Today we've got to simplify nutrition. Why? Because most of the time people make it really complex. And when something is complex, you usually wind up bailing on it pretty quickly because nobody can turn their nutrition into a second job and have it be something they can follow for the entire year or for an extended period of time, and therefore aren't going to get sustained consistent results. And we all know how important nutrition is. I've said it before. I'll say it again. Nutrition is about 70 percent of the equation, but if you can't follow it, we've got problems.
So, with ATHLEANX and in my X Factor Meal Plan, we have certain guidelines and rules that make following a meal plan a lot simpler. We remove all the calorie counting, and measuring and the macro counting because it doesn't have to be that complex. If you take your plate that you're going to eat on, right. Right here, a normal sized dinner plate, and you divide it in your own head, or even physically as I'll show you right now, you can make your decisions on what goes on that plate way easier. So, what I do, again, one of the key components is I start every meal.
I believe that protein should fit into every single meal you have. Obviously it's much easier when you're in your supplementation, when you're having your protein shakes, or if I have my RX shake. That's a gimme. But when you're talking about your main meals then you need to have protein in there. And what we do is we start with, here for me again, an example, grilled chicken. So, I've got grilled chicken that was already made up ahead of time which again is another idea that you might want to adopt especially here in the new year is bulk prepare a lot of your meals so that you can dip into them, and it's a lot easier than having to make it fresh every single time. Obviously I'm not talking about leaving this thing for days, but just for a couple days. And I start with grilled chicken, and I'll put half of my plate full of protein, ok. So here is the amount of grilled chicken that I'll have. Right there. Half of the plate.
That leaves this other half of the plate here for you to deal with, ok. On this other half of the plate, we've got carbohydrates. Now with carbohydrates you've got 2 major kinds of carbohydrates, or categories of carbohydrates. You have your starchy carbohydrates then you have your fibrous carbohydrates. Your fibrous carbohydrates are generally going to be lower in calories than are your complex starchy carbohydrates. It doesn't mean that you should be avoiding complex carbohydrates. I've gone to great lengths in this channel before of talking about the importance especially if you're a guy looking to build lean, athletic muscle. You need starchy carbohydrates to do that unless of course you have some medical reason or intolerance or gluten intolerance or insensitivity that steers you away from them. I believe that their importance is really, really high. That being said, if I'm a guy who needs to lose weight, we know again hypocaloric state will help us to lose weight. We can become hypocaloric by choosing lower calorie sources of carbohydrates.
So in that remaining one half of the plate, you're going to want to steer towards more of the fibrous carbohydrates so much so that 2/3 of that remainder of that plate, or even up to the entire remainder of the plate, could be fibrous carbohydrates if your main goal is to start to lose a lot of body fat, ok. So, if you did that, again, what I have here is, we have like a, again, pre-prepared zucchini squash mixed with some olive oil and onions. You would put that here on the plate and you take up about 2/3. And that is again the general recommendation up to the full remainder of the plate if you're trying to really cut down on your calories. Now me on the other hand, I like the starchy carbohydrates, and again this is ironic coming from the guy that stays lean 365 days of the year. There's not a video that I've done in this past year or the year before or the year before that that I haven't been in this same level of leanness. And that's because I eat this way guys. It makes it so simple that it's easy for me to follow and I can stick to this, and I do have starchy carbohydrates. So, in that case, for me, my plate would always start with a sweet potato because I love sweet potatoes. So, again, I take a sweet potato.
I put it right here. And I still have room on this plate for pasta which again Italian heritage, I like pasta. So, I'll put pasta on the plate also. Here. And then I have my fibrous carbohydrates. So, I can take the zucchini mix or I can take, as I showed you before, Edamame and I'm not scared about the occasional 14 or 15 pieces of edamame as far as soy goes, guys. So I put my fibrous carbohydrates here, there's really not enough in that bag there. But you get the idea. This is what my plate would look like, k. So we have the half protein up here with the chicken. We've got the starchy carbohydrates here. We have our fibrous carbohydrates again. I would eat more than this here. I would probably eat, if you want to show the real amounts, I'd add more. Matter of fact, I'd probably put this all over the top of my chicken. Probably have more than that, but that's a good idea about the portion sizes but really it's the compartmentalizing of your plate into these different constituents. Yes, they're macros, but you're doing it in a much simpler way than having to measure out 42 grams of carbohydrates, 31 grams of protein, that's the kind of stuff that'll drive you nuts. That's the kind of stuff that will lead you to get off of your meal plan as fast as possible. It doesn't have to be that way. Not if you're using this compartmentalization of your plate that makes it so much easier. And again, in terms of portion sizes, there's a guy that's going to weigh 280 pounds. Matter of fact I train guys that weigh 280 pounds that are really lean.
They're high level athletes. They're going to eat probably double the amount that I eat here. Portion size is relative to the size of the person that's eating. You're going to have a larger appetite, more muscles to feed the bigger you are. So that's all relative. But in the meantime, I wanted to give you the main idea and a principle that you can adopt and start using that's easy that will start to help you to get over the frustration of attacking a meal plan thinking, 'Oh my God, I don't know what I'm going to, I gotta start measuring and counting and all that.' No. Not at all. You don't do that ever in our ATHLEAN X Factor Meal Plan. We keep it simple. They're called guy-friendly eating plans because most guys can really adopt something that simple that doesn't require as I said in the beginning, a second job. So, if you guys are looking for a much simpler way to eat, and again, if you're looking for the exact way that I eat to stay lean 365 days a year, there's no such thing as getting ready for a show, there's no such thing as trying to look good for a certain period of videos and then covering up for the others, the idea is looking good 365 days a year. This is how I do it. And you guys can do the same. At ATHLEANX.COM with our ATHLEANX Training System, you get the day-by-day eating plan. In the meantime, I hope you found this helpful. If you want more nutrition videos, of course let me know and we'll make them. Leave a thumb's up if you like this one. And we'll keep making them in the new year. Again, Happy New Year. I'll see you guys back here again real soon.
