If you are a man and you are overweight, you are not alone. Nearly, 75% of men in the U.S. are overweight and obese. My hope for you is that these tips will help you lose weight and become healthier.
Getting ripped and losing weight is about being in a calories deficit, eating the right type of carbs, and controlling your blood sugar levels just to name a few.
I’m not perfect and I’ve had my own issues with weight and body type fluctuations, but not anymore and neither should you.
6 Proven Ways to Get Ripped without Counting Calories
- Eating a high protein-based breakfast
- Use smaller plates into tricking yourself that you are eating more
- intermittent Fasting
- Eating more high fiber vegetables
- Getting enough sleep
- Controlling plate portion sizes
In order to lose weight, it is very important to control your overall caloric intake as well as keeping your blood sugar levels stable. You can lose weight and get shredded without counting calories.
However, when you are first starting out I recommend using my fitness pal to educate yourself on how many macros are in each food. Everyone’s body is different and has different metabolic rates and requirements.
There is no cookie-cutter approach, I grossly overate calories for years until I started tracking to learn how much I was really consuming. This will give you a good baseline of how much you should be eating. I’m going to go into more depth on the “7 Proven Ways to Get Ripped without Counting Calories” from up above.
Tip #1- Eat more Protein for Breakfast
One simple way to help you lose more weight is by eating more protein in the morning. Ditch your bagels and muffins for some eggs and bacon in the mornings.
There are two separate studies that show that just by switching to eggs and not eating things like bagels can really help you lose weight effortlessly. The group that ate eggs for breakfast ended up eating fewer calories for lunch. They even ate less food for the next 36 hours, that’s pretty amazing!
After the 8 week trial, the group that ate eggs had lost much more than the bagel group.
- Up to 65% more weight loss
- 61% reduction in their BMI
- 34% reduced waist size
- 16% in body fat
While those numbers aren’t earth-shattering they are still a good way to start off your day to get your body into fat-burning mode.
Tip #2- Use Smaller Plates into Tricking yourself you are Eating more Food
This is done to trick your brain that it has eaten more food than what you really have and it works. I don’t know about you but I grew up with the mentality that I needed to finish my food and eat everything on the plate.
And that probably isn’t the best option when you are using bigger plates and bowls. Just by eating from smaller plates you will have less area to fill and fewer calories to eat.
There are studies where they used 12″ inch and 10″ inch plates to help eat fewer calories. The results were people ate 22% fewer calories and lost 10 pounds over the course of a year. Those are good results just from just shifting your plate size to help control your proportions.
This effect occurs because of an illusion trick it plays on your brain and is known as the Delboeuf Illusion.
“These findings are part of an optical illusion known as the Delboeuf illusion, named after a Belgian scientist who discovered it in 1865. Delboeuf found that when you look at two identical circles, they are seen differently, depending on the size of the circle placed around them. Wansink and van Ittersum found that the effect applies to the plates and bowls we use. Larger dishes can make portion sizes appear smaller, and smaller plates can lead us to believe that the same quantity of food is more than it actually is. In other words, larger plates can cause us to eat more and smaller plates can help us eat less.”
Tip #3- IF Intermittent Fasting
Intermittent Fasting is great because it helps control your overall caloric intake for the day. This is done by just simply eating within usually an 8-hour window.
This is known as the 16/8 rule, meaning you can eat at let’s say 12pm-8pm and the rest of the time you are fasting. There are many health benefits that come with fasting other than caloric restriction.
Personally, I can skip breakfast most days unless my training is more intense and I don’t feel like I’m getting enough protein. I will eat a higher protein and fat meal and skip the carbs for breakfast.
It’s important to know in that fasting windows you can’t have any calories if you want to drink coffee that’s fine but you can’t add any extra calories for the best results.
It can take up to 2-3 weeks to get used to fasting, especially if you are someone who prefers to eat more breakfast meals. If you are a busy guy like most of us, skipping breakfast can save us some time and calories in the morning, that can be used with our families at night.
Tip #4- Eat more High Fiber Vegetables
Another way to feel fuller longer is to eat low-density foods with fewer calories. This works, there are only so many green veggies you can eat and feel satiated.
If you sat down and ate 100 calories of high fiber foods like veggies and some fruit compared to 100 calories of potato chips. You will feel fuller longer with higher fiber foods then the chips.
Let’s face it if you are like me, I’m not eating the recommended serving size of chips, I’ll end up eating much more more. This happens because when you eat processed foods your not getting what your body needs and causes you to eat more then you should.
Eating less calorie-dense food just makes sense when it comes to snacking or adding a side to a meal. By adding fibrous carbs to each meal will help you feel fuller, mom was right all along “EAT YOUR VEGGIES!” High fiber and protein foods will help you feel fuller longer.
List of high fiber foods
- Almonds
- Oats
- Broccoli
- Beans and Lentils
- Brussel Sprouts
- Split peas and chickpeas
- Chia seeds
- Dark chocolate
- Avocado
Tip #5- Getting enough Sleep
This might be one of the most important and overlooked topics when it comes to weight loss and recovery. “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” don’t worry you will be dead much sooner than expected according to research if you are not sleeping at least 7-8 hours a night.
Your sleep and stress are important when it comes to losing weight and getting ripped. because of how your hormones are affected. Not getting enough sleep is a big contributor to obesity.
Hunger hormones such as leptin and ghrelin can be effected in a negative way if you are lacking sleep. Essentially these hormones will be affected negatively and causing your cravings and hunger to become out of control.
I’ve definitely felt this before with a lack of sleep where I just wanted to eat everything in sight for energy. If you are getting 7-8 hours of sleep a night will help control your hunger hormones.
Tip #6- Controlling Portion Sizes on your plate
Alright guys, going back to a secret weapon is getting in enough fiber. Everyone is so focussed on their protein that they usually forget about their fiber intake.
If you imagine your plate you would want roughly 40% of it covering it with high fiber carbs and 40% with protein, with the remaining 20% being a starchy carb. We know what high fiber carbs are because I’ve mentioned a list above, here is a list of healthy starchy carbohydrates.
- Beans
- Butternut Squash
- Chickpeas
- Corn
- Lentil
- Peas
- Potatoes
- Sweet Potatoes
- Yams
- Any type of Salad
I’m also okay with your 20% of your plate being things like pasta or spaghetti, bread, rice, and other high carb sources. This does not always have to be perfect, just do your best.
Once again, it is highly recommended to use my fitness pal app for two weeks just to educate you on how many calories are really in the food you are eating. After you have some knowledge and a good baseline you will be more self-aware of how much you eating.
Should I cut Carbs to Get Ripped?
When we eat in a calorie deficit to lose weight and get ripped there is a chance that we can lose some muscle. One of the best strategies is to make sure that protein should be equal to or the highest macronutrient you should eat. Therefore by increasing protein, you shouldn’t eliminate carbs but decreasing them is optimal.
The reason being is because while trying to get that ripped look you can’t consume high amounts of protein, carbs, and fats. There are just too many calories if you are eating this way.
As I mentioned above in the plate portion control above, it’s good to eat 40% protein, 40% high fiber carbs and 20% starchy carbs. This is not written in stone and these numbers can be massaged to what works best for your goals.
One way to do that is to make sure you are consuming enough protein. How much protein? It depends on what day you are asking and you might get a different answer.
According to Eric Helms, here are the recommendations.
” Well, based on everything, I think ~0.8-1g/lb (~1.8-2.2g/kg) is probably the highest intake you’ll benefit from in terms of enhancing strength or mass gains when you’re not in a deficit. Higher intakes are fine, but the only benefit would be for people who tend to overeat in the offseason and want to limit their calorie consumption to prevent excess fat gain.
While dieting, the jury is still out concerning whether there’s a benefit from an intake higher than 1.8-2.2g/kg for muscle retention. However, there probably are some benefits in terms of satiety and potentially mood. That said, I wouldn’t go too high, as excess protein can displace your caloric allotment for carbs and fat. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater and end up with a sub-par diet in terms of variety, micronutrient density, and adequate nutritional support for training. Thus, I’d cap dieting protein intake at ~2.8g/kg of total body mass, or roughly 1.3g/lb.”
How to Estimate Portion Sizes with your Hand
Portion size and control are crucial if you want to get into shape and ditch the dad bod. There is a tool attached to your body that can help measure portion sizes, your hand.
Obviously, everyone’s hands are different sizes but using hands and other objects such as a deck of cards to measure meat and other foods. Here are some examples to help ballpark how much meat you are eating.
Using your hand to measure is a fast and quick way to track your serving size. Break out a measuring cup and see how much of a serving your hand is and go from there.
- One handful= 1/4 a cup
- One heaping handful= 1/2 a cup roughly
- Two handfulls= 1 cup
- One finger scoop= 1 teaspoon
- Two-finger scoop= 1 tablespoon
How to estimate meat servings
- 1 oz of meat= matchbox size
- 3 oz of meat= a bar of soap or a deck of cards
- 8 oz of meat= a thin sized paperback book
What’s meat without the potato
- 1 medium-sized potato = a computer mouse
This is the guide to getting ripped without counting calories. Let’s face it most of us are not professional athletes or want to track calories for the rest of our lives.
We are looking for a lifestyle change, we need to improve our nutrition instead of going on the latest diet fad because you know someone who it worked for.
The reality is fad diets may work short term, but show me what that person looks like a year later? Sadly most of the time they have gained their weight back and sometimes then some.
My challenge to you is to follow this blog and see what happens. we are looking for a lifestyle change, not a quick fix. It’s not to say you can’t enjoy pizza, burgers, dessert or occasional alcohol. That would just be unrealistic, if you are eating clean and following these rules 80% of the time you will be fine.
If you are a busy dad looking to get healthy here is a great at-home workout.