Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the podcast.
Today's episode is titled How to Set Up Your Diet for Health, Performance and Body Composition Results.
So I'm going to be sharing my approach to nutrition and diet today.
And I say my approach to nutrition and diet Because there are so many different methods and concepts that you can apply to your own personalized and unique approach to nutrition diet, the foods that you consume.
There's not one plan or approach that works for everyone.
It is truly unique to the individual.
What works for you, what you enjoy, where you see results, what is sustainable based off of your lifestyle and the season of life that you're in.
So I wanted to share that before we get started.
There is not one diet.
There is not one approach, whether it's carnivore keto, high protein, low protein, high carb, low carb, high fat, low fat vegan Mediterranean paleo, All of those things.
They are tools that can be used to reach your health, performance or body composition goals and results.
But that's all they are.
Tools.
So it's discovering principles that work for you and then applying those principles.
That's going to provide sustainable long-term results.
And my diet has evolved over the years.
It truly has.
And the best part about documenting your life on YouTube.
At this point.
I've been sharing my fitness journey, my entrepreneurial journey, my family journey on YouTube since 2014.
Coming up on 12 years now. that I've been sharing my entire life.
Over a thousand videos documenting the entire process.
And I share that to say that you can go back and watch older videos from 2014 2016 2018, 2020 and you can see how my diet has changed and evolved over time.
I've tested different strategies and nutrition approaches.
I've discovered that some work for me and some don't.
I've kept the ones that work and I've eliminated the ones that don't.
So my diet now is the result of testing, learning, and applying changes over the years.
And I'm really happy with where my diet's at right now.
But I can pretty confidently tell you that In two years from now, my diet is probably going to look different than it does right now, based off what I have learned, tested and applied from now until then.
It is an evolutionary journey.
It is a process.
And that's what's fun about it.
Truly, that's what I enjoy about nutrition and diet.
Trying new things, seeing what works for you, learning what doesn't, manipulating nutrition to experience different results and outcomes.
It's truly a lot of fun.
I enjoy it.
I want to school for nutrition.
That's one of the reasons I love it so much.
It's always been a passion of mine for a long time now.
Now, what holds most people back from achieving their health and fitness goals?
It is nutrition.
It is diet.
If we boil it down and I recently recorded an episode, published an episode talking about the three characteristics that you need to embody to see success, to experience success.
Those three characteristics are discipline, commitment, and consistency.
You can apply it to many different areas and aspects of your life, but nutrition and diet is just another one of those, but a very clear and obvious example.
When you are disciplined, committed and consistent with your diet and the amounts that you're consuming, the quality of foods that you're consuming, the timing in which you are consuming those foods, you will feel better, you will look better and you will perform better.
It is just that obvious and that true.
And if you struggle and I know a lot of people struggle with nutrition and that's why many people never achieve their fitness and health goals.
They don't build the muscle they want.
They don't run the race they want.
They wake up feeling groggy and tired.
Nutrition is so much more than performance.
In the context of which we're talking about right now.
When you think nutrition and performance, you might be thinking body composition and getting as lean as possible.
You might be thinking physical performance in terms of running a really fast marathon or having the physical strength to endure a big effort like an Ironman or a triathlon.
Nutrition is so much more than that.
You have to be disciplined and committed and consistent with your nutrition and your diet for so much more than just physical performance outcomes.
Physical athletic performance outcomes.
Every single day you wake up.
If you want to feel good, if you want to have energy, if you want to have the mental clarity, if you want to sleep better, if you want to show up to your work and perform stronger, if you want to be able to meet the demands of your family and your kids and life as a whole, well then you have to be disciplined, committed and consistent with your diet.
Many people many, many people everyday people are underperforming, are waking up in a suboptimal level because they didn't focus on their diet.
They didn't focus on their nutrition.
What holds so many people back from achieving not just physical athletic performance goals, But goals in every domain and aspect of their life.
I can confidently say this
One of the reasons is because they don't take care of their body through the food that they are consuming every single day.
That is one variable that we get to control for many of us.
There's a caveat to that.
There are some people who don't have the resources, who don't have the financial security, who don't have the accessibility to healthy, nourishing food.
I recognize that.
And it's extremely unfortunate.
But what we're discussing in this episode, in this context today, is not speaking to those individuals.
I feel for people who don't have the resources, accessibility or access to just quality nutrition that fuels their body, fuels their mind.
But for many of us, we do have access to those resources, to good quality food.
But we choose the otherwise poor option out of convenience, out of laziness, out of lack of intentionality, out of gluttony, out of lack of a disciplined mind.
So we gravitate towards what sounds good, what tastes good, as opposed to what's going to fuel our body and our minds and to achieve the goals that we want to achieve.
As I mentioned, there's no perfect diet.
And what I'm sharing in this episode is what has worked for me.
And I believe that for many other people, it can work for them and you too, if you apply it.
But it all starts with a mindset.
And that mindset is out of discipline. out of commitment and out of consistency.
I can't tell you how many times over the last 10 plus years, and I've actually stopped doing it in most cases because of what I'm about to share.
So many people have come to me struggling to lose weight, struggling to be consistent with their diet, struggling either because they know they make the wrong choices and they don't have the willpower to not make the wrong choices, or out of ignorance and just lack of knowledge.
They don't know what to eat, when to eat, what to make, where to buy it.
And I've had many of these conversations over the years and I've sat down with these people and I've spent time writing them out a meal plan with the macros broken down by meal, with options and variations to substitute in the event they don't have access to those certain foods that were in the meal plan.
And in many of those cases, the individual in which I did that for, day one, good.
Week one, good.
Week two, somewhat good.
Week three, falling off even more.
Week four, completely off the diet.
Through the meal plan, the macros, the nutrition protocols in the trash and went back to their old ways of eating.
Because a lack of discipline, commitment, and ability to be consistent.
And it becomes discouraging to see that people have the answers right in their hands.
They have the ability to make the change, but just can't stick with it.
So none of what I'm about to share in this episode, none of it matters if you can't control the willpower to just make the right choices day in and day out, consistently for a long period of time.
And that's why it's so important that, when you build out and establish the way you're going to eat, what you're going to eat, when you're going to eat it, it's got to be something that works for you and that is sustainable.
And that's why there is no perfect diet.
There is not one way to eat.
Here at BPN, when we go into the break room for lunch, which ranges in time.
Some people eat lunch here at 10 a.m.
Some people eat lunch at 12 p.m.
Some people eat lunch at 2 p.m.
You just sit back and you watch people eat.
And some people bring their food into work.
Some people eat at work.
We provide meals for people here at BPN.
We provide lunch for people here through this meal prep service.
And you just watch People's eating habits.
Everyone eats so differently.
Which is it's so cool to see what people are eating, how they're eating it, how they're dressing that meal.
Condiments, they add seasonings, they add, some eat it hot, some eat it cold.
It's just.
It's an interesting observation to watch the eating behaviors and habits of individuals change.
And some of that's based off personal preference.
Some of it's based off of the way they were raised.
What they gravitated towards?
Things that work for them, things that they enjoy.
Food and nutrition and diet, it's very unique to the individual.
But also it's the one variable that we, many of us, get to control.
There's a responsibility there. an accountability element to that.
And for many of us, we can't blame anyone else but ourselves when we don't reach our goals.
We don't feel our best because we didn't make the right choices when it comes to food.
What we choose, what we pick up, what we put in our mouth, what we consume.
We got this body, this machine that we are responsible for.
I mean the way that I think about it.
How do I make this machine, this human body, work as well as possible?
What needs to go in it so that it's primed, it's charged, it's ready to go?
Same way a car operates.
Same way vehicles, machines, equipment operate.
The quality of the fuel that you put in.
It is going to determine the results, the performance that you get.
It's a responsibility.
It's a function of accountability, discipline, commitment, and consistency.
If you can't hone in on those three characteristics and abilities, none of what we're going to talk about matters.
So I just want to set that expectation going into it.
Now, why this podcast?
To be honest, as we go into 2026, the BPN team internally here, a lot of them have new health and fitness goals.
People want to get leaner.
People want to get faster.
People want to get bigger.
People want to get stronger.
This past summer and this past fall, a lot of us here at BPN were in an endurance-focused season, whether that's training for triathlons.
Many of you know that I was in an Ironman prep triathlon.
A lot of the BPN team was training for an ultra marathon.
So a few weeks ago, we hosted a 50-mile ultra at Bear Ranch for BPN employees.
Over this past year, we've hosted a few races on the ranch.
We had the Go On More Ultra, which was a last man standing style race.
We had Survive the Night, 50 Mile Ultra.
And then we also participate, host, and entertain other races throughout the year.
And for those races that we host or that we're working on, The BPN team can't participate because we are working in the events.
So we decided to put on a 50 mile ultra on Bear Ranch just for the employees.
That happened a few weeks ago.
A bunch of people came and threw down.
Lifetime distance PRs for many.
It was awesome to see.
What was even more awesome to see was the race was on a Saturday at Bear Ranch.
Monday watching everyone hobble into the office.
I mean, no exaggeration.
It took people 15 minutes to get from their cars in the parking lot to their office and sit down on their chair because people were in so much pain from running 50 miles at the employee team, 50 mile ultra 48 hours prior.
The team here puts in the work.
Coming off of a big endurance-focused season now, as we go into winter and in a little bit of hibernation mode or I guess a better way to describe it a building season, many of us here at BPN, myself included, are in a strength-focused phase.
Still running yes, still embodying the hybrid athlete training philosophy and lifestyle.
But running volume is definitely reduced for many of us and we're spending more time in the gym.
We're in a caloric surplus, slightly hitting the weights more, trying to get bigger, trying to get stronger.
And then come spring and next summer, we'll probably move back into a more endurance-focused season.
I like to time the things that I'm training for, or the structure of my training, with the seasons that we experience.
Spring, summer, fall, spending more time outside running.
Winter, a little bit less time running and in the gym.
So, as we're working towards a lot of the BPN team members goals going into 2026 and those goals are shifting from the summer and fall and more people are focused on putting on size and strength, they know that their diet, the foods they put into their body, is going to be a huge determining factor of the results they experience, primarily body composition results.
People want to put on size, but size being muscle.
That might be accompanied by a little bit of fat, but not too much fat.
So it's being smart with your training, smart with your diet.
So I started putting resources together for the BPN team.
Training programs and protocols.
We have a Slack channel where I'm sharing my workouts from each day so they can follow them and do them as well alongside of me.
And I started putting together some information for nutrition.
And I thought, you know what?
I might as well just record a podcast for them.
Now I'm going to record a podcast for them.
I should just record a podcast for everyone to listen to.
So that's what we're doing right now is.
This is the information on nutrition that I was going to share with the team that I'm now sharing with you guys.
But the reason I started the way I started this episode really reinforcing discipline, commitment and consistency is because that is the one thing that I watch.
I see every day.
I observe people here, even at BPN, failing at.
It's on days when people forget their lunch.
And they need something quick and they go grab an unfortunately unhealthy option right down the road.
Bring it back to the office, slam it quick, get back to work.
But those choices do not lead to the results that you're hoping for.
So I'm calling out everyone right now.
Go into this next year, especially in relationship to your nutrition and your diet.
Commit to one year of discipline, commitment and consistency around your nutrition and diet and watch your life change.
Watch your health, your physical performance, your mental performance, your body composition change in a way that it never had or has before.
Just do it for one year.
I know 12 months is a long time, but you will see changes that are so dramatic that there's no way you're going to go back to your old way of living, your old way of eating, your old way of consuming.
Because you've now seen the light.
You've seen how good it can be.
There's nothing that's going to draw you back towards the darkness, towards the unhealthy convenient, lazy options.
From my observation, the most common obstacles I have found that most people struggle with when it comes to food and nutrition.
First one being a unhealthy relationship with food.
Now this one is really near and dear to my heart, as I am someone who struggled with an eating disorder in my mid teens, when I was in middle school.
High school a very severe eating disorder.
And from that moment even till today, 20 years later, I still struggle with unhealthy relationships with food.
I do.
And I probably always will.
There are seasons where the relationship I have with food is more unhealthy than others, but I'm aware of it.
I know it.
I don't try to ignore it or that it doesn't exist, but there are a lot of people, a lot of people, who have unhealthy relationships with food.
There's also an overwhelming amount of information around nutrition and diet.
Understanding what to eat, understanding what not to eat, understanding how much to eat.
Another common obstacle is that there is a lack of planning or preparation.
This is one of my greatest strengths, in my opinion, is the planning and preparation approach to food and nutrition.
Because in a lot of cases, a lot of instances, when you don't plan forward or forward think and backwards plan and then prepare for the next day or the next couple days, you end up making choices that lack intentionality.
And that ends up being unhealthy options of what is just most accessible and within reach for wherever you are in that moment.
There is a difference between fueling for performance and health, optimization around food and nutrition, which we'll get into.
Another common obstacle is that you're trying to navigate travel busy schedules, off-routine disturbances.
As life becomes more complicated and you get a more demanding job and your family grows and you have kids, eating healthier becomes more challenging.
But if you are intentional and if you plan and prepare, you can navigate those challenges.
It doesn't necessarily make it easier, but you can still succeed.
A lot of people try to lose and gain weight too quickly.
This is one of the biggest issues I see which creates the yo-yo effect and really preaches unsustainable nutrition practices.
I meet so many people who have this light bulb moment in their life of, oh my gosh, I'm unhealthy.
Oh my gosh, I do not feel good.
Oh my gosh, I'm a hundred pounds overweight.
And they want to achieve the results.
Achieve the outcomes in which they would feel and look better tomorrow.
That's just not going to happen.
It's hard to to take the sustainable approach, as opposed to just going all in and making these drastic, unsustainable changes where yeah, you could lose a hundred pounds fairly quickly in an unhealthy way.
But when you try to lose the weight or you try to achieve a certain outcome usually a body composition outcome too quickly, the results are unsustainable.
It's called the yo-yo because you have people who lose and gain, lose and gain, lose and gain.
I met many people over the years who have lost 100 pounds, 200 pounds, but then they've gained 150 pounds, 250 pounds and then lost 150.
100 pounds, 200 pounds, and then gained all of it back.
I mean, this yo-yo effect is so hard on your body.
And it typically happens when you take the approach that is unsustainable.
If your thought process is I'm just going to suffer for six months, eat nothing but chicken and broccoli, do three workouts a day, get 20000 steps in each day, no cheat meals, and lose all this weight as fast as possible yeah, you're going to do it, but you're probably going to gain it all back because it's unsustainable.
We want to make changes to our lifestyle that we can sustain forever.
That's the goal.
Now, nutrition and diet, it requires mental strength and mental resilience.
So I have some notes here that I want to share.
As we've talked about unhealthy relationships with food, here's an example right here.
And I bring this up because we're in the holiday season.
At the time of this recording, we're a few days away from Christmas 2025.
We.
Just about a month ago, I had the opportunity to celebrate Thanksgiving with family and friends and good food and feasting.
It's amazing.
But during the holiday season is when a lot of people struggle with nutrition and staying on track.
And in my advice, my approach is always around the holiday season.
Enjoy the food.
Enjoy the food.
Enjoy the company.
Enjoy the experience.
You don't have to be that person who goes into Thanksgiving with your family and brings your Tupperware of your properly portioned and weighed out chicken, rice and broccoli.
And you don't have to do the same thing for Christmas.
Enjoy the meal and time with family and create memories around the feasting and just the love of everyone in your life, friends and family.
That's not the point that I want to make around the holiday season, but you know, like I was mentioning, about a month ago we celebrated Thanksgiving and this year we hosted Thanksgiving at our house.
So we had family, we had friends in town and a big Thanksgiving dinner and every holiday season when we have family gatherings with with friends as well.
I ended up having a conversation with someone.
It's always someone different.
And the conversation starts off somewhat.
Like you know, I've been fasting all day, all day yesterday and all day today, in preparation for this meal tonight.
I'm about to go so hard.
I'm going to eat so much food until I feel sick.
Why?
Why are you doing that?
I call it here in my notes, the Thanksgiving day approach.
It's the fasting and restricting in preparation for a binge.
That's gluttony.
Worshiping food.
And people don't just do this around the holidays, Thanksgiving, Christmas.
People do it for birthdays.
People do it for date nights.
I know people who they have a dinner scheduled for a Friday night with friends and family and they're fasting in preparation so they can just binge and go all out.
That's a problem.
That is an unhealthy relationship with food.
And I share this and say that because I used to do this too.
I would know when we were going out to eat next.
And I would fast and I would restrict in preparation for that meal so I could binge and go all out.
I would do the same thing for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
I would fast the day before.
I would fast all day leading up to.
And by the time I was ready to eat and food was served, I was so hungry.
All I could think about was food.
I'd have one plate.
And then two plates and I was full but I go back for a third plate and then I go back for dessert and maybe a second dessert, until I was laying on the couch afterwards feeling so sick and disgusted with myself, thinking why'd you do this?
What, why, what was the intent?
What was the purpose?
This is an unhealthy relationship with food.
The fasting, restricting, and then feasting and binging.
I would encourage people to try to eliminate this approach to nutrition in their life.
This is why I don't like cheat meals.
It's why I don't necessarily like free meals, because people reserve and restrict in preparation for the cheat meal or the free meal for the days leading up to that creates this unhealthy, unbalanced mindset around food fueling and nutrition.
So the way that I now approach going to dinner on a Thursday Friday, Saturday night or Thanksgiving dinner or Christmas dinner is that I wake up and I have my same breakfast as normal.
And then it's lunchtime.
I have my same lunch as normal.
And I'll probably work out.
And after I work out, I have my same post-workout shake or overnight oats or meal as normal.
And then when it's time to go to dinner with friends or family, or Thanksgiving meal is served or the Christmas meal is served, I make a plate.
I get everything that I want on that plate, maybe a little extra.
I eat till I'm full and then I'm done.
And you might be thinking to yourself, Nick, that's so much easier said than done.
But remember, I'm someone who used to struggle with these same things.
And now I have implemented healthier practices and And a lot of it is a proactive mindset.
Mentally preparing yourself proactively, mentally preparing yourself to have healthy relationships with food.
If you know you always restrict and fast in preparation for a binge, don't allow yourself to restrict and fast.
So by the time the dinner is served or the food is dropped off at your table, you're not starving.
Your body is sending you the right signals.
Your mind is sending you the right signals to eat as normal until you're full and then be done.
Put the appropriate amount of food on your plate.
Order the appropriate amount of food at the dinner table.
But you have to set yourself up for success.
And it's showing up physically ready, but also mentally ready, to having the proactive approach as opposed to the reactive, binging approach.
There's a problem with binging, fasting, and feasting.
And if you don't personally have these struggles, or you personally haven't experienced this one, I'm happy for you.
But two.
You might not recognize or realize how common it is for someone who has struggled with an eating disorder in the past and unhealthy relationships with food.
I can see when it's happening right in front of me.
And it happens a lot with a lot of people.
I heard this saying years ago that I love, but I also hate.
It's eat to live, don't live to eat.
Now, if you read this at face value, eat to live, don't live to eat.
It probably sounds like I'm saying you shouldn't enjoy your food.
And that food isn't meant to be celebrated and enjoyed.
But I'm not saying that at all.
Food should be celebrated.
It is a feast.
And a feast is very enjoyably done with other people.
But for a lot of people, they allow food to become an idol.
Food is worshiped and food over consumes them mentally and physically.
What I mean when I say eat to live, don't live to eat, is that you should choose foods that still taste good, that you can enjoy, but they're going to fuel your mind and body for health and for performance and for the body composition results that you want.
Eat to live.
What does your body need?
Not necessarily live to eat.
What does your body want?
Or more so, what does your mind want?
So we can't talk about nutrition without talking about macronutrients.
Macronutrient 101.
What are macronutrients and why do they matter?
Macronutrients are the large components of food that the body needs for energy and to maintain and or support basic bodily functions.
So you have three primary macronutrients.
You have proteins, fats, and carbohydrates.
There is a fourth technically macronutrient, which is alcohol.
So I'm about to share a little bit about protein, fats, and carbohydrates.
But alcohol also carries energy, calories.
There are seven calories per gram of alcohol.
Now hopefully, alcohol is not a meaningful macronutrient in your daily diet, but it's something to be mindful of that.
There is energy that comes with alcohol.
So starting off, protein.
Protein is made up of amino acids.
And protein's primary role is to rebuild and repair tissues, muscle growth, enzymes, and hormones.
Now, each gram of protein is made up of or consists of four calories, four calories per gram.
Fat, dietary fat.
These types include saturated and unsaturated fats.
The unsaturated fats being monounsaturated and polyunsaturated.
These are your omega-3, omega-6 fatty acids.
Primary role in fat is hormone production, cell membranes, nutrient absorption and long-term energy.
Fat has nine calories per gram.
So fat is the most calorically dense, based off weight, of all of the macronutrients nine calories per gram.
Carbohydrates.
There are simple and complex carbohydrates simple being sugars, complex being starches and fibers.
Primary rule of carbohydrates is energy production, primarily short-term energy production.
Four calories per gram of carbohydrates.
So proteins and carbs, four calories per gram.
Alcohol, seven calories per gram.
Fats, nine calories per gram.
The most calorically dense.
And those three, proteins, fats, and carbs, each play a specific role in the body.
And that's why, as we're putting our nutrition protocol together, we need to put emphasis and prioritize protein sources, dietary fat sources and carbohydrate sources, because they play unique roles, each one of them, in the body.
Now we'll talk about how to set up your macros.
Before we do, I want to share what my current diet looks like.
This will kind of set the stage for some of the other things that we're going to be talking about throughout this episode.
So as I was mentioning, over the years, my diet has changed a lot.
If you go back through all my old YouTube videos you can watch.
I have dozens, if not hundreds, of full day of eating videos.
And people love watching these.
And to be honest, I enjoy filming these too.
I look into what and how I eat on a regular basis, especially around training and work, and what I prepare.
Because the way that I approach my diet one, I choose food sources that are going to fuel my body, that are convenient.
I'm not spending a lot of time preparing food That is just, it fits my schedule and my routine.
And then they are not just tasty.
I mean, they taste delicious, but as I said, they're nutritious.
They fuel my body.
It's what I need to perform mentally and physically.
And it all tastes really, really good.
So right now, as of Q4, coming off of Ironman Prep 2025, I eat five meals a day.
Meal number one, I eat chicken and duck eggs.
So every morning I do two chicken eggs and do two duck eggs.
And I cook them in either ghee, which is clarified butter, olive oil, or coconut oil in a skillet.
Now, eggs are loaded with vitamins, minerals, vitamins, good source of fat as well as protein.
And the reason I started adding duck eggs into my what was always just chicken eggs is I discovered duck eggs at the farmer's market.
And the duck eggs that I get are big.
They're like twice the size as the chicken eggs.
And duck eggs have significantly more vitamins and minerals compared to chicken eggs.
They are very dense in vitamins and minerals nutrients and they also taste different.
I've shared this with people recently how duck eggs taste different and they ask well, how?
And it's really hard to describe.
I can't describe what makes them taste different.
They just taste different.
And I actually now prefer duck eggs over chicken eggs.
So every morning I do two chicken eggs, two duck eggs.
I do some sourdough bread that I either get at the farmer's market or we make at home.
I put some grass-fed butter on that bread and I'll have berries dried figs.
So really like the order of operations.
When I finish my workout up in the morning, I get back from a run.
I come in, I eat some dried figs and some blueberries or raspberries or blackberries.
And I kind of snack on this as I'm prepping the rest of the food.
And then I'll cut off a slice of sourdough bread.
I'll put it in the toaster, go back over the stove, cook my eggs, my chicken eggs, my duck eggs, and either the ghee, olive oil or coconut oil.
And then when the bread is done and the eggs are done, I put the bread on a plate, sourdough bread on a plate.
I spread some of that.
We use Kerrygold butter. grass-fed butter on the toast.
I put the eggs on top.
I usually do like over medium eggs.
And I'll sprinkle some flaky sea salt and a little bit of freshly grated Parmesan cheese on top of the eggs.
Delicious.
Absolutely delicious.
And then the supplements I have with meal one, I have electrolytes.
I have Strong Omega, which is our fish oil supplement.
Great sources of essential fatty acids, omega-3 fatty acids, EPA and DHA.
It's really important that you get some really solid sources of omega-3 fatty acids, especially specifically EPA and DHA, in your diet daily, which you can get from either a fish oil supplement or just consuming some wild caught fish in your diet.
Salmon is a great option.
So I have electrolytes strong omega, strong multivitamin, strong joints.
Strong greens, which is our green superfood supplement, strong reds, which is our reds superfood supplement, and then creatine five to 10 grams of creatine monohydrate.
That's meal one right now.
Meal number two, I'll have, and I typically consume this around 10 to 10.30 a.m.
I do eight ounces of grass-fed beef.
Sometimes it's bison.
Sometimes it's venison.
Sometimes it's elk.
Some sort of red meat, eight ounces of red meat.
I'll do 300 grams of rice, typically a white jasmine rice.
I'll do some Primal Kitchen's buffalo sauce.
So all of the Primal Kitchen's sauces don't use industrial seed oils.
They are avocado oil based.
And I'll add some pickled veg in there, because pickled vegetables are great sources of prebiotic fibers.
So that'll either be pickled onions, sauerkraut, or sometimes kimchi.
Meal three, this is typically post-workout meal or pre-workout meal.
I have old-fashioned oats.
I make overnight oats the night before.
And in that I put old-fashioned oats, protein powder honey, pumpkin seeds walnuts, and I'll top it with some fruit, either being a banana or some berries.
Meal number four for me, has the most variation in the day.
Typically like right now meal one, meal two, meal three, even meal five, is pretty much the same day to day.
But meal four is our dinner that we'll eat between five and 6 p.m.
We do like to eat earlier dinner.
And this is just depending on what we have at the house, what we got at the farmer's market, what we got at the grocery store, what we're hungry for, what recipe we gathered for that week.
But it's always some source of protein, whether that's meat chicken fish, a carbohydrate source, whether it's potatoes or rice or pasta, some sort of vegetable, whether it's broccolini or carrots or mushrooms or a combination of a bunch of different vegetables.
And then I always make sure there's a fat source in there.
So if the meat was pretty fatty, if we had red meat steak ribeye, for example, I already know that's pretty fatty.
I don't have to add a fat on top.
But if the meat source is a white fish or chicken breast or I know, because that source of meat is leaner in fat, I'm going to want to add in some sort of fat to that meal, whether that's olive oil, grass-fed butter beef tallow, some nuts and seeds avocado, something like that, to get more fat into that meal.
And then, about an hour before going to bed, I will have my last meal of the night, which is Greek yogurt and cottage cheese.
So I'll do one serving of Greek yogurt, just plain Greek yogurt, one serving of cottage cheese, which provides me about 30 grams of protein.
And I'll top that with honey, cacao nibs, sometimes peanut butter, unsweetened coconut flakes.
And then I'll typically have a whole avocado on the side.
So what I've been doing is I wait till the avocado is absolutely perfect.
Cut it in half, take out the seed.
And then I put Trader Joe's everything but the bagel seasoning on both sides of the avocado.
Eat it out with a spoon.
It is absolutely delicious.
So that's like a rough outline of what my typical diet looks like right now.
As I've mentioned, I'm choosing foods that taste really good.
I'm getting enough protein, enough carbs, enough dietary fat.
It's fueling my body.
It's fueling my mind for my training, for my workouts, for my recovery, for just the day-to-day.
And I really do focus on quality of food, sourcing ingredients, and nutrition.
Now, how to set up your macros.
The question is to track or not to track.
Should you track your nutrition?
Should you not track your nutrition?
There's pros and cons to each.
And here's my take.
I think if you don't have a strong awareness of what to eat and how much of that food to eat, you should try tracking your nutrition.
There's a bunch of free applications you can download.
I've used MyFitnessPal in the past.
And you just plug in everything you've consumed and the amounts.
And then, at the end of the day, you can see how many calories you consumed, how much protein, how much carbohydrates, how much fat.
I think it is a great tool and resource to use for a small period of time not forever just to gain a level of awareness in terms of how much you're consuming.
But I don't think that you should use these apps or track your nutrition forever, because it does become all-consuming.
I rarely track my nutrition now.
I mean, rarely.
Maybe...
Every once in a while, when I make big changes to my diet.
I will track my nutrition for a day, just so I know roughly what I'm consuming how many calories, how much protein, carbohydrates and fat.
But I can consume foods pretty intuitively now and know a ballpark of what and how much I've consumed.
But if you don't know or you're unaware, this is a great practice to implement.
Like I said, even for a short period of time, when I was in college studying nutrition at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania, I had a few different courses that I had to take, because when you go to school for nutrition,
There's a typical route where you go to school for nutrition or dietetics.
Then, upon graduating, you do an internship and then you can earn your accreditation to be a registered dietitian.
I didn't take that route.
I just got a degree in nutrition because I went right into the army.
But if you end up going the registered dietitian route, which comes with an internship after graduating from college, you are preparing to work with individuals, typically in a hospital environment, normally for disease intervention and building out nutrition protocols and plans based off of what disease they are trying to prevent or fight.
So I had some courses in college where we were working with other students to build out nutrition protocols to help them reach their goals.
Not necessarily in a hospital setting, but really just to get some experience working with people building out nutrition plans and protocols.
So one of the things that we would do was a seven-day food diary with these people working, Or I guess you can consider them clients.
So you would have people for seven days, eat like they normally do and document in a journal what they consumed, at what time, what the food was and a rough estimation of the amount.
And if they didn't know this was a cup of berries or 150 grams of berries, they could say it was a palm size of berries.
It was a fist size of chicken breast, for example.
So we would have them do these seven-day food journals writing everything down, And then we get them back and we would take those food journals and input the food and the rough estimates of the portion sizes into a program that would then calculate the calories, the proteins, the fats, the carbohydrates.
And if their weight stayed pretty consistent throughout that week and they ate as they normally would, we could, with rough estimates, generally assume what their daily maintenance calories are and how much protein, how much carbohydrates and how much fat they are typically consuming, based off their normal diet.
And then we can go in and manipulate and change what they're consuming or how much they are consuming.
Subtract certain foods, add certain foods to optimize their diet.
Well, you can do the same thing.
If you've never tracked your food before, you don't know how much you're consuming of what.
Download one of these free apps.
MyFitnessPal.
I'm not sure if it's free anymore, but there's some apps out there where you can download the software and you can input the food you consume and download one of these apps.
And for a week, Just input what you consumed at each meal and try to estimate as closely as possible how much.
At the end of the day, I would even recommend don't go back and look at how many calories you consumed, how many macronutrients you consumed.
Just input, move on to the next day.
Do this for seven days.
And then, after those seven days, go back and look day one how many calories, how much protein, how much carbohydrate, how much fat.
Day two, same.
Day three, four, five, six, seven, same.
And find an average of those seven days, how many calories you're consuming, how much protein, how much carbohydrate, how much fat.
And if your weight stayed roughly the same and that's what you consume normally, we can make the assumption those are close to your maintenance calories.
Then we can go in and make some changes to specific macronutrient goals.
Now, here's where I would start to set up your macros.
Protein.
I like the general rule of thumb, one gram per pound of body weight.
That might be a little bit of overkill.
You might be able to get away with a little bit less than say, like 06 or 07 grams of protein per pound of body weight.
But I personally enjoy a higher protein diet.
One, just because I love protein eggs and I love steak and chicken and fish and just like protein sources.
I could easily consume 300 to 400 grams of protein a day and love it.
Love it.
But I don't.
One gram of protein per pound of body weight.
Fats.
I like a slightly higher fat intake, just because of the role that fat plays in the body in terms of hormone production, long-term energy stores, just the importance of bodily functions.
It's recommended that dietary fat makes up about 20 to 35% of your calories.
I would try to set fats at around 30% of your daily caloric intake.
And this is the way you would do this.
Say you discover through this seven day food journal or you just know, you want to consume 3000 calories a day.
And that's your maintenance calories.
Maintenance calories are what you consume every day to maintain your current weight.
So 3,000 calories, multiply that by 0.30, 30%.
You're going to find 30% of that 3,000.
Then from there, divide that number by nine because there's nine calories per gram of fat.
And that will give you the amount of grams of fat you should consume daily, so that you are consuming 30 of your calories from dietary fat.
So I like to set my protein targets first, one gram per pound of body weight.
Fat.
I like to just for, like a starter number, 30 of daily calories, and then fill in the rest of your calories with carbohydrates.
That's my preferred approach.
Now, there's going to be questions.
What's better?
Is it better to have a high carb diet and a lower fat or a higher fat, lower carb?
I think it determines or depends on your season of life, what you enjoy more, what makes you feel better and the performance goals that you're aiming towards.
Now, carbohydrates are a fast acting energy source.
They fuel high intensity performance.
Fats, however, fuel low intensity performance.
When I was in my Ironman prep, for example, I was consuming a lot of carbohydrates because I had to fuel high intensity performance for multiple hours a day.
I was consuming... about 800 grams of carbs on average a day during my Ironman prep.
Now that I'm not in Ironman prep anymore and I don't require that much high intensity fuel being carbohydrates on a daily basis.
My carbs are probably around 350 grams a day right now, but my dietary fat is higher.
And I have personally found again this goes back to the beginning of the conversation what makes you personally feel best.
Some people feel really good, high carb, lower fat.
Some people feel really good on higher fat, lower carb.
And then some people feel really good with a moderate approach in the middle a good amount of carbs, good amount of fat.
I have found for me I feel really good right in the middle a moderate amount of carbs and a moderate amount of fat.
I probably consume 350 grams of carbohydrates a day right now and maybe 120 grams of fat a day right now.
I feel really good.
I don't feel really good when I have high carb, lower fat.
A lot of people don't feel really good when your fats are too low.
And for many.
When your dietary fat is too low for too long, you'll start feeling the effects of low energy, possibly compromised immune function.
Your hormones become disrupted.
You can't recover well from performance and training.
Your training is going to suffer.
So you have to be really careful that protein gets a lot of love, carbs get a lot of love, but Dietary fat only gets a lot of love when we're talking about it in terms of a ketogenic diet or carnivore.
But dietary fat is really important for everyone to maintain these systems within the body and just normally functioning bodily processes.
Now, like we talked about in the beginning, Planning and preparation is absolutely critical for success when it comes to nutrition, food and diet.
I've talked about this concept in my book, and I've used it for everything.
In the book it was mainly around building a business and setting up your training for specific goals, but we can apply it to nutrition as well.
It's a forward thinking, backwards planning.
I believe that this is one of my strengths that I have really refined over the years is I'm constantly looking into the future.
I'm forward thinking.
What am I going to need later today?
What am I going to need tomorrow?
What am I going to need next week?
What am I going to need next month?
And as I identify those things that I need in the future forward thinking, I then backwards plan and make sure I have those things prepared and ready so that I can execute when the time comes.
When it comes to forward thinking and backwards planning with nutrition, grocery shopping, making sure you have healthy food fuel source, easily accessible foods and snack options at your house, in your car, in your vehicle, in your bag, at your office.
What am I going to need to go buy at the grocery store to have readily accessible, so I don't have to go make a convenient, unhealthy option.
Food and meal prep.
I prep carbohydrates in bulk.
I prep meats in bulk every week so that whenever I'm in a pinch I can go into my fridge.
I can grab prepped potatoes or prepped rice or prepped ground beef or prepped chicken.
And I make my meals the night before always for the next day.
So I know that as soon as I wake up, no matter what happens, day gets crazy.
I have my meals prepped.
I throw them in my lunchbox, my cooler.
I take them anywhere I go.
So I have meals prepared.
Grocery shopping, forward thinking, backwards planning and food and meal prep are essential for success.
And to be honest, I spend a lot of time doing those things.
I spend a lot of time going through our pantry, going through our fridge, taking stock of what we have, what we don't have, making a grocery list, going and getting those groceries and then making sure I have those meals prepped at all times so I have accessibility to those foods.
I mean, there are many times where I have prepped ground beef at 5 am and midnight and There are many times when I've been making a pot of rice in the rice cooker shortly after waking up and then right before going to bed.
If you don't have a rice cooker, you got to get a rice cooker.
A rice cooker is absolutely game-changing.
It cooks the rice perfectly in like 30 minutes.
You put the rice in, you add the water, you press cook, you walk away, and it does its magic.
And then I just take that pot out of the rice cooker and I throw it right in the fridge and that'll last me a few days.
And then as soon as it's out, I wash it out and I make more rice.
But having a plan and being prepared, it's going to be overwhelming in the beginning.
If you've never done it, it will, but it becomes habitual.
It becomes part of your routine.
That's something that you have to be aware of and prepared for, going into making changes to your nutrition and your diet, or undergoing a new overhaul of just the foods you consume.
There is an acclimation period to all things.
It's going to feel like a lot in the beginning.
I'm tracking my calories in this app, writing down all the foods I consume in the seven-day food journal.
I'm making a grocery list.
I'm prepping meats.
I'm prepping rice.
Yeah, I get it.
It's overwhelming.
It's a lot in the beginning, but before you know it, I promise you it becomes habitual.
I don't even remember when I prep meats or rice or my meals anymore because it is so habitual.
It is so much a part of my routine.
It is a habit that I've just baked in over the years.
But you have to be ready to go through an acclimation period where it's going to feel somewhat overwhelming potentially and like a nuisance and complicated.
But before you know it, you're just doing it without even thinking about it, ordering groceries, prepping meals, filling your lunchbox every morning before going to the office.
Would it be easier to just order Chick-fil-A from your phone and have DoorDash drop it off at your desk every day at 11 am?
Absolutely.
Would it be easier to stop through the drive-thru on the way home from work every day and grab a Happy Meal before going home to sit on the couch and watch Netflix after a long day of meetings and calls and work?
Yeah, absolutely.
But what results do you want?
Do you want to feel better?
Do you want to look better?
Do you want to optimize your health and your performance simultaneously?
Well, then it's an easy answer.
You're going to have to do the thing.
That takes a little bit more work to experience the success and the results that you're hoping for on the other side.
They don't come without work.
It requires the work.
And for me, what has really been helpful over the years is having my go-to foods.
So I know every week I'm prepping a combination of ground beef, elk, bison, venison.
As I mentioned, I'm always cooking my prepared rice.
Those are always in my fridge.
I never have to worry about it.
So when I go to prepare my lunch for the next day, take out the food scale, take out my glass Tupperware, get out my meat mixture, my rice.
I do 300 grams of rice in the bowl, eight ounces of meat in the bowl, a little bit of the Primal Kitchen's buffalo sauce in the bowl.
Put the top on, put it in the fridge.
And then I get another piece of glass Tupperware out.
I make my overnight oats, my oats, my honey, my peanut butter PB2, almond milk, mix it up, add in the pumpkin seeds, the walnuts, throw that in the fridge overnight.
Boom, done.
My meal prep for the next day every night takes me about 10 minutes outside of preparing the bulk meals, but 10 minutes max to prepare my meals for the next day.
Those are some of my go-to foods, but there's also power in bowls.
If you're struggling to figure out what to eat, when to eat, how to eat, make it a bowl.
Me and my family me and Steph We eat these things called Power Bowls multiple times a week for dinner, especially with two young kids.
Before we had kids, we would spend one to two hours making dinner at night.
We would find a recipe that we liked online, We'd go buy all the ingredients.
We'd come home.
We'd make it.
We'd take our time.
It was super enjoyable.
But with a three-year-old and a one and a half year old at home, that's not really happening as much anymore.
So dinners have to be healthy.
They have to be nutritious.
They have to be fast and convenient.
So we just get bowls and we throw everything we want into a bowl.
Last night, for example, We threw some chicken on the grill and then we threw some sweet potatoes and some butternut squash in the oven really quick.
And we let those things cook on their own for about, I don't know, 30 to 45 minutes.
And then we each just made a bowl.
So in my bowl, I put spring mix, like a lettuce spring mix.
I did eight ounces of the chicken breast that we cooked on the Traeger.
I threw in the sweet potato and butternut squash, which was cooked.
And on top of that I added pumpkin seeds, pickled onions, black olives, some freshly grated Parmesan cheese and a dressing that we made homemade with olive oil, apple cider vinegar and Dijon mustard.
I call it a power bowl because that's loaded.
I have some great sources of protein carbohydrates fiber, dietary fat and a ton of micronutrients, prebiotic fibers.
This is going to fuel my recovery, my performance, my gut.
I'm going to sleep good.
I'm going to be full.
I call them power bulls.
So you take all these nutrient dense ingredients and food items.
You just throw it into a bowl, mix it up and it tastes delicious.
Oh, also last night I added pickled beets to this mixture as well.
It's one thing I left out.
Pickled beets, so good.
I could do a power bowl, not just every night for dinner, but for like every single meal.
Power bowls are game changers.
They're quick, they're convenient, they're nutritious and you can just throw all the good stuff in there.
Good protein, good carbs, good fats.
Now, not all foods are created equal.
And I think food sourcing is extremely important.
We try to buy as much food that's in season.
In season We try to source our eggs, our meats from local ranchers, farmers or high quality grocery stores.
But I put a lot of emphasis on food sourcing, the quality of the food and really prioritizing single ingredient foods as much as possible.
I hate to be that person, but when I'm at a grocery store sometimes and I'm checking out, I'm looking at what people in front of me are putting on the belt and then what people behind me have in their shopping cart.
And it's disturbing in some situations.
I'd like to assume that they are purchasing food for some sort of party or event.
But in some cases, I believe it's just what they're consuming on a regular basis.
It is processed foods.
It is packaged foods.
It is foods with a million ingredients, rarely shopping the perimeter of the grocery store.
High quality meats and fruits and vegetables.
And starches, fibers.
So I try to prioritize single ingredient foods as much as possible because, like that Powerball I was just talking about, there was nothing in there that I added that wasn't a single sourced ingredient.
Nothing.
I mean even like the salad dressing.
We made homemade mixture of the olive oil, apple cider vinegar and Dijon mustard.
So I highly prioritize quality of single ingredients that we add to our diets or add to my diet and what we're consuming and making at home.
I want them to be dense in micronutrients, which is why I prioritize fruits and vegetables, and nuts and seeds.
And I like to get a diverse range of foods in my diet.
There is this company here in Austin, and you might have one of these based off where you live.
Ours is called Farmhouse Delivery.
It's a super cool service.
So I go on their website every week and I put my order in.
And Farmhouse Delivery curates a selection of foods on their website that they pull from local farmers and ranchers.
So I can get my eggs and my sourdough and my meat and vegetables and fruits even pickled veg from farmhouse delivery who purchases what's in season from the local farmers and ranchers.
Sometimes I'll go to the farmer's market and buy stuff as well, but it's just a really good service that is convenient.
So every week, once a week, we get these plastic totes that are dropped off at our house from farmhouse delivery.
And within those totes are everything that I ordered.
It's my eggs, my duck eggs, my sourdough, some meats vegetables fruits, all organic, great service.
Now I'll just load up this order every week and then Steph and I will make it a mission to consume all of that throughout the week, which adds diversity into our meals and our diets, because farmhouse delivery sources what is local, based off, what is in-season.
And that's been a great way to add micronutrient diversity into our diet.
And if you don't have an option like that, where you live, every week you go grocery shopping.
Just try to buy different fruits and vegetables and meats or micros and force yourself to find ways to get creative to consume these.
And a great way is within these power bowls that I was talking about.
So I'm always looking for high quality sources of protein and more consuming on a daily basis, weekly basis.
Good sourced eggs.
So I get our eggs from this farm here in Central Texas area called Shirttail Creek the best chicken eggs I've ever had.
We eat our duck eggs from this farm called Belle Vee Farms.
So eggs chicken, we eat a lot of chicken chicken breast, chicken thighs, red meat, whether that's ground beef venison bison elk, do a lot of steaks, a lot of chuck roasts.
We're big crock pot roast people in the bear household.
Fish, we do salmon, some white fish here and there, but mainly if we're going to consume fish, it's from salmon.
I try to get some sardines in every once in a while because they are very high in omega-3 fatty acids.
EPA DHA, protein powder is another daily staple of mine to get more protein powder in, or more protein into my diet.
I consume at least one to two scoops of protein powder daily.
Carbohydrate options for me typically come from sourdough bread fruit, fresh or dried vegetables, rice starches like potatoes, sweet potatoes, purple potatoes, yellow potatoes oats honey, occasionally pasta, but not too much pasta.
It's pretty rare that we consume pasta, but most of my carbohydrate sources are coming from rice starches vegetables, fruits.
And fat options, the options are endless.
And for me, this is like the best tasting macronutrient.
Avocados nuts seeds, egg yolks, fat that's naturally in like fattier meat.
You know good ribeye, for example beef tallow ghee butter, coconut oil.
Just finding ways to get creative with how we're incorporating these different fats into our diet for all the health benefits.
And it's important for me to mention fiber.
One of the best reasons to be consuming more carbohydrates, especially starchy carbohydrates, is because of the fiber content.
I mean fiber has been shown time and time again to be so beneficial for our bodies, our performance, our guts.
It improves digestion and gut health by preventing constipation.
It feeds a beneficial gut bacteria.
Fiber produces short-chain fatty acids like butyrate, which strengthen gut lining and reduce inflammation.
Fiber consumption regulates blood sugar and improves insulin sensitivity.
It supports heart health by lowering LDL cholesterol and improving vascular function.
It promotes satiety and weight control.
Protein is the same thing.
Protein and fiber are both very satiating foods make you feel fuller for longer.
Some great fiber sources vegetables berries beans lentils, whole grains, nuts and seeds.
I try to get about 30 to 40 grams of fiber in my diet daily.
And if you have a diet that is low in fiber, You don't want to go from like five grams of fiber a day to 40 grams of fiber a day.
That will wreck you.
That'll back you up.
So what you want to do is slowly titrate the amount of fiber you're consuming daily, up slowly over weeks or months, to allow your body to naturally become accustomed to consuming digesting assimilating, utilizing fiber.
I've made this mistake in the past from going from five grams of fiber consumed a day to 40 grams of fiber consumed a day.
And it puts you in a bad, dark place.
I can promise you that.
So slowly titrate up your fiber consumption so your gut can become accustomed and regulated to that fiber uptake or increased amount of fiber consumption.
And the last thing I want to talk about is pre and post-workout nutrition.
Now what matters more?
Should you train fasted?
Is there such thing as the post-workout anabolic window?
Now again, I don't want to sound like a broken record, but this comes down to what you prefer and what works best for you.
I have found over time that once you train fueled, you will never train fasted again.
I've trained fasted before in my life.
I never felt great.
And once I started fueling my workouts, I felt so much better, so much stronger, so much more stable.
I found that I performed and recovered better.
Now, fueling a training session or a workout doesn't mean that you have to consume a full meal.
And that's one of the reasons we created G1M Sport.
It is liquid, carbohydrates, and electrolytes to fuel your performance.
Do you have to consume food, a full meal or anything before workout?
Not necessarily.
It depends on what works best for you.
How do you feel the best?
Some people enjoy training fasted in the morning.
But for me personally, I just haven't ever enjoyed that.
I feel better, like I said, training fueled.
But for a lot of people People myself included growing up in the old school, traditional bro science bodybuilding space 2009 2015, 16 maybe.
There's a lot of misinformation out there that has since then become debunked.
And real data, real science has been published debunking some of this stuff.
But there used to be this vastly promoted post-workout anabolic window that you couldn't miss.
And people used to say immediately after your workout if you didn't consume a full meal or at least a shake with carbohydrates and sufficient protein 30 to 60 minutes after a workout, you're missing this post-workout anabolic window, this window in which your body is just searching for nutrients, searching for carbohydrate and protein replenishment.
And this does exist.
This can be a thing, but it's all based off of your pre-workout nutrition.
Now, if you had a big pre-workout nutrition meal or bolus say, two hours before a training session, sufficient amount of carbohydrates protein, maybe even dietary fat, that fuel, depending on the type of training session if we're talking about strength training, for example that fuel before your workout is going to still be within your body being utilized come post-workout.
So while post-workout nutrition is important, It is vastly dependent on your pre-workout nutrition.
Now, if you didn't have anything pre-workout, you trained, fasted.
Your post-workout nutrition is very much important.
Your body is searching for nutrients carbohydrates for replenishment, protein and amino acids for rebuilding.
So do you need a post-workout meal?
Is the post-workout anabolic window a real thing?
Yes and no.
What did you consume the hours leading up to that workout?
If nothing, then yes, a post-workout meal or shake or nutrition is very important.
But if you had multiple meals or a meal a few hours before that training session?
Post-workout nutrition is important, but it might not be absolutely necessary, necessary or essential because you consumed enough leading up to.
So post-workout nutrition can be important, but it's based off of pre-workout nutrition.
And, at the end of the day, what matters is what you consumed within that day, not necessarily timing.
Timing can make a difference.
But to see long-term changes in health performance, body composition, we're going to look at trends.
And those trends can be monitored or managed by what we're consuming from day to day, week to week, month to month.
And the goal is that we hit our protein, our fat carbohydrate, ultimately caloric goals daily, from day to day, consistently to see results, to see changes.
That's why, going back to what we discussed in the beginning of this episode, if you want to see change, if you want to feel better, if you want to experience results, you need discipline, you need commitment and you need consistency.
Those three things.
The concepts are few, but the methods are many.
And, at the end of the day, it's going to be finding what works for you, what you enjoy and what is sustainable for long-term results and success.
So hope you guys enjoyed this episode, a little insight into the way that I approach nutrition.
Hope you enjoyed it.
And we'll see you in the next one.
