Alexander J. A. Cortes Quotes

“A good diet is one that is based upon whole food, nutrient rich foods. You can tailor this list to suit your preferences, but a good diet should begin with:

- meat/fish/poultry/eggs
- dairy products (if you digest them well. I don't recommend dairy, as most people do not digest it, it has medley of
negative health effects and modern dairy is of low quality. Experiment for yourself and see)
- vegetables and tubers
- fruit
- whole grains
- legumes (if you digest them well)
- nuts
- healthy fat sources, olive oil, walnut oil, macadamia nut oil, coconut oil, avocado oil”

“Be prepared to fail. Not every day is going to be victory.

You can lose daily battles, but still win the overall war. Do not major in the minor.

This will be hard no doubt. Welcome to being a responsible adult. Everything that happens to
you is your fault. And you don’t get a second chance when death comes for you.”

“Being overweight/obese changes your genetics for the worse. A large part of your genetic code is malleable (epigenetics), and being obese leads to maladaptive adaptations in your body that then are passed on to the your offspring.

So not only are you changing your genetics in real time to eventually get multiple diseases (which will be your fault), your are negatively changing the genetics of your eggs or sp*rm, and will have less healthy children as a result.”

“Depending on how unhealthy you are, it will probably cost you more over your life to be fat and sick than it would be to change your life.

Being healthy and lean is comparatively far cheaper.”

“Diets like paleo, carnivore and keto are fundamentally based on changing what you eat, and not focusing much on how much you eat.”

“Do not try to lose weight as fast as possible for forever. Metabolism does not like abrupt changes.

Losing weight too fast for too long results in muscle loss and causes hormonal changes that put your body into more of a fat storing, hungry state. Yo-yo dieting never ends for this reason.”

“Eat protein at every meal.

Seriously. Protein is highly satiating, highly nutritious, and it prevents overeating and quick energy grabs that constantly sabotage people.”

“Fat loss begins happening internally, not externally.

The reality to fat loss is the place you store the most of it is the last place you fully lose it. So don’t set yourself up for failure with false expectations.

Losing fat is like raising kids, it goes by fast, but day to day it doesn’t seem so. Most people do not notice dramatic changes until the 3 month mark. Take your time.”

“Fat Loss versus Weight Loss

Understand the difference. Fat loss refers to specifically losing fat cells. This is what you want to diet for.

Weight loss refers to any combination of losing fat, bodywater, and muscle.

You do not want to lose muscle. To avoid muscle loss, you must eat an adequate amount of protein, and having protein at every meal is a sound strategy.”

“Fat loss will require an energy deficit. You will need to eat less food that you currently consume. Period.

This is incontrovertible. You cannot diet forever, but you will need to diet for some period of time.

There are many ways of doing this, some require counting calories, some don’t. Regardless, an energy deficit is happening on some level.”

“Fatloss sells. It sells pills, wraps, tea, detoxes, magic workouts, and a bunch of other silly shit. it sells emails as well. My highest opening rate is always fat loss emails.

Anything to do with fat loss, people are immediately into. Everyone is trying to lose fat, everyone is failing at it. You failing over and over is a supplement manufacturers gain.”

“For simplicity sake, going for a 15-30 minute walk daily can be the most reasonable way to start being active. This is most common cardio recommendation I make for people.”

“If you are more than 20 pounds overweight, you likely have high estrogen, skewed leptin levels, lowered testosterone levels, and are insulin resistant.

What’s that all mean? Your hormones are contributing to you being overweight and/or obese, and you need to fix them by way of dietary changes. This is why fat loss is not only calories.

Your biochemistry is what is responsible for how your body metabolizes food, stores fat, and burns fat. I am going to make this point more than once. You need to educate yourself on your own biology, and subsequently make appropriate food choices.

A high protein, moderate to high fat, low carb, zero to very low sugar diet is probably going to be the best strategy for you.

“Everything in moderation” is not going to be a good strategy. You need to fix your hormonal health for the long term.”

“Invest in the process. You may be a long time away from optimized health and body, but you will only achieve that
through effort and knowledge learned through practice.

The process is your practice, and you must practice daily. Health has to become your lifestyle or it will not work.”

“It is not expensive to change your eating. It is expensive to diet if you think dieting involves special diet foods.

Most people focus on superfoods, health foods, and what they can and can’t eat. That is all bullsh*t, and it obscures that deeper, practical truth that losing bodyfat requires improving metabolic/hormonal health.

Eating healthy is not expensive once you understand what foods are healthy.”

“It’s not the food industries fault. Food does not magically jump into your mouth, you voluntarily select it, chew it, eat
it.

It is not fast foods responsibility to fix your health, and your supermarket is not your personal trainer and nutritionist.

Your life, your lifestyle, your choices are all under your domain of control.”

“Learn and memorize the following terms, and dietary information will be much easier to understand.

- Isocaloric = maintenance calories
- Hypercaloric = Eating more calories than you burn (fat gain)
- Hypocaloric = eating less than calories than you (weight loss)
- Protein = 4 calories per gram
- Fat = 9 calories per gram
- Carbohydrates = 4 calories per gram”

“Lifestyle is not temporal. The way of living that made you unhealthy will not be the way of living that leads to better health.

Change your life permanently, not temporarily.”

“Metabolism can take months and years to change. Change the way you eat and live, do not only 'diet'.

80% of people that lose weight put it back on; they lose it too fast, and they never fix their broken mindset and life. Change has to be internal and external.”

“The body of evidence is clear; once you become fat for an extended period of time, your thyroid and brain reset
themselves to that higher weight.

It takes years to reset that back down to a lower weight. You must lift weights and fix your hormonal health to get your body to reset. This is not arguable.”

“There is no such thing as a 'perfect' diet. Diets based upon alarmism or food demonization are bad science.

The 'best' diet is the one that covers your protein, fat, and carb needs, and supplies you with sufficient micronutrients.

Different kinds of diets work for different people and different situations. Some are proven to work better and more reliably than others.”

“Track your bodyweight daily. So long as your scale gradually trends sown overtime, you are losing fat.

Tracking daily can be intimidating, but over 100, 200, 300 days, you have objective data that demonstrates how weight loss is a trend over time, not a day to day battle.”

“Try to go to bed somewhat hungry each day. This is an indicator you're losing bodyfat.”

“Use your biofeedback.

Do not eat and multitask. Eat slowly, learn the difference between being full and being stuffed.

Pay attention to how food digests and your energy levels afterwards. Do not eat foods that do not digest well, or that crash your energy.

Do not eat foods that make you feel sluggish and bloated. Do eat foods that make you feel energetic.”

“You are fat because you eat too much. Do not buy into the bullsh*t. There are no secrets.

Fat loss is not only your hormones and it is not only your genetics. Does it affect those thing? Yes, it does. Is is affected by them? Absolutely it is.

But the crux of the issue is that you overeat food beyond what your body needs. For as long as you are overweight, this is a self evident truth.”

“You may encounter the most opposition by the ones closest to you. Either they get on board, or they get thrown overboard.

You are the sum of the 5 people you invest the most energy in. If those people are making you unhealthy, time to make a change and direct it elsewhere.”

“You want to achieve 1lb of weight loss, that means each week, your weight goes down a lb. Some weeks it might be less or more, but 1lb is sustainable and reasonable.

Caveat: The more obese you are, the more you lose each week. At least in the beginning. The closer you get to normal BMI, the slower your weight loss will become.”