The Best Tip for Sustainable Fat Loss

When it comes to the fitness industry, there are a lot of opinions out there about the best way to lose fat.

Unfortunately, most of those opinions tend to hover over well-intentioned people like money-hungry vultures eager to snatch a quick buck out of your back pocket at a moment’s notice.

What do I mean?

Most fitness propaganda will lead you to believe that fat loss is best achieved through one of these four methods:

1. Fat Loss Supplements

2. Specific Training Programs

3. Specific Workout Equipment

4. A Strategic Manipulation of Energy Balance

The problem?

Three out of four of those options are driven directly by money.

And in my experience, money tends to distort any notion of pure altruism.

Because as much as the people in the fitness industry want you to lose fat, build muscle, and live a healthier life, they also want you to buy their fat loss supplements, training programs, and workout equipment.

Fortunately, most of us are aware of this.

As much as any good dentist wants his patients to come into his office with vibrantly healthy gums and teeth, he also probably wouldn’t mind if you needed a few cavities filled, a wisdom tooth pulled, and a lifetime prescription of name brand mouthwash.

Business is business and we all have to make a living somehow.

The question is…

What’s the truth?

Are fat loss supplements, high-profile training programs, and specific workout equipment truly really necessary for sustainable fat loss?

Or is there a simpler, more affordable way?

As you may have guessed by now, the goal of this article is to provide you with an alternative approach to losing body fat sustainably that skips over the fat-burning teas, Movie Star Body training plans, and waist trainers.

I just have one simple tip.

Are you ready for it? 

Keep your “cardio” as fun and varied as possible.

In the past, I was awkwardly prideful about how little “cardio” I could do while still burning up fat. 

And this comes from a long history of bodybuilders being "against cardio at all costs." I'm exaggerating a little bit, but if you know you know. 

The idea is that anything you demand of your body that isn't stimulating for muscle growth while in a caloric deficit puts you at risk for muscle loss, which is why bodybuilders don't really do anything but walk while cutting fat. 

And it works like a charm if you have the time.

Plus, people like to be able to show off their lean physiques on Instagram with cheeky captions like, “Guess how much cardio I did to get this physique? None.”

And that’s great.

Eating like a bird is always an option for getting exotically lean if that’s your cup of tea.

But I'm going to be real with you, I think that's unrealistic and unsustainable for most people.

I think most people would be better off resistance training 3-5 times per week while sprinkling in as much "fun cardio" as possible.

Here are some examples:

• playing basketball before work with friends 

• playing soccer with your college buddies after work 

• hiking a new trail with your significant other

• take a long bike ride

• dropping into an OrangeTheory class

• hitting up a community yoga class

• trying out CrossFit for a few months 

• walking on the treadmill while binging your favorite new TV show

The key is to think about which ways you enjoy moving your body most and then implement them creatively into your lifestyle.

My own application of this concept is that I do CrossFit classes 5-6 times per week.

Why?

1. I love it, which makes it sustainable for me.

2. CrossFit burns a ton of calories and incorporates resistance training.

3. I don’t do it because I’ve been falsely promised it’s going to lead to automatic fat loss outcomes.

4. I do it in context of an entire lifestyle pattern that supports my fitness goals.

The result?

A great physique in context of a well-designed and implemented dietary pattern.

So ask yourself…

“What do I actually enjoy doing for exercise?”

And then do that as often as your lifestyle allows.

Why is fun “cardio” effective?

Keeping your “cardio” fun is effective for sustainable fat loss simply because movement burns calories.

Remember, fat loss is almost always a basic equation of calories in versus calories out.

If you burn more calories than you consume, you lose weight.

Therefore, adding a few more fitness-based activities to your weekly routine while keeping your caloric consumption the same tips this equation in favor of weight loss.

I also think fat loss becomes much less mentally demanding when you keep things fun. So it’s not that you’re burning more calories simply because you’re having fun - it’s that you’re not thinking of your exercise as some obligatorily hellish experience that “must be done.”

Keeping things fun creates positive associations around exercise instead of negative associations, which can be helpful for people who may have a strained relationship with working out.

Bonus Things to Consider

• You still have to make sure that you’re not out-eating your exercise.

  • No one here is suggesting that playing sand volleyball once a week with friends will give you the license to eat in excess while slowly transforming into a Greek statue.

  • The point is that if you were to add more exercise into your life while keeping all other lifestyle variables constant, you would likely lose fat over time.

• Resistance training is still king for obtaining a muscle-bound physique.

  • Going on a weekly hike and playing an extra game of basketball on Wednesdays isn’t going to make your glutes look like two newly discovered planets that rival the size of Jupiter.

  • You’ll want to be training effectively with weights several times per week to ensure muscle growth.

  • My recommendation in this article is to sprinkle in additional movement-based activity once you already have your resistance training regimen in place.

    • Also, my critique of high-dollar resistance training programs in the introduction is a critique of their unqualified promises to help people lose fat without consideration of other lifestyle factors like diet, sleep, and activity. It’s not a critique of resistance training programs overall. Training programs absolutely necessary for obtaining the lean, hard-body physique many people desire.

• It’s not all about calories.

  • What I mean here is that fat loss is best achieved through a combination of eating an appropriate number of calories, eating enough protein, resistance training, and implementing “cardio” as needed.

  • The point of this article is not to oversimplify the entire process. The point is to single out one particularly helpful tip for losing fat sustainably.

• Living a more active lifestyle will be much easier if you surround yourself with like-minded people.

  • In other words, you might have to get plugged into a new community!

  • Fortunately, there are lots of options like rock-climbing gyms, cycling clubs, CrossFit gyms, OrangeTheory gyms, yoga studios, and many others.

Summary

• You don’t need to spend your money on fat loss supplements, overpriced training programs, and fancy workout equipment to lose fat sustainably.

• My best fat loss tip is to keep your “cardio” fun so you can burn calories in an enjoyable manner.

  • If you were to think of your fat loss effort as a Venn diagram of three overlapping circles of effective, enjoyable, and adherable, you’d want your approach to be in that innermost circle.

• It creates positive associations around a lean body rather than negative ones. 

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I sincerely hope you found this article helpful or illuminating in some way!

If you feel like it brought you value, consider sending it to a friend or family member - especially someone who might be missing that “fun factor” when it comes to finding an exercise routine that works sustainably for them.

Later, friends.

-Andrew

How Does Online Fitness Coaching Work?

If you’ve stumbled onto this article because you’re in the research phase of hiring a “fitness” coach to help you with your goal of losing fat and building muscle, you’re in the right place.

In fact, I actually much prefer to call it online body recomposition coaching since it’s more specific to what most people want.

Let me explain.

Most people want to live a lean, muscular life.

In fact, you could put it even more bluntly and say that most people want to “look better naked” (as the expression goes).

And, although being fit can certainly overlap with an impressive physique, there’s no guarantee that getting fitter will make you look “better” in a swimsuit by the pool next summer.

Fitness and physique are not one in the same.

So keep that in mind as you continue reading.

As of now, I’ll officially be abandoning the term “fitness coaching” in favor of “body recomposition coaching” since I’m willing to bet you’re more interested in looking like a Greek god or goddess than you are improving your mile time.

I’m also willing to bet that you have a lot of questions about how this whole online body recomposition coaching thing works (as you should).

For example, you might be asking yourself…

• How can you even do personal training without being there with someone in-person? Isn’t that the whole point?

• Or is this somehow different than personal training? This “body recomposition” lingo is new to me.

• How do we communicate? Is it all through email or Zoom or what?

And you’re definitely wondering how much it costs.

Am I right?

Fortunately, I plan to answer all of those questions and more in this write-up.

What You Can Expect from This Article

My goal is for you to be thinking one of two things once you finish reading this article:

• “Wow. That was really helpful. Online body recomposition coaching sounds like exactly what I need in my life right now.” Or…

• “Wow. That was really helpful. I’m not sure online coaching is a good fit for me right now, but now I feel educated and empowered to make the right decision for myself.”

If you can say either of those things, I’m going to give myself a jovial slap on the back and treat myself to a bar of dark chocolate tonight.

So without further ado…

How does online body recomposition coaching work?

That’s a great question that deserves a great answer, but first I’m going to describe how traditional, in-person personal training works for the sake of comparison.

Let’s get right into it.

How does traditional, in-person personal training work?

With traditional personal training, you sign up for an initial consultation at your local gym and then typically book one to three sessions a week with a personal trainer that guides you through about an hour of stretching, resistance training, and cardio that they’ve programmed for you beforehand (hopefully) according to your goals.

They walk around the gym with you, lead you to each specific exercise, and offer corrective feedback on your technique.

They also program the number of sets and reps you will perform for each given movement and coach you through that accordingly.

There also seems to be a big social component to a lot of traditional personal training. In many cases, your coach becomes a sort of friend, and you wind up shooting the breeze with them for three hours a week.

In terms of rates, one week of discounted personal training at the local gym I attended for most of my twenties costed $99 for three 60-minute introductory sessions. If you add that price to the next three weeks of non-discounted sessions at $129 per week, that accumulates to over $500 for your first month of personal training, and it only goes up from there once the discounts no longer apply.

And this can be a great fit for a lot of people.

That’s in-person personal training.

So how does online body recomposition coaching work?

How does online body recomposition coaching work?

Online body recomposition coaching is much different and quite a bit more comprehensive (unless you choose to work with a reputable coach or company). Although I no longer run my own body recomposition company, I’m going to outline the experience as it was when I did.

So here we go.

Your initial consultation is done online from the convenience of your computer, which means you can Zoom in from anywhere in the world.

So the immediate advantage of opting for online body recomposition coaching is that you now have access to coaches and trainers on a global scale, which means you’re not limited to working with local trainers that may not align with your goals, values, or personality.

This is also a major advantage for online trainers because their pool of potential clients is now a splash shy of eight billion.

Not bad for business, right?

But back to consultations…

Your initial consultation is usually an opportunity for you to talk with your potential coach about whether or not working together seems like a mutually beneficial idea.

For example, your coach might ask you…

• What are your specific goals? Are you looking to lose body fat? Gain muscle?

• What are your motivations?

• What’s your diet history?

• What’s your training history?

• Do you have any prior injuries or medical conditions that I should know about?

• Are you taking any medications with side effects that are known to hinder weight loss efforts?

And, of course, you’ll (hopefully) have the opportunity to ask anything you might be curious about too.

• Will I have to run?

• Do I have to count macros?

• I’m vegan. Is that going to be a problem?

• Going to a public gym is overwhelming for me. Can I workout from home?

You get the point.

By the end of the call, the coach will either extend an offer to you or politely decline your interest in a coaching relationship if they feel they are genuinely unable to help you achieve your goals.

Assuming it’s a good fit and you decide to join the roster, you sign contracts and get to work.

On a second or third call with your coach, they might pitch you some kind of a lifestyle change proposal, which would essentially outline their big-picture plan for how they’d like to go about achieving your goals given everything you’ve told them in your consultation and all subsequent questionnaires. Essentially, this is a list of all the lifestyle habits and routines they’d like you to implement for optimal results.

For example, they might say:

• This is how many calories I’d like you to consume for these first two weeks.

• This is how I’d like to structure your training split.

• This is how much I’d like you to walk this week.

And much more, of course.

Here’s a quicker breakdown of the pros and cons as we see it:

PROS OF ONLINE COACHING

• It’s suited really well for busy people.

  • We live in a fast-paced world, and online coaching is designed for the digitally savvy.

  • You do the workouts on your own time, report your activities on your phone or on your laptop, and check in digitally for feedback.

• It benefits those who can take responsibility for what needs to be done.

  • If you’re an independent person, online coaching is a dream come true. You set a goal, surrender the strategy to your coach, and you implement what needs to be implemented. The guesswork is completely offloaded, and you have the freedom to execute without thought fatigue.

  • It’s also clear from day one that no one is going to do the work for you.

    • With in-person personal training, it can be easy to become convinced that you’ll see results “automatically” each week simply because you’re showing up. After all, you’ve got a personal trainer now, right?!

    • With online body recomposition coaching, you understand from the get-go that there are distinct coaching and client responsibilities in this process. The coach is responsible for designing a program that generates results according to your goals, and you are responsible for executing that plan.

  • Online coaching works particularly well for people who already feel comfortable in a gym environment.

    • Although we’re happy to send instructional videos on how to use the Hack Squat machine, progress tends to occur more quickly for individuals who have past gym-going experience. That being said, don’t let this deter you if you are new to the gym! Just be prepared for a steeper learning curve and more initial communication with your coach.

• It’s flexible and requires less scheduling and calendar management.

  • With traditional personal training, you have to align each workout session with your coach’s calendar. For most people, that means working out at a set time each week. For example, let’s say Mondays at 7 AM. But let’s say you’re a mom and a businesswoman and Little Johnny has been sick all night. You have to navigate an early morning doctor appointment, and the only time slot available is one that conflicts with your workout slot. You have to cancel last minute, and there’s no reimbursement. You didn’t workout, your money is gone, and you’re mentally discouraged.

  • With online coaching, let’s say you were still planning on working out on Monday at 7 AM. Little Johnny gets sick like he did in the first example, but now you’re able to make a simple and easy adjustment. You simply go to the gym after work on Monday, or maybe you even move your workout to Tuesday and take the day completely off while adjusting the rest of your week. You wind up getting a great workout, you don’t lose a dime, and mentally you’re actually better off than you were before because you’re feeling confident about your ability to navigate adversity while still pursuing your physique goals.

• It can be more affordable (but not always).

• It’s modern and effective.

  • We’re living in the 2020s, which means a lot of cool stuff is happening in formerly unthought-of ways. And for those who don’t know, thousands of people are obtaining healthier body shapes through online coaching. There’s no sense in thinking online coaching is “a bit edgy” or “risky.” At the company I currently work for, we don’t take your money and then surrender you to robots and automated messages. All of our one-on-one communications are 100% authentic and automation-free.

CONS OF ONLINE COACHING

• Your trainer obviously isn’t there with you in-person, and there might be a greater chance that you perform a few exercises with improper technique.

  • This is a fair critique, but we do ask for form videos from most clients in the early weeks of a program to ensure safety and movement quality.

• Some feel as though accountability is lessened when your coach doesn’t meet with you in person, but we mostly disagree, and here’s why:

  • Obviously, when you’re doing a set of decline weighted sit-ups and clearly slacking off, having an in-person trainer benefits you in that they are there to motivate you and encourage you to “push through the pain.” But what happens during the other 23 hours of your day? Keep in mind that most commercial personal trainers help you workout and that’s it. They consider nothing beyond what you do in the gym. So what happens when you go home and eat four slices of Papa John’s pizza and dig on a little Ben and Jerry’s for dessert? Where’s the accountability there?

• You workout alone.

  • For people who value the social element, this can certainly be a con of online coaching, but we honestly find that most people enjoy the time spent alone moving toward their goals without distraction and unnecessary noise. After all, there are plenty of other ways to get your social fix. Or, better yet, consider applying for our coaching with a friend! That’s a great way to make physique development more socially healthy for anyone who’d rather not be alone in the gym. And we’d likely cut you a slight discount for the creative thought and the addition to our client roster.

And those are the main pros and cons of online body recomposition coaching.

Summary

• Unless true fitness is your goal, you’re probably better off hiring a body recomposition coach than you are a fitness coach. Unfortunately, however, these terms are often used synonymously in the fitness space.

• And, although improved fitness is a fantastic goal for overall health and wellness, most people would rather pay someone to help them regain confidence in their physical appearance than be able to do 75 sit-ups in a minute.

• Traditional, in-person personal training can be a good fit for people who need in-person accountability, but I personally find its overall effectiveness to be limited.

• Online coaching favors those who are independent and digitally savvy. It makes good use of modern technology and allows for deeper and more intentional coach-to-client relationships.

• Online coaching also tends to be more affordable and grants you the opportunity to work with your favorite trainers across the globe.

• In some rare cases, online coaching may not be a good fit for people who don’t have any prior gym experience.

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As always, I hope you found this article helpful!

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me at @weswh1te on Instagram. Although I admittedly avoid social media like the plague, so be patient if it takes me a bit to get back to you.

Until next time,

-Andrew

5 Tips for Getting Back to Basics When You've Overcomplicated Your Body Recomposition Journey

To be honest with you, this article originally began as a personal note to myself I cyber-scribbled into my iPhone one day on a flight from Denver to St. Louis.

For quite some time, I had been making my body recomposition journey way too complicated, and I had become the poster child of self-inflicted paralysis by analysis.

And although ultimately my desire to understand every known detail about evidence-based body recomposition had fueled a lot of personal growth for me, I was starting to realize that it had also prevented me from taking my best strides at times.

I remember rewriting my own training programs over and over again thinking, “Finally! This is the perfect mesocycle for muscle growth,” just to rewrite it once more in a few days.

I remember thinking tirelessly about the “perfect” number of sets I should be doing each week and wondering fruitlessly if I should be counting drop sets as full sets or a half sets.

And I remember being hyper-focused on getting six “hits” of muscle protein synthesis per day to the extent that I was setting 150-minute timers on my phone so I’d know when to guzzle down my next serving of shredded chicken and half of a plain bagel.

I once even bought raw, cartoned egg whites and drank them in the car during a road tip because I was unwilling to miss an opportunity to “stimulate muscle growth.”

As the saying goes, I was missing the forest for the trees.

I had become so entrenched in the details that I had failed to look up and remember the grander narrative of what it meant to improve my body composition sustainably over time.

Does any of this sound relatable?

If so, I want to share with you what I wrote in that small note on my phone that day with the hope of helping you refocus on what matters most for a successful body recomposition endeavor.

5 Tips for Getting Back to Basics for an Improved Body Recomposition

1. remember that Calories matter most for fat loss, but your health and livelihood probably matter too.

It's so easy to overcomplicate this, but it really is true that you can get shredded to the bone while paying attention to calories and nothing else.

Just take a look at anyone who’s ever been stranded at sea on a handcrafted life raft like Chuck Noland and his spherical confidant Wilson circa 2000.

And in some sense, this is both good news and bad news.

It’s good news in that weight loss has now become very simple. If you consume fewer calories than you expend, you’ll lose weight.

But it’s bad news in that it becomes increasingly tempting to think of foods exclusively in terms of their caloric density and nothing else.

So now there’s really no good argument for ever eating an avocado or a handful of almonds over a Rice Krispies Treat because avocados have nearly three times as many calories than their marshmallow friends.

And yet most of us understand that avocados are probably the healthier option when pitted against an ultra-processed dessert made by a curious clan of animated elves.

Are you seeing how this can quickly become complicated?

At some point, the question we all have to ask ourselves is this:

To what extent will we nuance our understanding of calorie balance for a fat loss effort with our best understanding of how to eat for optimal health?

And so even though you could consume brownie batter flavored whey protein, Rice Krispie Treats, and peanut butter toward a leaner and meaner physique, it begs a few questions.

Would that be good for your health? Would you lose muscle mass? Would you be performing at your best on a diet of ultra-processed foods and somewhat “empty” calories?

Would your skin look the same? Would your hair be healthy? Would you be thriving sexually?

Would your sleep quality be high? Would you have energy throughout the day to invest in the relationships that matter most to you?

As I alluded to before, I ignored nearly all of those questions for a very long time in the name of caloric over-obsession and nothing else.

Did I get lean? Absolutely. But did I do so at the expense of my overall health? I believe so.

So to mitigate the risk of overcomplicating my first point in an article written to encourage people not to overcomplicate things, the main takeaway here is this:

Being in a calorie deficit is king for fat loss, but you’ll want to make sure you’ve thought through the health and wellness ramifications of your dietary pattern as well.

In fact, I think it’s similar to playing a game of chess.

In some undeniable sense, the king is the most important piece on the board. You cannot win without protecting him. Your own king, in this case, is your application of calorie balance.

But there are other important pieces on the board as well: the queen, your rooks, the bishops and the knights, and even the seemingly insignificant pawns that can become queens if you shepherd them well and guide safely beyond enemy lines.

We might consider these your overall health, your energy levels, your sleep quality, and your sex drive (among many others).

The key to becoming a great chess player is being able to command all of your pieces toward a unified goal while considering the greater context of the ultimate task at hand.

Will you be able to consider all of the pieces and how they can help you achieve your goal?

Or will you fail to see the bigger picture and miss the forest for the trees?

2. Don’t forget that training quality is the most important thing for building muscle.

I screwed this up for a long time too because I was searching for the “perfect” dietary pattern like it was the lost city of Atlantis.

In other words, I was placing a disproportionate amount of attention on my diet to give me the look I wanted instead of the quality of my training. I was incessantly tweaking something with the hopes of optimizing my physique just that much more.

And in doing so, I neglected my training quality.

In some sense, this this is the overcompensation for my first point in this article, and it’s a great example of how you can make a good thing a bad thing.

If you focus too much on the quality of your diet, you might forget that you actually have to train intelligently and intensely in the gym to build the muscle you want.

The point here is to settle into a dietary pattern that is supported by evidence for positive physique improvements and then eat habitually while you train with purpose.

The less time you can spend overthinking your diet the better.

For example, don’t waste time and energy wondering if eating 20 extra grams of carbohydrates from bananas versus berries during your pre-workout meal is going to yield you an extra 1% of muscle gain over the next five years.

Just get in the gym and train hard!

In summary, if a major component of your body recomposition goal is to grow bigger muscles, be sure to focus on high-quality training above all else.

3. Don’t overcomplicate your protein intake at the expense of other macronutrients.

This is another mistake I was making.

I had gotten overly focused on consuming excessive amounts of protein at the expense of food quality and overall food diversity.

As I mentioned before, there was a time when I would estimate that nearly 80% of my calories were coming from Fresh toast doused in sugar-free maple syrup and bowls upon bowls of teriyaki chicken.

Why?

Because they allowed me to “hit my macros” with convenience and ease.

Not only this, but I was convinced that five protein feeds per day must be better than four, and six must be even better than five. In doing so, I manipulated myself psychologically to believe that I “didn’t want my goals badly enough” when I only made time to eat three times per day.

Do I regret it? Absolutely.

Unfortunately, that season of eating was characterized by low energy levels and overall lethargy, digestive discomfort, and delayed post-workout recovery.

And even more unfortunately, I see now that choosing to eat that way had actually suppressed some of my greater values of health and vitality in favor of a “protein at all costs” mindset.

In short, my encouragement to you here is not to become protein-obsessed at the expense of a more well-rounded nutritional profile.

Instead, focus on eating an adequate amount of daily protein that supports your goal, and then maximize your intake of colorful plant foods as you approach your daily caloric target.

In an attempt to lead by example, I’ve now adopted a completely plant-based diet that is rich in lean protein sources, fruits, vegetables, legumes, whole grains, nuts, and seeds.

I feel better than ever, I eat much less protein than I used to (while eating way more carbohydrates and fats), and I’ve only continued to see steady muscle and strength gains since making that change in May 2021.

4. don’t stress about meals you can’t track perfectly.

As much as I enjoy the systematic fat loss outcomes of tracking food, I had come to realize that there were many times in life when tracking a meal just wasn’t worth the cost.

For example, one of my really good friends made me a delicious curry the other night.

If you've been around the macro-tracking block a few times, you know that curry isn't very tracker-friendly.

It's nearly impossible to know exactly how much of this vegetable or that vegetable was in your particular serving, and the sauce is always a caloric mystery.

This can make eating out with a friends a nightmare for people with orthorexic tendencies.

And this can be the case with many homemade meals like pastas, casseroles, and slow cooker meals.

Rather than stressing about it (like I would have in the past), I embraced the meal and simply kept my portion size reasonable and limited myself to one plate.

And I couldn't have been happier about it.

I didn't strain the relationship by being a high-maintenance guest, we were able to enjoy a delicious meal together without distraction, and I left feeling completely in control of my diet and physique.

So remember that not every meal in life will be trackable.

Learn to know when to relax and rely on mindful eating habits like portion sizes and eating to fullness without excess.

5. never forget that Sustainability wins in the end.

I mostly hate the phrase "do what works for you" because it always seems wildly unhelpful and conversationally lazy.

But this is one scenario where I think it works really well as long as we offer a brief explanation of exactly what we mean.

As it pertains to feeling more confident in your birthday suit, you’re still going to have to do all of the evidence-based things I’m always teasing out in all of my IVRY articles, but there are going to be small ways here and there that you can tweak your own lifestyle in unique ways for long-term body recomposition success.

For example, when dieting for fat loss, I used to eat a big breakfast and skip lunch in favor of a small snack in the afternoon and a bigger dinner while other people might prefer to fast until 1PM and then have their first large meal.

We're both generally still playing by all of the same rules of calorie balance, but we're manipulating those rules to our advantage based on our own preferences.

Does that make sense?

In my observations, this is a hallmark feature of all successful dieters - the ability to modify and nuance minor lifestyle behaviors in way that is rhythmic, repeatably, and sustainable for them.

Can I take it a bit further?

To be super frank, I'm not a proponent of transformations that people can't maintain long-term.

After having done this for awhile, I know how to sniff out a transformation photo of someone who crash dieted and destroyed their health to win an online “transformation challenge.”

Most people can starve themselves for eight weeks and "look hot" for a wedding. Most people can do super keto for three months and lose 30 pounds. Most people can suffer through P90X once to reveal a blurry six-pack and a plump, worm-like vein in their left bicep.

But what most people can't do is keep the weight off.

My point? Sustainability wins in the end.

Do yourself a favor and remind yourself to play the long game.

Summary

• When you’re passionate about improving your body composition, overcomplicating things can be an easy trap to fall into.

• Remember that calorie balance is most important for weight loss, but it’s probably a good idea to consider your health and wellness as well. The key is to find a balance.

• Never forget that training quality matters most for building muscle. Try not to let other aspects of the process distract you from executing a well-designed training plan with a high level of focus and intensity.

• Avoid overcomplicating your protein intake. Once you’ve identified an adequate amount of protein to eat on a daily basis, maximize your consumption of healthy carbohydrates and fats within your caloric target.

• Come to terms with the fact that you won’t be able to track every meal to the gram. In those unavoidable situations, eat mindfully and do your best to enjoy the moment stress free. You don’t have to keep a food scale in your back pocket at all times to be lean and muscular.

• Lastly, remember that sustainability is the name of the game. If overcomplicating any aspect of your body recomposition journey is preventing you from getting the results you want, you’d be smart to reconsider your plan in favor of something more sustainable.

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As always, I really enjoyed writing this article.

If you found it helpful, consider sending it to a friend!

Until next time,

-Andrew

CrossFit vs. Bodybuilding: Which is Better for Living a Lean Life?

To be honest with you, I never thought I would be writing this article.

For those of you who don't know, I was one of those classic “CrossFit-haters” before I woke up to the fitness, mobility, strength, and other positive health benefits of the CrossFit methodology, which means I would have given bodybuilding the award for “best training methodology for staying lean” over CrossFit in a heartbeat.

But after having dabbled in CrossFit for awhile now myself, I’m not so sure.

So it's time to discuss the battle of the training styles: Bodybuilding vs. CrossFit.

Which is better for getting that lean, hard-body look?

In this article, I am going to:

• Tell you what it means to train like a bodybuilder.

• Tell you what it means to train like a CrossFitter.

• Consider the general benefits of bodybuilding and CrossFit respectively.

• Tell you which one I think is “best” for living a lean, muscular life.

• Reveal how I personally train and eat based on my own goals and values.

You're busy, so let's define some terms and then jump right into it.

What does it mean to train like a bodybuilder?

Just know that the term "bodybuilding" here just means training with mostly straight sets of 6-20 reps with the primary goal of building muscle for aesthetic purposes above all else.

If you’re familiar with the term hypertrophy, you know that this is the name of the game for every serious bodybuilder - size and shreds at all costs.

But first, I want to make it clear that I don’t think you have to identify as a bodybuilder to train like a bodybuilder, and you certainly don’t have to be a competitive bodybuilder to train like a bodybuilder.

I wouldn't even have identified as a bodybuilder when I trained exclusively for hypertrophy from May 2019 through August 2021 because it simply wasn’t something I embraced as a part of my identity.

So when you see bodybuilding language being used in this article, remember that it just refers to that style of training, which is honestly what most normal people seem to do when they go to the gym to lift weights.

For example, they hit three sets of barbell bench press and then three sets of machine incline bench. Then they move on to a shoulder press and a few tricep movements to finish off their session with a skin-splitting pump and a quick flex in the mirror on their way back to the locker room.

Does this sound familiar?

In other words, most bodybuilders train with a particular training split in mind, which means they target specific muscle groups on specific days of the week (in most cases).

This is one of the main differences between bodybuilding and CrossFit.

Some of the most common training splits are:

• Push, Pull, Legs, Push, Pull, Legs, Rest

• Legs, Push, Pull, Rest, Legs, Rest, Arms

• Upper, Lower, Rest, Upper, Lower, Rest, Rest

• Full Body, Full Body, Rest, Full Body, Full Body, Rest, Rest

Mike Thurston, bodybuilder

To represent the bodybuilding side of the “argument” in this article, I’ve chosen to feature Mike Thurston, who has been one of my favorite fitness influencers for years.

And although Mike Thurston has often been accused of using performance enhancing drugs, he claims to be a drug-free bodybuilder (and I choose to believe him despite the rising intensity of the “natty witch hunt” movement).

For that reason, I think he's a great example of just about "as good as it can get" when it comes to training purely for physique outcomes.

So maybe consider his build as you continue reading about the bodybuilding side of things.

What does it mean to train like a CrossFitter?

CrossFit, for the purposes of this conversation, probably means that you actually go to a CrossFit gym and do their daily workouts usually called WODs or metcons.

You could maybe loop a more general circuit-like training style into this, but I'd rather not. It's just not the same, and I think we should keep CrossFit distinct from other training systems that might seem similar like Orangetheory or F45.

So for the purposes of this article, let’s assume that training like a serious CrossFitter is the dedicated equivalent of training like a serious bodybuilder.

For anyone who is unfamiliar with CrossFit, I think CrossFit is unique from bodybuilding in two distinct ways:

Noah Ohlsen, CrossFitter

1. True fitness is the goal of CrossFit - not aesthetics. And what’s important to remember here is that fitness refers to one’s ability to perform as much work as possible as efficiently as possible. What I mean here is that it’s not just about looking fit, which is a huge misconception in the fitness industry. While most people might agree that bodybuilders look fit, the truth is that most of them would struggle to post a respectable mile run time or even sprint 100 meters without straining a hamstring. And this isn’t meant to be an unfair dig at bodybuilders. Running in any capacity isn’t a primary component of what it means to be a bodybuilder.

2. CrossFitters don’t have training splits. In fact, one of the fundamental principles of CrossFit is known as The Hopper Model, which states that all-around fitness can be tested by pulling random fitness activities out of a bingo-like machine. For example, if you had 10 athletes looking to compete for the title of fittest of them all, you could pull out 10 random bingo balls with workouts on them and see who had the most impressive average performance. These workouts, however, would encompass a wide range of physical tasks: a max deadlift, a mile run, a couplet of pull-ups and overhead barbell presses for time, etc. The winner, in this case, would be the athlete who could perform the greatest variety of fitness exercises as well as possible. Because of this, CrossFit programming is about training in a way that best prepares you for the unknown. In other words, you won’t see CrossFitters doing bodybuilding splits. Instead, most of their training combines physical tasks in the categories of strength, gymnastics, and aerobic or anaerobic output (usually in the form of running, biking, rowing, or swimming).

Pictured above is Noah Ohlsen - one of my favorite physiques in the CrossFit space. Maybe think about him as you read about CrossFit and its perks.

He has finished in the top ten of the CrossFit Games seven times since 2014 and is frequently mentioned in conversations surrounding the “nastiest CrossFit physiques.”

Katrin Davidsdottir, CrossFitter

In both cases, I’ve tried to pick athletes who represent the cream of the crop for each of their respective sports.

And then obviously there are female representations as well, but I've decided not to go browsing the internet too intensely for women in minimal clothing, so you might have to do some of your own research for female physiques.

But for guidance you could Google "Gymshark chicks" "or “bikini competitors” for the bodybuildling/physique piece and then maybe Tia Toomey, Brook Wells, or Danielle Brandon for the CrossFit piece.

Pictured here is Katrin Davidsdottir, who won the CrossFit games in 2015 and 2016.

GENERAL BENEFITS OF BODYBUILDING

Keep in mind that the focus of this article is on which training modality is better for living a lean life - not necessarily which one is better all around.

But I've decided to start with a broader list of benefits of bodybuilding when compared to CrossFit to help people understand the bigger picture:

1. You can sculpt your physique more intentionally. So if aesthetics, symmetry, and shape are the most important things for you, this training methodology probably wins out. The most common example of this is probably women who want bigger glutes or men who want a bigger chest or bigger arms. CrossFit could certainly help with that, but a bodybuilding training style would be much more appropriate for a specific goal like bringing up a specific body part.

2. You're probably less likely to get injured, but it's no guarantee. I would just personally say it's less likely because the movements are generally less explosive, but some might disagree. You can hyperextend your knee on a leg press and fold in half like a piece of cheese just like you can tweak your back at CrossFit doing a heavy deadlift. And the only sense in which this injury piece has anything to do with getting and staying lean is that it’s hard to maintain an impressive physique as a wounded soldier.

3. Your workouts will be significantly easier in a "cardio sense" if you train like a bodybuilder. In other words, you never really get out of breath or feel like your lungs are going to explode. Some people really hate that feeling, so I think this is a notable perk for the bodybuilding camp.

4. You don't have to be athletic to train like a bodybuilder. While CrossFit might have you jumping onto boxes, running, and doing ring muscle-ups, bodybuilding is mostly about staying in fixed positions and focusing on a maximal mind-muscle connection.

GENERAL Benefits of CrossFit

On the other hand, I think the general benefits of CrossFit when compared to bodybuilding are:

1. Getting leaner and stronger happens fairly thoughtlessly if you show up consistently and continue to challenge yourself. That elimination of thought-fatigue is enormously important in my opinion. Most people already have enough to think about. Do you really want to have to design your own optimal diet and training program for glute hypertrophy?

2. You get to eat more food than bodybuilders and physique-minded people, which can have major lifestyle implications for people who don’t have the time or energy to be obsessing over food scales and precise macronutrient targets. Why? Bodybuilding doesn’t burn very many calories when compared to CrossFit workouts.

3. You actually get to take home a bit of fitness with your vanity. As amazing as some bodybuilders look externally, their aesthetic appearance is the extent of their “fitness.” CrossFit focuses on physical fitness above all else, which allows physique improvements to be byproduct of the greater goal. I think this has powerful psychological implications for people who want to be leaner and more muscular but are tired of being told to focus on “being in caloric deficit.”

Now that we’ve discussed the broader benefits of bodybuilding and CrossFit, which is better for living a lean, muscular life?

which one is better for a lean, muscular life?

Steve Cook, bodybuilder and fitness model

If your sole goal is to live lean life while looking like a Greek god or goddess, bodybuilding is going to better because it’s a more appropriate training methodology for your specific goal.

But a major caveat here is that it requires a level of discipline in the gym and the kitchen that most people are incapable of embracing.

For example, are you really going to make time to train 5-6 times per week for 60-90 minutes? Are you really going to hit 20 sets of quads taken within a few reps of mechanical failure? Are you really going to periodize seasons of cutting and bulking with specific macros and calories targets to accompany your goal?

Maybe! But maybe not.

For a lot of people, that level of self-responsibility and ownership just isn't realistic. They don't have the drive or the ambition or the time or the energy.

For that reason, I think CrossFit is better in terms of living that lean, muscular life that so many people seem to desire.

But let me be clear here about what I’m saying so you can understand the nuance.

In a vacuum, I think bodybuilding is better for overall aesthetics. But in real life, I think CrossFit is a better training system for longterm body recomposition.

In other words, if I had it my way, I would encourage everyone with a fat loss goal to start doing CrossFit over bodybuilding with the supervision of a weight loss specialist like me.

Why?

Firstly, bodybuilding just can't hold a candle to the time-effectiveness of CrossFit.

Christian Harris, CrossFitter

With CrossFit, you show up, get your bum kicked and lungs torched in less than an hour, and you go home having gotten a great stimulus for muscle growth and having burned a ton of calories in most cases.

This also leaves more grace for imperfect eating habits that bodybuilding folks don't get. In other words, you might be able to "get away with" training hard 4-5 times per week at your CrossFit gym while pretty much eating what you want within reason.

Does this mean you get to eat pizza and ice cream every night and be shredded?

No. It just means you can probably eat mostly whole foods to satiety and enjoy occasional (or even frequent treats) while staying respectably lean and in good health.

Secondly, most people are clueless when it comes to structuring a muscle-building workout (much less an entire cycle of evidence-based hypertrophy training) and lack the discipline required to execute that workout plan consistently.

In this case, the insurmountable benefits of CrossFit (in my opinion) are:

• The reduced thought fatigue of knowing the workout is already written for you.

  • All you have to do is show up and give your best effort.

• The accountability of a coach and other athletes in the class.

So, at the end of the day, I think it’s less of a question of which is “better” in an absolute sense and more of a question of which is “better” for you and your life.

Both bodybuilding and CrossFit can lead people toward leaner body compositions that boost health and confidence.

Ask yourself the following:

Which one do you enjoy more and which one can you see yourself doing sustainably?

If that’s bodybuilding, train like a bodybuilder.

If that’s CrossFit, train like a CrossFitter.

It just might be that simple.

What am I currently doing?

Right now, I'm blending both bodybuilding and CrossFit training concepts, but the majority of my training is centered around 5-6 CrossFit workouts per week.

Before or after those days, I do strength work primarily in the front squat, squat, and overhead press because improving my strength is a personal goal of mine.

Beyond that, I'm hitting extra bicep and side delt volume to help boost areas of my physique that I enjoy being more pronounced for aesthetic purposes.

In terms of how much I weigh, how lean I am, and how much I’m eating, I tend to hover around 190 pounds while eating about between 3,500-4,000 calories per day at somewhere between 12-15% body fat (according to the best body fat scan technology I have access to).

Why am I doing this?

This unique blend of training modalities is what most accurately reflects my personal values at this point in my life.

Personally, I value my overall physical fitness over my aesthetic appearance (which wasn’t always the case), and CrossFit is a much better lifestyle fit for me than bodybuilding.

It allows me to “eat in abundance” and “train like a freak,” which is personal motto of mine. I eat more than twice I used to eat as a bodybuilder, and I frequently enjoy 21-inch pizzas, toddler-sized burritos, Oreos, and red wine.

For me, nothing could be better, but I encourage everyone to make that choice for themselves.

Summary

• Bodybuilding will probably be better for anyone whose goal of being lean is driven by aesthetics above all else. While CrossFit will help you lose fat and build muscle, bodybuilding principles (when applied properly) will yield better aesthetic outcomes over time in most cases.

• CrossFit might be better for people who don’t have the time, energy, or ambition to write their own workouts and show up the gym consistently on their own accord.

• CrossFit might also be better for anyone who isn’t interested in looking like a Greek sculpture. There are plenty of people who just want to lose some weight, gain some muscle, and look and feel more confident in their clothes.

• I personally think CrossFit is a more practical approach for most people, but you can certainly live a lean, muscular life training like a bodybuilder as well.

• I am currently doing 5-6 CrossFit workouts per week while supplementing with some strength and hypertrophy work because it reflects my goals and values.

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As always, I really enjoyed writing this article, so if you found it helpful, do me a favor and send it to a friend.

Until next time,

-Andrew

6 Fat Loss Tips for People Who Work Sedentary Jobs

For many of us, quarantine dramatically reduced the amount of physical activity we were able to perform on a daily basis.

At one point we were literally restricted to confines of our homes, and many of us shifted from working in a traditional office setting to working from our spare bedrooms.

And none of this was our fault.

Unfortunately, our bodies didn't care that it wasn't our fault, and a lot of us put on unwanted body fat due to the reduced amount of daily walking and increased amount of couch-sitting we all did while surfing through every streaming platform known to mankind instead of doing literally anything that would have required us to take an active step out the front door.

But there’s a silver lining.

Now that the evil forces of the “it-who-must-not-be-named” virus of 2020 have mostly been subdued, our freedoms to go here and there and anywhere seem to be reinstated, which means…

Everyone who got pudgy during the pandemic now has the resources they need to improve their body composition.

The only problem?

Some of us are still working highly sedentary remote jobs, which can absolutely be a legitimate obstacle for anyone looking to lose body fat and reveal a harder, leaner physique.

And, of course, this applies to anyone who works a sedentary job whether it’s in-person or remote.

So here are my personal tips for losing body fat if you work from home or sit on your butt elsewhere all day at work.

6 Fat Loss Tips for People Who Work Sedentary Jobs

1. Acknowledge that you're at a BIT OF A disadvantage.

As much as it may stink, the person who walks 15,000 steps per day due to their naturally active lifestyle or vocation (like a construction worker or a landscaper) is going to have an easier time staying lean than the office job guys and gals.

Okay, it stinks.

Now let's move on and quit lamenting an unchanging reality.

If you've got a desk job, you're at a contextual disadvantage, but...

Remember that energy balance always matters most for fat loss.

If that term is new to you, don’t worry.

Energy balance just refers to the laws of thermodynamics that state that you lose weight when you consume fewer calories than you expend. This is the classic “calories in versus calories out” discussion.

So what’s the implication?

You can still lose fat while working a sedentary job, but you’re going to have to be more cautious with your caloric intake than someone whose lifestyle allows them to be more active.

Once you embrace that small disadvantage, you’ll be able to start implementing new habits that fit the specificity of your own unique situation.

2. Get creative about squeezing walks into your day.

Even though plenty of us are working from home now, it’s always an option to be more creative and disciplined when it comes to finding ways to be active.

For example, could you get up early each morning and take a lap or two around the block while listening to a podcast before you settle into your home office?

Is there a Zoom call you need to be "on for" but not visible? Maybe you could walk outside with ear buds while on mute.

Are you a stay-at-home mom? Try to implement family walks and neighborhood adventures to the park a part of the daily routine.

The key is to be creative and solution-oriented when it comes to minimizing the negative effects of a primarily sedentary lifestyle.

3. Come to terms with the reality that your caloric deficit might need to come MOSTLY through a reduction in caloric intake.

Unless you’re able to carve out a ton of time during your day for exercise, it's highly likely that you're going to have to get into a caloric deficit primarily through a reduction in caloric intake instead of an increase in activity.

If you love food, that might not be the most fun in the world, but it might be an unavoidable conclusion if you’re serious about pawning off your spare tire for a slimmer waistline.

On the brighter side, bodybuilders and other physique competitors have been doing this for decades, so can know at the very least that you’re in good (and lean) company.

But what if you really don’t want to reduce your caloric intake?

Firstly, I hear you. I absolutely love eating, so I’ve opted to be the “do more eat more” guy instead of the “do less eat less” guy.

And to this point, remember that you always have the option of adding in more activity in order to eat a bit more food throughout the day.

However, the reality for most people working sedentary jobs is that there just might not be enough time in your day to walk, jog, bike, or row for 45-60 minutes.

Nonetheless, keep in mind that you always have three options when it comes to kickstarting a fat loss effort:

1. Eat fewer calories,

2. Exercise more,

3. Or implement a sneaky combination of both.

In terms of eating fewer calories, you’d probably be best-suited to prioritize lean proteins, voluminous "health foods" like leafy greens, an assortment of unique vegetables and fruits, whole grains, beans, and healthier fats like avocados, nuts, and seeds.

In terms of exercising more, I always encourage people to walk more because it can be done anywhere, it’s free, and it’s easy.

If you wanted to incorporate a bit of both, you could make one of the following example adjustments to get your fat loss journey started:

• Idea 1: “I’m going to set a timer for 20 minutes each morning and walk through my neighborhood during that time. And I’m going to institute a one-plate-and-done rule at dinner. No seconds! Just one well-portioned plate.”

• Idea 2: “I’m going to set an alarm for 11 AM, 1 PM, and 3PM. Each time the alarm goes off, I’m going to walk to the end of the street and back to move my body. And I’m going to swap my two daily sodas for sparkling waters.”

Lastly, this is great time to mention that intermittent fasting can be a powerful strategy for at-home workers.

4. Ditch (or redefine) your snack life.

Arguably the worst temptation of working from home is that your pantry is taunting you from a scalable distance of 20 feet at all times.

So firstly, don't even have that stuff in the house if you really want to set yourself up for success.

Because let’s be honest. It’s unlikely that any of your favorite high-calorie snacks like cheese puffs and Oreos have your top-notch pool bod in mind.

But if you can muster the discipline required to enjoy snacks in moderation, you might consider setting some basic parameters on your snacking habits.

For example, “I don’t snack until 7 PM, but then I allow myself one serving of my snack of choice as a small dessert.”

In most cases, you’ll be able to make room in your diet for one small treat per day like two Oreos or a small bag of Goldfish.

Or you could completely redefine what it means to snack altogether by reaching for apples instead of cookies.

All in all, the key is not to snack mindlessly during the day simply because you’re bored or you happened to walk by the pantry in a moment of weakness.

Snack strategically, and remember that portion control is always important.

5. Push for active hangouts with your friends.

For physique-minded people, it can be discouraging that our most common hangouts in life revolve around foods and drinks that tend to promote caloric overconsumption.

The classic combination?

Pizza and beer.

In an attempt to redirect the narrative a bit, try catching your friends on the front end of a social idea by suggesting an active hangout like walking downtown or going on a hike.

Or maybe you could even invest in a relationship one-on-one simply by having walking dates at a park or anywhere nearby that allows you to get moving.

Better yet? Make it a weekly or biweekly thing.

“On Mondays at 3 PM, I walk with my co-worker Mary around the parking lot for 30 minutes, and every other Friday I walk with an old friend from high school around a nearby lake in the morning before work.”

I've had several clients find both fat loss success and relational meaning in this methodology.

Again, it comes down to being intentional, creative, and disciplined.

6. Experiment with traditional cardio on the incline treadmill or the StairMaster.

I couldn't write an article about this without saying it, but there's no shame in using a machine to help you reach your goals!

If the weather is terrible, don't be Mr. or Mrs. Well It's Raining.

Stop being silly.

Go to the gym and hop on the machine that forces you to walk lest you fall on your face and become a raging, viral TikTok at the expense of your all-but-hardly-remaining dignity.

And if you're really sick and tired of being tubby? Get on the StairMaster.

I actually made an entire video about the StairMaster and how you could leverage it for your fat loss goals, and - spoiler alert - it works if you can survive.

BONUS TIP: CONSIDER HIGH-INTENSITY INTERVAL TRAINING OR SOMETHING SIMILAR like crossfit.

Truthfully, I think the best way to combat the negative side effects of working a sedentary job is to start doing CrossFit (or something similar).

But before you write me and my ideas off forever because “CrossFit'“ is a death cult for ego-driven masochists who promote improper technique, let me explain myself.

The beautiful thing about CrossFit is that it forces you to burn a lot of calories in a very short amount of time.

As wonderful as walking is, it takes much longer to burn the same number of calories from walking as it does training in a CrossFit-like manner.

In short, CrossFit is a quick and effective way to burn a lot of calories while placing your body under the stress of heavy loads and unique planes of resistance, which over time leads to increased muscle growth and a more muscular looking physique overall assuming proper overload, diet, and recovery.

More specifically, I think this is particularly good idea for busy people who work sedentary jobs because it ticks both the “lift weights” and “improve your heart health” boxes all in one workout experience.

Plus, most CrossFitters wind up looking pretty jacked over time despite the sport’s focus on fitness over pure aesthetics.

But keep in mind too that you don’t have to do CrossFit to reap these same benefits.

You could adopt a CrossFit-like training style in your own garage with minimal equipment if you’re put off by the price of joining a local CrossFit gym, or you could join a gym with a similar fitness model like Orangetheory.

I just personally think CrossFit (when done well) is superior due to the more advanced weight lifting components than many other gyms fail to incorporate.

Summary

• Working a sedentary job for 40 hours a week does put you at a slight disadvantage when compared to fat loss friends with more active jobs simply due to a lack of caloric expenditure, but…

• Fat loss can always be achieved through a strategic reduction in caloric intake, which means there’s hope for all sedentary workers regardless of how much time you have (or don’t have) to exercise.

• Intermittent fasting can be an excellent dietary strategy for sedentary workers.

• It’s a good idea to eliminate or heavily monitor your snacking habits if you’re looking to lose body fat. Or, start making healthy snacking swaps like trading in your Doritos for clementines.

• When it’s time to hangout with your friends, try to direct your crew toward an active hangout like walking or hiking.

• For those who have the time, don’t be afraid to hit the gym after work just to crank out 15-45 minutes on the incline treadmill or the StairMaster.

• If you’re really looking to combat the negative aspects of a sedentary job, consider joining a CrossFit gym or trying Orangetheory as a time effective way to slash a ton of calories and build strength all at once.

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As always, I really enjoyed writing this article, so if you found it helpful, do me a favor and send it to someone in your life who might be living the desk job life and struggling to keep their weight under control.

Until next time,

-Andrew

4 Big Mistakes to Avoid for Improving Your Body Composition

If you’re committed to improving your body composition by losing body fat and gaining muscle, there are a few big mistakes you’ll want to avoid at all costs.

In this article, I’ve chosen to highlight four of them.

1 - You’re Being Inconsistent with Your Caloric Intake

Being inconsistent with your caloric intake tops the list because calories are king for fat loss, which means…

You don't have to lift weights to lose fat.

You don't have to run to lose fat.

You don't have to go to group fitness classes to lose fat.

You don't even have to walk to lose fat.

You also don’t have to give up pizza or beer.

But you do have to be in a calorie deficit, which means you can always look to a calorie-controlled diet for fat loss. That one is non-negotiable.

So if you're screwing around with your caloric intake due to a lack of discipline by eating 2,000 calories on Monday, a random 1,400 calories on Thursday because "life got busy," and then 4,000+ on Friday through Sunday because #theweekend, there's a very small chance you're going to be able to make any systematic or sustainable progress toward that lean, hard-body look.

I know a lot of "fitness people" like me like to shy away from saying the hard truths sometimes, but I really think you're wasting your time if you can't find a way to get consistent with your calories.

Do you have to be perfect? Of course not.

In fact, the “perfect” diet doesn’t exist.

But there should be some semblance of consistency when it comes to your dietary pattern if you want reliable results.

Side note: Don’t be the guy or gal who says, “Oh, my diet is consistent alright! I have three Cokes every day and three beers every night like clockwork!”

I’m encouraging you to consistently eat mostly whole foods in modest portions - not excessive amounts of ultra-processed junk foods.

In my opinion, one good way of gauging how consistent your caloric consumption is on a daily basis is to see how well you can answer the question, “So what’s a normal day of eating look like for you?”

If your answer is something like, “I almost always have oatmeal or a smoothie for breakfast. Lunch is usually a tofu salad or a tofu sandwich. And then I usually have some kind of pasta dish for dinner with vegetables. And if I need a snack I tend to grab a piece of fruit or enjoy some peanut butter toast,” then you’re probably doing great.

To be clear, I’m not suggesting that you have to be eating those exact foods, I’m just making the point that it’s probably a good sign if you can speak to that question with specificity and rhythm.

In other words, if you eat similar foods or genres of foods in similar daily patterns, there’s a good chance that you’re being adequately consistent with your caloric consumption.

But if you stumble through that question awkwardly because it depends on the leftovers selection in the office refrigerator and whether your significant other bought Twinkies or Nutty Bars that particular week, your dietary pattern might be worthy of reconsideration if you’re really trying to hone in on that lean, hard-body look.

More specifically, f your goal is lose body fat right away, you’ll need to consistently eat a bit less than your current metabolic needs. If your goal is to gain muscle right away, in most cases you’d be best to consistently eat a bit more than your current metabolic needs.

In either case, consistency in context of your caloric consumption when applied strategically to your specific goal is paramount for successful and sustainable fat loss and muscle gain.

So what’s the main takeaway here?

Make sure you’ve tailored your caloric consumption toward a specific goal and then actually consume that number of calories consistently (even if you’re not tracking them meticulously).

2 - You're Not Eating Enough Protein

The path to improving your body shape in a noticeable way is littered with unexpected difficulties, unwanted plateaus, and lots of demanding training sessions, muscle soreness, and a high level of discipline in both the gym and the kitchen.

Why make it any harder by skimping on your protein intake?

That's always the question I bounce around in my noggin when people push back on the amount of protein I recommend that they consume on a daily basis.

Firstly, know that my protein recommendations aren’t unique or unreasonable.

If anything, they’re much lower than the recommendations of popular experts in the fields of bodybuilding and physique enhancement in that I commonly encourage people to aim for 0.7g of protein per pound of lean body mass.

High-protein black bean pasta

For many, this will seem very low compared to the ultra high-protein diets touted by many, but it’s a position I’m happy to stand by.

In fact, I’ve even updated the original content of this very article to better convey my current opinion on protein consumption, which is…

That you need an adequate amount for muscle growth and nothing more.

I used to be of the opinion that protein was the “most important” macronutrient for a body recomposition goal because it:

• Maintains and builds new muscle tissue

• Tends to satiate us more than other foods, which can lead to improved diet adherence

• Has the highest thermic effect of food which means it requires more energy for your body to burn

But now I find that position to be narrow-minded and a bit heedless in context of a bigger body recomposition picture that includes that importance of carbohydrates and fats.

I might compare it to being asked what is the “most important” feature of a car: the engine, the wheels, or the steering mechanisms.

It doesn’t take most people too long to realize that the question is nearly impossible to answer because…

All of those features provide essential value to the overall function of the vehicle.

In this particular example, I think most people would be tempted to think of protein as the engine because it seems to come first in the chain events.

In other words, being able to turn on the engine seems like the “most important” thing because the car can’t go anywhere without the ignition.

At the same time, it won’t do you much good to have the engine running if your car is sitting on cement blocks without wheels or tires.

And, of course, something similar could be said of sliding into the driver’s seat to find yourself without a steering wheel (even though you’re smuggling 500 HP under the hood with a fresh set of tires that would make even the Michelin man blush).

In some sense, everything works synergistically toward the same goal of moving from Point A to Point B, which I how I feel about the relationship between protein, carbohydrates, and fats when it comes to trading in unwanted body fat for lean tissue.

So what’s my point?

Protein is important in the sense that you need an adequate amount to support muscle growth, but healthy carbohydrates and fats are important too (not to mention fiber).

That being said, the focus of this segment of the article is to make sure you’re eating at least 0.7g of protein per pound of lean body mass.

Once you have that in place, you can focus intensely on the quality of your training.

3 - Your Training Style Isn’t Conducive for Muscle Growth

This is a big one for obvious reasons.

If your goal is to lose body fat and build muscle but you aren’t training in a way that supports fat loss or muscle growth, what are you doing?

To be fair, I sincerely believe that most people don’t know any better.

They assume that all kinds of training methods can build muscle, but this is a classic point of confusion between general health, fitness, and “looking hot.”

To spare you the nuance, this is what you need to know in two brief points:

• Lots of training methods are good for building some muscle, but some are much better than others.

  • I think the lowest hanging piece of fruit here is the infamous group cardio class.

    • Need a mental picture? Picture 15-20 men and women in a room with a bunch of mirrors doing half-burpees, half-lunges, and shoulder presses with pink dumbbells. And I’ll admit I feel a bit dirty for positioning it so poorly, but group cardio classes strike a sensitive nerve in my body recomposition brain because they just don’t work very well if your goal is to look lean and muscular, (which is an extremely important caveat).

    • If your goal is improved general health and fitness, knock yourself out! I couldn’t be more supportive of group cardio classes for people with non-aesthetic goals. You’re just very unlikely to see meaningful improvements in your physique by going to “gen pop” group cardio classes.

  • Other examples could be boxing, yoga, or spin classes.

    • All by themselves, they just aren’t going to build you any impressive amount of muscle. Will they help you lose fat, build a small amount of muscle, improve your mobility, and boost your heart health? Yes! But you probably won’t be looking markedly jacked and lean at the pool.

      • Side note: If you’re currently reading this an enthusiast of one of these training methods or fitness activities, please don’t be offended! I love and appreciate exercise of all kinds, but the focus of this article is on how to avoid mistakes for drastically improving your body composition through added muscle mass and decreased body fat.

    • Lastly, if you love boxing or yoga but you want to be more jacked too, just added resistance training into your routine, which brings me to my second point.

• You grow muscle best by weight training within a few reps of technical failure mostly in the 6-20 rep range.

  • Really, this is the advice you need to take to the bank and cash-in on.

  • Lift heavy with as many sets as you can recover from as often as possible while getting modestly stronger over time.

So what’s the point here?

Make sure your training methodology is known for producing the physique you’re personally looking to achieve.

4 - You Let Small Obstacles Get In Your Way

One of my favorite mottos with regard to losing body fat is not to let perfection become the enemy of progress, and I mean that sincerely.

Perfection when it comes to dieting for any body recomposition goal is largely a fallacy, but I also think it's important not to give yourself too much grace.

And here I go putting myself at risk of being canceled…

Stick with me for a moment.

In my personal opinion, grace is really good thing to give freely in life. Your spouse needs grace, your friends need grace, and you need grace.

I need grace.

But, there's a difference between giving ourselves grace in moments of true need and making excuses for not doing what needs to be done.

For example, if you're a mother of three and one of your workouts has to be moved because your youngest comes down with a fever and needs some motherly attention, that seems like a legitimate reason to give yourself grace to miss that workout, love and care for your child well, and make plans to do that workout tomorrow instead.

But here is a quick list of three excuses I could see people making.

Are you ready for a series of hot takes?

"All I had on me was a protein bar, so I had to get fast food for lunch."

• First of all, a protein bar is a great option in a pinch! What's wrong with eating a protein bar?

• Secondly, the language here says a lot. You "had" to get fast food for lunch. No, you didn't. You were not the victim of the universe here - you just made a decision that valued your immediate comfort and preference over your body recomposition goal.

• I’m not trying to rip this person’s head off, but this is classic example of an “excuses mentality.”

"I'm having a hard time meeting my step goal on Mondays because The Bachelor comes on at 7PM."

• Girl, I watch the Bachelor too! You just need to plan accordingly. As far as I know, the Bachelor comes on at 7PM every week without surprise. Get up early. Stay up late. Snag 2,000 steps over your lunch hour. Get it done, you know? That's much more of an excuse to me than a legitimate reason to be set back.

"I didn't get groceries this week so my protein has been way off."

• Dude, go to the store! There is such a simple solution here. At the same time, I know what it's like to run out of groceries and be in a pinch when it comes to needing a high-protein meal.

• Me personally? I consider it self-imposed “punishment” for poor planning and laziness, so I'll make myself go buy a nice, protein-dense meal. For me, this usually means hopping over to Chipotle.

Long story short, I find that the people who are constantly eager to let relatively insignificant obstacles knock them off track are the ones who have a hard time achieving their body recomposition goals.

Does it mean you're wasting your time? Not necessarily. But I think it's worth a look in the mirror and asking yourself, "What are we doing here? Are we doing this or not?"

Summary

Firstly, please do your best not to be offended by this article. My intention is purely to help and never to harm, but I’ve been known to have a direct tone at times.

I'm just speaking to trends I’ve seen anecdotally among unsuccessful people: the people who lose 20 pounds and then gain back 30, the people who bounce from fad diet to fad diet, or even the people who mean well but just can't get their habits and behavior in check for long enough to see a difference.

The solution to avoiding all of these things?

Do your best to take extreme ownership of yourself, your lifestyle, your journey, and your results.

In summary, here are the four big mistakes I referenced in this article:

• Avoid being wildly inconsistent with your calories. The key to both losing fat and gaining muscle is eating a strategic amount of food tailored toward a specific goal.

• Avoid eating an inadequate amount of protein. In most cases, it will be more the sufficient to consume 0.7g of protein per pound of lean body mass.

• Don’t make the mistake of picking a primary training methodology that doesn’t support your goal of losing fat and building muscle. Resistance training usually produces the “best” and “most attractive” physical results.

• Don’t make unnecessary excuses for not doing the things you need to do to achieve your goal.

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I really enjoyed writing this article, so if you found it helpful, do me a favor and send it to someone in your life who finds body recomposition banter just as entertaining as you do.

Until next time,

-Andrew

How to Use Single-Day Fasting to Lose Fat and Build Muscle

You guys remember when Zoolander dropped in 2001 and Will Ferrell’s Mugatu character couldn’t stop obsessing over Hansel’s hotness?

That’s how I feel about fasting right now in the fitness industry.

Some people think it’s an amazing dietary strategy to help with fat loss (and sometimes even muscle gain) while others believe it’s suboptimal to having more consistent protein feedings across the day in order to maximize muscle protein synthesis.

Some people will tell you it improves insulin sensitivity and boosts natural testosterone levels while others would lead you to believe that it’s putting you at risk of muscle loss.

So which is it?

And why does it always feel like the fitness industry is exploding with conflicting claims?

These are good questions, which I hope to address (in part) in this article.

Here’s what you can expect:

• I’m going to avoid speaking about any health benefits of fasting outside of weight loss in order to respect my scope of practice. In other words, I’m not going to be taking a position on whether fasting can help us live longer lives or improve our hormone profiles.

  • So as for all of that insulin sensitivity and testosterone talk, you won’t see me addressing those claims (even though I find them fascinating and worthy of your own independent exploration).

• Instead, I’m going to tell you how to use fasting simply as a form of caloric restriction to help you improve your body composition primarily through fat loss.

• I’m going to provide practical examples of how I’ve used single-day fasting in my own body recomposition effort.

• I’m going to outline the advantages of single-day fasting when compared to other more traditional forms of caloric restriction.

How to Use Single-Day “Semi-Fasting” to Improve Your Body Composition

Although there are several ways to use fasting to improve your body composition, I’m going to focus the attention of this particular article on one specific strategy, which is…

Single-day fasting.

In other words, I think a lot of people would benefit from fasting for one entire day a week.

Sound crazy?

Maybe in context of our modern dietary patterns, but keep in mind that our modern dietary patterns have led 42% of people into a life of obesity, which is why I think a creative reconsideration of our eating habits surrounding the idea of sustainable body composition improvement is a very good idea.

So what’s up with not eating for an entire day? How is that supposed to help anyone with a body recomposition goal?

Simply put, it’s a very basic way of reducing your weekly caloric consumption.

In short, it helps you get into a caloric deficit to help you lose body fat.

We really don’t need to make it any more complicated than that, but we’ll dive into a bit more nuance in the following section.

That being said, if fasting for an entire day seems daunting and overwhelming, you could easily modify your strategy by fasting through the majority of the day and then enjoying one large, nutritionally-dense meal for dinner.

This is what I personally refer to as “semi-fasting” but only in the sense that you’re fasting for most of the day instead of complete 24-hour period. I understand that you can’t technically “semi-fast,” so take that terminology with a grain of salt.

Ultimately, it would be better described as a very low-calorie day relative to one’s normal intake.

When I do this myself, I usually have an 800-1,000-calorie smoothie packed with greens, plant-based protein powder, berries, bananas, nuts, and seeds around 5PM.

Or I might opt for an enormous tofu salad with a plethora of leafy greens drizzled in tahini and sprinkled with hemp hearts and walnuts.

The objective (for me) is simply to eat one nutritionally-dense meal with plenty of protein, which makes smoothies and salads great options given how easy it can be to pack them full of fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and lean proteins like protein powders or soy products.

What I like about this modified idea is that I never have to go to bed hungry, but I can still reap the benefits of a restricted eating window.

And, of course, eating once per day tends to be much easier to adhere to (for most people) than an overnight fast.

In fact, this modified “semi-fasting” approach is what you will see illustrated in the upcoming examples as I have applied it to my own lifestyle (as opposed to a full day of fasting).

Why might a SINGLE-day weekly “SEMI-fast” help with fat loss?

As I mentioned briefly above, there doesn’t seem to be anything “magical” about fasting when it comes to losing body fat other than that it serves as a very simple way of reducing your overall intake.

But I think another underrated benefit of single-day “semi-fasting” is that it helps you start thinking of your caloric deficit in the context of one week instead of a single day.

In fact, this is what I do with all of my fat loss clients and it's why things like carb cycling and high/low approaches work for bodybuilders.

As long as the caloric math makes sense at the end of the week, the fat loss is always systematic and exciting.

For example, you may have heard that 3,500 calories equal roughly one pound of body fat.

So, if you can get yourself into a 500-calorie daily deficit, you'll be cruising toward about one pound of fat loss per week because 500 calories multiplied by 7 days equals 3,500 calories.

Boom. Math, right?

But sometimes people get too caught up in the "24-hour-ness" of it all.

In other words, people focus too much on that 500-calorie daily deficit when they could be acting more strategically on a behalf of a 3,500-calorie weekly deficit.

I’ll use myself as an example here.

If my maintenance calories are around 3,300 calories right now, we could say that a daily intake of 2,800 calories might lead to approximately one pound of fat loss per week based on the math we just discussed.

Because of that, I could structure my weekly (non-fasting) eating pattern like this:

Standard static Weekly Calorie Example

The standard static example would look like this:

• Monday: 2,800 calories

• Tuesday: 2,800 calories

• Wednesday: 2,800 calories

• Thursday: 2,800 calories

• Friday: 2,800 calories

• Saturday: 2,800 calories

• Sunday: 2,800 calories

As you can see, this is simply the “eat the same number of calories everyday” approach that many people ascribe to for the sake of consistency and routine.

But a one-day “semi-fasting” example could allow you to eat more during the week while eating much less just once per weekend.

This is cool because you could choose to eat more carbohydrates to bolster your weekday workouts knowing you can rest up and eat less (or nothing) on Sunday.

Here is an example of what that could look like (and what I often do):

One-Day “Semi-Fast” Weekly Calorie Example

• Monday: 3,100 calories (+300)

• Tuesday: 3,100 calories (+300)

• Wednesday: 3,100 calories (+300)

• Thursday: 3,100 calories (+300)

• Friday, 3,100 calories (+300)

• Saturday: 3,100 calories (+300)

• Sunday: 1,000 calories (-1,800)

In this example, limiting myself to just 1,000 calories on Sunday allows me to eat an extra 300 calories on each of those other six days per week. Keep in mind too that those +300 calories in parentheses are relative to the deficit, which means this entire week of eating is still designed for fat loss.

Three hundred calories may not seem like much, but that's an extra PB&J and a glass of almond milk that you could apply to a important pre or post-workout meal.

But again, this is just one way to do it.

If you really want to be a Level 1000 Fat Loss Ninja, you could nuance your daily caloric intake even further by biasing your calories toward your most intense workouts or even planned, higher-calorie social occasions while utilizing single-day fasting over the weekend.

Check out what I mean in the following example:

Level 1000 Fat Loss Ninja Weekly Calorie Example featuring a One-Day Semi-Fast

• Monday: 3,400 calories for a nasty leg day because you want that peach (+600)

• Tuesday: 3,100 calories for an upper body day (+300)

• Wednesday: 2,800 calories for a rest day (0)

• Thursday: 3,100 calories for a normal leg day (+300)

• Friday: 3,400 calories because pizza with the boys (+600)

• Saturday: 2,800 calories because math (0)

• Sunday: 1,000 calories (-1,800)

Do you have to make it this complicated? Of course not.

I just want to illustrate that you have the freedom to do so if you like the idea of heavily nuancing your caloric consumption based on fluctuations in your training routine and lifestyle overall.

All three of these options add up to 19,600 calories per week, which means the fat loss in each situation would be almost identical while all other factors remain equal.

Pretty cool, yeah?

You could easily do similar math with your own numbers.

Just remember that these numbers were calculated for someone with a maintenance calorie intake of 3,300.

I also have a few opinions on why I think this can work really well for people.

Advantages of “Semi-Fasting” Once Per Week

• It's easy to fast for one day when you know you get plenty of food the very next day.

  • I like to think of this as the "light at the end of the tunnel" effect. For those of you who have never fasted before, this may still seem extreme, but it's really quite doable once you commit.

  • Plus, if you've ever dieted before, you know that the worst part of dieting comes from being randomly hungry on a Monday and knowing it ain't getting any better for the next six weeks. This dieting pattern fights against that drudgery.

• You're unlikely to downregulate your metabolism by fasting just once per week.

  • I don't pretend to be an expert on metabolic downregulation outside of plenty of anecdotal experience from working with my own clients, but to me it just makes good sense that it might be better for keeping your metabolism churning along to duck your calories hard once per week versus committing to a peasant's 1200-calorie diet for weeks and months on end. It's almost like your body senses that there is no need to process energy more efficiently when it knows more food is coming soon. Anecdotally, I have seen this work time and time again. And, although I wouldn’t call it “biohacking,” I do think it’s a creative way to manipulate your caloric consumption.

• It gives your digestive system a break, which I personally think may have some exciting health benefits.

  • In my own experience, it can also create a refreshing feeling of emptiness as the fast goes on, which leaves me feeling acutely lighter.

• It exercises your discipline muscle.

  • In a modern gimme-gimme culture where we tend to complain about anything we can’t have instantaneously, I find it grounding to limit my food consumption once per week.

  • I also personally think this translates well into other areas of life.

• For me personally, my stomach starts feeling noticeably tighter around 1-2PM, but this is of course just my own experience and a small psychological benefit I enjoy.

Disadvantages of “Semi-Fasting” Once Per Week

• Some people will never be able to handle the acute hunger of even a half-day fast, and that’s fine.

  • I’m not here to try to convince anyone to be hungry if you’re not bought into the benefits beyond the hunger (and I mean that sincerely).

• It might be difficult to navigate certain social situations like dining out with friends if you and your significant other are social people on the weekends.

  • For my own lifestyle, Sundays tend to be very relaxed, so this isn’t an issue for me personally in most cases, but I think it’s worth mentioning in case it applies to others.

• Your Monday workouts might feel a bit lethargic if you don’t prioritize a massive, carb-heavy breakfast to replenish yourself from the low-calorie day prior.

  • And again, you obviously don’t have to choose Sundays for your “semi-fast.” This was just the example used consistently throughout this article (and what I do personally).

Summary

• I think single-day fasting is an underrated form of caloric restriction that could help a lot of people lose body fat sustainably.

• Single-day fasting can be a helpful strategy to help people think of their caloric deficits on a weekly basis instead of a daily basis.

• “Semi-fasting” once per week can allow you to eat more food during the week to fuel your most intense training sessions.

• Practically speaking, I personally like to fast through the first half of the day and then eat one large, nutritionally dense meal around 5PM.

  • This is usually a large smoothie or a big tofu salad.

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I really enjoyed writing this short article, so if you found it helpful, do me a favor and send it to someone in your life who finds body recomposition banter just as entertaining as you do.

Until next time,

-Andrew

What Should I Eat to Lose Weight?

What should you eat to lose weight?

It’s the trillion dollar question everyone is asking because…

If we just knew what to eat to lose weight, we would eat it, right?

I’m actually not so sure.

But before we get too far, I want to let you know what you can expect from this article.

1. I’m going to tell you that losing weight is mostly about calories - not the specific foods you eat, which makes the question, “What should I eat to lose weight?” quite complex.

2. I’m going to help you think through that reality by using a financial analogy that relates calories consumed to dollars spent.

3. I’m going to tell you which foods I think are “best” for fat loss for those who appreciate practical suggestions.

4. I’m going to tell you which foods make up the majority of my own diet when I aim to lose weight on purpose.

MOST PEOPLE ALREADY UNDERSTAND BASIC NUTRITION

In my opinion, most people have a basic understanding of which foods tend to be best for fat loss.

For example, if we gave the entire planet a questionnaire about basic nutrition, I think we’d see that…

• Most people know that oatmeal with berries and a few tablespoons of chia seeds is a fat loss-friendly breakfast.

• Most people know that salads with lean proteins and modest portions of healthy fats are helpful, fat loss-friendly lunch options.

• Most people know that tofu, broccoli, and rice can be a fat loss-friendly dinner combination.

• And most people know that snacking on apples is probably more fat loss-friendly than eating Nutella straight out of the jar.

So where’s the disconnect?

Why are people still typing “what to eat to lose weight” into Google?

I could be wrong, but I think I know why.

In fact, it’s the reason I wrote an entire article called The Single Biggest Mistake You’re Making in How You Think About Fat Loss, but I’m committed to bringing you an updated perspective on the topic of food selection for weight loss.

Are you ready for it?

The problem with focusing exclusively on what you should eat is that there's little to no consideration of how much you should eat.

So the implication is that you can eat all of the “right foods” and yet never lose weight if you eat them in the “wrong amounts.”

This is why thinking of your caloric allotment for the day as a monetary budget can be a very helpful analogy for fat loss.

THINK OF YOUR CALORIC INTAKE AS A MONETARY BUDGET

We’re going to start thinking about calories like dollars.

To start, let’s use an example of someone with a maintenance calorie intake of 2,500 calories, and let’s say their goal is to lose weight.

We’ll also use a direct conversion of calories to dollars for the sake of making this analogy as easy to understand as possible.

So now, instead of eating 2,500 calories per day, we’re going to think of our example person as spending $2,500 per day.

Sound fun?

Just pretend our example person is Warren Buffet for a moment.

The first thing we need to do is tailor their new budget to their goal.

In this analogy, think of saving money as losing fat.

So, if we want to lose fat by 10%, all we need to do is reduce their daily spending by 10%, which would shift their current budget of $2,500 per day to a more prudent $2,250 per day.

Over the course of a week, they would save about $1,750. And, over the course of a month, they would save about $7,000, which is about two pounds of fat once we abandon our analogy.

And this is essentially exactly how weight loss works.

It’s like you’re a little kid being given an allowance of $2,250 per day and you can spend it however you want, but…

Once it’s gone, it’s gone.

To further the analogy, that means that spending more than your allotted $2,250 per day means you’ve put yourself in debt, and debt (in this particular analogy) negates any weight loss attempt and could even lead to weight gain depending on the magnitude of that debt.

The more debt you accrue, the more unwanted body fat you accumulate.

Interestingly enough, buying things on credit is a thing when it comes to dieting for fat loss, but credit (in this analogy) is stored body fat.

And finally, perhaps one of the most important implications of this analogy is that it really doesn’t matter how you spend your money as long as you stay within the budget.

Hear me out.

Some might be tempted to think it’s “better” to spend your budgeted money on things like your mortgage, utilities, food for your family, and clothes to put on their backs, but you technically could go spend it on strippers and cocaine as long as you can afford it.

Stick with me.

But it’s only “better” in the sense that it’s better for your overall wellbeing. Most people would probably agree that the way to flourish in life probably isn’t to spend your evenings frequenting seedy nightclubs and “doing lines” off of Tiffany’s lower back.

But it’s technically not “better” if the goal is simply to stay within your budget (at least in the short-term).

That being said, if you have a goal of staying within your budget and living a responsible life, then you would be smart to consider your purchases as more than “just pennies.”

So I’ll say it again.

It really doesn’t matter (much) how your spend your money if your only goal is to stay within the budget.

And this is the essence of flexible dieting, which is a popular dietary pattern that communicates this very same idea within the context of food.

WHAT’S FLEXIBLE DIETING?

Flexible dieting or the “If It Fits Your Macros” (IIFYM) movement says that…

If your caloric budget for the day is 2,250 calories, you really are free to consume those calories from whichever food sources you please if weight loss is all you care about (which is an important caveat).

Jelly-filled donuts? Yep.

Pizza? Yep.

Burgers and fries? If you must.

Cake and ice cream? Yes!

However, if you want that lean, hard-body look that we help people achieve here at IVRY, you’ll need to make sure you’re ticking a few more important boxes within your flexible dieting routine.

After all, there’s a big difference between weight loss and body recomposition.

It’s probably good to mention too that a flexible dieting approach doesn’t take your health into consideration either, which is why I prefer to encourage people to eat a whole food, plant-based diet as much as possible.

So what’s the takeaway from this section of the article?

Calories matter most for weight loss. Consume them however you please within your caloric allotment.

The Truth about Which Foods Are “Best” for Weight Loss

Once you understand that weight loss is mostly about the manipulation of your overall caloric intake, you’ll slowly realize that the only intelligent answer to the question regarding which foods are “best” for weight loss is…

That there are no specific foods that you should eat to lose weight.

I hope this is powerful and illuminating!

But, there are, of course, foods that tend to make weight loss much easier and more sustainable due to a few reasons:

• They're naturally lower in calories.

• They're voluminous.

• They're satiating, which means they leave you feeling full for longer.

• They’re usually plants.

• They work really well for your own personal preferences and lifestyle.

In my opinion, the following list of foods fit most of these categories I’ve just mentioned.

Do you have to eat them? No.

Should you feel limited to only eat these foods? Not at all.

If anything, I’m just giving you a brief peek into my own life and the foods I personally choose to consume on a regular basis in order to maintain my lean, hard-body physique.

And, if you didn’t already know, I do eat a 100% plant-based diet, which means you won’t see any animal products in the list below (although you certainly can use them to lose weight).

FOODS I EAT MOST often FOR FAT LOSS AND MUSCLE GAIN

• Oats

• Berries like strawberries, blueberries, and blackberries

• Other fruits like bananas, mangos, and cherries

• Plant “milks” like soy “milk” and almond “milk”

• Nuts like walnuts, pecans, and pistachios

• Nut butters like peanut butter and almond butter

• Seeds like hemp seeds, chia seeds, flax seeds, and pumpkin seeds

• Enormous salads made primarily with a spring mix or spinach

• Tahini

• Tofu and tempeh

• Sweet potatoes

• Vegetables of all kinds

• Rice (or quinoa) and bean combinations

• Burritos

• Chickpea and lentil-based pastas

• Nutritional yeast

• Chilis

• Plant-based protein powders

• Plant-based protein bars

And there are certainly many more, but this is just a list of the major players.

Remember, the reason it's good to focus on foods that are low-calorie, voluminous, and filling is because being in a caloric deficit is what drives weight loss, and foods with these qualities make it easier to maintain being in a caloric deficit for as long as it takes for you to get rid of your unwanted fat.

That being said, you can totally enjoy less “traditional” dieting foods like pizza or ice cream or brownies as long as you stay within your caloric budget.

At the end of the day, calories matter most for weight loss.

You don't need to make it any more complicated than that unless you’re interested in optimizing your weight loss effort and your health.

Summary

• There are no foods you should consume for weight loss since calories matter most for weight loss. It’s primarily a discussion of “how much” versus “which foods.”

  • That being said, I personally think everyone would benefit from a health perspective from eating most of their calories from whole or minimally-processed plant foods.

  • It’s important to remember that weight loss and improved health are not always synonymous.

• It can be helpful to think of weight loss in terms of a monetary budget.

• It’s probably easiest to lose weight when you consume the majority of your calories from plant foods that are naturally low in calories, voluminous, and satiating.

  • This also probably leads to better health outcomes, but this is outside of the scope of this particular article and beyond my expertise.

• Certain foods like pizza, burgers, fries, and ice creams can be difficult to incorporate into a weight loss effort due to their caloric density, but it’s still doable when your overall caloric intake is kept in check.

  • This is commonly referred to as flexible dieting, and can be a very useful strategy for many people.

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I really enjoyed writing this short article, so if you found it helpful, do me a favor and send it to that person in your life who seems eternally perplexed about why they can’t ditch their muffin top for a trimmer midline.

Until next time,

-Andrew

How to Lose Weight By Eating More

I have good news!

The fitness industry just called you on your old school yellow phone to report that the solution to your seemingly incessant struggle to lose body fat is…

That you need to eat more?

But wait, is that really true? At best that sounds a bit counterintuitive, right? And at worst, downright ridiculous?

Well, let’s talk about this peculiar claim that "you need to eat more to lose weight."

I don’t mean to spoil the contents of the article too quickly, but I actually hate this phrase with a passion because it's one of those things that can technically be true but is mostly just extremely misleading.

It also annoys me because people usually use it to catch peoples' attention because let's be honest...

Who doesn't want to eat more and lose weight? Of course we'd all love to be able to eat the moon and look shredded 365 days a year.

In fact, it’s probably exactly why you clicked on this article in the first place.

The question is…

Is it possible? And is this buzzphrase legit? Or is it just a load of horse manure?

The 2 Technical Ways This Can Be True

JUNK FOOD VERSUS NUTRIENT-DENSE FOOD (THE VOLUME TRICK)

If you're eating a diet that's full of high-calorie junk food, people sometimes use this phrase to communicate the idea that you could eat "more food" in a volume sense (which is true) while consuming fewer overall calories. And to be clear, that's definitely true!

In fact, it's one of the biggest perks of committing to a whole food, plant-predominant diet in that you get to smash a ton of vegetables, fruits, whole grains, beans, and lean proteins without eating in excess of your metabolic needs.

And this doesn’t mean you have to be vegetarian or vegan. It just means biasing more of your calories toward higher-volume, lower-calorie plant foods instead of consuming lower-volume, higher-calorie animal products like fatty beef and cheese.

In short, most people could lose weight without thinking too much about it just by picking more nutritionally dense foods over the pizzas, burgers, nachos, and beers they use to pick.

No brainer? For some people it is, but lots of well-intentioned people just don't understand this and plenty more simply aren’t willing to give up some of their favorite foods.

In fact, I wrote an entire article about the “one thing” a ton of people are getting wrong about the way they think about fat loss.

For example, if you're been snagging a McDonald's breakfast sandwich and a 600-calorie drink from Starbucks on your way into work each day for years, you can technically "eat more and lose weight" by choosing an enormous bowl of oatmeal and a protein shake instead.

See what I mean? The oatmeal is technically "more food" volume-wise than a tiny sandwich and a drink, but it's still fewer calories despite the increased volume.

You could literally eat enough oatmeal to poop your pants three times before noon for fewer calories than a McDonald’s breakfast platter or a classic burger and fries combo because you’re “in a hurry.”

But the trickiness here is that this isn't what people hear when you say "eat more and lose weight."

They think they need to get a second portion at the family BBQ to "boost their metabolism."

And that's why this is usually a harmful thing to tell people if you don't plan on explaining yourself.

You cannot eat more calories and lose weight acutely. That's very important.

Energy balance is absolutely the most important thing for fat loss. It’s not the only important thing, but it’s the most important thing.

YOUR METABOLISM SUCKS AND YOU might NEED TO REVERSE DIET strategically

This second one is a super stretch, but it's nonetheless a very real thing yet rarely explained.

Sometimes peoples' metabolisms are in such a bad place that you actually have to encourage them to eat more calories in the short-term in order to lose more fat in the long-term.

But rarely to never have I seen someone just start eating more calories and losing actual fat tissue at the same time.

That's a violation of the laws of thermodynamics and I can sense Layne Norton scrambling to make an angry YouTube video as I write this.

So to be clear, say some lady is eating 1200 calories and not losing weight even though she clearly has more fat to lose. Well, you can't just starve these people into oblivion.

So what happens is that you encourage them to eat more calories (in strategic increases) to help nurture their metabolism back to a better place.

But the reality is that they will most likely gain a bit of weight and body fat, which is the small price to be paid for having tossed your metabolism into the dumpster like a bag of potatoes you found leaking in your pantry.

But, once your metabolism is improved through a slow and strategic increase in calories matched with exercise and resistance training, you can then go back into a caloric deficit relative to your new metabolic needs and lose the fat you couldn't lose before.

In the fitness space, this is called reverse dieting and although it feels like wizardry, it's very much a thing. The problem is that it takes quite a bit of discipline to pull off, and a lot of people get too discouraged along the way and fail.

So in some long-term sense, it may be necessary to eat more to lose weight, but if you're trying to look cool at the pool in a month, you most certainly don't need to "eat more to lose weight."

Tricky, isn't it?

And that's all I've got for you. Just blasting confusing fitness lingo with the truth no one's telling you.

Summary

1. Eating more to lose weight is mostly hogwash, but it can be done in two technical senses.

2. The first is to eat more by maximizing food volume while still eating fewer calories than you baseline diet.

3. The second is to reverse diet strategically in order to potentially lose more fat later on due to an improved metabolic state.

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I really enjoyed writing this short article, so if you found it helpful, do me a favor and send it to that person in your life who’s sipping that fitness tabloid tea like an outdated Kermit meme.

Until next time,

-Andrew

How to Tone Your Arms and Flatten Your Stomach

If you know me personally, you know there's one word fitness buzzword that drives me crazier than most, which is...

This idea of "toning."

In this article, I’m going to walk through four things:

1. Why “toning” isn’t really a thing

2. The solution to the “toning” problem

3. How to adjust your efforts accordingly

4. A really helpful summary with practical takeaways

The Awkward Truth about "Toning"

I have bad news.

As far as I am concerned, "toning" isn't really a thing.

But, why?

I think it's because the culturally defined definition of "toning" is something like this - making one or two choice body parts look a little bit leaner without a full-body shift in fat loss reduction.

For example, I will hear a lot of women tell me they want to "tone" their arms.

So what people are really saying when they say they want to "tone" is that they want to spot reduce fat from specific locations on their body. And I will admit, that would be amazing! My goal with this article is not to shame or make fun of anyone who uses the term "toning."

Unfortunately, there really isn't any promising literature that I know of to suggest that “toning” in this sense is possible.

And in my own experience with my own body and as a coach to others, I've never seen anyone successfully spot reduce fat in any meaningful way.

Examples of “Toning” Efforts

Just to be clear about what I mean by that, here are a few examples of how people attempt to "tone":

• Doing lots of crunches because they want more visible abs

• Doing lots of side crunches because they want to ditch their love handles

• Doing lots of arm curls and pushups because they want tighter-looking arms

And I know what you're wondering.

"How does it work then? If I'm insecure about my flabby arms or my love handles, what should I do? Help!"

We'll get to those questions in a second, but I want to briefly address why "toning" as you've likely understood it until this point isn't an effective strategy.

Why "Toning" Isn't Really a Thing

Simply put, the way we all lose and gain body fat is mostly genetically predispositioned, which means we all carry and distribute our total body fat in different ways.

You don't get to choose how your body fat comes off and in what order.

For example, when I am bulked, I am a “love handles and leg fat” guy, but my back and arms tend to stay pretty lean even when overall I'm sitting at a higher body fat percentage.

I definitely didn't choose that!

And what this means in context of "toning" is that no amount of side crunches is going to convince my love handles to go away without being in a caloric deficit.

Without a caloric deficit, it's just not possible to lose meaningful amounts of body fat.

In short, you can't defy the laws of thermodynamics and energy balance through cheat codes like side crunches and bicep curls.

That’s really the punchline of this write-up.

So, if that’s the case, what can we do about it?

The Solution to the “Toning” Problem

Since I don't like to be the guy who just points out problems without providing solutions, I'm happy to tell you that there is a better way!

The way to "tone" is to get leaner overall through getting into a caloric deficit for long enough to allow your body to burn through the excess fat storage that led you to want to "tone" in the first place.

In addition to that, training your muscles for hypertrophy will cause them to grow and thus "push out" on your skin more, which will create that leaner look.

Check out this photo of Matt Morsia.

He's very jacked and very lean and yet I can guarantee you there were no deliberate "toning" efforts going on here.

He simply built a lot of muscle through resistance training and then tailored his caloric intake and activity level to reduce his body fat while maintaining the muscle he had already built.

So ultimately, "toning" is about losing fat while building or maintaining muscle along the way.

Now that we know that, I want to focus on how you can apply this for yourself.

How you would “Tone” if “toning” were a thing

Let's consider a very specific example.

Your arms are flabby and you want them to be leaner. The way to make this happen would be to:

• Firstly, start eating in a modest caloric deficit while prioritizing a diet adequately high in protein.

  • The deficit is what will drive the fat loss that will eventually result in your leaner looking arms.

    • This emphasizes the importance of the “calories in, calories out” (CICO) formula when it comes to body recomposition.

  • And, if you need help figuring out how to calculate your protein intake, check out this article I wrote once upon a time.

• Secondly, walk more. Although it’s impossible to issue a one-size-fits-all recommendation for walking, the idea is to remember that walking can be an extremely powerful fat loss tool.

• Thirdly, in this particular example, you would start training your arms in the 6-20 rep range for probably 10-20 sets as a part of an intelligent training program.

  • Even though you're in a deficit, the stimulus from this kind of exercise might even allow you to build a bit of muscle size to help emphasize your newly "toned" arms.

  • What would be even better?

    • An even better approach would be to train your entire body in the 6-20 rep range to see full body improvements while simply biasing more sets toward your arms because you’d like to see specialized improvement in that area.

      • This is an important distinction because you might be thinking, “Wait, I thought you said you can’t target improvements in specific areas?” I said you can’t target fat reduction in specific areas, but you can send more muscle growth signals to certain body parts than others by training them more.

    • So if you want to grow your arms, train them with more sets than the rest of your body.

  • Note too that this works particularly well for people who have never trained meaningfully with weights before.

    • People in this category are eligible for what we call “noobie gains” in the fitness industry, which means your body is likely to grow new muscle very quickly since you’ve never trained before.

And, for anyone reading this who might want to “lift their butt” or something similar, you would imitate this same strategy by training your glutes, hamstrings, and quads (probably in that order of importance).

Additional Thoughts on “Toning”

FAT LOSS DISTRIBUTION CAN BE FRUSTRATING

One very real and frustrating reality of losing body fat is that the body fat doesn't always come off the way we might want it to.

For example, if you're a woman that is overweight, you might find that you start losing body fat from your feminine attributes like your breasts or even your butt before you start losing body fat from your midsection.

That’s frustrating.

The reality is that there isn't much to be done about that aside from resistance training over many years to help grow your underlying muscle bellies to help emphasize whichever look you might personally find most appealing.

Does that suck? Totally!

Like I mentioned, I myself fall into this category.

But the only way to overcome that is to get your calories in check, train hard, and let your body transform until you’re as lean all over as you need to be to feel aesthetically pleasing.

BUild muscle in the right areas for optimal aesthetics

Sometimes building muscle in the right areas can help make a physique that used to carry fat in the wrong areas appear much “better” aesthetically.

For example, if you're a dude with a big belly at the moment, you might benefit from growing your chest and shoulders because that will make you look less like a pear and more like a strong guy who just needs to cut back on the pizza.

And then you can cut back on the pizza and shift your pear-ness toward a hint of that V-taper most women historically find attractive in men - broad shoulders that "V" downward to a relatively trim waistline.

Or for the ladies, building a strong and shapely foundation of glutes, quads, and hamstrings can create the illusion of a smaller waist.

As polarizing as Greg O’Gallagher (pictured here) can be for some people in the fitness industry, I think he has done one of the best jobs at identifying optimal male physique proportions when it comes to peak aesthetics.

THERE ARE NO SPECIFIC EXERCISES THAT “TONE” YOU

In my opinion, there are no specific forms of exercise that will "tone" you.

This is probably going to offend some people, but pure barre is not going to “tone” you.

That being said, it's totally fine to enjoy a pure barre class for the fitness benefits it offers you!

You'll probably develop a lot of core stability, full body control, and you might even build a tiny bit of muscle if you're transitioning into some form of exercise from a formerly sedentary lifestyle. I just think it would be silly to consider that “toning.”

You still have to control your overall caloric intake in order to lose body fat and reveal your lean tissue even if the extra calorie burn from group fitness efforts help you drop a few quick pounds at the beginning.

SOME PEOPLE LOOK HOT FOR NO REASON

That's called having favorable genetics for body composition, and I say that because it's too easy to see a girl featured in a hot new TikTok or Reel about how to “get toned for summer” and think, "She looks amazing! I should buy her programs so I can look exactly like her."

It's actually very possible that she was already “hot” by twenty-first century standards before she ever wrote her “toning” program, so try not to be naive about situations like that.

In other words, she didn’t use the program she’s advertising herself to get her current physique. And even if she did, there’s no guarantee that your body would respond the same way.

Secondly, have you ever had that one friend or co-worker who just kind of ate whatever they wanted, didn't exercise much, and still looked great? Me too. They exist, and let's not forget that.

Some people look hot for no reason, which means you can’t look to their programs for non-negotiable “toning” success.

How Much "Toning" Did I Do to Achieve the Physique at the Bottom of This Article?

None.

I achieved the physique you see below through a modest caloric surplus for about six months to move from around 200 pounds to 173 pounds.

I supplemented with lots of walking.

I trained mostly in the 6-20 rep range 5-6 times per week for as many sets as I could recover from.

No toning. No pure barre. No hot yoga. No group classes.

Summary

• “Toning” isn’t really a thing in the sense that you can’t spot-reduce fat, but there’s no reason to feel hopeless because…

• You can still achieve what people think of as “toning” by losing fat across your entire body while building muscle through resistance training.

• The ”calories in, calories out” (CICO) equation is still king for fat loss, which means a calorie-controlled diet will be optimal for “toning.”

• Walking is a great way to supplement your “toning” effort.

• Training with 10-20 sets per muscle group primarily in the 6-20 rep range tends to be best for muscle growth, which will help you appear more “toned.”

• It might be a good idea to strategically train certain body parts more than others to create a more aesthetic overall appearance.

  • Men would typically be smart to train their chests, shoulders, and arms.

  • Women would typically be smart to train their glutes, quads, and hamstrings.

• If you need help doing all of this, hiring a body recomposition coach would be a great next step.

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Thanks for reading! I genuinely hope you were able to take something meaningful away from this article.

If you feel like it brought you any value at all, consider sending it to your friend at work who has been doing 100 crunches before bed in preparation for hot girl summer.

See you in another article, friends.

-Andrew

How to Fix Your Squishiness

Let’s talk about the squishy fix.

As silly as it may sound, nearly everyone I talk to about training or dieting is interested in mitigating their squishiness in favor of a harder-looking physique.

Some people call this the "skinny-fat dilemma," but to me it's more of a squishiness dilemma.

So what do you do if you're squishy and you don't like it?

Firstly, I think it's important to understand how we all get squishy in the first place because not everyone is in the same squishiness boat.

How do we get squishy in the first place?

Scenario 1: you were lean but let go.

Probably the most common route to squishy is what I would call the person who grew up thin or lean by nature and then let go at some point in life.

Some of you are probably nodding your heads and thinking, "Yep. That's me." You never really had to think about food as a young person because "your metabolism was awesome!" And now it's apparently less awesome because you're squishy?

Or maybe your food and exercise habits changed a bit along the way as well.

A lot of these people were athletes in high school or college and then lost their way in their twenties.

scenario 2: the long-time chubster

But there are also people who have never known life without their squishiness. This would be anyone who feels like they grew up as a "fat kid" or thinks of themselves as genetically cursed.

You've never really felt confident at the pool or on the beach. You've never loved your picture being taken and you've probably always been insecure about a t-shirt that's just a little too tight. Maybe you were even made fun of for your weight when you were younger.

For those who know me well, you know that I actually fall into this camp.

Scenario 3: The Freestyle Friday Protein-Deficient Cardio Crowd

This third camp is probably the one that gives me the most grief because it represents a group of people who are trying really hard in all of the wrong ways.

And usually, pervasive ignorance is a common denominator among these people.

I know that sounds terrible, but I plan to defend what I mean by that as gently as possible. I call this group the Freestyle Friday Protein-Deficient Cardio Crowd.

Let me break that one down for you.

• Freestyle Friday is a term my high school basketball coach used to talk about anything that wasn't designed for a specific goal in mind. In short, it's something random and it implies little to no consideration of the future. With these people, I find that there's usually no method to their madness. They just "do" a bunch of stuff, and it's never systematic enough to warrant any meaningful or predictable returns.

• Protein-Deficient is pretty self-explanatory. Even though I've shifted my focus away from ultra-high-protein diets in recent years, you still have to consume an adequate amount of protein for any semi-serious physique endeavor.

  • If you want a deeper dive on calculating your own protein needs, check out this article I personally wrote on the topic.

  • You can also check this article out for practical tips on how to eat more protein if you don't know where to start.

• Cardio Crowd simply refers to the fact that these people generally spend way more time doing cardio than they do getting stronger and lifting weights.

When these three forces combine, you're bound to find some degree of squishiness. You might be fit in the cardio sense! But you might be squishy too.

For a surprising example, check out this photo of David Beckham I found the other day.

I'm not saying the guy looks "bad," but it's definitely a softer look for an elite soccer player in a photoshoot setting.

In my experience, most people want to be both more muscular and leaner than his physique in this particular photo.

Why Most People Don’t Love Their Squishiness

This is simple. Squishiness usually implies the combination of two unappealing factors: little to no muscle mass and unwanted fat.

This is a problem because most people would rather be the opposite of at least one but ideally both of those factors!

In other words, having little no muscle while carrying extra body fat is kind of the worst case scenario for most people.

You'd probably prefer having the combination of muscle and fat or the combination of no muscle and no fat than being all around squishy.

For example, powerlifters can sometimes be a decent example of what it means to have plenty of muscle but also plenty of fat, but, as you can see here, this lifter has a ton of muscle and a very healthy and aesthetic amount of body fat.

On the other hand, long distance runners tend to be a decent example of what it means to have little to no muscle or fat.

It's kind of like preferring to have your favorite team be 1-1 instead of 0-2 going into the third week of the football season.

Why would you want anything other than everything?

So in short, people don't love their squishiness because it's a double-opposite of what most people want.

Although each of those camps would benefit from slightly different strategies, the baseline principles are going to be the same.

5 Steps to Fixing Squishy

Be warned, these fixes are not sexy, and you won’t see any mention of lemon juice solutions.

Step 1: set a specific goal.

Firstly, you need to decide if you're going to lose fat first or build muscle first.

You can always try for a nice, slow, and steady recomp, but I think most people would be smart to pick one road or the other and get going.

This decision is important because it dictates how many calories you will be consuming as you start your new program.

Step 2: REMEMBER THAT calories matter most.

Once you have a clear direction and a specific goal, you've got to take extreme ownership of your caloric intake.

Remember that there are only ever three ways to eat:

• In a caloric deficit for a primary goal of fat loss

• In a caloric surplus for a primary goal of muscle gain

• At maintenance calories for a body recomposition effort

In any of these cases, I personally believe a modest approach will work best for most people.

In other words, I would recommend against any aggressive caloric deficit or caloric surplus, and I will tell you why.

Keep in mind that squishy or “skinny fat” people are typically visually softer and less muscular than they need to be for a hard-body look, which means…

• Eating in an aggressive deficit is going to severely limit the muscle you can gain.

• Eating in an aggressive surplus is going to cause excess weight gain and create an ever softer appearance.

As you can see, those are both unwanted outcomes.

So for some general advice, I think a 0-10% deficit or surplus depending on your goal is a very conservative place to start.

This means if your maintenance calories are 2,000 per day, you’d switch to an 1,800-calorie or 2,200-calorie diet depending on the goal (if you were to use the 10% figure).

STEp 3: make sure your protein intake is adequate.

You've got to get your protein in check.

Since so many people struggle to optimize their protein, I’m willing to throw out a few general recommendations.

I really think most females would benefit from targeting a minimum of 80g of protein per day while most males would benefit from targeting a minimum of 120g per day.

Obviously, you can eat much more than that if you personally feel you need to. That choice is yours. I'm just one guy yelling in a noisy room.

For a much more nuanced discussion on this, click here.

STEP 4: prioritize resistance training and progressive overload.

Train consistently with weights while minimizing unnecessary cardio.

You're just never going to develop succulent, balloon-like muscles that look impressive in your best outfits if you never train with weights.

I also realize it may sound a bit counterintuitive to minimize cardio, but you have to remember that building muscle is much more difficult than losing fat.

For that reason alone, I try to encourage people to commit to longer phases of muscle gain knowing in the back of their mind that cutting the fat later is always an option.

So if you're on the fence about training for muscle gain or dieting for fat loss, I might encourage you to train for muscle gain.

Some might argue it’s the less satisfying short-term move, but I firmly believe it’s the more gratifying long-term move.

You’re also going to want to make sure that your program is designed to allow for progressive overload, which means you’ll gradually be increasing the load, reps, or sets performed over time.

If you’re new to the idea of progressive overload, click here.

Step 5: diet in phases.

Diet phasically. I don't have the space to get into that here, but it's worth saying.

If you're squishy, you're probably not going to be able to do a single dieting phase and wake up lean and muscle-puffy someday.

In other words, you might start with an 6-week body recomposition effort at maintenance calories while optimizing your training quality and then deload for a week before jumping into a small surplus to start burning away some of the unwanted fat that’s preventing you from looking trimmer.

It might even take multiple phases of manipulating your strategy, which is where I personally think having a body recomposition coach can be extremely helpful.

Special Considerations

If you used to be lean but you've let go, there's a good chance you can "get your old self back" simply by getting back to old habits.

It's also most likely that you can go straight to cutting body fat since you might have some lingering muscle from your leaner days as a high school athlete or something similar.

If that’s you, it would certainly be my recommendation to start eating in a small deficit of around 10%.

For anyone who feels like they're bigger by nature, you might have to make a more dramatic shift than our leaner friends. But in my opinion, it's better to face the facts and get to work than it is to mope over the unfairness of genetic predispositions.

And I'm allowed to say that since I grew up "husky."

If your metabolism seems to be in a decent place, you're probably best to start chipping away at body fat and then building muscle once you get to a leaner base. Also, don't expect it to be easy. You might have to be more meticulous with your diet than the naturally thin girl at your office you secretly despise.

For these people, I would also recommend a small deficit of around 10%.

For the FFPDCC, you're in a bit of a pickle but it's not void of all hope. It's a hopeful pickle.

But you probably need to decide if you care more about being a cardio monster or a Greek statue. They just really don't go hand in hand in any optimal sense.

If you're more about cardio, then a lower-protein life makes good sense. You're not actually trying to build muscle and that's fine!

But if you're sick of squishy more than anything, get on a structured weight training program, bump your protein intake, and snooze the cardio for a few months to give yourself a chance to build some lean tissue.

For these people, I would actually recommend maintenance eating or a small surplus of around 10%.

And that's that!

Just some thoughts on being squishy and how to rewrite your story if you're in pursuit of leaner and more muscular body composition.

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Thanks for reading! I genuinely hope you were able to take something meaningful away from this article.

If you feel like it brought you any value at all, consider sending it to a friend or family member - especially someone who might be tired of having their love handles melt over the sides of their favorite jeans.

Later, guys.

-Andrew

How to Improve Your Body Composition Without Tracking Calories

Once upon a time, I wrote an article about why caloric deficits are overhyped, and the summary was generally this:

Most of us want to have leaner and more muscular bodies, and yet a disproportionate amount of enthusiasm and marketing in the fitness space go toward calorie deficits instead of modest caloric surpluses or eating at maintenance.

And I'm really no one to talk. I find myself tooting the caloric deficit horn much more than the surplus horn.

Why?

Because most people are chubby and like the idea of losing some fat immediately as a boost of confidence that they're moving in the right direction.

Right! That makes a lot of sense, and that approach is still going to work really well for most people.

But there's another way for another crowd that you just might fall into, and it’s likely why this article piqued your interest in the first place.

You want to know how to improve your body composition without tracking calories.

Personally, I think that’s wonderful.

In fact, if I had it my way, everyone would be working toward how to eat an abundance of nutrient-dense foods while pursuing a healthy bodyweight and body composition.

Why do I say this?

Although tracking calories meticulously for fat loss can be extremely effective, it’s not all rose petals and bubblebaths.

In fact, it can be quite the opposite when done poorly.

To illustrate that point, let's start by briefly addressing a frustrating yet very common reality for a lot of people who plunge headfirst into the “deficit or die” mentality when it comes to tracking calories.

WHY TRACKING CALORIES FOR improved body composition can be frustrating

Tracking calories works, but...

• The problem with tracking calories is that you start to think about food as just calories.

• And being in a calorie deficit usually implies eating fewer calories than you might like.

• So to maximize food volume, you start doing weird things to eat fewer calories like making Frankenstein French toast with low calorie bread, sugar-free syrup, and egg whites.

• And then your energy starts to decrease because you're depriving yourself of energy on purpose (and eating weird foods that might be void of any real nutritional value).

• You become afraid of bananas because they're the "highest calorie fruit!" Gah!

• And peanut butter is the devil because fat! Gah!

• And then all of sudden you’re the weird guy or gal who eats weird things in the name of “fitness.”

• And then going to the gym becomes a real pain in the bum because "you just don't feel like it."

• And then your training starts to suck. You're not getting stronger. You’re actually getting weaker. And you've maybe lost a few pounds, but you're still soft, chubby, and unhappy.

• And then you order 47 Papa John's pizzas and a birthday cake to yourself on a Friday night and never see the gym again.

That last bullet point is a bit of a joke, obviously, but hopefully you see the truth in the comedy.

Let me just pause briefly and remind you that doing the above absolutely works if all you care about is losing fat.

And that's not me trying to passively shame you into being "that person.” It’s totally fine to care about losing the fat above all else.

In fact, that above list is exactly what I did to lose 31 pounds and land myself the physique you see here.

So it definitely works. And I'm not taking a dig at it at all. I'm just being objective about the pros and cons while trying to make a specific point.

But again, we’re here to talk about how to avoid tracking calories while still making meaningful progress in improving our body compositions.

Are you ready for it?

Here it is:

Start training really hard while eating an abundance of whole foods without tracking a single calorie.

Some of you may be thinking, "That sounds reckless! All of this banter about how calories matter most for looking like Ken and Barbie and now you're telling me to eat in abundance. Lies!"

Let me explain.

Why not tracking calories for improved body composition might be better for some people

• From day one there is no notion of unnecessary restriction. In fact, the only restriction in this game is that you're bound only to whole, minimally processed foods. In other words, this is "clean eating" for lack of a better term. Vegetables, fruits, legumes, nuts, seeds, whole grains, and lean proteins.

• That's cool because being restricted is annoying. But I've found that being restricted to certain categories of food is more fun than being restricted to certain quantities of food. You might be different, and that would be totally fine. I'm just making that point.

• It's also cool because now you get to focus on your health instead of math. You're only eating whole foods, so there's a really good chance the nutrient density of your diet goes way up! That's great.

• You're also probably eating much more fiber now because you may have traded in a microwavable Lean Pocket for a bowl of oats with berries and soy milk.

• You're also probably not binging anymore because you can't really binge on "healthy food," you know? Seriously, grab yourself a bowl of brown rice, steamed veggies, and tofu and see how wild things get. I doubt they get very wild.

• So now you just have to train hard and effectively! If you need some direction on what that means, click here.

• Training hard is more fun now because you actually have energy to push around big weights. Yes, I am suggesting that a diet of oats and berries for breakfast might make you feel better and more energetic than frosted donuts and a whey shake.

• In fact, maybe you really start to enjoy training because you're seeing the numbers go up. Good vibes!

• And you're catching pumps in the gym. Ladies, the legs and the glutes are growing! Fellas, you just noticed a juicy new bicep vein in your right arm.

• And then you move from 3x per week in the gym to 4x to week in the gym because it feels like medicine and you're actually learning to love the process.

• And then all of a sudden you've been crushing your gym sessions for a month without having tracked a single calorie.

• Maybe you weigh the exact same, but you've built muscle underneath!

• Or maybe you weigh less "on accident" because you started fueling your body with pure goodness instead of occasional junk, and the sum effect of it all was a reduction in scale weight.

• Or maybe you weigh more because you're building muscle while eating like a beast.

• And slowly but surely you get leaner and more muscular through the simple practices of eating exclusively nutritious foods and then using that energy to fuel your increasingly productive training sessions.

That's what a life without calorie-tracking could look like.

CONS OF NOT TRACKING YOUR CALORIES

The obvious cons to this strategy might be:

• That you're not guaranteed any systematic fat loss results. I want to make this very clear. You can absolutely eat more than you need to even while eating a whole food diet, but it's just less likely to happen than in the context of a diet littered with pizza, burgers, ice creams, and donuts. This could be frustrating to some people with a very specific goal, but my guess is that some people would actually enjoy the freedom of the motto, "Eat in abundance. Train like a freak." I know I sure do.

  • The key here is not to make obvious mistakes like sitting down to watch a TV show with a jar of peanut butter or a back of pistachios. We all know nuts and nut butters are healthful food choices, but they are also very calorically-dense, which means you need to be careful to consume them in moderation.

• You also have to actually train hard and intelligently. The caveat here is that you might gain some unwanted fat if you only adopt the eating portion of this framework. Or you might not! I still think it would be a great step in the right direction regarding your overall health, but if you think that's a con, this approach might not be for you.

PROS OF NOT TRACKING YOUR CALORIES

The pros (in my opinion) are:

• You're free to eat foods without looking at them like numbers! That can be so freeing for a lot of people.

• You then start to see your dietary freedom as a motivator for training hard! Speaking personally, I’ve gone through phases when I was eating 4,000 calories per day (which I never thought would be the case), which means I was able to show up to the gym with purpose every day. It's like, "Okay, 4,000 calories per day? I literally have no excuse not to wreck this workout. Game on." What a fun way to train!

• You have an abundance mindset instead of a scarcity mindset.

• Your health and fitness get top priority instead of the mirror and/or the comments from friends and co-workers.

• It's suited well for people who are willing to embrace habits-based change and long-term improvements.

The question then becomes, “How do you want to live?”

If you decide you would prefer the systematic results of a tracking approach, that’s great! Seriously, it’s amazing approach for a lot of people (including me in certain seasons of training).

On the other hand, if you decide you like the idea of focusing purely on the consumption of nutrient-dense whole foods while training with purpose, that’s also great!

I have done both and will continue to utilize both as needed depending on my specific goals.

Similarly, the point is to make an educated decision about what is most likely to work best for you.

How to Take Action If You Don’t Want to Track Calories

• Commit yourself to eating only (or mostly) whole foods.

  • This means getting nearly all of your calories from vegetables, fruits, legumes, whole grains, nuts, seeds, avocados, and lean proteins.

• If you like to snack aimlessly, try to snack mostly on vegetables and fruits instead of fats like nuts and seeds.

  • Nuts and seeds have amazing health benefits, but you’ll always want to consume them in moderation to help minimize the risk of caloric overconsumption.

  • Some good options would be carrots and celery or apples and oranges.

• Drink mostly if not exclusively water with maybe black coffee or tea.

• Make sure you have a great training program. If you don’t know where to start, click here.

• Try to sleep and reduce stress as much as you can.

  • We didn’t discuss these in this article, but these two in tandem seem to be the mostly commonly neglected step-children in the context of successful body recomposition efforts.

Summary

Remember that you don't have to put yourself in a specifically-calculated calorie deficit from day one.

You can keep it very simple by eating lots of nutritious whole foods and training effectively and with purpose.

I can almost guarantee that the results in due time will come and that you’ll be happier than ever.

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Thanks for reading! I really hope you were able to take something meaningful away from this article.

If you feel like it brought you any value at all, consider sending it to a friend or family member - especially someone whose lifestyle just simply doesn’t allow for a life of food scales and perfectly-tailored macro splits.

Later, guys.

-Andrew

Why Caloric Deficits Are Overhyped

I think caloric deficits are overhyped.

No, this is not clickbait, and I'm prepared to explain why through a series of observations.

Why Caloric Deficits Are Overhyped

Observation 1: We All Want to Look Better Naked.

Most people in the fitness industry share a very similar goal in that they want to look better naked and feel more confident in their own skin.

Usually this means building muscle in certain areas and losing fat in other areas.

Most women want strong legs, plump glutes, and a flat tummy while most guys want broad shoulders, big arms, and six-pack abs.

I say this because these are by far the most commonly referenced physical attributes when I ask people about their goals.

Simply put, people want to look “hot.”

So we could summarize this point by saying that most people, by their own admission, believe that their bodies would appear the most attractive with the following characteristics:

• An appreciable amount of muscle mass

• Relatively low body fat

Observation 2: We All Want to Eat Plenty of Food.

My second observation is that most people also want to eat a good amount of food and enjoy life abundantly.

Consider how often we find ourselves in social situations centered on food and drink.

Fellas, have you ever had a jacked friend who seemed to be able to show up to a night out, crush a pizza, down a few beers, and stay as lean and muscular as ever?

Ladies, have you ever been jealous of “that one girl” whose body always seems to be perfect even though she can eat seemingly whatever she wants?

Most of us have, and I would argue that it’s a wildly enticing state of being.

It’s the desire to be able to eat without restriction while looking as amazing as possible, and it’s essentially the crux of my second point.

So, combined with that first observation, you're left with someone who wants to build muscle, lose fat, and eat in abundance.

I actually refer to this as the “golden zone” with my clients.

The “golden zone” is when you’ve trained and eaten strategically for long enough to be confidently lean while eating plenty of food on a day to day basis.

It’s the combination of being lean and have a high maintenance-calorie intake.

Now let’s move onto my third observation.

Observation 3: We’re All Being Told to Eat Less.

Most people in the fitness industry are obsessed with getting shredded or unsustainably lean, which has lead to a disproportionate level of attention given to caloric deficits.

Maybe you see where I'm going with this.

The problem here is that building muscle optimally actually requires most people to be eating in a slight surplus - not a deficit.

But the confusion comes from a very understandable place.

Most people are overweight or even obese when they begin, which means a caloric deficit is absolutely an appropriate first step (usually) in terms of burning some fat.

Let me make that very clear. I’m not saying that caloric deficits are overhyped because they don’t work. They definitely work when understood and applied properly and consistently.

The problem is that too many people never properly transition out of a caloric deficit into other phases of dieting (like maintenance periods and strategic weight gain periods).

In fact, I would argue that most of your body recomposition journey should be spent eating slightly above maintenance if you want to get increasingly muscular over time.

Why?

Because aside from very early beginnings in fitness, you don't really build a meaningful amount of muscle while eating beneath your body's needs.

Plus, it’s well known that the quality of your training dictates the quality of your fitness and physique outcomes.

Low quality training? Less exciting physical adaptations.

Extremely high quality training? Maximally exciting physical adaptations.

You can only grow your chest so much as a man who eats 1,500 calories per day just like you can only grow your glutes so much as a woman who eats 1,000 calories per day.

Long-term, the fuel simply will not be there to support the quality of training required to produce the quality of outcomes you desire.

This leads me to my next thought.

The “Chasing Two Rabbits” Analogy

It's much like the analogy of chasing two rabbits and catching none.

Let’s say you have two adorable rabbits in an open meadow. You set them both down to run freely and enjoy themselves, but then you realize you miss cuddling them and want to pick them up again.

In the beginning, you can actually clone yourself and chase both rabbits and catch both of them. It's super cool!

But after a while, you lose your superpower to clone yourself and you have to pick one or the other.

You can chase the fat loss and muscle retention rabbit or you can chase the fat gain and muscle gain rabbit.

To be fair, you can still choose to chase the recomposition bunny once you’ve lost your cloning superpowers, but it’s a far slower pursuit that many find discouraging.

The idea here is that you can’t eat in a caloric deficit indefinitely and while continuing to build more and more muscle mass.

At some point, you will probably have to choose between eating more and gaining more muscle or eating less and severely limiting your muscle gain.

What’s the Takeaway Here?

Here's the point.

Caloric deficits are overhyped in the sense that the fitness industry spends too much time talking about how to get into them and not enough time talking about how to get out of them and onto more glorious and healthful muscle-building endeavors.

If you're overweight right now but someday you want to be jacked and lean, think of your initial fat loss phase as a bank robbery. Get in and get out.

Once you've lost an appropriate amount of initial body fat, start eating more food, training harder, chasing performance improvements and strength gains, and improving your metabolism.

I fear that too many people are under the impression that eating in a caloric deficit is a permanent endeavor rather than a means to an end.

Let me say that again. Eating in a caloric deficit should always be a means to an end.

In other words, get into your caloric deficit, lose the fat, and then move on to strategic phases of maintenance eating and even eating in a modest surplus.

In time, you'll be eating way more, sporting a thriving metabolism, flourishing in the gym, and looking leaner and more built than you ever have before.

And that's a really good feeling.

Fortunately, I know this is possible because I've done it myself.

In 2019 I was a very unflattering 200 pounds and eating 2,300 calories per day.

Now, I can maintain a much leaner and muscle-bound 190-pound physique while consuming upwards of 3,000 calories per day.

Which would you prefer?

It's safe to say I prefer the latter, but the choice is yours.

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As always I hope you found this article helpful!

If you feel like this brought you any value at all, consider sending it to a friend or family member - especially someone who might be struggling with the despair of living life in a perma-deficit.

Later, guys.

-Andrew

Why There Is No Hope for Your Body Recomposition Goal (Unless There Is)

Sadly, the title of this article is not clickbait. 

I really am going to tell you why I think there's absolutely no hope for a lot of people out there with a body recomposition goal. 

And here it is:

Your mindset is self-limiting. 

And frankly, it's time everyone got called out a bit (gently, of course). 

Common Examples of a Self-Limiting Mindset

These are examples of things I hear people say and my non-spoken responses:

• "I really want to lose weight, but I'm not giving up my pizza and beer on the weekends!" 

  • My Response: That's fine, but you're probably never going to lose a meaningful amount of body fat doing that. You might have to limit those foods for some time in order to achieve your goal.

• "I really want bigger glutes and strong-looking legs, but I really don't like lifting weights. I especially hate lunges."

  • My Response: That's fine, but you're literally never going to grow your glutes or your legs. 

• "I want to gain more muscle but I just don't really have a big appetite."

  • My Response: That's fine, but you should probably adjust your goal. Muscle is grown best in a caloric surplus (even if it’s modest).

• "My only slot to workout is in the mornings. I could go to the 6AM cardio class, but I just don't want to get out of bed that early."

  • My Response: That's fine. Just don't expect to lose any fat sleeping in. You might have to make a decision about which is more important to you.

• "I know Andrew recommended getting more steps in, but it's kind of chilly outside."

  • My Response: That's fine. You could always wear a jacket, but the choice is yours. 

• "I really want to see my abs again, but there are always so many treats in the workroom! It's impossible for me to say no." 

  • My Response: That's fine. It's definitely not impossible to say no, it's just not a habit you’ve mastered yet.

Why I’m Not Here to Dispute Your Reasons

Now, just to be super clear, it really is totally fine for anyone to say those things. I really mean that! 

• It's not a problem to like pizza and beer more than being jacked and lean.

• It's not a problem to prefer watching Netflix than growing your glutes. 

• It's not a problem to enjoy workroom treats more than getting systematic fat loss results. 

But you have to be honest with yourself about the progress you will be able to make within the limitations of your own mindset.

If you read those examples carefully, you'll notice that every single one of them reflects an order of priorities in which the body recomposition goal always yields to some other element of preference. 

As cliche as it sounds, it's kind of true that most people who never achieve their goals never wanted them badly enough.

Why?

Because it's the desire within us that demands the implementation of new disciplines - even when those new disciplines are challenging and uncomfortable.

But here's where my hot take gets a little hotter. 

Personally, I think you should start disallowing yourself to exude negative emotions regarding the outcomes of choices you have made.

Read that again if you need to. 

What I'm saying is that at some point it becomes a waste of your own mental and emotional energy to dwell on negative things that you could change if you chose to.

That's a terribly negative cycle that never ends! And yet I think it describes the everyday reality of a lot of people. 

MIRROR MIRROR ON THE WALL

Think about it...

• Step 1: You see yourself in the mirror and you hate what you see.

• Step 2: You feel a negative emotion like shame or guilt or frustration or anger. 

• Step 3: But nothing changes because there are other elements of your lifestyle that you enjoy more than what it would take to improve the way you feel about the image in the mirror. 

• Step 4: And then the cycle repeats the next time you see yourself in the mirror. 

It's a very terrible thing.

Own your self-imposed parameters and move forward confidently.

In short, I think it's a good idea to make a decision about your body composition goals and journey, own that decision, and move forward confidently, even if your decision is not to pursue a dramatic change in your body composition. 

For example, if you wish you had a big booty but you're literally never going to squat, hinge, or lunge because you "just don't like it," I highly recommend learning to love your butt the way it is.

Contrary to what you might be tempted to believe while scrolling through Instagram, the plumpness of your peach is not a matter of life or death.

As it turns out, it's more of a fashion piece given the current cultural climate. 

Own your little butt. Love your little butt. 

Why?

Because you made a conscious choice not to grow your butt, and that was a mature decision. 

Seriously, you might wind up living a sad life if you hate your body despite your unwillingness to do anything about it.

Why put yourself through that? 

Similarly, if you're 30 pounds overweight but you're not willing to change your eating habits and exercise more, own that decision. It's a totally fine decision. 

Do I personally think you'd be healthier and flourish more in all areas of life if you were leaner and more fit? Of course! But I'm not you. Only you can make that decision for yourself. 

So what's my point here?

Do this...

Sit down and be real with yourself.

Go have a long think about what you think you want and the effort you're actually willing to put toward that image in your mind.

If there's a major discrepancy there, make an adjustment so that those two concepts line up with one another.

If you realize you've been dreaming and need to bring it back down to earth, adjust your goal.

If you realize your goal is legitimate but you're going to have to put more effort in, adjust your level of willingness to do what needs to be done.

Just make sure you have consistency between the goal at hand and the willingness to achieve it. 

Lastly, I couldn't help myself but leave you with some bit of positivity.

I lied. There really is hope (if you want there to be).

There really is hope for everyone if you choose to confront yourself and make change. 

Also, if this article offended you a little bit, I think that's good. I like to challenge the way people think - especially the ways they think of themselves and how they make decisions.

My honest opinion is that most people are capable of far more than they ever rise to achieve simply because they fall prey to laziness, self-doubt, and an over-obsession with comfort.

You can absolutely be that person if you want to be that person, but you can also make a powerful decision to rewrite your own story.

You don't have to think of yourself as "fat."

You don't have to think of yourself as "weak."

You don't have to hate your body.

The decision is yours, and there's hope if you want hope.

If you need help getting started, be brave and book a call with me.

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I hope you found this helpful!

If you feel like this blog brought you any value at all, consider sending it to a friend or family member who might need a loving kick in the pants.

Cheers, friends!

-Andrew

7 Reminders to Keep Things Simple for Muscle Gain and Fat Loss

The fitness industry is always buzzing with controversy and confusion, which makes it easy to chase headlines and dabble in new ideas while neglecting the fundamentals. 

In light of that temptation, this article is a quick list of how to keep things simple for the long-run while seeing consistent and encouraging improvements in your body composition.

If you are not doing any of these and your goal is to get that lean yet muscular, hard-body look, you'd be smart to ask yourself, "Do I really have a good reason for making this more complicated?" 

There are often good reasons for complexity, but make sure you challenge them thoroughly before you abandon simplicity. 

And if you’ve stumbled onto this article because you’re brand new to the idea of body recomposition, these seven reminders are the perfect place to start.

7 Reminders to Keep Things Simple for Muscle Gain and Fat Loss

1. You need to be getting stronger over time in the main movement patterns to grow muscle.

This is what we call progressive overload.

Transparently, this is probably the one strength training and body recomposition principle I have personally neglected the most, which is a shame considering I’ve given it the number one slot. 

For whatever reason, I have always been more attracted to the pursuit of accumulating increased volume through additional sets over the pursuit of putting more weight on the bar.

And although increasing your work capacity over time can be a powerful driver of muscle growth, most would agree that it should be accompanied by a gradual increase in absolute load over time as well. 

Long story short, keep things simple by focusing on getting meaningfully stronger in some kind of squat, hinge, lunge, push, pull, and row pattern over time. 

If you’re looking for specific exercise recommendations within those categories, I would point you to the following:

• Squat: Heel-Elevated Smith Machine Squat to Full Depth

• Hinge: Romanian Deadlift 

• Lunge/Thrust: Reverse Barbell Lunges

• Push: Barbell Bench Press

• Pull: Weighted Pull-Ups

• Row: Barbell Bent Over Rows 

If you were to consistently add weight to all of those movements over the next five years without doing any other exercise, I’d be willing to bet you’d be a very muscular person assuming proper diet and recovery.

This goes for both men and women. 

2. You need to be doing enough challenging sets of mostly 6-20 reps within a few reps of failure to grow muscle consistently over time. 

In other words, you need to make sure you’re training with sufficient volume.

I think 12-20 sets per muscle group per week is the sweet spot for growing muscle consistently over time, but even I can admit that this seems like a large, ambiguous range.

“Well, is it 12 sets or is it 20? And how do I know what’s appropriate for me?”

In my opinion, the best way to identify the “perfect” number of sets to complete per week per body part is to start conservatively low at 10 sets per week and move upward from there as recovery allows. 

For example, if you want to grow your quads, you could split up your weekly quad volume into three different movements. We’ll use the following exercises for this example. 

1. Barbell Back Squat

2. Hack Squat

3. Leg Extensions

Given our goal of distributing 10 sets sensibly across those 3 movements, I might choose to delegate the volume as you see below:

1. Barbell Back Squat (4 sets) on Monday 

2. Hack Squat (3 sets) on Thursday

3. Leg Extensions (3 sets) on Thursday

Without going into too much detail regarding the “why” behind that distribution of set volume, this would be a logical and evidence-based baseline of training if your goal is to grow your quads. 

“So how do you know when it’s appropriate to add more sets?” 

If you can overload your sessions modestly and progressively while clearing nearly all of your muscle soreness by the next time you train your quads each time per week, I think you would be justified to add more sets. 

For example, maybe I find that the 4 sets of Barbell Back Squats on Monday are actually very fatiguing and soreness-inducing to the point that it takes Tuesday and Wednesday to recover fully. In that case, I would not add sets to that Monday session. But if I felt completely recovered by Tuesday evening, I would consider adding a fifth set of Barbell Back Squats the following week.

3. You should probably be eating most of your calories from whole food sources while keeping processed foods to a minimum.

There is no need to make this one more complicated than it needs to be. 

Although you can certainly enjoy “junk foods” and highly-processed treats from time to time, those who consistently see improvements in their physique and overall well-being over the long-term tend to be those who prioritize basic nutrition practices rooted primarily in a whole food diet.

Vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes, nuts, seeds, teas, and lean proteins should probably make up the majority of your diet.

Bonus Reminder: I’d also like to throw in a bonus reminder here that you don’t have to eat meat or animal products of any kind to build muscle effectively, which means the “No Meat No Gains” motto from of old doesn’t need to be a guiding principle in your body recomposition journey.

If you’re curious about how to make the transition to a more plant-based life, email me personally at andrewwesleywhite@gmail.com with the subject line “Let’s Chat Plants.”

4. You need to consume an adequate amount of protein. 

To be honest, I've really been challenging the notion of ultra-high protein diets lately, so I think it makes sense for each individual to experiment with what seems to work best for them. 

In the evidence-based body recomposition community, most people agree that eating around 0.7-1g of protein per pound of lean body mass is sufficient to maximize muscle growth outcomes. 

Within that overall daily target, it’s probably a good idea to spread that protein across 3-6 meals depending on your lifestyle, preferences, and how much protein you need to consume to support your goals. 

Making it more complicated than that likely won’t yield any additional benefits. 

What do I do personally?

You can read more about my own plant-based dietary approach during gaining phases here, but I generally eat 3-4 high-protein meals per day with an emphasis on pre-workout and post-workout nutrition.

5. Your caloric consumption needs to match your goal. 

If you're trying to lose fat, you'll need to be in a modest caloric deficit.

If you're looking to build muscle, you'll need to be eating at maintenance (at the very least) or in a modest caloric surplus. 

If your caloric deficit is too aggressive, you risk burnout, unnecessarily decreased performance in the gym, and muscle loss.

If your caloric surplus is too aggressive, you risk gaining too much fat too quickly and reducing the overall productivity of your muscle gain phases. 

It’s that simple. 

If you need help determining those numbers for yourself, I would highly recommend reaching out to us for online coaching.

6. You need to be taking responsibility for your sleep quality. You can only train and grow as hard as you can recover.

It seems like no one in the fitness industry wants to talk about sleep quality because you can’t monetize it as easily as training programs and nutrition plans.

But you need to let your muscles and systems recover in order to introduce increasingly powerful stimuli over time.

Practically speaking, most research that I’ve seen over the years suggests that most people recover near optimally when sleeping between 7-9 hours per night. 

Although this won’t be possible for everyone in every season of life, its importance is certainly worth mentioning so that you can optimize it when possible.

In other words, there’s a big difference between losing sleep because you have a newborn versus losing sleep because you’re out partying or binging Netflix.

7. You can lose all of the fat you want simply by walking. You can make it more complex or intense than that, but you don't have to. 

As sexy as it may be to design a program that has you rowing on Mondays, biking on Tuesdays, swimming on Wednesdays, and sprinting on Thursdays, anything more complicated than a strategic walking plan is unnecessary for fat loss. 

Can you make it more complicated? Absolutely. 

Is there a place for more complicated methodologies for some people? Absolutely.

I’m just highlighting the reality that, if you want to, you can tailor your diet and training in a way that allows you to walk your way to your fat loss goal.

In fact, I wrote an in-depth article about exactly how to leverage walking to your fat loss advantage, so give that a read if you’re interested in learning more.

Conclusion 

How you get the physique of your dreams can be very simple. 

Does that mean it will be easy? Absolutely not. But the principles are simple and most effective when repeated and manipulated strategically over time. 

In fact, if I had to try to put all seven of those statements into one sentence, it would be something like this:

Getting lean and muscular is the result of progressively overloading the main movement patterns of squatting, hinging, pushing, and pulling while strategically manipulating your food selection, overall caloric consumption, and recovery within periodized phases of varied focus over time. 

Screenshot that for the moment you’re tempted to jump ship for Keto 3000 and Johnny Bravo’s latest Arm Blitz Split to add 6 inches to your biceps in 6 weeks.

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Thanks for reading, everyone! I sincerely hope you enjoyed the content and learned something.

If you feel like this blog brought you any value at all, consider sending it to a friend or family member!

Cheers, everyone!

-Andrew

"Should I Eat Low-Carb to Lose Fat?"

The tabloids and internet advertisements have us all wondering:

Should you eat low-carb or low-fat if you want to lose body fat and look lean and jacked?

Which one is it?

This is an immensely loaded question, but I'm going to keep it short and sweet.

Do What Is Sustainable and Feels Best

My extremely unsexy yet honest answer is that I think you should probably do what makes you feel best in context of your day to day energy, dietary preference, and performance in the gym.

Second to that, make sure this is something you do long-term. In other words, set your own adherence up for success in choosing a macronutrient distribution that you’re confident you can maintain for months and years.

But why? Shouldn’t there be a more definitive answer to this?

Not really, and this is why:

Looking lean and jacked is about having lost enough body fat to look lean and having built enough muscle to look jacked. And, since you can lose body fat and build muscle on both low-carb and low-fat diets, it doesn’t make much to heavily bias one over the other for most recreational lifters.

That being said, most physique and bodybuilders would agree that a high-carb, low-fat approach is best if you’re interested in building the most muscle possible due to the anabolic benefits of carbohydrates.

But this may not be you.

You might not be interested in “optimally jacked,” but you are interested in losing some body fat and building some muscle in a sustainable way because you don’t want to be a fluffy father or a mushy mommy.

So this brings me back to my initial point. It’s probably a good idea to do what allows for long-term adherence and feels best to you on a daily basis.

Questions to Ask Yourself

For example, these could be some helpful questions to ask yourself:

• Do you feel really good when you eat a higher carb diet?

• Do you naturally enjoy eating more carbs than fats?

• Do meals heavy in fat make you feel sluggish?

Or is it the reverse?

• Do fats keep you noticeably satiated and energetic throughout the day?

• Does eating fat give you a great mental clarity in the morning?

In my opinion, it might be as straight-forward as paying attention to the answers of those simple questions and acting accordingly.

As long as you are respecting essential levels of healthy fat consumption per day, which most experts in the field define as around 0.35x your body weight (in pounds) in grams of fat per day, I don't think it's worth overcomplicating your macronutrient distribution beyond that.

In practical terms, I think a conservative lower end for most men is around 50g per day while women can eat a bit less around 35-40g per day.

So to be clear, I think most people should distribute their macros in a way that allows them to enjoy their diet maximally while feeling and performing optimally. 

5 Reasons I Prefer High-Carb Dietary Patterns for Looking Better Naked

But, what do I do personally? What helped me lose my 31 pounds?

My bias is 100% toward high-carb, low-fat dieting, and here's why:

#1: All of My Favorite Foods Are Carbs

I freaking love carbs. I used to eat up to 6 bowls of Honey Bunches of Oats before bed each night. In fact, most days I'm actually trying to figure out how to add more fats into my diet to get to 50-60g of fat per day. 

So this first point comes down to preference and nothing else.

All of my favorite foods are carbs: sweet potatoes, white potatoes, oats, rice, quinoa, pasta, beans, bananas, berries, cereals, etc.

And now that I’ve made the transition to eating a predominantly whole food plant-based diet, it’s easier than ever to bias my macronutrients heavily in favor of carbohydrates over fats. 

#2: Carbs Make My Muscles Look Like Big Balloons 

Carbs create that full muscle effect that makes your guns look like freshly inflated balloons due to intramuscular water retention. 

When I keep my carbs low, I just look deflated. I don't like looking deflated. I like filling out my t-shirts.

If I enjoyed looking deflated all of the time, I’d probably take up marathon running. That’s no shade thrown at my long-distance brothers and sisters, but let’s call it how it is. There aren’t too many marathon runners out there experiencing restricted blood flow to their forearms because the sleeves on their t-shirts are inadvertently functioning as a tourniquet. 

Here’s a professional photo of me on more than 600g of carbohydrates the day of the photoshoot.

#3: Carbs Give Me Nasty Pumps at the Gym

High-carb dieting gives me sick pumps in the gym due to topped off glycogen stores. I like sick pumps in the gym, so I eat high-carb. Makes sense, right?

I also think there is a powerful psychological component here.

There’s an old adage that goes something like this: look good, feel good, play good. And as simple as it may sound, I think there’s quite a bit of truth there.

If you’ve ever had a skin-splitting pump in the gym, you probably know exactly what I’m talking about. When you catch a pump, you feel invincible. So what happens? You really start to connect both mentally and physically to the session. With each curl, you drive more and more blood into the biceps until you can’t help but sneak off to the group classroom and snatch a shameless selfie like I did in the photo you see here.

To summarize, I really think half of the fun of lifting weights is chasing the pump and feeling confident in your own skin, which is bound to produce other positive outcomes in both your psychology and your physique.

#4: Carbs Keep Me Feeling High-Energy

I just feel generally low energy when I eat high-fat and restrict my carb intake. Even when calories are equated, I just don't feel the same. 

There’s really no better feeling to me than smashing an enormous salad with berries, hemp seeds, and Italian dressing. Or even a Mexican-inspired bowl of rice or quinoa topped with a medley of beans, corn, tomatoes, and just a touch of avocado.

But again, this is just personal to me. You may not feel the same way, and there are plenty of intelligent people in the industry pushing for a higher-fat, ketogenic approach.  

#5: Carbs Seem to Help Me Stay Focused

I have a great mental focus when I'm eating carbs. I know some people swear by fat (and good for them), but I swear by carbs. Pick your poison.

I’m really not trying to tell you what to do. I’m just telling you what I do and what I’ve found success in over the years. 

For example, smash an enormous 800-calorie bowl of oatmeal in the morning can oftentimes sustain my mental focus through the lunch hour (without food) and well into the late afternoon.

If you need inspiration, check out this recent upload from my phone because you know I take pictures of my oatmeal like first-time parents take photos of their children.

"What does high-carb mean though? Give me some numbers!"

I do like giving people specific numbers, so when I talk about high-carb dieting I'm essentially talking about maximally high-carb dieting. In other words, I keep fats as low as possible (while maintaining general health parameters) to maximize the anabolic benefits of carbs.

My Current High-Carb Diet

Right now, my macros are 120-150P, 50-60F, and 500-600C, and you can check out this recent full day of eating in Cronometer for a more in-depth look.

But keep in mind that this comes in context of my personal body, my personal metabolism, my personal phase of training, my personal phase of dieting, and my personal preferences. 

Do not take my macros and try to implement them into your own life with the hopes of achieving the same success I have had.

That’s just not how it works.

If, however, you are interested in calculating your own macros for fat loss or muscle gain, send us an email and let’s set up a consultation call. If that sounds too scary, I highly recommend this article I wrote about how to know if you’re ready to hire an online body recomposition coach.

Lastly, if you want an additional “non-me” resource on the benefits of high-carb eating, check out this article by Dr. Mike Israetel.

I love Dr. Mike, and even though this article is written in the context of massing (or bulking), the ideas apply across all phases of training and dieting assuming no outstanding medical issues. It's an absolute smash of a write-up, so I highly recommend the read. 

Summary

• Which style of eating makes you feel good and perform well? Do that probably.

• Eating high-carb instead of high-fat tends to be more popular among physique sport enthusiasts and bodybuilders.

• I am personally biased toward high-carb, minimal fat approaches.

• I personally lost 31 pounds eating high-carb in context of a caloric deficit.

  • I just toss that in there to say that I was still maximizing carbs (although much lower than usual) while dieting for extended fat loss.

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Thanks for reading, everyone! I sincerely hope you enjoyed the content and learned something.

If you feel like this blog brought you any value at all, consider sending it to a friend or family member!

And, if you're interested in working with me one-on-one, visit The Vegan Gym and apply for coaching. I’ve had nothing but success in guiding people toward their fat loss goals.

Cheers, everyone!

-Andrew

"Which Protein Bar Should I Buy?"

Let's chat briefly about protein bars.

We all know what it’s like to casually stroll into the health market section of a grocery store in search of a protein snack just to be met by a seemingly endless selection of sometimes 50 or more protein bars.

It can be intense, overwhelming, and discouraging, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some people wind up leaving those aisles just as soon as they’ve entered in hot pursuit of a Cosmic Brownie and a bag of chips instead.

So, which protein bars should you buy?

That’s a great question, but let’s first talk about what I mean when I personally use the word “should.”

Every “should” you will ever hear from me will be accompanied by a disclaimer that answers the question, “Why?”

I’m a big believer that anyone telling anyone what they “should” do would be well-suited to have a good reason for suggesting such things. In other words, when there’s a “should,” I always provide a “why.”

So, the only sense in which you “should” take my advice on which protein bars to buy is if you want to optimize your body composition in the most efficient and sustainable way possible.

I want to be clear that buying and consuming protein bars without a nuanced understanding of the goal behind the behavior is not an automatic ticket to “looking better naked” or even being a healthier person overall.

And, remember I don't write for general fitness or health tips usually - this is about body recomposition, which means gaining muscle and losing body fat over the long term to reshape the integrity of your body.

Sound good?

So if you want to change the shape of your body by ditching body fat and building lean mass over the long term, this is my advice to you regarding protein bars.

Tips for Buying Protein Bars When Body Recomposition Is the Goal

Tip 1 - Try to get 20-40g of protein if possible.

To me, the most important thing to look for is that you're getting at least 20g of protein from the bar or that you're eating the bar with another protein source that gets you to that 20g minimum threshold.

We don't need to get too much into the science, but research tends to show that eating protein in doses of 20-40g per eating event stimulates near optimal muscle growth signaling through muscle protein synthesis.

Basically, if you’re going to eat protein, you might as well eat at least 20g of it per sitting to make it worth your while.

That being said, it's not an on/off switch, so you haven't "failed" if you only get something like 15g or 17g. That is certainly better than no protein at all.

In fact, most mainstream protein bars won't have 20g, which means you’ll probably have to do a bit of searching.

It'll be the ones that seem to be marketed a bit more to the bros that have 20-35g, which actually makes a lot of sense.

Bros want muscle, so bros eat more protein. You want muscle, so now you're a bro by a loose application of the transitive property, which means it’s time to level up your protein consumption per meal.

Why settle for 17g when you go for something more optimal?

So make sure you’re getting 20-40g of protein from your bars if you’re interested in maximizing your lean tissue accumulation.

Tip 2 - Do the calories fit your goal and overall eating strategy?

Make sure the calories make sense in context of your full day of eating, which needs to be tailored to your overall goal.

For example, you might find a protein bar that passes the protein test of 20-40g, but it might also be packing way too many calories if your goal is fat loss.

That means that bar isn't a good fit for you!

I have the perfect, real-life example.

Check out these Super Cookie Crunch Bars from MET-Rx that Josh and I used to pound.

You'll notice that they advertise a robust 32g of protein, which is great, right? It ticks our first box.

But they aren't advertising the calories, which are a hefty 420 calories per bar.

Yikes!

And although I can't offer anyone a magical number of calories that an ideal protein bar “should” contain, I can tell you with confidence that 420 calories per bar is probably going to be too many calories for most fat loss dieters (even men) unless you’re using it as a meal replacement bar as the brand recommends.

Even then though, the numbers just don’t add up well, and I’ll show you how.

Let's take some of my exact numbers for example. At the tail end of my diet when I was peeling back the layers for the photoshoot you see at the top of this article, I was eating 1,800 calories per day, which wasn’t much food for someone who was around 170 pounds.

In that case, spending 420 calories on a single bar would have been 23% of my entire day of eating but only 16% of my protein target.

That’s a meaningful percentage of my caloric allotment for the day from a processed brick of pseudo-Oreo happiness, which means it just probably wouldn't have been a good fit in context of the bigger picture.

In other words, it would have been a better idea to replace those calories with whole food option likes lean proteins, vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and healthy fats for a more complete nutritional profile.

Now, apply this same bar to the life of a 110-pound female who is dieting on 1,300 calories per day, and it's now 32% of her daily calories.

You get the point.

It's probably not going to be a good bet just because it likely won't fill you up as much as whole foods would, which is ultimately a poor overall strategy for sustained diet adherence.

Could you do it though? Absolutely. The key is simply to make an informed decision for yourself.

You have to make sure the calories in the bar fit your goal.

Oh, and one last thing: You're probably realizing how a lot of people can actually gain weight eating what they thought would make them "fit."

Remember Regina George from Mean Girls?

Yeah, perfect example. Don't get duped like Regina.

Tip 3 - Are you okay with the ingredient list from a health perspective?

Some people like the idea of keeping the ingredient list as short as possible for personal preference and health.

If that's you, do it!

Just remember that pursuing general health and pursuing a body recomposition goal aren’t necessarily always intimately intertwined, so this consideration is less relevant when it comes to building muscle and losing fat in a direct sense.

For more on that, check out this article.

And, as a bit of a pro-tip, keep in mind too that protein bars are usually processed by nature, so if you're an ingredient purist you've sort of been kicked in the knee before you ever set foot in the aisle.

As far as I know, protein bars don’t grow on trees next to the bananas nor in the soil alongside the yams.

I would also mention that if you're vegan you'll want to make sure your bar's protein is sourced with a soy or pea protein instead of whey.

Tip 4 - Does it taste good?

If taste matters to you, make sure the bar you are buying on a consistent basis tastes good!

That's probably a no-brainer, but it's worth mentioning as a quick fourth point.

When it comes to a fat loss diet, sustainability and adherence are the most important factors for success, so be sure you at least somewhat enjoy the protein bars you’ve chosen to help you reach your goals.

At the same time, don’t expect them to taste like your favorite childhood Halloween treat.

My Personal Recommendations

I know what some of you are probably thinking...

"Just tell me which one to get, dude! I don't have time to think about this stuff!"

Fine.

Although I have to be honest in that I originally published this article before I adopted a plant-based diet.

So, instead of completing reworking the article to be more plant-predominant, I’ve just sprinkled in a few disclaimers here and there to help nuance my new position.

My Ex-Protein Bar

For a long time, my favorite protein bar was the Pure Protein bar for the following reasons:

1. They pack 19-21g of protein depending on the flavor, which means you could either eat 2 in order to hit the 40g of protein mark or happily settle for just one. First rule checked!

2. The Chocolate Deluxe variety only has 180 calories, which means the macros are really great for body recomposition purposes. Keep in mind that the calories have to go up as the protein content goes up, but that's okay! You want your calories to come from protein when you're eating a protein bar, right?

So even when I would eat 2, I was only eating 360 total calories, which is something I could personally afford even when eating like a peasant for fat loss. Second rule checked!

3. The ingredient isn't impressively short like an RX Bar, but I was personally okay with it. Third rule checked!

4. I personally loved the taste. Fourth rule checked!

5. They were very affordable. Fifth rule checked!

Walmart carries these bad boys if you need to make a sprint after work, and I'm definitely not sponsored by them.

Should you buy this one? If it makes sense for your life and your goals!

My Current Protein Bar

There are only two protein bars I regularly consume now that I eat a completely plant-based diet.

The first and most common one is the Clif Builders bar series.

They’re a bit more calorically dense than they whey-based bars I used to consume, but they make up a very small portion of my diet now, so I simply make it work as needed.

These are still great for busy moments, so I try to keep a few in my gym bag or in my vehicle at all times.

The second bar I utilize from time to time is the NuGo Slim Chocolate Mint bar.

It’s a bit more calorically-friendly than the Clif Builders bar, but I try to eat them in pairs since each bar contains 17g of protein.

Curious about what else I eat as a part of my plant-based diet? I’ve got you covered.

Be sure to click on over to my article called Vegan Bulking: My Most Common Meals for Building Muscle on a Plant-Based Diet.

I hope this write-up helps you think about how to navigate the millions of protein bar options you've probably been presented with when shopping.

If you have any specific questions, just email me at ivry.fitness@gmail.com and we can have a humanizing chat about it.

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Thanks for reading, everyone! I sincerely hope you enjoyed the content and learned something.

If you feel like this blog brought you any value at all, consider sending it to a friend or family member!

And, if you're interested in working with me one-on-one, visit The Vegan Gym and apply for coaching. I’ve had nothing but success in guiding people toward their fat loss goals.

Cheers, everyone!

-Andrew

Is the StairMaster the Best Way to Lose Weight?

If there is one thing that is non-negotiably true about the fitness industry, it’s this:

Everyone wants to know the fastest and most effective way to lose fat and get that hard body look.

And, to be fair, that makes good sense considering most of us have never been busier. 

Who has the time to be farting around with their fat loss goals on nonsensically decelerated time frames when we could be spending time with our families, pursuing our up-and-coming side hustle, or even catching up on the most recent Netflix documentary that everyone is buzzing about?

I sure don’t, and I doubt you do either. 

But, you clicked on this article because you’re wondering if the StairMaster is the holy grail of fat loss from which we can all sip in shredded six-pack spendor, so let’s quit wasting time with introductory banter and get into the meat and potatoes of whether or not the dreaded stairs can help you carve out the statue-esque physique of your dreams. 

Now, rather than directly answering the question of whether or not you should do the StairMaster to lose weight, I’m going to pitch you four reasons you could be on the StairMaster and how they could impact your body recomposition goal.

The Only 4 Reasons You Should Ever Be on the StairMaster

1. You're Using It to Burn Calories for Fat Loss

Make no mistake about it, walking on the StairMaster can burn you a ton of calories in a short amount of time, which makes it an excellent choice for busy people who just don't have a ton of time to spend on their fat loss goals. 

And, this takes the number one slot on my list because it's by far the best and most logical reason - in my opinion - to be putting yourself through such torture.

So when I see people on the stairs, I assume it's time to get shredded, which means you have a focused fat loss goal that’s being done in tandem with a focused fat loss diet. 

Or, for people who really know what they're doing, getting on the stairs a few times per week can be a great way to stay lean while keeping your calories higher. 

I respect that 100%, and generally I assume that's what people are doing when I see "fit" people on the stairs. 

For a bit of practical application, I want to reiterate that I would always recommend using the StairMaster in combination with a calorically-controlled diet.

For example, if you’re a 110-pound female with a ferocious hankering for a Chipotle burrito who has to drop calories beneath 1200 to continue chipping away at the fat loss you want, you might consider assisting your deficit through the StairMaster 2-3 times per week for 15-45 minutes per session depending on the intensity.

Although I personally would always opt for more flat walking or incline treadmill work due to its minimal impact on overall recovery, the StairMaster is certainly a more time efficient way of burning a few extra calories than either of those options.

Keep in mind, however, that there literally isn’t a single person on the planet who needs the StairMaster to lose body fat and achieve the look they want.

It’s simply one tool of many that can be used strategically in context of your overall plan! Always remember that. 

2. You Might Be Training for a Hiking Trip, But I Doubt It

This isn't going to be very many people, but I have known a few people who were training for a hiking trip and used the stairs to prepare themselves for the hills. 

Let's be honest though, that's not going to be many people, and I would estimate that less than 1% of people on the stairs in the cardio section are training for a big hike.

At the same time, this is technically a legitimate reason to be on the StairMaster, so I thought it was worth including even though hiking protocols typically have nothing to do with a focused body recomposition effort. 

3. You Want to Improve Your Cardiovascular Fitness

Although this seems like a nutty reason to me since so many other things could achieve a very similar result, you could use the StairMaster for general heart health.

But you could also walk or jog or row or even do weight lifting circuits to keep your heart health on point, so I personally think the stairs are an unnecessarily brutal choice if you're just a noble soul looking to stay healthy.

That being said, good for you if this is your perspective on health! There is zero judgement coming from me. I see you and I celebrate you.

In fact, I have a medal of honor and nobility sitting on my desk for you at IVRY headquarters. Feel free to pick that up anytime between the hours of 9-5PM Monday through Friday.

But again, this has nothing to do with a focused body recomposition effort, and you could easily have a healthy heart while rocking a dad bod. 

The StairMaster is not an automatic one-way ticket to Shredzville or Peach Town.

4. You Enjoy It! 

Preference is always a fine reason to do something in the gym as long as you're doing it safely.

If you like the StairMaster, cheers! 

But stay away from me because I don't personally trust you.

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Okay, so those were the four main reasons I think you should ever really be on the StairMaster outside from silly reasons like you’re looking for a reason to talk to the cute girl who happens to be on the StairMaster next to you.

But I’m not going to leave it there.

Now, it’s time to expose three simple reasons you really shouldn’t be using the StairMaster.

3 Reasons Not To Be Using the StairMaster?

1. You Think It's Going to Plump Up Your Peach

Using the StairMaster is not how you get a big, muscular butt. 

I fear that a lot of people slaving away on the stairs are doing so because they saw some fit Instagram model doing it and they're envious of her rump.

Don't do that. 

Big butts are built mostly through heavy compound movements like deadlifting, squatting, lunging, and hinging for hypertrophy when paired with a high-protein diet that can actually build the muscle you want.

So let me say this one last time, if you see a chick on the StairMaster with a bum you’d be eager to sport yourself, remember that she did not build it on the stairs - even if she’s kicking her legs back with every step like a bad YouTube ad. 

Big butts are either the product of genetics or heavy resistance training.

If anything, the StairMaster might even be working against your glute gains! 

Why? Because muscle growth seems to occur when your glutes are trained within a few reps of muscular failure with a load that allows for 6-20 reps per set in most cases.  

So answer me this.

Do you want a bigger butt?

Or do you want an “endurance butt?”

The last time I checked, walking on the stairs is technically like doing thousands and thousands of supoptimal reps that never push your glutes to within a few reps of failure.

Do you see my point? 

The classic illustration of this idea in the fitness industry is the comparison of physiques between sprinters or “explosive athletes” and longer distance athletes.

To be fair, they always exaggerate the juiciness of the sprinters while making the long distance runners look like they’re on their deathbeds, but in general I think the point is well-supported.

FATIGUE BUILD-UP and the interference effect

And, one final point I want to make while we’re here is this…

Being on the StairMaster will create an immense amount of fatigue build-up in your legs. Some even call this the interference effect.

Think about it.

If getting a bigger butt is about training with loads that allow you get within a few reps of failure in the 6-20 rep range, but your legs are too tired from your time on the StairMaster to create the stimulus you need from your weight training, your butt is not going to grow optimally.

Can you see how you’d really be shooting yourself in the foot? Or should I say the butt? 

So the take-home point is this: If plumping up your peach is your main goal, train your glutes with heavy weights for 10-20 hard sets per week in the 6-20 rep range, tailor your calories and protein according to your goal, and stay away from the StairMaster.

2. You Think It's Going to Give You That Hard, Lean Look

Although riding the stairs can absolutely burn body fat like crazy when paired with a calorie-controlled diet, it's not going to give you that "hot" look all by itself unless you already have plenty of muscle hiding underneath your chub. 

And even then you might be risking a bit of muscle loss without a high-protein diet.

For example, if you're a former athlete and you used to have a lean look, you might be able to get away with hammering away on the stairs to reveal your lean tissue because, in some sense, you already put in the work years ago.

But if you're in that "skinny fat" category - or maybe if you're just overweight in general without much muscle mass underneath - slaving away on the stairs is just going to deflate you.

If your chubby self was a succulent grape, you’re now on the fast track to looking like your pointer finger after being in the hot tub for two hours.  

You'll lose weight! That's for sure. But you won't look the way you want to look. 

You’ll just have traded one unimpressive look for another - the only difference being a few pounds on the scale, which I doubt will capture the attention of your friends and family.

Think about it through the lens of my “family summer weekend at the lake” analogy.

MY Family Summer Weekend at the Lake Analogy

I am a Missouri person, which means one big aspect of Missouri culture in the summer is that people tend to hangout at the Lake of the Ozarks.

Nice lake homes on the water, fancy boats, fun drinks, good vibes, and…

Swimsuits - the infamously feared summer garment that reminds us all of how much we’ve let go.

And the fact that everyone is in their swimsuits means that you probably don’t want to feel wildly insecure in your own skin. 

I actually had a client tell me once that one of his bigger motivations in pursuing body recomposition is that he didn’t want to be the “fat friend” in photos from a friends vacation he’d be taking in a few months. 

Oof!

But, for the sake of setting up our analogy, let’s assume that next year you are going to show up to the lake after having undergone some type of weight loss or body recomposition effort.

I present to you two scenarios that could apply to men or women.

Lake Scenario 1 - You Lost Weight But That’s About It

You show up and no one really says anything. 

You’re in your swimsuit on the boat enjoying everyone’s company for maybe 40 minutes before you get caught up in a 15-minute conversation with your brother-in-law you haven’t seen a while when he says, “Am I making things up or did you lose some weight?”

Tickled that someone finally noticed your 30-pound weight loss, you proudly say, “I did actually! I’ve lost 30 pounds,” to which he responds, “Thirty pounds? Really? Huh. Well good for you, man. I wouldn’t have guessed it to be 30, but that’s great.”

Ouch! 

And to be honest with you, I think that’s what happens a lot when people diet for a weight loss goal through slaving away on the StairMaster (or any other type of cardio machine) without paying homage to resistance training and a high-protein diet along the way.

You lost weight, but no one really cares because you don’t really look that different and you certainly don’t have that hard-body look that tends to turn heads.

You'll be softer but mainly just smaller and equally squishy unless you really took your fat loss to the extremes.

And even then you'd probably just be a super tiny person with little to no muscle mass and a metabolism fit for a toddler.

Lake Scenario 2 - You Got Lean and Jacked

You show up and everyone says, “Dude, what in the world did you do?! You look sick!” 

I’m not saying you all of sudden transformed into Chris Evans, but you’ve definitely got broader shoulders, a shelfed chest, and some abs.

And, depending on how short your swim pants are, you might even be showing off a bit of quad pizzazz like our handsome Internet model Peter over here to the left.

You see that quad vein? Good job, Pete.

Or for the ladies, imagine hearing, “Girl, you look amazing! Please tell me exactly what you did so I can start tomorrow! But seriously, what did you do...”

Those are the kind of reactions that happen organically when you show up with less flabby underarms, stronger and more shapely glutes and legs, and a flatter tummy than you’ve had in a long time.

Just imagine how invigorating of a feeling that would be.

Speaking from experience as a body recomposition coach, those are the comments that continue to light the motivation fire for people more than anything else.

I could be wrong, but my guess is that 10 out of 10 people would choose this second scenario over the first every single time.

And for anyone scoffing right now because they’re unimpressed with the focus on vanity, keep in mind that having a strong, muscular body is a very functional way to live.

So what in the flying fork does that all have to do with not looking to the StairMaster to get you that hard, lean look? 

It’s a reminder that the coveted hard body look is a product of weight training, protein, and caloric control - not impulsive amounts of cardio.

And if you really want to remodel your physique over the long-term, cardio will actually probably play a somewhat minimal role in that process relative to those more important points of emphasis. 

3. You Are Super Duper Overweight

One last reason I think some people should avoid using the StairMaster is if you are significantly overweight or obese. 

The reason for that is simply because you likely don’t need to do something that intense.

In other words, just getting your diet in check is enough to get most obese people losing slabs of weight with very little required exercise.

I don’t say this to be judgemental in the slightest, but it seems like obesity is often times the result of having done almost everything “wrong” in terms of diet and exercise for an extended period of time, which means making a few critical changes - especially in the realms of calorie control - is enough to get the scale moving in the right direction.

I think I felt the need to bring this up because I frequently will see some very overweight people using the StairMaster at my gym, and it always makes me wonder if they know that it’s probably unnecessary. 

Secondly, I think being on the StairMaster when you’re very overweight puts you at increased risk of burnout because it’s semi-unsustainable. 

Imagine being overweight, putting in a ton of work on the stairs without tweaking your diet, not losing any meaningful amount of weight in the first two weeks, and giving up.

I think that’s probably a very real thing and the greatest source of frustration for a lot of people looking to lose weight.

“Screw it! If I’m not going to lose any weight, I’m done.”

If you’re very overweight, I would encourage you to look to more sustainable forms of increased caloric expenditure like:

• Walking outside with friends

• Incline treadmill walking at a very doable pace

• Spin class

• Other group classes with a community element like CrossFit

If you’d like an in-depth take on how to leverage walking for fat loss, read my article here.

Let's Wrap It Up

That was a long one, so let’s recap.

Being on the stairs stinks. 

Your heart rate goes soaring through the roof, you sweat like you're in a sauna, and your hip flexors cramp up into little tennis balls.

So if you're going to put yourself through that, do so for reasons that you've determined make sense for your long-term goal. 

Trying to lose body fat? Stairs could work! But walking also works, might me more sustainable, and sucks a lot less if you have the time.

Trying to gain muscle optimally? I'd recommend staying off the stairs and sticking with a moderate level of steps mainly for health. 

Walking up stairs won't make you jacked or help you really turn heads at your next pool party or family event at the lake. 

And for the love of all things moderately decent, don’t hop on the StairMaster in an attempt to grow your butt, ladies. 

“What about you, Andrew? Do you do the StairMaster?”

Personally, I have strategically used the stairs in the past to accelerate my fat loss, but I did so in a limited fashion with design and purpose. I encourage you to do the same! 

In fact, here is my transformation from 2019 when I lost 18 pounds. I used the stairs for the last two weeks of my diet. I was around 200 on the left and about 182 on the right.

And just for some comparative photos, I got on the stairs zero times when I underwent this transformation you see below in 2020.

I walked, lifted weights 5-6 times per week, ate plenty of protein, and kept my calories in check.

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Thanks for reading, everyone! I sincerely hope you enjoyed the content and learned something.

If you feel like this blog brought you any value at all, consider sending it to a friend or family member!

And, if you're interested in working with me one-on-one, visit The Vegan Gym and apply for coaching. I’ve had nothing but success in guiding people toward their fat loss goals.

Cheers, everyone!

-Andrew

How to Lose Weight for Your Wedding: A How-To Guide for the Brides of 2023-24

A lot of brides are gearing up for their special day in 2022 thinking, “It’s time to get into the best shape of my life for my wedding day.”

If that’s you, you’ve come to the right place because I’m here to tell you exactly how you can feel as confident as possible in your own skin as you walk down the aisle this year.

Before we get started though, I have to offer an extremely important disclaimer. 

This article is all about how you could lose weight and look “super hot” for your wedding, but no one here at IVRY is telling you that you should lose weight or need to lose weight - or that you can’t look beautiful on your wedding day just the way you are. 

You absolutely can.

I just know that there are plenty of brides and grooms who do want to shed body fat, build muscle, and “get hot” for their wedding day and honeymoon, which is why I’ve decided to write this article.

So let’s get into it.

You Need to Figure Out What You Mean When You Say “Lose Weight”

A lot of brides will say something like, “I want to lose weight for my wedding.”

And, to be fair, I know what most women mean when they say that, but I do think it can be an unhelpful way of thinking about “looking good” on your wedding day.

What do I mean by that?

Some people literally just want to see the number on the scale go down while other people care more about achieving a certain look.

These are very different things, which means…

You need to decide which person you are.

Do you really just want to lose weight? Or do you want to look a certain way?

The reason it seems like I am always teasing out this point is because it has a significant impact on the way you set up your diet and training.

In fact, it’s the very reason we call ourselves body recomposition coaches instead of weight loss coaches.

“I literally just want to lose weight and feel slimmer overall. If my butt looks like a sad raisin, I’m cool with that.”

If you literally just want to lose scale weight, I would encourage you to prioritize two simple things above all else:

1. Creating a moderate to aggressive caloric deficit through food

2. Burning calories through activity

In terms of practical application, that means you could go on something like a no-carb diet and commit to five classes at OrangeTheory per week. 

The diet is straightforward and simple to understand, and there’s no thought to the workouts, which means you just show up and burn hundreds of calories.

But remember, this isn’t going to make any of your muscles grow in any meaningful capacity because you’re only focused on losing weight - not body fat - just weight, which could be fat, muscle, water, or even just less food in your digestive system at any given moment.

At best, you’d be hoping to maintain any muscle you already had while getting smaller overall.

Nonetheless, you could very easily be “hardcore” for the few months leading up to your wedding, get the weight loss results you apparently want, snap the wedding day photos, feel “hot” on the beach and…

Oh, shoot.

Then what?

BEWARE THE EPIC HONEYMOON REBOUND

Unfortunately, you would probably rebound harder than Tom Hanks once he ditched Wilson and finally made it back to civilization after island life in the movie Castaway. 

Why?

Because crash dieting and reckless amounts of cardio just aren’t sustainably-designed or meant to bring anyone long-lasting results.

Not only that, but a traditional honeymoon experience sometimes involves the overconsumption of both food and alcohol, which results in an extremely high-calorie experience that could lead to anywhere between 3-10 pounds of fat gain.

This is why I warn against it.

But hey, maybe you’re not interested in a more phasic, long-term approach, and that’s totally fine!

You can make that decision for yourself. 

Some people literally just want the shortest route from A to Z and they don’t mind crashing and burning as long as Z is a good time.

Would I recommend it? Not at all. I think it’s shortsighted and destined for long-term failure, but I really don’t say that with judgment. It’s just my honest position.

But let’s address the brides out there who want to channel that shapely, fill-your-dress-out-in-all-the-right-ways type of lean bride vibe on their wedding day. 

We’re talking about strong yet feminine legs and glutes, a lean back peeking out from behind your straps, “toned” arms while you clutch the bouquet, and a flat tummy as a bit of icing on the cake. 

Do I have your attention yet?

“Okay, yeah. I’d rather put in the work to be shapely yet feminine! How do we do that?”

Sweet. That’s what I thought. 

So, if you’re wanting to lose mostly body fat (rather than just weight in general) while maximizing muscle retention or even building lean tissue on the way down, I would encourage you to do four things above all else:

1. Create a modest caloric deficit through food

2. Eat protein in doses of 20-40g per serving 3-4 times per day

3. Train 3-6 times per week with weights in an overloading fashion

4. Become a walking enthusiast

And here are some quick tips on how to achieve each of those numbered points without diving into too much detail.

Create a Modest Caloric Deficit Through Food

This is the most important thing on the list because the old saying that “you can’t out-exercise a bad diet” is absolutely true outside of Olympic athletes, genetic outliers, and those skinny eighth grade boys at the pool with a six-pack for no reason.

This comes down to identifying a caloric target for yourself that will have you losing around 1% of your bodyweight per week at most.

As a 200-pound guy, that means I’d be hoping to lose about 2 pounds per week.

Now obviously you can’t do that forever, but the point is to lock-in on a caloric target that can bring you that general weight of loss for 4-8 weeks. 

So if you’re a 150-pound female looking to get the ball rolling, you would set up a diet that would have you losing around 1.5 pounds (at most) per week for 4-8 weeks before adjusting.

Sample Fat Loss Pace for a 150-Pound Female

• Week 1 - 150 pounds

• Week 2 - 148.5 pounds or so 

• Week 3 - 147 pounds or so 

• Week 4 - 145.5 pounds or so 

• Week 5 - 144 pounds or so 

• Week 6 - 142.5 pounds or so

• Week 7 - 141 pounds or so

• Week 8 - 139.5 pounds or so

That would be a great start. 

But I know what you’re probably thinking.

“Well, are you going to tell me how many calories to eat?”

And the difficult answer to that question is no!

There is no one-size-fits-all caloric script that we can write because everyone is different.

That being said, I have found that starting most women out around 1800 calories is a great place to begin.

If you’re significantly overweight, you’ll probably lose plenty of body fat for quite awhile.

If you’re only slightly overweight, you’ll still probably start trending downwards, which is great.

But, women who are already relatively lean or who might just be very small people could benefit from starting their caloric target lower than 1800.

In some cases, eating 1800 calories per day could even cause you to gain weight slowly, but…

This could even be a good thing since it will give your body an optimal energy for muscle growth, which could even accentuate your muscular yet feminine curves despite a gentle uptick on the scale.

But again, did you just want to “lose weight” or did you want to look a certain way?

Now that’s true body recomposition, and it’s what lights my fire more than anything else as a coach.

The point of starting at 1800 calories per day is to kickstart the process because, well, you have to start somewhere. You can always adjust once you’ve accumulated about 14 days worth of bodyweight data.

If you’re losing weight around 0.5-1% per week, you’ve found the sweet spot! Slower than that? Maybe make a 100-calorie reduction to 1700 and continue to observe.

Others have speculated that you can take your current bodyweight in pounds and multiply that number by 10-12 for good estimation of a caloric target that should get you dropping some body fat.

Eat Protein in Doses of 20-40g per Serving 3-4 Times per Day

This is the second most important thing in my opinion because protein is the macronutrient that preserves and builds muscle. 

So, if you want to look svelte when the DJ cues up Canon in D, you’ll want to make sure you’re giving your body an optimal amount of protein to support your goal.

In short, I like to recommend a maximum of 1g of protein per day per pound of your goal body weight.  

So if you’re 150 pounds and you know you’d be excited to be a lean 140, it’s probably a decent idea to aim to eat between 98-140g of protein per day while you’re shredding for the wedding.

If you want more nuance on that, you can also check out our full article on just about everything you could ever want to know about structuring your protein consumption.

But, to keep with our 140-pound example, you could easily do the following assuming it doesn’t violate any food intolerance you might have:

• 8:00AM - 35g of protein from a plant-based protein shake with soy milk

• 11:30AM - 35g of protein from a tofu salad

• 5:30PM - 35g of protein from a chickpea pasta with salad

• 8:00PM - a piece of fruit for dessert

It really doesn’t have to be too complicated. Just make sure to keep your calories controlled to the goal.

Train 3-6 Times per Week with Weights in an Overloading Fashion

If you’re trying to look “uber hot” according to modern cultural standards, you’re probably going to need to be lifting weights multiple times per week.

In other words, thick bums and strong legs are in.

Can you do group fitness classes or hot yoga or pure barre or something similar? Totally.

But it’s probably not going to build the muscle you might be drawn to when dreaming about your ideal wedding day physique.

Those types of exercise are good for general health, fitness, flexibility, and burning plenty of calories, but they aren’t overloading enough to build an optimal amount of muscle.

Does that make sense?

So back to lifting.

For brides new to lifting, you really can’t go wrong with what we call the “push, pull, legs” split, which means you’d do the following:

• Monday: 4-8 pushing exercises (chest, triceps, shoulders)

• Tuesday: 4-8 pulling exercises (back, biceps)

• Wednesday: 4-5 leg exercises (quads, hamstrings, calves, abs)

And then you could easily repeat that for Thursday, Friday, Saturday while resting on Sunday if you want to make a 6-day split out of it.

You could also do 3 full body days a week or even a 4-day legs, push, pull, legs split if you’re a bride that wants to emphasize the lower half of your body (as most do).

For more information on how to structure a workout for optimal muscle growth, check out my article called How to Build Muscle Effectively Using the Rule of 7’s and 11’s.

Become a Walking Enthusiast

I’d recommend tracking your steps and aiming to hit the same semi-challenging number each day.

There’s nothing magical about 10,000 steps, but it’s a nice, round number that people like to see pop up on their phones or watches after a successful day of walking. 

When I lost around 30 pounds in 2020, I eventually had to push my walking up to 15,000 steps per day in order to see the continued results I wanted.

Whether your number is 10,000 or 7,000 or 15,000, get after it and get consistent. 

Walking burns way more calories than most people give it credit for, so if you’re in an area that allows for outdoor walking, I suggest you maximize it during the months approaching your wedding.

Seriously, if you think walking is silly advice, you’re probably unaware of the fact that most bikini competitors walk for 1-2 hours per day in the weeks leading up to their shows in order to achieve that fit yet feminine look that many brides are after.

So get to walking!

Looking for a more in-depth discussion on how to tailor your walking to your fat loss advantage, I’ve got you covered.

Manage Your Timeline Intelligently

The hard part about writing articles like this is that I can’t nuance every piece of the puzzle for everyone at the same time, but what I can do is remind you to be sensible about your timelines.

If your wedding is in two weeks, you’re probably a little late to the party.

At that point, “losing weight” probably comes down to wearing a trash bag in the sauna and chewing on ice like a high school wrestler. Don’t do that.

If your wedding is in a month, you could do an accelerated mini-cut for 4 weeks and lose a few pounds of body fat with an aggressive protocol.

But you really have a great chance at reshaping your physique if you’ve got 3-12 months until your special day.

The point is to tailor your approach to the time you have to achieve the goal, so if you’ve got plenty of time to make meaningful change, don’t put yourself on an unsustainable starvation diet.

Instead, go back to those four main areas of focus and start figuring out how to implement those strategies into your own life repeatedly for the duration of your engagement.

And, of course, if you need help doing any of this, these are the exact services I personally offer as a body recomposition coach, and I would be happy to walk alongside you for this process.

All you have to do is reach out for help.

Consider the Bigger Picture

As cliche as it may sound, every bride wants to feel like the most beautiful woman on the planet on her wedding day, and the photos you capture with your loved ones will be the moments you hang on the walls of your home for years to come. 

Which version of yourself do you want to be looking at for the next 50 years?

Not only that, but they’ll be the photos you one day share with your children, and I can’t help but think it would be a very proud moment to one day hear your daughter say,

“Dang, Mom! You looked HOT on your wedding day!”

And lastly, launching yourself into your married life with a strong, healthy, and confident body could be an excellent gift to your future spouse. 

Again, not because you should get fit or need to get fit, but more simply because it’s a token of discipline that communicates, “I want to be healthy and fit and present to live a full and thriving life with you.”

I think there’s something selfless and very romantic about that.

In fact, that’s one of my own greatest motivations for staying lean and muscular - to set myself up for a long life of romance within my marriage, adventures in the mountains and along the beaches, and (if I should be be so fortunate) fun spent with my future daughters and sons that will inevitably want to keep dancing or playing soccer with Dad for as long as he can keep up.

Is there any part of you that shares that sentiment?

Thanks for reading, everyone! I sincerely hope you enjoyed the content. 

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Thanks for reading, everyone! I sincerely hope you enjoyed the content and learned something.

If you feel like this blog brought you any value at all, consider sending it to a friend or family member!

And, if you're interested in working with me one-on-one, visit The Vegan Gym and apply for coaching. I’ve had nothing but success in guiding people toward their fat loss goals.

Cheers, everyone!

-Andrew

Are Being Healthy and "Looking Hot" the Same Thing?

In my opinion, three of the most abused terms in the fitness space these days are the following:

1. “health” or “healthy”

2. “fitness” or “fit”

3. looking “good” or looking “hot”

That being said, I’m pretty sure I know why these words get confused so much and it comes down to social behaviors.

What do I mean by that?

I mean some people are too afraid to admit that they really just want to look “hot” so they say things on January 1 like, “I just really want to get healthy this year.”

Don’t get me wrong - I love a good and honest goal of improving your health, but is that really what you want?

Or do you just want to feel a little more confident when you catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror each morning?

What about that “fitness” word though?

What’s up with fitness? What does that even mean?

Just a few days a go, I was chatting with my good friend Justin Miller about how confused most people are when it comes to training for fitness versus training for aesthetics.

And we decided the core of the issue is essentially that people don’t realize that fitness and aesthetics don’t always go hand in hand.

In other words, you can have great physical fitness abilities without looking like an Instagram fitness model.

And on the other side of that very same coin, you can look like an Instagram without being able to do 20 burpees in a minute with clean technique.

Really, it’s the classic difference between a bodybuilder or a bikini competitor and a CrossFitter.

So without beating the point to death, these are the three main things I want you to know as we consider the bigger theme of this write-up, which is to tease out the differences between being healthy and “looking hot” as our current culture seems to have defined it:

Health, Fitnesss, and Aesthetics

1. The way we use the word health should speak primarily to non-fitness markers. Having some level of physical fitness is certainly an element of optimal overall health, but that doesn’t mean you need to be a CrossFitter to be considered healthy in a general sense.

2. Fitness isn’t actually a term that speaks to body composition at all. Fitness speaks to work capacity, which means that being fit is an indication that you can “do a lot.” You have a large capacity for physical achievement, but what does that even mean? Admittedly, the waters are murky. Are we talking about running a marathon? Are we swimming? Are we lifting heavy weights? Or are we trekking through the jungle with a 60-pound backpack? Fitness is gray, but what I want you to know most is that being fit doesn’t mean you look like an Instagram god or goddess.

3. If you want to train for statue-like aesthetics, there’s a really specific way of training to achieve that. Burpees don’t make you look like a statue. Ab circuits in your living room don’t make you look like a statue. Air squats don’t make you look like a statue. And although all of those movements might make you a fitter person, they aren’t (in and of themselves) going to make you jacked and lean like you think of when you pass by a fitness tabloid while you’re checking out at Walmart.

Alright, so having gotten all of that out of the way, let’s chip away at the bigger idea.

"Are being healthy and “looking hot” the same thing?"

No way! And I think people need to hear that and be reminded of the differences. 

You can absolutely be healthy as a horse with a very unimpressive physique just like you can be shredded to the bone and hormonally suppressed.

Health and aesthetics are not the same thing.

That being said, I think there is definitely a sweet spot (and we'll get to that), but let me chat through what I think the biggest differences are.

What It Means to Be Healthy

All "healthy" really means in my opinion is that your doctor is giving you the thumbs up each year at your physical.

Your blood markers are good, you don't have any major vitamin deficiencies, your blood pressure is within an appropriate range, you're not significantly overweight, you're not smoking or drinking to excess, your lipid panels look good, etc.

In addition to that, there are also some general exercise parameters you might be meeting like 30 or so minutes of moderate exercise several times a week. That probably means getting your heart rate slightly elevated through jogging or some kind of recreational sport like pick-up basketball, soccer, or even pickleball.

But not much of that has anything to do with having an impressive physique or a body shape you're proud of.

You wouldn’t pick a healthy person out of a busy crowd in the name of looking amazing, but you just might notice if Mike Thurston happened to be walking down the street.

I think you get the point. Health and hotness aren’t always linked.

So, what does it mean to “look hot?” 

What It Means to “Look Hot” According to American Pop Culture in the 2020’s

If you're a dude, you're probably pretty jacked.

The softer, So-Cal, "Brody Jenner-esque" bodies of the early 2000's used to be the standard for "fit boys," but the game has changed now.

Nowadays, the "fit look" for men is to be carrying quite a bit of muscle mass. Big chest, big arms, sweeping quads, and a plump enough backside to rival the ladies.

Think Chris Hemsworth from Thor or Chris Evans from Captain America. These dudes have size!

If you're a woman, it's no longer about just being thin, which was the thing for a long time.

Nowadays, it's all about the booty. And when I say all about the booty, I mean it. We've traded thin for thiccck with 3-4 C's depending on which Instagram accounts you follow. 

“Fit chicks” are apparently the new breed of "hot girls," so we've seemingly ditched the Paris Hilton look for the girl who squats and hip thrusts 3x per week but still looks feminine enough to slay a classy yet fitted dress at a wedding. 

For better or worse, this is my perception of the way the tides have turned in what America and most of Western culture thinks is sexy on a larger scale.

I'm not celebrating it or demonizing it nor am I saying it's "good" or "bad" for people to be categorized like this and exposed to these cultural expectations.

I’m also not saying I agree on a moral level with how we tend to view people and their bodies.

I'm just setting the scene and speaking to a current social reality.

Also, if you read that and thought, “That is not at all what I personally find attractive,” then cheers!

I’m speaking to the greater theme of what I see in fitness pop culture everyday, and you are totally entitled to your own thoughts of attractiveness and sex appeal.

I am by no means saying that this is how you (or anyone) should think of the human body.

"So what does this have to do with the correlation between health and aesthetics?"

Honestly, this is kind of a cool time in culture to try to get the best of both worlds - both feeling culturally “relevant” while eating and training in a way that is probably optimally healthy at the same time (or at least a step in the right direction).

Let me explain.

I think you can be really healthy and look really good at the same time by doing a few simple things consistently.

How to Tick the Boxes for Health before you tackle aesthetics

Unless you’re hardcore into physique sport, I think most of us would agree that prioritizing our overall health and wellness should come before our physique endeavors.

If that’s you, I came up with these five points to help you make sure you’re putting your health first:

1. Make sure you're eating a balanced diet of plenty of vegetables, fruits, lean proteins, whole grains, healthy fats, etc. You probably already know this. Diet is a huge part of health. Get your diet in check first according to the recommendations of a trusted registered dietician.

2. Drink plenty of water. If you need a number, half your body weight in pounds and drink that in ounces. I aim for 100 ounces per day.

3. Sleep like a champion. I like no less than 7 hours per night, but 9 is my preference.

4. Walk plenty. For people looking to lose fat, I really think 10,000 steps per day is an amazing place to start.

5. Be carrying a healthy amount of body fat. Wait, what? You read that right. One thing a lot of people don't realize is that some Instagram models (both men and women) are actually hormonally suppressed given their extremely low levels of body fat. That's not healthy. So make sure if you want to hit the sweet spot of health and aesthetics that you're not too lean to the point that you're putting your health at risk. For men, that 8-15% body fat range is probably golden. For women, I’ve heard people smarter than I am recommend adding 7-10% to the low and high end of those recommendations as a general rule.

Now, what's cool is that none of those suggestions regarding health have to interfere with an aesthetics goal. 

How to sculpt your body aesthetically once your health checklists have been met

If you’re consistently nailing the aforementioned points, there’s a good chance you’re in good health standing, so now it’s time to get into the aesthetics piece:

• Get your calories in check with your goal within the parameters mentioned above.

  • If you're looking to lose fat, get into a caloric deficit. If you're looking to build muscle, either eat at maintenance or get into a caloric surplus. 

• Eat around 1g of protein per pound of body weight within the parameters mentioned above. I wrote an article on this to help you out. 

• Consider training with a higher-carb, lower-fat approach if you want to maximize aesthetics.

  • I know plenty of people have success doing ketogenic diets, but I'm personally biased toward high-carb, low-fat approaches for a handful of evidence-based and anecdotal reasons. Plus, bananas are carbs and everyone loves bananas.

• Train with weights 3-5x per week in a primarily hypertrophic fashion.

  • I am consistently blown away by the things people do in the gym when I know for a fact that all they want to do is look better naked and feel more confident in their own skin. Notice that I didn't say do cardio to burn fat. I said lift weights to get strong and build muscle. 

    • Prioritize the muscle groups that you know will help you achieve the aesthetics you want. 

      • For men, this likely means growing your chest and shoulders since most women find broad shoulders attractive and indicative of protector-like qualities. If that's you, you probably want to train your chest 2-3x per week with some specific side delt work 2-3x per week. If you're like me, you want big glutes and legs, so you'll train them 3x per week (which I do).

      • For women, this probably means big glutes and quads with a flattering midsection. Given that having a slimmer midsection is all about fat loss, I would recommend training your glutes and legs 3-4x per week with great muscle-building movements like squats varieties, lunge varieties, deadlift varieties, thrust varieties, etc. 

• Be sure as heck you are progressively overloading these movements over time.

  • That's way too much nuance to toss into this write-up, but make no mistake that progressive overload under proper technique is extremely important for growth.

Some Parting Words about Fitness Pop Culture

Here’s a hot take for you.

I'm actually a big fan of this change in "the new hot look" for one huge reason that has nothing to do with vanity or sex appeal.

Are you ready for it?

Having big, strong glutes and legs is a very healthy and functional body shape.

I know plenty of conservative people who think the butt craze is pure vanity (and it certainly can be), but at the very least it's somewhat cool that we're now encouraging people to lift and eat rather than smoke and starve.

To segue that, having a non-butt is not an overtly healthy or functional body shape. 

In fact, I call it the inverted butt. Everyone knows an older guy in their life whose jeans somehow seem to bubble inward instead of outward like a traditional butt would generally behave. I hate to say it, but that’s not good.

Having weak glutes and hamstrings can lead to all kinds of problems like posture issues, low back pain, and increased injury risk just from being a weak sack of potatoes.

Plus, the implications of being thin (or even skinny fat) with little to no muscle mass are that your calories are inevitably going to be very low.

And frankly, that's just no way to live a fun life. Food is so good! 

So when you think about it, that means 20 years ago people were being forced to make a choice: "Do I prioritize my health and fitness or do I try to look the part of what society tells me is attractive by keeping my calories super low to look as thin as possible?" 

In my opinion, that's a pretty slimy question to have to navigate in the first place, but the silver lining is that our current culture is now celebrating both at the same time (health and a strong body composition) - and that is pretty cool. 

What’s the takeaway then?

Be jacked and be celebrated for it!

Eat and put on some strength or muscle mass depending on your goal. And fuel your body with the foods that create strong bodies instead of obese bodies.

There has never been a better time.

Summary

• Health and aesthetics are not exclusively the same, but they can overlap in a way that allows you to get “the best” of both worlds. 

• You can be fit and not look like a social media Adonis. You can also look like a fitness icon without be very fit at all.

• For a rare moment in human history, pop culture is celebrating big, strong glutes (and jacked people in general). So, take advantage of this and get to lifting! 

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Thanks for reading, everyone! I sincerely hope you enjoyed the content and learned something.

If you feel like this blog brought you any value at all, consider sending it to a friend or family member!

And, if you're interested in working with me one-on-one, visit The Vegan Gym and apply for coaching. I’ve had nothing but success in guiding people toward their fat loss goals.

Cheers, everyone!

-Andrew