb, or anabolic. For instance, if you love French toast, but you don’t want all the calories, look for “anabolic French toast” or “keto French toast,” and you’ll find plenty of people who made alternative versions.
An important thing to note here, is that if you use an alternative version of a given food that is more fat and/or protein-based, you should adjust accordingly. To give an example, consider a burrito made with an egg wrap instead of a corn flour tortilla: because the egg wrap contains only fat and protein, you should use a little less filling inside the burrito, or subtract a little protein and fat from other meals. Remember, your macros for the day are already set. The point here is that even when using alternative or low-carb versions of certain foods, this may still result in a smaller meal if you’re trying to keep fat and protein at the same level. To combat the decrease in volume, we consider the next strategy.
Salad-beast mode on
Having a side salad with a meal is a great way of increasing volume without adding too many calories. As we’ve seen, even quite a lot of iceberg lettuce is still quite low in calories and high in volume. True, by adding a side salad, you’re adding a small amount of carbs back in, but this is off-set by the huge volume increase. Of course, it’s also possible to just replace a meal entirely by a salad, provided it has enough protein and fat for the particular meal you’re eating. If you’re someone who doesn’t mind eating a salad for a meal, this is a great option. A Niçoise salad, for instance, can make a terrific meal.
Personally, I employ this strategy quite often, even when maintaining. To give an example, sometimes me and my wife like to order in pizza. If I were to eat until I felt sufficiently full from just take-away pizza, I’d probably eat two big pizzas by myself, amounting to maybe 2000 to 2500 calories worth. Instead, I have a small pizza with a big side-salad, increasing the volume and satiety of the meal, while keeping the calories in check.
Soups and stews
Soups and stews are typically very satiating per calorie, due to their high volume. You’re taking in a lot of water with every bite, which obviously increases fullness, but there are also some differences in how soups and stews are digested compared to solid food. Especially if a soup or stew is bound, for instance using corn starch, because it creates a very stable suspension.
I love making soups when in a cut, it’s just such a great way to stretch a meal to the fullest. For instance, a single stalk of broccoli can be made into a huge bowl of soup without adding too many calories from binding. Also, when I’m cutting aggressively, I tend to get cold really easy and a hot bowl of soup is just what I need to feel better – other than the extra calories my body needs, of course.
Experiment, make it your own
A successful diet of any sort, be it fat loss, maintenance, or bulking, is a highly personal thing. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution to any diet or nutritional plan. Just consider the simplistic divide of hardgainers and easygainers: some people are just not so hungry, and have a hard time getting enough food in on a bulk; some people overeat on calories super easy and gain weight very quickly if they’re not careful. The diets for people on opposite ends of the spectrum will be vastly different in terms of food selection.
We all have our preferences, and not just when it comes to what to eat. Some people enjoy cooking, others hate it, and so the amount of time people spend in the kitchen can be vastly different. Some people don’t mind tracking their calories and putting some time into figuring out what to eat, others don’t want to think about it and like to keep things as simple and straightforward as possible. Some people wake up ravenous, others are not so hungry in the morning. Some people hate going to bed with a full stomach, others like to have a pre-bed snack. These are all things that you have to learn about yourself.
And so my message to you is this: it’s fun to learn about how to construct a diet, but more importantly, experiment until you find something you really like. I hope I’ve managed to help you.
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