How to Eat Like a Man, Not a Frat Boy
There was a time when I was an eating legend.
Not in the sense of refined taste or culinary skill, more like a human garbage disposal. In my late teens and early twenties, I could eat almost anything and get away with it. I wasn’t particularly active apart from the occasional beach volleyball game on summer weekends, but my metabolism ran like a furnace and I assumed that would last forever.
A typical lunch break in grade twelve might include an entire large pizza. There was the time I demolished fourteen pieces of fish and three plates of chips at Codfather’s All-You-Can-Eat, washing it all down with a full bottle of malt vinegar and two jugs of root beer. Or the night at Lone Star Café when my friends challenged me at all-you-can-eat fajitas, and I refused to stop until I’d eaten two more than the next guy, then ordered the fried ice cream dessert just to prove a point.
Fast forward a decade and I was still eating like that twenty-year-old, except I wasn’t a twenty-year-old anymore. I was working in an office, forty pounds heavier, gasping for air after two flights of stairs, and dealing with my first gout flare at age thirty. It turns out metabolism isn’t a magic shield; it’s a privilege of youth that eventually expires.
That’s where this conversation begins. Because what men eat, and how they think about fuelling their bodies, changes everything as the years go by. The sooner you stop trying to eat like your younger self, the sooner you’ll start feeling like your stronger, healthier, more capable self again.
Why “Winging It” Stops Working
Most men don’t eat badly on purpose. They just eat reactively.
A skipped breakfast followed by a big lunch. A quick take-out dinner after work. A weekend blow-out of beer, wings and nachos. It’s not a plan, it’s survival eating. For a while, the body keeps up. You move enough, your hormones are forgiving, and your energy rebounds.
In your twenties, you can get away with it. Your metabolism hums along like a high-revving engine, your recovery is nearly instant, and you can roll into a Monday workout after a weekend of pub food and drinks without feeling the impact. But as the years add up, those same habits start leaving a mark.
When you’re older, the margin for error shrinks. Long days at work, late nights, less sleep and higher stress all add up. The body becomes less forgiving, not because it’s broken but because it’s adapting to the demands you’re putting on it. You can’t run a high-performance machine on low-quality fuel forever.
That’s what reactive eating is: fuelling on autopilot. It’s grabbing whatever’s convenient, eating until you’re full and then wondering later why you’re tired, bloated or craving sugar at three in the afternoon. It’s starting the day under-fuelled, over-correcting at night, and thinking, “I’ll do better tomorrow.” The problem is that tomorrow never really changes, because there’s no structure behind it.
I see it constantly in my coaching work. Men who are driven and capable in their careers, deliberate in every other part of life, yet approach food with a shrug and hope for the best. They’re not lazy or careless; they’re just stretched thin, trying to juggle too many things at once. Nutrition becomes another item in the mental backlog.
Here’s the truth most people don’t want to admit: winging it works until it doesn’t.
At some point, the small things compound. Energy dips become normal. The waistline quietly expands. Recovery from training takes longer, if you’re training at all. You start needing more coffee to get going, more food to feel satisfied, and more willpower to hold things together. It’s not that your body betrayed you; it’s that it’s following the blueprint you keep giving it.
As you age, your metabolism slows slightly, but more importantly, your lean muscle mass starts to decline if you’re not actively maintaining it. Muscle is metabolically expensive tissue. Lose it, and your daily energy expenditure drops. Add in stress, long work hours and poor sleep, and your body becomes incredibly efficient at holding onto calories rather than burning them.
That’s why so many men in their thirties and forties find themselves gaining weight even though their eating habits haven’t really changed. What used to maintain their weight now creates a surplus. The math hasn’t shifted; the variables have.
The fix isn’t to punish yourself with a detox or go all in on some thirty-day challenge. It’s to build awareness and consistency into the way you eat. To stop relying on random effort and start using a framework that makes sense for your life.
That means planning even loosely, having a sense of what your meals will include, prioritising real food most of the time, and eating enough protein to stabilise hunger and energy. It doesn’t have to be rigid or obsessive, but it does have to be intentional.
Nutrition for men’s health isn’t about restriction or perfection. It’s about fuelling wisely so you can keep showing up at work, at home, in the gym and in life with more energy and fewer crashes.
That’s what separates winging it from mastery. The guys who feel their best aren’t following complicated meal plans or obsessing over macros; they just stopped outsourcing their nutrition to chance.
Energy Balance and Finding Your Healthy Weight
Every diet that works does so because it follows one rule: the body must be in a calorie deficit to lose fat. Every diet that fails breaks that rule. There’s no magic loophole.
That said, how you create that deficit matters. In The Balanced Burn, we use a rhythm of structured On-Protocol weeks in a significant deficit, alternating with Maintenance weeks where calories come back up to stabilise metabolism and hormones. This alternating approach keeps energy high and prevents the burnout and metabolic slowdown that often follow long, uninterrupted dieting.
You don’t need to count every calorie or track every gram. Awareness and consistency matter more. Pay attention to how food volume and composition affect your hunger, training and energy.
Your healthy body weight isn’t an arbitrary number from your past. It’s where you feel strong, mobile and clear-headed. Often, men find that when they eat better, move consistently and maintain muscle, their body naturally settles into its own “sweet spot.” For some, that means dropping weight. For others, it means holding steady but improving composition, more muscle and less fat.
Maintaining a healthy weight is just as important as attaining it. Long-term health and longevity come from staying in that zone where your body performs well and feels good, not from endlessly chasing the next drop on the scale.
Protein: The Anchor Nutrient
Ask most men about protein and they’ll tell you they “get plenty.” They’ll mention a few shakes or bars and call it a day. The truth is, many still fall short of what their body needs, not just to build muscle but to preserve lean mass, stabilise appetite and support recovery.
A simple, evidence-based target: aim for 0.74 grams of protein per pound of body weight as a daily baseline. If you’re training regularly, strength-focused or managing hunger during fat loss, move toward 1 gram per pound.
Unlike carbs or fats, protein can’t be pooled for later use as a quick fuel source. Your body draws on circulating amino acids to repair and build tissue as needed, which is why it’s best to spread intake evenly across the day. Doing so keeps a steady supply available whenever your body needs it for recovery or maintenance.
Start with a palm-sized portion per meal, roughly 4–6 palms per day for most men, and 6–8 if you’re leaner or more active. That alone takes care of most of the guesswork.
Focus on lean sources like chicken, fish, eggs, lean beef, Greek yogurt, cottage cheese and soy-free tofu. For inspiration, check out last week’s Fit Foodie Friday recipe, How to Cook a Boneless, Skinless Chicken Breast That Doesn’t Suck.
When you consistently hit your protein target, everything else becomes easier. Energy stabilises, hunger feels more predictable and the muscle you build through training has the raw materials to stay put.
Carbs and Fats: Stop the False Choice
For decades, men have been told to fear one or the other, carbs or fats, as if they’re opposing teams. In reality, both are essential.
Carbs are the body’s preferred energy source, especially for training, recovery and cognitive performance. Without enough, workouts feel flat, recovery lags and mood tanks. Focus on quality carbs like fruit, vegetables, oats, potatoes, rice, beans and lentils.
Fats support hormone production, brain health and vitamin absorption. They’re calorie-dense but satisfying. Favour olive oil, nuts, seeds, avocado and fatty fish.
The balance between the two is personal. If you love oats and rice, eat them. If you prefer a higher-fat, lower-carb rhythm and it keeps you consistent, that’s fine too. The key is energy balance and quality.
Carbs fuel the work, fats support recovery. Trouble starts when both run high at once: pizza, fries, baked goods, creamy sauces, foods that deliver loads of calories with little nutrition. These things aren’t 100% off the table all the time (nothing ever needs to be), but they need to be a more occasional indulgence rather than a regular part of the plan.
Choose foods that make you feel strong and energised, not stuffed and sluggish. You don’t need extremes. You need balance and awareness.
Fibre: The Unsung Hero of Men’s Health
Fibre doesn’t get much glory, but it quietly supports almost every aspect of health.
For men aged 19 to 50, both the USDA and Health Canada recommend around 38 grams of fibre per day, while men over 50 should aim for at least 30 grams daily. Hitting those numbers from whole foods can lower cholesterol, improve blood sugar control, reduce the risk of heart disease and certain cancers, and support healthy digestion. It also helps you poop better, which, let’s be honest, most men appreciate once they experience the difference.
One of the most critical reasons to care about fibre intake is its link to colorectal cancer prevention. Colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related death in men, and diets low in fibre are one of the key risk factors. Consistently getting enough fibre, especially from vegetables, fruit, beans, lentils and whole grains, helps move waste through the digestive tract more efficiently and supports a healthier gut environment, both of which lower long-term risk.
Good sources include vegetables, fruit, beans, lentils and oats. These foods are naturally lower in calories and higher in volume, helping you feel fuller for fewer calories while protecting your long-term health.
If you’ve been eating low-fibre for years, increase slowly and drink more water as you go. Your gut will thank you, your digestion will improve, and your energy will feel more consistent throughout the day. And if you’re wondering how to fit more of those fibre-rich foods into your meals, start by making sure there’s a generous serving of vegetables on your plate every time you eat. They don’t just add colour and volume; they’re an easy way to balance portions naturally.
That brings us to one of the simplest tools for managing balance in any meal: the hand portioning method.
Portion Control Made Simple: The Hand Portioning Method
If there’s one practical tool every man should master, it’s hand portioning, the same approach we use in The Balanced Burn.
It’s visual, portable and automatically scales to body size. Your hands are proportionate to your frame, so your portions are too.
Here’s the quick guide:
Protein: 1–2 palm-sized portions (about 25–30 g of protein each) per meal
Starchy carbs or fruit: 1–2 cupped hands per meal
Healthy fats: 1–2 thumbs per meal (about 12–15 g of fat each)
Veggies: 1–2 fists per meal
Start with three to four meals a day and adjust based on hunger and activity. If you’re training hard, add an extra cupped hand of carbs. If you’re gaining weight and don’t want to, or not losing when that’s your goal, remove one portion of either carbs or fats from one meal each day and see if that gets things moving in the right direction.
This system builds portion awareness naturally. You don’t need a scale or calorie tracker, just your hands and a bit of consistency. Over time, it teaches intuitive eating skills that last long after any program ends.
To make it simple, download the BTG Hand Portioning Guide, a free resource that shows portion visuals, equivalents for some difficult-to-portion-by-hand foods, and gram-based equivalents for you numbers guys.
Flexibility and Food Freedom
Food shouldn’t be a source of guilt. Yet many men live in a loop of strict weekday rules, chaotic weekends and the dreaded Monday restart. The issue isn’t motivation; it’s rigidity.
Rigid plans might work short term, but they eventually break. The goal is to eat well most of the time and still enjoy life.
That means having dinner with friends, ordering the burger, enjoying the beer and not labelling it a “cheat.” One meal doesn’t undo progress any more than one salad fixes it.
When your foundation is solid, with protein, produce, mindful carbs and fats, there’s room for flexibility without guilt. Consistency, not perfection, builds results.
A flexible approach also makes life bigger. You can plan indulgences, adjust portions elsewhere and trust your habits. That’s what it means to eat like an adult. It’s not about punishment. It’s about fuelling a body that lets you live well.
I talked about this in my article, A Plan Is Not A Prison. Structure and freedom can actually coexist when you understand what your plan is for, and the more you practise that kind of flexible structure, the easier it becomes to stay consistent without feeling restricted.
A Brief Word on Hormonal Health
We’ll dig deeper into hormones in the upcoming article “Testosterone, Aging and the Truth About Low T” on November 21, but nutrition already lays the groundwork.
Stable energy, adequate dietary fat, sufficient micronutrients and healthy body composition all support optimal testosterone and mood. Crash diets, chronic under-eating or cutting entire food groups do the opposite.
When you fuel properly, you’re not just supporting muscle and recovery. You’re giving your hormones the environment they need to keep you strong, focused and resilient.
Fueling Strength, Not Restriction
Men’s health isn’t built on gimmicks or extremes. It’s built on consistency, fuelling your body, training regularly and recovering enough to keep doing it for years.
Start small. Hit your protein target. Add more fibre. Use your hands to guide portions. Move daily, not to “burn calories” but because movement makes you feel alive.
That’s what real men’s health looks like: sustainable, capable and grounded. Food becomes a partner, not an enemy.
Support the Cause
You can support my Move for Mental Health challenge and help fund Movember’s work for men’s mental health, suicide prevention, prostate cancer, and testicular cancer.
Donate via Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/donate/4327774960878267/
Or through my MoSpace page: https://movember.com/m/15369756?mc=1
When we take care of our bodies, we take care of our future. That’s what this month is really about.