The approved foods list

How to use the list

Build most of your meals from this list and the numbers take care of themselves. The list is Jordan's. It's the one he hands every client in week one, refined over ten years of reading food logs and seeing what people actually eat, and it hasn't needed to change much in that time. I've written this page around it.

Almost everything here is a whole food a hunter or a gatherer would recognize. That's one of the reasons Jordan and I clicked: he got to this list from ten years of client logs, and I got to the same foods from biology. The handful that aren't ancient (egg whites, 0% Greek yogurt, protein powder) earn their place by making a high protein target reachable on an ordinary day. Jordan's four rules turn the list into meals:

1. Protein first, every meal

   Pick the protein, weigh it, then build around it. You can't go back and eat yesterday's protein, so every day has to get there on its own.

2. Fill the plate with vegetables

   Volume is how you stay full on a deficit. Vegetables are nearly free; eat them by the bowl, not the spoon.

3. Carbs around training and at night

   Rice, potatoes and oats go where the work is. Fruit anywhere.

4. Fats are measured, not poured

   Everything in the fats group is good for you and dense. Weigh it. "A handful of almonds" is a 250-calorie guess.

The list

What's not on it, and why

Cheese, salad dressings, mayo, French fries, anything deep fried, cooking oil, creamy sauces. None of them are banned. All of them are where fat hides, and fat is the macro you can overshoot by 300 calories without feeling one bit fuller. They belong in the twenty percent, logged, on purpose.

Print it

The page is built to print on two sheets with the lists intact. Stick it on the fridge, and shop from it until you don't need to look.

Print the list