If you’ve spent any time in the weight loss world lately, you’ve almost certainly heard the term food noise.

People describe it as constant thoughts about food, cravings that won’t quit, and an endless mental chatter about what to eat, when to eat, and how much to eat.

For some people, it feels like food is always on their mind.

The term has become especially popular since the rise of GLP-1 weight loss drugs. Many people who take these medications report that the “food noise” disappears almost overnight.

But that raises an interesting question: Is food noise actually real? Or is food noise simply a new label for something we’ve always known as hunger, cravings, temptation, or emotional eating?

The answer is yes, food noise is real. But the answer is more complicated than most people think.

To understand why, let me tell you about one of the most fascinating studies ever conducted on human hunger.

The Most Extreme Example Of Food Noise Ever Recorded

Years ago, I read a fascinating book called The Great Starvation Experiment by Todd Tucker. The book tells the story of the famous Minnesota Starvation Experiment conducted during World War II.

The study wasn’t designed to help people lose weight. Researchers wanted to understand what happened to people during prolonged starvation and how best to rehabilitate victims of famine in Europe after the war.

Thirty-six healthy young men volunteered for the experiment. These weren’t overweight dieters trying to get beach lean. They were healthy, normal-weight men who agreed to undergo six months of semi-starvation under carefully controlled conditions.

Why would anyone want to be semi-starved for six months? The reason is, these men were conscientious objectors. They agreed so they could contribute to the war effort in a non-combat role.

During the study, their calorie intake was cut by roughly in half while they continued to perform physical activity and manual labor (which made tolerating the calorie deficit twice as brutal). Over time, they lost an enormous amount of weight. On average, they lost about 25% of their body weight.

Dropping a quarter of your body weight might not seem unusual in the age of Ozempic. But keep in mind that many of these men started around a lean 150 pounds. That means they finished at a skeletal 112 pounds.

Their faces became gaunt. You could see their ribs. Their strength dropped. Their energy disappeared.

But the physical effects weren’t the most interesting part. It was the psychological effects that were truly shocking.

Many of the men became obsessed with food. They collected recipes, read cookbooks for entertainment, talked about food constantly, and spent hours discussing meals they wanted to eat after the study ended. The only thing they could think about was food.

They even lost interest in sex. Think about that for a minute. Food had become such a powerful biological priority that thoughts about eating crowded out one of the strongest human drives.

Today, we might describe what they experienced as the most extreme case of food noise ever recorded.

No one can look at the Minnesota experiment and claim that constant thoughts about food aren’t triggered under certain circumstances. The human brain clearly responds to severe food deprivation by increasing attention to food.

From an evolutionary perspective, that makes perfect sense. If your body fat is totally depleted and you are starving, your brain wants you to solve that problem quickly.

What Starvation Did To The Minds Of Healthy Men

One reason the Minnesota study is so fascinating is that it revealed how powerful the biological drive to eat can become.

These men weren’t weak. They weren’t lacking discipline. They weren’t addicted to ultra-processed foods. They weren’t scrolling food videos on social media all day. They weren’t surrounded by fast food restaurants everywhere they went.

They were simply hungry. Very hungry. Starving, literally.

The study reminds us that when energy deprivation becomes severe enough, thoughts about food can become almost impossible to ignore. In that sense, food noise is unquestionably real.

But here’s where things get interesting.

The men in Minnesota were genuinely starving. They had lost a tremendous amount of weight. They had almost no body fat left. Their bodies were desperately trying to survive.

So their obsession with food makes sense. And that raises an even bigger question.

If food noise is driven by deprivation and loss of body fat reserves, why do so many overweight people experience it too?

Three Different Types Of Food Noise?

At first glance, the Minnesota Starvation Experiment seems to explain food noise perfectly. Starve people long enough and they become obsessed with food. Case closed. Except there’s one problem.

Many people who report food noise aren’t starving. Some aren’t even dieting. In fact, in the popular conversations today, the people most often complaining about the food noise problem are overweight and eating enough calories to maintain their body weight.

The more I thought about this, the more I realized that when people talk about food noise, they may be describing similar experiences that arise from very different causes – and completely opposite ends of the spectrum.

The Starving Man

The Minnesota volunteers were experiencing something close to true starvation. Having lost a quarter of their body weight or even more, their bodies were desperately trying to conserve energy and restore lost weight.

These men weren’t imagining their hunger. Their obsession with food wasn’t a lack of willpower. It was a normal biological response to severe energy deprivation.

If your body believes survival is at stake, your brain is going to make food a priority. In this situation, food noise makes perfect sense. Your brain flips a switch that screams the message, “Find food now! Eat! Eat!”

The Obese Dieter

Now consider a very different situation. Imagine someone who is significantly overweight and starts a serious fat loss program.

This person may have plenty of body fat stored for energy. In fact, they may have dozens or even over a hundred of pounds of excess body fat. Yet many people in this situation also report increased hunger, stronger cravings, and more thoughts about food.

Why?

One reason is that the body doesn’t simply adjust hunger and appetite signals based on the amount of body fat you’re carrying. It also responds to changes in your calorie intake.

When your calories drop substantially, your body notices. Hormones shift. Appetite increases. The drive to eat gets stronger.

This isn’t the same situation as the Minnesota volunteers.

An obese dieter with substantial body fat reserves is not experiencing starvation in the same way as a man with visible ribs and almost no body fat left. But both situations involve some degree of energy deprivation, which may increase thoughts about food.

The situations are not identical, but they’re not completely unrelated either: calorie insufficiency leads to an increase in physical hunger and a cognitive fixation on food.

The Overweight Person Who Isn’t Dieting

This is the scenario that’s most perplexing.

Imagine someone who is overweight but not actively dieting. They’re not losing weight. They’re not restricting calories. They’re not starving. In fact, they’re consuming enough calories to maintain their current weight. they have lots of body fat in storage.

Yet they still think about food constantly.

They may be planning their next meal while eating their current one. They may find themselves drawn to snacks even when they aren’t physically hungry. They may describe food as taking up far too much mental space.

This is where the starvation or calorie restriction explanation starts to break down. Because now we have to ask a different question: If the person isn’t starving, what else could be driving all these thoughts about food?

The Modern Food Environment Is Unlike Anything Humans Evolved For

One possible explanation is that we live in a food environment unlike anything our ancestors experienced.

Think about how often you’re exposed to food cues during a typical day. Food advertisements. Restaurant signs. Television commercials. Social media videos. Convenience stores. Office snacks. Food delivery apps.

Even if you’re not hungry, you’re constantly being reminded that food is available. And not just food – highly palatable food. Ultra-processed food specifically engineered to be rewarding, convenient, and difficult to resist.

It’s hard to know exactly how much of modern food noise is driven by these cues in our modern environment, but it would be surprising if they weren’t playing a big role.

When Food Becomes Forbidden, It Becomes Even More Tempting

Over the years, I’ve become increasingly interested in the psychology of restriction.

Early in my bodybuilding career, I was one of those chicken-and-broccoli guys. My diets were incredibly strict. I viewed foods as either “good” or “bad” and there was a long list of banned foods.

Looking back, I can now see how that mindset only made the forbidden foods more psychologically attractive. The longer I resisted the banned foods, the stronger the wanting to have them became.

I was always disciplined enough to stick to a contest diet for 3 or even 4 months without deviating once. But I was also always counting down every day to that post-contest feast, where I ate everything in sight.

Psychologists have studied similar effects for decades. Harvard researcher Daniel Wegner called it “ironic rebound theory”: Tell yourself not to think about something and, ironically, it gets even harder to stop thinking about it.

Don’t think about pizza. Do not make a mental picture of pizza in your head right now. Whoops. You just visualized a tasty cheesy slice, didn’t you?

If you create long lists of foods that you can never eat, the result is food noise. And this kind of food noise is psychological, not physiological.

That’s one reason I eventually became such a strong advocate for flexible dieting. I found that when people stopped labeling foods as forbidden and started building flexibility into their meal plans, food became less emotionally charged.

Maybe not always, because as I mentioned, constant exposure to food can increase thoughts about eating. But not labelling foods as good or bad, forbidden or allowed helps a lot, and two decades of research backs that up.

Stress, Sleep, Habits, And Other Hidden Drivers

There are other possible contributors to food noise as well.

Poor sleep has been linked to increased hunger and appetite. Stress can increase cravings and make highly rewarding foods more appealing.

Habit may also play a role. If you’ve eaten a salty, fatty snack every night at 8 PM when you watch TV for years, your brain may start cuing you to eat that snack at 8 PM whether you’re hungry or not.

Over time, these learned associations can become incredibly powerful. This is another example of how thoughts about food may have little to do with calorie intake or how much body fat is in storage, and much more to do with routine, reward, and conditioning.

Not All Food Noise Is The Same

This may be the most important takeaway from our entire discussion.
A starving man with almost no body fat and an overweight person who is maintaining their weight may both experience food noise. Both may think about food constantly. Both may struggle with cravings. Both may describe an endless mental chatter about eating.

But it would be a mistake to assume the cause is the same.

One may be experiencing a powerful biological response to severe energy deprivation combined with the loss of almost all body fat. The other may be responding to food cues, habits, stress, restriction psychology, highly palatable foods, poor sleep, or some combination of factors.

The symptom may look similar, but the underlying cause may not be.

So, Is Food Noise Real?

Food noise is absolutely real.

The Minnesota Starvation Experiment settled that question 80 years ago. But even if you never heard of this study until now, just being around the dieting and fitness community today you hear enough first-hand accounts to know it’s true – or, you’ve experienced it yourself.

Food noise affects the average dieter who is simply in a calorie deficit for fat loss – not starving literally. The human brain clearly responds to food deprivation by increasing attention to food.

But that’s only part of the story.

Food noise isn’t one thing. Sometimes it’s biology. Sometimes it’s psychology interacting with the environment. Most often, it’s both.

The real question isn’t whether food noise exists. The real question is what’s driving it in your particular situation.

Unfortunately there’s nothing we can do about the physiology side of things. If your calories are slashed  to starvation levels, you’re going to be ravenous and thinking about food all day long, period.

But fortunately we do have control over much of the psychology and environment.  For example, on the psychology side, you can practice flexible dieting, not rigid dieting. Plus, you can partly control your environment, at least your home environment, and reduce your exposure to food cues.

There are many practical, evidence-based ways to reduce food noise naturally. In fact, I’ve put together an entire guide covering eight strategies that can help quiet the mental chatter about food, without relying on medication.

Inner Circle members can read that article here:
Cut The Food Noise: 8 Ways To Silence The Chatter Without Drugs

Not a member yet? Learn more about the Inner Circle here

-Tom Venuto
Founder of Burn the Fat Inner Circle
Author of Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle

PS. Learn more about flexible dieting and flexible meal planning here: The Guide To Flexible Meal Planning For Fat Loss

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About Tom Venuto
Tom Venuto is a natural bodybuilding and fat loss coach with 35 years of experience. He holds a degree in exercise science and has trained hundreds of clients in person and thousands online. He is also a recipe creator specializing in fat-burning, muscle-building cooking.

A former competitive bodybuilder, Tom is now a full-time evidence-based fitness writer, blogger, and author. His classic book Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle is an international bestseller, first as an ebook and later as a hardcover and audiobook. He is also the author of Meal Prep For Fat Loss, a practical guide to smart shopping, batch cooking, and kitchen strategies that make healthy eating simple and sustainable.

Tom is also the founder of Burn the Fat Inner Circle, a fitness support community with more than 59,000 members worldwide since 2006.

Tom’s work has been featured in Men’s Fitness, Muscle & Fitness, Oprah Magazine and dozens of other major publications. He is best known for his no-BS, scientific approach to natural fat loss and muscle-building.

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The inner cover flap of Brad Stulberg’s book, The Way of Excellence, says that it’s “The definitive book on excellence.”

Surprisingly, there aren’t that many books about excellence that use the word excellence.

Older books that do, such as Tom Peter’s Search For Excellence, were about corporate success. They profiled how businesses became successful.

Fewer are about personal excellence, which is what Stulberg’s book is about.

In his classic works, psychologist Abraham Maslow wrote about a similar concept – “actualizing your potential”.

Great books have been written about another related topic – mastery – including George Leonard and Robert Greene.

Excellence also overlaps with stoicism and the development of character.

Spiritual books talk about self-realization.

And the Greeks had a word for it – “arete” – defined as excellence or virtue; the highest moral, physical, and spiritual potential of a human being.

Among all the books that talk about excellence by that name or similar names, Stulberg’s book is unique in the genre.

I heard about him at first when I discovered the book he co-authored with Steve Magness – “Peak Performance.” (Not to be confused with the Charles Garfield classic on mental training for sports).

Peak Performance by Stulberg and Magness was very good, and I recommend it. There’s only one issue I think someone might have with that 2017 book: if they are well-read in the high performance and personal development field, much of the information may sound familiar since it appears repeatedly in other many other books.

By contrast, The Way Of Excellence (2026) is full of new and unique ideas, or fresh takes and perspectives on old ideas.

It avoids pushing hacks or hustle culture, and it’s not about perfectionism either. Stulberg says that excellence is about challenging yourself in worthwhile endeavors, focusing on what matters most, and expressing the unique qualities that make you what you are.

The advice is applicable to all types of endeavors from pushing yourself in the gym, to learning a musical instrument, managing a business, practicing medicine, creating art or honing any other craft.

Stulberg – and his former co-author and current podcast co-host Magness – both come from endurance training backgrounds, but after running injuries sidelined Stulberg, he took up powerlifting. That makes this a great read for fitness enthusiasts across the spectrum from long distance running to pumping iron.

The book is split into two parts. Part one lays out the foundations including the biology, psychology, and philosophy of excellence.

He first explains what excellence is. It’s when we are at our best. When we are:

Working without distraction at something that matters to us. Creating and contributing to the world. Engaging deeply with others. Sufficiently challenged. Using your unique skills. In a state of relaxed productivity. Giving something your all.

He emphasizes that excellence can be expressed in all areas of life – it’s not restricted to professional athletes and artists.

He also points out one of the great truths: We all have an innate drive for progress and growth, and this is why we feel so alive when we channel that drive into meaningful goals.

However, he explains that excellence is less of a destination or achievement of a goal, and more of an energizing process of growth and becoming. It’s an ongoing path.

Stulberg says that excellence combines mastery and mattering. Mastery is developing skills and making progress in activities you believe are worthwhile. Mattering is the sense that what you’re doing has significance. This combination leads to a life well lived and a sense of satisfaction.

I appreciated how Stulberg points out that lasting motivation is intrinsic. Giving a nod to Self-Determination theory, he explains how we thrive over the long haul when 3 needs are met: autonomy, competence, and belonging (social connection). Being intrinsically motivated also means that we engage in a practice for its own sake – because we enjoy it and it’s as satisfying or more satisfying than reaching any end point.

Part two of the book runs through 16 mindsets, habits, and practices of excellence. You’ll see some familiar topics here like goals, consistency, focus, discipline, patience, confidence, and community. But Brad brings unique insights and perspectives to all these topics rather than rehashing what everyone has already said.

Some of these principles are unique and not discussed by other authors, starting out for example with caring. You can have all the talent and knowledge in the world, but if you don’t care about what you’re doing it doesn’t matter. You must have a reverence and deep interest in your pursuit.

Another example is the chapter on gumption. That’s a word I never heard before in the study of excellence. He says it’s a forward inertia, a sense of progress and possibility a strong yet measured enthusiasm.

Some of the other topics in part two include trade-offs, renewal, routine, joy, and completion.

In this book, you will definitely hear new ideas on the pursuit of excellence, and new takes on old ideas. That’s a strength of this book – there’s a lot of originality.

What Stulberg did well, and why his book might really deserve the claim as the definitive guide to excellence, is that he tried to combine performance psychology, sustainable ambition, anti-burnout philosophy, eastern mindfulness, stoicism, and modern neuroscience all into one book with one cohesive theme.

Older books in this genre leaned more toward military-style discipline, hustle and grind mentality, achievement obsession, or just clichéd self-help advice. The Way of Excellence avoids those angles and is more about how to pursue personal greatness without becoming physical or mentally burned out. I think that is unique and very relevant in the 2020s.

In this book I learned new things, and was exposed to new ways of looking at ideas I was already familiar with. The book is conversational and easy to read – it’s not like those psychology books that have valuable information but are overly academic and a slog to finish. I flew through it in three sittings and then listened to the audiobook as well for repetition and reinforcement.

This is an easy 5/5 stars rating. Highly recommended for all my Burn the Fat Blog readers and Burn the Fat Inner Circle members to help you with your fitness journey and all your endeavors outside the gym as well.

The Way Of Excellence has been featured as a Burn the Fat Inner Circle Book Discussion Club Book Of The Month. Join us to chat about this book and about excellence and peak performance at the the link below.

CLICK HERE To Discuss this book in the Burn The Fat Inner Circle forums (members)

-Tom Venuto,
Author of Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle
Founder of Burn the Fat Inner Circle

Cilantro lime rice is one of those recipes that sounds simple. After all, it’s just a side dish, but small prep and cooking details make a big difference.

After making stovetop cilantro lime rice countless times, I like my homemade version better than Chipotle’s.

This is restaurant-quality rice, but it’s different: It’s toasted,  has brighter lime flavor, much more herby cilantro, and a richer taste from cooking the rice in broth instead of water.

That bright lime flavor comes from the secret ingredient – limes. Yes, I know that’s not exactly a secret since lime is in the recipe name.

But I don’t just mean lime juice from a bottle. I’m talking about fresh lime zest that goes in the pot in addition to the fresh squeezed lime juice that goes in the rice after it’s cooked.

Why Fresh Lime Zest And Juice Makes This Rice Better

In case you’re unfamiliar, the zest is the peel (skin) of the lime. It’s also known as the rind. It’s the green stuff – just the outer later, not the whiter pith below which is more bitter.

I use a microplane zester and it works beautifully for zesting lemons and limes because of the razor sharp teeth which give you very fine, almost “airy” zest without getting into the pith. Regular zesters and graters give you larger strips of zest.

For this recipe, one large lime does the trick (or two small ones). After you’ve zested it, then you can juice the lime which you’ll add to the rice after it’s cooked.  If you don’t have a lime on hand, you could use bottled lime juice and skip the zest, but it won’t be the same without the fresh juice and zest of fresh lime.

Important note when you’re lime shopping: Limes come in different sizes. The small ones, called key limes, are just slightly larger than a golf ball. The larger ones are called Persian limes.

This matters because the small ones might give you only 1.5 to 2 tablespoons of juice (and less zest) while the large ones will give you close to 3 tablespoons of fresh squeezed juice (and plenty of zest, including enough to reserve and sprinkle on after cooking).

This also matters because key limes are more tart, which is why they are commonly used in key lime pies, marinades, and cocktails.  Persian limes have a milder flavor and are more versatile for everyday cooking, including being ideal for cilantro lime rice.

If you’re stuck with the small limes, no worries, but you’ll probably need two of them.

Why The Stovetop Method Makes Better Cilantro Lime Rice

There are two tricks to get restaurant quality cilantro lime rice – or even “better than Chipotle” cilantro lime rice at home.

One is to briefly toast the rice in a small amount of olive oil for a few minutes before adding the liquid. This is not a mandatory step. You could dump in the rice and liquid at the same time and you’re off to the races. However, toasting is the official Mexican / Spanish method.

The toasting of the rice does something extra: it triggers the Maillard reaction, creating nutty, rich flavor compounds. It may also help prevent rice that sticks together in clumps or gets gummy. (When toasted, this rice comes out slightly moist yet fluffy – never clumpy).

While toasting for 3 minutes as instructed below, stand over it and stir regularly so it doesn’t burn. The idea is to lightly toast it. When you see slightly browned spots on some of the rice grains, it’s done. If you over toast you may find yourself with crunchy rice – and no one wants that.

How To Make Cilantro Lime Rice With Fewer Calories (And Still Keep The Flavor)

One thing I don’t do is drown the rice in oil or butter. Most cilantro lime rice recipes will use at least two or even three tablespoons of oil. You don’t need that much. One tablespoon is plenty.

I almost always reduce the fats to save calories. I’ve earned the nickname “two teaspoon Tom” because I’m often stingy with oils, but I just can’t understand why people drown everything in oil. I do use one full tablespoon (three teaspoons) of olive oil for this recipe so there’s enough to toast the rice and reduce the chance of burning.

I don’t argue that the rice might taste even better with butter (or both olive oil and butter), but if you know me, then you know I’m a calorie-saving, macro-optimizing home cook, so I pass on butter and large amounts of oil.

Why Broth Makes Stovetop Rice Taste Better

Another taste enhancer is to use chicken (or vegetable) broth instead of water. You could use water, but then you’re going to need to add salt.

The broth adds savory depth and saltiness.  (Which is why you shouldn’t use sodium-free broth).

If you’re looking to keep the sodium in check, use a reduced sodium broth – some brands have reduced sodium broth – often 30% to 50% less sodium.

Seasonings And Oil For Restaurant-Style And Home Cooked Cilantro Lime Rice

People often ask about the ingredients and seasonings that Chipotle restaurants use because they want to copycat their recipes.

It looks like their cilantro lime rice recipe is fairly simple. They use fresh chopped cilantro, and of course the lime juice. Their website says they steam the rice (in a huge commercial rice cooker) with rice bran oil and bay leaves. I think it’s worth trying a bay leaf in a future batch, but I wasn’t trying to make an exact Chipotle copycat recipe.

Also, almost no home cook has rice bran oil on hand, so that’s why I didn’t use it in this recipe. I use olive oil.  You could use avocado oil or a neutral oil like canola if that’s what you have in your cupboard. I don’t like using ingredients for my public-shared recipes that are not common staples in the home.  That said, I’d be willing to give rice bran oil a try one day and see how  it tastes.

Another difference in my recipe is that I use garlic. (Because garlic is awesome). A couple of cloves is all it takes – this rice is supposed to taste like lime and cilantro, not be garlic-forward. The garlic is added as the rice is finishing toasting, a minute before you pour in the broth.

In my recipe, the seasoning starts with the chicken broth, which adds flavor and saltiness. When the rice is finished, after fluffing it and adding the lime juice and cilantro, taste test it. If it tastes flat you can add a pinch of salt.

Don’t over salt though – it shouldn’t taste salty. The salt, if you choose to use it, is simply meant to help make the citrus flavors pop. That’s one of the things salt does – it enhances flavors.

Rice Cooker Vs Stovetop Rice Cooking

I used to depend on the rice cooker almost exclusively because it’s so easy and I am inherently lazy, but now I use the stovetop method just as often if not more so. Always when I want gourmet-quality rice at home.

The stovetop cilantro lime rice cooking technique is simple: after toasting the rice for a few minutes and leaving the garlic in there a minute, add the broth and bring it up to a roiling boil. Then turn the heat all the way down to low, cover the rice and let it simmer for about 17 to 18 minutes or until it is cooked through and has absorbed almost all of the liquid.

For the stovetop, use a large pot, sauce pan, or dutch oven. You can get a good stainless steel pot for around 30 or 40 bucks, give or take. You probably already have one in your kitchen.

When I got serious about cooking, I splurged and invested in the cast iron 3.75 qt  Staub pot (French Oven). It has never turned out anything but a perfect pot of rice. Looks beautiful, cleans easily and will last a lifetime. The Rolls Royce of Rice cooking pots… the luxury “cheat code” for rice.

Tip: This recipe was tested with white basmati rice. It has great flavor and is a perfect match for this cilantro lime recipe. Regular long grain white rice is fine too if that’s what you have on hand, but cook time might be different. Brown rice is a completely different animal that requires a completely different set of instructions.

Cook Time For Stovetop Rice (With White Rice)

As it cooks, keep your rice covered, undisturbed for 17 to 18 minutes.  The white basmati is always done for me by 18 minutes, but depending on your stove, cookware, and type of rice, your cooking time might vary.

If it’s not ready at 17 or 18 minutes, give it a quick stir, cover and cook for 2 or 3 more minutes or so. You know it’s done when all the liquid has been absorbed, but the rice is still moist.

That’s when you take it off the heat and let it rest covered for about 5 more minutes.

During the resting period, residual heat continues cooking the rice grains, any remaining liquid finishes absorbing gently, the steam redistributes the moisture more evenly, and soften any remaining firm grains.

This helps prevent the rogue crunchy toasted rice grain syndrome as well as the crusty rice stuck to the bottom problem (because the direct burner heat is gone).

If you keep cooking on the burner instead of resting off the burner after the rice is almost done and the liquid is mostly absorbed, the bottom layer dries out, gets crusty, and sticks.

Sticking might be a sub-optimal cookware issue, but keeping the pot on direct burner heat too long is the biggest reason most people get a scorched bottom.

Finishing The Rice

After resting the rice, fluff it with a fork to make it more airy and separate the grains.

Lastly, add the lemon juice, the lime zest you reserved earlier, and the cilantro.

A few notes about the cilantro:

One: Make sure you chop it finely so it disperses well into the rice. If you want to garnish the top with whole leaves that’s fine, but that’s mostly for presentation.

Two: This recipe calls for half a cup of chopped cilantro. That might seem like a lot at first, but after you stir it into the rice you’ll see it’s really not. In fact, I’ve made this with up to 3/4 cup and it was cilantro-forward, but still not excessive – it really “disappears” into the rice.

Three: For years I plucked the leaves off the stem one at a time.  Then I discovered that the stems are not only edible, they are flavorful. So to save time and enhance flavor, simply cut off the long thick part of the bottom stem, and chop up the cilantro leaves and small tender stems together.

Serving Suggestions

This pairs perfectly with anything Mexican. An obvious pairing is cilantro lime chicken.

For quick and easy 5-minute chipotle chicken, chop chicken breasts or thighs into small pieces, season with chipotle chili powder and salt and cook it in a skillet.

Of course this also pairs with beans. Here’s another 5-minute shortcut: Drain a can of black beans, add a teaspoon of oil to a skillet, add the beans, and season with:

1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp oregano
Salt to taste
Chopped onion optional (especially if you’re going to top it with salsa)

You’ll be surprised how great this ultra simple and convenient black beans from a can recipe tastes.

Put the beans, rice, and chicken together for a great Southwest bowl.

And of course, you can wrap it all up in a burrito too:

Put the cilantro lime rice, beans, and chicken in a large tortilla, and don’t forget the salsa and it’s almost exactly like a Chipotle burrito but maybe even better (especially the money you save).

How Many Calories Are In Cilantro Lime Rice?

You need a pretty large calorie budget to swing three starchy carbs in one meal – the tortilla adds a lot of calories – but you don’t need a tortilla. You can make a quick bowl of the rice, beans, and chicken and then you’ll have a complete meal with a reasonable calorie count.

If my goal was fat loss, I’d opt for a small bowl of  the rice and the protein with a veggie (like bell peppers) or just salsa.  If my goal were building muscle mass, then I’d go for the extra carbs with the burrito, including beans (need those calories to make gains!)

I did some calculations. At Chipotle restaurant, their bowl with only rice, black beans, chicken and salsa has 545 calories with 45 grams of protein.

But watch out! Add the tortilla for the burrito and now you’re around 800 calories or more – and that’s with no guac or sour cream or chips.

You can make good decisions at restaurants if you’re calorie-aware, but on the other hand, if you cook at home, you’re in charge of the calories and macros.

My cilantro lime rice has only 199 calories per serving (about 3/4 cup).  That leaves you lots of room to add a lean protein and a vegetable for a complete meal that comes in around 400 to 500 calories. Cooking at home can save more than money – it can save you calories.

Meal Prep And Storage Tips

The way I often meal prep, I’ll cook a four-serving batch like this, eat one, then divide the remaining three servings into containers. That’s if I want lower calorie meals for fat loss.

If I were in maintenance mode, this entire batch of rice would likely only be three servings, not four. If I were in muscle gaining (calorie surplus) mode, this entire batch of rice would only be two servings! (It’s good to be lifting and bulking!)

At any rate, it’s easy to scale the servings of this recipe any way you want.

I use the Burn the Fat Meal Planner software to calculate exact portions for my calorie needs (available exclusively at Burn the Fat Inner Circle).

Once I’ve added a veggie and protein to my rice for a complete muscle-building meal and put the container in the refrigerator, I’ll typically eat it all within two or three days.

I prefer not to leave prepped food in the fridge more than a few days. It’s fresher that way, and rice especially seems to lose its moisture and simply doesn’t taste as good after sitting in the fridge for days.

I’ve actually never frozen rice, so I can’t answer the questions, “Can you freeze it and how long does it last in the freezer?” I’ll try in the future after I make another huge batch. If you beat me to it and freeze your cilantro lime rice then thaw and reheat, let me know how it turns out (post in the comments).

This Rice Is Quick And Easy, So Go Try It!

This recipe comes together quickly. I’ve listed the prep time as 5 minutes because that’s all it takes (or even less) to zest the lime and mince the garlic (pre-cooking prep).

The additional prep – chopping the cilantro and juicing the limes – is done while the rice is cooking, so it doesn’t add to the total time.

That means the total time, including resting the rice is less than 30 minutes.

Are you hungry yet?  If so go get cooking, and enjoy!

Tom Venuto,
Founder, Burn the Fat Inner Circle
Author, Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle
Author, Flexible Meal Planning For Fat Loss

More Mexican Recipes:

High Protein Chicken Enchilada Bake

3-Ingredient Shredded Salsa Chicken

Cheesy Mexican Chicken And Rice Casserole (One Pot)

One Skillet Chicken Fajitas

To browse hundreds of Burn the Fat recipes, CLICK HERE (members only)

Not a Burn The Fat Inner Circle member yet? To learn more and get access to hundreds of recipes and the Burn the Fat Meal Planner And Recipe Creation Software, CLICK HERE

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About Tom Venuto
Tom Venuto is a natural bodybuilding and fat loss expert. He is also a recipe creator specializing in fat-burning, muscle-building cooking. Tom is a former competitive bodybuilder and today works as a full-time fitness coach, writer, blogger, and author. In his spare time, he is an avid outdoor enthusiast, hiker and backpacker. His book, Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle (BFFM) is an international bestseller, first as an ebook and now as a hardcover and audiobook. The Body Fat Solution, Tom’s book about emotional eating and long-term weight maintenance, was an Oprah Magazine and Men’s Fitness Magazine pick. Tom is also the founder of Burn The Fat Inner Circle – a fitness support community with over 56,000 members worldwide since 2006. Click here for membership details

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This high Protein Chicken Enchilada Bake proves Mexican food can be both delicious and macro friendly at the same time. Mexican food is awesome, but you have to be careful because in restaurants, it can be a calorie bomb. All the more reason to make your own at home.

The Problem With Traditional Chicken Enchiladas (They’re Fat Bombs!)

Here’s the first problem with Mexican restaurant food: The fat: Sour cream, guacamole, and full fat cheese. Plus, oil sneaks in there and you may not even know it. (For example, enchilada sauce can be made with oil or without oil, and refried beans may be made with oil – or traditionally lard).

According to the USDA nutrient data base, the standard serving size for restaurant Mexican cheese enchiladas is almost 700 calories, with a macro breakdown of 61% fat, 23% carbs, and 16% protein. That’s for the enchiladas alone, before sides. With rice and beans you’re easily at 900 calories or more.

A full chicken enchilada plate at Chili’s clocks in at 1,140 calories. That might be an outlier on the high end but shows how quickly a full plate with sides can escalate.

Then there’s that big basket of tortilla chips they give you to munch on before your meal is even served. Those are a combination of refined carbs and fat (deep fried in oil).  That makes it easy to hit 1000 calories or even much more, not even counting those chips on the side.

All together, if you’re doing a full accounting of a typical Mexican restaurant meal – enchiladas + rice + refried beans + chips and salsa – you’re very realistically looking at 1,200-1,600+ calories for the whole sitting, sometimes more.

And that’s not counting the drinks!

Developing A High Protein, Low Calorie Chicken Enchilada Recipe

I had the same calorie control issue when first creating this chicken enchilada bake recipe. It contained three different starchy carbs: rice, beans and corn. (Some people call corn a vegetable, but it’s really a starchy carb / grain).

Even after I reduced the amount of fat, I still wasn’t satisfied with my first version of this recipe because a serving that was quite modest in size contained over 500 calories.

That’s not a ton of calories, in fact it’s perfect for a guy my size, but the issue is that it didn’t leave me feeling full.

How To Modify A Chicken Enchilada To Make It Healthier, Leaner, And More Filling

So, I went back into my Burn the Fat Meal Planner software to tweak the recipe, and then back into the kitchen for testing. I knew I could modify the ingredients to not only reduce the calories but also make it feel more filling (while still delicious)

Here’s what I did:

1. Rice instead of tortillas. 

I figured that including tortillas in addition to rice and beans (and corn) would bump the calories more than I wanted. That’s why I decided to make this a chicken enchilada bake (casserole), not classic tortilla enchiladas.

Instead of tortillas, I included rice. Rice is a staple in Mexican dishes, and also in bodybuilding style diets, so that was a no brainer.

Make a note that in my recipe I didn’t count the rice cooking time, so factor that into the total time, especially if you use brown rice. (White rice cooks much quicker).

2. Small portion of rice and or corn (less starchy carb)

Here was the problem at first: There were three different starchy carbs, including the rice. So in my second revision of the recipe, I reduced the amount of rice to only 2/3 of a cup dry. That’s 2 cups cooked for the whole batch.

That’s less than I usually use in other recipes, but this is one way you reduce calorie density – reduce a portion of starchy carbs.

Corn isn’t included in traditional tortilla enchiladas, but I thought corn worked great in this original enchilada casserole. It adds a little sweetness and another pop of color. That said you could reduce it or even eliminate it if you wanted to bring the calories down, or you just don’t like corn.

3. Add low calorie veggies to increase food volume.

When looking at my original test recipe, I realized there were almost no veggies! The only one was a little 4 ounce can of mild green chiles. So in the next version, I added one large bell pepper.

Perfect. Hardly any calories, but that bumps up the food volume and makes you feel fuller. (A red bell pepper makes it more colorful too).

Remember, using three different starchy carbs does bump up the calories. If you wanted to make this even lower in calories you could reduce the corn or beans portion as well or simply leave out any one of those carbs. In fact, the simplest basic classic enchilada recipe only contains several ingredients: the tortilla, the sauce, the cheese, and the meat.

4. Use a lower calorie enchilada sauce (no oil).

In the first version of this chicken enchilada casserole I bought the first red enchilada sauce I found in the grocery store. Little did I know, it contained oil, which bumped the calories up to 280 in that small 10 ounce can! Shame on me for not comparing labels more carefully at first.

After shopping around I realized that zero fat (no oil) canned enchilada sauce is widely available. Old El Paso brand for example, has no fat and only 90 calories. In fact, I kept shopping and our local store had a brand with only 67 calories per 10 ounce can.

That’s a massive calorie savings. You could even use two cans and still come in with half the calories of the sauce that used oil. (Note: many enchilada recipes call for two cans of sauce).

In the future, I may circle back and look at how to mix up some home-made enchilada sauce, but the canned stuff, even though you could call it a processed food, is fast, easy and convenient.

I used the mild sauce, as well as the mild green chiles, but if you like spicy food, there are hot versions of both the sauce and the chiles. Even with the mild sauce, there is some spiciness, but that’s the whole idea with this recipe. Enchilada sauce is made with red chili pepper or red chili paste.

5. Use low fat cheese (or reduce the cheese amount).

Another way to save calories is to use low fat cheese. I used a 2% low-fat Mexican blend. You can use any kind of cheese you want, but I definitely recommend at least going with reduced fat so you can save some more calories.

Non fat cheese doesn’t seem as widely available as it used to be, but non fat shredded cheddar is available in all my local stores and that’s a good match for Mexican dishes.

Non fat is not as rich and doesn’t melt as nicely, but if you want to save even more calories, it’s an option. Plus, you get more protein.

If you want to save the most calories of all, reducing cheese is the most efficient option. However, this recipe, per serving is already low in calories and, well, cheese is awesome.

Sodium And Seasonings

The sodium content can get out of hand pretty quickly if you use regular canned goods. However, no salt added corn and black beans are widely available. I prefer to use reduced sodium canned products and then taste test and add the amount of salt I want directly.

Note:If you try to avoid salt completely, this is going to be pretty bland.

I thought my first batch, while not as low in calories as I wanted it, tasted pretty good, but it seemed like it was missing something. A bit of salt and pepper helped, but it still needed something else.

Two things popped into my mind:

One was chili powder (or chipotle Chile powder). Which I’m sure would work great. The other was cumin. I ended up going with cumin. Why? Because that’s one of the secret ingredients that makes stovetop Mexican rice taste so fantastic, so I thought it would be good in the enchilada casserole. Plus, I wanted to create something unique

After adding cumin in my second batch, it was perfect!

For the finishing touch, garnish your beautiful casserole with cilantro. I’ve come to realize not everyone is a cilantro fan. I love it, but if you don’t, try scallions, or even parsley. It adds an extra flavor boost and it presents colorfully when you serve it.

What Is The Best Protein For Enchiladas?

Last but not least, let’s talk about the protein. Chicken is most common in enchiladas and usually shredded chicken.

Shredded chicken is a great ingredient to cook in bulk and keep on hand in the refrigerator and or freezer. If you already have shredded chicken on hand, this recipe is really quick and easy to make. If you need to shred your chicken, count on it adding about 15 minutes or so to your cooking time.

The easy way to do it is to boil your chicken and then shred. The old fashioned way to shred is with two forks. But finally I decided to give the hand mixer trick a try. It’s works! A mixer shreds up your chicken completely in just seconds. If you prefer larger, stringier chunks of chicken, then use the fork method, but if you want to get done fast, use the mixer.

Alternately, a short cut is to buy a cooked rotisserie chicken and shred that. And don’t forget, the slow cooker is a great way to cook chicken to pull/shred. In fact, instead of using plain boiled chicken, consider checking out our Mexican pulled (shredded) chicken with salsa.

For protein, this should also work with lean ground beef or shredded beef as well, but I haven’t tried it yet. Using chicken breast keeps the calories as low as possible.  Very lean ground beef in 93% and even 96% fat free grade are available however.

Serving Suggestions

There are many ways you could alter this recipe, leaving out an ingredient or two, or adding other ingredients. And of course, if you choose, you could wrap this up in a tortilla, just remember to account for the extra calories (probably better for bulking than cutting diets!).

You can also serve it with extra salsa, chopped cilantro, scallions, jalapeños, or a dollop of light sour cream or plain Greek yogurt. If you want even more volume and fullness for very few calories, serve it alongside a big salad or extra vegetables.

One of the things I like most about this high protein chicken enchilada bake is that it feels like comfort food, but the macros still work. You get the cheesy, hearty Mexican flavor without getting a whole day’s worth of calories in one meal.

And with over 40 grams of protein per serving, it’s filling enough to work well for meal prep, fat loss diets, or even muscle-building plans where you simply want cleaner, higher protein meals that still taste great.

More Mexican Recipes:

3-Ingredient Shredded Salsa Chicken

One Skillet Chicken Fajitas (Low Calorie)

Cheesy Mexican Chicken And Rice Casserole (One Pot)

Cilantro Lime Rice (Better Than Chipotle)

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About Tom Venuto
Tom Venuto is a natural bodybuilding and fat loss coach with 35 years of experience. He holds a degree in exercise science and has trained hundreds of clients in person and thousands online. He is also a recipe creator specializing in fat-burning, muscle-building cooking.

A former competitive bodybuilder, Tom is now a full-time evidence-based fitness writer, blogger, and author. His classic book Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle is an international bestseller, first as an ebook and later as a hardcover and audiobook. He is also the author of Meal Prep For Fat Loss, a practical guide to smart shopping, batch cooking, and kitchen strategies that make healthy eating simple and sustainable.

Tom is also the founder of Burn the Fat Inner Circle, a fitness support community with more than 59,000 members worldwide since 2006.

Tom’s work has been featured in Men’s Fitness, Muscle & Fitness, Oprah Magazine and dozens of other major publications. He is best known for his no-BS, scientific approach to natural fat loss and muscle-building.

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My first turkey chili in the Burn the Fat recipe collection was a unique white bean stovetop version with no tomatoes. It’s still one of my favorites. But I also wanted to create a low calorie slow cooker turkey chili that’s more traditional – with red kidney beans, diced tomatoes, corn, bell pepper, and classic chili flavor – while keeping the macros lean and high in protein.

So I built this version to deliver everything you expect from comfort-food chili, but in a fat-loss friendly, high-protein chili recipe that fits perfectly into a muscle-building or weight-loss meal plan.

What Kind Of Protein Is Best For Slow Cooker Chili?

To keep the calories down and the protein high, this chili recipe uses ground turkey, though obviously this would work with ground beef too. Beef has a deeper, more savory flavor and fits the classic chili profile.

However, ground beef also has more fat and more calories, so if you want the macros to be similar to my turkey chili recipe, then choose the leanest ground beef you can find. Usually the leanest grade is 96% fat-free, and 93% is even more widely available and the macro difference isn’t massive.

I use 99% fat free ground turkey for this chili. 99% lean ground turkey is notorious for being bland and dry by itself. However, it takes on the flavor of whatever you season it with, and with the seasonings in this recipe, it won’t leave you wanting for flavor.

Plus, when you make chili with enough liquid (broth) and include enough veggies and moisture-containing ingredients like this recipe does, it won’t be dry either.

If you prefer, go ahead and use 93% fat-free ground turkey. It will be juicier and taste richer, but the calories will be a little higher and the protein a little lower.

Here’s a comparison of the macros in this chili recipe per serving  for 99% lean vs 93% lean:

Chili with 99% fat free ground turkey:
Calories: 380 calories
Protein: 40g
Carbs: 44.7g
Fat: 5.1g

Chili with 93% fat free ground turkey:
Calories: 412
Protein: 35g
Carbs: 44.7g
Fat: 10.9g

How Much Turkey Should You Use (And How Much Protein Is In Turkey Chili?)

This recipe calls for 1.5 pounds of extra lean ground turkey. If you break the whole batch up into 6 servings (as per the recipe card below), you get 40 grams of protein per serving.

Depending on how much protein you want per serving, feel free to adjust the ground turkey amount to suit your needs.

Also don’t forget, another reason the protein is high is because there’s protein in beans.  It’s not as much as you get in lean meat, but it’s a significant amount.   Those two cans of beans add 56 grams of protein to the batch.  That’s why even a moderate serving of this chili – less than 2 cups – will still give you 40 grams of total protein.

I’ve never tried it, but I’m sure you could turn this into a tasty vegetarian version by using tofu, tempeh, or TVP for a protein in place of the ground turkey.

Low Calorie Turkey Chili Ingredients

To make the macros fat loss friendly as well as healthy, this recipe includes a balance of fibrous carbs (veggies) and starchy carbs (like corn and beans). Combined with the protein, that gives you great macros.

This is not low carb, but not high carb either. I would call it a moderate carb recipe.

I used plenty of vegetables to make it healthy and keep the calorie density low. That includes two large bell peppers. These are fibrous carbs that increase the bulk of each serving, increasing satiety, while reducing the calorie density per serving.

Bell peppers also add flavor and texture. Use any kind you want. I like using red and green.

The veggies also include two cans (14.5oz) of diced tomatoes. Use regular or fire-roasted.

Turkey chili is great with a large amount of onions. They mellow nicely after slow cooking all day. They also boost the bulk of your meal, without boosting the calories much. This recipe calls for one extra large onion, which is usually at around 8 or 9 ounces, or 1.5 cups chopped.

Remember, the more fibrous vegetables you use, the fuller you’ll feel on fewer calories and the better your macros will be. That’s how I engineer almost all my recipes – with fat loss and staying lean in mind.

For starchy carbs there’s corn and beans. Dropping the corn reduces calories slightly, and I wouldn’t call the corn mandatory. But I recommend keeping it if you like corn because the calories in this chili are already low. Either canned or frozen works fine.

If you use frozen corn, don’t measure by weight because it’s not the same as corn canned in liquid. Here’s the proper conversion: A 15 oz can of corn (drained) contains approximately 1.5 cups of kernels.

Usually 1.5 cups of frozen corn weighs about 8 ounces. Many standard small bags of frozen corn are 10 oz, which yields about 1¾ to 2 cups. For convenience you could just use a whole 10 oz bag of frozen corn and you’ll be close to the original recipe – it will just be lightly “cornier.”

In one of my early versions of this recipe I used only one (15 ounce) can of beans and I found the final product was lacking in substance. Without enough beans, it’s not really chili to me.

Two (15 oz) cans of red kidney beans is the perfect amount to make a chili that’s hearty and filling with ideal (balanced) macros.

How Do You Make Turkey Chili Thick And Chunky?

How chunky versus how soupy you want your chili is a personal taste matter and you can adjust ingredients to get the texture and thickness you want.

I enjoy a very chunky chili, but with a little liquid. In my first attempt at creating this recipe, I thought my first batch had too much broth. So in this final version of the recipe I settled on using only one cup of chicken broth (low sodium). That was perfect.

I suspect that more liquid is recommended in stove-top cooking because there’s more evaporation, but what you put in the slow cooker basically stays in the slow cooker, plus juice leaks out of the other ingredients as they simmer all day.

Mistakes To Avoid When Making Turkey Chili

A mistake I made which left my first attempt sub-par was I skipped the browning of the turkey in a skillet on the stovetop. You’ll often hear that if you want to be lazy you can toss the turkey right into the crockpot first and it will cook just fine by the end of the day. That does work, but I discovered it’s not ideal.

Turkey is packaged after coming out of the grinder in strings. It also has a mushier texture than ground beef. By tossing that hunk of ground turkey straight into the crockpot raw, without compacting it into chunks and browning it in the skillet, it partially dissolved on me.

The flavor was okay, so I knew I got the seasonings right, but it was not as appetizing because little particles of meat made the chili like mush. That’s one reason why it’s worth it to brown the meat in a pan.

This also might have happened because in my earliest batches I used too much broth as well. Toss raw ground turkey into a pot of liquid and it’s no wonder it doesn’t come out well. That’s one reason why I only use a cup of broth. The other reason is I like chili to be thick, not soupy.

How To Season Turkey Chili So It Tastes Amazing

Be sure to start the seasoning process by generously adding salt and pepper to the turkey as it browns in the skillet.

Once in the slow cooker, here’s a no-brainer winning formula for seasonings:

• Chili powder
• Cumin
• Oregano
• Salt
• Pepper
• Cayenne pepper (optional if you like it hot)

Traditional formulas for the spices are that chili is first, cumin is second and oregano third in order of amount used.

For chili powder, I like 2 tablespoons and I’ve always thought that was plenty, unless you’re using a very mild chili powder and you want heat. (But in that case you could always leave it at 2 tablespoons and add a little cayenne.

Sometimes I cook for family who do not like spicy food and then I use as little as 1 tablespoon of chili powder.  Of course you have to use some, or it’s not chili, right?

To make it super spicy, add cayenne pepper powder as well (to your taste).

Is Turkey Chili High In Sodium?

If you use regular canned beans, corn, and diced tomatoes, this will not be low in sodium and you may not need to add any more salt. Taste test it shortly before serving to see if the salt is needed.

On the other hand, if you’ve used low-sodium or no-sodium ingredients, you may notice it tastes good, but seems like it’s “missing something.”

That something might be salt, which you can add at your discretion after taste testing before serving. Adjust the other seasonings to your liking as well.

Slow Cooker Turkey Chili vs Stovetop Turkey Chili

I wanted to try a slow cooker turkey chili recipe instead of doing it on the stovetop. This way I could make it in the morning, set it and forget it, and come back to a huge batch for dinner, with my kitchen smelling amazing.

This exact set of ingredients would probably work for stovetop cooking as well. (Just make sure you have a huge stock pot or Dutch oven).

However, turkey chili is one of those meals that seem to get more and more flavorful as it simmers all day long. Not to mention, the leftovers seem to taste as good or better the next day. It even freezes and serves well reheated too, so this slow cooker chili is great for meal prep.

Slow Cooker Chili Cook Time

Many slow cooker recipes take 8 hours, especially if they use potatoes and stew meat (beef chuck, round steak, etc), so you start mid morning and then it’s ready for dinner.

But this type of slow cooker turkey chili is done in as little as 6 hours. If it is, but you’re not ready to eat yet, it certainly doesn’t hurt to keep it simmering on low for 8.

As I mentioned, letting slow cooker chili simmer a while is great for bringing the flavors out.

If you started late, you can turn your slow cooker to high and it will be done in about 4 hours.

Portions, Garnishes, And Serving Suggestions For Slow Cooker Chili

This healthy turkey chili is a complete (and delicious) standalone meal. It’s high in protein and has plenty of healthy carbs and fiber without being a super high carb meal.

When I chose the portion size, I set it at 6 servings. But this recipe fills my slow cooker all the way to the brim – it’s a lot of food!  The whole pot divided by 6 is a very generous portion for one person.

The reason I divided it this way is because “portions” in my recipes are based on typical fat loss programs, where calories need to be lower (to achieve a deficit).

You get a big bowl of chili here but only 380 calories. If people are really light eaters, they might get 8 servings out of this full to the brim crockpot.  If you divided it up into those smaller portions, you’d still 30 grams of protein, but only 285 calories.

In the other direction, a starving family of four with no one dieting might polish off this whole batch at one dinner. So could hungry bodybuilders, bulking.

Amazingly, dividing this huge pot of chili into only four servings, you’d still only get 569 calories per serving, and you would be stuffed.

If you have even more calories to spare, sour cream, cheese, and avocado on top of this would  surely be delicious, but that’s where you start getting away from low calorie turkey chili and into calorie bomb territory. (At restaurants, some people have chips and drinks too – then you’re in trouble!)

Remember to always customize your portions for your own needs. The way I do all these macro and calorie calculations instantly is with my Burn the Fat Meal Planner software, which is also the ultimate recipe creation software.

This tool is available exclusively to members of my Burn the Fat Inner Circle. 

I hope you enjoy this chili. Be sure to rate the recipe and drop a note in the comments below to let me know what you think.

Tom Venuto,
Founder of Burn the Fat Inner Circle
The Support Community For Health-First, All-Natural Body Transformation

PS. This slow cooker turkey chili is one of the recipes in my Burn the Fat Guide To Meal Prep.  Click Here To Learn More And Download Instantly

More Lean Ground Turkey Recipes:

99% Lean Turkey Burger Recipe

Almost Fat-Free Homemade Breakfast Turkey Sausage Patties

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About Tom Venuto
Tom Venuto is a natural bodybuilding and fat loss coach with 35 years of experience. He holds a degree in exercise science and has trained hundreds of clients in person and thousands online. He is also a recipe creator specializing in fat-burning, muscle-building cooking.

A former competitive bodybuilder, Tom is now a full-time evidence-based fitness writer, blogger, and author. His classic book Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle is an international bestseller, first as an ebook and later as a hardcover and audiobook. He is also the author of Meal Prep For Fat Loss, a practical guide to smart shopping, batch cooking, and kitchen strategies that make healthy eating simple and sustainable.

Tom is also the founder of Burn the Fat Inner Circle, a fitness support community with more than 59,000 members worldwide since 2006.

Tom’s work has been featured in Men’s Fitness, Muscle & Fitness, Oprah Magazine and dozens of other major publications. He is best known for his no-BS, scientific approach to natural fat loss and muscle-building.

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Scott Callahan lost 54 pounds in just 12 weeks during the Burn the Fat Challenge.

At 60 years old, he started the 12-week body transformation challenge at 300 pounds and finished at 246. That’s an average of 4.5 pounds lost per week for 12 straight weeks.

Just as remarkable, this was the 10th Burn the Fat Challenge Scott entered… and the first one he finished.

That persistence paid off in a big way. Scott not only won the weight loss division of the challenge, he also earned the Best Health Transformation award.

Now, before you assume I’ll say that anyone can drop over 4 pounds a week on Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle during one of our transformation challenges, let me make this clear:  These results are not typical. They are extraordinary.

Most experts recommend aiming for around 1 to 2 pounds of weight loss per week. For people who are heavier, faster fat loss is possible with the right nutrition and training. Losing 1% of total body weight per week is not uncommon.

But even when starting at 300 pounds, that would only be 3 pounds per week. Dropping 54 pounds in 12 weeks is an amazing accomplishment.

So how did He do it? From his Burn the Fat Inner Circle forum posts and challenge essay, a few key strategies stood out immediately:

• He followed the Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle nutrition principles, including structured meal planning and bodybuilding-style eating.
• He used an aggressive but controlled calorie deficit – approximately 30% below maintenance.
• Instead of keeping calories low every day, he used periodic higher-calorie refeed days every fourth day.
• He practiced flexible dieting, allowing planned treats while staying within his calorie and macro targets.
• He meal prepped consistently, usually preparing most of his food on Sundays.
• He trained smart and cautiously to avoid injuries that might force him to quit.
• He stopped drinking alcohol during the challenge, even bringing a protein shake into a bar one night instead of ordering beer.
• Most importantly, he had a powerful reason why. Scott said he wanted to become “an inspiration for natural change” for his autistic son, who was also struggling with obesity.

Today we’re sharing Scott’s full challenge essay in his own words. I think you’ll find it both inspiring and surprisingly practical.

– Tom Venuto,
Author of Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle
Founder of Burn the Fat Inner Circle

“FROM SCOTTIE 2 HOTTIE” (SCOTT’S BURN THE FAT CHALLENGE ESSAY)

Hi, my name is Scott Callahan, and at 60 I did it – I lost 54 pounds in 12 weeks!

And let me tell you, this was not just about the number on the scale. It was about proving to myself that I could push through the days when I wanted to quit, the moments when comfort food called my name, and the workouts that felt impossible.

Every pound shed was a reminder of my strength, my discipline, and my commitment to becoming the best version of myself. I did not just lose weight – I gained confidence, energy, and a mindset that refuses to settle.

This journey was not easy, but it was worth every drop of sweat, every disciplined choice, and every small victory along the way. And the best part? I am just getting started.

MY HISTORY WITH FOOD AND DIETING

A loving family of food addicts raised me. Food was the answer whether you were sad or celebrating, attending a funeral or a wedding. Food was always a reward. I remember “dieting” from an early age and my mom would say lose 25 pounds and I will take you to the Chinese Buffet.

My mom raised me on every fad diet, supplement and injection that came out. She was wrapping me in saran wrap and giving me HCG shots at 16. She had a gastric bypass and a stomach staple surgery, staples in her ears, she wiggled to stop hunger, and taught me about the “EVILS” of carbs. But she died due to obesity.

Needless to say, I have had an unhealthy relationship with food my whole life.

MY REASONS WHY

I want to be a LIGHTHOUSE to show others that at any age if you just follow a simple plan like Tom’s – eating balanced, healthy meals, burning the fat by exercising regularly, and building muscle by lifting, you can achieve success.

I want to set a positive example for my 19-year son who weighed 380 when this started and has lost 20 pounds. I have shared Tom’s advice with people at the gym half my age asking what fad diet or shot I am on.

I started off 2025 weighing 300 pounds, on 12 prescriptions and a CPAP machine. I had no energy, and it hurt to walk most days. I had been trying to follow an intermittent fasting keto diet, but based on rollercoaster scales and poor blood work, I knew it was not working. I felt like at 60 years old, a lot of things that used to work did not anymore.

I have had success with losing weight many times but have always been even more successful at gaining it all back. I may be a professional dieter and regainer, but I held a PHD in negative self-talk and self-hate. I knew it was time to right the ship but I didn’t know were to start.

GETTING BACK TO BASICS WITH BURN THE FAT, FEED THE MUSCLE

I have followed Tom Venuto for years and started more Burn the Fat challenges than I can remember, but finished none. So now that I have finished, what did I do different? Well, the main thing is instead of just skimming a few parts, I actually read the WHOLE Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle book – that original edition that I’ve owned for 20 years.

I first focused on the mental training aspect, taking the time to set the book aside and really create meaningful goals and cards with positive affirmations. I created a logbook and wrote out powerful reinforcements throughout the challenge. If I felt like I was faltering, I re-wrote them and re-read them.

I made sure I did weekly meal prep and worked out my exercise routine before day one so I’d have no excuses. I spent time really understanding the diet and the various deficits and refeed days (something I had always feared). This laid the groundwork for everything to be perfect.

For the twelve weeks, I followed Tom’s plan very closely but as he states in the Burn the Fat book, it is not a one size fits all plan where “you must eat X calories of these foods or else.” You can customize it.

I downloaded many of Tom’s recipes from Burn the Fat Inner Circle and created my plans on the Burn the Fat Meal Planner software, creating days of varying deficits and surplus for the refeed every fourth day or so.

MEAL PREPPING PAYS OFF

I followed a principle I learned from another one of the great natural bodybuilders, Carlos DeJesus, of being an Experiment of One.

By this I mean each week I looked on my numbers and felt comfortable tweaking diet and exercise to maximize body recomposition and minimize LBM loss while accelerating fat loss. I rotated deficits and found a sweet spot of around 25% and would go as high as 30% on third day followed by a high calorie day.

I ate unprocessed natural foods most of the time, but I kept it flexible and allowed some calories for treats, inside my calorie deficit. Knowing I was never more than a few days away from an emergency slice of pizza or a treat reduced the craving for them a lot. Also, after years of skipping breakfast and avoiding carbs I was thrilled with the energy I had every morning after my overnight protein oats.

My exercise routine was split into 4-week blocks with first month being a base to ease in, lower weight / higher rep, second month focused on strength with higher weigh/lower reps and finally the last month has been circuit training to burn more fat.

OVERCOMING ADVERSITY

As for all these apparently perfect laid plans, well they went out the window about week five. I reinjured my knee causing changes to both lifting and cardio routines and came down with a respiratory virus. In the past, these would have done me in, but this time I worked through them successfully.

What Now? As I said before, in the past I have been just as good at gaining it back as taking it off, so what is going to change now? Well, I really feel that my mindset has improved. The mental training part of this is so important.

I also feel that I have finally found a program that I can adopt for life. I plan to continue and lose another 45 pounds, and then maintain around 200lb. I look forward to tackling another Burn the Fat Challenge too, hopefully in the muscle and physique category.

I went to the doctor several days ago, and he stopped the cholesterol meds, cut the high blood pressure meds in half, and stopped an arthritis med. I have not needed CPAP in 5 weeks. the doctor was smiling at my improvements.

-Scott

For details on the next Burn the Fat Challenge that you can enter, CLICK HERE

You’re following a good lifting plan, and it feels like you’re doing everything right. So why aren’t you getting the muscle gains you want?

In most cases, the problem isn’t the wrong workout program. It’s not bad genetics either. The problem is almost always one or more of the biggest lifting mistakes that quietly stall progress even when you’re on a decent program.

After more than 35 years of training and coaching natural lifters, I’ve seen countless people making the same 10 common muscle-building errors over and over again.

Short of a personal coaching session with me, where we could diagnose the problem in no time, my checklist below is the next best thing.

Run down this list and you should easily be able to spot what might be holding you back. Correct the mistakes, and I guarantee you’ll start gaining again.

1. Not Training Hard Enough

Most people simply don’t train with enough intensity to trigger significant muscle growth.

Research clearly shows that it’s not mandatory to train to failure to gain muscle. You certainly don’t have to push to exhaustion on every set at every workout. However, you must train close to failure to trigger real muscle gains.

What does “close to failure mean?” Experts vary in their opinions, but most agree that it means exactly what it says, literally: work to within 1 to 2 reps of failure. That can be differently stated as, “leave only a rep or two “in reserve.” That’s what we call a hard effort or a high intensity, and that’s what it takes to optimize your gains.

The problem is, a lot of lifters stop the moment it gets uncomfortable. That’s not intensity, it’s maintenance. If you’re finishing sets with 3, 4, 5 reps left in the tank, you’re not generating the kind of tension and fatigue that drives new growth. You’re not getting enough “effective reps.”

Beginners often struggle to judge how close they are to failure. That’s why I recommend occasionally training to true failure, when you can do it safely. (Smart suggestion: Take the last set of each exercise to failure).

Not only will training to failure at times guarantee that you trained hard enough, it will also teach you what one or two reps in the tank feels like.

High intensity bodybuilding and training to failure

2. Overtraining

More sets = more gains, but only up to a point. Yes, training too much can also kill your progress.

Studies show that up to 10–12 sets per muscle per week is optimal for most. Beyond that, you get diminishing returns, your results eventually flatline, and if you keep on pushing past your recovery ability, you regress.

Overtraining can come from too much volume, too much intensity (like failure training on all your sets), or too much frequency. Lifting heavy every day, without adequate recovery? That’s a recipe for burnout.

The warning signs are intuitive: lingering soreness, fatigue, joint pain, reduced performance, and a drop in motivation. If you’re getting weaker in the gym for weeks on end, something’s definitely wrong.

Also remember: your recovery depends on age, genetics, stress levels, sleep, and nutrition. Don’t blindly copy what “genetic freak” professional bodybuilders are doing.

15 Classic Warning Signs of Overtraining

3. No Progressive Overload

Progressive overload is the single most important principle for continuously building muscle over time. Unfortunately, it’s the one most people ignore.

If you’re using the same weights, reps, and sets week after week, your body has no reason to grow. Your muscles adapt to the challenge you give them, so if you never increase that challenge, you’ll never increase your size.

Adding weight is one way to overload. But so is doing more reps, more sets, more total volume, or increasing range of motion. As long as you’re progressing in some way, you’re winning.

This is why tracking your workouts is essential. No one can remember every set from every session. But what’s written down can be improved.

No training log = no overload = no gains.

7 Overlooked Progressive Overload Strategies

4. Inconsistency

Muscle isn’t built in days or weeks. It’s built over months and years.

The mistake? Being “on and off” with your training, or hopping from one program to the next every time something new trends online.

Even a less-than-perfect plan, done consistently, beats the best plan followed sporadically. Short on time? A 30-minute workout done 4 days a week for 3 months will beat the 90-minute workouts you skip half the time.

Consistency trumps everything.

Consistency Secrets: How To Stick To Your Plan

5. Program Hopping

I mentioned this above as a part of inconsistency, but let’s go deeper on this one.

Changing programs constantly is one of the most seductive, yet damaging mistakes in training. Our brains are wired to chase novelty, and social media makes it worse. There’s always a “new revolutionary method” making the rounds.

But muscle growth takes time. And progressive overload only works if you stick with the same lifts long enough to beat them.

Yes, variety has its place. It keeps training interesting. It can even break a plateau after you’ve squeezed out all the progress from your current plan.

But changing programs every week isn’t variety, it’s sabotage.

Pick a solid routine. Stick with it for at least 6 to 12 weeks. Make small tweaks if needed. But stay the course.

Boring consistency beats exciting inconsistency every time.

6. Bad Form and Ego Lifting

Chasing heavier weights at the expense of proper form is a fast track to nowhere, except maybe the physical therapist’s office.

When you cheat the weight up with momentum, you reduce tension on the target muscle. Less tension = less growth.

Good form means (usually) using full range of motion, controlling the rep, and keeping tension on the muscle. It doesn’t mean going super slow or being robotic, but it does mean lifting with the target muscle and not heaving with your whole body.

Yes, strict form may mean backing off the weight a bit. But the payoff is bigger gains and healthier joints.

If you think that you never swing the weights up at all, try this simple challenge: Do barbell curls standing against a wall. You’ll instantly feel the difference when momentum is removed. That’s tension right on the target muscle, not your lower back and lower body doing the work.

7. No Mental Training Plan

Building muscle isn’t just physical. It’s mental.

First, set clear goals. Then track your progress. Visualize beating your previous numbers before you step into the gym.

Progress tracking isn’t just a record-keeping tool, it’s also a motivation tool. When you see that you added 1 rep or 5 pounds over last week, it fuels you. And when you know what you need to beat next time, you show up with purpose.

Also, work on your mind-muscle connection. That mental focus during each set makes a massive difference. Over time, developing your mental training skills can be what separates the average from the elite.

A Research Proven Mental Training Training Tactic To Gain Strength

Mind To Muscle Connection And How To Strengthen It

8. Too Much Junk Volume

More sets don’t automatically mean more muscle.

There’s a point where additional volume stops helping and starts hurting your progress. I call this junk volume — extra sets that create fatigue but don’t contribute much additional growth stimulus.

Research shows most people grow best with about 10–20 hard sets per muscle per week. Go far beyond that without the recovery ability to support it, and performance drops, soreness lingers, and gains slow down.

Instead of chasing more volume, focus on quality sets performed close to failure with good form. A smaller number of effective sets beats a large number of mediocre ones every time.

What Is Junk Volume And How Much Is Too Much?

9. Not Tracking Your Workouts

If you’re not tracking your workouts, progressive overload becomes guesswork.

Muscle growth depends on doing more over time — more reps, more weight, more total work. But unless you write things down, it’s almost impossible to know whether you’re actually improving from week to week.

I’ve kept training journals for decades, and I still use one today. It keeps me accountable and gives every workout a clear target. Instead of just “working out,” I show up with something specific to beat.

No training log usually means no clear progression. And no progression means no new muscle.

10. Training The Same Way After 40 Or 50 As You Did At 25

One of the biggest lifting mistakes I see in experienced trainees is trying to train exactly the same way they did in their twenties.

As I got older, I had to make adjustments myself. I started using slightly higher rep ranges more often, avoided exercises that repeatedly irritated my joints, and focused more on techniques that make lighter weights feel heavier and safer.

I also spent more time warming up when needed and paid closer attention to recovery between sessions.

None of this slowed my progress. If anything, it helped me keep building muscle while staying healthy and pain-free.

Smart training changes as you get older. That’s not a setback — it’s how you keep progressing for decades.

My Thoughts On Training For Muscle After Age 50: How Is It Different?

Final Thoughts

You don’t need a perfect program to build muscle. But you do need to avoid the biggest lifting mistakes that quietly stall progress even when you’re working hard.

If your gains have slowed down, chances are one or more of these issues is getting in the way. The good news is that every one of them is fixable.

Train with enough intensity. Use progressive overload. Stay consistent. Keep good form. Track your workouts. Adjust your training as needed over time.

Master these fundamentals and your muscle gains will start moving again.

-Tom Venuto,
Author of Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle
Author of Meal Prep For Fat Loss
Founder of Burn the Fat Inner Circle

Most classic mashed sweet potato recipes are loaded with extra sugar or high-fat, high-calorie ingredients like butter, whole milk, cream, half-and-half, or sour cream. Usually both.

These low-calorie mashed sweet potatoes are different. With a few simple ingredient tweaks, you can keep the sweetness, rich flavor, and creamy texture while cutting the calories almost in half compared to traditional recipes.

Compare The Calories In My Healthy Mashed Sweet Potatoes To The Traditional Sugary, Fatty Recipe:

One popular recipe from a famous cookbook author called for 6 tablespoons of butter plus 1/2 cup of full-fat cream or sour cream along with whole milk. Plus the sugar.  I analyzed one of these traditional recipes and the batch came out to 2100 calories total, about 350 calories per serving. Whaaaat???

My version logged in at just 1022 calories for the whole batch (6 servings), only 171 calories per serving. Yep, these Burn The Fat mashed sweet potatoes have half the calories, just like my low calorie mashed potatoes recipe.

Even with my ingredient modifications, you still get a creamy texture and great taste. Plus, in this version of mashed sweet potatoes, I use sugar-free maple syrup to add a touch of sweetness, along with cinnamon for extra flavor. It may not be quite as rich as fattier versions, but the tradeoff is minimal for the huge calorie savings.

How To Make Mashed Sweet Potatoes Low-Calorie And Low Fat

Leaving out the butter is the first key to keeping your mashed potatoes lean. Trust me, you don’t  need it at all, but if you insist on splurging, and you have calories to spare, go ahead and use a small amount of butter (maybe 2 tablespoons instead of the typical 6). Be sure to account for the extra calories.

Second, keep the sour cream and milk, but switch to low or non-fat versions. This recipe uses non-fat milk and low-fat sour cream to save calories. To keep a richer flavor, we use low-fat instead of non-fat sour cream, but that’s still saving calories and a good compromise compared to the full-fat variety.

Can You Use NonFat Greek Yogurt Instead Of Sour Cream?

I started out making this recipe with low-fat sour cream.  Then one day I was making these mashed potatoes again, I had the sweet potatoes peeled, chopped and already in the water, when I looked in the fridge and realized I had no low fat sour cream! Gasp! What to do?

Well, I had non-fat plain Greek yogurt and I tried that instead.  I could not notice any difference at all in flavor. It was still delicious and the calories were a tad lower.

This seems unique to mashed sweet potatoes. I’ve tried nonfat Greek yogurt in the regular mashed white potatoes before and it was okay, but that was definitely better with low fat sour cream. But in these sweet potatoes with the maple and cinnamon flavors and only half the amount of sour cream (or yogurt) required, the yogurt works as a great alternative.

How To Prepare The Sweet Potatoes (Peeling, Chopping And Boiling Method)

Quick shopping and prep hack for before you peel, chop, and boil your potatoes:

When shopping, buy the large sweet potatoes with the smooth surface and uniform shapes. If you buy the small ones with the craggy surface and unusual shapes, they are a pain to peel. This will save you several minutes of prep time with frustrating peeling. Peeling and chopping doesn’t take more than 6 minutes. The combining ingredients and mixing in the bowl takes about 9 minutes for 15 minutes of total prep time.

If you browse enough cookbooks, you’ll see that half the mashed sweet potato recipes suggest baking the potatoes first, then skinning them, then mashing the flesh. I’ve never done that. I use the traditional method of skinning them, chopping them, then starting them in cold water, and bringing them to a full boil. That takes about 10 minutes from cold to boil, maybe 12 to 13 depending if you used a lot of water.

Then you simmer them another 15 minutes with just enough heat so the water still bubbles ( a low boil – that’s medium or just over medium). This method reduces the chances of uneven cooking where the outside of the potato is overcooked and the inside is still not done (too firm).

This is same method I used for our regular mashed white potatoes. Sweet potatoes just take a few minutes less to boil than white potatoes. (About 15 minutes for sweet potatoes, more like 18 to 20 for white potatoes).

The potatoes are ready to remove from the water and mash when you can stick a fork in and they’re soft and easily flake apart. Be sure to poke the largest potato pieces to make sure they are done before dumping the water and mashing.

When you cut your potatoes, if you try to make the pieces approximately even in size, it helps them all cook evenly. About an inch at the widest part seems to work well. If you cut into larger, thicker chunks it might take slightly longer to cook or else big chunks won’t mash as smoothly.

How To Season Mashed Sweet Potatoes

Adding one teaspoon of salt to the cooking water begins the seasoning process because potatoes absorb the water they are boiling in. If you’re healthy and don’t have sodium-sensitive high blood pressure, there’s no need to worry about cooking with a little salt.

The amount in this recipe is not overly salty. Not all the sodium ends up in the potatoes (lots is dumped with the water), and when the batch is split 6 ways, it’s not an excessive amount per serving – nothing like instant potatoes or other processed, packaged foods.

If you skip the salt completely, you get bland potatoes. You will add a little more salt when you’re mashing the potatoes and you can adjust that to your taste.

What Is The Best Way To Mash Sweet Potatoes After Boiling?  

Ricers and food mills seem to get high marks among chefs and cooks. I’ve used a hand-held potato masher and it worked great. For one batch, I even mashed with a fork and it still worked out fine, just took some thorough stirring and mixing. The way these potatoes were boiled and mixed with skim milk and low-fat sour cream, in just the right amounts, make them easy to mash and turn out mostly smooth.

But if you want your mashed sweet potatoes super smooth to the point of creamy, then use a mixer. Of course you can always use the classic electric hand mixer with the beater attachments.

I use the immersion blender. It’s the same one I use to make our Burn the Fat protein ice cream. It works great and the cleanup is fast and easy. The model I use is the Mueller Austria Ultra Stick.

How To Flavor Maple Mashed Sweet Potatoes

Sweet potatoes have natural sweetness, as the name implies, but not quite super sweet. Adding sugar-free maple syrup is the secret ingredient to not only bring it to the perfect sweetness, but also create the maple sweet potato flavor profile.

If you want your maple sweet potatoes dessert-delicious, then also add some of the non-caloric sweetener of your choice. If you’re not sure, taste test it first and then decide if you want even more sweetness.

Also if you’re going to use something like splenda, stevia, Truvia and so on, that works but consider the zero calorie brown sugar (such as Swerve, Truvia Sweet Complete, etc) because that adds even more to the flavor profile.

And of course, adding cinnamon is the perfect flavor-enhancing match for maple in sweet potatoes.

Taste test your potatoes before serving and you can decide if you want the additional sweetener, or a little more cinnamon or salt.

Need a topping? Add your favorite fresh herb.

Tips To Make The Mashed Sweet Potatoes The Perfect Consistency

Some recipes are best followed verbatim. This one you can tweak a lot of ways to make the finished product come out just the way you want it (like the sweetening and seasoning amounts I mentioned above).

If it’s too thick and it’s not soft or creamy enough? Add more milk. Not rich enough? Add a bit more low fat sour cream.

My only caveat is to add liquid ingredients in a little at a time – especially milk – because it’s easier to add in more moisture to dry, thick potatoes than it is to take it out of mashed potatoes that are too liquidy.

One last tip. If you’re cooking for a big feast and there’s a lot of other stuff to cook, you can make this the night before, or the morning of, store in the fridge, and just reheat them in the microwave before serving. Then you won’t be stressed out juggling multiple items on the stove and in the oven or grill at the same time.

And on the same note, if in doubt, scale up the batch. These make awesome leftovers!

Enjoy!

Tom Venuto,
Author of, Burn the Fat Guide To Meal Prep For Fat Loss
Founder of, Burn the Fat Inner Circle

PS. Also be sure to check out my original low-calorie mashed (white) potatoes and sweet potato protein pancakes

PPS. Looking for a true sweet potato dessert? Check out the healthy sweet potato protein brownies and the high protein sweet potato chocolate pudding

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About Tom Venuto
Tom Venuto is a natural bodybuilding and fat loss coach with 35 years of experience. He holds a degree in exercise science and has trained hundreds of clients in person and thousands online. He is also a recipe creator specializing in fat-burning, muscle-building cooking.

A former competitive bodybuilder, Tom is now a full-time evidence-based fitness writer, blogger, and author. His classic book Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle is an international bestseller, first as an ebook and later as a hardcover and audiobook. He is also the author of Meal Prep For Fat Loss, a practical guide to smart shopping, batch cooking, and kitchen strategies that make healthy eating simple and sustainable.

Tom is also the founder of Burn the Fat Inner Circle, a fitness support community with more than 59,000 members worldwide since 2006.

Tom’s work has been featured in Men’s Fitness, Muscle & Fitness, Oprah Magazine and dozens of other major publications. He is best known for his no-BS, scientific approach to natural fat loss and muscle-building.

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Do muscle mass gains always follow strength gains? How do lean powerlifters stay in the same weight class but keep lifting heavier? How do bodybuilders get bigger when they’re not lifting heavier? If your strength is down in a workout (no personal bests) does that mean your workout wasn’t productive and you won’t gain muscle? Here’s the short answer:

If you get stronger, will you get bigger? Usually yes, but not always, and it’s not always necessary to lift heavier to gain muscle.

There’s a close interaction between muscle gain and strength gain and vice versa. Getting stronger helps you gain muscle size and gaining muscle size helps you get stronger. But it’s not a one-to-one relationship, and this is where a lot of people get misled.

It would be more accurate to say that muscle gains correlate with strength gains.

The Myth About Getting Stronger That Won’t Die

You’ve probably heard this before: “just get stronger and you’ll get bigger.”  There’s truth to that. But the statement is incomplete – and sometimes flat-out wrong.

In fact, if you take that advice too literally, it can actually slow down your muscle gains or worse, beat up your joints while still not giving you the physique you want.

Almost everyone who lifts weights should try to get stronger. That’s not the issue. The mistake is thinking that adding more weight to the bar is the only way to gain muscle. It’s not. You can have productive, progressive workouts – and get bigger – even when the weight doesn’t go up.

Why This Matters Especially As You Get Older

This is especially important if you’re past your 40s, or even your late 30s. At some point, constantly pushing heavier and heavier loads stops working as well, increases injury risk, and starts to feel like you’re grinding your joints into dust.

I’ve been there, and I can tell you from experience – as well as the research – that chasing heavier weights at all costs is not the smartest way to train for muscle size, especially long-term.

Strength Training Vs Size training: Similar But Not The Same

I’ll break down the science in a minute, but here’s the key idea:

• Strength is influenced heavily by your nervous system.
• Muscle size is influenced by multiple growth mechanisms, not just heavy weight.

That’s why you can get stronger without getting much bigger, and you can get bigger without lifting heavier.

Getting stronger is a good thing for many reasons, and it usually does lead to increased muscle gains. But it’s not the only path to muscle growth, and it’s not always the best one, depending on your goal.

Not Everyone Wants To Be A Weightlifter Or Powerlifter

Many trainers and coaches today push their clients hard to get stronger.  I may be biased because I’m a bodybuilder, not a powerlifter, but I think there’s too much emphasis placed on heavy weight, low rep maximal strength training these days.

Personally, I couldn’t care less how much I bench.  I just want a good physique, great health, and enough strength to be functional in life as I get older. For many people, especially as they pass middle age, maximal strength training is not only not their interest, it’s too much stress for their joints anyway.

You should choose your own number one health and fitness priority; don’t let either a strength coach or a bodybuilding coach choose your goals for you.

If you’re a powerlifter or Olympic lifter, it’s your primary goal and your job to get stronger. If you’re a physique athlete, it’s your primary goal and your job to build muscle and look better. If your goal is general health and fitness, you’ll probably want a little bit of both – strength and muscle.

If you want to, you can pursue both – strength and muscle go together quite well and usually develop at the same time anyway. Just keep in mind that bodybuilders and powerlifters don’t train the same way, because they each have different goals. To optimize achievement of either goal requires specialized training with a primary focus on one or the other. That’s the law of training specificity.

How To Gain Muscle Without Maximum Weights

For bodybuilding or gaining muscle, the general advice to increase the weight progressively whenever you are able to over the course of your training career is absolutely correct. Progressive overload is a key driver of muscle growth – but increasing weight isn’t the only muscle increasing factor.

If you’re a bodybuilder or your primary goal is muscle size or physique development, you can’t always count on getting bigger just because you’re getting stronger. This is especially true if you only train heavy in the low rep ranges with long rest periods between sets. That’s because the mechanisms of muscle growth go beyond lifting more weight for low repetitions.

Developing muscle size is influenced by the amount of weight you lift because the amount of mechanical tension you place on the muscle is one of the three primary mechanisms of muscle growth. But developing muscle size (hypertrophy), is also governed by metabolic stress and muscle damage, not just tension alone.

Training with the bodybuilding style of workouts – a lower frequency of working each muscle group, shorter rest intervals between sets, a higher volume of work and higher number of reps – produces more metabolic stress and muscle damage than training with the powerlifting style. It also stimulates more blood flow and a bigger pump which leads to greater capillarization within the muscles. That answers the question of why bodybuilders usually carry more muscle size.

Now, about the other question I posed at the beginning of this post…

How Is It Possible To Get Stronger Without Getting Bigger? 

One of the biggest reasons you can get stronger without gaining size or body weight is  because developing strength is governed in large part by your nervous system getting more efficient, not just from a larger muscle cross-sectional area.

In a beginner especially, the majority of the initial strength gains are neural. The beginner’s nervous system is just getting started in learning how to fire off neural signals to the muscles – stronger, more coordinated signals that make the muscle contract harder and more efficiently.

This is why many lifting coaches say, “strength is a skill” and you “learn” how to do each lift better with practice and time, like any other skill. How do you get stronger without getting bigger or heavier? Practice. Practice the lifts often (higher frequency), practice the lifting technique to perfection, strive for progressive overload as your top priority, and over time your nervous system and muscular system together develop the “skill” of lifting more weight.

Furthermore, when you use very heavy weights in range of 1 to 5 repetitions per set, those types of heavy loads are more neurally demanding. When you combine that type of repetition and loading scheme with longer rest intervals, you don’t involve the energy systems and metabolic processes that optimize hypertrophy as much as if you did higher reps with shorter or moderate rest intervals.

You can’t expect to always get stronger though, and you should never get discouraged if you have workouts where you can’t increase the weight. In fact, it’s not normal to get stronger continuously. It’s normal to make gains for a while and plateau. You then do something to break the plateau and hopefully, continue to use progressive overload  to keep getting even stronger.

When You Can’t Get Stronger And You Plateau, What Then?

As an advanced lifter, more sophisticated training strategies are required than just “add 5-10 pounds to the bar every workout.” That is standard and correct beginner advice, but it’s too simplistic for advanced athletes, and is literally impossible to achieve forever. To keep getting stronger, advanced strength athletes have to know when to push hard and when to back off the intensity or when to take one step back to take two steps forward.

Basically we’re talking about graduating from simple programs with linear progression into advanced programs using periodization and much greater variety. Progression and periodization for advanced lifters is explained in all the good powerlifting and strength training books. It’s beyond the scope of this post to get into details, but here are two examples of what you might do when your strength plateaus:

1. Start taking de-loads once every 4th week (increase intensity for 3 weeks, then back off for a week)
2. Train straight through, increasing weights continuously until you miss your goal reps two workouts in a row, then back off 10-15% in weight and build back up

People with muscle size building goals also need to make their programs more sophisticated as they get more and more advanced. One way to do that is to vary the rep range (and the corresponding weight load).

Rep Ranges For Getting Stronger Vs. Getting Bigger

1. Low reps (heavy weight) for strength
2. Medium reps (medium weight) for hypertrophy
3. High reps (light weight) for endurance / metabolic effect.

The middle (hypertrophy) rep range is usually 8 to 12 reps. In the past, it was believed that for optimal muscle growth, you should train mostly in that muscle building “sweet spot” – that 8 to 12 rep bracket. But you’re not limited to using only one rep range, and today most bodybuilding trainers will agree that using both the strength and the hypertrophy rep ranges (with a small amount of high rep for pump and metabolic effect), is probably ideal for muscle growth.

Conversely, it was previously believed that if you trained mostly in the low rep ranges (4 to 6 give or take a rep), you’d get maximum strength increase, but probably not maximum muscle size increase.

However, based on the latest studies, it appears that if you do enough sets in the low rep ranges, so that the volume over each week is more or less equalized, you can probably gain as much muscle as if you worked in the hypertrophy 8 to 12 rep range. The difference is, you will be stronger than if you only train in the hypertrophy range.

Another way to increase muscle size while doing a strength or power program, is to add some bodybuilding-style hypertrophy work at the end of your workout, after you’ve done the heavy stuff first.

A weight lifter who trains entirely with low reps (with heavier weight) and doesn’t do a lot of volume or doesn’t add any hypertrophy work is rarely going to have the physique of a bodybuilder unless he or she has crazy muscle building genetics (a natural mesomorph), not to mention a really good diet.

An Important Point About What It Means To “Get Stronger”

One, let me clarify what “getting stronger” means. As mentioned above, most people think that heavy weights and low reps, like 3-5 reps, is for building strength. However, if you’re training for bodybuilding and if you increase the amount of weight you can lift for 10 reps, did you get stronger? You sure did! You increased your 10 rep max strength.

However, a lot of coaches and athletes think that getting stronger only means heavy weight and low reps. They don’t acknowledge that if you lift more weight in any rep range, you’ve gotten stronger. So remember, you can use progressive overload (increasing weights whenever you can) regardless of the primary repetition range you train in.

Two, it’s also worth mentioning that if you are gaining or even simply maintaining strength during a cutting phase, that is usually a good sign that you are also retaining lean body mass, even though it is not a direct assessment of lean body mass. If your strength is falling during a fat loss diet, that is not a good sign. It’s always a good thing to at least maintain your current strength level, especially when cutting.

The Bottom Line On Training For Strength Vs. Training For Muscle Size

Strength gains are a good thing that help lead to muscle growth, and correlate highly to muscle growth, but it’s very possible for your strength to go up without muscle mass going up.
It’s also possible to increase your muscle mass without increasing your strength (without lifting heavier) and there are many “progressive overload” techniques for doing that.

– Tom Venuto, author of Burn The Fat, Feed the Muscle.

PS.  If you want to learn more, then download a copy of my Progressive Overload Training Manual. If you want to gain more muscle size, the real key is progressive overload. In fact, did you know there are 7 major progressive overload weight training methods you can use to gain muscle – without lifting more weight? You learn them all in my new training manual.Click Here and pick up your copy today

References
Schoenfeld BJ, Ratamess NA, Peterson MD, Contreras B, Sonmez GT, Alvar BA. Effects of different volume-equated resistance training loading strategies on muscular adaptations in well-trained men. Journal of Strength And Conditioning Research. 2014 Oct;28(10):2909-18.

Erskine RM, et al. The contribution of muscle hypertrophy to strength changes following resistance training. European Journal of Applied Physiology, 114: 1239-1249, 2014

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About Tom Venuto
Tom Venuto is a lifetime natural (steroid-free) bodybuilder, fitness writer and author of Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle: Fat Burning Secrets of Bodybuilders and Fitness Models and the national bestseller, The Body Fat Solution, which was an Oprah Magazine and Men’s Fitness Magazine pick. Tom has appeared in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post, Oprah Magazine, Muscle and Fitness Magazine, Ironman Magazine and Men’s Fitness Magazine, as well as on dozens of radio shows including Sirius Satellite Radio, ESPN-1250 and WCBS. Tom is also the founder and CEO of Burn The Fat Inner Circle – a fitness support community for inspiration and transformation

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