meal plan to lose weight I what to eat to lose weight I Dieting plan for weight loss
In this instructional video, Eric Roberts walks viewers through a step‑by‑step framework for building a personalized diet aimed at fat loss. He introduces a nutrition hierarchy based on the Muscle & Strength Pyramids (calories → protein → carbs/fats → meal timing/frequency, all wrapped by adherence). He explains why calories are the single most critical factor and provides a simple calculation (goal body weight in pounds × 12) with a recommended ±100‑calorie range. Next, he details protein’s role—its high thermic effect, satiety, and muscle‑preserving benefits—and gives a target of goal body weight in pounds × 1 g of protein per day. He then downplays the importance of precise carb and fat tracking, suggesting they can be flexible as long as calories and protein are on target, while offering optional macro‑tracking resources. Meal timing and frequency are discussed, emphasizing consistent eating windows, the advantage of eating every 2–4 hours, and a critique of intermittent fasting when it leads to night‑time overeating. A sample day’s meal plan is presented (protein shake + banana at breakfast, eggs/toast/Greek yogurt mid‑morning, large mixed‑green salad with protein at lunch, tuna packet with fruit/snacks mid‑afternoon, salmon with rice and stir‑fry at dinner, optional dessert). Throughout, Roberts stresses that adherence (85‑95% consistency) is the ultimate determinant of success. The video concludes with a call to action for questions, subscriptions, and further resources.
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All right. Oh, oh, my abs are so sore, dude. Oh, I trained abs for the first time in like 5 years. Really sore. All right, cool. Crack my back. Alrighty, YouTube, what is going on? Welcome back to the video. This is going to be a jam-packed video, so I'm just going to dive right into it. We're going to be talking about how you can create your own diet that is specific to your life. We're going to talk about What meals you should eat, what times you should eat, how many calories you should eat, everything. I'm gonna give you everything in this video. So it's, again, it's gonna be jam-packed with information. So if you have to stop and take notes or do whatever you gotta do, I never stopped and took notes in high school 'cause I didn't really listen that much. But you should probably listen to this and take notes if you would like to make this the most beneficial that you possibly can, okay? So by the way, I forgot to put this in the video, but as you probably saw on the whiteboard, at the end of the video I will be giving you like a sample meal plan. of what your diet should look like for fat loss, so feel free to stick around for that, all right? So, first and foremost, kind of how this is set up. So, we're gonna be talking about calories, protein, carbs and fats, and meal timing and meal frequency. And you can see this is kind of like in a pyramid, right? So, this goes from the most important to the least important, right? And outside of this pyramid is adherence. And so, I wanna touch on 2 things very quickly. Number one, this entire concept, I wanna give credit where credit is due. This entire concept is built off of the Muscle and Strength Pyramids by Dr. Eric Helms. So if you want to learn more about the Muscle and Strength Pyramids, I'm going to put a link here for those books here below in the description of this, uh, of this, of this video here. Um, great books, great resource. Anybody who wants to learn more about nutrition or exercise or anything, phenomenal book. So I'm going to put a link for that in the description here below. But so basically what this thing is saying is there's certain things that are going to be more important than others for, you know, losing fat basically. And so calories are gonna be most important, protein second most important, carbs and fats third most important, meal timing, meal frequency fourth most important. But encompassing the entire pyramid is going to be adherence. Because listen, you can have the best plan with the best calories and the best carbs and the best meal timing, and you should eat these meals at these times, and that's the best on paper. But if you can't adhere to it, then it's not the best because you're not going to see the benefits from it. So all of this, everything we're going to talk about, you know, everything I'm going to mention here in this video, it's all predicated off of the fact that you need to be following something with 85 to 95% consistency. Because if you do not, if you make your own diet, which you will from this video, if you make your own diet and only follow it with 64% consistency, well, guess what? You're not going to see the results from said diet because you're not following it consistently enough. That is the most important thing. Adherence is the outside of the entire pyramid because without that you will not see any results. Very quickly, that kind of goes into, you know, we're going to talk about calories and protein and everything like that, but you need to work your own adherence into your own specific journey because you are an individual. Because my life is different than your life. You may have kids. You may have a full-time job. You may have this. You may have that. You may have more things going on than I do, for example. So your meal timing, and calories, and protein, it may look a bit different. We're going to touch on all that here right now. So let's dive right in, all right? So I'm going to be taking notes and you should probably be taking notes along with me. We're going to first start with calories, okay? So calories. In order to lose body fat, lose weight, you need to be in a calorie deficit. That's why it is the bottom most important thing, is the most important thing bar none In this video because without having your total calories in check, I don't care how much protein you're eating, I don't care how many carbs you're eating, I don't care how many meals a day you're eating, you will not lose body fat because the only way to do that is to eat less calories than what your body burns. Okay? So, calories are the most important thing and what you're going to do is take your goal body weight in pounds, so all my people outside of the US, take your goal body weight times pounds and multiply it by 12. That will give you how many calories you should be eating for any given day. Now, if you want more in-depth on how I got this and some other nuances with this number, I have a whole video on YouTube here on my free calorie calculator. So please, if you want to, head there after this video. Again, it's totally free. I think it has a lot of views actually, which, you know, I think it's my most— it's my highest viewed video, which is kind of cool. But either way, head there after the video. You can get more in-depth on that. But for right now, we're going to talk about Goal body weight times 12. That is going to be what we're going to use for our calories. So let's say for example you had 150, your goal body weight was 150 pounds times 12. That is going to give you 1,800 calories. So that is your number. That is a number you have to hit in order to lose body fat. Now what you can do with that number is say, hey listen, give yourself a range. So normally, for example, if I'm taking on a client, I tell them, hey, If we have a goal of 1,800 calories, give yourself from 1,750 to 1,850. This way it's much less about hitting the exact number because listen, like, you know, there's going to be days where you eat 1,844 calories or 1,783 calories and like there's no reason to freak the fuck out about being perfect. Just get within the vicinity, right? So if you're within 100, let's just say for example, 50 to 100 calories of your goal. So either, you know, 1,750 to 1,850 and/or let's just call it 1,700 to 1,900. If you're in those ranges, you will be good to go, I promise. So that is calories. And again, without this, you're not gonna lose weight. I don't care what we talk about in the rest of this, without being in a calorie deficit, you will not lose body fat. So that's number 1. Number 2, we're gonna touch on protein right now. So for protein, what I would like for you to do is— so first off, why is protein important for weight loss? Protein is important for weight loss because a few reasons. Number 1, Protein has the highest thermic effect of food. And what this means is your body has to burn more calories in order to digest protein— excuse me— in order to digest protein than it would carbs or fats. So just having more protein in your diet is going to allow you to burn more calories. We talked about the only way to lose body fat is to be in a calorie deficit, which means eating less calories than what your body burns. If your body burns more calories because you have a high protein diet, well guess what? You're playing into that favor. You're, you're helping yourself that much more get into a calorie deficit. Also on top of that, protein is the most satiating nutrient. What this means is when you eat protein, you are going to feel incredibly full. If you feel full, you're going to eat less calories. If you eat less calories, you're going to go into that calorie deficit that much more. And number 3, protein is massively important because the only macronutrient that is going to allow you to build and/or retain lean muscle mass. And this is important because the more lean muscle mass you have, the more work your body has to do. And because the more lean muscle mass you have, the more oxygen your body has to pump to your lean muscle mass. And the more oxygen your body has to pump, that's more work. More work equals more calories burned. So now again, you're— now you're playing into this calorie deficit that much more because your body has to burn more calories because you're eating high protein. Not only because it's digesting it, not only because now you're more full so you eat less calories, but also because you're building and retaining lean muscle mass, which is a huge part of your diet. Okay? So that is why protein is the second most important. What I want you to do for protein is just take your goal bodyweight times 1. Again, this is in pounds. So again, for example, if you want to weigh 150 pounds, you take your goal bodyweight, you multiply it by 1, bam, you're good to go. So 150 times 1. The answer is gonna be a shocking, probably 150 grams of protein per day. So that's how many you should get. And again, you know, if you get within 5 to 10 grams, so if you go from 140 to 160 grams of protein per day, good to go. Honestly, you, you can't eat too much protein. So hell, you could eat 200 grams of protein for all I give a shit. But you know, as long as you hit that 140 to 160-ish range, if you go over, awesome, but try to get at least that 140 grams. So. That's what I would say for protein. So that takes care of that. Now what comes next is carbs and fats. And so this is honestly where people like freak out the most. And I, you know, it's just funny because like having the knowledge, knowing that I don't care how many carbs you eat, I don't care how many fats you eat because your calories and your protein are the most important. But yet you have things like keto where you have to, you have to demonize carbs and you can't eat those. And it's very high fat and you have all these other diets where like, They're trying to manipulate all these things with carbs and fats. So, like, when in reality your calories and your protein are much more important than your carbs and fats. And honestly, I'm gonna play into this. Um, so if your calories are in check and your protein is in check, your carbs and fats can fall wherever they want to. And I say that because 2 things. Number one, once again, like I just said, if your calories are in check and your protein is in check, you're gonna lose body fat. So that's just a fact. But number 2, if those 2 things are in check, you only have so many calories left over to go to carbs and fats. So it's like they're pretty much gonna fall in line as they may. And this can take a lot of like anxiety away from kind of like having to track every single thing and be meticulously perfect every single time. And listen, you know, I'm a fan of tracking macros. I think macros can be a beneficial tool. I don't use it with a ton of my clients. We normally just track calories and protein. We track carbs and fats, but we don't have any goals for them because it's easier to hit calories and protein than it is to hit calories, protein, carbs, and fats and have to be kind of like quote unquote perfect with all four of those things. I'd rather just kind of take the two that are most important and focus on those two and let the others fall in place. But with that being said, if you do want some more kind of like guidance on carbs and fats, if you do want some more guidance on carbs and fats. I'm going to link a video here above. I did a whole video on how to calculate your macros for fat loss. So you can feel free to head there on that video. It's a lot to cover. That's why I did a whole separate video. So I won't cover exactly how to find those in this video, but again, I have a totally free calculator on YouTube. Just go ahead there after this video and you can check that out if you want to. But again, I would track carbs and fats more so to see what you prefer because we're talking about creating your own diet. I would track your carbs and fats to see, because I know for a fact some of my clients, for example, some of my clients like higher carbs. They feel better, they have more energy, they kick ass in their workouts. They like a higher carb diet. Some of my clients like a higher fat diet. They have less bloating, they have more energy, they have better stamina. Like, it just depends because, shocker, you're an individual and one thing doesn't work for everybody. So if you want to track carbs and fats, do so, but just realize that If your calories and protein are in check, you'll see progress. And use those things more as a learning tool for yourself to help build your own diet as opposed to being this strict rigid thing. So that's what I would say on carbs and fats. Now, meal timing and meal frequency. So meal timing and meal frequency— I feel like I'm having a hard time saying that— frequency, frequency. Meal timing and meal frequency, they kind of play hand in hand. So meal timing is How many, you know, what time of the day you're gonna eat. Meal frequency is how many meals are you going to eat throughout the day. So they kind of play hand in hand. I'll say this about meal timing and meal frequency. Once again, this is why it's at the top of this pyramid, because if your calories are in check and if your protein is in check and, you know, and you have carbs and fats, like, you're gonna see weight loss progress. And this is why, like, for example, intermittent fasting, where you can only eat from 12:00 PM to 8:00 PM. Great, cool. But you do know you can eat at 6:00 AM and still lose body fat. And you do, you do know you can eat at 9:00 PM and still lose body fat because as long as you're in this calorie deficit, that's what matters the most. It doesn't matter. You know, and again, for example, you know, eating every 2 hours to boost your metabolic fire and burn more calories. No, because you can eat 2 meals a day or eat 20 meals a day. If you're in a calorie deficit you will lose body fat. If you're not in a calorie deficit you can do intermittent fasting all you want, but if you're not in a calorie deficit you're not going to lose weight. You can eat 20 small meals a day and try to boost your metabolism and all those things that aren't actually true. You can do it all you want, but if you're not in a calorie deficit you are not going to lose body fat. So that's why meal timing and meal frequency is at the top of this pyramid because— I don't want to say it's not important because all these things are important, but there's a hierarchy system here where You shouldn't be that concerned with meal timing and meal frequency and all these things because if your total calories are in check and if your protein is in check, you are going to see progress. So don't listen to other people who are going to try and complicate it for you. It doesn't have to be that complicated. You're going to do this based on what your life entails. So that's number 1. Number 2, meal timing. I will say this, and this is where, again, like, yes, it's at the top of this pyramid, but it's still important because For example, I'm a big advocate, I make all my clients do this, I'm a big advocate for eating around the same times every single day for so many reasons. Number 1 is that your body is going to know when to expect nutrients. If you eat at, let's just call it, 6 AM, 9 AM, noon, 3 PM, and 6 PM. If you eat at those 5 times throughout the day, guess what? Your body is going to know, hey, around 6 AM I'm going to get hungry. Around 9 AM I'm going to get hungry. Around noon, I'm gonna get hungry. So around those times you'll get hungry, but guess what? You're eating around those times anyway. As opposed to if you eat one day, you eat at 6, 9, 12, 3, and 6. Next day you eat at 10 AM and then 12 PM and then 2 PM and then 4 PM and then 8 PM and then 10 PM. The next day it's all random times. Well, guess what? Your body's never gonna know when it's gonna expect food. So you're gonna be hungry all the goddamn time. You're gonna have cravings at all these different times 'cause your body has no clue when it's going to expect nutrients. Because remember, your body runs off of fuel and nutrients. That's what calories are. So when your body knows to expect that, that's when it's going to get hungry. And that can help you because you won't be hungry and have all these cravings throughout the day because you know during these times, that's when you get hungry, not all the time, every single day. So that's why one of the reasons why I'm big on meal timing. Also from anecdotal experience. And again, again, the research shows as long as you're in a calorie deficit, you will lose body fat. But with that being said, Yeah. From coaching hundreds, if not thousands of clients by now, eating every 2 to 4 hours can be beneficial, but not for the reason you think. And I say that because so many people think that they need to eat every 2 to 4 hours to boost their metabolism and burn more calories and all this other shit, and it's just— no. That's not true. That's not the reason why I'm an advocate for eating every 2 to 4 hours, because that Has no correlation with your metabolism at all. Like, there's other ways to boost your metabolism. That's not one of them, right? And actually, I think I did a whole video here on YouTube about how to boost your metabolism. So if you want to check that video out, but the reason I'm an advocate for eating every 2 to 4 hours is one of the biggest things I've seen, again, just coaching real people out here in the real world, people struggle with undereating during the day and then overeating at night. That's because the reason they overeat at night is because they're not eating a lot throughout the day. When the nighttime rolls around, they're starving. You have more cravings. You're hungrier. You get home and the pantry is like your monster. You're going to go in the pantry and get everything. You're going to eat dinner, still be hungry, not notice your hunger cues. It's because during the day you haven't fucking eaten anything. You had 2 fucking carrots and you had 1 protein shake and some coffee. Great. You know, 300 calories from 6:00 AM to 4:00 PM is not that many calories. And that's why you're continuously overeating at night and not being able to lose body fat because your meal timing is off. And that's why, I mean, just being very honest, I'm not the biggest fan of intermittent fasting. Now that's not to say that you can't see results on it. And I know, I know people who see results and they love it and that's great for them. But in my opinion, again, just coaching hundreds of people, I've seen intermittent fasting backfire way more than it helps people because they get to the nighttime and they're so fucking hungry because they haven't eaten breakfast. If they did eat breakfast, it was very light. My favorite is like, oh, yeah. I'm like, what did you have for breakfast? Ah, well, I woke up at 6:00, had a coffee, and then at 10:00 AM I finally had breakfast. I'm like, it's 4 hours. That's 4 hours plus the hours you didn't eat after dinner and the hours you slept. Let's just call it 16 hours. The last time you ate, you're going to be starving. And I don't care how big of a lunch you have, you're going to be hungry later on, which normally tends to you overeating. So I'm a big fan of eating every 2 to 4 hours. I'm a big fan of eating breakfast. Again, you don't have to eat breakfast to lose weight. As long as you're in a calorie deficit, you will lose body fat. But I'm a big advocate for it for those reasons. So that's what I'll say. And that kind of ties into meal frequency. So I'm a big proponent of Eating 3 meals and 2 to 3 snacks throughout the day. I don't care, you know, I actually have a video here on YouTube about how to lose body fat without counting calories and that's what I kind of talk about. I talk about the 3 meals and 2 snacks. But even if you are counting calories, that's my preferred way of eating because, again, every 2 to 4 hours you're getting some food, you're eating around the same times every single day, you're getting adequate protein. Again, for example, if we go back to protein, this is where meal frequency and meal timing can hit on protein. Protein is by far one of the hardest things for people to hit. A lot of people struggle. You watching probably struggle with hitting your protein goal. Well, guess what? If you're only eating 2 or 3 times during the day, it's gonna be hard to get 150 grams of protein eating 3 times. Like, good fucking luck. That's hard. 50 grams at each meal. It's pretty hard to get that, right? As opposed to if you eat 5 or 6 times a day, now you have 150 grams of protein Divided by 5, right? That's now 30 grams of protein throughout those 5 meals/snacks that you're trying to get. And that's much more attainable than trying to get 50 grams of protein for 3 meals a day, right? So that's why, you know, all of these things can influence each other, right? And that's where meal frequency comes into play because you can, you can, you can make this however you want to, right? If you're struggling, for example, hitting protein goal, cool. Add in a, add in a quote unquote 4th meal or 5th meal or 6th meal, whatever. But it's a protein shake and it still fits in your calories. So that way you can hit your protein goal, you can hit your calorie goal. This will, you know, the meal frequency and meal timing can play a role in hitting these things. So that's where it's kind of up to you. Like for example, I have clients who they work overnight shifts. So yeah, your schedule might look a bit different than somebody else's. And if let's say for example, if you get up at 4:30 and go to sleep at 9, your schedule is going to be different than somebody who wakes up at 7:30 and goes to sleep at midnight. So it's It's different. But that being said, as long as you have key proponents, and again, I'm a big fan of eating every 2 to 4 hours, having 3 meals and 2/3 snacks and following that kind of plan. So that's what I would say for meal timing, meal frequency, but remembering all of this really comes back to calories and protein. So you can kind of manipulate it how you want. Now, what I wanna do is I wanna give you a quote unquote sample meal plan. And again, This is a sample meal plan. You do not have to follow this. You, you do not have to follow this every day to an exact T every single time because you're gonna drive yourself absolutely insane. That being said, it can kind of give you some like, you know, meal templates, meal guidance, and some snack guidance, and just kind of like how you might set your day up for success. So let's dive into that right now. All right, so again, this is just a sample meal plan. This is not what you have to follow every single day. I just want to give you This is some sort of guidance because I talk to people and they're like, what the hell do I eat in a day? This is some sort of guidance you can follow. Let's just say you eat at 6:00 AM, 9:00 AM, noon, 3:00, and 6:00/7:00 PM. That's eating every 2 to 4 hours. So you're checking off your meal timing, meal frequency. We're going to talk about carbs and fats, protein, calories. Obviously, I don't know how many calories this is. I can probably give you a good rough estimate, but that being said, you would put this into your— if you were counting calories, put it into your MyFitnessPal. app, see how many calories it is, so on and so forth. So, let's start the day with, you know, people say they don't have time to eat breakfast. Perfect. Just do a protein shake, like a 30-gram protein shake and do a banana. Sweet. You're getting a good quality source of carbohydrates. No, bananas and fruit do not fucking make you fat because we already talked about as long as your total calories are in check, you'll lose weight. So, you can have some, a good source of a fruit and you have a protein shake. Super simple, super easy to make, very quick, right? Now, let's say you get to 9 AM and this is where, you know, you can have your, you have time to either cook and/or you brought your meals to work and so on and so forth. So, let's say you have some eggs/egg whites, you have, let's just call it, 2 pieces of toast and you have some Greek yogurt. Perfect. Protein packed to the brim. Protein, protein, protein packed. The eggs can give you some healthy fats and the toast can just give you some carbohydrates that kinda keep you going. And again, I put toast because so many people think that bread's gonna make you fat and bread does not make you fat because as long as you're in a calorie deficit, you know what I'm gonna say. So, that could be your 9 AM meal, right? And actually, I forgot to put it in here, but let's just say, you know, in the egg and egg whites, let's just say you make an omelet with, you know, spinach and peppers and tomatoes And all those kind of things and onions. Awesome. That'd be sweet. That way you're getting some vegetables as well. That'd be fucking awesome, actually. It sounds really good, actually. So let's say now you go to noon, so lunchtime. You have a BAS, a big-ass salad. You put a bunch of lettuce in there. You put a bunch of arugula. You put a bunch of kale, spinach. You put a bunch of tomatoes. You put a bunch of olives. Whatever you like in your salad. Don't fucking overthink it. Just make a fucking big-ass bowl and put some green shit in it and make a salad and throw some protein on top. Throw some chicken, throw some steak, throw some ground turkey, throw some rotisserie chicken, throw some deli meat. I don't care. Put some protein on it. Again, don't overthink it. This way you're getting protein and this way you're, again, you're eating every 2 to 3 hours and you're getting a salad. It's gonna help fill you up, very low calories, so on and so forth, right? So now let's say you get to 3 PM. Let's say, this is one of my favorite meals ever, you have a tuna packet, right? So one of those tuna packets. I love those things. Or you can do like beef jerky or even Greek yogurt again. But let's just say you have a tuna packet with some kind of fruit. I like clementines. I could eat clementines literally all day long. So, I just put an orange there, right? So, you can have a tuna packet with an orange and, you know, let's just say you have a handful of nuts or whatever it is, right? You can, you know, obviously again, you can make it how you would like, but giving you some structure for the day, which again, you're seeing tuna packet, high in protein as well. So, you're getting a good source of protein every single time. And then finally, you know, dinnertime rolls around. Let's just say you have some salmon with white rice and stir-fry. That'd be amazing, dude. That would be a phenomenal day of eating for you if you wanna lose body fat. Phenomenal day. And again, not that any of these foods are magical or not that you have to follow this to a T every single day. It's more just the logic behind things, like why are we doing this? Well, you have protein at every single meal. Every single time you eat, you're gonna have protein, which we talked about why protein was important. You're eating every 2 to 4 hours. Why do we do that? Talked about that earlier with meal timing, meal frequency. You're working in some fruits, you're working in some vegetables, you're gonna allow yourself to be full, not super starving, working in very good nutrient-dense whole foods. And you know, honestly, let's say you get to 9 PM and you have some calories left over, you know, have your Yasso bar or have your Greek yogurt with some dark chocolate. Have what you want because again, you can have, as long as you're in your calorie limit, you can have things you enjoy as well. So let's say 9 PM rolls around and you want to work in a dessert. Work in a fucking dessert, man. For sure do that. I actually had a client, her name is Mary. I'll put Mary here above. Mary had dessert every single night when she lost over 80 pounds. And as you can see, like, She clearly killed it. So as long as you stay in this calorie deficit, you'll be good to go, man. So guys, thank you for watching the video. I hope it helped you. I hope it was some sort of a good resource for you. Again, I know I kind of went in depth and I kind of, I think it was probably a longer video, but there's a reason because I really wanted you to kind of get all this stuff right here. So if you have any questions, if you have any concerns, please feel free to drop them below. I'd be happy to help you. Other than that, as always, thank you, thank you, thank you. If you like this video, feel free to subscribe to the channel and turn on that little notification bell. I don't know where it is, but turn on that bell so you can get notified when new videos come out. And, uh, thank you again. We'll talk soon. All right.
