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“With this one weird trick you could lose 10 pounds. Doctors HATE him!”

Back in 2013-2014 I wrote a lot about fat loss and my own weight loss journey. By now I’m fairly well experienced with calorie counting, macros, intermittent fasting and the mental tricks to help one maintain their weight. (It’s now gotten to the point that I’ve memorized almost every food and their macronutrient ratios at least roughly. And speaking of macros, I often hear people say “Nuts are a good protein source.” No they’re not. Nuts are more fat than anything else. If you used them as a MAJOR protein source you’d be eating hundreds of grams of fat, LOL.)

After my push up video (July 2015) was released.. I realized I was looking a little pudgy. In the bwf chat room I was like, “You guys, I’ve become fat.” And the first response was, “We know.” 😀 And I realized I was the heaviest I had been since 2013 at around 185lbs. How the fat crept up slowly, I don’t know. (Actually, I do know. It’s because I had a girlfriend and after I broke up with her, I realized I could control my food intake a lot better because I was alone. *As a smart man once said, “Women just like food too much.” And it’s not that men don’t, but it’s common to go out to eat as thing to do together.)

Anyway, to uphold my image of “average dude on YouTube that does slightly above average things”, I began counting calories using MyFitnessPal to ensure that I was eating at a deficit but then after a month I realized I didn’t need to keep counting as I had a REALLY good idea of whether I was over eating or under eating in a day. So I stopped counting calories and just went with eating intuitively. I dropped down from 185lbs to 178lbs over 2-3 months and found myself stalling out. I was really confused why I would plateau at such a high number… but that’s when I realized I have been on a constant, slow, steady bulk for the past 2 years and I now have a lot more muscle mass. So it was at that point where I decided I needed to shave my chest hair like a bodybuilder and use down-lighting to show off my jaw dropping cheese grating 6-pack abs. Haha, just kidding.

For the past few months I’ve been steadily losing weight very slowly without counting calories by implementing the following things:

Sleeping 1-2 hours earlier than normal. (Going to bed around 10-11pm) Eating carbs makes you crave more carbs. (Eat protein first and never carbs.) Supplementing with 1-2 scoops of whey protein powder every day

With those three simple changes, dietary adherence has been easy and physique improved.

1. I do most of my “excessive” eating later at night… so I’ve decided to just go to bed earlier. Something happened to me in October that made me put my foot down and get a handle on my diet, not just for the short-term, but long-term. And I’ve been really good about staying honest with my self. I’ve been practicing portion control, where I just stop eating and put the food away if I feel full before I’ve finished it. The other thing is, I tend to not have over-eaten by the time I’m done with my dinner/evening-meal. But anything after dinner is usually going to be excessive. It’s those late-night snacks that put me in the caloric surplus which usually happen cause I stay up a little too late at night. As a solution, I’ve been going to sleep earlier. And waking up leaner. It’s been working great. On top of not eating those extra calories, I’m getting more sleep which leads to better weight loss and the best part: Better recovery from my daily exercise/training!

2. Eating carbs makes you crave more carbs, so eat protein first and never carbs. This one was a life changer. If I haven’t ate for a while and I am going to put something in my mouth, I strive to have that first thing be protein and and NOT a food that’s mostly carbs or sugar like bread, grains/rice, fruit, etc. Instead, if there is a food that is mostly protein (chicken, fish, cheese, cottage cheese, protein powder, etc), I will eat that first and then check in and see if I actually want the other things. Protein is highly satiating. But carbs are not and if you start by eating carbs it creates a domino effect of you just wanting to eat more and more. This has been instrumental in increasing my dietary adherence without having to count my calories and the pattern is very, very obvious. This is extremely evident in those risky late-night midnight-snack scenarios.

3. Whey protein: I used to be the kind of person who tried to avoid drinking my calories in the form of sodas or shakes. I would instead choose foods that I had to chew so that I would eat slower and get more out of it. I also tried to always get my protein through natural (unprocessed) food sources. But when I realized on MyFitnessPal that I was only getting 80-120g of protein per day, that was way too low for someone as active as me! (Note: this is dependent on your height, weight, and activity levels.)

To get more than 120g of protein per day, naturally, I had to consistently eat lots more meat (or tofu) and I just don’t like eating that much meat everyday. So I started supplementing with whey protein powder. When I first began taking whey protein, I noticed I felt satiated and I really enjoyed the chocolate flavor. When I would record it into MyFitnessPal, I would be astonished how the macros were purely protein (25-30g in just a scoop?! and only 150 calories? impossible to mimic that so easily without having to cook something). There is definitely no other natural food that can provide that kind of macro ratio, that easily. Anyway, this is running a bit long but what’s most interesting is that I noticed a remarkable increase in recovery time when I first started supplementing with whey protein. (This was before I started sleeping earlier.) After a few weeks of it, I noticed that I had gained a few pounds on the scale, probably because I didn’t account for the extra ~300calories I was getting from the extra 2 scoops per day. I started up MFP and started tracking my calories to get a hold of how to better incorporate this new thing in my diet everyday. Now that I got a hold of it, sometimes it is almost perfect as a meal replacement and definitely a great post workout drink with almond milk. (You know what else is good? Pizza. Pizza is great. Just throwing that out there. Yeah.)

Now, with all that said, I’m going to have to find more sustainable protein sources other than whey for 2016 considering it’s a byproduct of dairy and I’m inadvertently supporting the meat industry which is hella fucked up. If you’ve seen Food Inc or Cowspiracy, you know what’s going on. If not, you could also watch this video below and be reminded of where your meat or dairy comes from even if you buy organic…

Fuck Whey… Let’s eat PLANTS instead, though, AMIRITE?

The problem I thought I had with replacing whey with plant-based protein is that whey is superior nutritionally speaking. Whey (and egg whites) have much greater bioavailability than pea/rice/hemp protein on their own. Same goes for the PDCAA-score which is the most usable metric. However, if you combine pea/rice/hemp protein, their PDCAAS exceeds that of whey!!!

So to rein in the new year right, I ordered 5lbs of this vegan protein powder for the first time. It’s a combination of rice/hemp/pea protein, and 1 scoop is almost the same as whey. Sure, the biological value (bioavaiability) may not be as high as whey or egg whites but it feels good not supporting the dairy/milk/meat industry.

Cost of Vegan Protein Powder vs. Whey

Now here’s the most interesting thing: Vegan protein powder costs slightly more than whey, which is really weird, right? Why would something directly harvested from the ground cost more than something that needs to be eaten by an animal then made into milk and then extracted from there?

To get whey, you have to grow grains, soy and grass to then feed cows with those plants, who will then, inefficiently produce milk. Then the milk needs to be collected and cheese to be created and the whey is one of the by-products of the cheese. How is that cheaper than growing plants and using them directly? The point is, if vegan protein powder keeps increasing in popularity, it should be MUCH cheaper than whey.

Oh I almost forgot. I had Cricket flour sent to me to review and try out as a protein source. I unfortunately didn’t like the taste of it, but I researched insects a lot and crickets are like 50% protein, which is more than almost all other insects other than meal worms or something I can’t remember right now, but anyway, unfortunately the taste is too nutty and the protein content is not even high enough for what it is and it’s not cheap for the price. Which is unfortunate because they are the most efficient little critters at converting food into protein as opposed to cows or plants! If only they tasted better. But, the peanut butter version was all right, tasted nutty and peanut buttery at the same time. But my blender bottle had the taste infused in it for a long time even after cleaning it many times, which was weird.

Intermittent fasting

People always ask me if I’m still doing intermittent fasting. I do but I don’t follow it to a tee. Before I used to do intermittent fasting by not eating breakfast or lunch and just having my food during “dinner” time. This made me adapted in such a way that I could now, at anytime, go on EASILY without food for 12-16 hours and not feel hunger whatsoever. So now what I do is, I don’t tell myself any hours are off limits, but it just so happens that naturally I’ll go on for very long periods without food and just feel fine. So I basically eat when I actually feel like it. And that usually means no breakfast but I’ll eat something by the afternoon, especially some protein, hah. I almost always train during the afternoon so I will always make sure I get my nutrition afterwards because that’s when I’m hungry anyway.