nutrition blueprint JAMES MCSORLEY PT Â
NUTRITION BLUEPRINT
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JAMES MCSORLEY PT
BEFORE WE GO ANY FURTHER... ...this is not a meal plan. This is simply where you'll borrow ideas and take my hand to handcraft your own bulletproof diet strategy! The more you see dieting as one big Spotify playlist, the less you’ll have to start over every other Monday.
THE
DIET
There is no ultimate spotify playlist- people have different preferences, they have different vibes for different moods, even if you were to borrow mine, there’s a good chance you’d get sick of it after a bit. The best playlist for YOU is actually the one you’ve been listening to all along. You probably just need to pick better songs! This analogy is where most people go wrong. Life is stressful enough as it is, your life is busyyou don’t need the meal plan of a 28 year old Instagram influencer who hasn’t got any kids and breathes kale. You need to find what is realistic, sustainable and enjoyable for you, and what makes you feel epic on the inside and out! And that’s where the blueprint comes in.
NUTRITION BLUEPRINT
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JAMES MCSORLEY PT
03 THERE ARE NO SHORT-CUTS Would you believe me if I told you there are people out there on social media who want to profit from misleading you into buying their products? Fit teas, herbal supplements, meal replacement shakes- they promise you the world, yet deliver nothing more than a dose of the skitter. They go against every basic nutrition principle in the book, and make their money from celebrities sucking their bellies in and contouring their abs. The good news is that you can still build your ideal body and feel awesome without being crazy restrictive. You just have to accept that the only tools you need to accelerate your progress are time, effort and consistency. And the more you educate yourself on nutrition, the easy this becomes, and the further you’ll go- and by reading this book, you’ve already started moving in the right direction.
NUTRITION BLUEPRINT
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JAMES MCSORLEY PT
04 THE INDUSTRIES DIRTY LITTLE SECRET In recent years, the industries dirty fat loss secret has surfaced through social media. We can talk about hormones all day long, about gut health and enzymes, but ultimately- all of this information is irrelevant unless you address your Calorie Balance. Now, this won't be just a book preaching about the importance of calories because chances are you know why they're important. But as this is what dictates whether your body STORES FAT OR USES IT, so we can't ignore them. In that sense, we should be aiming to approach fat loss exactly like we would approach our finances.
NUTRITION BLUEPRINT
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JAMES MCSORLEY PT
05 THE INDUSTRIES DIRTY LITTLE SECRET If you want a healthier bank balance, you’ll have to keep an eye on what’s coming in versus what’s going out, wouldn't you? Ideally, you’d want to find ways to either EARN more than you spend, or SPEND more than you earn. Losing fat is no different. You’re goal should be to either EARN more calories than you spend (by eating just a little less), or SPEND more calories than you earn (by moving a little more). Calories aren’t complicated. I don’t want you to obsess over them, but I do want you to be aware of them. Reason being, it’s empowering! If you learn how to manage your calories, you simultaneously learn how to enjoy foods without guilt, you don’t have to ask for permission to 'cheat’ and suddenly, dieting becomes a lot less restrictive! That's where step one comes into play!
NUTRITION BLUEPRINT
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JAMES MCSORLEY PT
10 STEP ONE; CALCULATE YOUR TDEE We can use a calculation that takes into account how big we are, and how much we move to get a gauge of our total daily energy expenditure (TDEE). The calculation this churns out will never be 100% accurate however, it doesn't need to be. This is a starting point, and a baseline in which we must make readjustments based off of the feedback we're getting.
CLICK HERE STEP TWO; CALCULATE YOUR DEFICIT I typically recommend for most people that a deficit of 15% from your TDEE works the greatest, as it provides enough calories that you don’t go hungry, don’t have to remove foods you enjoy but enough and that you can notice fat loss through a month/two months. It's also high enough that you'll preserve muscle mass and still keep performing in the gym, however your deficit size is totally up to you! You also don't need to be in a deficit everyday, obviously the more days you're in a deficit the quicker results will come, however if you're feeling worn and demotivated from dieting, borrowing a few days per week to eat at maintenance will not hinder your results and potentially keep you on track for longer!
SOCIAL MEDIA REPORT NUTRITION BLUEPRINT
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JUNE 2020 JAMES MCSORLEY PT
10 STEP THREE; PLAN FOR SUCCESS Planning will always be your first step towards success! Your task now is to head over to your 'Meal Plan' document and build your weekly meal plan based on your deficit calculation and your favourite food choices from our cookbook or your own knowledge! Be sure to leave an open window of calories for you to freestyle with if you're peckish! You may not be able to follow the plan to a tee, life get's in the way sometimes and that's okay. However, doing what we can to plan for life’s various outcomes ensures we can handle the stress in a much more resilient way and still truck on towards our goals when life goes lateral. Schedule five minutes before your week starts to plan, it isn't a massive ask, yet the return on investment will be incredible.
OPEN YOUR MEAL PLAN DOCUMENT NOW
NUTRITION BLUEPRINT
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JAMES MCSORLEY PT
FEAR OF FAT 'WAIT, THOSE CALORIES CAN'T BE RIGHT?" I spent a lot of my early teens properly terrified of gaining fat- I over-restricted, I used to chew food up and spit it out, I was being tested for all sorts of problems- you name it and I done it. However, knowing what I know now, do you know what my problem was? Lack of education.
No one gets fat overnight, fat gain doesn't work like that. The amount of physical fat we can potentially gain even in a week is often very, very overestimated.
People come to me with buckets of motivation, which is awesome, but when they get given their caloriesthey feel nearly UNDER RESTRICTED and ask if I’ve made a mistake (I take great pleasure in smiling back and telling them I haven’t) At this stage, it's very important that you don't fall into the 'THAT SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA AT THE TIME' mindset..
NUTRITION BLUEPRINT
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JAMES MCSORLEY PT
09 THE 'THAT SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA AT THE TIME' MINDSET...
When motivation is on your side, it can be very tempting to try and do too much at once. It’s very tempting to shave a couple hundred off your calories for example, because doing so may of course seem logical now, but a couple of weeks down the line when your diet motivation trickles away, when your performance in the gym gets poorer and your energy levels are wipedyou’ll begin to realise it was probably a bad decision., focus on building momentum... Take your time, be patient and focus on building momentum... If we are tracking the data and we know what is changing in your diet, and why, and what the effect is- then results are gauranteed, as we can always just adjust the course again if it’s not working and carry on. Trust in the process. Focus on consistency. It’s empowering and will save you YEARS.
NUTRITION BLUEPRINT
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JAMES MCSORLEY PT
10 SELF CARE VS SELF SOOTHE DO YOU KNOW THE DIFFERENCE?
People tend to use these words interchangeably in our industry but they have very different meanings. When we’re talking about SELF-SOOTHING, we’re talking about things that make you feel better in the moment. Pouring a hot bath A glass of wine Exercise to release endorphins Reaching for the bread bin Thumbing through your news feed These are all fine by the way; it’s important we keep these in our life for our own sanity, but it's not self-care. It’s actually the opposite. It's a short-term bandage that we use to combat stress, when we feel frustrated by life, when things are difficult or tiring or unpleasantbut it doesn't actually address the root problem that caused you to feel like you needed to soothe.
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JAMES MCSORLEY PT
SELF CARE VS SELF SOOTHE DO YOU KNOW THE DIFFERENCE?
Self-care on the other hand, does. It’s about being proactive, targeted and outcome-focused. It might be: Eating REAL FOODS for physical and mental clarity Tracking your calories in advance so that you don’t gain negative body fat. Exercising progressively to strengthen your body and keep energy flowing Keeping on top of your chores/work tasks -Investing in a programme or course to upskill your knowledge (like this book) etc. All things that might not make you feel better in the moment, but will improve your overall situation going forward is SELF-CARE. If you’re constantly finding yourself CONSTANTLY needing to self-soothe, maybe it’s worth looking deeper and addressing what’s causing you this frustration? What areas of your life do you need to self-care more?
NUTRITION BLUEPRINT
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JAMES MCSORLEY PT
CHOOSING YOUR SUFFERING Every person reading this right now has a goal. You have a dream body, a dream lifestyle, a dream outcome that you WANT- a better question to ask yourself though is, what do you WANT to suffer for? For example, if you want to eat impulsively, exercising inconsistently, use food purely for pleasure and disregard your body’s nourishmentthat’s 100% cool if that’s what you valuehowever, don’t expect that to come without the suffering of poorer physical health, negative body image, excess body fat and tarnished mental performance in the long-run. And by the same measure, if you choose to delay instant gratification and adopt a more functional approach, honing in on your body’s NEEDS primarily and pleasure secondarily, eating through a majority of REAL foods, exercising consistently, and thinking in the long-runBy all means you will look awesome, feel awesome and both physically and mentally perform awesome- however, don’t expect that to come without having to discipline yourself to sacrifice short-term satisfaction for the result of long-term success. Everybody wants something. We all want a certain outcome. But we just need to be aware of what we want enough. If you want the outcome, you’re going to have to want the suffering as well. Not just the result. You just have to choose your suffering…
NUTRITION BLUEPRINT
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JAMES MCSORLEY PT
13 ALCOHOL AND FAT LOSS I’d be a hypocrite if I told you that you couldn’t lose fat and still have the odd glass/bottle of red, or feed of pints. Actually, in my own coaching experience- I’ve found the occasional beverage or even splurge can often help with fat loss, especially if you’re feeling bound up from dieting for a period of time. However, it is important that you are realistic about how it’s going to affect your progress so that you can effectively choose your own suffering. Firstly, over consuming any nutrient will lead to fat storage, not just alcohol. Understand this first.
NUTRITION BLUEPRINT
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JAMES MCSORLEY PT
14 ALCOHOLS PARTY TRICK HOWEVER, alcohol does have it’s own exclusive party trick in that, your body will treat it similar to how it would treat poison! Whilst alcohol is in your system, all the other nutrients currently being metabolised will be shuttled towards STORAGE until the alcohol is eliminated. So this means that alcohol itself isn’t actually ‘fattening,’ it’s quite the opposite really, BUT the other excess calories in your diet may be more readily stored as fat when alcohol is present. Therefore, on days that you are drinking it may be a good idea to budget some extra calories from the days before and after for damage limitations and to do your best to avoid a postdrinking binge where fat loss is of a high priority for you.
However, you can still 100% include alcohol and get awesome results, assuming you make the extra effort of planning for it.
NUTRITION BLUEPRINT
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JAMES MCSORLEY PT
THE MAGIC SUPPLEMENT FOR RESULTS Before you go looking for the magic training plan, the magic pill or even the latest superfoodsupplement THIS into your lifestyle and I will put my business on the line, it will do far more for how you look, feel and function than anything else money can buy. 7-9 hours sleep. Every. God. Damn. Night. Honestly. I. Cannot. Emphasise. This. Enough. Outside of all the logistical stuff, sleep is undoubtedly the numero UNO thing you can do to make the process of getting better results a whole lot easier, more effective and more often than not… quicker.
Everything else
Sleep
NUTRITION BLUEPRINT
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JAMES MCSORLEY PT
THE MAGIC SUPPLEMENT FOR RESULTS If you’re in a sleep-deprived state, you immediately and statistically box yourself at a lot higher risk of overeating, adherence to a diet, under recovering, running down your immune system, poorer cognitive performance, and offsetting your testosterone levels- not to mention the effect it has on your life span, let alone health span. And when I say statistically, I don’t mean like they’ve done a handful of studies in some university in Saudi Arabia. The statistics show massive upsets. I can’t emphasise enough how much it’s changed my life, since learning of it’s benefits. Whatever your goal is right now reading this, sleep should one of (if not) the first areas of your lifestyle you should audit. Don’t believe me. Try it.
SOCIAL MEDIA REPORT
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JUNE 2020
17 DIET OR TRAINING FOR FAT LOSS? Diet is the key variable here, don’t think for a second that if you just exercise tonnes that the weight will just fall off. I’m not telling you to cancel your gym membership, at all, but I am telling you this; Exercise shouldn’t be correlated with calories and certainly not for ‘punishment,’ Exercise should have a funner purpose, outside of ‘self-harm.’ We should be exercising to improving our strength, our mobility and our fitness- traits that qualify us for more freedom, better energy and better confidence. The role it plays in burning calories is often greatly exaggerated. At best, a training session will expend 10% of the overall calories you burn through in a day. 10%. We shouldn't HAVE to go to the gym, we shouldn't feel like we our PUNISHING ourselves, it should be something we WANT to do because we know it grows us into better people!
SOCIAL MEDIA REPORT
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JUNE 2020
18 DIET OR TRAINING FOR FAT LOSS? Whilst exercise is amazing, there is only so many calories you can burn in an hour of training. Therefore, where fat loss and health is the goal, you'll get far greater results from your effort by considering your general daily activity- trying to move more every day, walking often, taking the stairs more than once, carrying things, and staying active- paired with an auditing of your nutrition. Tick those things off and watch your effort to results ratio flip on it's head.
NUTRITION BLUEPRINT
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JAMES MCSORLEY PT
19 MEASURING SUCCESS GET RID OF THE DEPRESSO DISH The depresso dish is your bathroom scales if you haven't guessed already, because that's exactly it does. I can say with great confidence, no matter how expensive your scales are- they still are probably the LEAST accurate gauge you have of progress! In fact, LOSING FAT is actually the SLOWEST method we have of LOSING WEIGHT. You may have to read that a couple of times. (This gets a little math'sy but I want you to stay with me) One pound of stored fat on our body contains roughly 3500 kcal worth of energy, which makes sense as the function of fat on our body is to preserve energy for periods of famine. One pound of muscle on the other hand, contains around 600 kcal. Now, if you were to shave 3500 kcal off your diet across the space of a week (which is a right chunk) and your body was only to use fat stores as a fuel source to fill the gap (which you would ideally want) The maximum amount of weight you would have lost that week would be 1lb...
SOCIAL MEDIA REPORT
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JUNE 2020
ON THE OTHER HAND... ... if your body was only to utilise solely muscle tissueyou could drop up 6lbs in that week! Not to mention the zap that would have on your strength, your energy, you're muscle tone and even your metabolic rate! The harsh truth is that, no matter how hard you train, how behaved you are with your lifestyle and how you nourish yourself in the kitchen- the scales just can't measure the important benefactors. WHAT ALTERNATIVES DO WE HAVE? The most reliable too you have at your disposal is your phone camera. Take a picture in the same light, in the same location with the same clothes on every month, and it'll be pretty evident if your body composition is changing or not.
And apart from that- keep tabs on; Your Performance during workouts Your Energy Levels Your Mental Clarity Your Confidence Your Digestion Your Happiness Just because a measurement isn't quantifiable with numbers doesn't mean it's not important.
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JAMES MCSORLEY PT
JUST DON'T MISS TWICE AT SOME STAGE, YOU'RE GOING SLIP UP... Life doesn't always go according to plan and that's okay. Slipping up once never hurt anyone, and it certainly didn't make anyone a failure. The majority of the time, if you could zoom out and look at actual damage that's been done in terms of weekly calories in vs weekly calories out- it would often be very, very minimal, if at all. What's important in times like these is that you don't dwell on it and let it derail you.
Everytime you find yourself in these situations, just have a little word with yourself and say "I just won't miss twice..."
It's only when you miss the second time, that's when you start to forge a new habit. So, if you miss a workout? That's okay- just don't miss two. Do the full tub of ice-cream? Nobody dies, just try and find out what triggered you. Slipping up will never fail you, but not having a strategy to quickly get back on track when things go up the left might...
NUTRITION BLUEPRINT
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JAMES MCSORLEY PT
22 GET CONNECTED! LET'S GET SOCIAL If you have any questions whatsoever or would like to learn even more strategies on living and performing better, be sure to connect with me on my socials @james.mcsorley I'd love to hear about your journey... Also if you're finding great value from this book and our challenge, it would touch my heart if you could share pics to your socials and give us a tag- the more people we empower with this knowledge, the cleaner our industry gets! Good luck with the rest of the challenge, and the start of your journey... not that you need it.