2980: 7 Diet Hacks to Stay Lean During the Holidays

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MindPump. MindPump. With your hosts, Sal DiStefano, Adam Schafer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded health, fitness, and entertainment podcast in history. This is MindPump. Today's episode, we talk about seven diet hacks that keep you lean during the holidays. Look, this episode is brought to you by Legion Supplements. These are the world's best supplements for muscle building and fat loss. Every batch is third-party tested. Quality is number one. So Legion does not sprinkle in a little bit of this, a little bit of that. They use efficacious doses that clinical trials show work of compounds that have data that back them. Their supplements are legit. They don't mess around. They have great protein powders, a great whey protein. Egg protein. They sell creatine, multivitamin, and much more. And if you go through our link, you can buy one, get one 50% off. 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And again, everything's 60% off. Go to mapsfitnessproducts.com and then use the code BlackFriday for the discount. All right, real quick. If you love us like we love you, why not show up by rocking one of our shirts, hats, mugs, or training gear over at mindpumpstore.com. I'm talking right now. Hit pause. Head on over to mindpumpstore.com. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. The holidays are here. The average person gains something like 8 to 15 pounds over the holidays here in America. But check it out. You don't have to. In fact, we're going to give you seven diet hacks. These are easy diet hacks that will keep you lean during the holidays. Plus, you'll get to enjoy the holidays. Let's get to it. I like this. I mean, my mind is here as we approach Thanksgiving. We're, you know, both on this diet kick. It's also kind of like. I know it's not a holiday, but, you know, traveling to Disneyland, I used some of these tactics, too. Like, so, anytime I'm traveling, we're going to be around just a bunch of food that is not ideal. Some of the stuff that you're talking about here are strategies that you can use. So, this is, even though it's geared towards the holidays because we're approaching the holidays, I think this works in other scenarios, too. It does. And, you know, here's the deal. Like, yeah, you can go into the holiday with your own food and track your macros. It doesn't make it weird. But here's the deal. Like, holidays are about connecting with people. And so, these tips that we're going to give are so that you could still enjoy yourself. And you just got a few rules for yourself that really limit the, you know, quote, unquote, damage that can be caused. I do want to be clear, by the way. You know, Thanksgiving, Christmas, maybe a few days in between, like, it's not going to make you gain 10 pounds of body fat. It's the mentality around the holidays that tends to cause that problem because it's not just one or two days or three days. It becomes, you know, weekly. It becomes weeks of this kind of thing. So, we're going to talk, though, specifically about the holiday themselves. So, I'll start with this. Number one, this is a good black or white kind of hard stop type of thing. Now, if you have had issues in the past with restricting your eating, if you have dysfunctional eating in this way, I would skip this one tip. But for everybody else, this is a good way to set yourself up going into a holiday meal like Thanksgiving, which is you fast the day of. Okay? So, I know 2 o'clock, we're going to go have Thanksgiving dinner. I come from a family. We have a big Italian family. We don't just have Thanksgiving meat, you know, food, traditional Thanksgiving food. We also have Italian food that we throw on top of it. It's a big, you know, deal, a lot of food. It's a lot of stuff. And if I just don't eat leading into it, which is totally fine, I've already, I'm starting at zero. In other words, if I eat, you know, 2,500 calories at the Thanksgiving meal, that's all I've eaten for the day versus if I have breakfast, lunch, and then I go. So, it's a really easy black or white thing. Yeah, it is. I'll add a little bit to that because I'm. I'll tell you what I'm going to do as we head into Thanksgiving is I'll actually not only fast the day of, but I'll run at least a good three or four pretty low calorie days leading up to it. So, I'm fully depleted. And when I eat that meal, a good portion of that is just kind of filling up glycogen stores. You might not even make up for those three days. Exactly. And so, if I do a good job of staying pretty low for a good three, four days heading into that, it gives me. It gives me a lot more of a buffer to kind of eat a higher calorie day. So, and I'll still follow some of the other strategies that you'll go and talk about, but I like to do that too. So, it really kind of buffers that. Cool. Now, the next one, it really has to do with kind of eating order and some rules around what you're eating that leverage satiety. So, satiety, when I use the word satiety, what I'm referring to is just you feeling satisfied. Okay. So, cravings, hunger, gone. You also have this feeling of. Like, I think I'm good. And when we look at the data on what produces satiety or what takes longer to produce satiety or what produces satiety first on a calorie per calorie basis, we see some pretty clear things. Protein being at the top, right? So, protein and fiber, but protein especially, it's at the top of satiety producing effects. So, when you look at the three macronutrients, fat, carbohydrates, and protein, protein produces by far the most satiety. Okay. Meaning, if you eat 500 calories of protein versus 500 calories of fat or carbs, it's the protein that's going to make you feel like, I'm good. I don't need to eat more. Plus, if you're seeking that out first thing and to your earlier point of like, you know, kind of fasting leading into that, now you're eating protein first, like your blood sugar is going to be a lot more stabilized the rest of the day. 100%. And so, here's what you do, right? You go into the meal. You're making your plate, your first plate, make it a protein and vegetable plate. Now, you're not telling yourself, I'm not going to have that. I'm going to have more. What you're doing is you're leveraging satiety. Like, you know, I see some meat here. I see some meatballs. I see some turkey. I see some, you know, some broccoli or some vegetables. That's what my first plate is going to look like. And if I want to go back for a second one afterwards, then I can do so. But what I'm doing again is I'm leveraging satiety. And if you do that, what you'll find is after that first plate, it's a lot easier to say no to some of the other things. There's another large value to this strategy also is, okay, let's assume that… Leading up to this, you trained either that day or the day before or two days before that, right? You got to lift in before. And you prioritize protein. And let's say you still over-consume calories. But if I hit my protein targets and I over-consume calories and I train the day before or the day before that, there's a good chance that those additional calories get partitioned over to building muscle. Right. Because being a higher calorie than what you're burning isn't necessarily bad if it comes with muscle. No. If I got to recover and build, some of that's going to get partitioned. But let's say I just over-indulge on fats and carbohydrates and I'm low on protein, then my body doesn't get what it needs to recover from the workout and to build the muscle. It just ends up getting stored as body fat. That's right. And so there's another reason why that is such a… I mean, the reason you guys are talking about right now is controlling calories and helping with satiety and blood sugar and insulin, all valid, important reasons for this to be a valid strategy. But even more importantly… I think is that, well, like, let's say I do over-consume on Thanksgiving, which there's a good chance I might. If I at least prioritize protein first and I hit my protein goals and targets, those additional calories will go to some good. That's right. Won't go to just being stored as body fat. Whereas if I just kind of throw my hands up and go, I'm going to eat whatever today… And your protein's low, but you eat a bunch of calories. Protein's low and I eat a ton of mashed potatoes and gravy and a lot of things that we can't eat on a day like that, then all I end up doing is storing body fat and or potentially paring down muscle because I didn't… I didn't give my body adequate protein to sustain the muscle. I went from training a bit heavy that day before, but I always do. So do I. So I think that's, like, this is why this is such a great strategy, not just for satiety-producing reasons, but also, hey, again, buffers for that in case I overeat a little bit. Let's build some muscle. That's good. Yeah, at least I'll build some muscle. 100%. Now, here's the second part of that. When you go back to get your second plate and now you're giving… Now you're like, okay, now I can eat some of the carbs and other stuff. Have a little bit of protein on that plate, too. This is what I do. So I'll go for the first meal, protein, vegetables, go back, eat, enjoy myself. I want to go back for a second, you know, dish. I'll throw a little bit of protein on there, and then I'll throw the carbs on. And this just does a good job of reducing the amount of calories. If I do the reverse and I go there and I get all the less satiety-producing things… It stokes up that craving. I am hitting way more. I mean, I'm significantly higher, like 50% more calories. Totally. Because I don't hit satiety as fast. Here's the next one. Only drink water. Now, I'm not necessarily referring to alcohol here because I think a little bit of alcohol with your family and friends, like, I'm not one of those guys that's like, don't drink alcohol on Thanksgiving with your family. No, no, enjoy your wine. Enjoy this. I'm speaking mostly to the stuff that's a waste of time. There is some value to alcohol, right? Yes, it has calories, but when I'm having a glass of wine with my uncle or my cousin who I haven't seen in a while and we're connecting, there's an actual value there. There's not much value in a Coke or Sprite or Fruit Punch. Cider. It's just a bunch of sugar. So just drink water. And personally, if I'm going to have extra calories, I'm not going to have it in the soda or the juice. I'm going to have it in the food if I want those extra calories. One of the best ways that I've been able to restrict this without feeling like I'm restricting is by focusing on the first one where you're talking about eating protein. If I just tell myself I can drink as much alcohol, have as much dessert, I can do whatever I want, so long as I hit what I need macro-wise, protein-wise first, what I find ends up happening is it's 1 o'clock or 2 o'clock and maybe people are starting to break out the drinks and I'm like, I'm only at 60 grams of protein right now. I still got to get to my protein before I indulge in that. But I can if I really want. If I want to have those drinks, I will. But let me get to my protein goals first. And then what I end up finding out is that by the time I get to my protein goal, I'm like, I just really don't feel like anything with extra calories or sugar. Yeah, it doesn't sound as appealing. What it's appealing is when I'm still hungry, I haven't eaten, people are like, oh, that sounds like a nice filler. But that's the first thing to lead you to the extra calories and not hitting protein. If I just tell myself, okay, after I do that, then I'll have that dessert or then I'll have that drink that has calories, it's crazy how much it limits itself. Here's what happens to me. With this, Adam, is I'll do the protein, the vegetables, you know, I'll only drink water. I'm feeling pretty satisfied. Dessert comes out. And rather than eating a big plate of dessert, where it's like I'm feeding myself a meal, I'll have some. Yeah. And I'll enjoy it. Because again, there's nothing wrong with enjoying the pie that my aunt made that she only makes on Thanksgiving. But there's a big difference between a small slice of it and me enjoying the flavor and connecting versus, yeah, I mean, like three pieces of it. And you're just exploding your butt into your pants. That's right. Here's another one. Eat slowly. So one of the reasons why, and they've got great data on this, by the way, when people overeat, they also eat significantly faster. In fact, if you just slow down your eating, you'll automatically cut your consumption by like 15%. That's a lot, everybody. Let me explain that for a second. You eat a thousand calorie meal, that's 150, 200 less calories with the same food if you just slow down. Now, why is this a thing? Well, satiety hits faster than the food that you throw in your mouth. Yeah. In other words, the faster I could shovel things in my mouth, the longer it's going to take for my satiety to kick in, and I've already eaten tons of calories and created some damage. So you just eat slowly. Now, what this means for me personally is I don't drink a lot of water while I eat. This forces me to chew my food thoroughly. Because what I used to do in the past is I'd take a bite, chew a couple times, wash it down, and I was eating so quickly. When I'm like, I'm going to chew my food, it slowed me down significantly. I have had. I've had clients in the past who've done this. In between every bite, they put their fork down on the table. It sounds silly, but I've had clients lose eight to 10 pounds from doing nothing other than that because they were chronic fast eaters. So they put the food in their mouth, put the fork down, hands together, chew their food, pick up the fork, and they're like, I can't believe I'm losing weight. Allows you to get proper signals from your body that way as well. Well, if there was ever a conducive holiday to this, it's Thanksgiving. I mean, if there was ever a time where sitting at the table for two hours or three hours was normal behavior. It's this holiday. It's like, this is when you have just one meal, aunts and uncles and family that you haven't seen forever. And there's lots of people that are trying to get at plates and food. It's just like, man, there was ever a time for you to eat a little bit, talk for 10, 15 minutes, eat a little bit more talk. I mean, this is the holiday. I get the routine of the night where you have a slotted amount of time there. This is dinner time. Then we get ready for bed and we got work tomorrow. But it's like, this is a holiday. Most everybody is probably lounging with their family all day long. Most Thanksgiving. Meals I've ever been a part of our hour or three hour long type of events. And so it's like, dude, don't rush it. Just take your time. It makes it so enjoyable. It really does make it more enjoyable. You savor every bite you're connecting with the people around you. And it brings so much more value to the holidays. Little side story. Just, you know, I grew up, I grew up in a big Italian family, you know, stereotypically, you know, a lot of stereotypes of Italians around food and whatever. And, you know, I'll tell you what, a lot of them are true and I can explain why. I mean, you know, my grand, my family. My family grew up very poor in Sicily and so they didn't have lots of food. That's where they had it. It's like, you better eat it all type of deal. Right. But when I was a kid, just to see you guys understand, like how important this one was for me, when I was a kid, my grandmother would give a $5 to the kid who finished her plate first. We were encouraged to eat so fast as kids that this became a part of who we are to the point where we're as adults, like my siblings and I have identified this. We're like, dude, why are we racing? It's like, oh yeah. Cause Nonna used to give us a Tiber. Whoever eats first gets $5 and we would, and it was really just this kind of dysfunctional relationship. Once I learned to slow down, I connected more with the people around me and ended up eating less and I ended up feeling better at the end of my meal. Whereas when I used to eat real fast, man, I would, at the end of my meal, I was like, I need to go lay down. Cause I think, uh, I think you like real time feedback. Otherwise. Yeah. Later it hits you. And you're just like in this insulin coma. A hundred percent. It also takes us to the next one, which is, uh, and this is just self-awareness. Eat until you're satisfied, not until you're full. Before you get full, before you feel like I can't fit any more food in my stomach, there is a point in which you're satisfied. Now there's an old Japanese saying, and I don't know what it is, but I know what it is translated, which is eat. I think it's eat until 80%. Is that what it is? Yeah. Eat until 80%. That's where I first, uh, I first learned this and I thought about this and this is, I used to coach my clients this way. It's like, before you get to the point where you're like, oh my God, I can't breathe. I ate too much. There was a point where you were kind of like, okay. And the difference between being okay and satisfied and being full is hundreds of calories. So just kind of be aware, like, am I satisfied? I think I'm satisfied. I'll stop right there. This is a close to home for me right now, since we've been on this diet kick and I'm actually controlling, measuring and weighing my portions right now. And it's wild how this slowly creeps on you over time and you don't even realize it. Like what I thought was like a normal portion size. It is. It's probably double of what I need. And like, now that I'm portioning it out and I look at, I'm like, oh my God, that's hardly any food. That's what eight ounces looks like. Yeah. And then I eat it. And then I'm like, I'm actually fine. Could I eat more? Sure. I could, but I'm 80% satisfied. And if I literally just walk away, I'm not like walking away going like, oh my God, I'm so hungry still. I'm like, actually I'm fine, but it's retraining yourself of what that portion is. So if you've never done that, I think there's a lot of value in just kind of weighing and measuring. At least where you're, you're considered portions are because I feel like Americans have done that. And we've done that. If you go eat out restaurants, you go places. It's wild. What? It's encouraged. In fact, we ask each other this like, Hey, are you full? Do you feel like you could eat more? It's like encouraged to eat to the point where you can't eat anymore. Yeah. And it's just a self-awareness thing. It's like, am I satisfied? And what you may find is, yeah, I think I am satisfied actually makes it a lot easier to say no, because you realize that you're satisfied. And at this point now I'm going beyond satisfied, feeling satisfied. Yeah. Sometimes this makes you feel bad. We all know what that feels like at the end of a meal where you're, you're sitting back and you're like, okay, I can't breathe right now. This is uncomfortable. Yeah. And I'm not having a good time. Uh, this next one's one of my favorites, uh, and this, I just love doing this because it contributes to the holiday, uh, is having a family walk after the meal. Uh, I started doing this years ago, um, just to improve digestion. And I was good. I remember the first time I did this, I was going to go outside and go on a walk, uh, by myself. But I'm like with my family. So I tell my cousin, Hey, you guys, you guys want to go on a walk? And everybody's like, yeah, let's go on a walk. And then my aunt's like, I'll come with you. And then my uncle, I'll come with you. And so then we all went on this nice, like 45 minute slow walk as a family after the meal. Now, walking improves digestion, improves insulin sensitivity, um, it's activity. It's also bonding. It's also one of my favorite conversations that I have with my family is a post meal walk. And it's great. Everybody takes a break. It's a walk. It's a walk. It's a walk. It's a walk. It's a walk. Uh, it's a walk. It's a walk. It's a walk. It's a walk. It's a walk. It's a walk. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And we always, and I'll probably still do that because we have that beautiful trail back there by our house. And so I'm hoping that it'll turn into a walk into doing some pull-ups and just messing with the weights. Yeah, you're not going crazy. Yeah, nothing formal or anything like that, just to kind of move the bodies. And so I'm going to do it and I'm going to see which of my family members like kind of kick in and do it with me. And if it becomes a thing or not, there's quite a few of them that are bought in already to the walk. And so we'll keep that because I don't want it to, I don't want to replace that. And then now nobody wants to do the workout because that seems like, so I like walking because I think it's low barrier for everybody. Grandma can walk. Everybody can walk. can walk and so walking i think is a must i'm really going to try and see if i can encourage everybody to kind of lift weights we'll see how it goes i love it so yeah what you were referring to earlier is this is now a year i want to say 12 uh where the day after thanksgiving my cut there's a lot of guy cousins we all grew up together we're now all either either 40 and up kind of mid 40s to like 40 or 39 and so after thanksgiving the day after we all meet up together and work out but really it's just we're hanging out it's not really a workout i mean we do some lifts but we all just hang out together and it's such a great and rights kind of stuff yeah well not anymore now we're in mid 40s everybody's injured you know it ends up being a lot more talking than working out i know we won't work it out now but it's a good time it's totally a good time so here's the last thing and this is really just a mental shift okay because i know i know what it feels like to connect with food at family holidays but it's really about connecting over food because that feels very different like if we're sitting together i haven't seen you guys in a while right you're gonna be with family you haven't seen in a while friends that you love hopefully these are the people you invite over your house for this meal um we can connect over the meal it's not about the meal now the meal helps us connect you know what that looks like that looks like oh my god did you try this oh that's so good oh i like what you made and then we're having good conversations versus we're all eating as fast as we can and we're all stuffing ourselves and every once in a while somebody says something so the holiday is about connecting you know food is about connecting over the meal and it's not about the meal it's about food is a part of it but it's connecting with each other so you can connect over food it's very different than connecting with the food where it becomes about the food itself and it is a it is a mental shift but when you make this mental shift you enjoy not only do you enjoy the holiday much more we actually enjoy the food much more yeah i think this one is this pairs with the you know taking your time and and talking and communicating like i think that that helps that process because it becomes like you said about the food you're like solely focused on that where if it becomes about everybody else in the experience yeah then that then that then that then that then that then organically that happens this conversation is going back and forth and so i think that and again there's no better holiday in my opinion to try and practice these these behaviors because thanksgiving is so conducive for them i mean it's set it's set up for us to congregate like that and i know our family we make we have a tradition where we go around and every single part and literally we have huge huge families it takes quite a while to go around and say what we're thankful for and so that's you know so it's like you know this this is uh and to me that it's a it is okay to enjoy the food and have the things that everybody has made and try all the stuff and i think if you follow these steps like we talked about uh maybe a few other ones that we talked about where you're maybe low calorie leading in or get a workout or two i think getting a good hard like justin said hard training session in the day before so my body's gonna need the calories to recover then if you turn around the next day after that and you go put it to work man you'd be surprised like it it's it would be very difficult to do a lot of negative damage in a single day if you follow those steps even if you gave yourself no guardrails of i can have as many calories as i want so long as i do these things hit my macros you know the stuff we talked about it's like good luck uh overeating enough to put even a pound of body fat on yourself like that very easy if you don't have any of these rules and you don't try any of this stuff you just go oh i'm gonna eat whatever i want and drink whatever i want and then yeah you absolutely could do some damage and that could bleed into the next few days oh yeah you can create yeah momentum which is you know just thinking about this ahead of time helps a lot so that doesn't happen totally look if you like the show come find us on instagram it's mind pump media we'll see you there thank you for listening to mind pump if your goal is to build and shape your body dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance check out our discounted rgb super bundle at mindpumpmedia.com the rgb super bundle includes maps anabolic maps performance and maps aesthetic nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by sal adam and justin to systematically transform the way your body looks feels and performs with detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos the rgb super bundle is like having sal adam and justin as your own 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