Welcome! We're thrilled to have you beginning this journey with us, and want to give you some tips to help you get the very best results from our courses.

Get Ready To Rock The 5 Core Nutrition Skills for Fat Loss!

We’re starting with these Core 5 Nutrition Skills for Fat Loss because they are the most powerful, most essential, biggest bang-for-the-buck food skills a person can work on, if they want to lose fat and lean up. Here's a preview:

Getting Started

After you finish reading this page, you can start exploring the lessons! We recommend working on all of the 5 skills in the foundation pack, taking as much time as you need to become consistent with each one. You can go in the order they are laid out, or you can do them in a different sequence; it's completely up to you. The crucial things are:

Don't skip over any skills in the Fat Loss Foundation
Become consistent in all five of these skills before moving on to other skill packs (even if it takes months or years.) These are the best investment of your time and energy.

There are tons of other great food skills to work on, and we’ll absolutely get to them. Following the foundation course you'll be able to choose from other skills packs on a variety of themes. All of the other food skills work better if you have a solid handle on the core five first.

You'll notice we use a skill based approach, instead of a diet based approach, because we find that success in any diet you have ever heard of hinges on a person’s skill level with the core five nutrition skills. You could get results on literally any diet if you have these skills down. On the flip-side, the reason most people ultimately fail at diets is because they were trying to shoe-horn some food rules into a life that didn’t have the core skills to make them work. They tried to perform on day one, with no practice or instruction to develop skills.

We basically trimmed the fat — we cut out the silly diet rules — and got to the part that actually mattered, the skills. We have created a supportive learning environment where you'll empower yourself with the skills that matter most.

Because these are so powerful and so foundational, we recommend that you work through all of these 5 skills before moving on. That being said, feel free to work through the Core 5 Nutrition Skills for Fat Loss in whichever order makes the most sense to you. Take as much time as you need with each one.

Not sure where to start? Don't stress. Start Here.

How To Use The Lessons for Each Skill

Each skill is broken down into multiple lessons. You can choose the method thay works best for you: watch the video lesson, listen to the audio, or read it. It’s a totally do-it-yourself guide with everything you could possibly want to know about how to use the skill in different situations, and answers to the most common questions people like you have had in the past.

You get to choose how much information you need to start practicing the skill. Some people will want to read all the information to understand why the skill matters and understand clearly how it actually works. Some people would rather just watch the videos. Some people will do both. Lastly, some people will just skip to the last lesson for the action steps and be ready to go.

There’s no right way or best way to do it — the best way for you is the one that suits your individual needs and style. You may even find that some habits you get intuitively and need less information, and others are newer to you, and you want to read/watch a little more. That’s totally great as well.

Choosing Your Next Skills Pack

The coolest part of this program is how much choice you get! You’ve probably noticed that that’s been a major theme up to this point — choosing which skill, choosing how much information you want about each skill, and even choosing how much coaching you want.

After completing the Core 5 Nutrition Skills for Fat Loss, you’ll be able to choose one of the follow-up skills packs, depending on your personal needs, and the skills that will best approach those needs. If you have trouble choosing, first off, we are always here to help you choose your next skill or skills pack! That being said, you can rest assured that all of the skills and all of the skills packs we’re giving you “work”. None of these are new. You aren’t a guinea pig with these skills, these are all skills that have made a huge impact for our clients for years.

So, don’t get too caught up in choosing the “right” one. It’s actually easier to practice the skills in a skills pack, to actually try them on in your life, to figure out which skills make the biggest difference for you. You won’t have to figure it out, after you’ve used a skill for a couple weeks, you’ll know if it’s an important habit for you. If it is, put that one in your tool-belt! If it isn’t, discard it and move to the next skill.

So, if you’re having trouble choosing between the different skill packs, take a look at the skills in each one. While the name of the pack might sound like it has some overlap (and, in practice, the skills from either one absolutely help with the skills from the other) you’ll notice that the actual skills that make up each skill pack is very different. If you see a skill that looks like it would make a difference for you, or intrigues you, that might be a great reason to work through that skills pack next.

Again, the biggest thing to take-away is that you’ll get the best idea of which skills to incorportate into your skill tool-belt by practicing them. Don’t stress too hard to figure it out on the front end, because we’re so often wrong. Many, many times clients have told us that in practicing a habit in their real life, they found it made a far bigger impact on their results than they would have ever guessed ahead of time. They found out which habits made the most difference by doing them. On the other hand, clients have often tried a habit for a week or two, realized it wasn’t a great fit for them, and discarded it. That’s totally ok too. The only way to know is to practice the skill.

Enjoy the choose your own adventure aspect of this program. Choose your skill pack. Try them on! You'll need to practice the skills to get good at them, so don't worry at all if you feel like you aren't skilled yet at something - that's why you're here, getting help and support to get better! Keep the skills you love, discard the ones that don’t make a difference.

Personalize for a Custom Fit

Most people, coming from a diet mentality, always assume that they should attempt to do a new skill at every meal. And that anything less than every meal is a catastrophic failure. Or that anything less than every meal won’t make any difference at all.

If the paragraph above looks like the perfect way to set yourself up to fail, it is.

It’s really important to notice that the way that most people approach a food program is exactly the way that sets them up to fail. One of the keys to making this program work is to stop approaching food like you’re on a diet, and to start approaching it like it’s about practicing a skill.

You don’t go in to the gym and immediately pick up 300 pounds. You start with 5 pounds, or 10 pounds. And you practice. As you practice, you get better. So you practice a little while, and next thing you know you are lifting 20 pounds. And then 30 pounds.

You have to start where you are at, and practice. It has nothing to do with wanting it enough or trying hard enough. With practice, you get better and can handle more. The diet approach — rigidly doing every meal — is the diet equivalent of deadlifting 300 pounds your first day in the gym. It’s a guaranteed path to failure. So, we literally do the opposite of that. We do just like the three bears:

Momma Bear’s porridge was too cold. Papa Bear’s porridge was too hot. Baby Bear’s porridge was just right

Why We “Goldilocks” (a.k.a. customize) Skills

Trying to do a skill too hard or too often is setting us up to fail

Doing a skill too little or too infrequently is boring and takes a longer time to reach our goals

Doing just the right frequency and scale of a skill will give us meaningful practice in the skill, and also set us up to succeed each week

The reason you’ll be so successful this time is that you know that practicing the right amount is the key to making food skills work in real life. It’s as simple as getting in meaningful practice that fits in to your life, schedule, and stress level.

How To Goldilocks Your Skills

We Goldilocks habits two different ways:

Scale — How much/how hard a version of the skill
Frequency — How often to practice the skill

So, for a skill like “eating slowly” the scale of the habit could be:

“I will eat 7 minute meals.”

“I will eat 10 minute meals.”

“I will eat 15 minute meals.”

And the frequency of your practice could be:

“I will eat slowly at dinner this week.”

“I will eat slowly at lunch during the work week, this week.”

“I will eat slowly at lunch and dinner Monday-Saturday, this week.”

Free to customize for yourself with a combination of both scale and frequency:

“I will eat 7 minute meals at dinner this week.”

“I will eat 10 minute meals at lunch during the work week, this week.”

“I will eat 15 minutes meals at lunch and dinner Monday-Saturday, this week.”

The most important part is to under-promise and over-deliver to yourself. Set yourself up with a version of the skill that you can succeed at. Again, it’s not about doing the ideal amount of the skill, or doing every single meal. It’s about getting in some meaningful practice in the skill. That could mean doing a lot of meals that are easy for you to win at. Or it could be focusing on a few meals you know will be a stretch. You get to say what is going to be meaningful practice for you. You also are the only one who knows your individual schedule, stress level, and skill level, for each habit, for the upcoming week.

Goldilocksing Different Situations

If you got kind of ambitious, set a big skill goal for the week, and then totally missed it, no problem! Just set a smaller skill goal for the next week. If you said “I’m going to eat slowly at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, during the work week this week.” but you had a hard time doing that, and only got a few slow meals in, no problem. Maybe dial it back to just dinners or just lunches.

If you have a really stressful or busy week coming up, definitely dial the skill you are working on down to an appropriate scale and frequency. Another reason people succeed in this program, where they have failed at so many others, is because we allow people to fit their skill practice into the natural ebb and flow of their lives.

If you have a week where you have a giant work project due, maybe dial your skill practice back to one meal per day!

Or if you have a stressful family situation, maybe dial your skill practice back more than you normally would.

You can also Goldilocks weekends differently from weekdays. Often people find that a skill that they can nail every meal during the week, it’s pretty tough to do one meal per day on the weekends. Again, the smart play is to be realistic and set yourself up to win.

Lastly, if you totally rock a habit, scale it up! If you nailed your skill plan last week, you can totally practice the skill more or more often this week!

Reflection is Magic for Fat Loss Results

Most people approach their food like a diet mentality — every week is either pass or fail, with nothing in between.

The silliness of the pass/fail perspective on your food should be obvious: Most people learn by:

Practicing a skill
Doing some things well
Making some mistakes
Learning about themselves and their values along the way

So, if we know that practicing a skill is always going to include a mix of doing things well and making mistakes, we should take time to reflect on those things. An artless and offhand pass/fail approach glosses over all of the things that happened inside of the practice, and squashes all of the learning.

The reflecting on what went well, what was hard, what mistakes you made, and what you might do differently, is where learning happens.

Take a look at each week, either in a journal, in the group, or with your coach. You can reflect on things like:

What was hard?
What did you notice?
What did you do well?
What did you learn?
Looking at how last week went, how do you want to adjust this skill for next week?

If you learn a little from your practice each week, that builds into really powerful wisdom about yourself, your life, your values, and your relationship with food. It’s those kinds of insights that pay huge dividends into your results.

Reflecting With Other People

There’s a triple whammy of awesomeness in sharing these reflections with people, whether your coach or the other people in the group.

For your coach, it gives them really important information about how to best coach you right now

For the other people in the group, sharing your reflections allows them to learn what worked for you, lets them know that other people are working on the same things they are, and contributes to their success by connecting them to other people going through similar things.

For you, sharing with the group connects you to other people doing the same thing. Other people in the group can share things that have made a difference for them. Everyone raises their food skill game together. It’s also really powerful to reflect on your goldilocksing with the group. By talking through moving up or moving down with a skill, everyone gets to learn about the skill. It gives other people an opportunity to learn from your thought process, or it gives your coach an opportunity to point you in the right direction. The group is an excellent place to share your reflections, as well as ask for suggestions or help.

For Best Results: Connect

Connecting with other people who are doing the same thing increases performance. Anyone who’s been on a great team, either a sports team in school, or a great work team, knows that being on an amazing team raises everyone’s game. It works the same way with food skills. Since we can’t all be in the kitchen together, the way to connect with your team about food skills is to share your reflections.

It’s like the old saying, “A rising tide raises all boats.”

Being an Epic Group Member

One of the most awesome things about having a group who’s all working on similar things, is how much everyone contributes to each other. Often, we find that in contributing to other people who are on the same journey, it actually makes us better at the same time. Plus, it feels good to help others!

Here are 3 ways to help make the most difference for people:

Ask other people open ended questions
Share what you're learning from the lessons
Share what you're learning with your practice

Asking people open ended questions is probably the most powerful way to help someone else when they are struggling. It’s always horrible when someone just tells us what they think we should do. But asking for more about what's going on show that we care and want to understand. An open ended question to someone struggling gives them a chance to reflect, to think, to sort out the problem for themselves.

You can help a teammate work through things by asking questions like:

If you had that to do over again, what would you do differently?

What was the biggest thing you learned from that?

Would you goldilocks that differently next time?

What are you thinking for next week?

Sharing your own experience really helps people because they can learn from what you did, without any pressure to do what you did. Basically, if what helped you could help them, they can use it. On the flip-side, if what you learned doesn’t apply to them, they have no pressure or obligation to do it your way. (We highly recommend using those two little words, "For me", just so people know their experience doesn't have to mirror yours.).

It’s a great way to share what’s working for you, without being pushy or coming off like a know it all, or making them feel bad for it being hard for them. You’re acknowledging that your experience was yours, and that it’s ok if theirs could be totally different. You can share things like:

What you are practicing right now and being challenged by
What was hard for you and what you learned
Something you struggled with, and what made the difference for you

You’ll notice that all of the sharing includes both what is/was hard for you, and what you learned or what made the difference for you. This are two really important keys for sharing with other people. If you leave off what was hard, you sound like a know-it-all or like you are bragging. If you leave off what you learned or what made the difference for you, you might leave them where they are at, without sharing anything that could help.

So, that leads in to the three things not to do.

Don't be a know it all. (Use "for me", and remind others their mileage may vary)
Don't tell other people what to do. (Try making suggestions or posing options and letting them decide)
Don't make people feel bad for struggling (Let's all keep it real. Every one of us has challenges with one of these skills)

By sharing your own experience and asking questions, you can be an amazing contributor to other people in the group. It’s a really cool feeling to know you stood for someone and helped them. It’s also one of those things where people who help other people tend to do really well themselves.

Just like we talked about above, being part of a group or team really works to increase performance for everyone. If everyone is cool to each other, asks each other questions, shares and from their own experience, everyone gets better.