THE P3RSP3CTIV3 METHOD NUTRITION GUIDE.

In this write up I’m going to give you the information you need to get your nutrition dialed so you can achieve a lean body, optimize your health & improve your mood & energy levels. 

I believe in eating a well balanced diet full of variety, earth grown nutrients, including animals that eat earth grown nutrients. I do not believe in eliminating food groups from my diet. 


My goal is to not just to look good but also feel better and to be able to perform at my peak physical performance!

I love to train hard and after experimenting with keto, pescatarian, vegetarian and carb free diets I have found that those methods just don’t work for me. Especially when I’m on my feet all day training clients, teaching classes and smashing it in the gym! 
I feel that I function at my highest level when I eat a balanced diet of complete proteins, whole grains and unprocessed carbs, heart healthy fats, tasty fruits and fibrous vegetables! 

This isn’t a crash diet.
To achieve results you’re going to have to be committed! Consistency is gonna be key for real, long lasting results.
The more sustainable approach ultimately took longer to get me where I wanted to be, but the process was more enjoyable.


IT’S A LIFESTYLE 
This guide is not a “six pack abs overnight” starvation, crash diet. This guide is going to give you tools you need to feel healthy, have energy throughout the day, & teach your body to use food as fuel and to torch stubborn body fat by EATING food not eliminating it. 
Your body is an adaptation machine. It adapts to the foods you fuel it and the ones you DON’T. If you starve your body with a drastic cut in calories or nutrients your body can enter a state of alert where your metabolism is slowed down. 
With a slowed metabolism, your body will adapt to using fewer calories for fuel and then when you do eat your body will most likely store any extra calories as body fat (keep in mind with a slowed metabolism, it will be easier to overeat even with what may seem like normal sized portions). 
Like I said earlier your body is an adaptation machine and will look to store body fat for the future in case you enter another starvation state. It will do this while burning your hard earned muscle because it’s trying to protect your vital organs first and foremost to SURVIVE. Big thick slabs of muscle are non essential to survival while fat is needed to keep you warm and to surround and protect your organs. 
Like your body you must be highly adaptable and learn to create healthy habits for healthy results. This isn’t something you follow for 2 to 3 months and all of sudden you’re ready to be ready to be on the cover of a magazine. 
It’s going to take dedication to consistency to train your body to do what YOU want it to do. 

If you stay committed I guarantee you will look and feel better. 
You will take command and control of how your body looks and feels by getting to know how food types, portions, and timing affect you! 
You’ll find balance and then you’ll be able to coax your body to gain lean muscle while ALSO burning body fat, have sustainable energy throughout the day, recover faster & ultimately feel better!. 

LET’S GET IT!


My Philosophy 
Many of you ask me how and what you can eat to get lean & build muscle. Now, although I am going to give you an example of what I eat in my day to day, this is NOT a meal plan. 
I do not believe that there is a one size fits all meal plan. What works for me might not exactly work the best for you. 

I’m not trying to feed you for a day. I’m trying to get you to learn to feed yourself for a lifetime!

My goal is to give you the knowledge to be able to put together a plan that works for you and your schedule. It’s like the saying “Give a man a fish and feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.” 
Because we all know that life happens and if I force you to stick to a tight eating schedule you might be able to stick to it for a bit but eventually something will get in the way and if you’re not prepared to adapt in those situations then you will only end up more stressed and potentially going off the rails with your diet. 
You’re going to have to put in effort to achieve the health & body of your dreams. I’m not here to hold your hand and give you a magic pill. 
I need you to take these tips and put them to practice yourself and be consistent and patient during the process! Feel free to ask me any questions.
Do not get discouraged if you don’t see results right away. Everything worth having takes time and effort to acquire. 
I applaud you for taking the step to transform your body and your life, it’s no easy feat. You have my respect for even trying. But you owe it to yourself to stick it out and achieve your goals so DON’T QUIT! STAY THE COURSE! Don’t let doubt or distractions get in your way. You have to COMMIT! 


What is Food? FOOD IS FUEL, FOOD IS MOOD.

To understand how to formulate a balanced diet, first we must review our macronutrients and how they 
affect our body. 

Calories are made up into 3 subgroups- Carbs, Fats, Protein

All of these macronutrients supply energy to the body. Carbohydrates and proteins yield 4 calories for every gram while fats yield 9 calories for every gram (meaning you can easily overdo it on the calories with fatty foods if you’re not careful). Proteins are usually given a ton of attention because they provide amino acids which are essential for building muscle. 
In addition to having different caloric values, each macronutrient also has a different thermogenic effect (TEF) on your body. TEF is the energy required for digestion, absorption, and disposal of ingested nutrients. 

Fats have a TEF rating of about 95% 
Carbohydrates have a TEF of about 90% 
Proteins have a TEF of about 80%




What this means is that if you eat 100g of carbohydrates (TEF 90%) then you can expect your body to use about 90g as fuel while using about 10g to just digest and absorb the food in the first place. The 10g of carbs are used up during the digestion process and released as heat to your body. 
This thermic effect is why eating portioned balanced meals frequently throughout the day can also help you burn body fat since your body is always burning calories when you eat. 
Another good point to make is that once you get leaner it will be easier to keep body fat off. Your body will have less insulation from body fat, so to stay warm it will constantly have to naturally burn more calories to regulate your body temperature. 
Keep in mind that we will be using this thermic effect to help us burn body fat while building/and or maintaining muscle using a carb cycling method. We’re not going to eliminate carbs but we are going to manipulate them to help us achieve our goals! 

Carbohydrates 

Carbs usually get a bad wrap and are usually the first thing people tell you to eliminate from your diet if you want to lose weight. This comes from the fact that all carbohydrates are broken down and absorbed in the body as sugar. And everybody knows SUGAR is BAD (not true when it comes to healthy carbs) but when we are talking processed junk with added sugar & refined carbs, yes sugar is terrible. 
But what they don’t tell you is that carbohydrates are an essential fuel for muscle growth and fat digestion. For fat to be broken down in the liver, carbohydrates must be present. Carbs encourage the release of insulin, the “storage hormone.” After a tough high intensity workout you deplete your muscle cells fuel tanks of glucose, their main source of fuel during high intensity workouts and strength training. 
How are you supposed to use your muscles if you deprive them of their most useful fuel??? (carbs) 
By introducing carbohydrates post workout you encourage insulin to signal your muscle cells to refill their fuel tanks with glucose, fueling growth and recovery... but muscle cells have a limited capacity to store glucose. 
So, if you overdo it on the carbs and your muscle cells reach the limit that they can store then the excess sugars/glucose can be stored in fat cells, increasing your body fat. 
Another reason why eating portioned meals is important is so that you don’t end up storing any extra calories as fat. You’ll also teach your body to better utilize the carbohydrates to fuel your muscles this way, helping you pack on muscle. 

Slow and Steady
Keep in mind that just simply drastically cutting carbs/and or calories won’t result in sustainable fat loss. If you remove too much too fast then your body can enter a state of alert where it thinks it is starving so then it looks to STORE as much of your survival fuel, FAT, as possible. 
If you starve yourself then your body will first slow its metabolism(remember slower metabolism, less heat, less calories being burned during digestion, less fat burn) and use the least amount of calories to survive. This will slow down your rate of fat burn and will make it even easier for you to store excess calories as fat, because you’ll have more excess calories after your body uses only what it needs with its slowed metabolism. 
AND in this state of alert your muscles will be less sensitive to insulin so recovery and growth will slow down 

OR if very severe your body can begin to eat away at muscle for nutrients. Your body would rather store body fat since it is what keeps your body warm. 
Your body will sacrifice muscle in favor of keeping fat to protect your vital organs. Not to mention muscles require tons of energy to maintain. So when you’re starving, they will be the first to go. Leaving you looking “skinny fat.” 
This is why it is important to gradually decrease calories no more than 10-15% every week from your baseline. The same goes for “lean bulking”. You want to increase your calories every week by no more than 10-15% every week from your baseline, or else you run the risk of gaining excess body fat. 


Simple and Complex Carbs

The difference between simple carbs and complex carbs: 
Simple carbohydrates are broken down quickly by the body to be used as energy. Simple carbohydrates are found naturally in foods such as fruits, milk, and milk products. They are also found in processed and refined sugars such as candy, table sugar, syrups, and soft drinks 
Complex carbohydrates are made up of sugar molecules that are strung together in long, complex chains, making them slower to digest. Complex carbohydrates are found in foods such as peas, beans, whole grains, and vegetables. 
Both simple and complex carbohydrates are turned to glucose (blood sugar) in the body and are used as energy. 
Simple carbs are broken down quickly and cause a huge spike in insulin. The sugars from the carbs fuel muscle tissue and liver cells but if they are full then they are stored in the body as fat. 
Complex carbs contain more bonds between molecules than simple carbs and they take longer to be digested and absorbed. This causes a more steady release of insulin which can help regulate your energy, mood and decrease the risk of storing excess sugar in fat cells! 

It’s also important to note that the more processed, refined or cooked a carb is, the easier and more quickly it can be broken down and absorbed and causing a bigger insulin spike. 
One thing to note as well is that dairy milk is made up of lactose, as simple sugar. I like to stay away from milk so I can avoid the extra sugar but it is also estimated that 75% of adults cannot properly metabolize milk sugars. This intolerance can result in many issues including bloating and acne. 
I have since been pretty much dairy free but include some cheeses and yogurts since the live bacteria in these foods actually makes them easier to digest. 
I recommend you try removing dairy from your diet for a few weeks and then reintroduce it and see if you feel any changes and see if it’s right for you! 
Try sticking to complex carbs in most of your meals to help you regulate blood sugar throughout the day and reduce your likelihood of storing excess sugars as fat. Also, I like to eat white potatoes, white rice, fruit and other simple carbs for breakfast and in my post workout meals and shakes. 
I do so because these are the times when my body most needs a high uptake of sugar. After sleeping/fasting or after a hard workout your muscle and liver cells are depleted of glucose, if you don’t fill up your fuel tanks then you can start to eat at your muscle or even go into a state of alert. This is why eating quickly digesting simple carbs like fruits, refined starches like white rice, and fast digesting white potatoes is prime. 
You can eat simple sugars but try to stay away from processed sugars like cane sugar, candy, ice cream and stick to fruits and vegetables. 
Fruits and vegetables contain simple sugars but they also contain more essential vitamins and minerals that can have great health benefits. They also contain FIBER.

Fiber 
There are two types of fiber: 
Soluble and insoluble fiber. Soluble fiber dissolves in water, and includes plant pectin and gums. Insoluble fiber doesn’t dissolve in water. 
Non-soluble fiber is considered a non digestible food. When fiber is added to simple or complex carbohydrates, it will slow the breakdown and release of glucose from the other carbs into the bloodstream, which will cause a lower insulin spike which can help reduce the chance of fat storage. 
Soluble fiber, which is found in foods like oats and beans, has been shown to increase muscle insulin sensitivity. Which means when you eat foods with this type of fiber, your muscle tissue will be more receptive to insulin. If your muscles are more receptive then they will potentially store more of the glucose in your muscle cells, while decreasing the amount that is being stored in your fat cells. 
You should aim to eat about 35 grams of fiber a day. 


Protein 
Proteins are essential for building muscle, as well as essential to all body tissue cell growth, repair and maintenance. 
I recommend eating complete protein, most easily found in animal foods, because it contains all the essential amino acids your body needs to repair and build new muscle. If you choose to eat a vegetarian diet, just be aware that most plant foods are low in some vitamins like iron, calcium, zinc, vitamin D and B. It can also be a bit difficult to find complete proteins when eating plant foods. Just make sure you are getting enough of these vitamins and complete proteins in your diet if you do choose to eat a plant based diet. 
Amino acids are what protein is broken down into. I also like to supplement amino acids into my diet when I train.  Be careful not to eat too much protein. Excess protein can be used as fuel OR it can be stored as fat. If you eat too much protein you can possibly cause some health issues like kidney disease. 
It is recommended to eat about 0.8 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight for the average person. For a person who is very active and is strength training, I like to suggest eating 1 to 1.5 grams per lb of bodyweight to assist in muscle growth and repair.
While carbs boost insulin, protein causes the release of insulin AND glucagon. Glucagon is a hormone that can help off-set insulin’s fat storing potential by stimulating the breakdown of fat stored in the body to release it into the body to be used as fuel. 
This is why eating a balanced meal with carbs and protein is important, to help lower the fat storing potential of insulin by producing glucagon when protein is ingested. 


Recommended Protein sources: 

Salmon
Lean Cuts of Organic Grass Fed Beef
Tuna
Lean organic ground beef, turkey, chicken, bison, elk, deer
Lamb
Eggs
Plain Organic Greek Yogurt (high fat)
Protein Powder
Shrimp



!!!!FATS!!!! My Personal Favorite…(The healthy ones though)

Fats do not make you fat! 
Unless eating in excess, as with anything else, fats will not make you fat. 
Fats are essential for brain function and they are used in the body as fuel for muscles during low intensity aerobic workouts like running and cycling. 
Dietary fat is necessary for our bodies to absorb the fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K. 
Your body has two essential fatty acids (EFAs) that it cannot produce on its own: omega-3 and omega-6. These must be obtained from food. 
Omega 6 fats are found in corn, safflower, soybean and vegetable oils. Too much omega 6 can raise your blood pressure, cause inflammation, and lead to blood clots that can cause heart attack and stroke. 

Omega 3 fats are found in fatty fish and can help reduce inflammation and prevent blood platelets from clumping together in blood vessels. 
You need both types of these EFAs for your body to function properly. Most people tend to have more omega 6 fatty acids than omega 3s. 
Try adding more omega 3s and reducing your intake of omega 6s fats so you can find balance. 
Essential fatty acids are vital to support a healthy immune system, assisting in blood circulation, and to help synthesize hormones. EFAs are essential to help build a lean, healthy physique. 


You also want to be careful when eating fats/oils that are rancid because they can cause damage in the body from the free radicals released during oxidation. 

My go to cooking oil options: 
Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil (highly reccomend)
Cold Pressed Coconut Oil 
Cold Pressed Olive Oil 
Cold Pressed Avocado Oil 
You should also try to stay away from roasted nuts, as the oils in these fats are likely to oxidize as well. I love eating raw nuts and if I really want that roast flavor then I’ll lightly roast them myself with avocado oil in a frying pan and eat them within a couple of days as they are less likely to oxidize. 
Another thing you do need to be careful of is to not eat high amounts of fat while also eating a high amount of simple carbs. Simple carbs will elevate your insulin and most assuredly store the dietary fat as body fat. 
One rule of thumb is if you’re eating a meal high in carbs then try and reduce the amount of fats in the same meal. And vice versa, if you’re eating a meal high in fats try and reduce the amount of carbs you’re eating in the meal. 


Good Fat Sources 


Grass Fed Beef 
Avocados 
Wild Caught Fish 
Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Pasture Raised Eggs 
Organic Coconut Oil 
Almonds 
Organic Avocado Oil 
Walnuts 
Nut Butters (low sugar)
Flaxseeds 


Chia Seeds 




Vitamins and Minerals 
Vitamins and minerals are considered essential nutrients—because acting in concert, they perform hundreds of roles in the body. They help shore up bones, heal wounds, and bolster your immune system. They also convert food into energy, and repair cellular damage. 
I make sure to eat high quality foods. I include dark green leafy vegetables and whole grains, as well as eating grass fed beef, pasture raised, wild caught meat, fish and eggs. These high quality foods supply most of my vitamins and minerals. 
Since I train a lot I like to make sure I supplement vitamins and minerals into my diet to make sure I’m covering all my bases and I’m not deficient in my essentials. 

Hydration

“Salt makes you bloated. Don’t eat salt and you’ll get lean and mean real quick.” 
This is some of the worst advice I ever heard. 
I actually followed this advice and minimized my sodium intake to try and cut as much water as I could to look lean. 
It worked. I shed a ton of water weight and I looked shredded to the gills. 
But, I quickly realized how dumb this was when I tried to continue training hard with a lack of sodium and electrolytes. 
My muscles started cramping and I felt tired and sluggish. 
Your body NEEDS water to function properly. 
DO NOT eliminate salt from your diet when training. 
You can lower the amount of sodium you eat, as excess sodium intake can result in high blood pressure but DO NOT eliminate it from your diet. 
When training you must make sure you are maintaining high levels of hydration so that you have healthy fluid balance. 

Poor hydration can result in: 
• Muscle cramps 
• Weakness 
• Decreased performance 
• Nausea 
• Fatigue 
• Dizziness 
If you want to make serious muscle gains then you must train at your optimal performance. 
Staying hydrated is vital! 

So make sure you're getting enough electrolytes.

Nutrition Tips- Improved Cognition / Energy



Nutrition Tips- Fat loss
Nutrition Tips- Muscle Gain


Our Core Principles
1- Our first nutrition principle is to eat more fat. Somewhere along the lines, people told you that fat was the enemy, that fat in your food equated to fat in your body.  It makes sense, right?  Too bad it's complete bullshit. Fat is a necessary component for supporting your body in all ways, including muscle gain, including weight loss, including general nutrition and health. It's absolutely vital.  So you're going to want to choose healthy fats sources, avocado, coconut oil, grass fed butter, egg yolks, yes eat the egg yolks .If you see somewhere that's still offering an egg white omelet. You can show them and point them to the science that says egg yolks are absolutely beneficial for the body. That type of healthy cholesterol is not only going to support heart health, it's going to support hormone health and make sure that you're able to truly own your day. Pack breakfast with healthy fats and protein for sustainable energy, try to limit or avoid carbs in your first meal besides fruits and vegetables.

2- Eat Less Sugar. Sugar is fucking you up,  It is going to make you fatter, it's going to make you sicker. It's going to even make your skin wrinkly and it's going to shorten your lifespan. Unfortunately, everybody took the fat out of everything and instead because it had no flavor, they put all the sugar back in.  So you might have heard of diets like the ketogenic diet, and that's a really popular word, but a lot of what that's talking about, it's talking about eating less sugar, supporting your body with more fat. That's the basic principle.  So you don't need to go full ketogenic, which is an extremely high fat diet and extremely low sugar, but generally you want to keep the sugar as low as possible, and then support your body with those healthy fats. 


3- If you don't have anything good to eat, don't eat anything at all. But dont starve yourself, just seek out something good for you. Somewhere along the line, someone probably told you that skipping a meal was bad, that breakfast is the most important meal of the day.  What would we be without breakfast?  Well, people of the breakfast industrial complex wanted you to believe that because the more breakfast you eat, the more money they make, but it doesn't really matter. The human body is designed to be able to skip meals. So maybe you're at a friend's house or traveling in an airport or you're traveling in an area where good healthy clean food is not available, just skip the meal.  It's as easy as that. And that might be uncomfortable at first because we get used to eating constantly. But as you keep your sugar load, lower those blood sugar swings that make us really hungry and cranky, you won't be feeling that you'll be at a more even playing field and that'll help you be able to skip those meals that you know aren't going to support yourself.  So the key principle here is if you don't have anything good to eat, don't eat anything at all. But dont starve yourself, just seek out something good for you. 

4- Min 12-12 intermittent fasting- Min of 12 -12 intermittent fasting (don't eat until at least 12 hours after your last meal of the day) For example- if you eat your last meal at 8pm, try not to eat until at least 8am. Use the perspective of looking at this as a practice of respect for yourself & your body. You are giving your bodily systems a break and a chance to relax. If your goal is weight / fat loss, I highly recommend following 16-8 intermittent fasting windows. Personally I practice 16-8 fasting Mon-Fri and aim for a min of 12-12 on the weekends. I also like to aim for one 24hr fast per month to burn some extra fat and give my digestive system a true break.


5- Calories are Bullshit-  Principle number four, calories are bullshit.  Now, we had to come up with some measure of the type of energy that you're taking in from food. But how is it even measured?  Well, I'll tell you, they put food in this thing called a calorimeter.  And in that thing, they burn the food and find out how much heat goes off.  Well, my stomach and my body is not an oven and calories don't work that way.  What really matters is macronutrients. That's how much protein you have, how much fat you have, how much carbohydrate, how much fiber calories can be an interesting measure, and we can look at those but really ultimately what matters is the type of macronutrients that we are putting in our body. A 50 Calorie pack of some bullshit cracker with some refined wheat or some sugar is not going to be nearly as supportive as a quarter of an avocado or half of an avocado or some grass fed beef that's going to actually provide the body with nutrients rather than just filling it with these empty calories that aren't going to do anything.  One of the big mistakes that people make is they drop their caloric load, but they don't support their body with enough nutrients.  So for this program, make sure you don't worry about calories. What you do worry about is ingesting enough of the right types of macronutrients, and that's going to be protein, that's going to be fiber and that's going to be fat. Depending on if your goal is weight loss or muscle gain there's a time and a place for those carbs.


6- Eat Weird Foods- Principle number five is to eat weird foods.  Now this doesn't mean some weird pastry or the weird doughnut that you can get that has the bacon bits on top. This means eating unconventional things, things you wouldn't normally eat. So when you go look out at that salad bar, all of those different types of foods. They all have specific nutrients, specific vitamins, minerals and enzymes that help support the body. The more varied the diet, the healthier your gut biome is going to be and the gut is really what supports a lot of cognitive practice, a lot of hormones, a lot of the weight loss and weight gain mechanisms are all controlled by the gut. And one of the best things we can do is support the body with a variety of weird foods. That means fermented foods ,that means strange leafy green vegetables, that means interesting foods like oysters. But oysters are packed with nutrients and packed with micronutrients. So the more weird and varied your diet can be, the more that you're going to support your body. A couple of my favorite fermented & probiotic rich foods that will help you greatly diversify your gut bacteria are Kombucha, Kim Chi, and Whole Milk Yogurt.

7- Go to War with Anti Nutrients- Principle number six is to go to war with anti nutrients.  There are certain things in everyone's diet that are really going to be deleterious to the body, they're going to really break down the body and prevent you from being your most optimized self. Now some of these common things are sugar, as we mentioned before, particularly high fructose corn syrup, and then also when you're talking about really highly refined carbohydrates, think Wonder Bread and pastries. That's basically just sugar in another form. That's sugar that's just baked and stretched into another format so you can actually chew it. The other thing is fried fats. When you fry fats, it creates a host of different anti nutrients with a lot of long names that you don't need to worry about. But try to stay away from fried foods. There's a smoke point for every different type of fat and when you exceed all of these good fats that we've been talking about, they become bad fat, so be aware of those fried foods. But just know, cooking your vegetables actually can be helpful. So it's not always about having this raw vegan diet where you get everything off the shelf. But some of the most common anti nutrients are definitely going to be your artificial sweeteners, your artificial food dyes and your artificial preservatives. These come in all of those packaged foods with the cartoon characters and the really bright colors designed to overload your nervous system and get you hungry. Different dyes like yellow number six and all these yellow dyes that they put in cheese have been linked to hyperactivity and children wonder why kids are so crazy well might be all that Velveeta they're eating and also the sweeteners that people have used in those little pink packets and those other things that you see on the counter. That's just straight up poison. There's way better ways to do that. Look at stevia, lo han and different alternative natural sweeteners to give you the satisfaction of that sweet tooth.

8- What you think about food matters. Think before you eat and have intention. Now one of the things that happens to everybody who starts on these health food journeys, is they start looking at food in a different way. And some foods they've normally eaten like bread perhaps maybe they've gone their whole life eating bread, but then they read something about how terrible bread is for you. And the moment that bread touches their mouth, their whole body goes into chaos. And that's part of a process called the no SIBO effect. You've all heard of the placebo effect where you ingest something non existent non nutrient filled pill and it causes some positive impact on the body. It's something that you account for in every clinical trial. Well, the opposite is also true. If you think that the food you're ingesting is poisoned and you tell your body that it is, it will be more so. So whatever you're doing, know that your body is going to be okay, you're going to be okay and send positive signals to yourself as often as possible. And if you think that every bad thing you do, every time you go a little bit off the diet, you've totally ruined everything. You're completely poisoning your body. Your body tends to listen to you. So know that you're still strong, you're still capable, and even if you have some of these anti nutrients or some of these other foods you're still going to be alright.


9- Digestion Is King- Digestion is king and digestion starts with chewing your food.  Now that's something you've probably had your parents tell you, your grandparents tell you at some point, but it's actually really good advice. The process of mastication where gnashing the food down to smaller particles, using the saliva to help break it down. That means that when it hits the stomach, your stomach is going to have to do less work and you're going to absorb the food better. Other ways to support digestion. You can look at digestive enzymes and also keeping the stomach acid healthy and hot and that might include a digestive supplement called HCl or hydrochloric acid. But you're really only going to be able to utilize the food that you take in to the degree that you're able to digest it. And also who wants that bloated feeling who wants to feel like they're full all the time. Supporting your body with healthy digestion is going to be absolutely essential. And if you do feel really full Ginger has been shown to increase the amount of time that food empties from your stomach by up to 50%. So after a big meal, have a ginger tea or when you're having sushi, take a chopsticks and grab that big old stack of that ginger and take that with your meal. So one quick hack, add ginger to the end of your meal.

10- Hydrate all day long. Water over anything. Avoid Soda, limit caffeine and alcohol. Rising Ritual Cocktail each morning! Make sure your water bottle is one of your favorite accessories, I suggest investing in a good one. 

11- Nobody is Perfect- Last but not least, nobody is perfect. You're not going to be perfect in this program. So when you cheat, cheat like a pro. Now if you're cheating with sugar, what you're going to want to focus on is making sure that you're not piling sugar on top of an already carbohydrate heavy meal. So if you know that you want the cake, then maybe skip the potatoes and skip the rice in that meal and then just go hard on that cake. You know, make sure that you're not adding more gasoline to the bonfire when the bonfire is also raging. Also, there's ways to slow down the absorption of sugar and that's the inclusion of fat and fiber, fiber and fat both slow down the digestive process which will slow down the intake of some of those negative things that you might be ingesting alcohol is another thing. A lot of us, myself  included like a nice glass of wine, or maybe a drink every now and then. And that's all right throughout the process of this transformation. It's going to be harder to stick to it if you don't allow yourself a few outlets to help support you through and if you can go with no sugar and no alcohol. More power to you, that's awesome. But if you are going to have alcohol make sure to keep this in mind. It's best with something like wine to have it after your workout. After your workout. Your glycogen levels are depleted. So the sugar that's going to come from wine will actually be more supportive to the body and also you're going to be a little bit dehydrated which means you have less blood volume. So the more alcohol you take in at that point, the more you're going to feel like you really want to turn yourself into a cheap date. You want to have the minimum amount of alcohol to have the maximum effect. So if you've just eaten a huge meal, and then you start pounding the wine, not only you're not going to feel it, it's going to require more and those sugars once again are going to stack on top of the other sugars that you've had in your meal and it's going to be less optimal. Be disciplined, keep cheating to the bare minimum. You didn't sign up for this program to cheat!