Push the calorie counting aside for a moment. It still matters. But your nutrition matters even more. 

I’m rolling the barbells to the wayside for a few weeks, and bringing in the big guns. The knife and fork. It’s time to charge up your fitness lifestyle with the ultimate way of eating. Drop the toxins, bring back the ingredients that put us at the top of the food chain. Three tweaks in three phases over 14 days. I’m laying down the gauntlet and inviting you to take it on.

The plan is a simple one, to create a three-headed monster that your body will be unable to slay, no matter how hard it tries. 

If you like the idea of a diet that doesn’t just shift the scale, but also purges stress and improves your drive, then you might want to drop your hat in for this one. We’re taking the metabolism from a state of dysfunction towards one that thrives. And while two weeks is a blip of time in the grand scheme of things, it’s more than enough to sense that you’ve stumbled onto something.

No Workout Challenges This Time

So for some quick backstory, the gym’s are offline in Wales for a few weeks, and we need a plan B.

With the way this blog has evolved, it’s easy to miss the fact that I’m also a big fan of lifting iron. Whether it’s in my training, or when coaching clients, resistance exercise takes up a huge chunk of the transformation template. To put it succinctly, you’re not getting to the dream shape without copious amounts of barbell-bending. And unfortunately, it’s going to take the backseat for the next few weeks. The lockdown has bitten back. But this actually opens things up for a bigger player to take the wheels.

Here are the facts. In all likelihood, your healthy diet is still packed with giant problems, despite your best intentions. That’s because the general nutritional advice is fundamentally flawed. We’re built to lose the battle with weight loss. Reduce fats, eat more vegetables, pack in the fiber. We accept the canon, and plan the diet accordingly. This strategy is not improving metabolic dysfunction. Things are getting worse. 

But here’s a gift-wrapped opportunity to put that healthy diet under the spotlight. Despite making my business on muscle-focused training, I can happily hold my hands up and admit that the diet is a far bigger driver of a fitness lifestyle. If your metabolism is being thrown into constant turmoil, it’s not really going to matter how hard you can train. A bad diet will always nab the last laugh.

See My Article – 10 Reasons Why You’re Not Losing Weight

There’s little point in looking like a million, when you’re having to claw up scraps from the bottom of the energy barrel. A healthy way of eating should improve your mood and energy rather than being a constant drain. People often head into a diet while gritting their teeth and expecting to feel worse for it, and this shouldn’t be the case. It’s not meant to be a slog. It’s a lifestyle upgrade.

This three-headed force of nature is perfectly designed to make that happen. Each of them comes with a very practical purpose, and I’ve already written several guides expanding on those topics. Now I get to wrap things together in a programme that everyone can jump in and follow.

In case you think that each of these tweaks seems to match up a little closely with my carnivore diet, it’s no coincidence. But as you’ll be finding out over the next few weeks, you won’t have to go straight to meat and water 1.0. There’s a personalised diet in here for everyone.

These three tweaks are built to follow one principle. The apex diet should include all the essential nutrients, while minimising sources of inflammation and empty calories. This gives you peak energy levels without the mood swings and crashes. It might sound like a fantasy, but it can also become your reality.

The Three Diet Upgrades

1. Increase Superfoods

If you’re feeling hungry and wiped out, it’s not necessarily because you’re not getting enough calories. There’s a huge chance you’re running low on certain nutrients. The typical western diet, piled beyond the brim with processed foods, is bound to be low on protein and a host of vitamins and minerals. Even a healthy mix of chicken and salad doesn’t get you close to hitting your requirements. Chicken isn’t a superfood, as it lacks iron, zinc, healthy fats, and much more. So the easiest way to go about fixing this, is by starting your plates with an ingredient that ticks off a big chunk of the nutrient boxes.

There’s more to this than steak alone, even if it’s a hell of a candidate.

2. Moderate Sugars

Guess your daily requirement for carbohydrates. It’s zero. Not even a gram. Despite some arguing that the brain needs 20-50 grams to survive, that can easily be replaced by ketones (fats) and gluconeogenesis (protein). This is massively at odds with the modern western diet, where carbs range around 50-70% of total calories. Even a low carb diet is typically way over the odds. You just don’t need much, even if you’re relying on it for workout fuel.

To make matters worse, there’s the energy rollercoaster that gets created by the sugar spikes. A high carbohydrate meal can often lead to a period of high blood sugar (hyperglycemia), which gets followed by hypoglycemia. Effectively robbing your energy and sending the brain into a stupor. Naturally, the body’s remedy for this is to drive up hunger in a desperate quest to pull the metabolism out of the low sugar state. You cave in, eat another pack of snickers, and the cycle goes on.

Sugar is an addictive substance, devoid of extra nutrition, and it’s highly inflammatory when allowed to run rampant. While that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to settle for a zero carb or ketogenic diet, moderation of sugars is a critical part of a healthy way of eating. Your brain will thank you.

The unfortunate catch, is that all carbohydrates are effectively sugars. They all get broken down into the same simple ingredient. Dropping the sweet stuff wouldn’t be enough, even if it makes for a hell of a start.

3. Eliminating Vegetable Oils

Finally, we have an ingredient that should be purged altogether. Also known by the names ‘seed oils’, ‘omega 6’, and ‘factory fats’. They are highly inflammatory, and induce a simultaneous state of insulin-resistant muscle cells and sensitive fat stores. Effectively making it harder to gain muscle and much easier to build that winter coat. 

See My Article – What Food Is Driving The Obesity Crisis?

Rewind a century, and we were using these oils for engines. Now they’re running our body, taking up a lion’s share of the western fat intake. Even compared to big sugar, vegetable oils can be far more dangerous. They tend to get stored in larger quantities, becoming part of your metabolism and continuing to trigger systemic inflammation. Our bodies are not designed to store these fats in these quantities, and our health suffers for it. Two of the biggest killers in the western world, like atherosclerosis and diabetes, are inextricably linked to vegetable oils. But chronic inflammation can have more subtle results, like joint pain, a weakened immune system, brain fog, and rampant hunger. The addition of vegetable oils to the diet has been a huge net negative.

The simple solution would be to cut ties altogether, but seed oils are found everywhere across the modern diet. Binning that bottle of rapeseed oil wouldn’t be enough. Processed foods are typically made with vegetable oils, because they’re cheap and durable. Even natural plant sources, like nuts, contain high amounts. The fact that it’s a whole food source doesn’t stop it from adding up on the inflammation scale. 

The 14 Day Reset

If you’re happy enough to risk a few weeks for potentially life-changing results, then business starts on Monday. There’s no need to start practising those three tweaks just yet. The goal for the first two days will simply be to start prepping your meals and logging everything in a food diary. 

Day 1
Record your morning bodyweight
Take a waist measurement and progress pictures

On day four, the fun can start. Over three stages, you’ll be pushing harder at each of the upgrades. 

Day 15
Record your morning bodyweight
Take a waist measurement and progress pictures

Head To Day One

I’ll be taking this reset on myself, and posting more guides and meal ideas in the process. If you have any questions, don’t wait around, just fire your questions over to my email or social media.

You can subscribe to my newsletter to get all the updates across the reset.