Hey food groupies today we're going to be talking about how you can lose body fat without tracking. So by tracking, mean calorie tracking using my fitness power, chronometer and app like that to kind of capture your intake, your calorie intake for a period of time. And fat loss, I probably don't have to define that. So I'm pro tracking. Okay. I think a lot of people think I'm anti-tracking. I'm not sure where that's come from. I love

Calorie tracking, I think it can be a really effective and a really valuable tool to help you understand what's in your food and to understand your requirements and all of these sorts of things. However, I do not believe and I say believe like it's a belief. I know from the evidence that it is not appropriate for everyone to do. For some people, it's not appropriate. It's not safe for them to do right now. For some people, it's never going to be appropriate or safe for you to calorie track. Okay.

there's a whole host of reasons why that might be the case, which I'm not going to go into now. I don't have an hour, but, that's why I wouldn't say I'm like, everyone must calorie track. When people say that, that frustrates the hell out of me. but also no one should calorie track. It's dangerous for everybody also frustrates the hell out of me because both of those positions are wrong. as always, the answer is somewhere in the middle and is it's a case by case basis. And not even just like I said before, not a person by person basis, but a

a situation by situation basis. You know, whether calorie tracking is right and or safe for you will probably change throughout your life. The one little ranty caveat I would say is calorie tracking. If you if you don't have time to calorie track, if that's your reason why you can't track your calories. That's a crap reason. Clearly, your fat loss goal is not that important to you because if the

only barrier to you tracking is time. You've said that I don't have 10 to 15 minutes a day to commit to my fat loss goal. And if that's the case, okay, that's totally fine. Now is not the time to lose fat. If you can't commit 10 to 15 minutes a day, at least. And honestly, it gets less as we get better at tracking, we're talking three, five minutes a day of just jumping on inputting your food. If you're not able to commit to that, then I would recommend not committing to fat loss because

Jono (02:24.94)

I don't think it's gonna go particularly well. Anyway, that has sounded very pro calorie tracking, which as I've just said, is not a necessity for losing fat. And the whole point of this podcast episode is talk about ways that we can push you towards or like guide you toward, guide your body towards getting into a calorie deficit without tracking, okay? Because there's definitely a time and a place for that too. it's also, sorry, longer term, we don't wanna be calorie tracking for.

Calorie tracking should be a short term thing that we do to learn about ourselves, learn about our body, learn about our food, put some systems in place. So if you have gone down the route of calorie tracking, that's all well and good, but you also need to get out of there at some point. And maybe in the future or right now, you want to get back into a fat loss phase, but you don't want to track again. So here's a couple of different ways that we can subconsciously or...

inadvertently, a lower our calorie intake, which could potentially get us into a deficit. So I can't guarantee that if you follow all of these things, you will be in a deficit. The only way to really know that is to capture your intake properly via tracking. But if you follow all of these things, you're at a far greater chance of being in a deficit. Hopefully that's made sense. So the first one, bro Jono is back, you're gonna eat your protein now, protein is the

helps fill you up and makes you feel fuller for longer. So I'm sure you can appreciate if you're feeling full more often and you're feeling more satisfied for longer, it's probably going to inadvertently or indirectly lower your calorie intake because you may not snack as much in between or at your next meal, it may not be quite as big because you're not quite as hungry because the previous meal had a good source of protein. There's a very rough guide looking for 0.5 grams

per kilogram of body weight, sorry, 0.3 to 0.5 grams per kilogram of body weight is a good serve for a meal of protein. Or you can be looking at something that's kind of filling about a quarter of your plate. So it's quite a bit of protein. And I would say without a doubt, most of the feedback I get from clients when we shift them from an adequate protein intake, which is enough protein, to what I would call an optimal protein intake, which is optimal. The feedback is,

Jono (04:42.976)

that's way more protein than I was, that's way more than I thought. So I would say if you think you're eating enough protein and you haven't tracked it, you're probably not. And I would increase that by, I don't know, 30%. Again, rough guides, but doing that at virtually every meal and then including a snack or two that are rich in protein, all of that is going to help manage that appetite and increase your chances of slipping into a calorie deficit.

The next tip is very similar and for very similar reasons. Eat your veggies, fruits and veggies, but I guess particularly non starchy veggies, just because they're kind of bang for their buck in terms of the amount of calories they provide is quite low, but the amount of satiety or the amount of the, good they are at filling you up is quite high. So I'm sure you can appreciate again, less calories being added for a big payoff of hunger is potentially going to help reduce your

your appetite and therefore reduce your overall calorie intake. Of course, fruits and vegetables have so many other huge benefits outside of this. So I don't want it to just be boiled down to they manage your hunger. But for the purpose of this episode, that is one way in which they're very, effective. So every meal, every snack, as much as you can try and get a third to a half plate of non starchy veggies. A non starchy vegetable is anything that's not a potato, sweet potato, pumpkin, beetroot.

corn, yams. It's not that those foods are bad, those foods are all amazing. It's just, they're a little bit more energy dense. So they're something that we want to be more portion aware of than say the non starchy stuff, which it's kind of just like go nuts. Eat as much as you want. So that can be really helpful. Another thing we see, and this is in people who lose weight and keep it off long-term is the frequency of snacking per day drops.

So it's close to two or less snacks per day. Now, I don't want you to interpret that as I need to, that eating more than two snacks is bad. But what I think is going on is if you are regularly eating more than two snacks or needing more than two snacks in a day, your meals suck. They are not big enough. If your meals are big enough and they contain enough protein and enough veggies and enough, you know, complex carbohydrates and healthy fats and things,

Jono (07:04.076)

then you probably aren't going to need to snack more than twice a day, unless you're like an athlete with really crazy high energy levels, which you probably shouldn't be listening to this podcast anyway, not energy levels, energy requirements. But if you're a regular human being like me, if you're snacking more than twice a day, I would strongly recommend looking at your meals because if your meals are big enough and satisfying enough, I don't think you'll need those snacks. the third tip is not too much snacking, but...

I wouldn't just look at that and be like, I snack four times a day. I'll just cut down on two. would go, why am I snacking four times a day? What is happening in the meals before those snacks? Is that meal big enough? And what you'll probably find is if you're having three snacks or four snacks grazing in the afternoon, those, each of those snacks is about 200 calories. So you've got 800 calories of snacking in the afternoon, adding 200 calories to your lunch could fill you up enough to only need one 200 calorie snack.

And so the math on that is I've added 400 calories via 200 calories to your lunch. And I have one 200 calorie snack, but I have traded 800 calories of snacks for 400 calories of extra food. So I've technically dropped 400 calories out of my day. Hopefully that talking about maths is always fun, but that's quite a big swing. So that's where they're not too much snacking can be really helpful. One other big thing to be really mindful of is your liquid calories. virtually everything that is a liquid, that's not water or herbal tea.

contains some calories, even black coffee. I wouldn't stress about black coffee. No one's like, it's like seven calories per cup. anything with milk, anything, even the amount of times I've had clients who I have tea, but I just have a dash of milk. They just have like six teas and what they think is a dash is actually like 80 mils or a hundred mils of milk. And six times that adds up to like 300 calories, which is non negligible, right? Like it's a reasonable amount to be mindful of. So.

Pardon me, any calories, any milky coffee, any sugars, any syrups, any milky teas, you know, of course soft drinks, of course, alcohol, all of those things contribute calories. I'm not saying you have to cut them to zero. I'm just saying maybe have a think about what you truly have in a day. Maybe just write down on a diary or a little scrap of paper as you have drinks throughout the day and then quickly look up.

Jono (09:25.036)

Like what is a medium oat latte? And so you've got just some context of what those calories are. And maybe you go, you know, I don't really need a medium coffee. A small coffee with an extra shot is the same amount of caffeine and it's still got milk in it. So it's still like delicious enough. Boom, there you go. And maybe you look and you go, you know what? Those dashes of tea in my, dashes of milk in my tea probably don't need to be that heavy. I can still enjoy my tea with less milk and you can just dial them back like that, you know? So just being careful.

those liquid calories. The next tip is eating mindfully and eating slowly. Mindful eating essentially just means when you're eating, try and make the only activity you're doing eating. Don't eat whilst doing other things because if you're doing other things, you're distracted and you won't be as tuned into your hunger and fullness cues. And so it's much easier for you to overeat because you can eat past fullness because you're distracted. So try and really focus on what you're eating and

One really good way to do that is to eat slowly because food takes time to get to your gut. As it gets to your stomach, your stomach stretches. It sends a whole bunch of chemical signals to your brain to say, hey, I'm full. You can stop eating now. It's just that that takes about 15 minutes. So if you just eat really, really quickly, you've had five minutes, even if what you ate was enough and will be filling and satisfying in a little bit, in that moment, you're going to go back for more. You're to eat more than you need because you're hungry, right?

because it hasn't yet triggered in your mind that you have had enough. So eating slowly, chewing slowly or chewing more, putting the knife and fork down, having a little bit of a break, checking around the table to see who else is eating, find the slowest eater at the table and kind of just keep pace with them. All of these things can be a way that will help you reduce what you're eating without just sort of crazy restriction. It's just sort of eat a bit slower.

tune into your hunger and fullness cues a bit more and you might find you actually get full sooner than you think. The last tip is to reflect on your entire week. This is a huge one, even if you do track, it's very easy to be like, yeah, Monday through Thursday, I like nailed it. I was perfect. And I don't even like that phrase, but you know what I mean. I was like, all of my, it was fine. I adhered to my regular plan. Friday, Saturday, Sunday, a bit of a...

Jono (11:48.95)

black hole. It doesn't really matter because Monday to Thursday, I was on. Unfortunately, fat loss is about an average over time. And so it's about your weekly deficit. And it's very easy for you to build up a calorie deficit Monday through Thursday, and then wipe that deficit out on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, or even wipe that deficit out on Saturday, if you're not careful. So that's not to say that you need to be perfectly on point all week. What it does mean though, is be realistic about

how much you've consumed on the weekend. And what I would encourage you to do is try and lower that a bit. Does every single meal on the weekend need to be a party? Probably not. Trying to get your weekend to be a little bit closer. I've got a whole podcast on how to eat a weekend eating pattern, which can help with all of the weekend things. So make sure you've listened to that, but essentially just making sure your weekend is still reasonably calorie conscious.

If you have a goal of fat loss, can't really afford to have four days switched on and three days switched off. What that's going to make you feel like, and I've seen this, I've had this conversation hundreds of times, it makes you feel like you're quote unquote dieting because four days a week you're really hard at it. And then three days a week you just kind of let them slip by and don't think about them. But then you'll feel like you're dieting hard, but you're not getting any of the results. And it's just because on average,

you're in a deficit four days a week, but then you're in a bigger surplus on the three days. And what that means is your week has averaged out to maintenance calories. So make sure you're reflecting on your entire week as well. I'm sure there's plenty of other tips out there that I've forgotten, but they're definitely the biggest ones. So if you're looking to get into a deficit and you don't want to track for whatever reason, or tracking is not a good idea for you right now, it's not safe, then here, I've already gone through them. Those are the things that I would be focusing on to help you get into a deficit without.

tracking. Anyway, any questions, any thoughts, anything, send me message. Otherwise, I'll chat to you next time.

Jono (13:52.344)

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