Make Food Your Secret Weapon

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Hey Brothers,

Welcome back to the LenDentonThrive Letter! 

As I write this, it’s early January and I know that you’re probably busy either building your ThriveLife or working hard on your health and fitness in other ways. Whether you’re doing it the ThriveLife Way, or the Hard Way, I wish you all the best! ;-)

For most guys trying to lose weight and get fit, food is their worst enemy. In this edition of the Letter, I want to show you how you can transform food from being your worst enemy into being your secret weapon! 

To do that, I’ll address a long-standing fitness myth and give you three tips that will forever change your relationship with food. So, let’s jump in!

The ‘Exercise Only’ Myth 

The myth is: Exercise alone is all you need to become sustainably fit and healthy. In other words, “if you work-out hard enough, you can eat whatever you want and you’ll still lose weight and get ripped!

We probably all know guys that are following this approach. Some guys would much rather work out for an extra 30-60 minutes than manage their food or alcohol intake. And, these guys are typically easy to spot in the gym. They’re the ones with the big arms, big chests and big waistlines! 

So, if that’s not the look you’re going for, then keep reading!

The Truth

So, here’s the truth about food and working out:

1 - You can NEVER outwork a bad diet. Consuming calories is much easier than burning off calories with exercise. We tend to under-estimate the amount of calories we consume, while we are over-estimating how many calories we can burn off with exercise. 

Here’s an example of what I mean. An extra pint of your favorite craft IPA at dinner will cost you 300-400 calories. To burn off those extra calories, you’d need an additional  hour (or more) of cardio or lifting weights. (Note: your mileage will vary based on body composition and intensity.)

You can see how easy it is to add 500 or more calories to your daily totals without even thinking about it. Over time, this adds up and adds inches to your waistline! 

2 - Most guys' diets are TRASH! The typical American guy is eating what I call the Standard American Diet (aka S.A.D.). It’s filled with fast foods, sweetened drinks and lots of ultra-processed foods (UPFs). UPFs are highly-engineered food products that come from factories owned by giant food corporations. They’re designed to be tasty, convenient, inexpensive and highly addictive! Examples include: pizza, frozen meals, breakfast cereals, soft drinks, coffee drinks, snacks and desserts. The typical American gets more than 50% of their daily calories from UPF sources! These foods are high in calories and usually low in nutrition content. UPFs are the main source of America’s current obesity epidemic!

3 - Once you get your food right, everything else is easier. We are currently living in an exercise-obsessed culture. The common mantra is: “muscles are the key to fitness.” 

While I think muscles are good, I think this exercise-only/muscles-first approach is wrong! And, I’ve proven this in my own experience with a food-first approach that I have been following successfully for the last 12 years. 

It’s true that you can lose weight with a muscles-first approach. But, a food-first approach will get the pounds off faster and will help you keep them off longer. Avoiding calories is always easier than burning calories! 

When you get your diet tuned in, it’s not just your weight loss that becomes easier. You also begin to see better results in the gym. And more importantly, you see better results in your overall health.

Everything gets easier when you have your food right! 

3 Tips

About 12 years ago, I was 70 pounds overweight and my doctor told me that I was a poster-child for a heart attack or stroke! I knew I needed to get into better shape or I was likely to become a cardiac statistic! 

I did a lot of research. I looked at lots of different diets and fitness strategies. That research ultimately led to the creating of my ThriveLife approach to permanent weight loss and forever fitness that I write about in the Letter. 

But, the most important thing I learned was how to change my relationship with food. I learned that choosing the right foods was the most important part of losing weight. It was more about making smart, healthy choices than eating less.

As I adopted these food-first habits, the weight came off. I lost 70 pounds in just 7 months without crazy diets or grueling workouts. Food was no longer my nemesis. It was my secret weapon!  

Here are 3 tips to help you re-imagine your diet to make food YOUR secret weapon.

Tip #1 - Say NO to restrictive diets: restrictive diets just don’t work over the long-run. One reason for this is that our brains HATE deprivation and will do everything possible to stop it. When our bodies experience a large, sudden decrease in calories (like when we start a new diet), our brains interpret that change as the beginning of possible starvation. The brain will reduce the body’s energy consumption to combat what it perceives as starvation. It reduces our metabolism to slow down our calorie burn until more calories can be obtained. So, if you’ve ever felt like your body was trying to sabotage your diet, now you know! 

The key is to reduce calories without triggering deprivation.

Tip #2 - Exit the Red Zone: Certain foods cause our glucose levels to spike when we eat them. This glucose spike causes our bodies to store excess fat and cause other problems such as insulin insensitivity and diabetes. I call these Red Zone Foods, and I suggest that you avoid them as much as possible. Here is a quick list of Red Zone Foods:

• Sugar

• White flour

• White rice

• White potatoes

• Corn

• High Fructose Corn Syrup

• Ultra-processed foods (UPFs)

• Seed oils

Tip #3 - Learn to Eat Smarter: As part of the research I noted above, I learned how a food’s Glycemic Index determines how quickly foods are metabolized by the body. Foods with high glycemic indexes metabolize quicker than those with lower indexes. Foods with higher GIs also tend to have greater fat storage than lower GI foods. Using this approach, I created a process to categorize all foods into one of three food zones: Green (Low GI foods); Yellow (Medium GI foods); Red (High GI foods).

To learn more about Eating Smarter, check out the ThriveLife Guide To Eating Smarter below. And you can read more about Eating Smarter here and here.

Getting your food right is the key to winning the long-term weight loss battle. When you transform food into your secret weapon, you will:

• Look better

• Feel better

• Be fitter and healthier

• Live longer

This is the ThriveLife. This is THE way! 

Thanks for reading today.

And remember, God loves us. He wants us to thrive. So, let’s go!

Thanks for reading this week.

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