Podcast Transcription: The 3 Most Important Nutrition Principles to Lose Weight Before Summer  

Ted Ryce: Summer's around the corner, and I know you wanna look good at the beach, at the barbecues, at the pool, taking your shirt off, feeling good in front of your friends, getting compliments. We say we exercise and eat well because we care about longevity, and that's probably true, but we'd also be lying if we said that we didn't care about the way we look. 

That's why I decided to do this fat loss episode. Not only because I want you to live a long time and to avoid all the problems that come from having excessive body fat, secreting inflammatory chemicals causing insulin resistance and heart disease, and all the other terrible things that happen. But because I want you to start applying these principles now so you can still get results before summer. 

So today we're breaking down three important nutrition principles for fat loss. In fact, the most important nutrition principles for fat loss, the ones that actually move the needle. 'cause so many people are confused about this. So many people struggle with this. They do super strict diets. And don't get the results they want. 

And I just got asked literally yesterday, like, oh man, you're so lean. What do you, what'd you eat for breakfast? I was like, well, almond croissant, uh, bacon waffle, uh, covered in maple syrup. I. It, it was true actually my answer, but it's because people don't understand. They think it has to do with the quality that the choosing the right foods, there's, that's part of it, but it isn't the most important principle. 

Do you not believe me? Does that sound too hard to believe? Well. You're gonna wanna listen to this episode because I'm going to help you. So if you've been feeling stuck, if you tried keto, fasting, clean, eating, low carb, and you haven't really seen the type of results that really lit you up, or if you weren't able to keep the results because it was just too strict or overwhelmed by, uh, trying to keep up, let's say keto or paleo. 

This episode is for you. I'm gonna cut through the noise, give you a real clarity on what matters. I mean, look, these are the same principles I use for myself to stay in between 10 and 15% body fat, depending on how many Nias and almond croissants I have, and the same ones that I use with my private coaching clients. 

If you've seen the incredible before, after photos. Look, and these are people with demanding careers, busy families, full lives, and they wanna lose fat. They wanna build lean muscle, they wanna, um, also enjoy their life. They don't want to give up their favorite foods or be obsessing over every bite. And I'm gonna tell you don't have to. 

'cause here's the truth, fat loss. It doesn't have to be complicated. You just need to understand the fundamentals and apply them consistently. So let's dive into the first one. The first and most important principle is this. Are you ready? Track your calories, because what gets measured gets managed. Most people fail at fat loss because they have no clue how many calories they're eating. 

They'll say something like, well, um, I'd hardly eat, but I can't lose weight. Okay. What did you have this morning? Well, I, I went to Starbucks. I had a muffin that was 400 calories. I'm saying that they're not saying that. And then I had a, a frappuccino. So it was like 1200 calories, right? The 800 calorie frappuccino, or 600 calories, and then the muffin was 400 calories. 

They think they're not eating that much because what they say, what they think is that the volume of food that I ate wasn't that big. I mean, if we measured, if we, you know, measured the three dimensional space that the things that I just ate take up, that's hardly anything, and they're right. That's not what calories are. 

You can have a huge meal of chicken breast and broccoli, that old chicken breast and broccoli and it will be 300 calories. And you can have like what I ate the other day. I bought a chocolate bar. It was 500 calories and change. And after I ate the whole thing in one sitting, actually probably took me five minutes to eat, seven minutes to eat the whole thing. 

It did nothing to fill me up. So understand, you don't know how many calories you're eating and that is the issue. So what do we do with that? Start with MyFitnessPal. What I want you to do, go to your phone right now. Unless you're driving or bench pressing. Right. Download it and upgrade to premium because premium will allow you to simplify tracking, set up your profile. 

But what I want you to do, ignore the default calorie recommendations there not, right? And what does tracking work? Because it starts to educate you. What I say is this. Imagine going jeans shopping and you're like looking for a pair of jeans. Well, you could go to Levi's and pick something up for 50 bucks, or you can go into Bruno Cuccinelli's and pick up a pair of jeans for a thousand bucks. 

And what I tell people, what I tell my clients is like, imagine going shopping for cans but not looking at the. Price tag of what you're buying. People don't look at the price tag of the food and what I mean at the price tag. 'cause people very much are money conscious when it comes to the food they buy, but they're not conscious of the caloric cost. 

That's how I like to think of it. There's a cost to eating certain foods and a candy bar or a bar of chocolate will cost you 500 calories and it's not gonna do anything for your hunger. So. Tracking creates accountability. It's like managing a budget. It ensures that you know what's coming in, because most people don't. 

So if you're good with numbers, you're gonna be good with this. If you're not good with numbers, well, you know, you're gonna have to step your game up if you want to be lean and still fit in the foods that you love. So, step two, now that you have. Premium MyFitnessPal downloaded. Now we're gonna set up the calories. 

So a very simple formula for starting calories is to multiply your body weight by 10. So if you weigh 200 pounds, then you're gonna shoot for 2000 calories. If you, uh, weigh 250 pounds, you're gonna start with 2,500 calories. If you weigh 150 pounds, you're gonna start with 1,500 calories because. The key to fat loss is simply a calorie deficit. 

Fat loss happens when you burn more than you consume, period. Exercise helps, but trying to outrun eating too many calories is trying to empty a swimming pool with a bucket. It just doesn't take enough water out. Okay? It just doesn't take it, it doesn't balance out the calories you, you're talking about a couple hundred calories burned in a workout versus. 

300 calories burned in the one minute of eating a slice of pizza. It's just really hard to out exercise your diet. Now let's get to the second principle. Prioritize protein. Protein is three major benefits for fat Loss number one helps you maintain and maybe even build muscle mass when you're in a cowie deficit. 

Number two, it helps keep you satisfied in your hunger levels, in check and hunger as you're going to find out or probably already know from your past dieting experiences. If you are hungry and struggling with hunger, you're gonna lose or strong, but not that strong. And number three helps you. Uh, protein helps you increase the calories you burn through the thermic effect of feeding. 

Now, what is that you might ask, and if you've been listening for a while, you know what the themic effect of feeding is? If you're new, then let me explain it to you. It's really simple. Your body, when it does things, it costs energy. Just like exercise costs energy, digesting your food costs energy. It's not free. 

It's not energetically free. In fact about 10%. And this is just a fun fact here. Maybe it's not so fun, I don't know. But it's uh, something that is important to know. 10% of the calories that you eat in any given meal get burnt up in the digestion of the meal. I. So what does protein do then, if any given meal does that? 

Well, protein can bump that up to 10, beyond 10 to 15, to even 20, or even up to 30% of what you eat if you're eating a very high protein meal. It doesn't mean that you're taking in less calories, but it means you're burning more than you were and it's just burned up in the digestion process. It sounds like a small thing, but what I'm trying to, the point I'm trying to make here is that protein is powerful for changing your body. 

So how much should you eat of it then? Well, luckily we don't have to guess because science, or more specifically research into this, has worked out solid starting points for most of us. So let's say you're overweight or obese. What you want to do is you want to shoot for 0.5 to 0.7 grams per pound of body weight per day. 

So what you do, you take your body weight, you multiply it by 0.5, and that will give you the minimum of the range. And then 0.7, take your body weight and multiply it by 0.7, and that will give you kind of the maximum range of where you should be with your protein. I know you probably want an exact number, but we want some flexibility here. 

Just write down those numbers. Okay? Pause this, do the math using your calculator on your phone or whatever. If you've got a calculator and you like to kick it old school, that's cool too, and figure out those numbers. Now, if your normal weight, you can go anywhere from 0.7 times your body weight to 1.1 times your body weight. 

Again, I pounds. So if you're a kilogram user, I'm, I apologize. That, um, uh, metric system challenged, but I'm giving it to you in pounds, so you gotta convert your body weight into pounds first and then multiply it by 0.7 and then again by 0.1, 0.1, and that will give you the grams of protein. That you should eat in a day. 

So again, if you're overweight or obese, chauffer in between 0.5 to 0.7 times your body weight and pounds. That'll give you the grams per day if you're overweight or obese. If your normal weight, you wanna multiply your body weight, I pounds by 0.7 or 1.1 grams, and that will give you the range of grams per day of protein that you want to eat. 

After figuring out your protein, you use the rest of the calories to decide your daily grams of carbs and fat. So right now in MyFitnessPal, you should have in your calories, you take your body weight, multiply it by 10. Then to set your protein, I gave you the ranges already. So you, now you've set your protein, and so now what you want to do is you wanna use those remaining calories for your carbs and fat. 

You may be wondering, oh, well how should I do this? How do, how do I divide the carbs and the fat? What I wanna tell you is this, we know from studies for fat loss, it doesn't matter. You can go lower in fats and higher carbs or vice versa. What does matter here is your personal preference, and if you try to cut cards, because some influencer online told you they're bad for fat loss. 

I gotta cut the carbs, but you struggle when you cut them out because you're low energy. Your brain's full of fog and you're just craving them. You're just making things unnecessarily hard on yourself. Same thing goes for a preference of fat over carbs. If you enjoy eating more fat, if you want avocado and fattier cuts of meat, go for it. 

Just make sure it is the thing that you can stick with, because what DIA book authors won't tell you. Is that if you can't stick with this, then it's not gonna be a lifestyle. And if it's not gonna be a lifestyle, uh, it is gonna be a quick fix. And quick fixes are gonna lead you to the same dead end that so many people have found themselves in over and over and over. 

And I'll even tell you a little bit of a bonus here when it comes to setting your carbs and fat, just set 'em equally, but only pay attention to the protein and total calories. The third principle is all about staying full because you start to wrap your head around, okay, I get it. It's about the calories so I can eat potato chips and lose fat. 

Yes, it's true. You can eat ice cream and lose fat. Yes, it's true, but if you don't choose the right foods, it becomes impossible to stay in a calorie deficit because you're fighting hunger all the time. And if you can't stick with the plan, you're not gonna get results. So let's talk about how to make the best food choices so that you can control hunger and make fat loss feel easy and sustainable. 

1. Controlling hunger goes way beyond just eating more protein. Your stomach has stretch receptors, and when these receptors are triggered by eating a meal, they send signals to your brain to stop eating, but some foods work better than others. We need to make sure that we're eating foods that help us with our hunger in general, and then some of those cravings for something sweet.

The meal, those will go away. So what I want you to do is this, I want you to pause this episode right now and I want you to. Satiety index and click on images and choose whatever image you find easiest to read and study this, and think about the food choices you make versus the choices that they talk about on this satiety index. 

And if we look at the satiety index, we see it's broken down into proteins, fats, carbohydrates, refined carbohydrates, and hyper palatable foods. So if you haven't brought up the satiety index, either one. You're being lazy. Pause this right now and do it just to take a look so that you can understand what I'm about to explain to you here. 

Or if you're driving or have a, uh, you know, couple hundred pounds on a, on, on your back because you're doing squat right now. Well wait until afterward of course, but do you have it pulled up now? Great. Let's jump in. As you see, red meat, a white fish actually score quite high. Then if we look at the fats. 

Salted peanuts score quite low cheddar cheese, kind of in the middle, poached eggs kind of in the middle. You know what's interesting about this is that refined carbohydrates, carbs, and refined carbohydrates get a bad wrap. But if we look at the, the food that scored the highest. On the satiety index, it's what do you see it? 

Potatoes. And what type of potatoes are they? Well, they were boiled potatoes. Of course you wouldn't know that unless you read this study, but I'm here telling you what it is. It's boiled potatoes, of course. Who's gonna over eat boiled potatoes? And let's look at what scored the lowest. Have you found it yet? 

It's croissants. So croissants scored the lowest. Potatoes scored the highest. Now croissant isn't a carbohydrate. This is so important to get this correct 'cause I used to think carbs make you fat. Man, that's a really ignorant, ignorant, ignorant thing to say. Again, if you're believing that I'm not calling you ignorant. 

Per se because, uh, it's tough out there to decide to determine what is right and what is wrong. But I want to tell you this, go and type in croissant on MyFitnessPal and look at the calories coming from fat. Fat is nine calories per gram, carbohydrates and protein, or four calories per gram. You're gonna see that. 

Things like ice cream, things like croissants. They have equal numbers or even more calories coming from fat than from carbs. But it's not so much about the fat, it's about the combination of fat and carbs together. That's what really makes a food, you know, it makes our brains crave more food. It makes, it makes us go yum. 

Right. For example, let's go go back to that boiled potato. Boiled potato is nothing but a carbohydrate. I mean, there's some protein in it, but, uh, how are you gonna overeat boiled potatoes? Just understand that it's, you take potatoes and you boil them. They're not so appetizing. But if we look on the hyper palatable foods and we look at. 

For example, french fries, they score french fries, score much lower than potatoes and low in general for satiety. And what is a french fry? It's a potato that's been processed into fry shape, size, uh, sizes, and then it's fried and oil. So again, it's a combination of the natural carbohydrates that are found in potatoes, then fried in oil, and then put some salt on it. 

And then you got this crispy outside. Mushy inside, salty, delicious thing. And let's take it a step further. What if we took those potatoes, sliced them into chip size pieces, and then fried the hell out of them till it was nothing but a, a crispy chip, a potato chip? As you can see, those score quite low. 

They have zero water in them. It's all been cooked out. French fries have some. That's what creates the mushy delicious inside. As you can see, so the processing effects what you eat. The big issue here is the more processed the food, and certainly if it's a combination of carbs and fat in general, the lowers the satiety. 

For example, we can look at white bread. White bread isn't terrible, terrible, but it's, it scores pretty low versus, um, brown rice in the carbohydrate section or oranges or porridge. And of course, potatoes that score really high. So start to look at this and start to make choices based on the satiety index. 

You'll get more control over your hunger if you do so. There you have it. The three most important nutrition principles for fat loss. Number one, track your calories. If you are not in a calie deficit, it does not matter how clean you eat. 

It will give you the awareness. It's the first step to making huge change. Number two, prioritize protein to build muscle. Stay full, and it even gives you a little bit of a boost in terms of calorie burn. And number three, eat more satiating foods so you can control your hunger without relying on willpower. 

And if you do this right, oh my gosh, this. We'll take it to the next level. So if you've been struggling with nutrition, these three strategies will give you a foundation to build on. And look, you may be new to this show, you may not be aware of all the before and afters I have, and you know, follow me on social media. 

But even if you don't believe me, I'm not asking you to, I'm asking you to try this out and prove me wrong. And with summer right around the corner, this is the perfect time to start dialing in your habit so you can feel leaner, stronger, and more confident in your clothes, especially with your shirt off at the pool at the beach. 

Getting compliments. I get compliments all the time. People cannot believe I'm 48 years old and look the way I look. If you want expert support to implement this the right way without burnout or extreme diets or giving up your favorite foods, or a lot of people think they even have to give up alcohol. 

Look, you don't have to do that stuff, but it's hard to do this on your own. That's why I have a business. So if you are a person, a high performer, if you're running a business, if you're an entrepreneur. If you're crushing it with your family, you just don't have time to figure out how to put all the pieces together, then I invite you to book a free strategy call with me. 

We'll talk about your goals, your current routine, and whether my unstoppable after 40 body transformation program is the right fit for you to finally get the results you want and lose weight. Before summer. Go to legendary life podcast.com/apply to schedule your call now. That's legendary life podcast.com/apply. 

That's it for today. Hope you enjoyed it. Have an amazing week, and speak to you next Monday.