It happened when I was in college.

I was playing basketball with my buddies, going up for a rebound.

When I landed, I heard a loud snap, followed by the worst pain I’d ever felt in my life.

I literally thought I’d been shot. I could feel the blood running down my leg, except when I looked down, there was no blood.

That blood that I felt was on the INSIDE of my leg, instead of the outside.

I tore my iliopsoas, which connects your hips to your legs. It’s one of the strongest ligaments in your body and isn’t supposed to tear. 

Unfortunately mine did, and it left me in a wheelchair bound for an entire year. 

To say I was depressed was an understatement. 

Everything I loved was taken away from me. My favorite sport… having fun with my buddies… even the ability to WALK was taken away from me.

So I looked to food to make me feel better.

The problem was, I kept eating like I used to, even though I couldn’t move. It stuck to me like glue. The more I gained, the more depressed I got, so the more I ate.

It was a cruel, vicious cycle.

Between the depression and inactivity I ended up packing on 25 pounds of belly fat in only 12 months.

By the time I was out of the wheelchair, I’d hit rock bottom. My energy was gone… my confidence had vanished… I felt like a shell of the person I used to be.

So I did what most people do… I went to Google and typed “what’s the best diet?” into the search bar.

The first thing that popped up was Paleo, so I thought that was the best solution available.

The next thing I know I’m headed down the diet rabbit hole and pinballing from Keto… to high carb / low fat… to low carb / high fat… to intermittent fasting… and literally everything in between.

Don’t get me wrong, they all have their pros and cons.

But for me, the problem was that they LIMIT what foods you can and can’t eat. They give you very strict guidelines as to what they deem “healthy” and what’s going to make you fat.

Even worse is how they make you feel GUILTY if you don’t eat exactly as they say.

I mean COME ON ALREADY.

Because of everything you hear on the news and in mainstream media, you start thinking the only way to reach your fitness or body composition goals is to remove all the “bad food” from your diet and start eating an extremely strict/boring diet.

In fact, studies have shown that those who follow a rigid/strict diet actually put themselves at a higher risk for binging on the foods they’re trying to eliminate.

And these so-called “cheat meals” that everyone talks about? 

That’s just a disaster waiting to happen.

Once I discovered “cheat meals” I became obsessed and started having MASSIVE cheat days where I would eat myself sick. 

Every time I had a craving I would add that particular food to a list and after 7-10 days I would buy and push myself to eat everything on that list.

It was after about a month of this that I realized two important lessons…

1. This was NOT a healthy way to think about and eat food
2. Even though I was eating like a bird throughout the week, I was binging so insanely hard on weekends… I’m talking 5,000 calories a day easy… that I’d remove all the progress I’d made throughout the week

After a few months of this, I knew something had to change. 

And that’s when it hit me…

The specific diet you’re on DOES NOT MATTER…

This is a new concept for most people, so let me explain.

I want you to think about ALL of the various types of diets out there now.

Keto… Paleo… the Zone diet… the South Beach diet… the Atkins diet… vegans and vegetarians… intermittent fasting… 

… I could go on and on for probably the next 20 minutes, but you get the idea.

The point is, there are millions of people who have lost weight on ALL of these diets.

They all work… in the short term.

But you probably already know that as many as 95% of people regain the weight within just a few months of losing it.

The question is…

Why?

This was the question I asked myself over and over again for months, trying to figure out a solution. I wasn’t willing to slave away in the kitchen doing meal prep for 6 hours on Sundays… I wasn’t willing to starve myself all week just so I could have one single day of binging… I wasn’t willing to force food down my throat that I hated, just to stay in shape.

I knew that if I were to find something that worked for me LONG TERM, I had to think totally outside the box.

I had to find something that kept my energy levels high… was easy to follow since I didn’t like to cook… and was totally effortless for me so I could actually stick with it long-term.

And that’s when I discovered flexible dieting.

Flexible dieting allows YOU to be in control of what you eat, and what you don’t. 

As I mentioned a minute ago, literally every diet that’s ever been created WORKS… for a few weeks. The problem with most diets is that when you deny yourself the foods you love, you get insane cravings, and you end up going off the rails and ruining whatever diet you were following at the time. 

Not only that, but once label foods as “good” or “bad” it ruins your relationship with nutrition and turns food into the bad guy. 

This leads to a faulty mindset and causes you to feel guilty every time you eat something on your list of bad foods.  

Following a super-restrictive diet or cleanse can be difficult, especially when you’re out with friends or on the go. It’s impossible for anybody with any kind of social life to follow.

But flexible dieting opens the door and gives you much more freedom with your food choices, making it easier to diet and stay on track, even at parties, restaurants or when limited food options are available.

This sounds like common sense, but it’s something very few people do. 

But science is even backing it up now. Multiple research studies have shown that people who follow simple diet programs that allow greater flexibility in food choices are much more successful at keeping the weight off over time, compared to those who follow stricter diets.

Because as I’m sure you’ve seen in your own life… 

… if you FEEL like you’re on a diet, you’re doomed from the start

How much easier could you stick to a diet if every day felt like a cheat day? 

You’d have no problem at all. 

That’s the most exciting part about this… you feel like you’re cheating but you’re getting incredibly full on healthier, lower calorie versions of your favorite foods that are still SUPER filling and satisfying so you never feel hungry or want to binge.

Now you may have seen a lot of food bloggers recently who created “healthy versions of guilty treats”… but if you’ve ever actually tried them… it was probably so bad it made you gag.

For example, I once saw a recipe for “healthy brownies” made out of black beans. It made me want to vomit. 

Can you imagine sinking your teeth into soft, warm brownies, expecting a rich, gooey chocolatey flavor, and getting a mouthful of black beans instead? 

GROSS!

And look, I get it. I applaud them for trying, but honestly they’re doing it wrong.

I love food and want to enjoy what I eat, so I’ve taken a completely different approach. 

I focus on ingredients in recipes that have healthier, lower calorie alternatives, that hardly change the taste.

Here’s an example of one of my FAVORITE recipes ever, which I actually eat several times a week…