Transcription
So, you've decided that it's finally time to shed the extra weight, to try to carve out your six-pack. You said, "Brandon, all of your videos, they've made an impact on me. I'm going to get lean. I'm going to do it." Here are five different mistakes that you need to watch out for.
After working with hundreds of men, I have watched them fall into these traps time and time and again. I'm telling them to you now so that you can avoid these pitfalls and continue making really, really good progress. Because what I see time and time and again is that men will be making some decent progress at the very beginning. They're getting into a little bit of a flow state with it. They're starting to like the way they're looking in the mirror. But then that progress stops coming because usually they're getting sabotaged by themselves. They're making one of these five mistakes, and when they stop seeing those results come in, then they start going back to their old habits because they think, "Well, things just stopped working." No, it didn't stop working. You just refused to get smarter and understand what you were actually doing wrong so that you could continue progressing and making good progress.
Mistake number one, all right, starting us off is going to be eating health foods that are actually incredibly high in calories, all right? And I'm going to go through and I'm going to call out the eight main foods that I see this happening with.
Number one, grapes. A lot of people think, "Oh, it's a fruit, so it's good for you." No. Grapes are legitimately just little balls of sugar. Yes, they taste good, but they have low fiber, especially when compared to all of the other fruits that you could choose from, and you can easily demolish 600 calories worth of grapes and not even bat an eye. You're not going to be that full from it. And although they aren't the worst option when it comes to getting in carbs, they are so many better things that you could be consuming on a regular basis.
Another one is going to be granola. Since when did everybody start thinking that granola was this amazing health food that everybody should be getting in? Granola is incredibly high calorie. It often has a ton of sugar. It often has low fiber. And it's super, super easy to eat and it's not very satiating. So, avoid granola at all costs, my friends.
Another one is watching out for things like butter. And I already know there're going to be some carnivores or some keto people in the comment section, "Brandon, how dare you? Butter is so good for you. I eat a stick of butter every day. Butter is amazing. Butter is great." If you are trying to lose fat, you need to be in a calorie deficit. When you're cooking with a whole bunch of butter, that becomes a problem. And your body, it needs some fats, yes, in order to maintain optimal hormone function. But it doesn't need all of those fats. A lot of people that I see are getting in an extra 400 to 500 calories in every single day. Enough calories to completely cancel out their caloric deficit simply because of the amount of butter that they are cooking with.
Another one is olive oil. That also sabotages people. Once again, I'm going to have people that say, "Brandon, olive oil is so good for you. It's so good for you." Not in the context of a calorie deficit. You can use a little bit of it. Spray it on there. Keep the calories minimal. But I've seen time and time and again people legitimately eating an extra 4 to 500 calories worth of butter or olive oil with all of their meals and they don't even realize it. They think that they're eating 2,000 calories a day. They're actually eating 2,500. That is a big difference, people.
Nuts is going to be the next one. Cashews, almonds, all of these different nuts. People are convinced that they're healthy and that they're some sort of health food. Oh, when you start dieting, oh, then you start eating a bunch of nuts. No. Keep the nuts out of your mouth, my friend. Don't eat nuts. Stay away from peanut butter, all kinds of nut butters. Just stay away from it, all right? It's way too calorically dense. There's no reason for it.
Smoothies, all right? People will legitimately make a smoothie with more calories than a Dairy Queen Blizzard and for some reason think that it's healthy just simply because the spinach that they put inside of it turned it green. They put all of this garbage in there, make it a thousand calories, put some spinach in there, turn on the blender, it turns green. Oh, therefore, it's healthy. Spoiler alert, just because something is green does not mean that it has some sort of magical dieting effect and that it's going to help you get in shape and be able to see your abs. Absolute insanity, all right?
The next one is going to be rice. So many people seem to think, oh, wait, I'm dieting, so that means I should be eating chicken, broccoli, and rice? No. Rice is actually a bulking food. It's very low on the satiety index. If you want to get really, really big and put on a ton of weight, eat a ton of rice. It's carbs that are easily digested, all right? Don't eat rice when you're in a calorie deficit. Opt for a higher fiber choice of carb that's going to keep you more satiated.
This one always blows people's mind, all right? And the last one is going to be salad dressings. You can easily add in an extra 400, 500 calories in a meal if you add salad dressing on top of your salad, everybody says, "Oh, it's a salad. I'm being so healthy, Brandon. I'm making all these healthy choices." What kind of salad dressing did you use? Ranch. I like ranch salad dressing. Oh my goodness, I already know. I already know that they be squeezing that ranch bottle, and when it comes out, it makes that heinous noise, the cuz that's how much they put on there. Like, they squeeze it so much that the air, like, the bottle literally needs to breathe because they're putting so much salad dressing on their salad. And it makes that noise right there. You're cooked, my friend. You're going to cancel out your entire deficit just because of the amount of salad dressing that you are consuming. Salads are healthy, yes, when done properly. Avoid the salad dressing or keep the dressing to a very, very minimal amount or even opt for a lower calorie dressing.
Now, the next thing, the next mistake that people tend to make is utilizing fat burners, all right? One of the most common questions I get asked, "BRANDON, WHAT ABOUT this fat burner? I saw this fat burner at the store. Is it a good fat burner?" Here's the truth about fat burners. Stems do work. Caffeine has been shown to actually help you burn body fat as time goes on. And fat burners can be very useful. But here's the deal. Your body adapts to stimulants very, very quickly. A lot of people that come to me and they're like, "Brandon, I want to lose fat." These people are consuming so much caffeine that they don't even notice that the caffeine has an effect on them anymore. They're like, "Brandon, I could drink a cup of coffee and then go right to bed right afterwards." Yeah, it's because you have completely desensitized yourself to stimulants, my friend. The stimulants can be incredibly useful at lowering your appetite and also increasing your energy expenditure. Fat burners are not this crazy miraculous concoction. All they do is they have stimulants in there that will encourage you to move more, so you're burning more calories, and they'll get you to eat less cuz it will lower your appetite. But your body will quickly become adapted to that. And then if you're extremely adapted to stimulants, then they have no effect. They don't benefit you. So you can use it a couple days per week, or you could go on a complete stimulant detox, and then they will be very, very helpful for a short period of time. But I had this guy come to me a couple weeks ago. He was saying, "Brandon, I'm doing a gram of caffeine a day, and on top of that I'm doing this other fat burner as well." And I was like, "Dude, you're 300 lb." I'm like, "Did you expect that you were going to be able to get the benefits from this fat burner and using 1,000 mg of caffeine in a single day? Did you think that those effects were going to last the entirety of your FAT LOSS JOURNEY? NO! IT'S GOING TO LAST FOR LIKE 2 WEEKS, AND THEN ALL THE PROBLEMS are going to go away, and you're going to feel like death even while you're on that amount. Your energy levels are going to be in the all right? So don't get hooked on the stimulants. Don't go chasing the next fat burner product just trying to find a different supplement that's going to help you out, all right? Stick to the basics.
The next one is going to be training too intensely when it comes to your cardio, all right? When you do intense cardio, it is going to spike your appetite, and it is also going to spike your cortisol. It's going to throw off your ghrelin. I encourage you, walk a lot throughout the day. It's very low intensity, and you can burn a lot of extra calories when you're moving a lot throughout the day without spiking your ghrelin and spiking your cortisol. But, if you're like, "Oh, I you know, I'm in this fat loss phase. I need to jump on the bike and I got to pedal until I feel like I'm about to die, or I got to hop on the stair master, and I got to do it until my entire shirt is completely drenched in sweat, and like I have the ass crack line, and I smell horrible." All these different types of things. No, don't do that kind of cardio. Keep the cardio reasonable. 130 to 140 beats per minute. 15 to 30 minutes a day, based off of how active you are throughout the rest of the day. You should not be dying during your cardio. It should be moderate in the highest, because you want to make sure that you are regulating those cortisol levels, you are keeping your ghrelin in check, and you're not encouraged to eat more. These people go out and they do all this cardio, and then they get super hungry, and they're like, "Well, I did cardio, so I can eat a lot more." And then they stuff their faces, and then wonder why they're not making any progress when they completely negate all of the cardio that they were doing in a simple little meal that they have afterwards. All right? So, don't try to out cardio your nutrition. It's just simply not going to work, my friends. All right?
The next one is going to be following a fad diet that encourages you to alienate an entire food group or an entire macronutrient. All right? So, do you keto people out there, the ones that just hate carbs, don't cut out carbs. Carbs are your body's main source of energy. It's your preferred source of energy, my friends. Don't cut out carbs. You are going to feel like trash. Your workouts are not going to be enjoyable. You are not going to perform very well. If you move consistently throughout the day, you will burn those carbs. Your blood sugar levels will stay in range. Consume carbs before your workout, before your activity levels, and you will feel fantastic in a deficit. Utilize those carbs. Understand what they are supposed to do in your diet. Don't lock yourself down by saying, "Oh yeah, I'm going keto." Cuz what people do is they're like, "Oh, I'm going keto." or "I'm going carnivore." And then what ends up happening is they lose a ton of weight really, really fast because their glycogen levels get incredibly depleted, and so their muscles just shrink up. All of the glycogen disappears from it. They lose a ton of water weight because they're not consuming any carbs, and then they're like, "Wow, this diet really works." But guess what? It doesn't work like that for very long because most of the stuff that you lost was all glycogen and water. And so now you're stuck with crappy performance, and you're going to be in a caloric deficit just like everybody else now. So it's better to be in a caloric deficit and utilize the macronutrients properly. Utilize your carbs. Don't cut out the fats completely either. That's going to crash your hormones. So have a good amount of fats in there, especially to make sure that your testosterone is staying in a good spot while you're cutting down. And make sure that you're eating high protein in order to maintain or even build muscle during the deficit. All of these extreme fad diets, run away from them. I want you doing a balanced diet, all right? Nothing should be off of the table when it comes to a certain food group or a macronutrient that you are able to consume in a deficit. You want things to be maintainable. You want to be operating at your best. So don't follow the fad diets.
The next one, all right? The final mistake that people tend to make is sacrificing sleep to hit the gym. You're locked in now. You're like, "Brandon, oh I'm going to put on all this hard work. It's my Rocky cut scene, bro." And then what they tend to do is like, "Oh, I have to meal prep for the rest of the week. So I'm going to stay up an hour and a half later, 2 hours later, and then that time all comes out of when they should be sleeping. Or they're like, "Oh, I need to get my workout in for the day, so I'm going to wake up super, super early on only 5 hours of sleep, and I'm just going to grind." What are you doing, dude? What are you doing? This whole process is supposed to be sustainable. It's not sustainable getting 5 hours of sleep every single night, especially not when you're in the deficit. Once again, your cortisol levels going to spike, and once again, your ghrelin going to spike. You're going to feel hungry, you're going to feel like and then you're going to be like, "This whole diet thing sucks. I don't want to be doing this for very long." So, stop sacrificing your sleep. You're not hard, bro. You're not hard because you only sleep 5 to 6 hours a night now. You're just burying yourself. You're going to run into a wall, and then you're going to be just as far behind as you would have been if you had started off with a smarter approach. In fact, you're going to be more behind. This is very much a tortoise or the hare type of scenario. The people that take things a little bit slower, that prioritize their sleep, they are going to be so much better off in the long run than the people that were like, "Yeah, this is my Rocky cutscene. I'm so motivated. I'm going to do all the cardio. I'm not going to sleep. I'm I'm going to wake up. I'm going to watch my motivational video. Maybe I'm going to turn on Brandon on YouTube, and I'm just going to get super motivated." No. That's ridiculous. Motivation has its place, for sure. Don't get me wrong. But, if you are trying to speedrun this process by sacrificing your sleep, you are fundamentally undermining everything that is important about this entire journey. I need you guys to understand that, all right? Hopefully, you found this video helpful. Drop a like down below if you did. Drop us a single thumbs up in the comment section if you watched all the way through to the end of this video, and I will see you guys all in the next one. Peace.