There are two things you have to nail for an awesome physique:
High muscle mass, and low body fat.
Muscle, you get from building strength. Simple.
The way you get lean is by continuing to strength train, and simultaneously hitting a calorie deficit—getting your energy intake below what you need to maintain your weight, on average, each week—for long enough to lose the required amount of body fat to look how you want to look. That’s it.
There are no other ways you will get ripped.
There was a point in time (early on in my “fitness” journey) where I hated the idea of hitting a specific calorie number. I just wanted ONE simple diet I could eat forever, that I knew would eventually get me lean (and big, and strong… the lot).
I tried “clean eating”. I tried paleo. I tried low carb. I tried the Japanese village diet.
I hoped that by doing something intentional about the way I ate, I would get results. Surely I deserved them for my consistent efforts in adherence?
What I eventually realised, with enough experience, was that all diets are the same. Sticking to one set of foods guarantees no more results than any other set; there are just dosages. Protein amount matters to a degree (in supporting muscle gain and maintenance), and after that everything comes down to energy intake. You can overeat on any diet, you can undereat on any diet. Or you can get the balance just right, for your goal at the current point in time (e.g., fat loss).
Any diet that succeeds in getting you lean, regardless of how it gets you there, works because it puts you in a calorie deficit for long enough to see a change in fat mass.
So if you’re going to bother trying to lose fat, you may as well create that deficit yourself, intentionally, rather than leaving it to chance and hoping the diet works. Then, once you are lean, you can stop the deficit, go back to a higher energy intake to support strength and muscle growth, and get proceed to get jacked while enjoying your new low level of body fat.
There are two big benefits to creating the calorie deficit yourself:
- You’re in control of the causal variable (calorie intake), and can adjust it based on results (rate of weight loss)
- You can eat and drink whatever you choose to, while getting better results than any restrictive diet (because you’re actually ensuring you do the one thing that matters: hitting your calories)
The reason I was so put off the idea of manipulating calories initially was that I didn’t want to have to constantly assess what I ate, pulling out a calculator and notepad every time I sat down to eat a meal to balance my day’s energy budget. Not to mention I had no freaking clue how much energy was in those meals in the first place.
I’ve since discovered that hitting a calorie target does not mean you need to be constantly tracking and logging everything you put in your mouth over the course of the day. Quite the contrary. You likely wouldn’t keep this up long enough to get you to your goal anyway (nor would you want to).
Instead, there is a simpler way to do this. And, like with everything, the simpler the action required, the higher your chances of success.
My advice? Rig this game so you can win it, just like everything else, and watch results come with more ease than you thought possible.
How To Get Ripped Without Tracking Calories
The following method assumes:
a) You are strength training regularly and hitting a protein target. If you’re not, go get those things in place before trying to lose fat (or else you’ll lose weight, not fat, i.e., burn up muscle tissue as well).
b) You have a calorie target to aim for. If you don’t, go figure out your initial fat loss calories. You’ll need to get a starting estimate, then track your bodyweight to see what it does in response to this target over a couple of weeks, and calibrate accordingly.
The way I lose fat on demand now, rather than reactively tracking the calories I consume, is by instead proactively designing a simple meal structure, one time, that hits my calorie target, and then executing that on repeat for the duration of my fat loss period—no thought required.
I can still choose the specific food I want each day, I can still eat out and drink alcohol when I want; but doing this eliminates the need to constantly be tracking and budgeting for everything I put in my mouth. Instead, that budgeting is all done once upfront, and I can then just eat each day without thinking, knowing I’ll get results, making adjustments only if and when I need to. Here’s how it works.
1. Set up a meal plan that hits your targets, that you like
Once you have your calorie and protein target to aim for, you literally know what you need to eat (at the highest level) every day to reach your goal. So why leave the day-to-day execution to chance?
Over the years I have found it far easier to just decide up front what I am going to consume, and plan it out so I don’t have to think. I’ll map out the meals I am going to consume (e.g., lunch, dinner, dessert, snack), the amount of each food category in each (e.g., lunch: 500g meat, 250g potatoes, 1tsp oil, veggies = 950 calories, 100g protein) and then I have a blueprint ready to go, no thought required. I know that if I eat my day’s allocation of food, I’ll hit my targets, and get the result I’m after.
Note: All lean cuts of meat, all potatoes/sweet potatoes, all rice, all types of oil, etc., each have roughly the same amount of calories per 100 grams. So all you have to do is plan for the amount of each food category in each meal, then you can swap the specific types in and out as desired without any need to recalculate.
2. Eat that every day
Enjoyment of food (for me) comes from satisfying my body’s needs, not from eating a random array of different stuff every day. So trough trial and error I’ve figured out a diet that is immensely satisfying (to me), and I simply lock in to eating that until I’m ripped.
For me that looks like meat, rice or potatoes, some vegetables, fruit, a bit of dairy, and chocolate. Every day.
It doesn’t have to be complex. It just needs to taste great and hit your targets. That’s all.
Getting a balance of protein, fat, carbs, veggies, seasoning (salt/acid/herbs & spices), and some tasty treats of your choosing (chocolate, biscuits, beer, etc.) is a surefire formula for taste and satisfaction. Find some simple combos of the above that you love, and run them on repeat. You don’t get results for creativity, you get them from consistency. The most likely way to be consistent is to keep things as simple and enjoyable as possible so you won’t hesitate to come back and do the same thing day after day.
So make your meal plan (Step 1) one that you really like, then don’t feel guilty about being very boring and eating it every single day all the way to your goal.
If you’re eating to the same plan every day it also makes adjusting that plan based on results very easy. Which brings us to Step 3:
3. Track your weight and see what happens
It doesn’t matter how sensible your planned calorie target is or how precisely you execute your plan to hit it. There is randomness in the human body. It’s complex. The only way to know your plan is going to work is by executing it and measuring the outcome to see if it does.
The metric we can watch to measure results in our fat loss is scale weight: not our daily measurements (which will vary randomly day-to-day over a 2kg range), but rather our weekly averages. We just want to see that our weekly average weight is going down at the appropriate rate.
For lean people, about 0.5kg a week is a reasonable target to expect from a 400-500 calorie deficit. If you’ve got more fat to lose, this can be faster.
Regardless of pace, the point is that you don’t know if your deficit is working, until you see evidence that it’s working. Weekly average weights can give you and indication of this.
And if it is working, then there is no need to worry any further about your meal plan! It’s doing everything it needs to do. You then just have to continue as you are, and continue seeing the scales trend down, until you reach your goal.
4. When you need to deviate, just estimate
When you need to deviate from your plan, (which you will, if you have a social life; eating out, eating at a friend’s place, treating yourself to a spontaneous bite), just quickly estimate the calories in the meal, and fit this into your plan for the day. You might need to do a bit of reshuffling, but with some forethought it shouldn’t be hard to make most social occasions fit your day’s plan.
With some experience eating your daily meal plan, you’ll soon have a good idea of what an 800-calorie meal looks and feels like (for example). So your first-guess estimates will actually be pretty good—plenty good enough to work. If you leave a slight buffer (just be conservative in your guesses), you’ll be safe.
As for alcoholic drinks, there’s no need to let these throw you off either. Just figure out the calories in the drinks you consume regularly, sub an amount you’d like to drink into your plan for the day, and you’re sorted. Or don’t—just try to be somewhat moderate in your consumption (stick to 2-3 drinks) and simply cop a day of slower fat loss when you drink (provided it’s not every night). Again, the simpler you can make your process, the better. (The whole point here is not having to track!)
Note: Using this approach, you obviously won’t be snacking. You would need to track snacks. But because you already know what you’re aiming for, why not just plan your meals to hit that target, and eliminate the need to snack (and the headache that comes with it) entirely? If you want to include chocolate/ice cream/whatever junk you like (which I recommend—it’s much more fun getting shredded while eating dessert every day), include that as a small meal in your daily plan. (The plan can include whatever you want! So plan for what you’re going to want to eat from the outset. You’re a human, not a bot. It’s allowed to be fun.)
In summary
To hit a calorie target and get lean without tracking calories:
- Design one simple meal plan that hits your target and eat that every day.
- When you need to deviate from that structure (e.g., eat a meal out), roughly estimate the calories involved, and adjust your plan to make it fit for the day. Then go back to routine.
Done.
No need for logging everything in an app, no need for constant decision making.
Track ONCE (i.e., when you make your plan in the first place).
Then just execute, on repeat.
Track your weekly weight to make sure it’s working.
If it’s not, adjust accordingly and continue.
Wake up in 4-12 weeks ripped.
What do you do when you’re done losing fat? Just change your plan over to gains calories and start hitting that (a 100-300 calorie daily surplus, rather than 400-500 calorie deficit). Obviously you’ll have more room each day to play with now, so meals out etc. become more fun ways of hitting your calorie target (rather than uncertainties to account for). Even better.
Don’t make it harder than it needs to be. Make it fun, keep it simple, and repeat it for enough days, and you’ll reach your fat loss goal every time.