This blog post is part of a conversation on the What's On Your Table Podcast with Jesse Kohls: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/whats-on-your-table/id1625974777

What would you say to people who struggle with the mindset of consistency when it's either just a diet or maybe they're just trying to get in better shape?

Start small with sustainable habits. 

Don't try to do it all at once. Don't try to go from zero to perfect overnight, because then you're setting yourself up for failure. 

The first one will be if you track your food. If you want to use something like My Fitness Pal or some sort of app that tracks your food, start tracking your food. 

Track for a week or two. Get in the habit of weighing and measuring your food so you can see how much food you're currently consuming. It’s important to know what the macronutrient breakdown is on that, and what the protein, fats, and carbs are on that. 

Then you can figure out if you need to increase or decrease any of the macros or the overall calorie count in order to meet your goals, whether it's to put on some size or lose some body fat. 

What are the pros and cons of tracking?

Tracking is the biggest tool that holds you accountable because you have to feel what you eat. You might not have a coach over your shoulder watching you put all your food in your mouth, but if you hold yourself accountable and you have to punch it in that app, then it's going to make it so you have more consistency. 

Other than that, it lets you see the types of food you're eating and the macro breakdown of it. So you can see ahh Man, I didn't realize I was only eating 40 grams of protein a day and eating 400 grams of carbs and 200 grams of fat. I'm eating 3500 calories and I'm putting on the weight. 

It's like weight training. You track your progress in the gym. I know I'm going to bench 135 and 155. The next week I'm going to try to hit 175. I use weights and I track my weights in the gym. I see nutrition a lot like that. I want to have objective measurable progress so I can track everything numerically as best I can. 

Building the perfect plate!

I would suggest starting with the protein at every meal. Make sure to include a good lean protein source with every meal. Like meat, fish, vegetables, or beans any protein as long as it's lean, so it's lower fat. Where some people, especially guys, get in the habit of our protein. More protein, more protein. I'm going to go hit a brisket or I'm going to go get a juicy ribeye steak or something like that. If I'm trying to lose weight, then that comes with a lot of extra fat. It might give me too many calories, but it might make it. So my body doesn't need to use body fat. 

Make sure to have a protein at every meal and then build your meal around that including a vegetable with at least two or three meals. A different kind of vegetable. Two or three meals include fruit with two or three meals. So you're getting all the healthy micronutrients from the meat and vegetables. A lot of people don't know about meat. You know meat is super high in micronutrients. A lot of people just think it's the veggies, the veggies are good. They have the stuff, but it's the meat. With the veggies, you get all the good micronutrients that help support your health and longevity.

Then after you get a good base between a protein and a fruit or vegetable with your meals, Then add some sort of non-processed carbohydrate potatoes, white rice, Brown rice, Some oatmeal with breakfast, things like that. There are some people that really don't like carbohydrates. Some people like the keto diet. I think any nutrition that you can stick with is great, but I bring that up to say you never heard of somebody getting fat off of eating chicken breast and white rice. 

Do you know what I mean? You never heard anybody getting fat off of eating egg whites and oatmeal. It's all the extra stuff that they put in with that. If you're putting in a bunch of sugar, if you're putting a bunch of honey or a bunch of sweeteners, you're dousing your eggs in barbecue sauce or your chicken and stuff like that. But if you just keep the bare bones like that, you can eat a very high quantity of food and still lose body fat.

“Stress-Free 2023”

If that phrase sounds good to you we have good news. This year's beef sale at Gonnam Ranch is called the “Stress-Free 2023 Sale!” The goal is to help you not stress over your beef supply all year. If you are new to how we do things at our farm we only ship out our bulk beef once a year. Why? Because we honor the whole animal by grazing it on the best grass all growing season then we take it to our local butchers in the fall/winter. (They are USDA/State Inspected facilities) Then we take it and ship it right to your door.