40 Days. Big Change.
March 1, 2022 | Words by Gabe Yanez
When it comes to nutrition, I’ve tried it all. Paleo, carnivore, keto, intermittent fasting, counting macros, carb cycling, dirty bulking—you name it, and chances are I’ve tried it. I even went full vegan for a while, which is pretty tough to believe knowing what I know now.
My experience with some of these diets has been better than others, but through each of these bouts of self-experimentation, I’ve learned something, and it’s thanks to all of those little lessons that I am where I am today.
Surprisingly, one of the best experiences I’ve had trying something new with my nutrition was during the NCFIT EOE40 Challenge.
For 40 days, I decided that I wasn’t going to cut out any specific food group. I didn’t want to count macros and I definitely didn’t want to stress about any specific fasting windows. Instead, I committed to cutting out snacking between three big, balanced meals.
Every day throughout the challenge I ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and that was it. For each of those three meals, I made sure my plate had a serving each of protein, carb, fat, and fruit or veggie. Rice, bread, cheese, sauces, meat, sweetened granola, and protein bars were all fair game as long as they were incorporated into one of my three balanced meals.
That doesn’t mean I threw food quality out of the window. The vast majority of the food that made up my meals came from whole food sources. For anything that did come out of a package, the ingredient list was short and I stayed away from refined sugars and inflammatory seed oils like canola, sunflower, corn, and other vegetable oil (which I would do anyway).
At the culmination of the 40-day challenge, I was pleasantly surprised by the results. I felt great, looked the way I wanted to look, and my digestion and sleep quality were on point. Where I once felt bloated or had poor quality bowel movements, I no longer experienced either. Without snacking before bed, I was sleeping better and, because of all that, I looked leaner and felt stronger.
I have always been a big snacker, but I never realized how much of a problem it was until I stopped. Limiting my diet to just three meals made me more cognizant and intentional about how I built them. I made sure I had enough protein and fiber to keep me satiated in-between meals and plenty of carbs to fuel my activity throughout the day.
It’s tough to say whether the lack of snacking put me in a caloric deficit throughout the challenge, since I didn’t count my macros before or during EOE40. What I do know is that I didn’t lose any weight — I literally weighed the same thing from start to finish, with some natural fluctuations — which leads me to believe that my caloric intake was pretty close to maintenance level throughout the challenge.
Yet, somehow I got the results I wanted.
When it comes to nutrition, sometimes the most simple things can yield the most surprising results. Take it from someone that has tried all of the extremes and ended up feeling my best with what essentially boiled down to consistency and moderation.
That’s what EOE40 was about, and that’s what #effortovereverything is about.
There are no shortcuts, magic pills, or flashy diets that will get you to your goals. There’s only EFFORT and consistency.
