If this is your idea of cooking...you've got no hope

If weight loss is your goal, then the food you choose to eat is probably going to have to change to some degree. Although I believe you can lose weight eating whatever you like, there will be an easy and harder path to weight loss.

The base of it will always be a caloric deficit. After that it’s a matter of feeling satisfied with the food you eat while still maintaining this deficit.

Some people like simplicity and don’t want to even bother experimenting with new foods. These type of people stick with a simple rotation of the same 10-12 foods each week. They get used to the portion sizes and calorie counts of each food/meal and once they have a system that works they don’t deviate from it.

This is how most traditional bodybuilding diets are structured. It’s usually a matter of simplicity rather than variety or choice.

If this sounds like a sentence to hard labor then there is another way, BUT it requires you to be somewhat creative in the kitchen and know your way around the grocery store.

There is an endless amount of great meals that you could cook that will allow for weight loss and maintaining a caloric deficit AND taste awesome and leave you feeling satisfied…IF you know how to make them!

I personally have experimented with a few things but I am by no means a wizard in the kitchen…

Luckily a friend of mine who is also one of the models in the upcoming Venus Index workout system just happens to be such a wizard in the kitchen and she is always making me kick ass cookies and muffins, and all kinds of other items that are much lower calorie than the commercial counterpart but taste just as good.

I’ve manage to talk her into teaching me a few things and she’s also agreed to teach you a few things. In the coming weeks I’ll be posting some videos and recipies she has agreed to share.

John

I was having a conversation with a friend of mine and she brought up the most interesting thought experiment for weight loss.

No weight gain for no weight loss?

Imagine you were granted the power right now to never gain another pound of fat for the rest of your life no matter what or how much you ate? Would you take it? <– I think the answer for most of us is a resounding YES…but then she threw a little twist into it…and it goes like this…

BUT, this same power also makes it impossible for you to ever lose another pound of fat for the rest of your life.

In other words, would give up your ability to ever lose fat again for the power to never gain fat again from this day forward no matter how much food you eat?

Do we have a deal?

Please answer in the comment section.

John

As some of you may know I’m in the process of cutting down and have lost almost 27 pounds in the past 9 weeks or so.

I’ve been getting a bunch of questions about what I’ve been eating, and the answer is: The same food I was eating before I started cutting down…but less of it.

I still eat chicken wings, pizza, nachos, donuts etc. I just don’t eat as much of any of them as I did before I started cutting down.

I still go out for dinner and eat the stuff I would normally eat, I just have less. (I hope you’re noticing the recurring theme here)

Here is a good trick for eating at restaurants while cutting down without looking like a calorie counting obsessive compulsive freak.

Order 1 big entree and split it with the person you are with (this works best when it is a guy and a girl eating together)

If you’re not actively trying to lose weight but still want to keep your total food consumption in check then you can also split an appetizer.

I’ve found that most restaurants portion sizes are so large that 1 entree  including the side dishes it comes with is more than enough food for a couple for dinner.

Today I went out and split an 8 oz steak that had scallops and shrimp topping with a side of steamed veggies and a salad.

This was a dinner entree that we split between the two of us and it was more than enough food for both of us to feel completely satisfied and it easily fit under the range of calories I needed to continue my weight loss progress.

Now that I’ve been eating like this for over 2 months I find it hard to believe that I would have ordered that entree and eaten the entire thing myself.

Eating smaller portions becomes a habit if you do it for long enough.

Splitting 1 entree (and perhaps 1 appetizer) is a great way to go out for dinner and enjoy all the foods you really like and still maintain a weight loss program.

Give it a try if you like and let me know how it goes.

John