As beach season arrives, I’d like to initiate dialogue about fat-loss, and even turn the blog into a Q & A or troubleshooting hub for general adipose tissue — AKA, fat — destruction. The first installment features 10 fat-loss tips for men:

1. Weigh yourself daily

No, this is not unhealthy obsessive behavior. Yes, I realize water and sodium and carbohydrate intake can cause significant fluctuations in weight, even on a day-to-day basis. Still, excelling at anything requires constant, impartial feedback. Daily scale accountability will focus you on your goal every morning.

2. Don’t watch mindless TV

Merely seeing food can trigger a physiological hunger response. And let’s be honest, the types of foods seen in commercials aren’t conducive to visible abs. Boredom, too, destroys physiques: if women eat their feelings, men eat their boredom. Do something, and you won’t snack; do nothing — e.g., watch TV — and you will be tempted. Aim for output: creating something — anything — activates higher brain functions which relegate hunger to the back burner.

3. Avoid excess hunger

Hunger potentiates salty and sweet taste buds; salty or sweet foods will taste better when you’re hungry. This spells disaster for those with bingeing tendencies: miss a few meals during a hectic workday and a slice or two of frozen pizza when you get home becomes the entire pie with a pint of Ben and Jerry’s to boot. The solution? Eat offensively: every few hours. Don’t go hours on end without food and previously irresistible cravings become negligible.

4. Snack on nuts/monounsaturated fats

Most nuts are rich in monounsaturated fat, protein, and fiber. This combination exerts a powerful hunger-blunting effect. 15-20 nuts constitutes a snack (try adding a protein shake for a host of additional benefits), and 50 nuts can be used as a meal replacement. Monounsaturated fats in general are very satiating; consider adding high quality extra-virgin olive oil or my personal favorite, macadamia nut oil, to your pantry. (Don’t skimp when purchasing olive oil; real extra-virgin olive oil has a natural peppery finish and a deep, green aroma of grass and artichoke. It is not bland and not merely used to grease pans.)

5. Make your intentions public

Set a target weight-loss date and share it with a loved one, or participate in a team-based fat-loss contest. Enter into a head-to-head bet with a friend, with sizable stakes — men flourish in competition. Added social incentives are powerful motivators. Like Warren Buffett says, you want some “skin in the game.”

6. Make one small nutritional improvement per day, and one large behavioral change per week

Look, I get it: fat-loss is a very emotional process. When people embark on a diet, they want to lose 10 lbs. yesterday. They depart culinary hedonism — burgers, fries, and soda for lunch and pizza and beer for dinner — and opt for a monastic diet of ice water and steamed tilapia filets. And an asparagus spear. Coupled with hundreds of dollars of supplements. This lasts all of three days, and when they inevitably fall off the wagon it’s bad: 17 Pop-Tarts bad. A whole cheesecake bad. Too much change all at once overwhelms.

Bypass this ascetic doom loop and instead implement the above advice. When compounded over several months, it leads to dramatic changes in appearance and healthy, new habits; when examined microcosmically, in the course of a week or two, it’s painless. Exchange lunchtime soda for water (small daily improvement), and establish a Sunday ritual of grocery shopping and planning your meals for the upcoming week (large behavioral change), for example.

7. Eat a man’s breakfast

Yes, carbs can be beneficial in the morning, but protein and fat bestow real fullness. Don’t shun whole eggs in your omelet or peanut butter on your toast; man cannot subsist on cereal alone. Consume more calories in your first meal of the day and you will eat less during the rest of it.

8. Practice slow meals and hara hachi bu

Eat slowly and mindfully. Learn to savor, and actually taste, food. Converse with friends over dinner, listen and contribute. Don’t bolt down your food in a hectic rush to return to whatever you were last doing. The quicker you eat, the more you tend to eat. Experience one thing at a time, including meals; they weren’t meant to be multitasked.

Why? It takes about 20 minutes for your stomach to send “I’m full” signals to your brain. Complete a meal in less than that, and you’ll have no biofeedback on how much you ate until it’s too late. Meals that exceed 20 minutes confer two-fold weight-loss benefits: you’ll be fuller longer, and you’ll feel full from less food.

Hara hachi bu is a Okinawan phrase meaning, loosely, “eat ’til 80% full.” Okinawans also have the longest life expectancy in the world; they’re doing something right. If that doesn’t appease you, elite Russian athletes have a saying, “always be a little hungry,” which they rigorously apply in the gym and in the kitchen. Turns out humans weren’t meant to eat until drowsy.

9. Don’t drink calories

Think of your apportioned daily calorie total as a bank account: you only have so much to spend before you’re broke. If I can “spend” 2,500 calories in a day without blowing my budget — i.e., I can still lose weight — then I’d much rather spend those calories on food than drinks. Why? Because there’s plenty of things I can drink that cost me nothing. Tasty, zero-calorie beverages abound: water, teas, coffee (black), diet sodas, and Crystal Light. There may be no such thing as a free lunch, but there exists a free refreshment to go with it, at least when we’re talking calories.

10) Butt in gym

Don’t complain about lack of weight-loss if your butt is not in the gym. Regularly. Make a routine, and adhere. Also don’t obsess over the workout itself; consistency trumps any “magic” program. Here’s a rule of thumb: when you leave the gym, someone walking in should readily perceive that you just worked out — that you exerted yourself. Sweat, lose your breath, exhaust some muscles. Don’t just show up, get your butt in the gym.

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Questions on how to pair this advice with some supplements that work? Call us at 800-499-4810

Buy MAN Swagger from Best Price Nutrition for $26.99

Every once in awhile, a product comes out that I feel compelled to do a write-up on; it’s either because I love a product or because I strongly dislike a popular product and I hate seeing people waste their money on it.

MAN’s new product, “Swagger” (aptly named, if I do say so myself),  fits the bill of the former. I daresay that I love this product. I liked it on paper, but sometimes a wicked-looking formula will fail to deliver. Not this one. The feel matches the formula.

As usual, I’ll justify myself:

1) The right amount of caffeine:

225mg (per serving — 3 capsules) is just about my sweet spot for caffeine content: any more than 300mg and I’m useless, but any less than 200 and I don’t get much out of it. Plus, it’s split into three capsules (at 75mg apiece), so you can ratchet the amount up or down depending on tolerance and desired effect (and time of day, and blah, blah, blah). Many products are so inundated with caffeine — just to make you feel “buzzed” — that they aren’t actually doing anything from a fat-loss standpoint; making you feel like a rodent on cocaine isn’t conducive to anything but, well, feeling like a rodent on cocaine.

2) Full Disclosure:

I’ve talked about this before. I am much more receptive to new products when companies don’t try to conceal their formulas behind the guise of proprietary blends. Swagger is one of the rare products that tells you, down to the milligram, how much of each ingredient it contains. Let me tell you a secret: simpler is better. Full disclosure’s rarity (at least, in this industry) is only rivaled by its awesomeness. Nothing is more reassuring than knowing you — and your wallet — aren’t getting hosed by some half-ass, pixie-dusted “kitchen sink” product.

The blend is novel and fairly unique, which also garners high marks from me, and takes an expansive approach to fat-loss by offering more than a typical hackneyed fat-burner. Specifically, it addresses all four things I want from a product aimed at fat-loss: appetite suppression, increased energy, increased energy expenditure, and cognitive support. Most products fulfill about two of the four, or decide to forgo anything that might resemble an effective formula in favor of enough stimulants to kill a horse.

There’s Bacopa, Citicoline, Picamilon, 1,3-Dimethylamylamine… lots of interesting, uncommon ingredients. If you have a question about what any of them do just ask. This is one of the better fat-loss products I’ve seen recently, and I’ve been enjoying it simply for the feeling it imparts (i.e., you can still take it even if you do not have any fat-loss goals). Enjoy!

Buy MAN Swagger from Best Price Nutrition for $26.99.

Questions? Call 800-499-4810, or leave ‘em in the comments!

*All these drinks are “diet” drinks because they have no or negligible calories, but you can certainly enjoy them whenever. I also probably would not be able to diet successfully without them.*

1. Holiday Mocha

These taste fantastic. I’ve been drinking one every morning, especially since the weather has turned here in Chicago.

2. Hot Green Tea

When dieting, I take green tea extract (as should you), but I love hot green tea as well. I feel this “heats me up” just as well as the extract. Usually I buy an enormous 100-bag matcha blend from Costco’s Kirkland brand.

3. Yerba Mate Tea

This is a unique tea that contains the full “theo/thea” line of amino acids: theanine, theobromine, and theophylline (you may recognize theanine from green tea and theobromine from chocolate). I think I read somewhere that it is the only known source that has all three, or maybe the only tea, but don’t quote me on that. In any case, it’s not common to find all three together and you get a really smooth energy/alertness from it.

We sell this one, and I’m also enamored with Cruz de Malta Yerba Mate. Finally, there is an awesome offer from Tim Ferriss and our friends at Samovar where you can buy this 4-Hour Workweek Organic Mate Set; 100% of profits go to charity and you can pick the charity of your choice through DonorsChoose.org. The last one makes an awesome holiday gift.

4) SoBe 0 Cal Life Water

Unbelievable taste for something that contains no artificial sweeteners or sugar. Uses stevia and a natural sugar alcohol called erythritol. My favorites are Açaí Fruit Punch and Yumberry Pomegranate.

5) Diet Wild Cherry Pepsi

I’m sure that I’m going to catch a lot of flak for this, but I really don’t think that aspartame is proven dangerous in humans. Before you throw PubMed links at me, remember: humans aren’t rats. Aspartame is irrefutably less deleterious than diabetes, so don’t throw the “regular pop is better than diet” argument at me, either.

Look, the jury is still out and there’s no body count; no coroner has ever pronounced death from acute or insidious aspartame poisoning. And damnit, these are great when you’re starving on a diet. File this last bit under “things I know, but can’t prove”: the carbonation in pop fills you up and blunts hunger, too.

6. Xyience Xenergy Drinks

These things are sinfully good. An indulgence with just enough caffeine to wake you up, but not enough that you can’t drink 3 per day and stack with Cytolean V2. The kicker? These don’t have any aspartame or artificial coloring, either, so if I wasn’t able to talk the anti-aspartame zealots off their pedestal, no worries with these.

Seriously, try one. This list isn’t in any particular order but if it was, these might be my #1, especially Blueberry Pom.

7. Kukicha Tea

This one’s a bit more unorthodox, but it’s an awesome tea that not many of people are aware of.  Kukicha is made from twigs and it has a sweet creamy flavor. It’s also great because it has the lowest caffeine content of all traditional teas so you can drink it later in the afternoon/evening in lieu of undesired snacking. I enjoy Eden Foods’ organic offering.

8. Crystal Light

Do I really need to explain this one? An absolute staple to keep in your refrigerator at all times to fend off moments of weakness and kick a sweet tooth to the curb. Cran-Apple is the best, in my humble opinion.

9. Diet Snapple Iced Tea

There are three great flavors: peach, lemon, and raspberry. Crack one open and pour on ice after workouts to quench thirst. Repeat as needed.10. Water

Like that girl (guy?) you dated in high school you always call when you’re home on break from college, water is comfortable, familiar, and tasty (hopefully). And it’s also always there when nothing else sounds appealing. So drink it (or, you know, death is imminent).

Need help with other products for fat-loss or dieting? Give us a call at 800-499-4810, and we’ll help you find the stack that’s right for you.