Are you STILL confused about nutrition?

Now that the Thanksgiving holiday has passed and the Christmas holiday is just around the corner, many feel they want to truly enjoy the tasty morsels that abound in robust proportion, but don't want to "strap on the feed bag" and lose their hard earned gains (and losses).

Well, don't despair, Ol' Steve is going to show you a few tricks. Just follow these steps:

This is the simplest, as well as the most effective way, for diagramming what you should be eating in order to lose fat and maintain your hard earned muscle.

1) Honestly evaluate and distinguish if you are losing fat at your current food consumption level or not. Do this over a seven day period average of intake. If you are currently successful at losing fat or if you are at least maintaining your weight, keep doing what you're doing and perform steps 2 through 4.

If you're one of those that is gaining weight, or you are new to a fat loss workout and nutrition regimen, the first thing to do is to decrease your calories by 25%.

NOTE: If you fall into this category, my bet is that you aren't aware of just how many calories you ingest in a day. Please go to Fitday right now (it's free to use) and find out your average daily intake. You will need to log 7-days worth of meals to factor your average calorie consumption for the week.

2) Concentrate on eating strictly supportive foods, which are fruits, vegetables, protein, some dairy (not yogurt as most has WAY too much sugar), nuts, and healthy fats.

Make sure to eat nothing that is processed... like bread, pastries, chips, tortillas, etc. If it has been altered from its original form, then don't eat it. Also make sure your eating regimen is "right on" before you fool around with calories.

3) Commit to 90% compliance. This means that if you're eating 5 meals per day, 7 days per week, that's 35 meals. 90% compliance means you eat "right" at 31.5 of those meals. This means you get 3.5 cheat meals or snacks per week. And a cheat meal is not a cheat free for all. It is a chance to have something outside the boundaries of your supportive eating parameters IN THEIR PROPER PROPORTIONS!

If you have not committed to 90% compliance, don't do anything else until you can successfully commit to this endeavor. Doing otherwise will simply frustrate you. Also, trying to gauge calories and intake will be ineffective.

4) If you still are not losing fat AFTER you have mastered steps #2 and #3, then begin decreasing your calories by 10%.

5) Re-evaluate after 2 weeks.

That's it.

Just the way I like it ... simple.

God bless you,
SP