In this episode, we talk about how to hit your macros every day and keep a balanced nutrition program to support your goals, regardless what your schedule looks like.
We even talk about how to do your grocery shopping on a budget so your nutrition plan doesn’t break the bank.
In this episode, you’ll discover:
- How to grocery shop for 2 on a $40/week budget
- How to hit your macros every day (no matter what schedule you have or how hectic it is)
- The staples to stock in your pantry to make any meal exciting
- The most filling carb sources that leave you feeling satiated for hours
- How (and where) to get high-quality foods without the brand name price tags
- How to structure weekly meals to save time and money (great for people who don’t have a lot of time to prep)
- The diet protocols that make staying in a deficit both easy and enjoyable
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What’s In This Episode
- Getting lean is a numbers game
- Greg’s Current Meal Plan Strategy
- How Willpower Effects Dieting
- How To Hitting Your Macros
- What Fat Loss Comes Down To
- The power of protein
- How to make counting macros simple
- How a simple meal helps you get cut
- Our “go-to” meals for lunch
- Hidden calorie bombs
- Grocery Shopping on a budget
- Different sources of protein to hit your macros
- The great rice debate (brown versus white rice)
- Tom reveals that he has a massive sweet tooth
- How to make any vegetable insanely delicious
- How much protein you can absorb at once
- Action steps for hitting your macros every day
- A free guide to grocery shopping on a budget
Greg:
Hey, what’s going on? You are listening to the Road To Ripped podcast. We have an awesome episode today. We’re gonna talk all about hitting your macros, grocery shopping, food. Just the things to make fat loss and muscle building, whatever you goal you have—just to make it a lot more simple. I’m here with my man, Tom Ness! He’s been a longtime follower of Kinobody. I’ve done a lot of coaching with him. He’s even helped me with my site and stuff. He knows the stuff inside and out. He’s gonna be my co-host today. What’s going on, Tom? How are you?
Tom Ness:
What’s up, man? I’m so hyped to be here. No joke. I’ve been following Kinobody, lately so—the last year… More than the last year. I’ve actually been using it to get into wedding condition because I’m getting married. At the time we’re recording this, I’m getting married in about a month and a half. Dude, it’s been awesome. It’s been a fun ride. I’ve enjoyed working with you, helping your site out, helping you grow Kinobody…I’m hyped to be here. Let’s do this.
Greg:
Dude, I am so pumped. That’s a new phrase right there, “wedding condition”, Kinobody Wedding Condition!
Tom:
Yeah, dude. Expect, like, the Kinobody wedding shredding program to come out soon or something.
Greg:
Wedding shredding program. It’s all about looking good in that suit; getting really lean, getting the face angular—
Tom:
That’s right, dude. I got Vera Wang tux coming, too. It’s a trim fit, so I got to fit the bill.
Getting lean is a numbers game
Greg:
You have to fit the bill. That’s vital. Let’s crank down to business. In this episode, we’re gonna talk really about just how to hit the macros. Just to catch everyone up to speed right now, as far as getting lean is concerned, it’s really a numbers game. It’s about creating that deficit to allow your body to tap into fat loss. It’s important to optimize your macronutrients, which are your proteins, fats, and carbs. These make up the bulk of your calories. By having the right calorie intake and a good solid makeup of proteins, fats, and carbs, you’ll lean down nicely, support muscle mass retention, and support hormonal functioning. It’s important to have a good balance of proteins, fats, and carbs while having the right calorie intake. You can eat a wide variety of foods that you enjoy and you like. You can use those foods to make up your macros, which is definitely the most enjoyable way of going about leaning down. The old approach, which people did for a long time—and Tom, you’ve probably done this yourself as well, is, you know what, just having like a food list. “These are the only foods I can eat, and as long as I eat these foods, I’m doing good. I’m doing well.” The problem with that is that it’s not hard to overeat, even on—quote, unquote—“healthy” foods. Me, for example, I can go on a Paleo diet and I would gain weight just because without having a set amount of food, I would just keep eating. Just keep filling up on like, the fatty meats and the nuts. I’d just be taking in 3000 plus calories and I would clearly gain weight. Also, too, I’d feel deprived and be like, “Damn it. I want some potatoes! Or, I want some rice.” Or, I want just some—quote, unquote— “not Paleo…” Or not—quote, unquote—“clean” food. Maybe I want some frozen yogurt ice cream. Who knows? So, anyway, that’s that. Tom, do you have anything to say about the old school versus the new school way of doing things?
Tom:
Yeah! Actually, I don’t even look at it as old school versus new school. I look at it as Kinobody versus everything else. No joke, dude. Before I started following Kinobody, I would try things like… Actually, the last thing that I tried before the Kinobody dieting strategy was the Flat Belly Diet for Men, because it happened to be like a popular book at that time. Before I stumbled upon the Kinobody stuff, there is like all the diets out there that are hocked by all… They’re in the bookstores and everything, and there’s like a new diet program coming out every week. You go to the bookstore and you’ll find something on the bestseller list. It was The Flat Belly Diet for Men, and basically, you couldn’t really eat a lot of carbs at all. Then you had to eat like six meals throughout the day and each one was between 300 to 500 calories. Actually, like 300 to 400 calories because you’d be eating six of those meals per day. It sucks. I’m 185, so 300 calories is like really nothing. If that’s your lunch or if that’s your dinner, it’s like nothing, and so was really hard.
Tom’s experience eating at 1,600 calories per day
Greg:
It is nothing. It is less than a tease.
Tom:
Dude, it’s horrible. Right now, that’s less than half of my side following the Kinobody strategy. It was hard because I was always hungry. There was never a point during the day that I felt satisfied. If I had more than 400 calories, I felt like I was cheating. I followed it for, I would say, a good month or so. I saw a little weight loss but nothing substantial—and nothing to justify the hunger pains and the misery that I was experiencing while I was on the diet! So, yeah.
Just another way the Kinobody plan is awesome. Following that approach where you eat, whether you wanna do two huge meals during the day and a snack later or even… I think you’re on the two meal a day schedule right now, aren’t you?
Greg’s Current Meal Plan Strategy
Greg:
Yeah. I’m doing the two meal a day. It’s sort of like a hybrid two meal because I split up my first meal. I split up the big main meal and the side. So I have a huge portion of steak or a big ass chicken, or some pork, whatever, and some veggies. Then I’ll eat that and then I’ll chill, do some work, and then I will go carb crazy, and then kill some carbs. Then later that night, I’ll have my last meal. I found it really cool… I actually prefer breaking up the protein, the veggies, with the side of potato wedges or carbs. I just find my adherence is a lot higher when I do that, funny enough.
Tom:
Absolutely. But I mean, in general, let’s recap—you’re eating a shitload of food. That’s what it is. But if you do it in a strategic way… Before I read your stuff, I didn’t really know about intermittent fasting. I would wake up and I would have my first meal within the first 30 minutes of being awake for the day. Then three hours later, I would be eating another 300-calorie meal. Then three to four hours… So it was like those little windows all throughout the day. Dude, it was so hard to stick to. It was so hard.
Greg:
Let me just break down exactly why that approach is so hard. That was the [00:06:56 inaudible] we talked about. Thirty grams of protein within thirty minutes of waking up, it’s not necessary. The reason why that’s so hard is there’s so much going on against you. First of all, having to eat six meals per day is very challenging. Unless your whole life is fitness, body building, etcetera, it’s very challenging if you have a work life. If you have a life, it’s very challenging having to deal with food every two, three hours. But as well, every time you eat a meal, especially one that isn’t fully satisfying, you have to use a little bit willpower to not overeat. So, every time you sit down to have that 300, 400-calorie meal, you’re literally using willpower to just eat that and to not brood about other food and to not keep eating. So, you’re sapping your willpower literally six times a day. Six times a day, you’re literally taxing your ability to be mentally focused and just…
Tom:
Just adhere to the diet plan.
Greg:
Yeah. It’s so much harder in that respect. Whereas if you were just to like totally take longer gaps of eating, eventually, you’d hit the state where food is off your mind. You don’t even think about food. Then when you do eat, because you’ve created this good deficit, because you’ve created this good buffer to have a big meal, you finish that meal and you don’t even wanna think about food. So, you’re taking the whole willpower component out of the diet. Moreover, not only are you taking the willpower component out of the diet, you’re also taking the stress or the work—I’ll say, the work—out of diet, because having to eat several meals a day is hard work. It’s not fun. It’s hard work. So when you take the work…
Tom:
It’s especially harder when you’ve been trying to fit that around. If you work 9:00 to 5:00, or if you close at work, trying to fit that around… Like, unless it’s your job to stay at home and just diet all day, which I would imagine it is nobody’s job that’s listening to this podcast, but unless that’s your job…you can’t do it! You literally can’t do it. You can’t fit it around a full-time job.
How Willpower Effects Dieting
Greg:
Right. On two separate ends, you’re using so much willpower. You don’t get to feel satisfied and then you also have to deal with the distress of having to eat constantly. Every day is like a grind. It’s hard to keep up. So, when you strip that away—you start doing the fasting and you feel amazingly alert and focused, and then you kind of eat a couple of times a day, your day just goes so much more smoothly. Every day, you feel totally like a fucking warrior or king, just satisfied, on food. You lean down and it’s really ridiculously simple. Even for me, I had periods of time where I wasn’t working and I was just focused on getting lean. I couldn’t even do the five, six meals a day just because I would always just wanna eat more. I’d always feel…
Tom:
It’s tough!
How To Hitting Your Macros
Greg:
Yeah. I mean, let’s switch gears. Let’s talk about hitting the macros on a Kinobody plan. It’s pretty simple. It’s not overly complicated. You guys will not have to get stressed out. Tom, what do you think the first step is? First step is probably getting an idea of what your macros would be. That’s probably beyond the scope of this podcast.
Tom:
Well, I’ll tell you what, let’s approach it from like a fat loss strategy first. Really, what it comes down to, it’s a numbers game. In a lot of people, there’s a lot of confusion surrounding macros and what it looks like. You could probably start off with just addressing the concept of macronutrients and how you need to structure your macros in order to lose fat. Do you wanna start there?
What Fat Loss Comes Down To
Greg:
Yeah. That’s a good idea. As far as fat loss is concerned, as long as you’re taking in less calories than you’re burning, you will lose fat. Optimizing macros are important for testosterone, health, retaining muscle… The first step is really to find out how many calories you’re burning and then eat less than that. Generally speaking, if you’re moderately active, maintains calories around 14 to 15 calories per pound of body weight… So, like, a 185-pound guy like yourself, Tom, you’re looking at burning about 2700 calories per day if you get a little bit of activity. If you kind of maybe go for an hour of walk during the day, or maybe go to the gym to lift some weights and then you do a little walking on the house…you’d probably be around 2700 calories per day. That is a matter of losing fat.
Probably the magic number for you is gonna be about 2200 calories per day, where you lean down nicely. Maybe it’s a bit higher, maybe it’s a bit lower, but somewhere in that range. Now that you have your calorie set for fat loss, now you get to play around with the macronutrients. How much protein do you want? How much carbs? How much fats?
Really what it comes down to is a matter of balance. Every single macronutrient has its purpose, and it’s beneficial. You try and single out one macronutrient, say “carbs are bad”, “fat is bad”, or hell, even “protein is bad”, you are making work a lot harder than it has to be. Here’s the deal, fat is very important for testosterone. Fat, it tastes really good. If you strip out all the fat from a meal, food does not taste very good and you’re left hungry in 30 minutes. Fat is important for testosterone. Fat is very important. To go on low fat is gonna backfire. Now, if you take all the carbs, right, and there’s no carbs in your meal, you’re not gonna get that seratonin release in your brain that makes you feel relaxed and satisfied. You’re not gonna get that craving satisfied. You leave a meal wanting more. You’re going to keep wanting to eat because you don’t feel satisfied. As well you’re not gonna support training because carbs are really what fuel training at a high intensity level, lifting weights… Sleep is gonna be impaired. Your sex drive is also gonna be impaired when you cut out carbs or fats. So, all these macronutrients are really important.
Tom:
Mm-hmm.
The power of protein
Greg:
The protein, of course, is what helps rebuild, repair muscle tissue, although, you don’t need to have buttloads of protein. There’s a certain number that’s gonna pretty much give you everything you need. Going up higher than that is not a bad thing because protein is really filling. Eating stuff like chicken breast is gonna fill you up more so than eating rice. Once you set your macronutrients, maybe you have like 30% calories from fats, and then maybe you have the rest from carbs and protein balanced. Maybe it’s 40% protein, 30% carbs, or 35, 35. Some balance in there is gonna be pretty spot-on. And then from there, it’s a matter of hitting those macronutrients. If you’re doing two meals per day, you can just cut those in half.
I mean, if you’re not familiar with counting the macros, you might be kind of getting a little bit convoluted here but let’s say, Tom, you’re doing 2200 calories per day… You know what, you can even do a thousand calories per meal and then have two pieces of fruit. What that would look like would be like a big portion of meat, maybe some chicken breasts, maybe some steak, maybe some pork, maybe what have you, and then a big portion of carbs. For carbs, I really like stuff like potatoes, sweet potatoes which are really filling and satisfying. And then maybe some fats, or healthy fats—just some saturated fats, whatever, to add some fats to the meal.
Tom:
Absolutely. A lot of people struggle with counting macros. I know that I did at first as well just because they’re literally… Like I said before, it’s all a numbers game. To make it really easy, you have articles on Kinobody that address exactly how to count your macros, how to figure out how much protein you should have, how much fat you should have, how many carbs you should have each day… The way that I make it really easy, and I know you use this too, there’s apps that you can use in your phone or in your computer. The one that I use is called MyFitnessPal. Literally, all you do is you plug in how many calories you wanna have per day. And so, I actually have mine set to 2200. Then you—
Greg:
I was right!
Tom:
Dude, you were spot on, yeah! So, I have it set to 2200 calories and then you can set the percentages of what macros you wanna eat. I currently have mine at 40% protein, 35% protein carbs and 25% fat. I’ll fluctuate like 44, 40, 20 or 35, 40, 25. It just depends on what your goals are and you know how many calories you consume is also gonna be dependent on what your actual goal is; if you wanna lose fat or if you wanna build muscles. If you wanna build muscle, you’re gonna want a surplus. Not a huge surplus, but enough to actually support the muscle growth. For fat, though—Again, I’m still cutting for my wedding so my calories are based off of the deficit. Those apps make it so easy because then, you don’t have to count all the calories and everything. You can literally scan the bar code of the food that you’re about to eat, and it’ll total everything up. It even shows you where you’re at, throughout day, in a little pie chart! It makes counting macros like a breeze. In order to figure out actually what you’re consuming, what it actually counts for, how many fats, proteins, carbs, and everything—what I would really recommend everybody do is actually put in the time to weigh their food. So, pay attention to serving sizes because one whole chicken breast… I mean, I don’t know what it is offhand because I scan the barcode nowadays. If you don’t know…
Greg:
[00:17:39 inaudible] grams of protein.
Tom:
Yeah. If you don’t know how many grams of protein is in a chicken breast, I’d recommend weighing it. Or, on the box, if you’re cooking rice, for example—or if you’re cooking a potato, weigh the potato, actually measure up the rice and cook the specific portion sizes so you actually can eyeball what the actual serving size is, and you can use that to calculate your macros. Once you figure out what certain portion sizes look like, counting calories becomes so much easier. It’s just you have to know what’s in your food and what you’re putting in your body in order to adequately track your macros.
How to make counting macros simple
Greg:
Yeah. That’s exactly right. Everyone is kind of new to this. There’s a few things you’re gonna wanna do. First of all, you’re gonna wanna get one of those calculators, those apps, on your phone. The phone is just so much more accessible than your computer so I would recommend you getting on your phone. MyFitnessPal is really great. MyNetDiary is also really solid. Then from there, you also gonna wanna get a digital food scale, and then you can start weighing these foods, getting an idea… Plug it in, and don’t stress out about getting the exact calorie number, 2200 calories on the dot. Don’t stress out about getting exactly 200 grams or 150 grams of protein, whatever it is. Just get within a nice range. Give yourself some wiggle room as long as you’re somewhere within the ballpark of it. Going up to 2300 calories or down to 2100 calories is not the end of the world. Going 20 grams of carbs or 20 grams of protein over or under is not a huge deal. Five or ten grams, over or under, of fat is not a big deal. Just try and get within the ballpark. If you’re so focused on just getting the exact number, it’s not gonna help you. It just gonna stress you out. It’s gonna make things just more stressful. Just be relaxed, enjoy it. I did this tracking for a long time. I did weighing. I did the phone. Literally, once you get used to it, it literally takes no time. There’s no reason to be stressed out about it. It literally takes five seconds. If you’re cooking a meal, it takes five more seconds to figure out the macros in the calories.
Tom:
It’s true. It doesn’t have to be a long, complicated process.
Greg:
Right. Then once you have the meal and you measure it, you probably can just eyeball that meal the next time. It’s pretty simple. Then if you’re going out to restaurants, a lot of these restaurants, they have the nutritional information, the macros, online. If you want these—Chipotle or Subway, or even some of these fast food restaurants, there’s actually options. Even if you’re going to like McDonald’s, there’s options where you can actually double up on protein and get a healthier option. All these restaurants, especially in the United States, they tend to have all the calorie macro information online. It just becomes very, very simple. Me, these days, I don’t really even use my phone app. I don’t often use the scale because now, I’m really good at eyeballing it and I’ve started to become more in tune with my body, and so I’m just kind of go with the flow. I’m very objective so it’s not an issue, but for a long time, I was tracking the stuff and it helped. It really helped!
Tom:
Yeah. If you’re talking about cutting and you’re talking about eating at a deficit, I think it’s really beneficial until you know and until you can eyeball particular meals or particular foods. It’s really important, I think, to weigh things. Right now, I basically make the same thing for lunch every day. So, like, I fast through maybe the first four to six hours of waking up. I try to get up 7:00. Usually, it doesn’t happen. I’m usually making lunch between 12:00 and 2:00. So, I make the same damn thing every day. I have ground turkey…I do the bulk of my grocery shopping at either Aldi or Wal-Mart here because keep in mind, we’re trying to save up for a wedding and it’s both me and my fiancée, Emily, who’s conveniently working on The Kino Chef right now, putting recipes and everything together. So, it’s both of us and we both follow the Kino strategy, so, we’re feeding two people each week… I mean, two people all the time…If you’re not used to eating in the Kinobody approach, like two huge meals, again, it is a lot of food.
When I first started following the Kino stuff, I was like, “Dude, not only it is so much food, but it’s gonna cost a fortune trying to feed us every single week because we’re going through potatoes like crazy, we’re on through proteins like crazy; chicken, turkey, everything…” So, we had to figure out a way to do it not only cost-effectively, but in a way that what our lifestyle. What I do is every single day; I make ground turkey for lunch. I season it. I put some cheese on it and I cook a potato on the side with some broccoli. I’ve cooked it enough times, and I used to weigh it out on the beginning to where now, I know exactly… Even like with the plate I use—I know how much food can fit on this specific plate and the macros behind it because I’ve made it and I’ve weighed it out for three weeks straight. Then after that, you get used to what portion sizes are, what that looks like, and you don’t have to track everything so religiously.
It’s really beneficial, putting in the time in the beginning for at least the first few times in making anything to…just to actually see what foods equate to what macros. Plug that into your app, whether you’re using the app on the phone or in your computer. Or, just keep in track of things set around the nutrition labels and figure out what food has what so you know where you’re at.
Greg:
Yeah, exactly. It’s funny. When you’re leaning down, when you’re cutting and creating that deficit, once you find a meal that you really enjoy, that satisfies you, then that’s not an issue eating it every day. It’s not.
Tom:
No.
How a simple meal helps you get cut
Greg:
It may sound crazy to most people but when you’re cutting and you’re getting leaner, you’re seeing these results and you have a simple meal that you just love, you don’t care to mix it up. You don’t. Maybe…
Tom:
Yes, that is so true!
Greg:
Maybe you rotate through a few different meals. Me, for example, usually, I have four or five meals that I really like at a specific time. I’ll just play around with those meals. Me, for example, I almost have potato wedges almost every single day. If I’m cooking at home, I’m literally having potato wedges every single day because they’re so freaking good. I’m so satisfied after I eat them and…they’re so freaking good.
Tom:
Do you have, like, a go-to lunch? What do you make 90% of the time for you lunches? Because I have one that’s like—In fact, I’m gonna make it as soon as we’re finished recording this because now I’m getting hungry. But what’s your go-to lunch?
Our “go-to” meals for lunch
Greg:
Usually, what I do is I kick it off with some frozen veggies. I’ll just boil some frozen veggies. I’m too lazy to prepare fresh vegetables. I’ll boil some frozen vegetables. Maybe some broccols, some cauliflowers, some mixed veggies. Then, I’ll hit up some protein. Some days, I’ll just cook some chicken breasts, cut them up, cook them on the pan with some coconut oil. Other days, I’ll do the same thing but with flank steak. I’ll cut some flank steak, cook them on the pan. Some days, I’ll roast like a sirloin. I’ve also recently been playing around with pork tenderloin which is fantastic. Pretty low-fat actually. I’ll bake some pork tenderloin. Some days, I’ll go to the grocery store and I’ll pick up a whole chicken and just eat as much of it as I can.
Tom:
Like, rotisserie-style? Or…
Greg:
That’d be disgusting. But, yeah. I’ll eat as much as I can. I’m like, “That’s enough protein.” Then I’ll just put the rest in the fridge. Maybe for another meal, I’ll make some chicken wraps with something like brown rice . Wraps. Usually, those are my protein sources; a roast beef, pork tenderloin, chicken breast. I gotta get started on the ground turkey because that’s very good. After that meal… As the second component of that meal, rather, I will just bake some potato wedges with some macadamia nut oil. Then boom, I am just hooked. I am like, “Yes, I love life right now!” Some days, I won’t even…
Some days, after I had the protein source, instead of cooking the potato wedges, I will literally…maybe I’ll go to a restaurant with some friends but more of, like, a late night thing. I’ll go out with some friends and just doing appetizer and I drink. Instead buying like a $30, $40, $50 entrée, I will be like, “Sweet potatoes fries!” This one place, they have these amazing Irish nachos. If I’m doing this, I usually do chicken breast and just vegetables as the first component of that meal because then, I’ll create this big fat buffer. So I have room for more calories and fat. Then these Irish nachos are like literally potatoes with cheese and almost cooked crispy like nachos, and they call this—like—I’ll kill that.
Tom:
People probably see you eating food outside at a restaurant and wonder how the hell you’re so ripped.
Greg:
Yeah. It’s funny. When I used to be… Because I have a girlfriend now, but when I used to be like kind of…
Tom:
Congratulations.
Greg:
…dating a lot, girls would initially meet me and they’d think I’m some fit-obsessed dude, obsessed with like eating clean and healthy. They would see me pound some frozen yoghurt ice cream and chocolate chips at night. They’d be like, “What is wrong with you? You must have the best genetics.” I’m like, “Yeah. I know. I…I could gain weight like that I just kind of cracked the code and I know how to eat these foods and make it work.” They go, “Teach me, teach me, teach me!” I’m like, “We’ll see.”
Tom:
It’s unbelievable because like my go-to lunch is have two potatoes, like I love russet potatoes because I can buy 10 pound bag of them for $4 and that lasts for like 2 weeks at a time, for two people—So I have two russet potatoes which is a lot of potatoes, keep in mind, and then I have between 12 to 14 ounces of ground turkey.
Greg:
That’s raw ground turkey?
Tom:
Raw ground turkey yeah, and so obviously it cooks down and so.
Hidden calorie bombs
Greg:
One thing I’ve seen in a lot of people that have been hitting me up, like, you know, “Gregory, I’ve been hitting my macros, I haven’t been leaning down, I don’t know what’s going on here…” And this comes up with so much and I know this because I’ve made this mistake too. And so here’s the problem, is people like look at the macros of like a protein source maybe they got a steak and okay, 12 ounces is 600 calories, cool. Little do they realize they’re weighing it after they cooked it and when you cook something, you lose a lot of that water weight and so something that is 12 ounces cooked is 16 ounces uncook. So they’re taking in literally an extra 30% of calories. And that adds up.
Tom:
That’s a big thing. A big thing! That’s why it’s important to weigh the food like weigh it raw, all your protein—weigh it raw. And for your carbs like measure amount before you cook them or anything because it does cook down and if you weigh things when they’re cooked, I mean you’re taking in a lot more calories and you think you are and it does add up really quick.
Greg:
Yeah, like that could be your deficit. Like that 500 calorie deficit you created, if you’re weighing stuff after you cook them and you’re like you’re reducing the weight…that is the deficit!
Tom:
Exactly.
Greg:
And so I actually this is couple of 2 or 3 years back and this one right off my head and I was just—I was like wondering why am I like…was my maintenance really low? My maintenance was as low as 2000 carbs, I’m not losing weight and then I realized I was actually taking in a lot more.
Tom:
Yeah, well but that’s it though.
Greg:
Yeah.
Tom:
And so here’s what I do, so this is my go-to lunch and this is what I’ll make as soon as we get off this call—I take 2 potatoes and I put them in the microwave, well I peel them first and then I put them in the microwave. While they’re cooking in the microwave I start browning up my turkey, so I cook a whole package of it, it’s about a pound and a half. So I take a half of pound or like, I take 7 ounces off of it and it comes out to be between 12 to 14 ounces of raw turkey and so I cook that down, and then as soon as the potatoes are done, I take them out and I cube them up into like littler pieces and by this time I mean they’re all like perfectly cook but then as soon as the turkey finishes browning, I throw the potatoes in the pan and it’s like a big scramble, and then so after its done—oh, I’ll throw some cheese in it depending on you know what I want, sometimes it’s like a couple of tablespoon of buffalo sauce, otherwise I use like chili powder and cumin and paprika and salt and pepper stuff like that, that’s what I season it with and then I heap it on my plate usually with a little side of broccoli…sprinkle some cheese on it.
It is so good, I mean it looks like a pile of dog food but the quantity of it is so massive that everybody that sees it is like, “What are you doing? Like, are you really going to eat all that?” And it’s kind of like a shock factor because if you don’t really understand the concept of how to eat, like two huge meals instead a deficit, it looks like you’re just going to gourd yourself. And honestly, it’s kind of intimidating plate when it gets done but it is absolutely the most delicious thing I eat during the day until Emily cooks dinner.
Greg:
Are you boiling the potatoes or no?
Tom:
I microwave them.
Greg:
Okay, yes you microwave first. How long you microwave them for?
Tom:
Well, I got the potato setting in my microwave but it comes out to be about 5 minutes.
Greg:
Let’s say 5 minutes yes and then you cut them—then you dice them into cubes and then you fry them on the pan.
Tom:
I also—When they come out in the microwave they’re already cooked and they’re already like softer, so I throw them right into the pan and scramble them up with the turkey. The other thing I do is sometimes—So if I don’t have a full serving of turkey, I’ll scramble off some eggs and I’ll cook the potatoes—Sorry, microwave them. I always start with russet potatoes because I hate undercook potatoes, just crunchy and yeah I don’t like them. So I will microwave the potatoes and then I’ll still dice them up and throw them in the pan with like a tablespoon of butter or some kind of oil, macadamia oil or something like that and like brown them up a little bit and then I’ll scramble up some eggs in on and then I’ll put the turkey or chicken on top of that. So I mean either way I’m huge into the scrambles, so I think it’s like I’m not like a big chef or anything—that’s Emily’s department, that what she’s working on the cookbook. I just like I need to get in there, smash some food, and get out, you know? I got a busy day usually. So huge on the scrambles but they’re so good and then it could be a different scramble everyday which is using different seasonings or different sauces, and I think that’s we’re get into next with like actually grocery shopping so you can this.
Grocery Shopping on a budget
Greg:
Yeah, let’s get in to grocery shopping because we’ve covered a lot of ground and unless I guess people probably want to know like, all right I’m going grocery shopping, you know, what are the essential items, what should I get? And we’ll keep this really simple and just basically we don’t want to give people like 50 to hundred items to buy because they don’t need to it. You can be very very simple, so can you tell them or what you start with?
Tom:
So I have—Really there are things that we buy every week because like now keep in mind, like over here, like, it’s both Emily and myself. So we feed two people and we’ve gotten it down to where we can do it for between $35 to $40 per week and the way that we do that is there is, so we buy proteins, carbs and veggies basically every time we go to the grocery store once a week and then we have things like that we keep it in our pantry like sauces and spices and seasoning and stuff like that to make what we buy unique. So example you can take chicken, you can have chicken breast everyday of the week but you can have it in a different way, you can put barbecue sauce on it, you can put buffalo on it, you can put it in a crock pot with the jars and salsa. You could have that same chicken breast every single of the week but you can season it differently, so you create a different meal and you never get sick of it. And that’s, I think the problem with dieting in general that people think they need a pound of chicken breast and broccoli every single day and they get burned out on it. You know? And so you got to mix it up a little bit, but the go to things that we get at the grocery store, we get chicken breast, we get ground chicken or ground turkey, we always get eggs and now we just moved down to Florida and they carry grass-fed beef over here.
Greg:
Dang!
Tom:
I know, dude! So, we buy a pound of ground grass-fed beef which is inner beef. I mean that’s really is, sometimes we’ll throw some salmon in there, salmon or tilapia for fish, but essentially it’s chicken, ground turkey, eggs and grass-fed beef—and that’s our protein.
Greg:
Yeah, that’s all very cost effective protein. I’m more of a [00:36:05 classy] person myself so—
Tom:
[laughs] I can’t wait to hear this!
Greg:
So I throw them some steaks, and some roast beefs but yeah I know I always hit on those foods as well.
Tom:
Now that’s screams class to me. [laughs]
Greg:
That’s it, yeah. So I mean yeah you got your protein sources locked down, some chicken breast, some ground turkey and some eggs and some extra lean ground beef.
Tom:
Absolutely.
Different sources of protein to hit your macros
Greg:
And then if you want you throw them some stuff like roast beef or pork tender loin or some lean cut like a lean steak, like flank steak or sirloin steak. And some fish, tilapia or—but like find—just pick like 3 different protein sources that you really enjoy and just cook on those because you don’t want to get like to convoluted yet, and so now those are protein sources. Let’s move in to the carbs.
Tom:
Yes, with carbs. So my go-to again I love potatoes, I think that they’re really filling. Every time, if I had a side of potatoes, my meal typically is a lot more satiating in that it just holds me over. So, I prefer eating potatoes over any other carb that I could have. Sweet potatoes are number one but I love reds and rusettes too but apart from that like the carbs that are in my grocery bag are usually a bag of potatoes regardless of what kind I get and then we do brown rice or white rice, and then usually some oatmeal that we really—We don’t ever eat the oatmeal outside of putting it in a food processor to create breading for chicken, if we’re making some kind of chicken tenders. So, keep it coming in Kino Chef, there’s a barbecue and buffalo chicken tenders made with like an oatmeal breading which are just delicious but—
Greg:
If there’s dressing it never has to be boring.
Tom:
No, never. And so yes, so I do potatoes, rice and then oatmeal for the breading and that’s…those are my staples, how about you?
Greg:
Yeah, I usually—I mean, for me it’s like I usually get some like nice crispy apples and I’ll have like a couple apples a day. In my feasting when I usually I eat like 2 apples a day just find them tasty and like I’ve eat it before a meal or something and then yeah I just kill that, potatoes, just kill potatoes and—
Tom:
What do you think about brown rice versus white rice? I mean it’s a huge debate if you actually look in to it. I mean do you think it matter one way or the other or what’s your opinion on it?
The great rice debate (brown versus white rice)
Greg:
I think people are just giving too sucked into the whole debate of brown rice versus white rice. Brown rice has been shown that have some anti-nutrients which can, you know, minimally reduce protein absorption and vitamin and mineral absorption and I stress the word minimally because now like brown rice going to stop you from absorbing these nutrients, it’s just kind of slightly reduce their absorption which isn’t the end of the world and the whole glycemic index thing…people need to scrap this. People need to forget about it as far as fat loss is concerned, it’s about your macros that you’re hitting, if you’re in a deficit, you’ll lose weight and moreover if you’re having like white rice with some steak and some broccoli, well the protein, fat and fiber that you’re getting from the steak and broccoli is going to render the glycemic index meaningless. It will slowdown the absorption of the meal, so the white rice versus brown rice thing, I really don’t think it matters, like I really just think—go with whatever.
If you’re to be more satisfied eating a cup of white rice then have the white rice. If you’re going to be more full in the brown rice, have the brown rice. Find out what it is you want, I very rarely have rice unless I’m going to [00:40:25 inaudible] just because—Or, I mean or if I’m going to sushi, all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant. But if I’m trying to keep my calories low, rice is not on the top of my list because it doesn’t do it for me. Potatoes are filling. Just a little experiment, get 300 calories of rice, get 300 calories of potatoes and see the difference. You’re going to be like this is a lot of potatoes, and then you’ll be like…this like literally nothing for the rice or same thing with cereal, 300 calories of cereal, what? This is what a serving size is? Oh my God this is like for a baby.
Tom:
Yeah, it’s like two thirds of a cup.
Greg:
Yeah, two thirds.
Tom:
Dude, I used a pound like 4 bowl of cereal in one sitting that’s like 11 servings.
Greg:
Yeah, that’s like 1000 calories! I don’t know, but that’s a lot. And so I mean you can do rice, I know some people that have a lot of rice in their diet and they’re fine, they’re satisfied and they’re full but for me potatoes are where it’s at. So, yeah. Usually my carb sources are like literally I’ll get some russet potatoes, some sweet potatoes and some apples and then sometimes I’ll play around with other stuff like if I want to get some treats in there, I’ll get some frozen yogurt ice cream, if you’re going to have ice cream get the frozen yogurt ice cream because literally it’s less than half of calories of regular ice cream and so you can have a big bowl of frozen yogurt ice cream. If you let it melt or soften off a bit it taste like almost just as good and you’re not going to feel…like you’re be able feel satisfied on a bowl that’s not that much calories.
Tom:
And you’re going to feel like you’re eating…It feels like cheat meal but it’s not because again that fits within your macros.
Greg:
You wanna hear something funny, Tom? You wanna hear something funny?
Tom:
Shoot.
Greg:
I feel more satisfied having like a 400 calorie portion of frozen yogurt ice cream—I feel a way more satisfied having that than 400 calories of rice. Like, I’m not even kidding.
Tom reveals that he has a massive sweet tooth
Tom:
Why is that? See, now, that strikes a chord with me because I’ve got the biggest sweet tooth known to man so I have to find some way to satisfy that craving and that happens to be with frozen yogurt for me. So I totally get you, man, I get what you’re putting down.
Greg:
Yeah, so I mean yeah I do the potatoes, the apples, the frozen yogurt ice cream sometimes and yeah I’ve been experimenting with like these corn tortillas which are amazing. You can literally fry this up on a pan with a bit of coconut oil and then throw like some chicken in there, like what I’ll do is like I mentioned how like usually pound a whole chicken and then I’ll cut the rest and save it in the fridge and so I’m having some corn tortillas, I’ll literally fry them, I’ll put—after it’s cooked I’ll throw the chicken in there and maybe had some cheese in there and let it stay on the pan to heat up a bit, let the cheese melt and have some of those and they’re really really tasty, really incredibly tasty, so good. It takes two seconds and it’s funny, like these meals like we’re talking about, like they’re so simple to do and like literally when I share these meals with my friends or my brothers or whoever, they all love them. Like this is so good!
And so I’ve help my youngest brother, Rory, he’s like 17, I’ve helped him lean down so much. He was just that chubby kid in school, he was that fat kid in class, which sucks, it’s hard to be that person. And so few years ago once I started showing him that losing fat could actually be really enjoyable, and once I showed him like the way of like fasting and eating like, really delicious meals—and he was the pickiest eater in the world. We go much in restaurants and he would just—[laughs] you know the waiter would come over and they’d come over to Rory and be like “Okay, what do you having?” And he’d be like, “Pizza!” “Oh, we don’t have pizza at this restaurant.” And he’d be like, “Pizza!” Like he would—All he’d want is pizza. So he’d be the pickiest eater ever. And so once I start showing these meals, he loves it. And he’s start leaving down and so now like literally he’s just fully adapting my way of eating, he loves it. And so yeah the point is like these meals that they are satisfying, they’re going to really satisfy you and keep you satiated, allow you to make eating at deficit really really enjoyable or actually like you can’t not love them.
How to make any vegetable insanely delicious
Tom:
Not only are they incredibly satisfying, but they are actually healthy for you. And like, the first time you have them and you feel like you’re cheating, you feel like there’s no way in how that this could actually be a healthy meal but they are. And you just have to figure out how to cook in a way that is healthy and that fits within the confines of the macros that you’re trying to hit. And so on the side I mean you cook up with broccoli on the side, I personally I love broccoli, corn, this is a new thing for me but I love brussel sprouts now and if you throw a little bit of salt and pepper on them with like a tiny bit of butter—and like any vegetable becomes instantly delicious.
It’s just I don’t know how but it does. So you know you have like your protein, your carb and your veggie and it’s like you have this incredibly satisfying meals that you never thought that you—Sometimes I can even finish my portion sizes, which is crazy to say when you’re cutting but you know, it’s true, and that’s like eating in this kind of fashion, that’s what it does.
Greg:
And you want to hear an interesting phenomenon that I thought I’d just throw out right now? It’s sometimes is really cool what happen is when you do this two meal strategy, one, you’re providing your body with all of these protein, fats and carbs and you’re just feeling satisfied, sometimes you lean down really quickly and you’d be like, you know what I going to slow this down and some days you’ll have to like deliberately eat more.
So I have like a phase where I was doing maintenance for a while so I was kind of—and by eating at maintenance after cutting you’re essentially you’re kind of bringing up [00:46:59 lechtin], optimizing your hormones, and getting your body used to burning more calories. And so when I shifted back in to a deficit, literally my weight was going down really fast and so every like 3 or 4 days I would literally go to this burger restaurant and I would pound two double patty burgers and huge thing of fries, every 3 or 4 days just so I didn’t lean down too quickly.
Tom:
It’s a good problem to have.
Greg:
It’s a really good problem to have. It’s a really good problem to have.
Tom:
Man, the struggle is real for you.
Greg:
The struggle? I mean, that was because I did that really cool maintenance phase and I just kind of got my body ready to kind of lean down fast again so it worked amazing.
How much protein you can absorb at once
Tom:
So now what about for the people that are like Woah, how if you have that much food at one time, you know aren’t useful to space and outing, can you really absorb that many grams of protein and that many carbs, like how do you address that? Because keep in mind like with this strategy we’re talking what you fast throughout the morning, I mean if you’re familiar with any Kinobody strategies, I mean you talked about it tons of times both in the podcast and on your blog, I mean you fast for the morning and then you have a huge lunch then you fast—or, well, you don’t fast, you can have an apple or snack or something but then you have huge dinner—and optionally a smaller snack at night or between your two big meals but you’re eating too huge pillar of meals, here. How do you address the criticism of like, “Oh, you can’t absorb that much protein or carbs in one go!”?
Greg:
Okay, this is why I like having you on the call, Tom ,because these questions are that literally still fly our…I still forget that I need to address this stuff like you have that in mind and this is important stuff to address because a lot of people still have these questions. I get these questions on my blogs still all the time and so—I mean I guess one of the first things that you said was, can you absorb this much protein at a time? Yes. Yes, you can.
There’s no limit to how much protein you could absorb, the more protein you eat it would just take a longer to absorb. Meaning, if you have like a hundred grams of protein in a sitting, it may take you 12 or 14 hours to absorb that protein. And that’s not a bad thing, that’s completely fine. And so that was a myth that you can only absorb 20 or 30 grams or 40 grams of protein in a sitting and it was very productive to the supplement industry because their serving sizes of their weighed protein was matched to that number. So one time there’s 24, one time there’s 30, one time there’s 40 and it was just to get you to buy protein shakes because it’s very hard to go to restaurant or like cook exactly like 30 grams of protein.
In order to like hit—because they tell you, you have to hit like a certain like 200 grams of proteins and then you have to do that in meals with like 30 grams of proteins so you’d have to be eating protein every 2 hours. That was a complete myth! There’s no science to back it up! And if it was true, if you could only absorb 30 grams of protein in the time then what is that mean? It means that the other 50 grams is just getting evaporated? Any food that you put in to your body, your body has to deal with, it has to process, it has to utilize. And so if you’d only absorb 30 grams of protein than any other protein food you took in would literally be magic calories that would just disappear, and that’s not the truth. So it’s just ridiculous, I mean if these are really big meals, you’re not accustomed to eating them, that’s find.
Maybe make the meals a bit smaller at first, give your body a time to adjust and to eat more. And if you find it that you’re really full and satisfied on 2 meals a day then if you’re under your macros then just do that for awhile, you just lean down really fast and then eventually your body’s like, okay, I need—I’m ready to eat more for lunch and I’m ready eat more for dinner…and then bring things up.
Action steps for hitting your macros every day
Tom:
Absolutely. So I tell you what, to help wrap things up I think we should get people some action steps so they can use to not only hit their macros on a daily basis but also do it in a way that doesn’t break the bank, because I know when I first started cooking Kino meals, you got to think—12 to 14 ounces of chicken twice a day is really expensive, I mean like your food can add up and I—when Emily and I first started the whole Kino diet plan, we were actually spending a lot of money and for like food we’re spending more money on food than anything else because we would buy like everything to cook, every single meal individually, which is like horribly counter-productive to any kind of budget and like keep in mind we were saving for a wedding. We have to figure out ways to do it very inexpensively and that’s why we ended up…so now we shop in Aldi’s and Walmart just to make it manageable but it’s like we found a really cool way to, like, more of a system more or less to hit our macros every single day and stay on a budget at the same time which I think may resonate with a lot of the listeners to the podcast here. So it is okay with you if we break down some action steps on how they can do that?
Greg:
Yeah, exactly. And we have a free deliverable that people can download like a cheat sheet which make this a lot simpler rather than have them re-listen and stuff.
A free guide to grocery shopping on a budget
Tom:
Yeah, absolutely. And so I tell you what, you guys can go if you were to kinobody.com/grocerylist you’ll actually—We’re going to put together like a guide of the things that we buy at the grocery store every single week and also probably a couple of different meals that you can make with those groceries. But what I have found really effective what we do here is still at the beginning of every week, we plan all of our meals for that week. And so we typically gravitate towards between 1 or 2 meals every single day for lunch, so it’s really only the dinner that we need to focus on making different. So what we do is we plan out…and it’s almost like a spreadsheet, like we pick whatever we want to make for the whole week, we plan our meals out and then we make a grocery list based off of that. And we buy things in bulk that we can use for multiple meals so that way you’re not buying individually for every single meal which is usually how get really expensive to begin with. And then you can figure out how to make different meals with the same ingredients, like chicken breast for example.
If you buy bulk chicken breast at Walmart, you can buy like 4 pounds of chicken for $9 which is pretty good. Like, $8 to $9 and you can put in the crock pot, you can cut a couple of breast up in a tenders, you can make—you can use the oatmeal strategy that we do, we put oatmeal in the food processor and dip the chicken breast in the egg white so then roll them in the oatmeal to make like a breading, you can do that with them. You could just like cook them up and put buffalo sauce on them, I mean there’s—You could put it in like a stir fry for example with brown rice, I mean there are tons and different things you can do but figure out like how you can take like your same core ingredients like chicken or turkey or beef and make different meals with them using different sauces or seasonings, so you save a lot of money on groceries but you can have like different foods everyday if you want so you don’t get burned out on your diet plan, quote unquote.
Greg:
Bam, word!
Tom:
How’d you like that?
Greg:
How do you like them apples? All right, that was perfect. Yeah. Because, I mean that’s one objection you’ll have is like yeah if I’m eating all this food it’s going to cost it fortune, I don’t have that. I can’t just spend $200 a week on food. You don’t have to.
Tom:
Exactly.
Greg:
So that’s kinobody.com/grocerylist this is going to save you money, tons of money, tons of time, tons of personal anguish, so go there now. We have a sweet download for you, and I mean…Anything else, Tom, that we need to, like, hit on?
Tom:
Well I think that’s probably good for this and we’ll pack some pretty cool stuff into that report. I think it is worth mentioning that The Kino Chef which is the Kino cookbook is in development right now and it’s kind of a prolonged process because there is—We usually like to cook the same recipe at least a few times just to make sure that it comes out consistently and it’s actually good and that hit the macros that we want it to, so that’s still being developed, but that is something on the horizon which is going to help a lot of people cooks some really awesome meals using the same things that they’re going to be buying anyway. So that’s pretty cool but yeah I think we’ve covered a lot! We’ve covered hitting macros, different dieting strategies and then, you know, the things that we shop for every week. So…
Greg:
All right, so perfect. Alright guys thank you so much for listening and stay tuned for the next episode. We got some great stuff coming, all right, guys, take care.
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