What's going on guys.
Sean Nalewanyj, SeanNal.com, Real ScienceAthletics.com.
And in this video we're talking about the subject of intuitive eating.
So can you lose fat effectively without any form of caloric tracking at all by just estimating
your intake on the go and eating according to your body's hunger signals and based on
how you feel?
Before I jump into the subject, if you're new to the channel and you find these tips
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So first off, is it possible to lean down and draw body fat consistently without tracking
daily calories?
The answer of course is yes, it is possible and there are plenty of people out there who
do it.
However, as a general rule, I'd say this mostly applies only in specific situations.
The first is if you're in the more intermediate to advanced stages with your fitness plan
and you already have previous experience with dietary tracking.
So you have a good general idea as to what your maintenance calories are, a rough idea
of the nutritional content of the foods you're eating, and you know how to listen to your
body and adjust your diet throughout the day in order to land around the proper calorie
and macro ranges for yourself.
So you've already put in the work previously to gain that skill and now you're able to
put things more on autopilot.
That's a situation where intuitive eating will often work just fine, and as a longer
term goal, most people ultimately will want to progress to that stage, because I don't
think anybody out there really wants to be or needs to be a tracking calories for the
rest of their life, aside from temporary phases where maybe you're really trying to dial in
your results more closely.
So a more intuitive style of eating should be the ultimate end goal for most people.
And then the second situation would be, if your current diet is just really poor overall.
So you're taking in a lot of obvious things that you should be limiting, like, you know,
fast food, big restaurant meals, sodas, sweet dessert types of foods, just really calorie
dense items that pack a lot of calories into a small volume of food.
If you go ahead and just clean things up in general by replacing a good chunk of those
foods with minimally processed whole foods, you start eating more protein and veggies
to control your appetite, you start exercising and expending more calories throughout the
day, then yes, chances are that you're going to start losing body fat even without specifically
tracking anything, at least in the initial stages.
So in those two scenarios, intuitive eating is a viable option that can work quite well.
However, if you're still in the beginner stages with your fat loss program, and you don't
have a lot of knowledge in terms of your body's daily caloric needs and the caloric content
of the foods you're eating.
Your diet isn't horrible right now, maybe it's not ideal, but it's not too bad.
And you're truly serious about getting a handle on your health and fitness, losing body fat
and setting yourself up in the best way possible over the long term, then tracking your diet
for at least a temporary period, is probably going to be your best bet, and it could very
well make the difference between success and failure with your fat loss goals.
It's become really common nowadays for people to talk about the benefits of just eating
intuitively and "Listening to your body," and a lot of people out there want to sort
of demonize caloric tracking as if it's this evil, unhealthy thing, but the reality is
that your body, in terms of the natural cravings and the natural hunger signals that get put
out, it's not some sort of perfect system because it's wired up for a much different
environment than the one that we live in today.
Okay.
The modern world as it is now, with the endless abundance of food that we have everywhere,
and not just that, but hyper-palatable, calorically dense, inexpensive food in large portion sizes
that you barely even need to expend any calories to obtain, that's not normal to our physiology.
Okay, this world is the blink of an eye in evolutionary history.
We evolved as hunter gatherers, where food wasn't always readily available.
High Fat, high sugar items were very rare, which is why they taste so good to us, because
if you've found something like that 50,000 years ago it was a very valuable item, and
our bodies are basically programmed to say when there's food eat.
So if you take that natural evolutionary intuition and then you transport it into today's world,
chances are that you're going to naturally revert to at best eating at your calorie maintenance
level or eating in a calorie surplus, which is why obesity rates are so high and they
just keep getting higher.
And no matter what anybody tries to tell you, the underlying driver of fat loss is net energy
balance.
It comes from eating in a caloric deficit where you're burning more energy than you're
consuming.
Eating a clean and healthy diet is great, but it doesn't matter how healthy you eat
if your calories are just too high, period.
And keep in mind that your body is programmed for survival first and foremost, and so, if
you go into a calorie deficit during the day but you have nothing on paper to hold you
accountable because you're not tracking anything, and you know, you feel that little bit of
background hunger at certain points, that is completely normal during a fat loss phase,
but you're in this sort of intuitive eating mindset and you automatically assume that
this is a bad thing, and that you need to listen to your body, chances are that you're
going to overeat.
Maybe not into a surplus, but at least not into a sufficient deficit that you need to
lose fat at a reasonable rate.
Excessive calorie restriction is obviously not a good thing.
It's definitely not what I promote if you follow my content, not in terms of calories
or in terms of food choices, but there's still no way around the fact that in order to lose
body fat there does have to be a certain amount of restriction involved.
Fat Loss is a restrictive process by nature, just like fat gain is the opposite.
You know, people gain fat by overindulging and so if you want to go in the opposite direction,
you have to do the opposite.
So the bottom line is this.
If you're currently following an intuitive eating approach, you're not tracking anything
at all, but you're getting your desired result, you're dropping body fat consistently, you're
losing inches, your training performance in the gym is on point, then that's great and
you should just keep doing that.
I'm not saying you can't do it.
More experienced trainees can usually do it.
People who are a bit more on the overweight side can often do it to some degree, like
I mentioned before, and then there are always just general exceptions as well.
Some people out there can never track a calorie in their life, and just stick to a relatively
clean diet and get into their desired shape that way, especially if their physique goals
are a bit more modest and they aren't necessarily trying to get that lean or that muscular,
or if they just have really good genetics.
However, for the majority of people, I would say that tracking your intake, at least in
the beginning stages, is going to significantly increase your chances for success and maximize
the chances that you'll actually be able to maintain your goal body fat percentage over
the long term.
It's just a really valuable skill to have in your overall nutritional toolbox.
Again, the big picture goal for pretty much anybody should be to eventually transition
into an intuitive eating style, but it's not something that most people can do overnight
and it's a skill that you learn with time.
You have to learn how to operate in this much more tempting high calorie environment that
we live in now, and keeping track of your calorie intake and your approximate macronutrient
intake over a sustained period is the best way for you to go ahead and do that.
And in terms of specific tracking, I don't think it's necessary to track every single
gram of protein, carbs and fat that goes into your mouth.
So you don't need to track exact macros, but I think a good middle ground approach is to
track your total calories, and then just roughly estimate your macros to ensure that you're
getting in enough total protein and fat, and that things are reasonably balanced overall.
And as far, as specific numbers go, a calorie deficit of about 300 to 500 calories below
maintenance.
That's a good sweet spot for most people, that will have you dropping body fat at a
significant rate, but while also keeping hunger and energy levels under control.
And then, you'd want to aim for about 0.8 grams of protein per pound of body weight
daily as a minimum, and about 25% of your total calories from fat as a minimum.
Okay.
There's no perfect macro breakdown, but those figures will work really well for most people
in most situations.
If you did find this advice helpful and you want to learn exactly how to bring this all
together in terms of a fully structured step-by-step program so that you can lose fat and gain
muscle as efficiently as possible, then make sure to take my physique quiz over at quiz.SeanNal.com
because that'll get you started with, not just the proper nutrition plan, but also the
proper training plan for you based on your specific goals, body type and experience level.
You can click up here for that, or use the link in the description box below.
On the supplementation side of things, you can also visit RealScienceAthletics.com to
check out my no BS science-based formulas to help fully streamline your program and
get the very best results possible, the link for that is also in the description.
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Thanks for watching guys and I'll see you in the next video.