How to lose weight without counting calories
If you want to shift stubborn body fat you know you have to keep a closer eye on what you eat. But that doesn’t mean you need to spend hours adding up the energy in your food. Here’s how to lose weight without counting calories so you can get the leaner, healthier and fitter body you want, says New Body Plan’s Joe Warner
Do you have to count every single calorie you eat if you want to lose weight? Absolutely not! You’d don’t even need to log any calories at all!
Why? Our 90% Nutrition strategy – where you eat well for a better body 90% of the time and for pure pleasure 10% of the time – is the smart, sensible and sustainable way to lose weight fast without counting calories or giving up your favourite foods.
Ultimately calories do matter: to lose weight you need to be in a “calorie deficit” so your body starts tapping into fat stores for fuel.
But counting the calories you consume at every single meal of every single day for weeks on end takes a huge amount of time, effort and motivation. That’s time, effort and motivation that could be better spent training harder, or unwinding and relaxing to help reduce stress levels.
Let’s face it, who wants to be digging out measuring cups whenever they’re hungry? Or be constantly cleaning food scales? Or spending good money on apps and online services to track those calorie numbers that are almost certainly inaccurate anyway? It’s no wonder so many people quit counting calories almost as soon as they start.
Never count calories again!
Fortunately, with New Body Plan you don’t have to worry about counting calories ever again. Why? Because there is a better and easier way to know which foods you should be eating and how much of them.
It’s called the Perfect Portion approach. It has been adapted from a strategy created by the nutrition experts at Precision Nutrition. All you need is your own hand and the ability to count to two! The approach empowers you to know exactly which food groups should make up each of your meals, and in exactly the right amounts you need. Here’s what you need to know.
The “Perfect Portion” approach to eating for fat loss
It might seem strange at first, but using your hands to work out your perfect portion sizes makes perfect sense. First, your hands are convenient. They’re by your side at work lunches, restaurants, social occasions. Wherever you go, they go.
Second, hands are scaled to the individual. Bigger people need more food, and tend to have bigger hands. So they get larger portions. Smaller people need less food, and tend to have smaller hands. So they get smaller portions.
Third, it helps you meet your specific protein, vegetable, carb, fat and energy needs at each meal without you having to count a single calorie or weigh a single gram of food!
How to eat for fat loss and a leaner body
If you’re moderately active, here’s a great way to start using the Perfect Portion approach.
A moderately active man needs a daily intake of:
• 6-8 palms of protein-dense foods
• 6-8 fists of vegetables
• 6-8 cupped handfuls of carb-dense foods
• 6-8 thumbs of fat-dense foods
This makes it very easy to appropriately portion each meal. For instance, if you eat three or four meals a day, the starting point for putting together each meal would be as follows:
• 2 palms of protein-dense foods
• 2 fists of vegetables
• 2 cupped handfuls of carb-dense foods
• 2 thumbs of fat-dense foods
The best way to eat for a leaner and stronger body
The Perfect Portion approach makes eating for a better body easy. How? It enables you to control your daily calorie intake almost as accurately as calorie counting, but without all the hassle and stress of kitchen scales, apps, calculators and notebooks.
It also empowers you to be much more flexible about what you decide to eat because you can easily substitute one type of protein, carbs, fats or vegetables for another, without giving a second thought to calories!
So, you fancy a palm of steak instead of a palm of chicken or tuna or turkey? Go for it. You want a fist of carrots instead of a fist of broccoli, cauliflower or green beans? No problem. You’d prefer a cupped handful of roast potatoes instead of a cupped handful of rice? Have want you want!
It really is that simple. Every single meal you eat will be determined by what you fancy or what you’re craving.
Not only can you say goodbye to calorie counting, you can also wave goodbye to rigid and restrictive meal plans that dictate exactly what you have to eat and when you have to eat it. That’s not a sustainable approach. This is. Which is why eating for a bigger, stronger and leaner body has never been so easy.
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