What to Do When Your Diet is Total Shit

Write out your typical day’s diet.

Not what you wish it was, but it actually is.

Write down what you ate yesterday, and the day before that.

2 days out of your whole life might not seem like enough data, but rarely is your prior days eating every an anomaly.

How you ate yesterday is probably how you eat all the time.

Write it down, and read it.

Does it look bad?

Would you grade yourself as eating healthy? 

I have clients do this exercise, and the majority of the time they are disappointed or disgusted with themselves.

Who knew that eating like an adult could be so difficult.

Now, I dont want to get pedantic as to WHY you eat like a 6 year old. You do, accept it.

The topic here is WHAT TO DO.

I lay two general approaches to this

1) The Dramatic Approach

You could also call this going cold turkey. You overhaul everything, throw away your fridge, commit to meal prepping (or meal services maybe). You buy protein powder, get a gallon jug of water, you get protein bars. All your meals become protein and veggies. You hire someone to help you with all this maybe

Essentially this a “Reversal of Living”. And some people CAN pull it off. Some, very few actually, but there are clients Ive had that have done 180s very quickly within the span of a few months.

2) The Realist Approach

This is about 90% of people. This is you struggling, implementing small changes, making mistakes, learning to develop discipline, working on habits, rituals, creating a process. This is you failing ALOT. It’s also you needing help ALOT. It’s also you needing to struggle and learn and not hold yourself to arbitrary standards.

Most people WISH they could be the Dramatic Person.

The irony being that the Dramatic approach requires so much discipline, willpower, and sheer force of motivation that it’s an anomaly when people do pull it off.

You are human, be realistic about yourself.

For the realist, here is a nice list of 30 Tactics to use to improve fat loss.

Here are 30 Tactics to Lose Body fat

1. Replace one of your meals with a 50 gram protein shake -I recommend True Nutrition for protein powder. You can use the code AJAC235 for free shipping
2. Drink your bodyweight in ounces of water a day
3. Get 30 minutes more sleep 
4. Walk for 15 minutes a day
5. Start a workout program thats actually planned out
6. Drink Green Tea to modulate appetite
7. Replace your processed carbs with veggies
8. Replace your processed carbs with white rice
9. Try eating a gram of protein per pound of bodyweight a day
10. Skip your last meal, and go to bed just a little bit hungry
11. Go for a long, long walk on the weekend (at least 2 hours). 
12. Eat protein at every meal 
13. Go for a walk on an empty stomach in the morning, as often as you can
14. Exchange diet soda for regular soda
15. Start eating breakfast, if you normally skip breakfast
16. Try eating only protein and veggies for a week. Don’t worry about how much or they are prepared, just try it 
17. Count calories. Don’t worry about anything else, just count them. 
18. Keep a food log if you don’t want to count. Just record what you eat
19. Keep an energy log if you don’t want to track food. Record your energy levels throughout the day
20. Keep an activity log. Record how much you sit versus how much you stand 
21. Do 50 bodyweight squats a day. Don’t overcomplicate this, just do them
22. Spend 15 minutes learning a new skill. The brain uses 25% of your daily calorie intake. Extra learning gets you leaner (Im halfway serious about this) 
23. Eat whole wheat carbs in place of the usual carbs you have. 
24. Have oatmeal every day as one of your meals, enough to get full on
25. Go to bed earlier, as early as you can
26. Go for a walk after dinner, however long you can manage
27. Run a mile every day. No more than 1 mile, no less than 1 mile. Dont worry about how long it takes you, just do the mile
28. Eat fruit when you want to eat fruit. You will be amazed how much this satisfies a desire for sugar
29. Stop caring about being perfect trying any of these things, and just try them
30. Hire a trainer. Do what they say. Seriously

Write down what you intend on doing, and then do it.