When you want to lose weight you definitely want to exercise, but even more important is your diet. However, many people, especially beginners are often confused about what the right weight loss diet plan should look like. So in this post, I will show you step-by-step what, when and how exactly you want to eat to lose fat as a man. You will learn how to structure your diet to get leaner, more muscular and even get six-pack abs. 

 

Before we get started make sure to download the sample meal plan at the bottom of this post. It is built around what I will teach you in this post and you can use it to get started right away. 

The first step is actually less about your meal plan and more about your mindset. You have to stop thinking about your diet as something that you do short term and then go back to your old eating habits.

 

Long-term improvements require long-term changes, which is why it’s better to look at it as a lifestyle change than a change in eating habits. Health and fitness really come down to adopting the right lifestyle and not eating some magic superfood, like so many “gurus” would have you believe. 

 

Of course, this doesn’t mean you have to run around in gym clothes all the time and prep your meals every Sunday. You can start small by just evaluating your diet and being honest about what’s good for you and what isn’t. 

 

For example, if you are a chocolate freak like me, try to limit your intake to one chocolate bar a day. If you were eating more than one per day before, include some fruits instead and you will quickly see how your taste changes. Over time you will get used to these small adjustments and crave chocolate a lot less.

 

Let’s now start with the actual meal planning. I want you to write down 3 types of healthy carbs, proteins and fats that you like.

 

Examples for protein include chicken, lean meat, eggs or if you are a vegan beans and legumes
Examples for carbs include vegetables, whole grains, rice or potatoes
Examples for healthy fats include avocados, nuts and fatty fish

 

Once you have written down your favorite 3 for each macronutrient I want you to think of weight loss meals that you could make with them. The classic example is chicken with rice and vegetables, but if that’s too boring for you come up with other combinations.

 

Knowing how to prepare fat loss meals is extremely important because when you get home at night after a long day of work you don’t want to come up with a complicated recipe. So make sure these are simple recipes that include foods you like and also make sure to always have these foods at home.

Most beginners don’t eat enough protein. First of all, it helps with satiety and is the actually the most filling of the three macronutrients. So by eating more of it your hunger levels will be reduced quite a bit.

 

But protein is also very important for building and maintaining muscle mass especially when you are dieting. Unfortunately, many beginners eat way too little protein and that’s why they often lose not only fat but also muscle. So to avoid this make sure to get around 0.8 to 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight.

 

The easiest way to achieve this is by building every meal around one main protein source. For example, in the morning you make eggs with some whole grain bread, for lunch you have some chicken and rice and at night you eat some tuna with vegetables. 

Calorie cycling basically means you eat more on workout days and less on off days. The benefit of calorie cycling is mostly psychological because more food on workout days means less hunger and more strength. Most people automatically do this because they feel more hungry after they get home from a workout so they will eat more.

 

But make sure to compensate for this by really eating less on your off-days. My suggestion is to do this only through your carbs, so keep protein and fat intake roughly the same every day and only eat fewer carbs on your off days. 

 

Carbs are the body’s preferred energy sources, so you don’t need them on your off days and should eat more of them on your workout days.

The last step is adjusting your food intake as you go. Your first diet plan will never be perfect so you have to monitor your weight and see how it changes over time. A good rule of thumb is losing a pound per week.

 

If you fall below that lower your food intake accordingly. If you want to know how to calculate your ideal calorie intake and macronutrients make sure to check out this post.

 

And those are the 5 main steps of setting up a weight loss diet as a guy. Of course, make sure to also follow a well-designed workout plan and have fun with everything. This isn’t a race so you can take your time and adjust everything to your lifestyle and preferences.