How to Get Lean and Stay Lean

This one goes out to my home boy from Brooklyn Heights days ;) 

I get asked about weight more often than anything else. This is most true during the new year period from late December through this week.

People want to get lean but ingrained patterns are persistent and seem difficult to change.

I’m going to describe how I approach getting and staying lean. I’ll keep it straightforward and provide links to content that provides greater detail for each component. 

If you have any health conditions, talk to your doctor before following any of this. If you are severely obese, call Dr. Tro. He is now licensed in many states and lost 150 lbs himself.

If you have questions, reach out and I will answer.

A Few Items First

Before I describe what to eat, when to eat, and the role of movement, here’s a few preliminary items.

This Is Important

This is an important topic for a couple reasons:

1. Obesity is terrible for our health. It increases risk of all-cause mortality, heart disease, diabetes, stroke, sleep apnea, arthritis, mental illness, and more.

2. The obesity rate continues to skyrocket in the US:

Real Talk

This post lays out where I’m coming from.

It has details I learned along my journey, some from others who inspire me, some from trial and error, some by discovery or accident.

Everyone follows their own path.

Some readers might be inspired, follow this post closely, and make it their own. Others might assimilate some things and discard others. Some might find this post useless and head in a different direction that works just fine.

And finally, alas, some readers might continue to struggle with weight and metabolic health for a while longer.

Lean Mindset 

We construct our own reality. 

We have greater control over the path we take in life than we recognize.

We can take actions we might not have considered even yesterday that wind up changing our lives profoundly.

Good health is a mindset we embrace, habituate, and internalize. It becomes a part of who we are.

This is not about a diet or an exercise regime.

Alcohol

Alcohol is a mindset crusher and a wrench in the lean machine. 

If you can't control your drinking, it might be difficult to get lean and stay lean, especially as you age.

Alcohol is bad for our health across multiple areas including weight control, sleep, mood, cognition, organ functioning, cancer risk etc.

Sorry to say it but you are probably not an exception.

Less is better.

Nutrition Trumps Exercise

The biggest misconception about getting lean is that people think you get there with exercise.

You don’t. 

Exercise is incredibly healthy and it plays an important supporting role, but it is secondary to nutrition.

Our weight depends on the things we eat and drink. 

I forget where I first heard it, but this adage is pure gold:

You can’t exercise your way out of a bad diet.

Getting Back on the Horse

Sometimes, we fail because we adopt an All or None posture. We mess up one time or break one rule and claim failure.

Nobody is perfect. 

I have taken three steps forward and two steps back ten thousand times. I have eaten ice cream and I will do it again.

When you veer from your plan, give yourself a break, acknowledge your imperfect humanity, maybe even laugh at it, and then get back on that gotdamn horse first thing tomorrow morning.

Nutrition

The things we eat and when we eat determine our weight more than anything else.

What to Eat

Here’s a list of nutrient rich foods that provide the only body we will ever have the stuff it needs to get lean and stay lean.

*Foods with the asterisk are fine but a little tricky because they can be tough to stop eating. Nuts, especially.

Here’s a post called What to Eat. 

Here’s a post called The Benefits of Eating a High Protein Diet.

Here’s a post cataloguing the foods I eat in some detail.

What Not to Eat

Here’s a list of foods to stay away from:

When to Eat 

When we eat plays a critical role in getting lean and staying lean. Intermittent Fasting is a method of limiting when we eat over the course of the day.

A good intermittent fasting schedule goes like this:

1. Eat from 12 PM to 8 PM each day.

2. Don’t eat from 8 PM to 12 PM the next day.

So skip breakfast and no snacking after dinner.

This is much easier than we might think if we’re eating mostly the nutrient rich foods mentioned above.

I wrote more about the rationale and details in a post called Getting Started Intermittent Fasting.

Movement and Exercise

Movement is secondary to nutrition but also important.

We don’t burn as many calories as we think unless we’re ultra-marathoners but still it's nice to have the wind at our backs and the burns do add up over time.

Plus, movement has multiple health benefits aside from helping us stay lean.

Walking as a habit is fantastic and also allows us the opportunity to practice mindfulness. I walk early in the morning most days.

Here is a post called Walking.

Strength Training is also fantastic and adding lean muscle increases the amount of calories we burn even while we are resting. Also, it takes less time than you think and can be approached safely. I workout twice a week.

Here is a post called Getting Started Strength Training which covers the basics.

Everything is good - running, yoga, swimming, HIIT, Peloton. Whatever your thing is.

Contrarianism and the Environment

We live in a toxic health culture that glamorizes unhealthy food choices. We learned bad habits from the time we were very young and have been fed bad information too.

It helps to have an oppositional streak in this endeavor. It kinda is us against the world.

Resources

Here’s all the links from today’s post and a few more.

What to Eat

This Is What I Eat

Benefits of Eating a High Protein Diet

Getting Started Intermittent Fasting

Getting Started Strength Training

Obesity Is Increasing in the US

On the Importance of Nutrition Over Exercise

Some Info on HIIT

Walking