The Best Diet To Get Shredded (3 MUST FOLLOW RULES)

How many times have you heard that a certain diet is the new magical way to strip off fat? I see headlines, videos and posts all the time that promote a novel diet as the best way to lose fat. And it frustrates me because of all the confusion and misinformation it causes. I mean, let's just take a quick look at a few diets out there. There's keto, there's intermittent fasting, there's one meal a day, and now there's even something called the carnivore diet, which each have their own set of rules. But the truth is, although each of these diets do have various physiological benefits associated with them, when you look strictly at body composition and more specifically, fat loss, not just weight loss, research has time and time again shown that there's nothing special about any of these diets when calories and protein intake are equated. But now you're probably wondering, Jeremy, if that's the case, then why exactly did these diets get popularized in the first place? And why does it seem like so many people do seem to see success with these diets? And to answer this question, we have to look at the very problem with dieting and why most people fail with their diets, which is hunger. Many people fail with their diets simply because they struggle to consistently eat less and stay at a calorie deficit due to their hunger levels. And that's where each of these diets can come in handy. Keto, for example. It makes it easier for you to stay at a calorie deficit by simply eliminating a whole food group. Carbs. So now that you're not allowed to eat any carbs, most of the processed junk that you usually have is cut out of your diet immediately. And you have to instead rely on protein sources and healthy fats, which, if you eat quite a bit of, is going to keep you pretty full throughout the day and hence just make it easier for you to eat less and stay in a calorie deficit. Now, let's look at intermittent fasting, where you restrict yourself to a feeding window typically of about eight hours a day. Again, all this does is it keeps your hunger at bay. If you can only eat within eight hours a day, then you're going to be able to control your hunger much better within those eight hours, since you'll have more food to eat in a shorter amount of time. And that's all that these magical diets do. They simply make it easier for you to adhere to a calorie deficit. Now, although these diets do work well for some individuals who are able to adhere to them in the long run. This isn't the case for most individuals who will instead want hop on these diets thinking that they do something magical, see some results, yet struggle to stick with it and sustain the results in the long term because of how unsustainable some of these approaches can be. Instead, it's much simpler than this. Screw the next fad Diet. Just listen to this. Think of your diet as a bank account. When you're in a calorie deficit, you only have a limited amount of calories to spend every day. So you want to invest your calories into foods that are going to bring you the best bang for your buck in terms of keeping you full and satisfied with less calories, as that's what will be key in enabling you to stick to that calorie deficit with ease. It really is that simple. Now as for the best diet to accomplish this, here are three rules that you can stick to every day that'll enable you to get the most out of your limited amount of calories. The first rule here is to opt for low calorie density foods, and the reasoning behind this is very simple. Several studies have indicated that feeling full is more likely to make a person stop eating than is the total calorie content of the food consumed. So by simply opting for foods that have a low calorie amount relative to their weight, you'll be able to eat more of that food for a given calorie intake. This then causes a few favorable effects. One is that you'll be intaking a higher volume of food for less calories, which activates the stretch receptors in your gut to enhance the fullness response. This alone is so beneficial when dieting because research indicates that we tend to eat to maintain a constant volume of food intake. Since your stomach actually gets used to the amount of stretch, you provide it with your diet. So if you all of a sudden cut out food when you're on a diet, your stomach gets stretched out less from your meals and then you experience more hunger as a result. Second, a higher food volume also means that more chewing is required and longer meal times, which both also enhance the fullness effect. And finally, low calorie density foods are often also quite high in fiber, which also seems to have an added effect on fullness because it slows down digestion, all providing you with the perfect formula for you to stay full on less calories. In fact, one study tested this effect by having 20 subjects eat as much as they wanted over a period of five days from a diet consisting of high calorie density foods. Then they swapped this for low calorie density foods and repeated the process. What they found is that on the low calorie density diet, the participants felt full with just over half the calories they needed to feel full on the high calorie density diet. And eating time on the low calorie density diet was also significantly longer by an average of about 33% per day. And in the long term this also seems to lead to significantly greater weight loss as a result, with studies lasting longer than six months showing that weight loss was three times greater in individuals who ate a diet composed of low calorie density foods as opposed to high calorie density foods. Now as for the best low calorie density foods, these are typically foods that are high in water and fiber since these both decrease calorie density. For this reason, and as shown in this brief list, most fruits and vegetables are lowest in calorie density because of their high water and fiber content, whereas more processed and fattier foods don't rank as well. Oats, egg whites, lean meats and fish, Greek yogurt, boiled potatoes and air popped popcorn are also some great options as well. So just make it a point to incorporate more of these foods into your diet and doing so really is quite simple. For example, adding more veggies into your dishes and replacing some of your carbs or fats with them is an easy way to bump up the volume and fullness that you experience from that dish while reducing the calorie content of that meal. Creative with it. For example, I could have this 1 pound bowl of fried rice which packs around 750 calories. Or I could have this cauliflower fried rice with the following ingredients instead, which ends up being even more weight and volume, yet would only pack around a third of the calories, all while still tasting great and delivering way more protein and fiber as well. Here are some other easy swaps that you can make as well. You can apply this same concept to pretty much any dish or dessert out there if you just get creative with it and do some research. And in addition to this, when you're out grocery shopping, pay attention to the nutrition labels. I mean, let's say you want to make some wraps. I found these tortilla wraps which pack 240 calories for three tortillas, whereas these coconut flour tortillas pack only 130 calories for three tortillas, yet are the same size and even pack more fiber which will no doubt keep me just as full or even more full than the other ones while saving me quite a bit of calories. So. So be mindful of this. It's the little switches like this that you need to be aware of because they make all the difference. Next is you want to keep a close eye on your fat intake. Although we do want to intake a good amount of healthy fats in our diet, studies have found that fats have the lowest impact on fullness when compared to carbs and protein, since high fat foods are often smaller in weight and volume, yet pack over twice the amount of calories per gram as carbs or protein does, which just makes them very easy to unknowingly overeat, especially given that most people underestimate the calories of these healthy foods. And to illustrate this, let's do some 100 calorie comparisons of these foods. So five walnuts is a calorie equivalent of about 25 strawberries. One tablespoon of coconut oil equates to about five cups of AirPod popcorn, and a fourth of an avocado equates to about 30 baby carrots. I mean, you can clearly see that the latter of each would quite obviously provide a much greater effect on your fullness. So my recommendation is to aim to experiment with a relatively lower fat intake that's at least meeting the minimum recommended fat intake every day, and then allocate the rest of your calories more towards carbs and protein, since these do tend to have a much greater effect on your fullness. Do experiment with this though, because it will vary individually and some of you will just enjoy having more fats in your diet, which is perfectly fine. But just make sure that for the fats that you do intake every day, be mindful of them and measure them whenever possible since these calorie dense foods can very quickly take you out of a calorie deficit, which at the end of the day is what matters most. Lastly is you want to limit your liquid calories. And to help explain some of the reasoning behind this, here is Jackson Pios, published researcher who has done a ton of research within the field of hunger management tactics.

So there was a really well designed study carried out in 2011 and essentially the researchers were comparing hunger ratings after eating a solid chicken breast versus drinking that same chicken breast but blended with water. And the hunger and hunger scores and desire to eat were actually lower after the solid meal compared to the calorie matched and protein matched liquid version. So what does this tell us? Well, it tells us that solid Meals are actually probably better for suppressing appetite or our hunger compared to shakes or liquid calories.

Is that something that's been replicated in other studies and is a common finding in the research comparing them?

Yeah. So in some of the systematic reviews and meta analyses, it's been shown that when people consume a higher proportion of their calories coming from liquids, they actually consume overall more calories compared to people who consume a low proportion of their calories from liquids. Which tells us that the calories calories coming from liquids are having less of an effect on suppressing our appetite and our hunger hunger levels and actually leading to overeating.

Interesting. So I guess just to briefly summarize, during a dieting phase, it would be a good idea from a hunger management perspective to limit your intake of liquid calories overall. So this could mean avoiding fruit juices, smoothies and shakes and instead opting for their whole food counterparts instead since they'll have a greater impact on your fullness. And then also just on that note, I'd assume that, you know, a post workout shake is perfectly fine, but it's just that if you're having additional protein shakes and or protein smoothies throughout the day, that's where this can become a little bit problematic in terms of managing your hunger.

I think it comes down to a little bit of the context of the individual. If hunger is becoming an issue and it's causing you to binge or overeat or something like that, I think people should look inwards and say, okay, am I having liquid calories in my program? If I am, maybe perhaps I'll try to reduce them, substitute them with sort of a calorie and protein match solid version. And that's probably just going to make my appetite a little bit easier to manage.

So to sum this all up for you, here are the key takeaways that you'll want to implement into your diet. And for your convenience, I've created a free fat loss meal plan for you that covers a full day's worth of meals. With these tips already applied to them, I'm sure that many of you will find dieting to be so, so much easier and so much more enjoyable with this plan compared to the meals that you're currently using. So to grab a copy of this, just simply head over to builtwithscience.com meal plan and I'll send the plan right over to you. And I'll also leave a link to this in the description box down below. All in all though, guys, it's vital that you set up your nutrition plan in a way that not only maximizes fat loss, but more importantly, in a way that you'll actually adhere to and enjoy sticking to every day, as that is the key to long term success regardless of the dieting approach you choose to follow. And for a step by step program that does exactly that and not only shows you what and how much to eat week after week, but also pairs this with a weekly workout plan so that you can burn off fat as efficiently as possible with science, just like countless of our members have done with their Built Science programs and simply head on over to built with science.com and take the Analysis quiz to discover which program is best for you and where you're currently at. Anyways, that's it for today guys. Thank you so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed this one. Please do me a favor by showing your support and giving the video a like leaving a comment down below as to what you'd like to see me cover next, and subscribing to the channel as well, and turning on notifications as well as this all really does help me out. Thank you so much everyone and I'll see you next time.