What's up, guys, Jeff Cavaliere, athleanx.com.
So there's one question that I have been asked more than any other over the last 10 years
is, Jeff, how do you stay as lean as you do all year around? You literally never change.
Well, I take that as a compliment, but honestly, it comes down to the way that
I approach nutrition. You see, there's no deals with the devil. I didn't promise my firstborn son.
I don't take TRT. I don't take any drugs I never have in my entire life. There's nothing that I
do special except my special ability, I guess, to stay incredibly consistent with my nutrition.
Because quite frankly, I've talked about it in the past, I don't even really do cardio. I do enough
just to maintain some shape and to focus a little bit on my heart, but I don't do nearly as much as
I should, but it's certainly not a factor in how I remain as lean as I do. It all comes through my
nutrition. Now that being said, people say, Well, Jeff, I know that, and I've watched your full day
of eating video, but maybe you can update that for us. You can make another one.
Well, guess what? It would be a pretty boring video because it's going to be the same
exact information that I gave you back then. As matter of fact, the same thing pretty much that
I'm eating. And it's the fact that I can have that consistency that I believe leads me to the levels
of body fat that I demonstrate consistently. However, there is a system and the system
that's in place here is what is allowing me to do that all the time and to remain as lean as I do.
So I want to share that exact system with you here today so you can actually start to do the same.
Now that being said, depending upon what your desired level of leanness is, it's going to be
either easier or more difficult to actually get to where I'm at. And that's a good thing because not
all of us want to be Jeff Cavaliere lean, it might not suit you or your purposes in life. As a matter
of fact, a lot of us feel much more comfortable in the mid teen range and body fat levels,
and they want to stay there. And the good news is you're not going to have to be as consistent
as what I'm showing you here, but the rules will still help you out to a great degree.
If you want to get even leaner than that somewhere in between, again, you're just going to have to
sort of up the ante on your consistency, but you're not going to have to veer away from the
rules. So no matter where you want to be in terms of your level of leanness, you're going to be able
to apply exactly what I show you here today. All right, so first up here I'd like to think
is the cornerstone of how I do things, because if you can't do this, it's never going to work.
And that is, you need to eat what you like. Notice I didn't say eat whatever you like,
because that's not the way we play this game. In order to get lean, you're going to have to have
smarter nutritional choices. You're going to have to have foods that are a little bit
lower in caloric density, but higher and nutrient value and my diet is filled with those selections.
But it's not perfect, as you'll see again, if you watch that full day of eating video.
However, you need to find the foods that are going to fit into that criteria that you still really,
really like. Because if you're forcing foods into your daily meal plan, you're never going to be
able to stick to that plan for the long term, so it's never going to become a lifestyle. For me,
there's not a single food that I put in my body every day that I don't thoroughly enjoy. And I
mean that. I thoroughly enjoy every food that I eat, if I didn't, I couldn't maintain that
consistency. And there are so many food options out there that make this job so much easier.
And not just foods, but the way that we put them together, the recipes, how we eat them,
how we prepare them. You can make any food incredibly enjoyable, you just have to
experiment and take the time to find those foods that you like. Because when you do,
the whole deprivation basis of a diet is no longer there. There's no longer the period
of being on the diet that ultimately ends off the diet. And that is where you start,
because if you don't like what you eat, you can't eat what you're eating.
The next thing you have to do is pick an approach and stick with it. And again, there are a lot of
different approaches here, some that I agree with, some I don't really agree with at all. However,
if you're able to take an approach and stick with it and have consistency for the long term,
I'm talking year after year after year because that's the only acceptable form for me,
then by all means, continue to do that. I'm not a believer in keto. However, if you can
eat that way and that has worked for you, then go ahead and eat that way. I'm not forcing you
into my method, but since this video is about my methods, I'll share with you what I did.
I went the low-fat approach, and the reason why I did that was for two reasons. Number one,
I realized that the caloric density of fats on a gram per gram basis was more than twice as much as
proteins and carbohydrates. Secondly, I realized that at the time I had a lot of fat in my diet.
So what I did was make the easy cut. I always urge you guys to make the cut that you think
might be the easiest to make. But what I did was make a giant mistake here because I went to the
extreme. I figured less fat is better than a lot of fat, and no fat is even better than
some fat. And that was a big mistake because I went all the way down to pretty much the
no fat level and my body paid for it. I wasn't able to stay warm, even in the sunshine,
I had problems with my vision. I talked about all these things before photosensitivity,
I went to the extreme and I paid for it. So what I did was what a smart person would do, I hope,
is make some modifications back in the other direction. And I gradually added fat back in,
but not to the levels I did before. And because again, the caloric density of the foods that I
was replacing those fats with was less, I was able to create that caloric deficit needed to
get to a leaner, body fat level. I urge you again to find the method that works for you, but again,
if you're looking for the one, that might be the easiest to do if your diet's already high in fat,
that's the one I'm going to suggest you do. And so the next rule here is one that I believe
is very important for my success, and it can do the same thing for you. And that is I eat
at specific times during the day. I eat around the clock or based upon the clock. And no, it has
nothing to do with optimizing the anabolic window, which is another thing we learned a long time ago
doesn't really exist. However, what it does is it provides a level of consistency because I eat
only during specific times, each and every day and not outside of those times. And the consistency
comes because it prevents me from eating for any other reason other than it's time to eat.
Now it just so happens that my body has built up to a point where I am hungry every time those
windows of time open up and come around. However, I'm not eating because I'm hungry throughout the
rest of the day. And oftentimes we just eat when we're hungry, and that opens up a Pandora's Box
because we know when we just do that, we become grazers and grazers, become big calorie consumers
and trying to get into a deficit is very difficult when you're mindlessly grazing. Not to mention the
fact that a lot of us confuse hunger for a lot of different things. Even thirst can make someone
feel hungry and if you're eating every time you're thirsty, you're doing the wrong thing.
So what I do is I pick a window in the morning. Again, they are about half hour windows somewhere
in the morning for breakfast, a mid-morning time, a lunch time, a mid-afternoon time,
a nighttime, and then once again, my last meal of the day, which is dinner.
That being said, I never eat outside of those times because I don't want to allow myself to
become susceptible to any other emotion or feeling or craving. And by becoming mechanical about it,
I'm also a lot more prepared for my meals throughout the day. So if I'm not going to
be in the office or if I'm going to be out and about, I can plan ahead and make sure
that I have the meals available to me or a place that I can get the meals available to
me that are going to allow me to eat and stay consistent with how I do things.
Now ironically, this is actually similar to something like intermittent fasting.
Not at all in terms of the biochemistry and the hormonal reactions that occur
from a six-hour eating window throughout a 24-hour day. But because the rules are in place, I am
confined to these specific eating periods that allow me to maintain this consistency that keeps
me on track and prevents the overage that would occur if I was eating outside these windows.
Which brings me to my fourth rule here, and that is the institution of more eating periods
throughout the day. I already mentioned that mid-morning and mid-afternoon eating period, not
everybody does that. But what happens is if you're going to eat by the clock and you're going to try
to stay consistent, you're going to find that hunger may wind up beating you. In other words,
the hunger may wind up eclipsing your ability to withstand till that next time period of eating.
And to overcome that, you simply institute another eating period. I didn't start off by eating that
many times during the day. I started off, like everybody else, breakfast, lunch and dinner.
But when I started to realize that I was consistently having that mid-morning craving
and instead of just mindlessly eating throughout that period, every time I started to get a little
bit hungry at 9:30 at 10:15 at 11:00 at 11:45, I confined it to that rule of eating within that
period of the mid-morning snack and everything went away. To the point where, as I said,
my body became accustomed to that time period, and now I don't find myself getting hungry until that
time period. Remember, you just ate at, let's say, 8:30 or 9:00 in the morning whenever your
breakfast was, you're not going to be immediately hungry. So we're only talking about the ability
to withstand maybe 30 or 45 minutes of hunger. But when that next eating window is approaching
and you don't have to wait all the way till lunch, it's going to set you up for success.
So those four simple rules forming the basis of how I eat, the question oftentimes becomes,
But Jeff, how do you break the rules? When do you break the rules? When is your cheat day?
And see guys I already talked about it many times on this channel before, there is no cheat day for
me. Cheat meals, you know, again a couple of times a year, once a year for my carrot cake.
I don't have the cravings for the cheat meals. And what cheat meals are implying
is that you're departing from the restrictions on the ordinary meals that you're eating. You see,
there's an instant comparison between your cheat meals being the ones that are much more enjoyable
and the meals you're eating every day being not so enjoyable. But if you go back to rule number one,
I made you pick the foods that are incredibly enjoyable to you from the very beginning.
And when you form the basis of your eating plan around those incredibly enjoyable foods,
you're not going to feel the need to have cheat meals as often. But we talk about again,
what is your desired level of leanness, because that matters. If your desired level of leanness
is to be in the mid-teens and look damn good in the process, well, you're going to find the
ability to have your cheat meals more often. As a matter of fact, the cheat days can actually exist
at that level. And that might give you the sanity that you need to stay consistent. Because again,
consistency is the key and consistency can occur at all the different levels of body fat.
Remaining consistently in your mid-teens and body fat levels is a good thing, and if you
have to do that through the use of cheat days or cheat meals, then by all means do it. If
you have to do that through a different style of eating, they all end up in caloric restriction,
then do that as long as you can stick with it for the long term. Guys, the point is how you
eat will determine how you look. If you can get your nutrition in check, you're going to
be able to get your body fat down to a leaner level. How lean you want to go is up to you.
The more you want it to be lean, the more you're going to have to sort of set these rules in place
and stick with them a little bit of varying here, and there are going to be able to still
allow you to look damn good without having to get so extreme. But I will tell you this,
the more that you can stick to the rules, the easier sticking to the rules becomes.
That's what rules are there for in the first place. When the rules are in place and you don't
allow yourself to veer outside those rules, your life becomes a lot more consistently predictable.
And when it's consistently predictable, your ability to look a certain way is going to be
that much easier. At that point, guys, it's up to you to what level you want to do it to.
If you're looking for that video again, how I break down exactly what I eat,
you can find that here. If you're looking for a meal plan that reflects exactly how I eat from
a day-to-day basis, you can find it in our Athlean-X Programs at athleanx.com. If you
find the video helpful. Make sure you leave your comments at thumbs up. Let me know what else you
want me to cover, and I'll do my best to do that for you in the days and weeks ahead.
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