Episode 11 - Macro Bowls 101: The Easiest Way to Eat for Fat Loss, Energy & Consistency

business athletes what is going on so we have a great episode for you today macro bowls 101 the easiest way to eat for fat loss energy and consistency so I would say that one of the biggest challenges that most people have is their ability to just make healthy tasty simple meals at home that don't drown them in a bunch of meal prep that are easily adaptable based on their biofeedback that they can make in 10 minutes or less and quite frankly get to the point where you don't even have to track calories just to kind of preface this whole macro bowl concept I'll talk about what that is in a second but I haven't counted calories in 10 years I haven't counted calories in 10 years and I stay between 6 to 8% body fat all year round and I don't yo yo because of this principle that I'm about to teach you and I've seen the people that understand the value of this and actually implement it well holy moly they get amazing results absolutely amazing results and the thing is is that the thing I need you to understand is part of the reason why you might lose some weight or get some progress and then you burn out or you just feeling like you're dieting your face off or you're hungry all the time or as you get leaner your energy starts to drop all the things that challenge people out of it is because more than likely there's a lot of nutrients that you're missing in your diet quite frankly and so in the previous episodes of this podcast I talk about why getting blood work run is so important so I believe it's episode 3 I talk about the importance of blood work because that's going to give you a bearing on the different systems in the body that you need to focus on to then incorporate certain vitamins and minerals that certain foods will have that you then plug into your macro bowl formula so I'm gonna walk you through this whole process step-by-step I want this to be like a how-to guide so if you take notes from this you can go away and you can implement this system that I've built and it will be a game changer for you absolute game changer the first thing I want to say though is please if you enjoy this material head over and leave me a really positive review on whatever platform you are listening to this on please share these episodes if you get some value out of them take a screenshot share it tag me talk about it jump onto my profile when you see me sharing the podcast and jump in and leave a comment just because it helps with the algorithm it helps push it out there I want as many people to see this stuff as possible thank you so what is a macro bowl well there's another name for it too it's a poke bowl it's a P.O.K.E poke bowl but I call it a macro bowl and if you're in the U.S. there is a location for example called sweet green so sweet green is in a lot of different cities unfortunately we don't have one here in the mountains I wish we did but sweet green is a really good example of what a macro bowl food place looks like and it's a really useful tool anytime I travel you know especially if I'm with the musician Chris archery anytime I've been doing music videos and which been traveling and we're being in Hollywood or whatever we hit sweet green constantly it's the only place we actually go to and we'll refine and adapt the macro bowls on a day-to-day basis based on how his physiology is responding to get him primed and prepped for his music videos so it's a very cool tool because you can adapt it very very intuitively so your macro bowl is basically if and even if you go to Instagram or Pinterest and just search macro bowl you'll see a lot of different examples of what this looks like think of it like a plate or a bowl that has all its constituent parts so you can see in the meal it has a clear serving of protein it has a clear serving of carbohydrates that you carbohydrates it has a clear serving of fats or a condiment and it has typically has some rainbow vegetables red screens orange that type of thing I love macro bowl concepts because I found that it really reduces down decision fatigue it allows you to build out a well-oiled system where you can end up making these meals in six to eight minutes and I'm going to tell you how I do that actually because I think it would be a very useful thing for you to know and it allows you to be very repeatable trackable and scalable where for example if you are making your portions and you're using metric measuring cups which is I'm going to talk about forms of measurement in this conversation when you have different forms of measurement based on how your body's responding you can scale the portions up or down pretty easily so let's say for example you wanted some fat loss and you're doing one cup of rice in your macro bowl meal you then scale it to three quarters of the cup and then as you get any more results you scale it to half a cup and you keep modifying these portions up or down based on your goal so it's like a sliding scale such a user friendly tool the challenge that people face when they don't use a concept like this is they either have to track calories obsessively and what I find is often the meals are missing stuff when I see someone who doesn't really follow a macro bowl concept that well they often have a lot of gaps in their diet you know so when I'm looking at the meal for example they'll they'll typically undershoot the protein so the protein's undershot there's too many fat carbohydrates and fats in it by comparison so the ratio of the macro nutrients in their meals not very good so they're consuming a lot of calories but it's not a very good meal that's conducive with optimal muscle building and fat loss the other thing is that there's usually just a lot of other random stuff in the meal that just adds extra calories that I would say have a pretty low ROI you know there's a lot of there's a lot of cooking oils maybe they throw in a bunch of cheese or extra condiments and it's just extra calories man and look I get it some people enjoy those things but part of this is finding healthy food upgrades and modifications for things to allow you to get that high level of result and you got to remember at the end of the day you're free to do whatever you want you know I never force people to necessarily follow macro bowl principles but if someone's going to come to me and be frustrated with their result I'm gonna be like hey look in the mirror because what you're doing right now is not very accurate it's not very dulled and by comparison what I see other people do so you got to take ownership of that now the other thing that happens when you're sort of missing nutrients is that it just requires you to track calories more obsessively because there's more variables let's say for example if you have a couple of macro bowls you cycle through because you're cycling on such a steady consistent basis you almost don't even need to count calories but if you're making like random meals you know one night it's like spaghetti bolognese and the next night it's like macaroni and cheese and then it's a casserole and then you're making burgers it's so random and there's so many variables that you need to track calories constantly you'll be forever anchored to tracking calories and I find for a lot of people that just leads to burnout it really does and the other thing is that it's not very good for biofeedback because you're adding a ton of extra variables into the equation think about it if you're trying to really master your physiology like how you got response to stuff how your energy levels respond your insulin sensitivity it's pretty hard when you've got like a smorgasbord of different recipes that you're just rotating through one thing I'll tell you right out of the gate is that if you find yourself saying but I just love variety I want it I get bored that's because you're emotionally eating I'm sorry to say that but that it's because you are emotionally eating you're using food as an emotional tool to regulate yourself that's something that you have to work on you have to get to the point and most people do this people don't get fat because they choose to be fat they get fat because they don't know how to emotionally regulate themselves properly and they use food to try and do it and so if you find that you get bored really easy and you need lots of variety you've got to realize that you are using that as an emotional outlet and you need to actually cultivate and construct better patterns of behavior and better outlets to do that and I talk about that a lot in my business athlete council and my course material so like I like I always say get in there and get involved if you want because that's the place where we talk we fuse psychology in performance with diet and optimization the two and the two come hand in hand you cannot compartmentalize away diet and training from your life and your psychology you can have the best plan in the world but if someone's got a crappy mindset and they are very disempowered they will not be able to implement the tactics so it really does start from that mental game so when you're thinking about macro balls I love them like I said because it's easy it's repeatable it's a streamlined process you can eventually get to the point where you don't count any calories or track anything it's very intuitive and you can adapt things based off your biofeedback and based off how your body's responding on the fly and I just find for most people who are busy juggling a lot managing a lot of things it reduces down noise it reduces down decisions and it allows you to automate processes more that's why you get good results with this if you choose to finally dial it and stick to it and play with it so macro ball structure now I post just so you know if you jump into my Instagram and Facebook stories I post my typically my meal almost every day so if you're wondering what does a macro ball look like go and follow my stories and pay attention and at some point in the evening you'll probably see one of my meals pop up that's typically what they are and when it comes to a macro ball structure what I want you to think about as I want you to think about the different parts like the reason why it's called a macro ball is because macro nutrients protein carbs and fats so it's basically like you're sort of adding in each individual ingredient and then you're using a condiment or seasoning or flavoring to flavor the whole meal you can kind of mix it up and you eat it that way so initially you have your lean protein as an anchor that's going to be the first point of action what I would say right out of the gate if you need ideas for this is to just use AI and just say give me the top 10 best lean sources of protein you know and what I would tell you as I you know I like I say I've been plant-based for 13 years so I have my plant-based options but for anyone that is you know consume the animal-based products as well what I would tell you is I would focus on making sure that you rotate your protein sources a little bit that they're different lean sources of different things and I would even incorporate some plant-based proteins into the rotation I'm all about nutrient variety for most people the only things that you need to be aware of is when you get your blood work run what is the different markers in your body saying so for example some people if they have certain elevations and inflammation markers or maybe the APOB so the small particle LDL is elevated there might be things that they need to at least be aware of you know they might need to be more aware of you know the saturated fat that comes with some of these protein sources especially in meat they might need to be a little bit more aware of their red meat consumption and what they might be need to just moderate their whole egg consumption I'll never tell you that something is good or bad the context makes it so so based on your blood work some people can handle a lot of those things some people are very sensitive to them and I've seen a lot of genetic variability here so don't feel like you know just because someone said XYZ is good or bad you're good to find out if that's good or bad based on your context based on your blood work the other component of it is food sensitivity testing I think that that's it this is a very useful place to focus because initially people fall into this trap of consuming foods that they think are healthy for them and in all intents and purposes they are healthy foods but your physiology is sensitive to it so you almost have like a mild allergen response and that there's a whole process around gut health food sensitivity that I don't want to touch on in this episode but I have talked about when it comes to gut health where part of what you want to be focusing on it early on is optimizing your gut because your gut really is the sort of foundation layer to optimizing your health because if you're finding and this is very common that you can't really consume very diverse macro balls you know some people just do a carnivore diet they can't consume anything else that's because your gut is so wrecked that you can't tolerate a lot of the fibrous foods that's not a good thing and just avoiding it to me is not the solution what I would rather do and what I do with my students is I run them through some gut rehab protocols trust check that with their food sensitivities like an it like heavily well has a comprehensive food sensitivity test you can do it home and then that way when you're cross checking it with those sensitivities you can then make sure you incorporate the right things that's the first point of action so you might have in terms of lent you know proteins you might have salmon other high quality white fish whole eggs or egg whites tofu tempeh I mean I would even throw like lentils in there lentils are a more carbohydrate based protein but I'm going to talk about protein stacking in this conversation and you'll understand what I mean when I talk about protein stacking you can almost imagine what that is you know leaner cuts of high quality grass fed sort of game meat or red meat lean chicken lean turkey you know sardines tuna those all these types of things like I said find what works for you based on your blood work based on your food sensitivity testing and that that will give you a good start point and I would pick out of all of that stuff you know probably like three to four different protein sources and rotate through you don't have to do all ten you don't have to do everything one under the sun but pick you know two to four that you rotate through and just build out a process build out a structure like a structured system where maybe you sort of do one type of protein you know if you're doing two macro balls a day you're doing two different protein sources per day every day you're just rotating back and forth that's always a good start point and what I typically tell people also is that I would encourage you to think about the cook method here I'm going to talk more about the cook method at the end of the podcast but you know I typically will air fry a lot of stuff or I'll use our special like green pan which is like a ceramic based non-stick cookware so I don't have to add a bunch of cooking oils see oil in and of itself not necessarily a bad thing but I find it's just a calorie bomb it's so many extra calories for people and so they might have a you know four hundred calorie serving of protein and then they have an extra two or three hundred calories of oil cooked to it so that's why it's hard for people to lose weight so I would rather air fry stuff that or use my green pan ceramic cookware and then that way you get the crispy texture you get the intention but you don't get all the extra calories so there's a little little tip for you outside of the proteins I would then tell you that like your next focal point is your whole food starches so you start your carbohydrates now generally speaking with starches it's gonna fall into one or two camps you're gonna either have your root vegetables like sweet potato, Japanese sweet potato, purple potato, gold potato red potato I would even say lighter calorie versions of these things fall under like butternut squash and spaghetti squash which I'm gonna talk about a lot because they're a very good phallus tactic so root vegetables are one component and the other component is your grains and your sort of ancient grains so you can have everything from basmati rice, jasmine rice, wild rice, forbidden rice like black rice, quinoa, couscous, amaranth, all of those types of things now obviously some of these things are kind of novel and I would say there's nothing wrong with them I mean for example quinoa couscous is actually pretty cool it cooks very fast so if you really want to expect your cook time couscous is quite cool and it's good it's not bad I mean I kind of like it you know some people like quinoa just because it's got a slightly higher protein content I typically prefer jasmine rice or basmati rice or some type of like wild rice generally speaking I would have weighed just your typical like standard white rice I think jasmine and basmati are fine I think that brown rice or wild rice are better in terms of blood glucose response because the black or the wild or the forbidden or the brown they have a little bit more of a fiber content in them and so because they're a bit more fibrous remember fiber slows down blood glucose absorption which is really important for insulin sensitivity and stabilizing your energy levels that's why I tell people like if you eat a lot of bread or you eat a lot of pasta or you see a lot of white refined grains you'll find that you get tired like your energy goes up and down quite volatile because there's not a lot of fiber that's attached to those carbohydrates to slow down the absorption of the sugar and so it just spikes up and then it crashes so I like to remember it's more than just calories this is what I say to people all the time like if you were just to count out a hundred calories of you know standard white rice there's a hundred calories of a good quality you know forbidden or or black rice wild rice yes they're both a hundred calories and I would even say they're probably even kind of similar macros but one has more fiber attached so it's gonna have a better physiological response in your body it's about the ROI of the food that goes beyond just calories this is the concept I don't know if a lot of people truly understand this is why for example if I see someone just doing a serving of broccoli is their green food I'll tell them to use broccoli microgreens because that same cup of broccoli if you use the cup of microgreens you're going to have a lot more vitamins and minerals in that cup of microgreens microgreens are a lot more nutrient rich so calorie for calorie gram for gram cup for cup you want the foods that are gonna have the bigger ROI because that's what's gonna help reduce cravings that's what's gonna help improve energy levels that's what's gonna help slow down aging more all those things that's how I'm able to perform the way I do because the calories that I consume have such a high ROI to them that far surpasses what most people will be doing with their typical bromials this is I would say one of the most important concepts to understand now I would say that first of all look at your food sensitivity testing pay attention to your biofeedback I find a lot of people they don't always respond that well to grains some people tolerate them okay right and I will also add in another addition here is that there's a lot of good quality protein pastas now so like a lentil flour part an organic lentil flour pasta like there's a brand called Brahmi so you'll find chickpea flour pasta lentil flour pastas I don't think they're a bad thing because usually it's like organic lentils and that's all it is there's no additional stuff there's no additional refinement so you can use that as your carbohydrate allocation if you want it what I would tell you is that my general feeling is that in terms of the ROI of the food and especially the digestibility and the way it makes you feel and the satiety level so how long it keeps you feeling satisfied for is that root vegetables tend to be a bit of ROI they tend to be a bit of ROI so I'm a big fan say for example of Japanese sweet potato or purple potato because think about it if you have some white potato or if you have some white rice and you have a hundred calories of white rice there's a hundred calories of purple potato the purple potato has a ton of antioxidants that's why it's purple the darker the color the more of the antioxidant load so I'm not only getting the hundred calories of the carbohydrates and the food but I'm getting a much richer antioxidant profile that helps with recovery that helps reduce inflammation in the body that's a good thing so what I would tell you is I typically default to either dark grains like the wild rice the forbidden rice because of that reason or I'll use things like purple potato or Japanese sweet potato now you can obviously use gold potato and red potato stuff like that I think that's fine again this comes back to cook method too you know potato is quite versatile you can do a lot of different things with it but I just find generally speaking if you cook them and then you cut them into chunks or or slices you throw them in the air fryer and you crisp them up for a few minutes textures really important I would say the two main drivers to have you enjoy meals like this is texture and flavor if you find really good flavors and you have a good texture with your meals it makes it way easier to stick with this long-term that's one of the challenges I see certain people make they'll try doing the macrobals but they have no tasty condiments with them they just either don't want to get them or they don't know what to do and the cook methods terrible it just looks like it's boiled you know think about it what's better a boiled protein or like something that's like nice and pan-set and a crispy outer layer right so I say this because that even that texture with air frying a little bit of potato can be an enjoyable thing for you that allows you to stick with this process more now I would tell you guys in terms of starches potato things like that I think most people they often overshoot the portion sizes of this they just think their body can handle more of it than they can quite frankly and that's why people typically run high-body fat you know part of part of why people are fat is because they just don't realize that they need to eat less food they think that this meal is a small meal but it's a massive meal we're being conditioned to think this way so how do you keep the food volume high enough to keep you full at the same time still make it low enough in calories right it sounds like almost like a paradox doesn't it this is where things like spaghetti squash and butternut squash come into the equation so for any of you guys who in my tribe you will know I'm a big fan and advocate of spaghetti squash of butternut squash and I even add in mushrooms and pickles I'll talk about the mushrooms and pickles a little bit later on but spaghetti squash and butternut squash the squash family in general and zucchini noodles are the reason why I like them is because if you were to do one cup of spaghetti squash or one cup of butternut squash it would be probably half the calories of one cup of potato but butternut squash is quite close to the texture of potato it's very high in micro nutrients to so vitamins and minerals and it's easy on the gut this is the thing I find spaghetti squash for most people is very easy on the gut so most people that struggle with their digestion with macraboles you know if they're adding cauliflower rice and a bunch of broccoli like tons of cruciferous vegetables it's hard on your digestion if you haven't done a lot of gut rehab and so spaghetti squash butternut squash zucchini noodles are easier on digestion I would start with these as a base and I would even say if you really wanted to accelerate fat loss just for go the grains or the potato completely and just use butternut squash or spaghetti squash as as your um starchy allocation and then this way you can do it like whole cup like one whole cup worth is probably about 30 or 40 calories it's a very low calorie profile this is why it's good for fat loss because there's this concept with a nutrition called volumetrics so volumetrics is basically how calorie dense is a food so that if you know fats for example every one gram of fat is nine calories one gram of carbohydrates is four calories one gram of protein is four calories so that if you have a cup of avocado one cup of avocado is going to be a lot of calories whereas one cup of spaghetti squash is very low in calories the same thing is true for like you know one cup of um sweet potato it's going to be a lot more calories than one cup of spaghetti squash so you want to add in more high volume foods so high volume foods are going to be your green vegetables it's going to be zucchini noodles spaghetti squash butternut squash stuff like that high volume foods so that's going to be sort of your whole food starch allocation and I would generally say that if you really wanted to kind of improve your insulin sensitivity add in carbohydrates either on days that you train you weight train and then pull it back and just do the lighter carbohydrate sources like spaghetti squash stuff like that on active rest days so say for example you might do rice or the protein pasta or gold potato on a day where you lift weights and then on the days where you're resting you might do spaghetti squash or butternut squash that's essentially a calorie cycle and a carb cycle so and again I this stuff I know it can feel a bit overwhelming I'm going to into a little bit of detail here you don't have to get this complicated early on I would just say if that sounds overwhelming to you just do spaghetti squash every day but that's also why getting into my business athlete council or into my course is a good place to be because I can help you solve this stuff instantly I mean this stuff's like sick and nature to me right and just remember like I always say this like pros get the pro help amateurs bullying yes and we you know there's a lot of people that are amateurs and that's that's just the journey that they're on and I always ask myself and my people and you do want to be a pro do you want to be an amateur there's nothing inherently wrong with being an amateur there's a lot of people who are but do you want to be one so think about that when you're thinking about moving forward and getting some help now the next part of that puzzle is your whole food healthy fats now the reason why I say whole food fats is because generally speaking I try to avoid liquid fats meaning I don't think you need to add a lot of oils into your meals the only time I intentionally add oil to anything I'm doing is I do one tablespoon of blue print extra virgin olive oil every day because it's very high in polyphenols and it's very good for hard health and brain health so I do it for those reasons but it's 120 calories so I do make sure that I factor that into the equation what I would tell you is that is why air frying and using ceramic non-stick cookware is a good thing because then you don't have to load up with you know coconut oil or butter or ghee or avocado oil or whatever you're using because it's all going to be a calorie bomb same thing is true if you're adding oil is addressing there is a lot of better options in that I would not be adding oils as salad dressings that's why people that's why people who eat salads and are overweight struggle to lose weight you know they might be like I don't know why I'm why I'm fat I'm eating salads all day while you're eating 500 calories of oil and condiments with your salad your salad is a hundred calories but it's got a hundred it's got five calories of oil and cheese on it that's why so just by removing that so whole food fats so typically and what I would even tell you is I find again blood work does play into this and obviously food sensitivity but most people tend to opt I would want them to opt for a mono unsaturated fat so a healthy omega three I don't think this so there's a lot of confusing stuff in nutrition there's a lot of dogma there's a lot of contradiction there's a lot of confusion for example saturated fats you've got the carnival camp you've got the keto campus a saturated fats good for you etc I would say it really depends on the person's blood work and physiology because I've seen examples where that's absolutely unequivocally not true I've seen examples of someone doing a carnival diet or the being on you know a bunch of coconut oil and saturated fats with their food and their APO B and their inflammation markers are through the roof through the roof and APO B is that small particle LDL and that's the one that is highly atherogenic that HDL LDL we can debate the the relevancy of those I think HDL is important to increase some people will come and set come along and say it's not you know LDL and it's not a big deal it's the ratio of HDL to LDL I get that argument and some in some sense it makes sense but you can't ignore the elephant in the room which is APO B which is that small particle atherogenic LDL that causes arterial plant buildup in a big way and I often see that if someone's adding a lot of saturated fat in and this includes like if you do a lot of whole eggs if you're if you have a hyperlipidemia like I did and you add a lot of whole eggs in or coconut oil with your cooking that's going to drive your APO B through the freaking roof that's exactly what happened to me there's a reason why I've been plant based for 13 years guys there's a reason because early on I was having a lot of issues with my blood work I was in kind of okay shape you know but and I was only in my late 20s and I got my blood work run because I was I was still tired I was taking naps a lot I just didn't feel very energetic and my my APO B was high my cholesterol profile looked like garbage I even had like a bit of insulin resistance so my hemoglobin A1C was kind of high my insulin levels were kind of high I was like what is going on I'm sort of I look kind of fit my testosterone was like it wasn't good and I was doing more of like a paleo style diet but I was definitely adding in a lot of proteins and I was really going hard on the fats and stuff and again everyone's a bit different I've had students come to me and they could consume you know multiple whole eggs and the APO B look great so again non dogmatic approach that's why I hope you guys trust me because I'll never tell you how you should do what I do I'll say what is your data say that's the thing how many people do you even tell you that most of these cowboys on social media are so self assured and so quick to say oh you know this is the way to do it well based on what based on your anecdotal experience and what else how many people have you mentored how much blood work have you seen zero it's like the done and Kruger effect on full display it's it's unbelievable so I say this because healthy fats whole food healthy fats typically because oils the ROI is just not there unless you really want to get that ROI from the blueprint extra virgin olive oil from the hard health benefits but even then I would say primary sources are gonna be things like avocado even hummus you've got to use hummus as a base olives whole olives hemp seed so often I'll even encourage people to throw a bit of hemp seed on the meal hemp seed has like a nice nutty flavor and it also has a bit of protein in it too and it's high omega-3s so but typically avocados a nice base I find people like guacamole they like a little bit of avocado if you're not a big fan in that you could maybe interchange with a bit of hummus you could throw in a few whole olives you know so and also remembering if you're gonna do a lot of fatty fish your fatty fish will have some omega-3s in that and so sometimes you need to be mindful of that what I typically do tell people is I'll add my serving of extra virgin olive oil I won't do any avocado personally but my wife Lauren does but then I allocate some of my calories and fats to my condiments so you know some of the healthier condiments that I like they might be say a nut based condiment you know they might have sort of almond or cashew as a base and I will just allow for a few calories of that so it's almost like an allowance I think to myself okay if I want to make this meal really tasty where I genuinely enjoy it even if the condiments a little bit more calorie dense I'm okay with that as long as I factor it in and make sure that I'm not cooking with a bunch of oils or I'm not going nuts with a massive serving of carbohydrates or I'm not adding a massive serving of avocado alongside the condiment but I would say bang for buck will be like avocado hemp seed like I mentioned that type of stuff but you do want some whole food fats in the rotation I find it seems to be more so for women helps a lot with hormonal profiles in general I would say hormone profiles I would say heart health and brain health and even skin quality I find that those those macros that those foods tend to help with sort of a fuller looking collagen rich looking skin helps to stabilize hormone profiles a bit more helps with brain health and hard health a bit more to and there is data that supports that too by the way so monoinsaturated omega-3s predominantly because most people their omega-3 to 6 to 9 ratios are really skewed in favor of omega-6s which is like your canola oil your seed oils basically and the reason why omega-6s are so high in someone's diet is because they're eating a lot of processed stuff most processed foods have some type of seed oil in them and there's a whole debate around seed oils that I'm not going to get into here but because it pushes up that omega-6 ratio so high it skews your omega-3s a lot and that's not good so you really want to prioritize omega-3s into your rotation it's also wide to a double serving of omega-3 supplementation because there's a lot of good research that suggests it helps with mood stabilization it's very good for brain health and and clearly as you guys know me at this point those are things that I really want to optimize now the next part of this puzzle so we've got protein starches fat next part is all your fibrous vegetables it's going to be like what I say eat the rainbow like I've mentioned food is like software and your body and mind are the hardware and so the the issue that people have is they'll often just pick one one visual they'll just do green beans or they'll just do broccoli there's nothing wrong with that to start with if you're coming from eating junk food fast food pizza doing just some broccoli or just some green beans it's not it's not a bad thing but you're definitely not not maximizing the ROI of the food by just doing that so generally what I will tell you is where's your green vegetable where's your red where's your orange or yellow and I would be making sure that you add one of those three in across the board so it might look like for example if you're going to do some raw stuff it might look like grated carrot broccoli micro greens or kale micro greens and some pickled beets or some tomato I realize tomatoes are fruit but obviously I just counted as a red so that would be like your raw stuff then maybe you do like a stir fry mix and your stir fry mix might be like red peppers sliced carrots and some broccoli for example what I typically tell people to do is no matter what your green vegetable is if it's a if it's like a broccoli or whatever add some extra micro greens to your meal I don't think there's anything wrong with adding a few extra micro greens or a few extra broccoli sprouts to your meal broccoli sprouts have a high level of sulfurifane in them and sulfurifane is very very anti-cancerous so I almost think of broccoli sprouts like a like an insurance policy I don't I don't have cancer but I consume them every day for that reason so I would tell you no matter what your meal looks like throw some broccoli micro greens or kale micro greens onto the meal as well as some broccoli sprouts just as that insurance policy just to really push some extra nutrients into your system now what I'm going to talk about different cook methods as well because on one end of the spectrum with all your fibers vegetables you have convenience and speed but it's a bit harder on your gut so I do a lot of raw stuff if you ever see my meals it's typically just a bunch of micro greens some raw zucchini noodles some pickled beets and some grated carrot now I obviously cook my spaghetti squash so I'll cook like probably two of those a week so one whole squash will last me probably half a week so that is one thing I do cook but everything else is raw and I do this because I just want to make the meal fast I'm all about speed and efficiency even if it's a little bit harder on my gut it's not too bad I've really conditioned my gut to tolerate these things pretty well at this point but if you're someone that gets really adverse effect which can happen early on you know if you if you say hey Fraser I've tried the macro ball stuff I felt bloated and terrible it's not that the concept doesn't work for you it's that you need to adapt what you're doing and you need to rehab your gut first and again like I can help with that stuff but in terms of spectrum you have your raw fiber stuff down one into the spectrum it's usually got more new it's more nutrient rich because it's not cooked so the cooking method hasn't broken all the sort of molecules down and it's faster and it's it's it's more convenient then in the middle you have say stir fry so stir fry is kind of cooked down it takes a little bit of time but and it's it's a little bit hard on the gut but it's not as bad as eating raw stuff then you have steamed so your steamed stuff is what I would tell anyone who's getting basic digestive issues to start at so you get a part you get some water you steam the food that's going to break the the the cell walls of the fiber down more so it's almost like an assist on your gut then you would have sort of a slow cook oven process maybe where the temperature is a little bit low and you cook it for an hour or two then you would use an insta pot or a crop pot now there's one convenient strategy that I often suggest is the amy's canned soups and stews so there's a lot of stores in the US that carry amy's soups and stews that's probably a nice fast ninja trick you can use if you just want something that's really easy on digestion as a base because the amy soups and stews they've clearly got the rainbow veg in there and it's all just like book down in a stew I would tell you though doing insta pot is going to be a good approach for anyone that's got gut issues because the foods will really broken down obviously the tradeoff is it takes a bit longer it's probably doesn't have quite as much nutrition in it but it's easier on digestion so you can see how there's a digestive spectrum where do you land on that spectrum that's very important to test it's very important to test this is where most people get it wrong and so I'm at the I'm at the speed into the spectrum and you might be at the digestive end of the spectrum and that's okay there's nothing wrong with that what I would tell you is if you're doing insta pot stuff maybe you just add a little bit like a quarter cup of broccoli or kale micro greens on top of it just to get that little bit of extra nutrients like the frosting on the nutrient cake you're always just looking for a way to maximize it even a little bit because your body over time will get better at tolerating these raw fibers if you might produce them into your rotation I love using and again this is these rainbow veg it's all about the ROI so I love doing pickled beats for example because beats are a nitric oxide producing and nitric oxide helps with blood flow that increased blood flow helps with oxygen transportation that's going to help with energy levels recovery all the good stuff that our body needs so I will literally incorporate those every single day for that reason I mean even carrots are high in beta-carotene good for eye health so I say this because think about every different color every different nutrients being almost like a whole food multivitamin it's got the key components in it that will help you with optimization in different areas brain health eye health skin health you know all across the board I would say that the rainbow veg like I mentioned you can incorporate spaghetti squash in there as a base to bulk a meal up and this way you can have a bigger portion and it's low in calories it's a nice simple add-on outside of the rainbow fibers veg this would be like the foundation of your meal and if you can tolerate larger portions of this do it I don't think you need to stress about the calorie count with these things with the rainbow veg because most of these foods are going to be pretty low in calories if you can tolerate two cups worth of rainbow veg on your meal and it really helps curb your hunger and satiety and you don't get a ton of bloating then do it but if you find that your scent digestions a bit sensitive go a bit easier on these things you can still add them in but just kind of microdose them in to allow your gut to acclimate now other parts of the macro bowl concept that most people completely look over is your fermented foods and your adaptogens this is this is like the ninja tricks this is the business athlete difference this is the deciding variable that really makes a macro bowl and a B plus meal or an A plus meal so adaptogens are going to be your mushrooms so lions main shittake my tacky turkey tail I would tell you see if you can find or grow some type of good adaptogenic mushrooms mushrooms are a very interesting tool they are very low in calories depending on how they're grown they might have some vitamin D in them as well but adaptogens are very good for brain health think of it a bit like it's good at understanding what your body needs and helping either up regulate or down regulate a system to normalize and stabilize it so I just think of adaptogens like like fertilizer for your brain basically it's fertilizer for your brain so and it's because of slow in calories you can do a decent portion of them and you won't spill over in calories and gain a bunch of body fat so it helps you have these bigger meals you can enjoy without going crazy on calories so adaptogens are another good tool I often do lions main or shittake mushrooms as an add-on now the next part is your fermented foods so all this talk that we have about digestive health and the gut what people the mistake that people make is they start with a lot of fermented foods because they've heard that this is what's good for your gut health it's good for your gut health in the right context if your guts all inflamed and you've been consuming a bunch of ant acids and alcohol and antibiotics and you haven't consumed a lot of my macro balls in your life if you throw in a ton of fiber and fermented foods your guts going to be like what is going on this is this is way too much for me to handle and you'll feel bloated gassy and awful you need a micro dose things into your repertoire so I typically tell people if your digestion sensitive and even if it's not micro dose fermented foods in over a period of like a week or two the the micro foods that I or the the fermented foods sorry I like is kimchi, sauerkraut, nato, miso so those are the main ones basically you've got so you've got kefir which is like a fermented dairy and you can actually get a coconut kefir so it's almost like a fermented sort of creamy yoghurt type thing but miso is a fermented paste you can almost use that as a condiment I know my wife Lauren and my daughter Zia will use it to put on their potato for example they'll often do nato, nato is very very high in vitamin K and nato kinase it's like a it's a total superfood and so we order nato from New York nato online and I do a serving of it for them every day and I do a tablespoon of it for me every day it's like a superfood vitamin K very very good for blood health very good for female bone health as you age one of the biggest issues for women as they go through menopause as osteoporosis it's very good for helping with that and nato kinase is very good for heart health so you'll often find with supplementation when it comes to heart health nato kinase is a supplement that's often suggested I take nato kinase as a supplement but I also get it in my food for added measure very very good for heart health and I know for some people heart health may not interest you that much but I'm telling you it will eventually when you realize that this is the one thing between you in death you know if your brain goes or your heart goes you're done whereas if you you know if you get a little bit fat or you know you have you've been unfat or you know you have slightly de-optimized hormones or whatever you can navigate that and get better but you don't want to lose your health with your heart or your brain so really prioritize that as much as possible so fermented foods adaptogens those are the bonus points that really take a macro bowl to a whole other level now what I would tell you in terms of protein carbohydrates the rules the portions types things is that generally speaking if I'm telling someone to think about the protein requirement for the day I typically tell them to focus on about one gram per pound of target body weight so if you're 300 pounds but you want to be 200 pounds go for about 200 grams of protein if you're 160 pound guy but you want to be 180 go for 180 grams of protein that's at the top end of the range so that's being cautious meaning you probably don't need that much generally speaking the science seems to support that about 0.7 to 0.8 grams per pound of body weight is sufficient so 0.7 to 0.8 grams per pound of body weight is sufficient so if someone was 100 if you know if you were small and you were 100 pounds that would put you at 70 to 80 grams of protein but I typically tell people to aim for about one gram per pound of target body weight because you almost want to go to where the ball is going you want to anticipate with the ball so if you if you want to get to the next level you've got to almost fuel your body to actually facilitate that in the first place and like I've said one of the biggest issues I see with a lot of people that struggle to hit their protein in a meal is they don't do macrobals and they'll they'll pick together a meal and it's got like 15 to 20 grams of protein in it and so but their fats and carbs are quite high and so their whole meal is skewed they've eaten a bunch of calories but then the total protein counts low you don't want that you need to prioritize protein and fire as vegetables first and carbohydrates and fats are like things you worry about after the fact I would say fats are the next step and carbohydrates are the thing you worry about last don't be pile driving tons of carbohydrates in your meal if you're not crossing your teeth and dotting your eyes across the board with everything else I would say the other thing is eat some of your protein first eat some of your protein alongside your fibers vegetables first protein is very satiety inducing so it helps really bring down hunger response and when you combine it with your fibers veg it helps with blood glucose control so rather than just smashing into your rice straight away gets in protein gets in fiber into you first I typically have my my some of my microgreens first to almost act like a blood glucose stabilization right from the get go now I would tell you if you were out or you were trying to eyeball your protein servings it obviously depends on how many meals a day you eat but I find a general rule of thumb for eating a meal that's not going to make you feel super stuffed as a as a palm size serving generally it's obviously going to range but if you look at your palm size and you are a 6 foot 5 280 pound guy versus a 5 foot 5 woman who's 120 pounds your palm is going to look like twice the size so it's almost in proportion to your body size which I do find is a useful tool it's a useful tool to have that as a backup system where if you can't use metric measuring cups or count the amount of ounces you're doing because you're eating out you can eyeball the portion size through a palm size now I would tell you that with your proteins you can either batch cook like you could get out your barbecue or you could cook everything in the oven like one or two times a week I will often for example me being plant based I do a lot of marinated tofu I get the pre marinated blocks of tofu that are already done so all I need to do is cut them up and throw them in the air fryer for a few minutes and it's done if for anyone that's consuming animal based stuff I would tell you you can get packs of smoked salmon or you go to a deli section of say whole foods and they'll have cooked chicken breasts they'll have cooked salmon fillets they'll have cooked proteins in the deli section yes they cost a little bit more money but if this helps you be consistent with your meals if you know you're not going to be as consistent as you should because you're not going to get on top of your meal prep make sure that your proteins and your starches are prepared ahead of time so whether you go to the deli get pre cooked chicken breast smoked salmon salmon fillets marinated blocks of tofu blocks of tempeh you just throw in the air fryer 400 for you know six to eight minutes and it's crispy and good to go do that you can obviously cook your stuff down but it's gonna take more time so obviously if you're gonna cook a chicken breast it might take 20 to 30 minutes do you want to do that every day or would you rather batch cook one or two sessions of this a week or like I said get them from a deli section and in that way you're just absolutely streamlining that process the other thing is is true for your grains get packs of organic basmati rice organic jasmine rice organic wild rice and in that way you just can rip the bag open throw it in the microwave cook it up and it's good to go in 60 seconds right rather than having to cook down a bunch of stuff the cook time is what's gonna get you the only other thing that I cook as my spaghetti squash or butternut squash and with a spaghetti squash I go 400 degrees Fahrenheit for about 40 minutes done and I do that twice a week and that's it and so that's the only bottleneck it's just making sure that you get on top of your prep stuff I talk if you go to episode seven I talk in detail about my dinner habit stack so my dinner habit stack is where I prep out my dinner meal and I make a double portion and their second portion is like a lunch meal that you can prepare and I talk all about how you streamline that dinner meal making process that way you have your lunch meal done while you're making your dinner meal and you do that every day that allows you to stay on top of things but at the same time make a little bit every day so the food's nice and fresh some people want it fresh right so there's there's there's strategies to this game but just know that like the again carbohydrates you can prep the stuff if you want to do sweet potato you can cook a bunch of sweet potato in the oven you know maybe when you're doing your spaghetti squash you cook down a bunch of sweet potato at the same time but outside of that that only thing I'd be worrying about is if you need to instant pot your rainbow veg or if you're going to do raw stuff like me it's just you just basically got to have it on the shelf ready to go I would say in terms of your starches I definitely think that if you are still a bit fat you want to go easier on this I would be typically be opting more for butternut squash and spaghetti squash for your starches and doing less pasta and rice and things like that I just feel like those things really slow people down towards their target because they do have that sort of sedating blood glucose effect so it's not even that your body can't handle the calories it's just that very often they don't help with your insulin sensitivity and if you're getting sleepy and taking naps all the time is holding you back you really need to weigh that in and and future pace how you want to feel I would tell you that one of the things to focus on is your step count you know if you can get between 12 and 15,000 steps a day that will allow you to consume more carbohydrates if you can weight train you know four to six times a week and you can train the big muscle groups you know legs and back two times a week that's gonna you will have a bigger capacity for carbohydrates that's the good thing to know is that as you build muscle you build a better capacity to tolerate carbohydrates so be excited about that because it's not like a death sentence you don't always have to stick with these portions but initially you might now like I mentioned with your fats I would typically go for about two tablespoons or a thumb size serving on by the way with the carbohydrates it's usually about one cupped hand so if you cut your hand imagine that's like one serving for you that's again a very generalized statement but at least it's a universal principle you can stick with this is where I use metric measuring cups for most people so you've got your baking cups like one cup three-quarter cup half cup quarter cup right you can scale that up or down so if you are still fat and you're doing one cup of rice scale down to three quarters get some more fat loss until you plateau then scale down to half a cup get some more fat loss until you plateau scale down to a quarter of a cup or as you're scaling down you might swap it out completely and just do some spaghetti squash instead because you still want a big portion of food but you want to be very light in calories right so the good thing about carbohydrates and stuff like that is you can scale those portions up or down based on the goal that you want now coming back to the fats it's typically going to be about two tablespoons or about one thumb volume as a base again it depends on your style of diet you're doing if you're doing a keto based approach you might do a lot more avocado than that it depends but it's just a start point because often people are like where do I begin just begin there first but I would say that that will be something that you will want to adapt and play with but you got to make sure that you're paying attention to hidden fat calories that it will be in condiments and that will be in cooking method those two things will spill you over and that will be one of the reasons why you're like I don't know why I'm not losing any weight well are you counting the calories in your dressings and your condiments and in your special cooking oil either guy one time tell me it's like I don't know I've been struggling to lose weight and I got him to do a video and show me how much cooking oil he was putting on his baked potato like his potato wedges so he made homemade potato wedges and he was putting oil it's absolutely drowning it there was so much oil I might do you're consuming like a thousand calories of oil like why did you not process that this wouldn't be an issue so part of it is like sometimes you don't know what you don't know but again I will tell you guys that's why having a good mentor in your corner helps because if you're just guessing you probably have a myriad of blind spots episode 10 but previous episode I talk all about the top 10 blind spots go listen to that one because I guarantee you you do some of those things and if you can solve for those things holy moly man like you will absolutely improve now the last thing that I was in terms of visual portion sizes so we've got a palm size serving approaching a cup tan of starch a thumb of fat and then about a fist of vegetable so a fist of rainbow veg if you put your hand into a fist typically about that volume now obviously if you're digestion sensitive you'll probably do less than that but that's a good general rule of thumb so I definitely think batch cooking your proteins and starches is key I would definitely cook a dinner meal and double up the portion so you have your lunch meal for the next day you can pre-chop vegetables or getting frozen vegetables is back up so you know you've got your frozen stir fry mixes for example that way you just get it out you can just quickly microwave it to warm it up throw it in the pan done rather than like chopping a whole bunch of stuff up and it's like a consuming tire tiring process right leverage those types of conveniences now one of the things that I think's really important to touch on is condiments and flavor you know we talked about texture air frying is one using a green pan with the ceramic cooktop stuff but the condiments so if you're just adding a normal condiments normal dressings you're going to be holding yourself back what I would tell you is there are a few condiments that I suggest to people and it just depends on how clean you want your diet to be so new source in you source new source is a very good brand that's very clean it's got about five to fifteen calories per serving so it's a very good nutrient profile you've got taste flavor company which is another one it's not quite as clean but it's not bad then you have flavor gang which is pretty tasty again it's not quite as clean as taste flavor company but it's it's okay and then you have something like a g-hues sugar-free barbecue source or a g-hues sugar-free sweet chili source those are not too bad either low in calories which often for most people is the initial goal we want to get that body fat down before we start worrying about you know the minutia around seed oils and stuff I would tell you first get get the body fat off that's far more inflammatory in my opinion than you worrying about a tiny little drip of seed oil and a flavor gang condiment now I would tell you that try the different flavors have a repertoire rotation of new source and taste flavor company in the rotation that you can play with one of the other tools that I do this is what I personally do most of the time as I use a brand called G-sauce J-E-E source now they have a initial product called bitch in source that's in a lot of stores G source is a better quality version of that that the fan so there's a family that made this product and they basically had an issue an estrangement and now the brothers went off separating from the rest of the family and the brothers went off to create G source so I order my G source online it's like a nut-based condiment I love the taste of G source it is just so delicious but it is quite calorie dense because it's a nut-based condiment so that's where I get my fats from but tactic for you I cut it with either a little bit of spring water or I even cut it with a little bit of the G- who's barbecue source so I find just for me personally the combination of mixing a little bit of the G- who's barbecue source with the G source it makes it go further and I add some water to it as well so I'm almost turning it from a source to a dressing so what I'm doing is I'm not adding two big heat tablespoons of G source I'll just add one normal tablespoon and then I'll cut it with a bit of barbecue sauce and water and I'll mix that together and make it more like a dressing it's still popping with flavor and it's still very delicious but I'm not adding as much condiment to the meal so I'm keeping my calorie count on that thing down so you can dilute down your condiments using coconut aminos or water just to basically make it more of a dressing I know that just seems like a simple little tool but it goes a long way I mean I do this often and I really find that little bit helps I would also tell you that if you're someone that kind of likes the taste of vinegar you know salt and vinegar chips or that vinegar base adding some pickles so I get a pickle spare and I'll dice that up and I throw that through my protein so I'll get my protein once it's cooked in the air fryer I'll put it in a bowl a mixing bowl I'll cut up a pickle I'll put the pickle in there and it gives it like a bit of a vinegar base and then I mix my condiment I pour my condiment through it and I mix the whole thing up covering the sauce all over the protein and then I pour it into my macro bowl little things like that make all the difference I actually was telling this to a friend the other day and they're like dude you need to share that like that's such a helpful thing and I've never shared that before because I just didn't think I just didn't think it was like at the time what people even wanted to hear and he's like no this is what people want to hear so it was really helpful to hear that because I've really been able to refine how to make the texture and the taste very good so you stick with this long term so in general guys I would say you just got to be aware of whether your macro bowls if you're not hitting a protein target which a lot of women can can fall into the trap of if you let if if you focus on fat creep so over time if you're adding more oils of condiments or dressings in or you're cooking with oils that fat creep can really add up if you're not adding enough rainbow veg in because you like quite a quote don't like the taste you know don't be a big baby right I tell people that's like if you're an adult and you just turn your nose up at a certain food stop being a baby like that's what infants do okay what I've noticed is like a lot of people that are not healthy and overweight they're very picky eaters and I think that's part of their problem they're so picky they're not thinking about the health effect that they could create if they optimize themselves I eat broccoli sprouts every day I do not enjoy the taste but I understand the health benefit is so useful I'm just gonna do it be someone that operates that way that's how a true business athlete operates they get it done they don't come up with these petty excuses okay so like if that's you you've got to gut check yourself and and fix that and so I would say make sure you're getting enough of the fibrous rainbow veg into the rotation because that will help improve blood glucose stability more and more and more one thing I would say is if you're doing the macroboles but you're not seeing the changes that you want you're gonna have to start tracking accurately because you can do these macrobole principles and you just eating way too much food for your metabolism if you're adding in a bunch of avocado and you're adding a bunch of rice in there and it's all healthy stuff but it's you you might be consuming 2500 calories a day and your metabolism is at 1800 calories you'll never lose the body fat you want because you're eating too much total calories and that's where playing with the volume metrics of the food is really really important I would say in general doing macrobole for lunch and a macrobole for dinner and then having your post-workout nutrition and your snacks woven in such a potent tactic and and process guys it really is and my my six-week signature course the anomaly project it's based around all of this stuff so all these principles that I've spent the last hour telling you about my course and the way that I coach is geared around this now obviously in my business earthly council I do have people that don't necessarily do macroboles because I'm I'm so skillful at this point I can help someone get a good result even if they do even if they add a lot of variety into their diet as long as they're tracking the calories and they're being diligent with their tracking you can add variety you can get kind of flamboyant but you've got a track otherwise you'll be spilling over left right and center and you just will not get lean but I will tell you the macro macro principle is is the next level to this game it allows you to get a ton of micronutrients in your rotation it allows you to fine tune your macro nutrients it allows you to eat very intuitively you can streamline the process to literally make meals in six to ten minutes and it's something that you can do with a family and you can modify the bowls so each person has something slightly different that they enjoy so it's not like a one-size-fits-all thing because one of the challenges that I know some people have is that you know if the husband or the wife's making the meal and it's not really fitting your macros or goals but you're just eating it because it's convenient that's a problem you need to figure that out so I would tell you the macro ball process much more effective say for example if I'm making my tofu but I had a friend who was having chicken we would just cook different proteins everything else will be the same and I would just have my protein they would have theirs problem solved otherwise if you're having to eat what everyone else is eating around you you're gonna be at the mercy of their result and their physiology and their blood work and you're gonna ask yourself is that what you want it's just a simple question but it's gonna get it's gonna reveal a lot to you so this is the next step right and go to the store prep out that nice clean macro ball ingredient list I will tell you this has been a process that I've refined over the years and I've absolutely seen it change people's lives so what I love is for you to create your macroboles post some of them and tag me and share it and I will share it I love when I see people do this and they get into it and they tag me it just makes me so ecstatic to see the positive ripple effect that this information has on people's lives and if you need help reach out but go out there today lock in and clean up your diet remember food is like software in your body and mind of the hardware and if you want to perform at a higher level you need to make sure that you're putting a good operating system update into your hardware and that is exactly what a business athlete does