Table of Contents No Bullsh*t Advice to Follow Along to:.................................................................................................3 Dumb Ass Meal Plan ...........................................................................................................................4 Meal 1: Oatmeal .................................................................................................................................5 Meal 2: High Calorie Shake ..................................................................................................................6 Meal 3: Beans on Toast with Cheese ....................................................................................................7 Meal 4: Noodles & Boiled Eggs ............................................................................................................9 Meal 5: Bran Flakes & Fruit ............................................................................................................... 11 Meal 6: Salmon & Sweet Potatoes & Vegetables ................................................................................ 12 What about Asian Food?................................................................................................................... 14 Dieting For Aesthetics....................................................................................................................... 16 How to Maximise Muscle Growth with Dieting ................................................................................... 18 Why Clean Eating Is Better ................................................................................................................ 19 Awareness & Cravings....................................................................................................................... 22 Level up your Willpower ................................................................................................................... 24 Setting up Your Environment for Success ........................................................................................... 26 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................... 27 No Bullsh*t Advice to Follow Along to: 1. Have a selection of 5-10 meals that you choose from and eat everyday 2. Getting most of your protein from whey protein (or any other powder) is absolutely fine – I have 2-6 scoops of whey protein per day 3. Prioritise bulking over cutting unless you’re very fat (90% of guys should bulk) 4. Bulking does not allow you to eat like shit. Eat clean whilst bulking 5. Eating clean, healthy foods will make you gain more muscle and less fat compared to eating junk food EVEN IF you eat the same calories – healthy foods optimise your hormones, make you feel energetic and give you better workouts which means more muscle 6. Cravings for junk food can be overcome through meditation and willpower levelling 7. To level up your willpower keep some of your favourite snacks on your desk and journal how you feel. 8. Setup your environment for success by not eating whilst watching YouTube/Netflix/Tv (this is when you’ll overeat junk food), keep water visible in front of you at all times (only when it’s visible in your peripheral vision will you drink it more often) 9. Disassociate with people who constantly make you fail your diet goals . When you stop eating the junk food, your friendship disappears (same with drugs) Dumb Ass Meal Plan Below is 6 meals literally every dumb ass can make so there’s no excuse to eat junk. Each of the meals takes less than 10 minutes of your actual time and I’ve even recorded cooking videos to show you exactly how a dumb ass (just like you) can cook meals that are infinitely healthier than buying prepacked junk or getting fast food. I’ve included the exact measurements that I have and the macronutrients of my meals. You should take these meals as inspiration and then make them fit your calories / macronutrients by tracking on MyFitnessPal. Each one takes a minimal amount of effort to cook, is healthy and nutritious and will lead to muscle and strength gains. Unless you’re going to load up on the meat in your meals, you’ll find that your protein always ends up being pretty low. This is where whey protein (or any kind of protein powder) is essential to hit your protein goal. On top of these meals I have an extra 2-3 scoops of whey protein per day. I’ve went up to 6 scoops of whey protein per day and it was absolutely fine (it’s completely safe to do so and whey protein is actually the best kind of protein to have too). Log in to Kajabi (the website I use to host the Aesthetic Body Course) and you’ll be able to watch the cooking videos for these meals. Meal 1: Oatmeal Ingredients: 100g Oats, 20g Peanut Butter, 20g Dark Chocolate Calories: 595 Protein: 18 Fats: 21 Carbs: 77 Step by step instructions: 1. 2. 3. 4. Place your bowl on top of your weighing scale and weigh out 100g of oats Fill the bowl up cold water slowly until the water just starts to rise above the oats Put the bowl of oats + water in the microwave for 2 minutes After 2 minutes is up, take the oats out of the microwave, mix it with a spoon for a few seconds then put it back in the microwave for 2 more minutes 5. After the second 2 minutes is done, take out the bowl and lightly salt the oats 6. Break up the dark chocolate into small chunks (I just bite it and spit the chocolate out into the bowl) 7. Place the peanut butter on your weighing scale and weigh out 20g to put into the bowl Meal 2: High Calorie Shake Ingredients: 300ml Whole Milk (any milk works – almond/oat/skimmed milk etc), 30g Peanut Butter, 100g Oats, 30g Whey Protein, Half Banana Calories: 911 Protein: 51 Fats: 33 Carbs: 98 Step by step instructions: 1. Measure out 300ml of milk into a blender 2. Place your peanut butter on your weighing scale, scoop out 30g with a spoon and put that into the blender 3. Put 1 scoop of protein into the blender 4. Chop up half a banana with your spoon and put the pieces into the blender (chopping up the banana stops big chunks from ending up in your shake) 5. Take the blender cup out of its machine and place the actual blender cup on your weighing scale, weigh out 100g of oats 6. Place the blender back into its machine and start to blend 7. As it’s blending move the cup/machine so that all sides of the shake are blending equally (huge lumps of banana or oats are annoying) Meal 3: Beans on Toast with Cheese Ingredients: 2 Wholemeal Bread, 200g Baked Beans (No added sugar), 20g Butter, 35g Mature Cheese Calories: 607 Protein: 28 Fats: 30 Carbs: 50 Step by step instructions: 1. Make the toast on the hob with a flat pan if you have it (if you’re using a normal toaster simply just toast the bread, you don’t need instructions for that, do you?) 2. Scoop out 1-2 thumb sized chunks of butter and place that onto the flat pan 3. Turn the hob on to the highest temperature and the butter will begin to melt over the pan 4. Move the butter around so it has a bigger surface area so it will spread over the bread 5. Place the bread over the butter and move the bread around so the butter goes onto it evenly 6. Weigh out 200g of baked beans into a bowl and cover the bowl with a plate 7. Place the bowl with the plate on top of it in the microwave for 2 minutes 8. When the bread has toasted up to your preference on one side, flip it round so the other side toasts 9. I like to mainly toast one side and under toast the other side 10. Take the toast off the flat pan when it’s toasted to your preference and place them on a plate 11. When the microwave is done, grab a kitchen towel and take the bowl of baked beans out of it – the bowl will be extremely hot so grab it with the kitchen towel 12. Take the plate off the bowl of baked beans 13. Place the bowl of baked beans onto your kitchen scale 14. Salt the baked beans 15. Turn the kitchen scale on and weigh 35g of cheese directly into the bowl of baked beans 16. Place the bowl of cheesy beans onto your plate 17. Now you have beans on toast with cheese without soggy toast Meal 4: Noodles & Boiled Eggs Ingredients: 1 Pack Noodles, 4 Eggs Calories: 644 Protein: 33 Fat: 32 Carbs: 51 Step by step instructions: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Fill up your kettle with water and set it to boil Place two pots over 2 hobs Put 4 eggs into 1 pot Open the noodle package and place the noodles into the other pot (I crush my noodles so they’re easier to eat) When the water boils pour it into the pot with the eggs until the water reaches above the eggs Set the eggs hob on max heat Set on a timer for 4 minutes When the timer goes off, pour water from the kettle into the hob with the noodles until the water reaches just above the noodles Set the noodles hob on max heat Set on a timer for 3 minutes 11. When this timer goes off, drain out the water from the egg pot and fill up the pot with cold water 12. Place the eggs pot somewhere to cool down – back on the stove but not on the same spot it was before because it’ll still be hot there 13. Whilst the eggs cool, drain out the water from the noodles pot 14. You may need a fork or something to stop the noodles from falling out of the pot whilst you twist it to get the water out 15. Once the noodles are drained add in the seasoning that came in the noodle package 16. Pour out the noodles into a bowl 17. Add soy sauce / chilli sauce if you like 18. Drain out the water from the egg pot 19. Take 1 egg at a time and lightly crush them against a surface and begin to peel the egg shell 20. Break off the egg shell near the middle of the egg and soon you’ll be able to peel off most of the entire shell 21. Place the boiled eggs on top of the noodles Meal 5: Bran Flakes & Fruit Ingredients: 70g Bran Flakes, 300ml Unsweetened Almond Milk, 50g Blueberries, 30g Whey Protein, Half Banana Calories: 497 Protein: 33 Fat: 7 Carbs: 74 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. Place a bowl on top of your weighing scale Weigh out 70g of bran flakes Wash the blueberries with cold water for a few seconds and then drain the water out Weigh out 50g of blue berries on top of the bran flakes Chop up half a banana with the side of a spoon and place it on top of the bran flakes + blueberries Pour 300ml of unsweetened almond milk into a blender Place 1 scoop of whey protein into the blender Start the blender for about 5-10 seconds (that’s all it needs) Pour the protein milk over the bowl Meal 6: Salmon & Sweet Potatoes & Vegetables Ingredients: 1 Salmon Fillet (frozen), 300g Sweet Potato, 250g Broccoli (frozen), 80g Sweetcorn (frozen), 50g Peas (frozen), 15ml Olive Oil Calories: 706 Protein: 35 Fat: 21 Carbs: 84 Step by step instructions: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Turn on your oven and preheat it at around 180 Place a sheet of tin foil over a baking tray Dash some olive oil over the tin foil – enough that could be spread across the entire length Weigh out 300g of sweet potato Wash the sweet potatoes with cold water, rubbing off the dirt Grab a large knife and begin cutting the sweet potato into wedges, chunks, fry shapes Grab one piece of the cut sweet potato and use it to spread the olive oil across the baking tray Place all sweet potato in the baking try evenly – try not to let any pieces stack on top of each other 9. Place the salmon fillet on the baking tray with some distance to the sweet potatoes (the salmon fillets juices will spread and will make your sweet potatoes soggy if they are close by) 10. Weigh out 250g of frozen broccoli, 80g of sweetcorn and 50g of peas and place them near the salmon fillet but with some distance to the sweet potatoes 11. Season the entire tray to your liking – I use mixed masala seasoning 12. Place the tray inside the oven at a heat of 180 degrees and set on a timer for 30 minutes 13. After 30 minutes have a look at how it’s cooked – You may want to it eat now or you may want it all to crisp up more. I usually place the food back in the oven and wait another 10-20 minutes 14. Once the food as baked as much as you want it to, take the tray out of the oven, place it somewhere safe and use a large spatula to scoop out the food into a plate What about Asian Food? Here’s the deal… Many Asian people hold the belief that they can’t get fit by eating their cultures food because “it’s fatty”. That’s complete bullshit. A high fat diet helps you stay lean. It’s just that we eat too much of these foods, eat too many sweet treats and don’t move enough. I would also assume that mental health is generally worse in countries like India and Pakistan compared to western countries and we know that poor mental health = overeating. So then why haven’t you included any Asian food into the meal plan? Because it’s not easy to cook. This meal plan is dumb ass friendly so that no one has an excuse to eat junk food. Asian food is far more time consuming and requires more knowledge compared to say, making beans on toast lol. And again, with complete honesty, I don’t even know how to cook Asian food myself. My mum makes it with her 30ish years of cooking experience. Sure, she could teach me. But I wouldn’t pe rsonally cook this food myself because I prefer to keep my time in the kitchen to a minimum. So here’s my recommendation: If you know how to cook Asian food, and you love to eat it, then eat it. Track the individual ingredients into MyFitnessPal, meet your calories/macronutrients and you’ll reach your fitness goals just the same as a person eating western food. If you mainly eat Asian food, I think you’ll really like this Instagram page of the Asian Body Coach . His content is an absolute goldmine for Asians. “Eat Curry, Lose Weight” Click this link to see the Asian Body Coach’s page: https://www.instagram.com/asianbodycoach/ Dieting For Aesthetics If you’re less than 2 years into consistent training your entire focus should be on building muscle mass, NOT getting lean. Beginners make the mistake of trying to get lean before they’ve even built up a good amount of muscle. What happens is that they go onto a ‘cutting’ phase with the intention to lose fa t and look shredded but because they don’t have much muscle, they end up just looking weirdly skinnier. Maybe they lose 1cm off from their stomachs but it isn’t noticeable. They’re left disappointed and worst of all, they spent months cutting when they could have been building muscle. Dieting for aesthetics focuses on building the muscle FIRST then cutting to reveal the muscle that you’ve built. Do NOT think it’s a good idea to “cut first then bulk later”. You must be comfortable with some fat otherwise you’ll waste time constantly switching from a bulk to a cut. The most progress you’ll ever make is when you do a long, lean bulk – Where you stay in a calorie surplus for 9+ months! Imagine that – You lean bulk for 9+ months, you are significantly bigger and stronger than when you started. Maybe you’re 20-30lbs bigger! And since it’s a lean bulk (no more than 2-3lbs of weight gain per month) you haven’t gained too much fat during this time. You’d look and feel awesome. Your strength in the gym would be through the roof, you’d be significantly bigger to the point that literally everyone around you would notice and compliment you. THEN you would go on a cut and you’d look even better. Once you’ve done that cycle for at least 2+ years (long bulks followed by cuts) you can start to maintain a lean physique all year round. Until then, put your focus onto doing those long bulks and prioritise building a great amount of muscle and strength. Building muscle and strength naturally will make you gain some fat. If you’re someone who constantly tries to lose that fat when they aren’t even 2 years into training, you will setup your future self to have a much worse body. It’s far better for you to just change your mindset and be ok with having a higher body fat % and focus on building muscle than it is to cut and lose a few lbs of fat but just slow down your muscle growth. What if I ‘gaintain’ by losing fat and building muscle at the same time? Gaintaining is where you eat at roughly maintenance calories whilst training hard and that will make you gain some muscle and lose some fat at the same time. For some reason this gets all the beginners excited. The reason why I’ll never recommend it is because it’s not the efficient or effective way to structure your diet. Your biggest progress in the gym will come from being on a bulk. Your biggest progress in your physique will come from being in a cut. Staying in the middle will give you the benefits of neither. Sure, you can lose fat and build muscle at the same time but your future self will reach his dream body much faster if you stick to doing proper bulks and proper cuts. Too many beginners get too invested in staying/getting lean before they deserve to be lean. If you’re less than 2 years into consistent training you do not deserve to be lean. You can only be bulky and being bulky is far better than being skinny fat or just fat in general. So don’t fall for the ‘gaintain’ hype. It’s better to go onto a long term lean bulk… What is a lean bulk? Gaining weight by eating more but NOT eating junk food or eating too many calories. You’d still eat clean, healthy foods and keep your weight gain fairly low. Depending on your current weight and how long you’ve been training for, on a lean bulk you’d like to gain anywhere from 1-3lbs of weight per month. (1lbs per month for guys who have been training for 3+ years, 3lbs per month for guys who are just starting their training recently). Any more than this 1-3lbs weight gain per month will be fat and again, the more fat you gain, the more you’ll have to cut. The more you have to cut, the less time you spend in a bulking phase where you maximise muscle growth. This is why doing long term lean bulks is the absolute best way to structure your best to maximise muscle growth. As long as you don’t eat too much junk food or you don’t eat far too many calories, you won’t gain much fat on a lean bulk meaning you could stay in that bulking phase for almost the entire year. You’d make major progress in that year if you did this. Compare that to the beginner who constantly switches from bulk to cut, never making real progress in the gym and never even looking lean like he wanted to. He ends the year with only a marginal amount of muscle growth because he constantly stopped his bulk phase to cut. Do not be one of those beginners who doesn’t bulk just because he thinks he’s getting a little too fat. You have to be ok and even excited to see your weight go up. Have the mindset that you do not deserve to be lean right now (and you especially don’t deserve to s ee your abs either), but through lean bulking you will see the rest of your muscles grow and look much bigger. How to Maximise Muscle Growth with Dieting Your muscle growth is maximised on a bulk with the right macronutrients (download the app MyFitnessPal and allow it to recommend your macronutrients when you input your details into the app). Maximising your muscle growth comes from eating as many complex carbs as possible whilst not eating so much that you gain too much weight on your lean bulk. Think of complex carbs as the healthy carbs – wholemeal bread, oats and potatoes. The more of these you eat, the stronger you get. The stronger you get, the better workouts you’ll have and the better your workouts, the more muscle you’ll make. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that carbs are bad for you. Simple carbs like sugary snacks are bad for you. Complex carbs like potatoes/sweet potatoes, lentils, chickpeas, beans are vital to keep your strength and progression up in the gym. Long term you’ll maximise your muscle growth by staying on a lean bulk and not eating like shit. The worse you eat on your bulks, the shorter your bulks will be because you’ll gain too much fat and need to cut sooner. Why Clean Eating Is Better No BS Follow Along Advice: 1. Calories from junk food will reduce your aesthetics (eat 1-2 non-sugary cheat meals max per week) 2. Calories from healthy foods will improve your aesthetics (eat healthy for almost all meals) 3. Sugar increases your insulin. Insulin builds fat, makes you feel tired and lazy. Avoid sugar. 4. Follow the meal plan for a list of healthy foods that will result in lean muscle mass Why should you eat clean, healthy foods if all that matters is calories in – calories out? First of all you must understand why the fitness industry has been promoting calories in calories out. It sells. The videos of the fit people eating junk food are more likely to be watched, diet plans advertising “eat all your favourite junk food and still lose weight” sells, fitness coaches marketing their “eat the processed food you love and lose weight” sells. But does it work? Yes. This is where it gets tricky. Eating junk food (as long as you follow the rules of calories in – calories out) will result in weight loss… but it will stunt your aesthetic body transformation. Whilst you may be able to eat ice cream and still lose weight, the calories from the ice cream are not used to build muscle. Essentially you have just lost 350 calories that you could have used on complex carbs like rice or potatoes that would have fuelled you up for your workout, leading to increased strength and therefore increased muscle. This isn’t even mentioning your health. When you follow a ‘flexible diet’ of eating whatever you want as long as you eat the right calories, you’ll naturally start to eat junk food that’s heavily processed, filled with all sorts of unhealthy ingredients and is always higher in trans fats and sugar – the 2 things that will make you fat and lead to metabolic syndrome (one of the leading causes of death in the world). Eating unhealthy food also makes you much more likely to overeat above your calories. It’s not so difficult to eat most of a pizza by yourself, that’s around 2000 calories in one sitting. Imagine trying to eat 2000 calories of a healthy meal like salmon, potatoes and vegetables. It’s practically impossible. Yet people who follow flexible dieting overeat above their calories all the time. That leads to even more fat gain. Whilst you CAN lose weight eating unhealthy food, you often WON’T. And even in the best case scenario of losing weight whilst ‘eating your favourite foods ’ you’ll be sacrificing muscle, health and your lean body fat %. Eating junk food will undoubtedly cause you to be at a higher body fat % than if you were eating healthy (even at the same calories!) Why would eating 2000 calories of junk food lead to more fat than 2000 calories of healthy food? Calories are just a very simple way of looking at your diet but it’s actually your hormones that you should care about. No BS explanation of diet hormones: Eating junk food like ice cream and biscuits will increase your insulin production. Insulin is a hormone that’s released from sugar and it literally causes the fat building process, making you feel weak and tired. The more sugar you eat, the more insulin in your body. The more insulin in your body, the more your body produces fat and also the more tired you feel. This will directly undermine your workouts. Complex carbs like wholemeal bread or potatoes don’t produce anywhere near the same level of insulin in your body. That means calorie for calorie, junk food will result in more fat gain. So not only does eating that junk food produce more fat (even at the same calories) but it actually leads to you being less active and performing worse in the gym which means less muscle growth. The reduced activity caused by insulin (which is caused by junk food) is often coupled with instant gratification activities like binge watching Netflix or wasting hours on social media. For most people, there is no benefit to eating sugar other than the instant gratification you get (and that’s something we want to desperately avoid as men on self improvement). Athletes may get some benefit from having sugar near their workouts, but this is marginal and is just a few grams of sugar. The issue comes from people who randomly eat junk like donuts, cake, sweets, and chocolates throughout the day. Calories in – calories out just doesn’t make sense when you start to look deeper into nutrition. How our body reacts to those calories is more important than just the basic number of how much you’ve ate. Just imagine anyone who says that ‘All calories are the same’ is an idiot who says ‘All money is the same’. If the rest of the population are eating that food (fast food like McDonalds, sweet treats like candy, soda, cake) just know that you should be steering way clear of it. If you want to build a body of the 1%, you must do everything differently to the 99%. What about junk food that isn’t sugary? Junk food that isn’t sugary (pizza, burgers and fries) is still problematic but it’s less of an issue than sugar. The problem of this foods comes from how easy it is to overconsume. You will eat more in a meal of junk food than you would in a healthy meal. These junk foods are often high in sugar anyway! Isn’t that crazy? (A burger from McDonalds has more sugar than a small bag of sweets, a sandwich from Subway has the same sugar as 1.5 large energy drinks and 3 slices of pizza from Dominos has the same sugar as a donut. If you’re going to eat junk food, make it ‘proper’ food like a takeaway/restaurant meal that you’re also having for a social experience to share with friends and family. This junk food also comes with a health risk that young men often don’t care about. All we care about is getting girls, getting money and getting muscle. But your health has to be the priority. Junk food messes up your gut, causes inflammation and reduces your intelligence. If you’re studying for exams or you’re trying to grow your business, you’ll perform better if you had very minimal junk food and more healthy food. But what about adherence? Isn’t a diet that restricts your favourite foods bad? Adherence to a plan is the priority. However our plan isn’t to restrict your favourite foods. It’s to change your favourite foods. Imagine if you felt no craving towards unhealthy foods. You could have your old favourite snack right in front of you and you felt nothing towards it. That’s the best case scenario. That’s what this Diet Plan aims to walk you through. The meals I’ve given you in this plan are still incredibly tasty. You’ll look forward to your meals and you’ll quickly start to lose the craving for sugar especially now that you’ve learnt that it negatively effects your muscle mass and body fat %. Your adherence to the plan will be increased as we will allow 1-2 cheat meals per week and a small daily treat of 1 cube of dark chocolate. This treat will improve your meditation and willpower practice and will battle cravings away. Awareness & Cravings The most common reason why people don’t lose fat on their diets is because they simply don’t stick to the diet (because of cravings) and then they stop the diet altogether. You have a plan to eat the right things, now we have to actually get you eating thos e meals and not eating all of the tasty shit your lizard brain craves. Meditation will do this for you. First of all, what is a craving? It’s a thought that you should do something “Eat the cake, it’ll be tasty” followed by physical and emotional sensations. You’ll feel irritated, excited, tired or distracted when you are craving something. If we could stop the power of cravings from effecting you and let your meal decisions come down to your conscious ‘good brain’, you’d have no problems getting to a lean body fat % and staying lean all year round (like I have done in the last 12 months). The way to stop the power of cravings is through awareness. Awareness is what is levelled up through meditation. When you meditate, you practice being aware of your mind and body. You focus on a single point like your breath and soon enough, your focus is distracted, you’re deep in thought. After a few moments you realised that you were deep in thought and then you bring your focus back to your breath. The more you meditate, the faster you become aware that you are distracted, and you bring yourself back to the focus point. Outside of your meditation practice in your day to day life, you’ll begin to be more aware of your mind. Let’s say you instantly get the benefits of 6 months of consistent meditation. What would your life be like in terms of your diet and cravings? You’d still hear and feel the craving, your mind would generate a thought to eat the cake, but within a split second you’d conclude that you were just experiencing a craving. You wouldn’t dive deep into the craving, weighing up the decision to eat the cake, you’d simply address the craving as an unhelpful thought, and move on. If there’s one thing that will help your diet the most, its awareness built from meditation. Most people are so unaware of their eating habits, so nothing gets improved. They can’t figure out why they keep breaking the diet plan they set. They’re doing well, they’re so motivated to eat clean and lose weight and before they know it, they’re in an internal battle with their mind trying to convince them to break the diet and eat the junk food. Because they have no awareness practice, they indulge in those weak thoughts and the thoughts almost always win. It feels like a full time job to battle against your own thoughts, eventually the mental fatigue is too much, they eat the junk food and worst of all, they don’t even enjoy it. They literally eat the junk food whilst feeling upset that they’re eating it, making plans to be more strict on the diet tomorrow. Awareness is the escape from this cycle. Unless you’ve been consistently meditating already, you will not understand what is written here. You may feel excited to read it but you’re confused at exactly what awareness is and how to meditate properly. Do not get overwhelmed. People who try to figure everything out at this stage never get consistent in a meditation practice. Simply show up, meditate every single day for the rest of your life and over the weeks and months you’ll begin to automatically understand more. Watch this video to learn how to start meditating: https://youtu.be/nDFE1GAovMw Use this free app to start meditating: https://meditofoundation.org/medito-app Use this analogy for your practice: The basketball player who doesn’t even know the rules of the game is making major progress every time he comes to a practice session. The basketball player who doesn’t come to practice isn’t making any progress at all. Just keep showing up to practice, even if you don’t 100% understand everything. But I’ve been meditating for months and I still indulge in my cravings! Your meditation sessions must have a sense of progressive overload to them. Progressive overload is workout term for increasing the intensity of a workout overtime to keep it challenging and therefore keep yourself making progress. You must use the same concept with meditation. If you started meditating for 5 minutes 3 months ago and you meditate for 10 minutes a day now, although that is an improvement, it’s likely not enough of an improvement to maximise your awareness. The awareness benefits to your diet come when you have been meditating for 20-30 minutes every day for the last 3 months. Be honest, have you been meditating for 20-30 minutes daily for the last 3 months? If not, that’s your action plan from now on. If you have been meditating for that long every single day, this where willpower comes in. Continue reading… Level up your Willpower “Willpower is limited” the peasants say. “Just throw out all of the junk food” the beta males exclaim. Everyone has the wrong idea about willpower. The most common self improvement advice is to avoid using willpower as it is a resource that is limited, and simply focus your efforts on setting up your environment to not even require willpower – Throw away the junk food! Setting up your environment is awesome advice but relying on it will lead to failure 10 times out 10. Why? Because there will eventually be a point when the environment works against you. You throw away the junk food from your house, but then you buy more the next time you go shopping. You stop buying more junk food when you go shopping, but then your coworkers offer you cake. You socially isolate yourself, but then you order a takeaway and dessert from Uber Eats. Why does this happen? Because you never levelled up your willpower. You simply relied on a childish “If I can’t see the junk food, I can’t eat the junk food!” method of improvement. The best case scenario is having your former addictions in front of you, and you choosing not to indulge in them. We are going to level up our willpower overtime to make that a reality. First of all, let’s go over some willpower BROSCIENCE: Willpower is the skill of disobeying your lizard brain. Your lizard brain says “eat the cake” , you say “no” and don’t eat the cake, that’s willpower. Every time you use willpower to disobey your lizard brain, two things happen… First, your willpower is slightly drained. After making that decision to disobey the lizard brain, you now have less willpower for the rest of the day (willpower recharges when we sleep). Second, you gain xp (experience points) in your Willpower Skill. So using willpower to disobey the lizard brain and saying no to your cravings makes you level up your willpower in the long run, but now you have slightly less willpower to disobey the lizard brain for the rest of the day. To level up your willpower efficiently and effectively, we are going to actively make you disobey the lizard brain through keeping small treats on your desk. Imagine having some small chocolates or sweets just next to you whilst you do your work on your computer. Normally you’d mindlessly eat those treats. Now we are going to set the intention to NOT eat those sweets, simply to have them next to you. I’ve done this for around 9 months. I’ve kept salted caramel chocolate bars (my all-time favourite) on my desk right in front of me. Of course, I’m human, so I ate some of the chocolate over time. But each and every hour I spent with that caramel oozing out of the chocolate just staring at me, my willpower level increased. What about your willpower draining? Won’t you be more likely to OBEY the lizard brain after this practice? Yes, but only slightly. On the short term basis, you’ll have slightly less willpower for the rest of the day. However on the long term basis, you are guaranteeing your future self to have far better willpower. This is exactly the same as working out in the gym. After working out and draining your muscles strength, you’re weaker for the rest of the day. But overtime, you rest and recovery and then you’re stronger for the next workout, and then the next workout, and eventually you’re significantly stronger and bigger than you started. You just had to deal with feeling weak and fatigued after your workouts, until you went to sleep. Imagine if a beginner said he didn’t want to workout in the gym because he didn’t want to be weaker for the short term after finishing the workout session. What would you say to him? “Damn it Jeffery you’re literally going to be weaker for the rest of the day. You’ll go to sleep and then you’ll wake up stronger tomorrow. Do this for an entire year and you’ll be so much stronger.” You should be levelling up your willpower every day with the practice mentioned above. Go out and buy your favourite snacks, keep them in front of you all day and set a solid intention to not eat them. Journal how you feel. When you mess up and eat some of them (which you will, expect it) journal the reason why – Did you mindlessly eat the snack without even realising? Did you consciously make the decision? Did you argue with your lizard brain? This is an extremely valuable practice that not only will help you with your diet, it’ll literally help you with the rest of your life. Willpower is a skill that transfers over to everything else in your life, you’ll become more productive in your studies and you’ll work on your side hustle more, you’ll feel more confident to speak to new people (especially girls), you’ll skip less workouts. Setting up Your Environment for Success It’s worth to setup your environment for success to make it easier for you. Carry on with the willpower levelling as that is far more important than setting up your environment, but this will help too. To set up your environment for success, you only have to do a few things: Do not mindlessly eat whilst ‘watching something’ – Most of the times you’ll eat junk food is when you’re also doing another bad habit of watching Tv/Netflix/YouTube. Break the habit of watching stuff whilst eating by replacing it with reading/listening to an audiobook or podcast whilst eating. Eat mindfully by staring at the food you’re eating and giving it your 100% focus. When you eat like this you’ll almost automatically stop eating unhealthy food, it’s an incredibly powerful technique to improve your diet. Simply stop pairing eating with watching. Always have the ingredients to make the healthy meals that you like and get consistent at making those meals every day. You no longer need snacks throughout the day when you know exactly what meal you’re having every 3 hours. Keep snacks on your desk to level up your willpower but do not buy anymore to stock in your cupboards. If you live with family or friends who buy snacks, get into the habit of not even looking at where the snacks are kept – there’s nothing for you in there anymore. Always keep a water bottle visible in front of you at all times, you’ll drink 5x more than normal (keeping it visible in front of you is vital, the water literally needs to be in your peripheral vision). Drinking more water will lead to eating less snacks. Disassociate with people who constantly make you fail your diet goals. You aren’t truly friends with them, your friends with the junk food. Watch, when you stop eating the junk food, your friendship disappears (same with drugs). Conclusion The best knowledge you have learnt from this diet plan was the importance of bulking. If there’s just one thing you could do to maximise muscle growth and set up your future self to have an awesome body, it would be to lean bulk for as long as possible. You should keep in mind that dieting is the harder part for most people – Training in the gym becomes very fun after a couple of months / 1 year but dieting almost always remains a struggle, especially when your calories go up and you have to force feed yourself. If you just read the last sentence and got excited at the thought of eating more calories and you automatically started visualising all the tasty foods you’ll eat, I have no doubt that you’ll get fat and hate your body within a few months. Use this as a friendly warning – Bulking is not fun. It’s only ‘fun’ if you’re eating junk food. If you want to delay gratification and maximise your muscle growth, leaving your future self with so much self-love and gratitude for you, eat clean and lean bulk. It’ll literally get you to your dream body years faster. All the best, Hamza