TPL#11: The 5 Ways to Get Lean

Happy Monday!

Welcome to the 11th Edition of the Thrive Protocol Letter.

Today at a glance:

Something I hate about the fitness industry is the misrepresentation of some approaches to fat loss being effortless. It’s best to be realistic about it.

Fat loss is hard. There are 5 general approaches to make it work, I’ll go over some pros and cons of each one so you can consider which one may work best for you.

A Quote

Content

I’ve been on a big Huberman Lab kick lately, I may have to retire the content section of the TPL to avoid just plugging the same podcast every week! But in the meantime, I really enjoyed this wide-reaching conversation that touches on forging and identity, mental health, and what it means to be an effective leader.

One day I think I’ll go online and see a fitness coach saying:

Marketing 101 says that an attractive offer needs to seem fast and easy.

This “fast and easy” is the cause of most of the bullshit in the fitness industry.

The less popular truth is that there is no pain-free, effortless way to get leaner.

If you want to be leaner than you currently are, you have to change your behavior.

This is always challenging.

Change requires discipline and cognitive restraint.

Every approach to fat loss works this way and has its own challenges.

Another marketing tip is to pick an enemy to position yourself against and regularly shit on in your marketing.

The chosen enemy of many coaches is “tracking calories.”

They construe tracking nutrition as this painful, tedious chore, whereas their chosen method is easy and pain-free.

It’s bullshit.

No one has an easy and pain-free method.

There ARE restrictions (at least to a degree).

You can’t eat as much of whatever you want whenever you want and lose fat.

There are only five options you have to lose fat.

All require effort.

All require discipline.

All of them are harder than the default mode of “eat whatever you want” that got you fat in the first place.

Getting lean isn’t about finding a magic bullet.

It’s about picking an option for you that is the most tolerable.

These options are “restraint mechanisms,” and you’ll need to choose one you can stick to that sucks the least.

Let’s go over the 5 options you have for restraint mechanisms and weigh out the pros and cons of each.

Eating Clean

This is the default mode for anyone who wants to get healthier.

They’ll just start “eating clean.” This usually means lots of veggies and no ice cream or potato chips.

Eating clean works well if people can stick to it.

Basic intuition concerning healthy and unhealthy foods is usually decent.

But there are a few caveats.

Sometimes, somebody trying to “eat clean” will think that dietary fat is bad, and they’ll fear things like beef and eggs, some of the most nutrient-dense foods on the planet.

Or they’ll assume that as long as they’re eating “clean” unprocessed foods, they can’t gain weight, and they’ll proceed to stuff themselves on whole foods.

I’ve heard thin people say you can’t overeat a basic whole-food diet.

This is a thin person’s perspective...

If you have a high food-reward value, you CAN overeat a whole-food diet (it happened to me).

Another problem with simply “eating clean” is that it’s ambiguous. So much of what we eat is processed in some way.

Are you really just going to eat lean protein and veggies for the rest of your life?

Maybe you will.

But chances are you won’t, and the eating clean approach can create a moral perception around anything that is processed in some way.

Overall, I’m not a huge fan of simplistic “clean eating.” I think it’s too ambiguous and sets someone up to perceive food morally, which can easily backfire.

A Standard diet.

Keto. Paleo. The Zone Diet. Vegan. Carnivore.

Your second option is to follow a standard diet.

The advantage to this is that the diet does the thinking for you — you can outsource your decisions about what to eat to the rules of the diet.

And some people truly do see amazing improvements to their health when they start one of these approaches.

But for most, I don’t think it’s a good idea. They’re too limiting.

For every person who is happy to live on keto, there are 500 who will try it for a couple of weeks but not be able to stick to it.

Same goes for paleo. The truth is that most people don’t need extreme elimination diets.

These restrictive diets are often suggested by people who DO need to cut out a lot of foods, and for some reason, they seem to think that everyone should do the same thing that works for them.

Most people tolerate most things pretty damn well.

There is no need to cut out an entire macronutrient from your diet if you don’t have to.

I think following a “diet” is a terrible strategy for 90% of people. It works for some, but most people want (and can handle) more flexibility.

Intermittent Fasting

If you don’t want to limit the foods that you eat, you can limit the time that you eat.

The most popular approach to intermittent fasting is the 16:8 split, where you eat in an 8-hour window (typically 12 pm - 8 pm) and fast for 16 hours daily.

If you’re somebody who doesn’t get hungry in the morning, this can be a great approach.

A few potential issues, though:

A high-protein breakfast is an amazing strategy to ensure you will hit your protein for the day.

Whether it’s just a protein shake, some progurt, or a hot breakfast with eggs, when you “protein load” (focus on getting most of your protein early in the day) you give yourself more flexibility with your food choices later on.

This is often something I’ll suggest to my clients, especially if they have a family.

If you can be heading into dinner time with 80% of your protein requirements met and plenty of calories to spare, you’re in a good spot.

Intermittent fasting makes it harder to protein load and can make it harder to ensure you’ll get enough protein in without having to be stuffing down chicken breasts at 7:59 pm.

Another risk with intermittent fasting is that it makes people too hungry, and their snack monster emerges.

For many who work in an office, the “mid-morning snack monster” is a thing.

Right around 10:30 or 11 am, all those “healthy” snacks in the office kitchen start to look reeeeeeal good.

Some people don’t get hungry when they fast. But for others, skipping breakfast will put their snack monster on steroids.

A high-protein breakfast is a better option in this case.

The final risk with intermittent fasting is that people see it as an excuse to eat whatever they want because they’re “fasting.”

Intermittent fasting isn’t effective for weight loss because of any magic.

It just happens to nearly always result in a reduction in calories.

If you fill that 8-hour window with donuts, Cheetos, and cheeseburgers, you will not lose fat.

I prefer intermittent fasting to eating clean or following a diet; it can be incredibly effective for some.

It’s highly individual, though. Know yourself, and be aware of your hunger levels.

If you’re famished come lunchtime and need snacks at 11 am, it may not be the right approach for you.

Protein Loading

I mentioned this one a second ago, and it’s one of my favorites.

It’s the simplest way to hit your protein goals.

It’s not full tracking of everything, but there is a focus on tracking protein.

The idea with protein loading is to get about 75% of your protein in as few calories as possible as early as possible.

This leaves you with a ton of flexibility for dinner and activities later in the day.

You can look at protein loading as a bit of a sacrifice: you stick to the same high-protein staples and take a “fuel” based approach to food during the first part of your day, but you get the reward of getting to eat (almost) whatever you want for dinner.

To protein load well, you want to focus on foods with an excellent protein-to-calorie ratio for the first part of your day.

• Shrimp

• Cottage cheese

• Greek Yogurt

• Chicken breast

• Whey/Casein Blend

• Sliced ham

• Protein wraps

Nutrition Tracking

Finally, we have the option everyone likes to hate.

Nutrition tracking.

“Counting calories.”

People often make a couple of misassumptions about nutrition tracking when they condemn it for being terrible.

And yes, tracking calories does take some effort.

But all of these approaches take some effort and discipline, and tracking calories isn’t nearly as hard as many make it seem.

Tracking software has come a long way.

You can import recipes and store recipes with AI on some applications to make tracking a walk in the park.

And “tracking calories” does NOT equal a restrictive diet.

In fact, it’s more likely to be the opposite.

When you track, you can calculate a reasonable portion of a food you love (that you wouldn’t want to eat if you were “eating clean”) and fit it into your macros for the day.

As long as you get enough protein, fiber, and nutrients, there is no harm in fitting in the odd treat.

Tracking your calories is the optimal way to do this.

People say it’s not sustainable, but I’ve been tracking for nearly 4 years. When you create systems and make it a habit, it’s easy peasy.

Tracking is my personal favorite approach because of its flexibility.

The only con is the work involved, but it’s nowhere near as bad as it’s made out to be.

If you want to get leaner than you are currently, you will need to choose one of these “restraint mechanisms.”

All options have an element of being hard.

They all require discipline.

Your options are:

• Eat “clean”

• Follow a diet

• Intermittent fasting

• Protein loading

• Nutrition Tracking

Choose an approach that’s right for you, but don’t expect it to be as easy as eating whatever you want whenever you want.

When you’re ready, here’s how you can work with me.

I want to help you ditch confusing diets and workout programs and help you achieve your fitness goals in a way that works for you.

If you’re tired of spinning your tires, failing to get results, and wondering what you’re doing wrong, apply for 1-1 coaching now.

Results are guaranteed.

You’ll hit your goals, or I’ll work with you for free until you do.

-Colin “Fat loss ain’t free” Matson