Episode 56: Complexities of Diet and Nutrition

Transcript

I've tried to record this same episode, or something similar to this episode, at least twice already.
This is at least my third run through this, which isn't usually how I do these.
I don't typically do a bunch of drafts, you know, quote-unquote drafts, before actually settling on the final version of an episode.
But this one, for whatever reason, it just, it kept catching me.
And I think it's because I was going into it assuming that I was trying to do one thing when I actually realized something else.
The general topic here that I wanted to come in and discuss was really, I wanted to explain how I approach my diet and nutrition.
And each time I recorded this, I ended up going on and on and on and on, because I had this assumption, because when I think about how I approach my diet and nutrition, and again, maybe if this is your first time listening to me or whatever, I weight lift quite a bit.
I take my diet and nutrition and fitness kind of stuff pretty seriously.
So, for me, I came into recording this episode thinking that I could, I have an inherent belief that it's easier to do this stuff than people think, right?
But you have to kind of have a couple underlying baseline things.
And the more I talked about this on the episode, the more I unraveled complexity in my assumptions that maybe wasn't fair, right?
Each time I tried to explain through how I approached my diet and nutrition, I realized it was far more complicated than I actually think about day to day.
I think this is because of a couple things.
One piece of this is that I've been doing it, I have been paying attention to this now for enough years where, to me, it has become just baked into my life.
If it's kind of second nature, I don't, for example, one of the points I was trying to make on these was, I hold myself, I have a rule that I always tell myself.
This isn't like a foundational rule or anything, but I'm just giving this as kind of an example of what I'm talking about.
By and large, 99% of the time, if I can't eat at least 30 grams of protein when I sit down to eat something, then I just don't eat at all.
And this rule means a bunch of things.
It's just a rule that I hold to myself.
And for me, in my head, it's because without 30 grams of protein, there isn't really any point in eating a meal.
But it also prevents me from doing things like snacking, right?
Like a lot, there are plenty of people who, you know, you try to walk by a bowl of pretzels or a bag of chips or whatever, and you just can't help but stop to have some of them.
And I just, I don't fall into that category.
I don't fall into it partly because I'm just not a huge snacker, but I also don't fall into it because I have this rule for myself.
Or in the back of my head, I know that if I took a handful of pretzels and ate it, that's not 30 grams of protein, and therefore it is not a useful weight.
I, you know, it's not a useful form of nutrition for me to bother consuming.
So if I'm hungry, I'll eat something else instead that has more benefit towards my goals, which is typically trying to build muscle, trying to stay relatively lean, trying to, you know, that sort of track of things.
But I was trying to record this episode and essentially, because my day-to-day approach to my nutrition is not very complex.
You know, by and large, I have a small assortment of breakfasts that I choose one of them.
I have a small assortment of lunches, and I typically choose from one of them each day.
I have the same exact nighttime snack, like right around 9, 30, 10 o'clock at night, that I always eat before bed.
And then for me, the big question mark is always dinner, because I have a family, and like family dinners, if you're someone who tries to track nutrition and macros and stuff,
when the portions are all over the place and you don't always know what's in the dinner, like it's just a little more challenging.
So you have to kind of leave some, I leave some margin of error for myself when it rolls around to dinner.
And then depending on if I'm, you know, bulking, cutting, whatever I'm maintaining, whatever, I kind of adjust my portion sizes on any one of those meals up or down.
And I sometimes I'll incorporate an afternoon snack, but I don't sit around and count calories.
I don't really even need to count my macros by and large, because I know any given meal that I sit down to, I'm going to eat between 30 and 40 grams of protein.
You multiply that by either four or five meals throughout the course of the day.
And I, on any given day, I'm going to have anywhere between 150 and 200 grams of protein.
And the rest of the things don't really matter as much.
So I just, I just do this naturally, I suppose, at this point, but I uncovered all of these like kind of complex scenarios.
And then the underlying piece, I really wanted to come on the episode and be like, look how easy this is.
It's very, very simple.
It's very simple.
You know, decide for yourself one of a couple different breakfasts that are, that have reasonable calories and lots of protein.
Decide on yourself one of a couple of lunches that have reasonable calories and a bunch of protein.
Make sure you get a nice, easy to consume nighttime snack to get kind of a, a bit of protein in you before you go to bed for the night.
And then your dinner can kind of wait, you know, be a little bit flexible depending on your living situation.
So it sounded, it sounded simple in my head.
But what I realized in talking about it and essentially failing to record an episode on the topic, that's all true.
Those things are simple.
They're very doable.
I would argue that it's, it's mostly just basic math.
You know, if you're a, if you're a guy and your maintenance calories are somewhere around 2,500 and you want to eat four or five times a day,
then you're probably shooting for any given meal to be somewhere between five and 600 calories.
You don't need to count it if you count it kind of once initially, and then you sort of eat the same thing all the time and just leave yourself some extra room for any meals that are question marks.
It's a very flexible approach and a very simple approach.
And it works for me, but it doesn't do justice to just how much of my life I have set up around this.
And this is the thing that I uncovered sort of in, in talking about it.
The, the day-to-day execution of it is simple.
Like I said, it's, it's not hard.
In fact, it's, it's, you know, it's sort of like that thing where like some people always, always dress in the same outfit or whatever, because it's easy to think about it.
That's almost how I approach food.
It's like, I, I, I wake up and I have the exact same breakfast almost every day of the week.
And then my lunches, there's really only, you know, a small handful of them because I, and I know that I could have any one of them because they're all approximately nutritionally equivalent.
It's easy to execute that, you know, once you find the things that work for you and once they fit within your constraints, what it doesn't take into account though, is how much of the rest of your life has to be built around enabling that.
My entire life practically, and, and I'm not, I'm not a professional, right?
Like I'm not like a professional stage pro bodybuilder or a, you know, a personal trainer or a professional nutritionist or like, or like a influencer or something that, that tells other people how to approach their nutrition.
Like I'm not, I'm none of these things.
It's just a thing that I do, but I build almost my entire life around.
And my diet and nutrition needs, like the way that I approach my whole life and have for the last six or seven years is all about that.
Like when I eat my meals as very regimented, generally speaking, am I, the goals behind it sitting in the back of my head at all times?
Am I bulking?
Am I cutting?
Am I maintaining?
That really matters.
When people, I mean, before I started doing a lot of this stuff, I'll give you a, for instance, like I never hesitated if someone asked me, oh, you want to go grab a drink after work?
I never hesitated to say, yep, yep.
Sounds good.
And I would go and have two, two beers or whatever at the bar after work at five o'clock or whatever.
I never even thought twice about it since going down this road much more seriously.
Again, over the last six or seven years, I don't do that anymore, ever.
And it's not because I was necessarily trying to quit drinking or something.
It was much more because that no longer fit into my diet and nutrition goals to support my overall, essentially fitness, bodybuilding, weightlifting, like those sorts of things.
And that could go for everything.
So, it has taken a toll in some ways on certain social situations, but also it's led to me to a lot of at least more physically healthy things.
So, like, I don't know.
I found this is almost a meta episode, right, where I really thought I could explain very simply like, hey, here's how to approach your diet and nutrition if you want to do this.
The problem is, yes, the execution of that is really simple if you have all these underlying things.
If you are willing to, under the hood, always be thinking about your nutrition, always be disciplined in it, making sure you don't wait.
I mean, again, it's not 100%, right, but like 95 plus percent of the time, my meals are locked in, my macros are locked in, my nutrition is locked in.
I'm hitting the gym.
I'm, you know, it's a day in and day out, every single day kind of thing.
And I think I've been just doing it long enough where I started to believe it was really simple in my head.
And then as I talked through it, I just realized that there were all these underlying assumptions underneath it.
So, if there is any point of this episode, it is that, I suppose, number one, be wary of any tips and tricks and whatever that people give you, maybe influencers or whatever, that make it all sound simple.
Because it's not, not really.
The execution, again, might be quite simple.
But to set yourself up with the ecosystem, I'll give you another example, like food shopping.
Food shopping is very specific.
If you are trying, you need to make sure you have the right stuff in the house all the time.
Eating out at restaurants, like you typically, I typically have a small selection of places that I know I can go and not totally screw up my nutrition for the day.
Or my macros or calories or, you know, whatever you're talking about.
So, be careful of, you know, oh, it's so easy.
Even for me, where I had gotten that headset of like, oh, this is so easy.
Like, I can explain this.
And the more I talked about it, the more I was, this isn't simple at all.
It's just that you need a lot of underlying base level stuff and discipline and lock in.
And then it gets easy.
So, just be, yeah, again, just be wary.
If there's any point here, it's just be wary of people who are saying it's simple.
It is all very doable.
You know, again, I have a family.
I'm in my early 40s.
I have been a working professional for a long time.
You can do this.
But it does require sacrifice.
It does require discipline.
And certain things will get weeded out of your life if you really want to take it seriously.