Why Am I Not Losing Weight?

One of the most common questions or frustrations we hear from both clients and friends is the question, “Why am I not losing any weight?”

This question is usually followed up with a long list of everything this person is currently trying or has tried to use to lose weight, and most of the time, they are all fine things.

However, losing weight and really chipping away toward the body composition of your dreams isn’t easy, and there are many roadblocks for most of the population in trying to achieve these goals.

Instead of trying to provide a quick cop-out answer to all of the people asking this question, I’ve decided to list 7 possible reasons why you may not be finding the success you are working so hard to achieve.

For those looking for THE solution to your own weight loss struggles, be careful while making honest assessments about your situation. For example, it is highly unlikely someone who already exercises extremely intensely, daily and moves around a lot throughout the day needs to exercise more to lose weight.

Let’s dive in!

1. You Are Still Eating Too Many Calories

One of the most important pieces of any intelligent weight-loss plan is being in a caloric deficit. All this means is that you must consume fewer calories than you burn over the course of a day to lose weight.

So the first natural thing to check are your calorie intake numbers!

I know people can be hesitant about tracking their caloric intake, but if you truly want to be sure that you are in a caloric deficit, tracking your calories is a fantastic tool we have in our toolbelt.

A Quick Summary on How to Track Caloric Intake

The best way to figure out if you are in a caloric deficit is to weigh yourself multiple times per week, and track your daily caloric intake. If the scale continues to stay the same OR it increases, you must either eat fewer calories, or expend more energy.

Continue to track your calories and weight adjusting your activity level or calorie intake until the scale begins to go down. Once you’ve reached that point, then you know about how many calories you need to be eating to lose weight.

The process is a bit more nuanced than that quick explanation, but this explanation gets the general idea across.

One thing to keep in mind before you decide to cut more calories are your hunger levels. If you already find yourself very hungry throughout the day on the amount of calories you’re eating, I probably wouldn’t suggest lowering your calories any further as you will likely not adhere to the plan.

Instead, maybe take a look at the composition of foods you are eating and sub in more non-processed, satiating foods into your diet.

2. You May Be Incorrectly Tracking Your Calories

Maybe you read the previous section and said to yourself, “but I am tracking calories and I’m STILL not losing any weight.”

The simple fact is that you may be incorrectly counting calories.

This is where investing in a food scale might be a beneficial investment for my trackers out there that don’t have one, or for those people who want to try and better hone in on their calorie numbers.

Using apps like MyFitnessPal (which is a fantastic free tool) can be great, but adding things like “medium banana” or “serving of broccoli” don’t tell the most accurate story of what you just ate.

If the banana is only 20 calories off from what you actually ate, it may not seem like a huge deal. That being said, if every single entry into MyFitnessPal is 20 calories off, then your calorie numbers could be off by a few hundred come the end of the day.

This isn’t ideal.

When using tracking apps, it’s important to be as detailed as possible when entering the foods your are consuming on a daily basis, and a food scale will tell you exactly how much you are eating.

3. You Aren’t Exercising Enough

In our current American culture, there isn’t much movement that occurs throughout the course of our day unless we force ourselves to do more via some activity.

Think about the average American life: you wake up, go (mostly) sit at work for 8 hours, maybe run to the store, make or order dinner out, sit and watch Netflix. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

I’m clearly diminishing the actual human experience here to make a point, but the message is important: Unless we purposefully add some sort of movement or exercise to our weekly routine, we likely aren’t getting enough from our current lifestyle.

Some people may read that and get a sense of dread thinking about that treadmill that they used to be a slave to, but there are so many options that you can probably remain active without needing to use that specific tool that you despise.

Here at IVRY, we think that weight lifting is the best option because we both subscribe to a bodybuilding routine and find that this is the most enjoyable type of regular exercise that fits our goals.

Here are some other activities that could also work:

• Running

• Biking

• Rowing

• Walking

• Hiking

• Throwing the frisbee with the dog

• Playing with your kids

There are plenty of other great activities that would help any person become more active, but those are just a few things many people have access to.

For those who already have pretty regular exercise routines and are still struggling, it may not be the exercise. I would suggest however taking a hard look at your exercise program to see if you could push yourself a little harder.

4. You Are Relying TOO Much on Avoiding Certain Foods

Some people set really unattainable restrictions on themselves when trying to diet, and those sorts of restrictions can really backfire on your progress.

A lot of people when beginning a diet will categorize many foods as foods to avoid. Problem is, those foods are tasty and even some of our favorites.

By totally restricting yourself like this, you may eventually find yourself in a moment where you lose your self-control and just go on a tear, eating all of those foods you were restricting yourself from.

The problem may not manifest itself THAT intensely, but avoiding certain favorite foods altogether for long periods of time is likely to lead you have a mindset of, “well I already messed up, so I may as well keep going…” and this mindset it what can lead to those moments of binging.

Instead of totally avoiding certain foods, learn to eat and enjoy them in moderation!

Some practical examples on how to enjoy your favorites in moderation:

• Instead of ice cream nearly every evening as dessert, save it as a treat for one night

• Instead of eating 4-5 pieces of pizza, have two slices and maybe tack on a salad

• Instead of binging 10-15 drinks on a Friday night, have a one or two drinks a couple nights per week

• Instead of going out to eat or ordering takeout for nearly every meal, try and cook a few of those meals at home instead

One of the most important things you can do for your relationship with food is to learn how to enjoy the foods you love while having the self-control to consume them in moderation.

This is a skill that really does take practice and discipline to achieve, but everyone is probably capable of reaching that point in their relationship with food.

5. You Aren’t Getting Enough Sleep

From my personal experience, I think that sleep is a highly underrated topic of discussion for an overall healthy lifestyle, and a lot of us just don’t quite get enough of it.

I’m not going to pretend I’m a scientist with a PhD, but there is a ton of scientific data detailing how sleep deprivation affects the systems in our body. A lack of sleep can diminish recovery times, leave us with little energy, and can lead to chemical imbalances.

These chemical imbalances can lead our bodies to think they are more hungry or require more calories than they actually need which is something you probably don’t want your body confusing when trying to lose weight.

Along with the chemical imbalances, our bodies aren’t optimally recovered on little sleep which can lead to decision making skills and willpower being diminished.

If for no other reason, getting enough sleep leaves most people feeling better and more alert/energetic throughout the day, so why not add this to your routine?

6. You Aren’t Drinking Enough Water

This is another one of those things we all get told but most of us never follow through with.

A pretty general recommendation for most people is to drink half of your bodyweight in ounces of water per day. So that means a 200 lb. dude should be drinking around 100 oz. of water per day.

That’s a lot of water!

Our bodies are mostly comprised of water so it makes sense to most people that we need to drink it in order to stay healthy, but the amount of water most people should be drinking is a number that they rarely reach.

I’m not qualified enough to dig into the science behind why consuming water is a good idea, but again, there are plenty of studies done by reputable and respectable sources that explain why water is so important at a cellular level.

Here are some things I can speak on in regards to water:

• leaves us feeling more satiated (natural appetite suppressant)

• flushes waste out of our system

• limits the amount of other liquids you drink that are likely higher in calories

• helps lubricate our tissues and joints

In general, drinking more water is likely not going to hurt you, so if you already don’t consume enough water, then this could also be an easy adjustment to your daily routine.

7. You Sit Most of the Day

I hit on this a little bit in point 3, but most American jobs require people to be on a phone or in front of a computer all day which means that most people are seated for almost 8 hours a day at their workplace.

For those people that sit most of the day at work and get little movement outside of that, a daily one hour exercise may not be enough movement to expend enough calories.

Here are some things you can do to move a little bit more throughout the course of your workday:

• park further from the entrance

• get a standing desk to do work

• get up and walk down the hall every 30-60 minutes

• stretch every so often

• walk around the room while on the phone

• go for a walk between meetings

A lot of little movements over the course of the day can add up to a meaningful amount of activity.

In Summary

Today we examined 7 possible reasons why you may not be losing the weight you are wanting to lose:

1. You are still eating too many calories

2. You may be incorrectly tracking your calories

3. You aren’t exercising enough

4. You are relying too much on avoiding certain foods

5. You aren’t getting enough sleep

6. You aren’t drinking enough water

7. You sit most of the day

I warned readers earlier to be careful when trying to diagnose your own issues because each situation and person is different. With that though, there could be one or more reasons on this list that are inhibiting your current fat loss goals.

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When it comes down to losing weight, we do believe that being in a caloric deficit is the most important aspect of the process.

That being said, it can be really hard for the average person to confidently diagnose their issues and exact calorie numbers to see progress.

One of the benefits of having a coach is that we help you throughout that entire process. Not only do we provide the necessary accountability to stick to your goals, but we have the experience to help you hone in on the things you need to be doing to reach those goals.

Both Andrew and I are currently adding clients to our rosters and would love to be the support that helps you reach your goals!

If you read this article and think it might be time to hire a coach to help meet your needs, click here to learn more about what it is we do, and if you are already prepared to get started on the process, just say hello by heading here to give us some more information.

Until next time-

Josh

Deceptively "Healthy" Choices That May Hinder Your Fat Loss Goals

It’s funny how my concept of “healthy” has evolved and grown over my lifetime. I can remember grouping foods into “healthy” and “not healthy” in my head for a long time. For example, I used to think of the following foods and food groups like this:

• Fast Food = “Unhealthy”

• Salad = “Healthy”

• Pizza = “Unhealthy”

• Fruit = “Healthy”

And, you can probably see where I’m going with my list.

This is how I thought about “healthy” and “unhealthy” for a long time. To be fair, learning to categorize foods to some extent is a great educational place to start, but as I personally learned more about nutrition, my definition of “healthy” evolved into something much more specific (for the better).

The reason that my view of “healthy” vs “unhealthy” foods evolved is because:

1. Whatever I had been practicing for my nutrition for a long time was not working. How did I know that? Because I wasn’t getting the results I wanted.

2. I wanted a more wholistic view of the word “healthy” from an educational perspective.

3. My goals became more specific, and thus my nutrition had to be more specific as well.

What I learned about my assumptions between “healthy” and “unhealthy” was striking - especially regarding some of the apparently “healthy” choices I had been making that actually turned out to be setting me back in a powerful way.

My goal with this write-up is this: I want to present a consideration of a handful of diet choices we commonly make that appear “healthy” on the surface but might actually be a hindrance to our diet goals when misapplied.

#1: Ordering or Buying Products that Contain “Superfoods” or are Ambiguously Thought of as “Nutritious”

This was a big hurdle for me personally.

When I was in high school, I remember starting to care more about my diet choices for the first time. I was an athlete and I wanted to make choices that wouldn’t “slow me down” on the field.

At least that’s how I thought about it.

So, I would put avocado on everything when given the option because the internet said avocados contain healthy fats, which they do, but that was my only thought about avocados at the time. Healthy foods will make me a better athlete, right?

I had also heard that nut butters were a good source of healthy fats, so I gave myself the green light on those as well.

Now, this increase in fat intake was great for me in high school because I looked like a scrawny alien twig, but if I were to implement that same viewpoint now as an adult while making a focused effort to lose body fat, it would most likely be setting me back due to the excessive caloric intake alone.

For that reason, it’s always a good idea to know the macronutrient content of your foods along with the micronutrient breakdown that may qualify a food as nutritious.

Because in my opinion, the last thing you want to be doing when trying to lose body fat is eating foods you think should be helping you when they are actually slowing down your progress or even pushing you in the wrong direction. Unfortunately, plenty of well-intentioned people unknowingly make that mistake all the time.

On a coaching note, part of what Andrew and I do with our clients is educate them on basic nutrition while providing structured macronutrient goals so that we can be as optimal as possible with their body recomposition goal. In other words, we try to guide you through a calorie-controlled approach to your goal without ignoring the overall importance of eating nutrient-dense foods.

#2: Blindly Ordering Salads at a Restaurant as Opposed to Another Entrée

Back when my novice definition of “healthy” sat on the nutrition throne of my brain, I began to order salads out at restaurants.

Because salads are healthy, right?

Actually, yes! Salads can be amazingly healthy for us, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get fat from eating too many nutrient-dense salads.

Think about it. When most of us order salads at restaurants, we cover them in things like:

• Croutons - Mostly carbs and extra fat

• Cheese - Contains protein, but generally an equal amount of fat or more

• Fatty Dressings - Most salad dressings contain a LOT of fat.

• Avocado - High fat content, even though they are nutritious

• Fatty Meats - A lot of salads (especially Italian salads) can pile on heaps of salami, pepperoni, bacon, prosciutto, etc.

• Nuts (especially candied/glazed) - While nutritious, these nuts contain a lot of fat. And, if they are candied or glazed, they will also include a lot of sugar which equals extra carbs.

Realistically, if you have a caloric plan in mind or are keeping a mindful eye on your macronutrient intake, you could add a few of these to your salad and still reach your goal.

But, these toppings become a problem if you decide to add three or four of these to one salad because it dramatically changes the caloric total of the entire meal. It’s the cumulative calorie effect that results in weight gain.

Some things to add to your salad instead of some of the ingredients above to add another element could be:

• Grilled Chicken - high in protein and will help fill you up with a much needed macronutrient, especially if trying to hold onto hard-earned lean muscle tissue

• Vegetables - For me personally, texture is a big deal, so adding veggies with a little crunch to them is great! You could even try chipped cucumbers, celery, broccoli, carrots, and/or peppers next time.

• Egg Whites - Whole eggs can be great as well, but I prefer hard-boiling an egg and then chopping up the whites for some easy extra protein

• Beans - Rinse out a can of your favorite beans and add some extra protein to your diet. This is a great option for those that eat plant-based diets.

• Fresh Herbs and Spices - Talk about taking flavor to another level without adding any unwanted fats! Try using some basil, mint, dill, or cilantro with your salad. Just make sure you know the herb you choose will pair well with your other flavors.

• Lemon Juice - I like using just a little bit of oil and then squeezing fresh lemon juice onto my salad as a dressing. As it turns out, a little bit of citrus can go a long way.

Again, depending on your goal, any of the options above could be a good substitution or mindful addition.

#3: The Misapplication of Intermittent Fasting

I have been effectively using intermittent fasting in my current fat loss phase, so I’m certainly not making intermittent fasting the enemy here.

I still consume three to four large meals during my “eating window” (which is 10 hours for me instead of the commonly recommended eight-hour window), and I also consume several high-protein snacks.

But, where does it go wrong for some people?

In my opinion, here are two common ways intermittent fasting is frequently abused:

1. You’re narrowing your eating window to less than eight hours and only giving yourself time for one or two large meals.

   • When we do this, we can sometimes negotiate with ourselves and eat foods that are less nutritious or have unfavorable macronutrient compositions since we are sacrificing an entire meal. In other words, we lose sight of nutrition in favor of a game of calories and calories alone. Just because you could eat a plate of nachos and cheese for 1500 calories doesn’t mean that is going to lead to the body recomposition outcomes you want.

   • I’ve also found that intermittent fasting can lead to more snacking, and generally the snacks we tend to pick aren’t as nutrient-dense or macro-friendly as something we might cook for a proper meal.

   • Eating one large meal can also make people feel sluggish and lethargic.

2. Your protein consumption might not be as optimal as it could be.

   • If your goal is to lose fat while maintaining lean muscle tissue and you choose to enter the intermittent fasting world, you may not be able to eat all of the protein you could benefit from according to most evidence-based guidelines.

     • And, as I mentioned above, typical snack foods tend to be high in carbohydrates and fats and generally low in protein. So, if you tend to be a snacker while practicing intermittent fasting, your snacks may be a limiting factor in your progress.

     • If you need more clarity about how you could go about calculating your own protein intake, check out this blog.

Again, intermittent fasting doesn’t have to be the enemy, but it is often touted as a very healthy diet strategy even though it can easily be misapplied.

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Feeling Motivated?

Like I said at the beginning of the article, it’s probably a good idea to be very careful about making sure that the “healthy” choices we are making are actually choices that help us move toward our goals rather than push us further back.

I also mentioned that part of a coaching relationship with an IVRY Fitness coach is a personalized macronutrient goal to help you reach a specific body composition goal. So, if you have always wanted to make a change but have continuously felt stuck because nothing you have ever tried in the past has worked, consider reaching out to us.

We have open coaching slots and are looking for highly motivated clients that want to make a significant change in their body composition.

Click here to learn more, The journey always has to begin somewhere, so why not here and now?

Keys to a Successful Fat Loss Diet

I thought it might be time that we put some big ideas that we really believe in writing just so we had a list in one place for us and for you all. 

The internet is saturated with posts like these, and often a lot of them miss really big ideas that are crucial for a successful diet. 

So, we decided to set the record straight with what our keys to a successful diet are.

THE ESSENTIALS

The following three points are what we are going to call “essential.” These are three big points we really believe almost everyone should be taking part in while dieting.

Key #1: Be at an Energy Deficit

If you want to lose weight, the golden rule of fat loss is to be at an energy deficit, which means you need to be burning more calories than you consume.

This first point isn’t really a debatable topic as it is, well, true. 

Most people will have to exercise in some fashion along with trying to hit a specific calorie goal in order to achieve this while others will be able to feel it out naturally.

Key #2: Eat Enough Protein

This one tends to be fairly neglected among people who haven’t been floating around the fitness space for very long (including me as little as two years ago).

Thankfully, Andrew has already written a fantastic blog about how much protein you should consume, so check that out here if you want a deeper look into how you could go about calculating your own protein needs.

The reason you might need to consume more protein than you have been is because protein is the macronutrient that aids in muscle recovery. If we want to keep working out and allow our muscles to mend and grow, we need to give them the resources they need to do so.

For those that are trained, eating enough protein can also allow you retain as much muscle as possible as you begin to cut body fat.

Also, for those who have been untrained for a while, the right amount of protein could aid in overall body recomposition as you build a little bit of muscle and lose fat at the same time.

Key #3: Have a Workout and Nutrition Plan That You Can Stick To

Adherence is arguably the most important part of your diet because, if it’s something you don’t want to do or aren’t motivated/disciplined enough to follow through with, then you won’t.

So, the solution to any potential fallout of adherence is to have a workout and diet plan that you know you will be able to continue on with for a long period of time.

This may need to happen in phases in that you may have to slowly adjust your calories along the way as you lose more weight, so it is important to create a reasonable and reachable goal from the onset. 

If you are completely clueless about how to do this, you can check out some of our content on Instagram and learn a ton from that. 

And that’s one great thing about having a coach. We help you create those things if you still feel overwhelmed and confused by the misleading info on the internet.

If you think that would be helpful, give us a shout here!

SECONDARY KEYS

We think that the following points are also important for a successful diet, but they didn’t quite crack the top three. Andrew and I both apply these “secondary” keys as much as the “essentials,” but the previous points probably carry a little more weight.

Key #4: Prioritize Recovery

If you are at an energy deficit and also working out pretty hard, you can potentially put yourself at risk of injury if you are not recovering well enough.

A big piece of recovery is eating enough protein for muscle recovery, which I talked about in point two. 

Another important piece is sleep. I am all too hypocritical in talking about this and I struggle to get enough sleep myself, but I have found that getting 7-9 hours of sleep is so beneficial for recovery.

At risk of trying to talk as a scientist who studies the subject, your non-REM sleep or “deep sleep” is apparently the key. From what I understand, your brain slows down so much during this state that extra blood carrying oxygen and nutrients goes to other parts of your body to aid in recovery.

So, if you find yourself constantly waking up thinking about work or just unable to sleep, you may be hindering your body’s recovery process. 

In addition to that, stress often can keep us from sleeping too, so another thing to try to help your recovery is to do your best to limit stress throughout the day or find a way to de-stress before bed.

Key #5: Meal Timing Becomes Important

If we decide we are going to eat less and continue to workout, we are still expending the same amount of energy as before, but we are consuming less. 

So, one way to try and keep the intensity of our workouts high is to eat appropriate meals around the workout. 

Something I will do is eat a high protein and high-carb meal about two hours before working out. This gives my body time to digest the food before I begin my workout while also providing plenty of energy to get me through it.

Post-workout, I will try and eat another high-protein and high-carb meal within an hour of my workout, or I will consume some kind of protein within 30 minutes (maybe a protein shake) if I know I will not get a meal within the hour.

This means that a lot of my daily calorie intake is consumed right before and after my workout. So, if I’m planning my diet well, my other meals/snacks will generally have to be lower in calories.

Key #6: Listen to Your Body to Avoid Injury

This one is more geared towards injury prevention, but it’s definitely an important key for everyone. 

If you have been lifting a while, you know what it’s like to be sore in a good way. The feeling that your muscle has used all of its energy and it aches to be fully recovered. 

If you’re new to lifting, you learn relatively quickly (arguably after your first day in the gym) how muscle soreness feels. 

Now, say you are completing a lift or walking on the treadmill and you begin to feel a sharp pain that you feel like causes discomfort and not just muscle soreness. In that case, stop immediately to prevent further injury.

As I said previously, your body is more susceptible to injury while in an energy deficit, and even something like sleeping on your neck wrong can lead to an injury if you try to work through the pain. 

Lastly, it’s almost always a good and safe idea to take a day or two off to let small muscle and joint pains like that heal before you injure yourself and end up out weeks instead of days.

In Summary

If you are just beginning your fat loss journey, trying to follow and remember all of these keys may be hard, but try sticking to the essential keys first:

1. Be at an energy deficit.

2. Eat enough protein.

3. Find a diet and workout program you can adhere to.

The latter three keys can also be very important to help maintain a longer diet and will allow your body to be more efficient throughout the process.

So meal timing, prioritizing recovery, and listening to your body to avoid injury also become an important part of a prolonged fat loss phase.

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If you found this article helpful but feel that you would love the support of an exercise program and nutrition suggestions, we are looking to add clients to our roster! Click here to learn more.

Cheers,

Josh

Creating Healthier Eating Habits When Dieting

If you have ever struggled to diet consistently well or to have a healthy mindset while trying to lose weight, this article is for you. I’m going to provide some insight into how I approach the shift from a bulk to a cut, then provide some tangible practices that may help your relationship with food become healthier when dieting.

Struggling to Find a Healthy Relationship With Food

I felt inspired to write this article because it is really hard for me to transition from bulking to cutting, mainly from the mindset of my relationship with food. The same principles apply if you are coming from poor diet habits to beginning a fat loss diet.

When I am bulking, there are so many calories and foods to be consumed throughout the day that it sometimes feels like a chore to eat. 

Anyone who has tried to bulk can probably relate.

Eating a ton of food always sounds awesome at first, but it gets tiring quite rapidly. I might take some flak from bro culture for saying that, but it is truly quite a challenge for me. 

So when I initially shifted to my current fat loss diet, I carried over some bad habits from bulking that were really impeding my progress:

• My meals were way too big.

• I did a lot of late night binging (habit from bulking to try and get my calories!)

• I ate a lot of fast food for quick and easy calories.

I needed to change these habits if I wanted to lose weight and live healthier.

Creating a Healthy Mindset

So now enter the fat loss diet. This is where it is important to really set the correct mindset for dieting and how you treat food. 

During my bulk, when calories were in excess, my mindset for food was more like a chore. It was something that needed to get done to reach my goals, and so unfortunately my outlook on food sort of became soured. 

So the first couple of days when I cut calories (arguably the harder days), I kept some of those bad habits. I tried to fast until a certain time of day, or drink lots of coffee to try and fill myself up just so I could save my calories for a couple of large meals later in the evening. 

It was seriously almost like I was torturing myself to make it to a point of the day where I could torture my stomach with way more food than it could handle. 

It is honestly a little bit hard to admit that, but it’s true. 

So it finally hit me that what I was doing was not only unhealthy, but not working very well as far as the scale was concerned either. So I really sat down and examined how I was treating food and my diet and tried to be mindful about ways to combat a negative mindset. 

Here are some things that helped me have a more positive mindset when it comes to dieting.

Ways to Build Healthy Eating Habits When Dieting

1. Put Your Fork Down Between Bites

If you really spent some time watching people eat, you might be a little grossed out. I can only imagine what my mom thought of me when I was in high school; I probably looked like Joey Chestnut at a hot dog eating contest.

So something I have been doing to try and monitor fullness and satisfaction is just to set my fork down between bites. If you aren’t using a fork, same idea! Set the slice of pizza down between bites, I promise it won’t sprout legs and run away.

If you really want to take this practice to the next level, just be thankful for every bite. 

You don’t have to verbally acknowledge it, just in your head think about how you are thankful that you get to eat in a way that can help meet your goals and realize how blessed you are.

2. Don’t Stuff Yourself Full Every Meal

This one is hard because I don’t know how everyone really approaches food and their meals. 

I think psychologically, somewhere in our brains, there is that primitive voice saying “eat until you are full because you don’t know when you will eat again.”

Well, guess what? You aren’t a primitive nomad, and you more than likely know when your next meal is and probably even have options for what to eat.

So since we know we have another meal coming, try to eat in such a way where you don’t stuff your belly until you can’t fit anything else. 

Arguments can be made that you may be forced to do that when bulking, but when we are cutting, we don’t need to stuff ourselves. 

Outliers exist, such as doing some crazy intermittent fasting diet where you have to eat all of your calories in 4 hours, but for the most part, this is a safe and helpful practice.

A tangible way to try and think about this is to eat until you feel satisfied, not painfully full. If we want to put a number to it, eat until your stomach is at about 80% capacity. 

Eventually you start to figure out the amount of food it takes to get you to that ~80% level and then you can be more efficient with your cooking and preparation. 

3. Drink a LOT of water

I need to listen to myself with this one, but I cannot stress how important water is for the health of our bodies. 

I am no scientist, but there are way too many pieces of evidence out there pointing to why we should all be drinking more water. 

Now how you do this is totally personal, and how much you drink depends on many factors.

You could be the gallon jug person.

You could be the one who slams two full glasses upon waking up in the morning. 

It really doesn’t matter to me, but drinking more water will not only benefit your body, but also how you feel in general and how full you feel.

4. Find the Balance Between Food as Enjoyment and Fuel

After growing up in a house with a lot of diversity in the foods we would cook and eat, I have a great appreciation for the different flavors, combinations, and creations that people share.

I don’t know how that experience differs from others, but what I learned from my experience is that I may have learned to enjoy the food a little too much.

I rarely thought about how food was fueling my body and giving me the energy I needed for all of my sports, lifts, etc…

I mean we all know that food is fuel, but do we all actively think about that?

A simple way to rationalize your thoughts before you think about your next meal might be: “Will my body appreciate what I am about to give it, and will this help me reach my goals?”

Now don’t go all food nazi on me here. If you need to grab a McDouble on a road trip or settle for some Kraft Mac in a bind, it’s okay! 

I think it’s just important to be aware that healthier and more nutritious foods are probably going to fuel your body more efficiently than highly processed and fast foods. This is mainly due to the usually lacking nutrient profile in fast and processed foods.

Finding fun and tasty recipes that are full of healthy and satisfying ingredients that can both fill you up and make you feel well may take a little work, but is totally worth it.

Takeaways

It can be hard to set the correct mindset when trying to begin a diet, especially if there are pre-existing bad habits.

Try these to practice healthy eating habits: 

1. Put your fork down between bites

2. Don’t stuff yourself full every meal

3. Drink lots of water

4. Find the balance between food as enjoyment and fuel

These may not be anything groundbreaking, but practicing these habits personally has helped me on my current fat loss journey. 

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If you found this article helpful it would be amazing if you shared it with friends and family! Andrew and I both love creating content and helping others, and we have been really putting in the time recently to pump out quality content.

We post a lot of quick hitters and thoughts that require less explanation than a blog might on our Instagram page @ivry.fitness. Give us a follow if you like what you see because there will always be more to come!

Finally, we have coaching spots available for this summer if you are still thinking about taking your goals seriously and want a coach to help get you there! We are very confident in our past successes and can’t wait to work with you in the future.

-Josh

Collecting Data to Improve Body Composition

A Wrong First Impression

I can remember being in college with little tent-pole legs sticking out of my shorts absolutely despising that guy at the gym who jotted things down into his little miniature notebook.

In fact, I can still almost picture one particular jacked guy with great posture walking around like whatever was written on that tiny notepad held the key to eternal life (or gains) while I was over in my own corner just thinking about what I was going to eat on my Chipotle burrito later that day.

Naturally, I didn't have a great initial experience with all of those guys that would fill out their workouts on little notepads. It all seemed like something professional athletes were supposed to do, and I was pretty sure none of these guys were professional athletes.

I remember thinking “it wasn’t for me” or that I wasn’t knowledgeable or capable enough to create a workout program.

But now that I think back, I was at the gym just for the sake of being at the gym.

I thought, “Well, as long as I'm here, something has to happen, right? If I go push a couple of heavy-ish things around and get a nice sweat in, surely I'll be looking like Arnold in no time.”

As it turns out, I couldn’t have been more wrong, and that guy I had originally judged for being a “meathead with a logbook” was years ahead of me in terms of utilizing the benefits of data collection for the sake of achieving a physique goal.

The Case for Data Collection

The best businesses in the world that seek to grow and surpass any of their wildest dreams all rely heavily on data to influence their decisions. Since I also currently teach math, I was recently reading a few articles on data collection and this quote from Carly Fiorina (former Hewlett-Packard CEO and a 2016 Republican presidential nomination) came up that I thought was relevant not only for business, but for our purposes also:

"The goal is to turn data into information and information into insight."

- Carly Fiorina

Hyper-successful people like Carly clearly use information and data to drive nearly all of their decisions. Now collecting data and information is not a direct indicator of success, but more successful people than not use data-driven ideas to drive their work.

What if we applied these ideas to our body composition goals as well?

Why Should I Collect Data to Improve Body Composition?

We use data and information to drive our decisions all of the time - even in ways we usually don't think about - because our brains do it almost automatically.

For example, say you tell a joke to a couple of friends and they find it extremely funny. We note their responses as important information such as, “my joke is funny, I should tell that again.”

Then we later tell that joke to some other friends and they also laugh. One of the best ways to see if we have a funny joke is to tell people and measure their responses, but we never really think about the process of telling a joke as a data driven solution - in some aspect, it just is!

Why then, do so many people refuse to let data drive their goals of body composition? It just doesn't make sense to me.

Can you still reach your goals without taking down any hard data or tracking anything? Sure. But, that's also like trying to walk from Columbia, Missouri to Mesa, Arizona without using the hundreds of map apps you could easily be accessing on your phone, which begs the question: If you could avoid all the wrong turns and setbacks, wouldn’t you prefer that? If I told you, “You can get to Arizona one of two ways. You either start walking with no resources or you start walking with a handful of helpful resources,” which would you pick?

What Do I Track?

As you may have noticed if you follow us on Instagram, Andrew and I are always posting little tidbits surrounding our habits of tracking calories, macros, workouts, steps, sleep quality and a host of other things, and this is why: Data is a friend of anyone pursuing a physique-related goal.

From here on, I’m going to talk mainly about my own process and things I'm personally doing.

I was very slow to join the tracking movement as you could tell by my initial response to people tracking in the gym, but clearly I was missing something. So I began to learn and practice all of these ideas about how to eat healthier, make better gains, and optimize rest and performance. My thought was: If I have all of these tools, why not try to use them to my advantage? Especially if the work to track some data points seems to be minimal.

Here are some of the (nearly) daily things I track:

• Steps

• Total Calories

• Macros

• Sleep Quality

• Sodium Intake

• Scale Weight

• My Workouts

Some of these things are easier than others to track, like entering my scale weight into a spreadsheet versus guessing my sleep quality based on how I feel when I wake up. One is straight forward, and the other is pretty subjective since I can’t measure the quality directly.

Here is what it looks like for me on my spreadsheet:

Examples of Why Tracking Has Been Useful for My Personal Fat Loss Goals

Weight Spikes

Occasionally my weight will spike up randomly, and you can even see that happen a few times on my sheet. Specifically near the end of the first week in the image, we can see a fluctuation of bodyweight. Without tracking anything, I probably have no idea what happened, or I could maybe at least incorrectly blame something.

With tracking however, I knew that I had eaten deep dish pizza for a special occasion on April 23 and a couple of other food items high in sodium. That was the only large meal I had eaten that day aside from a couple of other small snacks, so I know I kept my calories low (just didn’t report them for some reason). So why the weight gain? Sodium levels. Any time you eat out or make a dish that is high in sodium, even if you keep a lock on calories and macro numbers, you still might end up with a higher number on the scale the next morning because sodium causes us to hold a little bit of water, skewing your numbers a little bit.

Tracking As a Road Map for When You Get Lost

At some point in the cutting or gaining process, what you were doing before stops working. This is completely reasonable and logical because a lot of things about your body are changing as you gain and lose weight, so naturally it makes sense that the things that we need to do will slightly change.

This year it happened way earlier in the cutting process, and I have written a lot about it in several past social media posts, but essentially what happened was that I was struggling to lose weight early based on what worked for me last year and how I was implementing the diet this year. If I am a type of person that doesn’t track any of the categories listed above, I would probably be clueless about how to progress

However, with this data, I was able to manipulate a few things very easily and started to see results. I personally decided to increase my step count while also trying to better limit the fat consumption in my diet, and it worked!

Trying to Diagnose the Reason for a Poor Workout

This example has a little more nuance than the others, but it is something that has still been helpful for me when tracking. Several weeks ago I went to the [garage] gym and had a memorably horrible day; I felt sluggish, and asleep at the wheel with no motivation or strength to get anything done. I got in a few movements to justify being there and then left, albeit a bit puzzled.

The date I referenced was April 21, and if you peep the logbook picture above, you will see that my sleep quality from the previous night was listed as bad. I remember that night. I got maybe 3 hours of sleep? Again, this may make sense to most people… obviously my workouts suffered because my sleep was poor. Sometimes I have horrible sleep and then go into the best workouts of my life, so sleep may not always tell the entire story.

Another factor could’ve been that I had around 2,300 calories the day before as well (this was at a time when I was eating close to 2,700 cals), so the two could have compounded to provide the perfect storm for a poor workout.

How Much Work Does Tracking Data Take?

Tracking is one of the easiest and potentially most life changing investments you can make on your fitness journey.

I do almost all of my tracking (outside of entering my food into MyFitnessPal) in the mornings. My morning routine is almost always this:

• Wake up

• Use the restroom

• Weigh myself

• Enter bodyweight for that day, then sleep quality, total steps, sodium intake, calories, and macros from the day before into my spreadsheet.

Entering these things takes me maybe a maximum of five minutes if you move slow in the mornings like me, but realistically it only takes a couple minutes of transferring some numbers over into a spreadsheet and you’re done!

What you will probably find when you start is that it isn’t necessarily hard to input the data, but it can be hard to be consistent about tracking if you don’t have a routine for doing so. I mentioned my routine above, but that doesn’t have to be yours. I’d suggest to find a time to update your spreadsheet as often as possible (ideally daily), and start making that a habit!

Conclusion

Hopefully from the information laid out here, you can see why we value tracking data with our own programs, but also why we generally ask clients to track these sorts of things.

The more information we have at our disposal, the more informed decisions we can make. If building a healthy lifestyle and a better body composition is something that you are wanting to work hard for, or you are already working hard for it, then consider tracking some of the things listed in the article to give you a better chance at achieving the composition that you want.

To clarify, data isn’t the only tool we use at IVRY to help our clients, and like I’ve said already: if it’s easy to track this data and it’s easily accessible, it would be silly not to let those numbers help inform decisions along with other important factors.

I encourage you as you continue on with your body composition journey to start using data as a friend and a guide, and to let us know how it goes!

If you found this post helpful or are interested in learning more or having some personal coaching, we are currently adding new clients to our roster! Just click here to learn more!

My Hot Take on the Trending Sexiness of Intuitive Eating in Context of Body Recomposition

It’s a big question in the fitness space: Intuitive eating or counting macros? Which approach is really better for helping you achieve you body composition goals? Let’s set the scene.

For the purposes of this write-up, I’ll be using the phrase “intuitive eating" exclusively in context of those who are implementing it as a strategy for systematic fat loss or muscle gain, which means I’m not talking about it for anyone who is simply looking for a dietary approach that "works for them.” On the other hand, the second term I’ll be considering in-depth is a dietary approach commonly known as the “If It Fits Your Macros” movement (IIFYM), which favors a less intuitive and more calculated methodology to physique improvement that involves eating a certain amount of proteins, carbohydrates, and fats per day within a given caloric window. Another apparent perk of IIFYM? You can eat “whatever you want” (even the “unhealthy foods”) to hit those macronutrient targets. But, there are pros and cons of both.

Let’s break it down even a bit further.

DEFINING THE TERMS

Intuitive eating, as I see it, is a culture of eating that says, “Eat what you want and when you want according to your hunger cues.” Simply put, eat when you’re hungry and stop when you’re satisfied. It seems simple and to the point, and it is.

Counting your macros, however, urges its users to eat within a certain caloric and macronutrient range on a daily or weekly basis with little to no consideration of hunger cues or any natural inclination of when to eat.

Are you starting to see the trend? As their names suggest, one promotes fluidity while the other favors systematic calculation.

As the title suggests, however, intuitive eating (at least for the time being) has certainly stolen the cultural spotlight for many people - and for good reason. If you think about it, the idea really is quite sexy. It’s natural and seemingly casual. It’s loose and fluid - carefree and maybe even a bit rebellious.

Now, since this is a hot take, I’m probably going to reveal some bias in this write-up, but that doesn’t mean I’m saying one is inherently better than the other, nor does it mean I think you should or shouldn’t do one or the other. That choice is 100% up to you. These are just my thoughts and opinions, and I want to make that very clear throughout.

In thinking about this, I’ve developed an analogy called the “Jacked Guy In a Grocery Store” analogy.

MY “JACKED GUY IN A GROCERY STORE” ANALOGY

Imagine walking through the grocery store and noticing a man in his early 30’s with a phenomenally fit and attractive shape. Being a curious kitten, you muster the courage to ask him “what his secret is,” and he responds with something like this: “I just listen to my body actually. If I’m hungry, I eat. And I always stop when I’m satiated. It works great for me and it keeps me looking the way I want to.”

Sexy, right? You’d be instantly drawn to the effortlessness in his voice, and the mystery of its simplicity would be fascinating.

Now, imagine the exact same scenario, but he offers you this response instead: “I’m actually really meticulous about the amount of calories I consume, and I tailor them according to my current goals. I eat between 3-5 meals a day, and I always design my meals around a high-quality protein source supplemented with a vegetable and a carb source like potatoes or rice since I workout quite a bit. If I’m trying to build muscle I eat a bit more and when I’m trying to trim up I reduce my portion sizes. But generally I eat the same whole foods and try to minimize the junk. Oh, and I eat plenty of fruits and veggies.”

And you think in your head something like this, “Well, that actually makes a lot of sense.” Why?

Because his answer was boring. I’d even be willing to bet you’d be a bit disappointed. No secret remedy? Just an honest application of a bunch of stuff that makes pretty good logical sense?

However, I’m not saying that the guy in our first scenario is a complete unicorn. For those with favorable genetics for physique development, it’s quite possible to look really good while putting little thought into your diet. In fact, those people are all over Instagram. As I’ve heard it said many times, plenty of people look amazing in spite of their poor practices. They are the genetically “blessed” - the ones who can “get away with it.

But this is certainly not the norm, and it’s certainly not a plausible reality for too many people who are just embarking on their fitness journeys - especially if you’re setting sail because you’re currently 30 pounds overweight. After all, if you were already genetically blessed, would you really be asking people in the grocery store for their secret remedy? Probably not. You’d have a remedy of your own with little interest in what happened to be working for someone else.

Having said that, let’s get into the practical applications.

I THINK MOST OF US ARE HOLDING OUT FOR A QUICK-FIX SOLUTION.

In the online coaching space, hundreds and thousands of people are finding coaches online, engaging with them, and hiring them to help them achieve their body composition goals. It’s also worth mentioning that there are plenty of people out there who, despite not being able to afford an online coach, are doing their best to implement the “right kind” of diet and exercise to either drop body fat or muscle-up for beach season. So in this case we’re considering two major populations of people placing a value of either money, time, or other resources into their body composition: the people who have already hired coaches and those who are basically trying to coach themselves to save a buck.

And yet one thing I have found to be the case with many of these people when they talk to me about “losing weight” or “getting jacked” is that they just don’t want to track their calories or count their macros. In fact, as soon as I tell people I track my macros, I can almost always sense an immediate and unmistakable disinterest in continuing the conversation. Why? Because I don’t have the secret remedy they’ve been searching for. There’s nothing sexy about tracking your macros to achieve your physique goals just like there’s nothing sexy about a university student studying for weeks on end to pass their chemistry exam. 

If I heard that my friend had passed his final with flying colors and asked him how he did it, what do you imagine he would say? He’d probably tell you that he attended class attentively, took detailed notes, compiled a study guide, and then studied those materials meticulously. And in that case, what sense would it make for me to be - dare I say - disappointed in that answer? None at all! In fact, I doubt anyone would be naive enough to offer any other answer but just some good and honest hard work.

But just for fun, let’s talk about what many of us would rather hear him say. “Oh, I just went to class when I felt like it, took notes when I felt like it, and studied when I felt like it. And it was awesome. It all just kind of happened casually and I got an A. Actually, now that I think about it, I don’t think I ever took notes.” (insert casual chuckle)

In my experience, a lot of people only get interested when they become convinced that getting the physique of their dreams is easily achievable. And let’s be honest, eating intuitively will always be easier than counting your macronutrient intake, which is why I think people are so eager to kick a more meticulous approach to the curb.

Now, here’s where things might get a little spicy.

I have to admit that I get a bit miffed when people seem to want to achieve a physique goal without counting their macros, and here’s why: For a lot of people, intuitive eating is exactly what led them to hire a body composition coach in the first place. And, to be fair, if your intuitive eating had actually been working well for you up until this point, we’d probably be discussing something like sports or the weather instead of your muffin top right now. Yikes! Maybe that stings, but I can’t help but be honest in thinking that’s the truth of it.

At the very same time, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with having a muffin top. I have personally had a muffin top of my own in certain seasons of life.

Maybe your significant other adores your muffin top and you feel like a king among men accentuating your waistline accomplishment. Good on you! I really say that without sarcasm because I never want to pretend like we all have to have the same idea of what’s attractive or desirable in terms of body shape. If you are healthy and feeling amazing in your own body, press on.

Do you see my bigger point though? How silly is it to approach a coach while 20-30+ pounds overweight and insist on an approach that continues to allow you to eat intuitively?

In some sense I’d even be tempted to tell someone that they’ve "lost their privilege" of eating intuitively, but that really makes you sound like a super villain. You had a good thing (intuitive eating) and it became a bad thing (overeating to the point of unhealthy weight gain), and now we’re going to try a different thing if (and that’s a big if) you’re telling me you have serious goals about changing your body shape. 

It's kind of like an sixteen year-old kid being given a cool sports car from his parents just because they wanted to gift him something special for being their son. But sooner than later he starts breaking curfew because he’s out drinking booze and smooching on Sally Sue on the weekends, and his grades start to suffer. At the end of the semester he’s sitting on a report card of two F’s, a D+, and an A+ for irresponsibility. The car gets yanked and mom starts driving him around again until he’s proven he can correct his behavior.

“If the food habits you’ve been practicing for years have led you into unwanted weight gain, it might be time to consider a more intensive approach - even if it means sacrificing a bit of convenience. ”

so, you’re saying intuitive eating is bad?

Of course not. Intuitive eating can be bad just like counting your macros can be bad, but here’s the real equalizer:

The same physiological principles have to be applied when aiming to lose body fat whether you are counting your macros or not. To be clear, your body doesn’t know whether you’re eating intuitively or counting your macros. It just knows how many calories you are consuming on a regular basis. Maybe the science-y crowd would say, “It only recognizes overall energy balance.”

All I’m really saying here is that you will lose body fat if you are in a caloric deficit. Whether you are counting those calories on your finger or implementing another strategy altogether is meaningless.

The problem is that most people cannot intuitively eat in a caloric deficit.

Therefore, the only way I could possibly recommend an intuitive eating approach as your coach is if you could intuitively eat in a caloric deficit, which - in all fairness - is possible. Sadly, however, I might argue that for 99% of people, that would be individually impossible. Why?

Because, again, you have proven that eating intuitively has not worked for you. It is, in fact, primarily responsible for your current unwanted body shape. By very definition of the word intuitive, it has to be eliminated as a viable strategy moving forward because your intuition is skewed. Your diet can be anything but intuitive. And I don’t say this to “be mean” or anything - I say it to provide the groundwork for a real solution that can lead to a healthier and shapelier body for anyone struggling with this.

IS THERE A MIDDLE GROUND?

I think so. The next best approach (for those adamantly opposed to tracking macros), however, would be to consider what some are calling a “mindful eating approach,” but even this comes with great limitation. 

Mindful eating is probably best defined as a somewhat guided approach to eating, without counting calories or macros, that does its best to serve a desired outcome of physical recomposition. But I didn’t pull that from the Oxford library - I’m just saying this is how I think most people in the fitness space are thinking about it.

When I think of mindful eating, I think of a plate that is made up of half protein, a quarter of vegetables, and a quarter “healthy carbs.” In short, you’re paying a bit more attention to what you’re eating and doing your best to control your portions. It’s not totally Freestyle Friday, but you’re not weighing things on scales and popping data points into MyFitnessPal.

But the problem even with mindful eating for physique-related pursuits is that you still have little to no knowledge of your caloric consumption, and at the end of the day, calories are king when it comes to fat loss. As a result, the ambiguity in both intuitive and mindful approaches becomes limiting for a coach since one of our biggest cards to play in the greater game of fat loss is the card of regulated and strategic calorie consumption.

That would kind of be like buying the Chicago Bulls back in ‘96 and telling the GM you want a championship, but there’s one catch: You want Jordan on the bench because, well, you guys don’t really get along that well. He’s healthy and ready to lace up, but you’re not willing to put him in the game.

Is that the right move?

LET’S WRAP IT UP

As you can see, I’ve personally not been wooed by the trending sexiness of intuitive eating for those looking to make significant implements in their body composition. If I had to sum it up in one sentence, it would be this: I just really believe that the specificity of data you can accrue through the habits within intelligently structuring and counting your macronutrients are far too valuable to leave to the potential inconsistencies of intuitive eating if you’re serious about attaining physique-related goals in a predictable, systematic way.

But again, I can’t stress enough, though, how important it is that you realize this is just my opinion - just one guy in a world of a lot of guys and gals.

If you prefer a lifestyle of intuitive eating while attempting to achieve your physique goal, you should by all means pursue that route! I mean that sincerely. It’s 100% your life and your diet, which means you have all the power to make those decisions for yourself.

If you want to banter more, hit us up on Instagram! I genuinely always welcome a good conversation from a stranger about all things fitness and food.

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Thanks for reading, everyone! I sincerely hope you enjoyed the content and learned something.

If you feel like this blog brought you any value at all, consider sending it to a friend or family member!

And, if you're interested in working with me one-on-one, visit The Vegan Gym and apply for coaching. I’ve had nothing but success in guiding people toward their fat loss goals.

Cheers, everyone!

-Andrew