The Easy Eating Diet: Make Healthy Eating Easy and Lose the Weight and Food Guilt Forever!

Contents

Disclaimer

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

PREFACE

The Perfect Diet

INTRODUCTION

The Big Fat Truth

CHAPTER 1: Simple Science

The Power of Protein and Pizza

Five Healthy Hacks to Eat more Protein

CHAPTER 2: Perfect Plants

Defense Against Disease

Five Healthy Hacks to Eat more Plants

CHAPTER 3: Clear the Carbohydrate Confusion

The Two Rules of Starchy Carbohydrates

Be Good to Your Gut

CHAPTER 4: Don’t Fear Fats

CHAPTER 5: The 6 Best Fat Loss Tricks and Tips

CHAPTER 6: Wine and Your Weight.

Follow the Drink and Dine ‘Fit Body Five’

CHAPTER 7: Calorie Control

Need for Nutrients

How Much Protein Per Day? Here’s a Good Guide.

Everything Else

CHAPTER 8: Assess Don’t Guess

CHAPTER 9: Faster Fat Loss

CHAPTER 10: Fit Body Fantastic Four Rules of Fat Loss

CHAPTER 11: Practice Makes Progress

CHAPTER 12: Easy Eating Meals in Minutes

CHAPTER 13: The Three P’s of Progress: Protein, Portions, Planning

CHAPTER 14: Sugar Shocker

CHAPTER 15: The Scale and Your Sanity

Funny Bunny Food Fact:

Let’s get real

CHAPTER 16: The Myth of Motivation

CHAPTER 17: 5 Steps to Building a Healthy Habit

CHAPTER 18: Recharge your Mind, Muscles and Metabolism

The Simple Seven Sleep Solution

CHAPTER 19: Turn Goal Setting into Goal Getting

Focus on Your Behavior Based Goals Not Your Outcome Based Goals

Small Hinges Swing Big Doors

CHAPTER 20: The Biggest Mindset Mistake

Why You Keep Starting and Stopping

CHAPTER 21: Compliance Calendar.

Don’t Break the Chain

CHAPTER 22: The Dirty Diet

CHAPTER 23: Mindless Mondays

The Easy Eating Mindless Monday Meal Plan

The How and Why

How Many Calories?

Am I Eating the Right Amount of Calories?

CHAPTER 24: 5 Drive-Thru Healthy Hacks for Fitter Fast Food

CHAPTER 25: 40 Success Secrets to be Healthier and Happier

The Five Pillars of Progress

CHAPTER 26: Simple Shaker Salad Recipes

Here are the three layers:

Crunchy Basil Salad

Korean Sesame Salad

Simple Sicilian Salad

Chinese Chopped Salad

Classic Italian Salad

Asian Ginger Salad

Honey Balsamic Salad

CHAPTER 27: Mix and Match Meals

Tips:

Mix and Match Menu Planner

350-Calorie Breakfast Choices

400-Calorie Lunch Choices

450-Calorie Dinner Choices

150-Calorie Snack Choices

Copyright

To Dad, for letting me find my passion and purpose.

To Mom, for always providing me a soft place to fall.

To my wife Kathy, for your patience, love and support.

To Matea and Caden, for giving me a bigger reason why.

To all my family and friends who have supported me along the way.

Disclaimer

You must get your physicians approval before beginning this eating or exercise program. These recommendations are not medical guidelines but are for educational purposes only. You must consult your physician prior to starting this program or if you have any medical condition or injury that contraindicates diet changes or physical activity. This program is designed for healthy individuals 18 years and older only.

The information in this book is meant to supplement, not replace, proper nutrition and exercise programming. All forms of exercise pose some inherent risks. The editors and publishers advise readers to take full responsibility for their safety and know their limits. Before practicing the exercises in this book, do not take risks beyond your level of experience, aptitude, training and fitness. The exercises and dietary programs in this book are not intended as a substitute for any exercise routine or treatment or dietary regimen that may have been prescribed by your physician.

See your physician before starting any exercise or nutrition program. If you are taking any medications, you must talk to your physician before starting any exercise or eating program. If you experience any lightheadedness, dizziness, or shortness of breath while exercising, stop the movement and consult a physician. You must have a complete physical examination if you are sedentary, if you have high cholesterol, high blood pressure, or diabetes, if you are overweight, or if you are over 30 years old. Please discuss all nutritional changes with your physician or a registered dietician.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sean Barker is a husband, father of two, foodie and fitness coach. Some career highlights include:

President of Valley Fit Body Bootcamp Inc.

Contributing writer for many mainstream fitness publications such as Men’s Health and Inside Fitness magazine.

Sean rises up at 4 am every morning with energy and enthusiasm and has a burning desire for self-development, being a health hacker and over the last 23 years, has traveled the world to learn from the best in the fitness industry.

Through this time Sean has been successful coaching clients through body transformations online with his various information products like Dad Fitness, 6 Week Fat Loss Blueprint, his own cookbook, Fit Body Food and and now this book, the Easy Eating Diet.

Offline he owns and operates KV Fit Body Bootcamp in New Brunswick Canada where along with his team, coaches busy parents and professionals to be their best Fit Body.

Sean was nominated by his industry peers for Personal Trainer of the Year in 2015 and 2018 at Fitness Business Summit in California. He was a keynote speaker at the same event the previous year. He has also spoken twice on stage at the Fit Body Bootcamp Franchise World Conference and for many other companies and organizations.

In 2014 he was voted 3rd place in North America for the Men’s Health Next Top Trainer contest and selected by Men’s Health as one of their MVP contributing fitness writers.

He is also a current contributing writer to Canada’s leading fitness magazine, Inside Fitness.

In 2001 Sean was the first from his hometown of Wabush, Labrador, Canada to compete provincially in bodybuilding and also received runner-up in the world-wide AST Sports Science Body Transformation Contest, appearing in their High Performance Muscle Magazine and receiving a sports supplement endorsement contract.

Sean loves motivating in person but also through the written word and his email newsletters have been called by his clients the best thing I read to start my day along with my morning coffee.

He has also been awarded Top 10 business owner and received the golden franchise success award by Fit Body Bootcamp franchise headquarters.

Sean believes every day is a chance to get better, for himself as a coach, as well as his clients. He continues to be driven to succeed in spreading his passion for achieving health and happiness.

PREFACE

The Perfect Diet

Calories in versus calories out. Eat less, move more. The perfect pill, potion or percentage. Eat real foods. Eat clean foods. High protein. Low carbohydrate. High fat … The ideas and the advice go on and on.

Easy to say, but not so easy to do, right? Confusing? Yes!

And this is just a fraction of the type of advice you get when you ask someone about the D word—the word DIET.

If I had any hair left on my head I would pull it out and scream. Do you feel the same way about finding the perfect diet?

When did eating and controlling our weight and health get so confusing? And more importantly, when will the confusion stop?

Well, hopefully it stops right now, the minute you begin reading this book. I want you to know you’ve made a smart decision in purchasing this book and that Easy Eating will be the best companion and guide to a new you that you have ever had. That’s because Easy Eating is not a a diet book at all, at least not as far as the word diet is commonly defined in the Oxford English dictionary:

Diet:

to restrict oneself to small amounts or special kinds of food in order to lose weight.

a special course of food to which one restricts oneself, either to lose weight or for medical reasons.

For most people, ‘dieting’ ends with failure and discouragement. Despite an initial high from short-term weight-loss results, the average calorie-restricted dieter ends up hating their life after a few weeks or months and eventually quits ‘dieting’ when the lure of their favorite foods and the frustration of preparing complicated recipes becomes too much to bear.

Ultimately the dieter returns to eating the way they did in the past—and they return to the same body weight as well, sometimes to a higher weight than before.

But worse for a person than gaining back the weight are the residual feelings of frustration and failure left lingering after each diet attempt, feelings that push the dieter farther and farther away from his or her best body, discouraging them from finding a real, permanent solution.

Yet there is another definition of ‘diet’ that many don’t think of when they hear that word— and that’s the definition used in this book.

When I refer to ‘diet’ in this book I mean:

Diet:

The kinds of food that a person, animal, or community habitually eats.

That’s it. ‘Diet’ is just a word for the foods we all eat. So I think we can all relax a little.

This book doesn’t advocate for or promote certain foods. There are no ‘good’ or ‘bad’ foods; no diet dogma or extreme food restrictions. Every food (unless you have a serious food allergy) in the Easy Eating Diet is fair game to eat and all you have to do is follow some simple science strategies, practical principles and healthy hacks.

In today’s nutrition realm there is, unfortunately, very little reliable research happening that addresses what most of us care about when we think of diets: getting leaner and lighter. Most of the money spent on nutritional research is spent on studying disease prevention and analyzing health markers. Which is great! But it’s not helpful for those of us who are more interested in looking good on the beach.

That’s why, in this book, we are going to get back to proven and practical strategies for healthy weight loss and fat loss (not always the same thing, you will discover).

We will wipe the plate clean, so to speak, and clear the confusion on carbohydrates; examine the shocking truth about the numbers on the scale; get the goods on gluten; and, eliminate the highs and lows that diets cause when they lead you down a dead-end street, leaving you with nothing but a light wallet and heavy heart.

You’ll learn proven how-to hacks for building healthy habits for life as well as new tips and tricks about how to make eating easier— all without the white-knuckle willpower, extreme food restriction and constant decision fatigue that are part of diets that cause you to worry about what to eat every single day.

You will discover and use the latest neuroscience research about lifestyle and behavioral change to finally make healthy habits stick. Because it’s not just what you know … it’s are you doing what you know?

Further, you’ll uncover the mistakes we all make with our mindset and motivation and you’ll learn how to implement your new skills and knowledge in the context of real life as a busy parent or professional.

Plus, you will get our meals in minutes recipes and meal planning guides to make eating easy and enjoyable without spending