1. Stop shopping for food

I hardly ever set foot in a grocery store.

I get everything delivered. Same basic order, every two weeks or so. (We added paper towels to the rotation recently because I’m making that YouTube money now.)

Game changer.

One of my biggest pitfalls with food has always been emotional eating. It’s Tuesday at 7pm, I’m fried from work, there’s nothing in the fridge, and now I have to decide what to eat. That’s when the wheels fall off. Hit the drive through. Order in. Raid the pantry for whatever’s lying around.

Here was my ‘a-ha’ moment: eating well doesn’t start at the meal.

It starts when you decide what comes into your house.

Just like digestion doesn’t start in the stomach. It starts in the mouth.

Fat loss doesn’t start when you sit down at the table. It starts days earlier, when you decide what to buy. Or whether you shop at all.

If the food isn’t in the house, you won’t eat it. If it is, you will. So choose wisely. Or something.

When I order groceries from my phone, I’m doing it with a clear head. I’m not standing in an aisle, hungry, making decisions I’ll regret.

The right food just shows up. That’s not discipline. It’s just the default choice.

Think like a business owner. Remove the mental bandwidth and let the system run.

I put together a free list of my favourite high protein meals with a grocery list – grab it here. 

But you might be surprised by what I actually eat.

Quick note before we continue. If you struggle to:

> Stay consistent without being obsessive over food

> Lose belly fat and actually keep it off instead of restarting every Monday

> Get your body to finally match the standards you want for yourself

I want to help you level up – come see how it works: details here

Promotion over, let’s move on. 

2. Eat foods, not meals

Most of the time I eat foods, not meals.

Unless it’s a special occasion, I’m not making a thai coconut chicken curry.

It’s more like: yogurt and berries. Chicken and potato. Beef and pasta. Pork and veggies.

Your boy is not making a twelve ingredient recipe three times a week. I eat simple foods I actually enjoy.

Once you stop blasting your tastebuds with flaming hot cheetos and get your calories in check, real food starts tasting incredible.

Fruit. Dairy. Meat. Starches. Veg. All of it.

Meals don’t need to be complicated. I used to do the whole Sunday meal prep thing. Then life got busier, and my fianceé and I realized we’d rather keep it simple.

Find a few foods you like. Rotate them. That’s it.

A guy in our 1:1 coaching program, Justin, does exactly this. He’s got a 4 year old, another on the way, and a busy work life.

Oatmeal or a smoothie for breakfast, 5 minutes.

Yogurt and fruit for lunch.

Pre-marinated chicken with rice and veggies for dinner.

He’s down 12 pounds in his first 7 weeks, up early to train, and he says his body feels awesome.

Simple way to start: run through the list of foods and pick a few of each you like.

Start with fruit and veggies.

Mine are blueberries, strawberries, melon, broccoli, cabbage, carrots.

Pick a few starches. Mine are pasta, bread, rice, legumes. 

Pick a few proteins. Yogurt, whey, chicken, beef, whatever you like.

3. Stay flexible (and eat more on weekends)

You want to feel strict, so you tell people you cut out carbs. 

Or that you can’t eat because it’s three minutes past 6pm. 

Strict does not mean better.

Be like water.

Your total calorie intake matters more than whether you “ate healthy.” Your average weekly calories matter more than being perfect every single day.

On my most recent cut I ran 2900 calories on weekends and 2200 on weekdays. That gave me room for the social stuff, right where I needed it.

But what about cheat meals, Matteo?

Dumb idea. Never do it.

If you want an ice cream bar, which I had almost every day on my cut, that’s not a problem as long as you’re still in your deficit. 

No binge required. I can’t imagine torching 5 days of dieting for a few extra bites of something tasty.

4. Track your food (but do it the lazy way)

I track what I eat.

I just do it differently than most. Logging your meals is the fastest way to build momentum for fat loss. It’s the only way you’ll actually learn to eat enough protein.

It’s how you find out you’ve been eating 250 calories of peanut butter every time you walk past the pantry.

It’s honesty with food. That honesty unlocks a whole new range of body fat percentages for you. But most people can’t stick with it.

Fair, especially early on when you’re making a lot of mistakes.

So, here are 3 strategies that have helped me track for over a thousand days straight:

app is MacroFactor – code MARRA gets you 2 weeks free 🙂

1) Pre-track

I log what I plan to eat ahead of time. Then I just show up and hit my meals. No macro tetris at 9pm.

2) Repeat meals

Easier to dial in one day, then run it back 3 or 4 times, than to reinvent it every day. I already know 150g of cooked chicken thigh is my portion. I know 200g of greek yogurt with a scoop of whey hits my protein.

3) Use ranges

Too many guys think nutrition means being perfect down to the gram. You’ll get basically the same results landing in the right neighborhood.

Mine right now is 2800 to 3000 calories and 170 to 190g of protein. 

See how much easier that is than “2900 calories and 180g”? 

Same results, way less stress.

(For details on setting up your targets, read The Complete Plan To Go From 30% to 15% Body Fat In 2026)

5. Eat like you mean it

Be present when you eat.

Snacking is the easiest way to jam an extra 1000 calories into your day.

The little handfuls of nuts. The chips. Your body keeps track of those calories – even when you don’t because you weren’t paying attention.

Most snacking isn’t even hunger anyways.

It’s boredom, habit, convenience. The food’s just there, so you eat it.

Do you ever finish a meal and immediately want something else?

So when you eat, actually eat: 

• Phone down.

• TV off.

• No emails.

• Chew.

• Enjoy it.

Give your brain a chance to register the meal.

Eating is one of those things every human has to do, but most people never let themselves enjoy it. 

6. Stop obsessing

I used to think being perfect with my calories and macros was the thing that would get me the body I wanted.

I was always the fat guy in my family. When I finally decided to get my shit together and quit taking a bath in baked ziti every night, I went all in. Tracked everything.

Structured fat loss phases. Muscle gain diets. Minicuts.

If some influencer was talking about meal timing or how to split your carbs by digestion speed, I was on it. Every book back then was about discipline, so I figured that’s what I needed.

That discipline helped. I needed it. In more areas of my life than just fitness. 

But it also made me neurotic about food and sucked a lot of the fun out of this.

There’s a message out there that ‘it’s all about what you do outside the gym, bro’

Sure, if you want to lose fat you need to be dialed in on how much you eat. But if you’re a natural guy like me who just wants to be jacked and in great shape, it’s mostly about the lifting.

Once you’re at a healthy body fat percentage, most of your time should be spent eating enough to at least maintain, not stuck in a deficit.

Look at the story in pictures of my client Jonathan above.

Yes, he wanted to lose a lot of fat first, and that took focused work on nutrition. But the real magic showed up when we started building muscle.

I wish I’d spent more time just eating to support my training and enjoying the process.

Eating shouldn’t feel like a full time job unless you’re making a real fat loss push or trying to get next level shredded.

The guys who get the best results (naturally) either:

1) won the genetic lottery

or

2) found a way to train hard for an unreasonable amount of time

I promise you, chugging expensive whey isolate in the car to “maximize muscle protein synthesis” won’t build more muscle than driving home with your favourite songs on, feeling grateful, loving life, and eating normally when you get home. 

There’s no amount of chicken and cottage cheese that’s going to build the physique you want. That comes from lifting.

Once you get food locked down, go put your energy into the gym. 

There you go – I just saved you from wasting $1000s on supplements, and 5 years of struggling to lose weight. 

– Matteo 

btw: if you want to go further on the gym side of this, I made a full deep dive on the muscle building habits that actually move the needle – watch it here

And if you want a plan to follow instead of guessing, grab my free training plan here