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

Why Am I Not Losing Weight?

One of the most common questions or frustrations we hear from both clients and friends is the question, “Why am I not losing any weight?”

This question is usually followed up with a long list of everything this person is currently trying or has tried to use to lose weight, and most of the time, they are all fine things.

However, losing weight and really chipping away toward the body composition of your dreams isn’t easy, and there are many roadblocks for most of the population in trying to achieve these goals.

Instead of trying to provide a quick cop-out answer to all of the people asking this question, I’ve decided to list 7 possible reasons why you may not be finding the success you are working so hard to achieve.

For those looking for THE solution to your own weight loss struggles, be careful while making honest assessments about your situation. For example, it is highly unlikely someone who already exercises extremely intensely, daily and moves around a lot throughout the day needs to exercise more to lose weight.

Let’s dive in!

1. You Are Still Eating Too Many Calories

One of the most important pieces of any intelligent weight-loss plan is being in a caloric deficit. All this means is that you must consume fewer calories than you burn over the course of a day to lose weight.

So the first natural thing to check are your calorie intake numbers!

I know people can be hesitant about tracking their caloric intake, but if you truly want to be sure that you are in a caloric deficit, tracking your calories is a fantastic tool we have in our toolbelt.

A Quick Summary on How to Track Caloric Intake

The best way to figure out if you are in a caloric deficit is to weigh yourself multiple times per week, and track your daily caloric intake. If the scale continues to stay the same OR it increases, you must either eat fewer calories, or expend more energy.

Continue to track your calories and weight adjusting your activity level or calorie intake until the scale begins to go down. Once you’ve reached that point, then you know about how many calories you need to be eating to lose weight.

The process is a bit more nuanced than that quick explanation, but this explanation gets the general idea across.

One thing to keep in mind before you decide to cut more calories are your hunger levels. If you already find yourself very hungry throughout the day on the amount of calories you’re eating, I probably wouldn’t suggest lowering your calories any further as you will likely not adhere to the plan.

Instead, maybe take a look at the composition of foods you are eating and sub in more non-processed, satiating foods into your diet.

2. You May Be Incorrectly Tracking Your Calories

Maybe you read the previous section and said to yourself, “but I am tracking calories and I’m STILL not losing any weight.”

The simple fact is that you may be incorrectly counting calories.

This is where investing in a food scale might be a beneficial investment for my trackers out there that don’t have one, or for those people who want to try and better hone in on their calorie numbers.

Using apps like MyFitnessPal (which is a fantastic free tool) can be great, but adding things like “medium banana” or “serving of broccoli” don’t tell the most accurate story of what you just ate.

If the banana is only 20 calories off from what you actually ate, it may not seem like a huge deal. That being said, if every single entry into MyFitnessPal is 20 calories off, then your calorie numbers could be off by a few hundred come the end of the day.

This isn’t ideal.

When using tracking apps, it’s important to be as detailed as possible when entering the foods your are consuming on a daily basis, and a food scale will tell you exactly how much you are eating.

3. You Aren’t Exercising Enough

In our current American culture, there isn’t much movement that occurs throughout the course of our day unless we force ourselves to do more via some activity.

Think about the average American life: you wake up, go (mostly) sit at work for 8 hours, maybe run to the store, make or order dinner out, sit and watch Netflix. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

I’m clearly diminishing the actual human experience here to make a point, but the message is important: Unless we purposefully add some sort of movement or exercise to our weekly routine, we likely aren’t getting enough from our current lifestyle.

Some people may read that and get a sense of dread thinking about that treadmill that they used to be a slave to, but there are so many options that you can probably remain active without needing to use that specific tool that you despise.

Here at IVRY, we think that weight lifting is the best option because we both subscribe to a bodybuilding routine and find that this is the most enjoyable type of regular exercise that fits our goals.

Here are some other activities that could also work:

• Running

• Biking

• Rowing

• Walking

• Hiking

• Throwing the frisbee with the dog

• Playing with your kids

There are plenty of other great activities that would help any person become more active, but those are just a few things many people have access to.

For those who already have pretty regular exercise routines and are still struggling, it may not be the exercise. I would suggest however taking a hard look at your exercise program to see if you could push yourself a little harder.

4. You Are Relying TOO Much on Avoiding Certain Foods

Some people set really unattainable restrictions on themselves when trying to diet, and those sorts of restrictions can really backfire on your progress.

A lot of people when beginning a diet will categorize many foods as foods to avoid. Problem is, those foods are tasty and even some of our favorites.

By totally restricting yourself like this, you may eventually find yourself in a moment where you lose your self-control and just go on a tear, eating all of those foods you were restricting yourself from.

The problem may not manifest itself THAT intensely, but avoiding certain favorite foods altogether for long periods of time is likely to lead you have a mindset of, “well I already messed up, so I may as well keep going…” and this mindset it what can lead to those moments of binging.

Instead of totally avoiding certain foods, learn to eat and enjoy them in moderation!

Some practical examples on how to enjoy your favorites in moderation:

• Instead of ice cream nearly every evening as dessert, save it as a treat for one night

• Instead of eating 4-5 pieces of pizza, have two slices and maybe tack on a salad

• Instead of binging 10-15 drinks on a Friday night, have a one or two drinks a couple nights per week

• Instead of going out to eat or ordering takeout for nearly every meal, try and cook a few of those meals at home instead

One of the most important things you can do for your relationship with food is to learn how to enjoy the foods you love while having the self-control to consume them in moderation.

This is a skill that really does take practice and discipline to achieve, but everyone is probably capable of reaching that point in their relationship with food.

5. You Aren’t Getting Enough Sleep

From my personal experience, I think that sleep is a highly underrated topic of discussion for an overall healthy lifestyle, and a lot of us just don’t quite get enough of it.

I’m not going to pretend I’m a scientist with a PhD, but there is a ton of scientific data detailing how sleep deprivation affects the systems in our body. A lack of sleep can diminish recovery times, leave us with little energy, and can lead to chemical imbalances.

These chemical imbalances can lead our bodies to think they are more hungry or require more calories than they actually need which is something you probably don’t want your body confusing when trying to lose weight.

Along with the chemical imbalances, our bodies aren’t optimally recovered on little sleep which can lead to decision making skills and willpower being diminished.

If for no other reason, getting enough sleep leaves most people feeling better and more alert/energetic throughout the day, so why not add this to your routine?

6. You Aren’t Drinking Enough Water

This is another one of those things we all get told but most of us never follow through with.

A pretty general recommendation for most people is to drink half of your bodyweight in ounces of water per day. So that means a 200 lb. dude should be drinking around 100 oz. of water per day.

That’s a lot of water!

Our bodies are mostly comprised of water so it makes sense to most people that we need to drink it in order to stay healthy, but the amount of water most people should be drinking is a number that they rarely reach.

I’m not qualified enough to dig into the science behind why consuming water is a good idea, but again, there are plenty of studies done by reputable and respectable sources that explain why water is so important at a cellular level.

Here are some things I can speak on in regards to water:

• leaves us feeling more satiated (natural appetite suppressant)

• flushes waste out of our system

• limits the amount of other liquids you drink that are likely higher in calories

• helps lubricate our tissues and joints

In general, drinking more water is likely not going to hurt you, so if you already don’t consume enough water, then this could also be an easy adjustment to your daily routine.

7. You Sit Most of the Day

I hit on this a little bit in point 3, but most American jobs require people to be on a phone or in front of a computer all day which means that most people are seated for almost 8 hours a day at their workplace.

For those people that sit most of the day at work and get little movement outside of that, a daily one hour exercise may not be enough movement to expend enough calories.

Here are some things you can do to move a little bit more throughout the course of your workday:

• park further from the entrance

• get a standing desk to do work

• get up and walk down the hall every 30-60 minutes

• stretch every so often

• walk around the room while on the phone

• go for a walk between meetings

A lot of little movements over the course of the day can add up to a meaningful amount of activity.

In Summary

Today we examined 7 possible reasons why you may not be losing the weight you are wanting to lose:

1. You are still eating too many calories

2. You may be incorrectly tracking your calories

3. You aren’t exercising enough

4. You are relying too much on avoiding certain foods

5. You aren’t getting enough sleep

6. You aren’t drinking enough water

7. You sit most of the day

I warned readers earlier to be careful when trying to diagnose your own issues because each situation and person is different. With that though, there could be one or more reasons on this list that are inhibiting your current fat loss goals.

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When it comes down to losing weight, we do believe that being in a caloric deficit is the most important aspect of the process.

That being said, it can be really hard for the average person to confidently diagnose their issues and exact calorie numbers to see progress.

One of the benefits of having a coach is that we help you throughout that entire process. Not only do we provide the necessary accountability to stick to your goals, but we have the experience to help you hone in on the things you need to be doing to reach those goals.

Both Andrew and I are currently adding clients to our rosters and would love to be the support that helps you reach your goals!

If you read this article and think it might be time to hire a coach to help meet your needs, click here to learn more about what it is we do, and if you are already prepared to get started on the process, just say hello by heading here to give us some more information.

Until next time-

Josh

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

What is Progressive Overload?

In college, I used to go to the gym and have a muscle group in mind for that workout. I would hop around from machine to machine and exercise to exercise until I was satisfied. I never wrote anything down and I tried to rely on my memory and “feel” to make sure I was pushing myself to get a solid workout in.

The only problem with this was that I made very little progress over the few years I was lifting in college…

To be fair, I don’t think my goals were very clear, and I didn’t have enough drive to want to do any more than I was already doing.

This approach to exercising is very common among gym-goers, but if we are all going to be spending hours in the gym each week, it would make a whole lot of sense to approach our workouts more methodically so that we can maximize our performance and growth.

So how do we do this?

What Is Progressive Overload?

Essentially, progressive overload is the act of continually increasing the demands on our muscles to accrue growth in muscle strength, size, and endurance.

To state it even more simply, in order to get bigger or stronger from your exercises, you have to challenge your muscles more and more over time.

This is generally done through adding weight, reps, or sets on a session to session basis.

And, while people generally apply this principle to resistance training, this principle can also be easily applied to a long distance running program, biking, or even swimming.

At IVRY, we believe strongly in this principle and apply it to all of our individualized programs because we understand that without it we would be leaving too many gains on the table for our hard-working clients.

An Example of Progressive Overload

Let’s say that you can perform 1 set of bench press at 135 pounds for 10 reps on the first week of your exercise plan.

If you continually go back to that exercise week after week and repeat the same performance of 10 reps at that same load, you probably shouldn’t expect to see optimal growth.

To apply the concept of progressive overload appropriately, the week after you pushed 135 pounds for 10 reps, you would look to improve in a couple of possible ways: slightly increasing the weight on the bar, or adding some more reps at that same weight.

Maybe the second week you go to perform your 1 set of bench press, you aim to move 135 pounds for 11 reps. And, this works!

If you continued with this trend, you might be able to accomplish the following progression.

Sample Progression

Week 1: 135x10
Week 2: 135x11
Week 3: 135x12
Week 4: 135x13

While it may not seem like a huge increase, if you continue to push yourself through modest increments week by week over the course of a month, I would expect you to see a respectable amount of growth relative to that initial week of training.

I think it’s also important to note now that you don’t need monumental weekly increases in the volume or resistance to see growth. Oftentimes progressive overload is a slow process that manifests itself as strength, size, and endurance growth in the long run.

Before we see progressive overload in action, there are some stubborn ideas about exercise that we may have to adjust from.

Some Habits You May Need To Ditch

1. Trying to Aim for an EXACT Number of Reps

One of the biggest inhibitors of progressive overload is this idea that you need to hit the same number of reps EXACTLY as your workout program has laid them out for you.

The reason this can be a problem is because a majority of workouts you see on the internet have something like “3 sets of 10” written next to an exercise.

Here’s the deal.

If you are performing an exercise, say hamstring curls, and you keep the resistance the same for all 3 sets, your hamstrings will fatigue naturally over the course of those sets.

If our body gets fatigued over time, and we are within a few reps of failure on each set, we should be able to complete more reps on our first set than on our second (and certainly on our third).

To eliminate this common programming error, Andrew and I program and train all of our clients to work in a specific rep range for each exercise to allow for that fatigue build-up so that our clients are never leaving unnecessary reps on the table for their first set or trying to push way past what is realistically achievable with immaculate technique on their last set.

How to Get Your Reps Descending Across Your Sets

Here is a quick example of what this might look like when applied to a spreadsheet.

You can see here that the rep range listed is 8-12, and the number of reps performed on each set was 13, 12, and 10.

Although 13 is technically outside of the prescribed rep range, it’s not worth being nonsensically pedantic about it - especially since the optimal rep range for hypertrophy is largely considered to be between 5-30 reps.

2. “Using the 2.5 Pound and 5 Pound Plates is a Waste of Time”

As I mentioned above, progressive overload is a slow process week to week, and the growth is best seen over longer periods of time.

No one said the physique of your dreams was going to happen in a month, ya know?

There is a stigma attached to the smaller measurements of plates hanging out on the gym floor, and I’m here to try and tell you that those smaller plates can be your best friend when it comes to making gains over the long-term.

If the smallest plate size you ever use is a 10 pound plate, that means that for any exercise involving a barbell, the minimum increase from one week to the next would be 20 pounds.

That’s bananalands!

If it takes a huge amount of effort in a week to perform 3 sets of an exercise to within 1-2 reps of failure, then adding 20 pounds to that movement the next week will most likely see an enormous drop-off in performance.

In fact, I use those smaller plates almost every single day I’m in the gym because I know that slowly progressing in resistance over time is the key to adding big weight to a single exercise in the long run.

3. Not Using a Logbook to Track Performance

Your exercise logbook is like your fitness bible.

Without the data to inform us of what we’ve done in the past, we can’t really intelligently progress in future workouts.

As I mentioned in the introduction, I was the guy for years who chose not to log my workouts. By making that decision (likely due to laziness and a lack of understanding), I severely limited the growth I could’ve seen in the gym.

If you want to be consistent in your training with each passing week, it is vital to start tracking your exercises in some form.

This tracking becomes especially important if you are practicing progressive overload by using rep ranges. It is highly unlikely that someone can remember the number of reps performed with a certain weight for every exercise every week.

Some people choose to log their workouts in a notebook that they tote around with them at the gym, and that is a great way to begin practicing the logging of your workouts.

However, we think that using a spreadsheet on the free app Google Sheets is the best way to log your exercises, and this is what we give to each of our clients.

There is a little bit of work to create the spreadsheet in Google Sheets before starting your workout cycle, but since we are all carrying our phones around with us anyways, it makes sense to use them to log our exercises as well.

But enough with the bad habits. Let’s get an even more in-depth look at how to apply progressive overload.

Working Within a Rep Range

For the sake of the rest of this article being coherent, we are going to be under the assumption that we are using a set rep range (i.e. 3 sets for 8-12 reps) for each exercise as opposed to a specific number of reps (i.e. 3 sets for 10 reps).

At the most basic level, the idea is to set a weight that you can perform in the given rep range.

Once you find that weight, the goal is to push for more reps on as many sets as possible (it is totally okay for those first couple of sets to be MORE than the upper end of that rep range) until all of the sets for that exercise are above or at the upper end of the given rep range.

Once you reach this point, it would be time to increase the resistance or load for that exercise and then repeat the process.

Let’s get a closer look at how to actually apply this with some spreadsheet examples.

Methods for Applying Progressive Overload

1. Increase the Resistance

This is the most common way that people naturally apply the idea of progressive overload, and that’s likely because most people are using a workout guide where the number of reps is set at a specific number, so the only thing to increase is the weight on the bar.

We want to only increase the resistance on the bar once we have reached the upper end of our rep range.

In this example, the given rep range was 12-16. In each set you can see that we outperformed or were right at the upper end of the rep range. In this case, it would make sense to add a few pounds to the bar the following week.

Going back to those 2.5 pound and 5 pound plates, it’s probably a good idea to only slightly increase the load on the bar so that you can stay in that rep range for the following week.

I would likely suggest moving up to 95 pounds. or 100 pounds. for this exercise the following week, and here is an example of what the following week might look like:

You can see that there might (and should) be a drop-off in reps once you increase the resistance, but as long as you can get close to that rep range, everything will be fine.

The last thing I will say is that when you increase the resistance for an exercise, it is completely fine if you don’t quite hit the given rep range with your last set as seen here. After a couple more weeks of working at this weight, your reps should continue to increase and place you in that rep range.

2. Increase the Number of Reps

When working in a given rep range, this is another common way to progressively overload. It is also pretty easy to regulate!

If you aren’t quite ready to increase the resistance because you haven’t reached the upper end of your rep range with nearly every set, then your goal should be to aim for at least one extra rep in at least one of your sets.

As you can see in this example, I wasn’t quite hitting the number of reps I would like before increasing the resistance. So when I see this, I know that I need to try and aim for at least one more rep in at least one of my sets.

This could look like only adding one rep to that first set (when I’m the most fresh), or adding a rep or two to each set. Either situation is an example of overloading, and the only difference is how fast I might be able to overload.

For a logbook reference, here is what I did the following week:

I was able to add a few reps over the course of a couple of the sets, and I was very happy with even this seemingly small amount of progress.

3. Increase the Number of Sets

While the first two applications of progressive overload are relatively easy to monitor and apply, another tool for progressive overload is adding an entire set.

The idea of adding an entire set is more nuanced and a little bit more challenging to self-regulate over the course of multiple cycles, but it can be a great tool for overloading.

As it can be hard to gauge when to add another set to a specific exercise in your program, it makes more sense to plan out beforehand where you might add sets over the course of your workout cycle.

If my goal over the course of a mesocycle is to hammer my back, I may plan out ahead of time a few exercises for my back where I would add some sets.

Example

If my mesocycle is 5 weeks and I know I really want to work on building some strength and size in my vertical pulling movements, I may structure the number of sets for each week like so:

Week 1: 3 sets
Week 2: 3 sets
Week 3: 4 sets
Week 4: 4 sets
Week 5: 5 sets

The reason that this can be more nuanced is that if I’m still trying to work in a specific rep range, the number of reps I can perform on that added set might drop off to be outside of the given rep range.

In my opinion, this is 100% okay.

You should do your best to try and keep that added set in the given rep range, but don’t be alarmed if you can’t quite get there.

Adding an entire set to your program is a fantastic way to greatly increase the workload for a specific muscle group because you are able to add a lot more reps for that exercise.

4. Decreasing Rest Times

This is probably the least common way people apply progressive overload because most people likely don’t measure their rest times between sets.

By decreasing the rest time, the idea is that you are doing the same amount of work (or even more if you can add reps to a set) in less time.

We generally don’t advocate for using this method in our own programming for our clients because it’s more of a fitness-based strategy for improvement, but it is definitely another tool that you can use to challenge yourself in some fashion.

Time to Make Progressive Overload Work for You

After reading this very in depth guide to progressive overload, hopefully you see the benefits and process that we personally use at IVRY to help our clients succeed.

You may need to start small at first and practice using only one of those applications to add progressive overload to your exercise program, but I encourage you to think about reorganizing your workout plan to follow this process so that you can see better results!

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

How Can I Limit Hunger While Dieting? (Part 1)

If you’ve ever had a serious fat loss goal, you’ve likely experienced the sensation of hunger during your pursuit of that goal. Naturally, dieting requires us to consume less calories than we burn which puts our bellies in a pretty tough spot.

Trying to diet well while limiting the amount of time during your day where you feel hungry is one of the hardest parts of a fat loss diet.

There is no golden ticket, other than maybe Cocaine, so stop looking for one.

What I can provide you with is a list of foods you can eat that might help limit the amount of time you spend feeling hungry while in a fat loss diet, so let's get into it!

What Foods or Drinks Will Help Me to Feel “Full” Longer?

1. Sparkling Water

Sparkling water has been a staple in my fat loss diet phase the last couple of years, and for good reason: sparkling water has 0 calories, yet the carbonation in the water creates the sensation of feeling more full than I actually am.

This may not be true for everyone, but fizzy drinks (even ones with zero calories) tend to provide the sensation of feeling more full. If something with zero calories can provide that sensation, then sparkling water should be a no-brainer addition to your shopping list.

There are plenty of different brands and flavors out there for you to pick from, so if you’re a person who enjoys variety, there are plenty of options to spice things up. I personally think that Bubly has the most flavor, but that is merely an opinion.

2. Vegetables

Vegetables should be a staple in any type of diet as they provide us with a lot of vitamins and minerals that we generally don’t get enough of in our typical diets here in the states.

Not only are vegetables great for you, but they are very low in calories which means you can eat a lot of them and not feel guilty! (Though I don’t know how many people have ever felt guilty for eating too many veggies..)

Here are some common vegetables with serving sizes and calories:

• Asparagus (93g) - 20 calories

• Bell Pepper (148g) - 25 calories

• Broccoli (148g) - 45 calories

• Cauliflower (99g) - 25 calories

• Carrots (78g) - 30 calories

• Green Beans (83g) - 20 calories

All data acquired via the FDA, and some serving sizes are larger than a general serving size

Clearly adding a ton of veggies into your diet is a great way to increase the amount of food you can consume while limiting the overall calorie total.

Things you might want to be careful or aware of when adding more veggies into your diet:

• Your overall fiber intake will likely increase with an increase of vegetables into your diet, so just be aware!

• It would also be prudent to make sure that you don’t add TOO much oil when you cook vegetables as the calories from cooking oils can add up fast!

3. Drinking Coffee or Tea

Adding some coffee or tea into your daily routine can really allow you to postpone a meal further as these drinks can also provide you with the sensation of feeling more full for almost zero calories.

Since coffee and tea both provide natural caffeine stimulants, these drinks are great to drink in the morning, and especially for those who are trying intermittent fasting. Without coffee, my intermittent fasting periods during my last fat loss phase would’ve been very challenging.

Really, coffee and tea are drinks that allow you to have something to consume that isn’t food, and while the sensation of feeling full will be greater for some than for others, trying either one of these drinks may be a lifesaver for you!

Plus, you may actually enjoy the taste of the drinks and the caffeine boost. There are also caffeine free options of both drinks if your hesitant about adding caffeine into your diet.

4. Oatmeal

There really isn’t anything inherently special about oatmeal, but it does serve as a nice base for adding things like: protein powder, spices, fruit, etc…

Oatmeal also tends to leaving me feeling full for much longer than something like a bowl of cereal or a protein bar might, especially if you add some protein powder into your oatmeal.

When I was in the middle of my most recent fat loss phase, I would eat a giant bowl of oatmeal before my bigger volume days in my program and I never felt hungry throughout my workout.

If you’ve never tried eating some oatmeal with protein powder and a few berries, I encourage you to give it a try; it’s cheap and it might be one of your new go-to breakfast meals!

5. Egg Whites

Egg white are another one of those foods that can serve as a nice boost of protein into the diet while keeping those calories lower.

Each serving of egg whites has about 5g of protein, and I personally like making my eggs with one whole egg and a load of egg whites. Cook some vegetables along side the eggs to make an omelet, or just add some scrambled egg whites along with your oatmeal if you decide protein powder in oatmeal isn’t for you.

Using egg whites allows you to also truly make as many as you would like since there is such a low amount of fat and total calories. Therefore, a heaping plate of eggs will give you that injection of protein and will keep the total calorie count down, allowing you that extended sense of fullness for a minimal amount of calories.

Not only can you eat these by their lonesome, but I like making protein french toast and use an egg white/protein powder mixture as the coating for my french toast.

6. Soups

I love making a nice soup or stew once the weather starts to turn more chilly, and there are a ton of pros to prepping soups:

Soups are the perfect base for a load of different ingredients. I like to make sure that whatever soup I am prepping has a decent amount of a protein source (I will sometimes add more or even double this in the recipe), along with a hefty amount of veggies and maybe even a carb source such as potatoes, pasta, or rice.

The reason you might want to think about adding more soups into your fat loss diet is that most soups have a broth or liquid base. Since this liquid base is usually just water with some seasoning and flavor from the ingredients you are cooking in the soup, the broth itself doesn’t add to the calorie count.

The broth acts as the base for everything else in your soup, and as you consume more of that broth, it takes up space in your stomach providing, again, that sense of fullness for a limited amount of calories.

Soups can be a great way to get creative in the kitchen as they are pretty tough to mess up, and there seem to be an endless amount of recipes for tasty soups on the internet.

7. Salads

The thought process for adding more salads into your fat loss diet is similar to soups, but instead of a broth base, you now have a leafy green base to build from.

The actual base of lettuce, spinach, or whatever you use to build your salad will contain a very minimal amount of calories. This leaves you with the ability to top that salad with whatever your heart desires, though I would stick with a lot of colorful veggies and a protein source or two.

The problem with salads is that they can become quite calorically dense fast with the use of fatty dressings like those that are cream-based (ranch) or have a heavy oil base. One of my personal favorite fat loss “dressings” is to squeeze a half of a lemon onto my salad since the acid provides a nice contrast to everything else on the plate.

Salads are also a great way to clean out some of those veggies that might soon turn bad as well as any leftover protein sources you may have prepped for the week.

If you use a large pile of lettuce or spinach as a base, then a salad has the potential to fill you up because that lettuce can occupy a lot of space in your stomach, creating the sensation of feeling full; throw in a protein source and maybe a carb source on the side or mixed in, and you’ve got a really nice fat loss meal.

In Summary

There are many other foods that could probably get tossed onto this list, but I wanted to include the main foods and drinks that I personally use in a fat loss phase, and that others have also found to be successful not only for myself, but for others as well.

In the end, dieting comes down to being in a caloric deficit (burning more calories than you consume), and so when faced with the challenge of having to eat less, these foods could come in handy.

Is Instagram Ruining Fitness for Everyone?

When I was planning out my content schedule the other day, I stumbled onto a super spicy topic that I've never written on before - Instagram influencers and all the ways I think they are kind of "ruining fitness" for a lot of people. 

So let’s get into it.

The Good and Bad of Instagram Influencers in the Fitness Space

Now obviously most things in life can be good or bad depending on how you choose to use them or "be them" in this case, so I'm not trying to make the point that all Instagram fitness influencers are "evil" or even full of bad intentions. 

You can absolutely be a good fitness influencer or a bad fitness influencer just like you can be a good plumber or a bad plumber. 

And by "good" and "bad" I probably mean something like primarily seeking after the common good of others more than your own selfish ambitions.

But here's why I personally think a lot of Instagram influencers are really screwing people up.

Reason 1 - Instagram Mostly Feeds You Content from the “Genetic Elite”

As much as I hate to admit this, what you're seeing on your feed really is the "genetic elite," as we like to say. 

But, to be totally honest, I really don’t like that term because I feel like it far too often gets used as an excuse for people to forfeit the integrity of their long-term body composition goals before they’ve ever given themselves a proper chance.

Let me explain.

I think too many people see phenomenal physiques on Instagram or other avenues of social media and think, “They were probably just born like that. It’s genetics, and I will never look like that.”

And while it’s absolutely true that some people are born with favorable anatomical structures, insertion points, and genetics overall for building muscle, that doesn’t negate the parallel reality that some degree of meaningful body recomposition can be achieved by all of us.

In other words, everyone can become a leaner and more muscular version of themselves to varying degrees, and I hate the thought of people settling for less than their personal best just because their own physique potential might not be as impressive on a cultural level than those of the statue-esque models they’ve grown accustomed to seeing on Instagram.

But the reality is that some people really do just “look hot" according to the cultural standards of the 2020’s with very minimal effort. 

You heard that right, some dudes can get pretty muscular without much work just like some chicks can have a thick bum and a tiny waist for seemingly no reason.

Genetics are very real and seemingly unapologetic. 

To spell it out for you even more clearly, I’m saying that some people are always going to look “better than you” no matter how hard you try.

Let’s think about it context of a race analogy:

• It’s kind of like being among a group of people who are all trying to run a “body composition race” of one lap around the track. 

  • If you’ve got average genetics, you get to line up at the traditional starting line, which means the distance to your destination is an even 400m. Seems fair, right? 

  • But, having elite genetics means you get a massive head-start on your competition in the sense that some people are literally lining up at the 100m, 200m, and even 300m mark to run the same exact race as you! All of a sudden, things don’t seem very fair anymore, do they? 

  • Not only that, but imagine being genetically disadvantaged, which means you’d be starting 100m behind the starting line - or worse!

  • Who is going to win the race?

And that’s exactly what I mean when we say “good genetics.” 

So imagine now you take that same group of genetically elite individuals and give them a great training program, evidence-based nutrition, and a team of photographers that know how to rig up the lighting just right. 

What happens? You get the perfect storm of aesthetics and social media allure.

Of course Instagram is going to put those physiques on your feed!

They are shocking and awe-inspiring and they can keep you scrolling for hours while you compare yourself (usually negatively) to their seemingly perfect features.

Call me crazy, but I personally don't think that's probably good for most people's mental health and overall self-esteem, which is the first reason I think Instagram’s over-promotion of the genetic elite is contributing to negative associations with fitness and body image for many people.

Reason 2 - Some People Will Do Just About Anything for a Double-Tap and a Potential Modeling Career

You have to keep in mind that a lot of opportunity is floating around on Instagram, which means that some people will do literally almost anything to snap the perfect photo that might land them a magazine cover or a partnership with Gymshark or Alphalete or an even a higher level modeling agency. 

But how far are some people willing to take it?

To answer that question, I decided to make a list of three specific things I would personally do if I decided to sell my soul for maximum Instagram approval:

• I would probably take drugs.

  • Whoa, drugs?! You heard that right! But before you freak out because you know me personally, just know that I will never take special sports supplements (which is basically a gentler way of saying steroids) because I personally value my long-term health more than any immediate benefit being more jacked could offer me.

  • But the point I am trying to make here is that we are seeing physiques on Instagram (both male and female) that you might naively think are achievable naturally or - in other words - without "special supplementation."

  • And just to be clear, I'm not talking about whey protein, creatine monohydrate, and your mom's favorite multivitamin. We're talking testosterone and exogenous hormones that allow you to build muscle literally all day long while staying lean, which is basically an influencer's dream come true. Sound appealing yet? 

• I would stage fake photographs to make you think I live a certain lifestyle that I really don't.

  • Specifically, I would take a ton of photos of me "eating meals" that I never actually ate.

  • Have you ever seen a picture of a super fit dude or dudette eating the cheat meal of your dreams? Or maybe even looking shredded on the beach or at the club with a few drinks in hand and a huge smile on their face? Of course you have. And although that may be possible for a handful of people, it's just not realistic for most people.

  • Creating the illusion that you can eat whatever you want and look "super duper sexy" 24/7/365 is high misleading for most “normal” people.

    • And let's be honest with ourselves. Do you really think influencers aren't above ordering an enormous array of food just to let their friends eat it once the photo has been snapped?

    • When your income is on the line, creating a false lifestyle narrative on social media is a no-brainer.

• I would starve myself all summer long for a summer of sick photos.

  • For people who don't use drugs, being super lean for an extended period of time is extremely difficult and frankly unhealthy.

  • "But wait! I'll get more modeling gigs if I stay super shredded even at the expense of my health?" Sold, right?

    • If I were an Instagram influencer and wanted the best approval outcomes, I would probably stay on 1,800-2,000 calories for 3-6 months straight, which is a pathetic amount of food for a guy my size. We'd be snapping photos every day with spray tans, perfect lighting, and perfect pumps and skin oil! 

Do you see my point? The stakes are high on Instagram, which means the commitment to photograph perfection (even at the expense of the integrity of its presentation) is ultimate.

Reason 3 - You Never Know Which Pictures Were Taken When

Similar to my third point in the paragraph above, it's worth noting that some influencers will take hundreds of photos on the same day in 18 different bathing suits to post all year round. 

This is even easier for women to pull off than men because their hair and facial hair consistency isn't a concern. Most women rock a relatively similar look all year round.

Also, do you think some influencers aren't above getting shredded for summer and then throwing on a Santa hat or staging a photo in front of a turkey mid-July so they can post those months later and appear super fit and lean even on Thanksgiving and Christmas?

That’s kind of like being a parent of a teenager and assuming they’ve been playing Monopoly with their significant other in the basement for the last few hours. Don’t be naive, folks.

As casual as the photos you are seeing on social media may appear, these are professionals.

This is their job, and their paychecks are often on the line based on the success of their photos.

If that were my sole concern in life, I would likely be doing the same exact thing.

In fact, I could see Santa hats in July becoming a real fashion statement for me.

Reason 4 - Photoshop and Other Body Altering Apps Are a Deceptive Mistress

People are literally changing the proportions of their bodies, which means our brains are being conditioned to define a new reality - a warped one.

Yes, men will make their chests and arms bigger while shrinking their waists on Photoshop and other apps.

And women will do the same with their bums and their breasts and their thick thighs and their tiny waists.

Would I do it if all I cared about in life were becoming the next fitness phenom at all costs? As weird as it sounds, I just might.

"Where do we go from here then?"

Since I never want to be the guy who just complains about this or that without providing his own thoughts about a solution or at least a practical step forward, I've got two practical takeaways for you depending on the type of person you are:

Takeaway 1 - Follow People Who Seem to Be Honest

I would say for 9/10 people, it's probably best to follow people that have a reputation for being honest about their genetics, the food they actually eat, and the training they actually perform. 

• Look for people who don't look absolutely bananas all year round. You should see them in seasons of very lean, seasons of “normal,” and even seasons of slightly fluffy.

• Look for women who are brave enough to post unflattering photos of their stomachs or the cellulite on their legs. 

• Look for men who will post pictures of themselves without a skin-splitting arm pump in hotel room lighting or fresh out of the shower.

• And beyond even that, try to follow people that talk and produce content across multiple forums like YouTube or a podcast.

  • I'm always skeptical of people who only have Instagram accounts because it's just too easy to fake stuff when you've only got one audience to dupe.

  • Plus, when you talk publicly and you talk often, people can get a sense of your values and what type of person you are on a deeper level. Some great examples of this are Steve Hall from Revive Stronger, Eric Helms of 3DMJ, Christian Guzman from Alphalete, and honestly even any local person in your area that is documenting their own modest fitness journey. To me, those are the most valuable accounts because the transparency and honesty they offer is unmatched when compared to major accounts. 

Takeaway 2: Keep the Freaky Folks Around for Motivation and Nothing Else

If you're like me, you shoot for the stars against all odds. 

So I literally follow people that I know for a fact are using resources I will never have access to because I like the challenge and the motivation. 

"This guy looks like this and he's on drugs? And he's a full-time fitness model so he has all the time in the world to dedicate to his physique? Plus, he has perfectly crafted, macro-friendly meals delivered to his house each morning because he's sponsored?" 

Some people would be paralyzed by jealousy and feelings of inadequacy and inferiority, but I personally love the challenge!

I sincerely want to eat it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner because that’s what drives me to new levels of success and ambition. 

At the same time, do I fully realize I may never be able to match the physiques of people like that? Of course. But I’m a dreamer.

That being said, most people are not like me. 

For many, negative body image association is lurking viciously around every corner, so I always like to give the following disclaimer. 

This type of approach only works if:

• You have a really strong perspective on body image and your own self-worth.

  • If you can't handle it, be honest with yourself and don't hurt yourself by following unhelpful accounts.

• You can use the motivation of other physiques while keeping the joy of the entire endeavor in the pursuit - not the end product.

  • For example, I see physiques of guys on Instagram every day that far exceed my current status. But as I just mentioned, for me it's just extra motivation! I don't compare myself negatively or think less of myself because of them. I see them as an entity of what might be possible if I apply myself to the fullest (whether that is true or not).

  • To be fully transparent, my favorite physiques on Instagram right now are Mike Thurston, Luis Young, and Steve Cook. And guess what? I will probably never look anything close to these dudes - and that's fine! The joy for me is in the pursuit - not any non-negotiable outcome that I might be tempted to attach to my self-worth.

• You have pretty thick skin and a competitive spirit.

  • This is pretty similar to my second bullet point, but I don't want to leave out the crowd of people who can take a strong right hook on the jaw 10 times in a row and stand up 11.

  • If you want to be the best and pursue your own genetic potential when it comes to your physique (just like I do), then this approach can be awesome. For example, if some guy out there is working harder than me, I want to know about it, you know?

  • So if that's you, I think using these somewhat unrealistic but still highly motivational fitness accounts on Instagram can - in some very specific sense - be helpful to you in a dreamer's vacuum.

Summary

• Instagram is totally fine to use as long as you can be mature about what you're looking at and know that reality often isn't what's being depicted. Instagram is largely fantasy.

• You're looking at pictures of people who do this professionally and will play any card to win another opportunity that may benefit them vocationally.

• Lots of people use drugs and lie about it because it's sexier and better for engagement.

• Photo editing apps are very much a thing.

• A healthier approach long-term for most people is probably to follow people you trust that don't have a million followers. Look for the people who are wildly honest even to the point that you think internally, "Wow, I'm surprised they would put that on social media. That's brave."

Also, just to be clear, I think every influencer I’ve photo-featured in this article does a great job of “keeping it real” while also inspiring their audiences. I just wanted to make that clear to anyone who might have been wondering if I was using them as a “bad” example.

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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

How to Look Like Chris Hemsworth from Thor

Just the other morning I met up with a new potential client for coffee at Panera, and I asked him the question I ask nearly everyone when the topic is how to get maximally jacked and lean.

“So, do you have a favorite physique? Maybe a celebrity or something?”

And almost without fail, nearly everyone has that one photo in their phone that they keep coming back to - the one you pull up from time to time and say, “Dang, it would be so sick to look like this dude/gal.”

You’re probably no different.

Over the years, I’ve ebbed and flowed between wanting to look like Brad Pitt from Troy and Zac Efron from Baywatch.

Maybe for you it was Ryan Reynolds from The Amityville Horror (a random genre of movie to be jacked in) or Deadpool.

For this guy, it was Chris Hemsworth from Thor, and who can blame him?

Chris Hemsworth’s physique is absolutely next level - arguably the perfect combination of aesthetics and brute size, which in tandem flawlessly captures not only the heartbeat and admiration of the ladies but the respect and inner applause of the men as well.

In my personal opinion, that unique combination is the epitome of the ultimate physique - the one that captivates all audiences.

My Very Important Disclaimer on Wanting to “Look Like” Other People

Now, as a quick side note, I know a lot of people like to frown upon this idea of “trying to look like someone else,” so I’d like to speak to that briefly.

I try to give people the benefit of the doubt when they tell me they want to “look like” someone they admire in terms of fitness or physique.

If you pull up a picture of Ryan Reynolds and say, “Take me here,” I know what you mean.

You’re not asking me to drive you to the nearest plastic surgery facility to reshape your pecs to look just like his…

You’re saying you want to build a similar amount of muscle and shed a similar amount of body fat to get a similar result.

You’re saying, “Let’s move toward this physique in my own specific context,” and I respect that.

It’s not like when I first saw that scene of Brad Pitt in Troy I was thinking about how to grow long blonde hair at the same time. I wanted to know what I would look like if I were carrying that much muscle at that body fat percentage.

Does that make sense?

I just want to be sure to tread really carefully when I speak about wanting to “look like” other people.

It’s not about “looking like” someone else because you’re insecure. It’s about being inspired by a strong, muscular physique in someone you admire and setting a personal goal to achieve similar outcomes in your own context.

It Might Be Easier For Men Than Women

To be honest, I think men are generally better at keeping these distinctions in mind than women.

That’s not a dig at women, I just think women are perhaps a bit more likely to want “hips like J-Lo” or the “ratios of a Victoria’s Secret Angel” - and that's much different than saying you want to be jacked like Thor.

In fact, I think it’s a very dangerous way of thinking for women who are looking to understand their dignity and self-worth, which is want to make it very clear that I would never want to encourage body negativity of any kind.

As you read this article, please understand that “looking like” someone else in the fitness industry should never (in my opinion) come at the expense of dismissing your own self-worth.

So, ladies, if you think you want to “look like” some other girl who you think is the epitome of beautiful or sexy, my encouragement to you would be always to hold your own beauty, dignity, and self-esteem in a precious place.

If you want to build muscle, lose fat, and feel confident in your own skin, I think it’s best to do so out of self-love - not envy or insecurity.

And although this article will most likely attract men looking to get uber-stacked, I wanted to be sure to include that for my female audience. Consider it your daily dose of advice you didn’t ask for.

Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s talk about what you showed up for - how to get as jacked and lean as Chris Hemsworth was in Thor.

Is It Even Possible to Look Like Thor?

Frankly, it’s probably not possible for most. Ouch!

But I don’t say that to play the “genetics card” (although he certainly seems to have phenomenal genetics for aesthetics).

It’s deeper than that - an impossibility that speaks more to the willingness of the individual.

I say that because most people don’t want his physique badly enough to tailor their entire lifestyle toward that outcome.

Simply put, looking like Chris Hemsworth as he was in Thor just doesn’t happen by accident unless it happens by accident. And if you’re already jacked like Chris Hemsworth by accident, you probably skimmed over this article without a second thought.

But, let’s say you’re crazy enough to attempt it like me.

Here are my top seven tips about how I personally would approach it.

7 Tips for Getting Jacked Like Thor

1. Your Physique Is Now Your Full-Time Job

This first step is more of a mental adjustment than anything. Your food, training, and recovery are now of paramount importance at all times. You have to maximize all of the variables.

Some specific examples of this might be:

• Binging Schitt’s Creek but you know if you watch another episode you’re going to dig into the sleep you need to train properly all week? Turn it off and go to bed. It’s your job.

• Work party tonight but it’s going to be pizza and booze? Eat your own high-protein, macro-tailored meal beforehand and enjoy a sparkling water with your co-workers. It’s your job.

• Long stressful day at work and leg day sounds worse than hell in the moment? Cowboy up, my friend. You’re the one who signed up for this. It’s your job.

This also means no more stupid excuses about “missing breakfast because you overslept” or skipping leg day because you had a “tough day.”

Or only eating 67g of protein on Saturday because you were “traveling.”

Or having a lackluster training session because you “went out for too many drinks” with your friends on Friday night. Stop that.

If you really want to get after a big boy goal like getting jacked like Thor, you have to stop making excuses and starting owning every detail and outcome of your life - both positive and negative.

That’s a mental tweak and nothing more, but in my opinion it is certainly the first step.

2. Figure Out If You Need to Cut First or If You Need to Get Straight Into Bulking

For most people, looking like Thor is going to be a multi-year or even decade-long pursuit depending on how much muscle you want to add to your frame.

That means you need to tap into that idea that your journey is going to have to be phasic for you to see any kind of meaningful long-term success.

The first step is deciding if you need to bulk or cut, and these are my quick tips for making that decision.

People Who Should Cut First

• If you have no semblance of abomination definition, you should probably cut body fat.

  • The only exception I can think of is if you’ve never trained before and you’re not super overweight. But visible abs are probably a good indication that you’re near or below 15% body fat, which is where most people agree you should stop the gain train before your nutrient partitioning becomes more biased to fat gain (and even that’s still highly debated).

  • If you’ve never trained before, there’s a good chance you can build muscle and lose fat at the same time, so you could certainly make that your goal in this unique case.

• This probably goes without saying, but if you’re very overweight or obese, you probably need to cut body fat first before trying to put on muscle size.

  • You can still train for hypertrophy along the way, but you should probably be in a caloric deficit.

People Who Should Get Straight Into Bulking

The hardest part about looking like Thor is going to be putting on the muscle mass.

There’s nothing wildly impressive about his level of leanness, but the size and proportions are what turn heads when mixed with that leanness.

Your best gains are most likely going to come when you’re somewhat lean, which is why I would recommend most people who are any degree of “overfat” cut to a lean place in order to maximize those great gains. If you’re overweight and you go into a further caloric surplus, there’s a good chance that excess energy is going to be stored as more fat rather than more muscle - and we don’t want that.

But there are some people that would benefit from getting straight into bulking.

• If you’re that classic skinny dude who can’t put on weight to save his life, you should absolutely get straight into bulking, which probably means a modest calorie surplus.

• If you identify as skinny fat, I might also recommend getting into a very modest caloric surplus that might be mistaken for maintenance from time to time. You’re qualified to maximize that whole “build muscle and lose fat at the same time” idea, so why not press into it? Plus, cutting when you’re already sort of deflated and squishy can be a big shot to the ego, so why not set yourself up for more positive vibes by putting on some muscle beneath the flubber instead?

3. Get Your Calories Straight and Track Them

Talk to a trusted person in the industry about what your calories should be and get after it.

If you decided you needed to cut, make sure your caloric deficit is appropriate.

If you decided you needed to bulk, make sure your caloric surplus is appropriate and actually working. Wait, what does that mean? Metabolic adaption, folks. Your metabolism is not static.

If your surplus should have you gaining in theory, but it doesn’t have you gaining in practice, guess what? It’s not enough.

Add calories from carbohydrates (if possible) until the scale starts ticking upwards. If it becomes too unbearable to eat more carbohydrates, grab some extra calories from healthy fat sources to help you out.

Beyond that, make sure you are gaining at the proper rate per week, which most experts in the field would agree is around 0.5-1% of body weight gained per week.

Don’t want to track your calories? That’s fine, but that’s like saying you want to brew the best beer of all time but you’re simultaneously not interested in paying attention to the quantities and qualities of the ingredients.

You probably can’t do both if you want to maximize the quality of the outcome. You either get convenience and suboptimal outcomes or you get discipline and optimal outcomes.

If the glory of Thor is your end goal, suboptimal sure isn’t the word I would use to describe it.

4. Get Your Protein Straight and Track It

Within those calories, eat protein at least 3x per day in doses of somewhere between 30-50g each from high-quality sources, and get most of those calories and protein from whole food sources if possible.

In terms of overall daily amounts of protein, that’s going to vary from person to person, but this article I wrote should get you headed in the right direction.

As a general rule of thumb, you’ll want to be consuming about 0.7-1.0g of protein per day pound of lean body mass to optimize your muscle-building efforts from a protein perspective.

Also, supplementing with whey protein or a pea protein blend is probably a good idea for convenience and adherence purposes - especially if you are vegetarian or vegan.

Curious about how to do this on a completely plant-based diet? Click here.

5. Make Sure Your Training Program Is Top Notch and Train Like a Freak for Years

Make sure your training program is hypertrophy-based and well-rooted in proven methods.

This means training with the right amount of volume, a sensible array of movements (meaning the right blend of compound moves to isolation moves), and utilizing intelligent progression and overload schemes from week to week.

I can’t outline what that would look like in a single post, but this probably means hiring a good coach.

Trying to DIY your training to Thor status is probably a fool’s errand.

Also, remember that putting on an impressive amount of muscle mass takes years, so be ready to train relentless for a long time before you take on an endeavor like this in ignorant bliss.

6. Sincerely Consider Hiring a Coach If You’re Anything Less Than an Expert or Super-Enthusiast

Funny - I was just talking about hiring a coach!

This truly isn’t even a shameless plug for our own coaching services. Although we would love to have you, this tip makes the list because it’s genuinely probably the quickest road to Rome.

As much as it would be amazing if everyone were as educated in building muscle and losing fat as Dr. Mike Israetel, that’s simply not the case.

Having a coach provides you the peace of mind that your program is incredible and your nutritional strategy is appropriately tailored to the goal.

It also saves you precious time and energy that would be an epic shame to have lost in the stubbornness of your own unwillingness to invest in a coach.

7. Manage Your Recovery Like a Superhero

Although sleep is most likely the most important aspect of recovery on a macro level, there are other ways that recovery can oftentimes be overlooked.

• Minimize high-impact activities that might prevent your muscles from recovering on time.

  • This might be recreational basketball or soccer or even Spike Ball. You can do all of that fun stuff once you already look like Thor, but until then it might be time to lock down your recovery. Or if you must do it, do it sensibly and only on occasion.

• Nap when you can.

• This hopefully goes without saying, but don’t stay up late for no reason like a dumb-dumb. If you can bag an extra hour or two of snooze, do so.

• Drink plenty of water and get as much of your diet from high-quality, whole-food sources as possible.

• As a bit of a bonus consideration, you could consider sipping on a nighttime ashwagandha drink. Personally, I use KOS’ Organic Calming Blue Spirulina Blend once or twice per week to help wind down before what I hope becomes an epic night of sleep. Anecdotally, I have found it does exactly what it claims to do: It calms me down and leaves me crawling into bed with a warm and fuzzy sensation that usually leads to a bit more restorative sleep according to my Whoop.

8. Take Around 5g of Creatine Monohydrate Per Day

Although I don’t take creatine right now for personal reasons, the science on creatine monohydrate is pretty convincing in terms of improving strength output and muscle gains.

It is by far the most researched and well-supported supplement in the fitness space alongside whey protein, so it’s a bit of a no-brainer if you’re serious about rivaling Thor.

Just be sure to stay hydrated as creatine monohydrate does pull water into your muscles to aid in its beneficial effects.

Summary of How to Blow Up Like Thor

And there you have it, friends!

My top seven tips on what it would look like to really dig into the idea of pursuing a Thor-like physique as optimally as possible.

1. Realize that tending to your physique is now essentially a full-time job.

2. Decide whether you need to cut or bulk first.

3. Determine the right number of calories to eat and track them.

4. Identify a daily protein target and hit it consistently.

5. Be certain your training program is hypertrophy-focused.

6. Consider hiring a physique coach.

7. Manage your recovery as optimally as possible

8. Take creatine if desired.

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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.

Lastly, I want to disclose that I do earn from qualifying purchases as an Amazon Associate.

Cheers, everyone!

-Andrew

The Single Biggest Mistake You're Making in How You Think About Fat Loss

Are you ready for it? Because I’m going to hit you with the entire summary of this write-up in this very first sentence.

The single biggest mistake you’re making in how you think about fat loss is...

You still think fat loss is something you achieve through eating a specific menu of foods instead of a specific caloric density of foods consumed strategically through an optimal distribution of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates. 

Now, if you wanted to, you could make that sentence a little easier to digest and say something like, “Fat loss is all about how much you eat and not the specific foods you eat.”

While that’s not necessarily false, I think it misses some important nuance that can actually help us all shape the way we think about the entire fat loss process.

What do I mean by that?

I mean that you can easily fix this mistake by doing three simple things.

1. Be Careful Dabbling in Omission Diets in Search of an Effortless Fat Loss Experience

I honestly don’t know if an “omission diet” is already a term, but if it’s not I’d like to coin that right now. 

What I mean by an omission diet is simply a way of eating that is predicated upon the removal or extreme restriction of one major category of food. 

The most obvious of these in this camp would be any “no carb” diet, the ketogenic diet, the carnivore diet, or even your stereotypical “clean eating” diet.

“But Andrew, don’t you eat a 100% plant-based diet?” I do!

And you could absolutely make the case that a plant-based diet is an omission diet.

However, I think the main difference here is that I’ve adopted an exclusively plant-based dietary pattern in attempt to reduce animal suffering.

In other words, I didn’t “go vegan” hoping to lose fat and build muscle effortlessly, which is what I’m encouraging people to be cautious of in this particular article.

So what’s the concern with omission diets?

Diets like these tend to thrive off of getting ignorant people into a caloric deficit by insinuating that carbohydrates or sugar or processed foods are the driving force behind their inability to lose weight.

And although such approaches can work, it’s the calorie deficit that initiates the fat loss - not the foods or the particular nuances of the dietary patterns themselves.

To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with aiming to limit certain food groups in an intelligent effort to improve your body composition.

I’m merely encouraging people not to be mislead in thinking that there’s any one food or group of foods that are solely responsible for their increasing waist circumference.

The first take-home point here is this: You have to start believing that excess calories relative to your current metabolic needs are what “make you fat” - not any specific food. More pointedly, that means your love handles are an “energy issue” - not a “food category issue.”

2. It’s Not Quite as Simple as “Eating Less” and “Moving More”

If you get it into your head that “eating less” is all that it takes to lose fat, your fat loss success is now at the expense of whatever your diet was before you came to this conclusion in terms of the foods you consumed on a regular basis. If that’s confusing, let me explain.

If you just start “eating less,” you’re probably not going to change the foods you’re eating, which means the food selection remains the same but the amounts change.

Let me give you an example.

Let’s say your normal breakfast is a large bowl of cereal and a handful of blueberries.

You’ve just been told by a friend that losing body fat is just about “eating less” and “moving more.” Easy enough, right?

So what do you do? You take your bowl of cereal that was 100g and reduce it to 50g and half the number of berries you add.

In some sense, you’d certainly be on track to losing body fat due to your simple math equation for caloric reduction, but you’d also be failing to consider one massive piece of the body recomposition puzzle, which is the consideration of whether those calories are coming from protein, fats, or carbohydrates and in which ratios.

Eating a peasant’s serving of cereal and toddler’s handful of blueberries is essentially a meal made up of pure carbohydrates.

We’ll get to this in point three, but that’s just simply not an evidence-based diet strategy for optimal body recomposition.

Can you eat cereal and blueberries for breakfast each morning and live to see another day? Of course. I’m just saying it’s not the most effective approach for optimizing your body composition.

So, the second take-home point is this: It very much matters whether you are getting your calories from proteins, fats, or carbohydrates when it comes to “looking better” even when overall calories are equated.

But, this brings me to another great point worth addressing before we move on.

What the Heck Does It Mean to “Look Better?”

When people say they want to lose body fat, they also usually mean that they want to “look better” in the process. 

Without harping on the subjectivity of what it means to “look better,” let’s just all assume for our purposes right now that “looking better” probably means trading unwanted body fat for shapely muscle in all the “right places.” Right?

People want to look good and feel good in their own skin.

So, if you just take your current diet and start reducing calories, you will most likely lose weight! But, will the “look” be what you thought it would be? 

Will you start to take on that harder, leaner look that we all seem to be so drawn to these days? Or will you start to look like a melting ice cream cone?

A person who eats a 2500-calorie diet from an optimal distribution of macronutrients (namely adequate daily protein consumption) would not look the same in a parallel universe if they were eating a 2500-calorie diet from a suboptimal distribution of macronutrients (namely inadequate daily protein consumption).

In short, eating morning pastries and sipping orange juice all day isn’t going to lead to the same results as if you were to eat 3-5 servings of protein in 20-40g doses spread evenly across the day.

And now we’re talking about protein, which leads me into my third and final point.

3. Make Sure You’re Eating an Adequate Amount of Protein If You Want That Hard and Lean Look

This might be a bit direct, but I honestly think you are wasting your time if you’re claiming to be serious about getting lean while neglecting your protein intake.

If you’re wondering how much protein you should be eating per day, I highly recommend you reference my article where I tackle that topic in-depth. 

How much protein do I eat personally? As a 6’ male at 187 pounds and around 12% body fat, I eat around 150g of protein per day and here’s why:

• The general rule of thumb in protein consumption for physique development is to eat around 0.7-1.0g of protein per pound of lean body mass (LBM).

• Personally, I’ve seen no meaningful differences in terms of muscle gain when eating more than 150g of protein per day. In fact, I’ve experimented with even lower protein intakes of 80-120g per day for short periods of time and observed no apparent difference.

  • For those of you who don’t know, I used to eat upwards of 200g of animal protein per day before I adopted a fully plant-based diet.

My third take-home point is this: If you’re serious about getting in shape, get stategic about your protein too.

Summary

The biggest mistake you might be making in terms of how you think about fat loss is focusing on specific foods over the caloric density of those foods. 

In short, calories and macronutrients matter most when it comes to body recomposition, which means you can “get fat” on avocado toast just like you can “get fat” on ice cream.

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I had a blast writing this article, so if you enjoyed it, do me a favor and send it to that one friend in your life who’s still looking to the Super Keto 9000 Diet to bring them the six-pack of their wildest dreams. You know who I’m talking about.

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

5 Things We Think Every Novice Lifter Should Know

There are way too many articles on the internet that have a title very similar to this, and the problem is that some are from great sources while others are horribly misleading.

If you’ve been following our content for a while now, you’ll know that we deeply value an evidence-based approach to nutrition and fitness, and we’ve been doing our best to put out as much content as possible to prove that being evidence-based is certainly the name of our game.

That being said, I wanted to provide a solid list of what I think every beginner needs to know (in no particular order) when it comes to beginning the journey of creating a desirable physique.

Check ‘em out:

1. Focus on Perfect Form

Andrew and I both struggled with this one when we began lifting together 5 years ago.

I think deep down this is truly an ego problem more than anything else because practicing any movement with perfect form, especially for beginners, means that the weight used on the bar is probably going to be lighter than you want it to be.

Nobody wants to be the guy squatting with 10’s on each side of the bar at a gym where guys are squatting 450 pounds. But, guess what? They had to start somewhere too.

If you want the most efficient growth possible, starting with a primary focus on perfect form is going to be one of the best ways to help you get bigger and stronger while minimizing your risk of future injury.

Practicing perfect form is going to be more tiring than you think because it requires great mental focus to really envision the muscle being worked while being strict about your movement to ensure that a supporting muscle isn’t taking over the movement.

For example, back in the day when Andrew and I were trying to hit back movements, we would put way too much weight on the machines we were using.

As a result, we ended up rocking our bodies to use the momentum to help us pull the weights, and we used our arms pretty heavily as opposed to trying to focus on letting our back pull the weight.

As you can imagine, this didn’t give our backs as much stimulus as we probably wanted, and we weren’t giving ourselves the best chance to grow our backs.

A few other positives for trying to lift with perfect form:

1. You won’t need to retrain your muscle memory down the road because you chose to lift the movements correctly the first time.

   • I had to spend a lot of time reteaching myself correct form for back movements in the last couple of years, and it felt like a huge waste of time.

2. You will always have the confidence that you are completing the movements correctly, which allows you to push for better gains without the fear that you might hurt yourself.

   • Most lifters probably aren’t worried about this when they start out, but they really probably should be. To be honest, Andrew and I are both very surprised we survived our early lifting days without major big injuries from lifting like idiots.

2. You Can’t Really Out-Exercise a Bad Diet

I remember hearing something like this in college, “A good physique is made 25% in the gym and 75% in the kitchen.”

I always shrugged this comment off and thought I knew better. However, what you are choosing to ingest for energy and the macro and micronutrient profiles of your diet have an important role in facilitating fat loss or muscle gain.

To clear the quote up, I don’t think anyone can truly put hard percentages on the importance of exercise versus nutrition, but the idea that nutrition is just as important if not more important than your exercise is the take-home point.

Since tissue gain or fat loss is all based on an energy balance, nutrition (the foods we eat that give us energy) becomes crucial.

We encourage our clients to track their nutrition on a free app like MyFitnessPal or something similar so that they can keep track of how many calories they are consuming and the breakdown of those calories.

What’s cool about creating a nice physique is that it’s never been easier to nail down the amount of calories you are consuming with the help of technology. In fact, MyFitnessPal literally allows you to scan foods into the app and can be pretty accurate as long as you are using it correctly!

Big Picture Tips on How to Tweak Your Diet for Fat Loss or Muscle Gain

Now I can’t give any hard recommendations here because the breakdown of calories and how many you should consume is highly individual, but here is a quick way to think about it:

• If your goal is to lose fat, you will benefit from weighing yourself regularly and systematically. If the scale weight isn’t dropping, then you probably just need to eat less until it does. Eventually you will find a calorie number that allows you to lose weight.

  • An easy way to do this is to limit fatty snacks and foods, and make sure you have several meals a day that include a lean protein, some veggies, and a complex carb source.

• If your goal is to try and gain muscle, you probably need to eat more. So if the scale weight isn’t going up, add in another snack or protein shake to your day, or eat a little bit more at your meals until the scale begins to increase.

  • I would strongly recommend that the extra calories you add to your diet be in the form of protein or more carbs, but again, this is highly individual.

Protein is the macronutrient that tends to be most critical for muscle gain and fat loss, so if you need help targeting a number for how much protein to consume, use this article as a guide.

Lastly, it’s hard to give any “blanket statement” advice when it comes to nutrition, but if you are someone who is eating fast food 3+ times per week and slamming 64 ounces of soda every day, those habits probably aren’t helping you reach your goals.

If you want more nuanced and detailed information regarding how to sculpt your diet into something a bit more physique friendly, check us out on Instagram.

3. Prioritizing Recovery is Undervalued

I think a big mistake a lot of beginners make, including myself, is that we focus too much on trying to work as hard as we can in the gym and often think that if we aren’t sweating, we aren’t working hard enough.

This leads us to do crazy things like superset every single exercise of every workout, try only HIIT workouts, or give ourselves little rest time between sets on very big lifts which require a lot of energy.

I remember supersetting my squats with a lunge variation about 4 years ago, and looking back it’s easy to laugh at myself for some of the things I did.

I think everything is obviously dependent on goals, but when it comes to taking rest times in the gym and trying to be as efficient as possible - especially if lifting for hypertrophy (muscle growth) - taking longer rest times of 2-3 minutes is okay. For some of the bigger lifts like squat, deadlift, and bench press, it might even be better to rest a little bit longer.

In short, the amount of sweat accrued over the course of a workout isn’t the best indicator of how good that workout was if you’re training purely for physique improvements.

Other Ways to Value Your Recovery

Not only is it important to give yourself ample time to rest during your workout, but prioritizing recovery between workouts is also important. In other words, training your quads into oblivion every single day of the week probably isn’t the best way to grow aesthetically pleasing quads. Simply put, they need time to recover and grow.

Additionally, like I mentioned in point #2, your nutrition is an extremely important element in making sure we are giving our bodies the fuel it needs to recover.

Alongside nutrition, things like hydration, sleep quality, and mindful lifestyle habits can also promote optimal recovery.

I personally try to sleep 7-9 hours each night, and also try and drink about as many ounces of water as half of my scale weight in pounds. I also try to make sure I am not sitting down all day and try to stretch and walk daily.

4. Soreness Does Not Non-Negotiably Equal a Good Workout

This is another point I wish I could tell a younger version of myself.

One of the biggest myths novice lifters believe is that if you’re not sore, you didn’t work hard enough.

I rarely feel as sore after lifting as I used to, and that’s a good thing in my opinion.

Soreness generally comes from applying a new stimulus to your body that it isn’t used to, so for the first several weeks, novice lifters will get an immense feeling of soreness in their muscles.

Given the sensation of that initial feeling, it’s tempting to think that that we need to keep chasing that feeling, which unfortunately means many times we end up using too much weight or overworking ourselves by hitting 15 sets of one muscle group in the same workout.

The way we see it, an intelligent workout plan will be one that allows you to optimally hit each muscle group without completely wrecking your muscles and giving them plenty of time to recover so that you are ready to go for the next time you hit those muscles.

In other words, don’t feel the need to chase soreness for soreness’ sake. You’re probably doing yourself more harm than good.

5. Weight Training is Generally Better Than Pure Cardio for Physique Development

If you truly enjoy cardio and don’t have specific goals of creating a physique that has a little bit of muscle for aesthetics, then go for it!

However, it is important to note that weight training burns some calories just like cardio does, but weight training allows you to build muscle and work toward building a robust physique that is complimented by a nice body shape.

There is this idea out there that people need to run or jog regularly to lose weight, and that is honestly just false. Most people would likely benefit from a weight training program versus only doing cardio, even if your goals weren’t centered around gaining muscle.

Also, for those worried about looking too “bulky” from weight training, don’t worry. That probably won’t happen.

It takes years of weight training properly to end up with muscles that would create a “bulky” physique, and even then if your programming is centered around hitting exercises that grow the muscles you desire to grow, you should never end up looking bulky in a way that you don’t want to.

In Summation

There are many more ideas I could put down on this list, but I wanted to include the topics I thought were most important - or the ones that might provide the most immediate value.

Again, there is no hierarchy of what is more important here as I think heeding all of these points provides value to fitness goals for beginners.

To tidy it up, the five points I think all beginners should pay attention to (thinking of myself 5 years ago) are:

1. Focus on perfect form.

2. Pay attention to your diet.

3. Prioritize recovery.

4. Don’t buy into the soreness myth.

5. Implement weight training into your program if aesthetics are your primary goal.

If I had followed these points more closely when I began lifting, I wouldn’t feel like I had wasted many years of my time in the gym, and I don’t want any beginners feeling the same way that I do!

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Thanks for consuming our content and for all the support!

We are currently looking to add new clients to our roster, so if you are looking to finally build the physique or lose the extra flab you’ve been thinking about doing for a while, click here to get started.

We aren’t asking you to give us your social security number. We just want to say hello and see if we can get started on building habits to make a lifelong impact on your overall health!

Cheers,

Josh

6 Signs You're Ready to Hire an Online Body Recomposition Coach

How do you know if you’re truly ready for an online relationship with a body recomposition coach?

That’s a wonderful question. Let’s talk about it!

Sign #1: You’re finally ready to invest financially. 

Oh, this is awkward. We’re talking about money on point number one? Absolutely, and I’ll tell you why.

It’s one thing to say, “Shoot. I’m just not sure I can responsibly spend that money on a body recomposition coach right now,” because that’s a reality of life.

I used to walk by the freshest cuts of Wild Atlantic Salmon at the grocery store and think, “Man, I’d really like to buy those cuts, but I’m not sure we can responsibly afford that right now,” for that very same reason. I just simply couldn’t justify paying for it at the moment, and that was completely understandable.

So, what’s the difference?

Well, I don’t have a strained relationship with the fact that I’m not eating the best cuts of salmon on a weekly basis. If I were walking around on a daily basis cursing my non-salmon dinners of ramen noodles and peanut butter sandwiches while harboring an excessive amount of negative energy toward the lack of salmon in my life, that might be a different story.

What’s my point? If I had wanted the salmon badly enough, I’d have found a way to afford it even if it meant making sacrifices in other areas of my spending.

In short, your spent dollars tend to reflect the nearest and dearest values of your heart, so if you’re not willing to spend a few hundred dollars a month getting fitter instead of fatter, it’s probably a good indication that you’re not ready for an online coaching relationship yet.

Sign #2: Frankly, you’re a little bit pissed off.

You’ve been overweight for years, and you’ve decided that enough is enough.

You’re tired of being that person and being discouraged by the image you see in the mirror.

I even had a client once tell me that they were going on vacation in six months and they were determined not to be the “fat friend” in photos. I will never forget that conversation because it created a renew sense of empathy in me. I couldn’t imagine the shame this person was feeling toward the shape of their body.

Are you sick and tired of being the “fat friend?”

If so, this might be the perfect time to make a powerful investment in yourself.

Now, I’m not saying you have to be angry in order to commit to a successful body recomposition goal, but I am suggesting that you should be experiencing some degree of motivational and emotional restlessness to help you kickstart your endeavor.

If this is you, there’s a very good chance that you’ll be willing to make the lifestyle adjustments necessary to achieve your goal, and a coach might be the perfect fit for you at this time.

Sign #3: Getting a personal coach has been a long time coming and you know it.

You’re probably ready for an online body recomposition coach if you’ve been spinning your wheels aimlessly for years dabbling in all kinds of diets and “training programs.” 

You lost 10 pounds on keto, but then you gained 15 back over Christmas. You lost 15 pounds as a vegan and then gained 20 back once you ate a pizza. Now you’re doing intermittent fasting in tandem with Whole 30, but you’re starving like Tom Hanks on a life raft in the middle of the South Pacific.

When will it stop?

To be fair, there’s nothing technically wrong with this. No one is saying you can’t continue experimenting with new dietary patterns and training styles.

But it might be worth admitting that at this point you have no idea what you’re doing when it comes to dieting and training for an improved body composition.

So ask yourself this, “Is anything really going to change if I keep leaving myself in charge of this process? Do I really have the knowledge to do this on my own?”

If the answer is no, you’ve been blessed with an exciting moment of honesty and clarity.

When you’re able to face that reality openly, there’s a good chance you're in an appropriately humble position to hire a fitness and nutrition coach for the next six months to a year.

Sign #4: You’ve stopped asking questions like, “Am I going to have to run?”

Why is this important?

Because if you are still asking questions like this, it exposes the reality that you’re still keen on keeping things as cozy and non-invasive as possible. That sort of mentality generally doesn’t inspire optimal results.

The key to being successful in this process is to approach all things with an open mind and a willingness to learn.

No, you don’t have to run, but why are you not willing to run? 

The mindset of someone who is truly ready for an online coaching relationship is one that communicates this: “I am ready to trust my coach to guide me toward my body recomposition goal, and I know for a fact that this will mean remodeling old habits, welcoming new habits, and adapting to any adversity that may present itself along the way.”

You should be asking what you get to do to get the results you’ve always wanted - not immediately hoping to shirk as many unpleasant forms of exercise as possible from day one.

If that’s you, you’re probably ready for an online coaching relationship.

Sign #5: You’re excited about the challenge.

If you’re dreading the idea of becoming the leanest version of yourself you’ve ever been, what are we even doing here?

Save yourself the cash! I mean that sincerely. Life is short and there’s no sense in forcing yourself to be something you don’t want to be.

Your legacy is yours for the forging, and no one is asking you to trade in your muffin top keg for a six-pack if you're happy and healthy just the way you are.

But if you are excited about the idea of seeing your body transform in new and motivating ways, you’re probably in a wonderful position to consider hiring a body recomposition coach.

Sign #6: You want to change your body shape for yourself and no one else.

Yikes, this one cuts to the core! But, how true is it?

If you’re considering hiring a body recomposition coach because you want to look hot for Justin Bobby at the pool this summer, you’re essentially looking to hop in a dune buggy at 100mph headed for the edge of a cliff.

Devastation awaits.

Why?

Because I’ve found that the only meaningful and lasting results in body recomposition are the ones that are pursued and accomplished in a spirit of self-respect and love. 

Cliché? Probably. But I’ve found that some of the most cliché things in life turn out to be true.

So, if you want to get lean or jacked, do it for yourself - not to impress a person or earn a meaningless badge of cultural approval.

If you’re in this for yourself - or even selflessly for others in the sense that you know your current body weight is putting you at risk of early mortality - then hiring a coach might legitimately be one of the best decisions you have ever made. 

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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.

Although I no longer run my own body recomposition business, I have joined forces with The Vegan Gym, where you can apply to work with me directly.

Until next time,

-Andrew

How and Why to Use Deloads for Optimal Recovery

If you’ve been following our content for a while, you’ll know that we have spoken a lot to the fact that both Andrew and I did a ton of things wrong for a long time in our early twenties.

In fact, that’s a huge reason why we both have become so passionate about fitness and doing things the “right” way; so we started a business to try and help others avoid the same wasteful journey that we took.

When we didn’t know any better (i.e. we weren’t tracking our lifts efficiently, tracking calories, practicing effective recovery, etc.) we both encountered the strange phenomenon of what I’ll dub, “a week at home with Mom’s cooking.”

We would travel back home to our parents’ houses over holiday breaks and random weekends here and there, not lift while at home, and eat loads of great food.

When we would return to the bachelor pad, one of the first things we wanted to do was get a solid lift in like a couple of bros.

I kid you not, during every single one of those lifting sessions back from “a week at home with Mom’s cooking,” we felt like superheroes.

We would be putting up bigger numbers than we were hitting previously (albeit for only a few sessions because we were boneheads), and we thought that we were invoking some kind of magic power divined from middle-aged Midwestern women’s cooking.

What we were really experiencing - in some form - were the effects of practicing a great recovery tool called a “deload week.”

Deloading has become a staple in both of our personal programs and has allowed us to continuously push for bigger numbers and greater strength gains.

Let’s define the idea of a deload.

What is Deloading?

Generally, we define our deload phases as a period of decreased training intensity (amount of resistance used) or volume (number of reps/sets performed), while usually eating at maintenance calories (especially during a fat loss phase) usually four around a week but sometimes less.

Sometimes, deloading can mean completely taking the entire week off, but my recommendation would be to still perform the same sessions you were previously doing while lowering the intensity and/or volume.

There are many ways you can go about deciding what the best set of reps and what percentage of the load you should be using when deloading, but here are a few options:

1. Keep the same load on your movements, but cut the volume down.

2. Keep the same volume, but decrease the load you are using.

3. Use 50-70% of the load from the previous week and hit 50-75% of the volume, which is what I do.

So, the whole purpose of a well-timed and intelligent deload phase is to allow your body to have an extended period of recovery.

What happens is that once we successfully deload, we create a desirable launching point for our next training cycle.

Earlier I mentioned that “a week at home with Mom’s cooking” made us feel like superheroes and that we would hit big numbers upon our return to the gym.

Part of the reason for those feelings was the fact that we weren’t practicing strict progressive overload. We would hit more reps or use more weight, but none of those choices were really well thought-out.

You should still probably feel refreshed after a restful deload week, but you may only notice a slight increase in your performance, especially if your are an intermediate/advanced lifter, or you are following a strict training plan implementing progressive overload strategies.

So, what are the actual benefits of a deload phase?

Benefits of Deloading

I think one of the hardest parts about lifting weights, especially as people get more advanced in their training, is managing your body well in a way that avoids injury.

Lifting weights puts a ton of stress on our bodies, especially on our central nervous system (CNS) and connective tissues, and a lot of that stress is hard to manage.

So, instead of taking a few days off to give our bodies a chance to recover, we can end up injuring ourselves, which can put us out for an extended period of time away from the progress we have been working so hard towards.

To help you avoid those kinds of injuries and to practice healthy recovery, here are some of the benefits of implementing a deload week into your programming:

1. Muscle Recovery

   • Lifting with less intensity or less overall volume allows our muscles more time to fully recover.

2. Central Nervous System (CNS) Recovery

   • When you’re training in a light to moderate manner, your CNS may recover just fine by the next day, but some studies show - specifically for high volume training - that it may take multiple days for our CNS to fully recover after a very demanding session. And, since training intensity tends to ramp up at the end of a mesocycle, this makes deloading after your overreaching weeks the most beneficial time to sensibly deload.

3. Psychological Recovery

   • Just like we need to take breaks from our actual jobs and careers for vacations and weekends away to relax and mentally escape, taking a break from your normal gym routine can also promote mental benefits the next time a heavy squat is staring you in the face.

4. Connective Tissue Recovery

   • Muscle tissue generally recovers much faster than our connective tissue (ligaments, tendons, cartilage), and there aren’t any highly reliable ways to track damage done to our connective tissue. Deloading ensures that by decreasing the overall stress on these tissues, we are allowing them to recover and heal for the sake of injury prevention.

     • It’s worth noting that a majority of the injuries that I and a lot of friends experienced from lifting have been connective tissue injuries since they are so hard to manage properly.

5. Social Recovery

   • If you work a normal job and also lift 5-6 days a week, a lot of your precious time is already spent, which leaves less time for friends, family, and other hobbies. One of the best benefits of a deload period has nothing to do with your body, but rather the amount of time that is freed up from shorter or fewer workouts. I love spending this newly available time by hanging out with friends and family.

Now that we know what a deload is and have seen the benefits, how do we know when or how do we plan a deload phase?

How I Personally Know When It’s Time to Deload

There are several different ways to go about adding a deload at the end of your mesocycles, and I will say more about that in the next section, but I wanted to give a quick look into how I personally organize my routine to include deload phases.

But before I do that, I think it’s important to lay out my current approach to training so that I can provide a little bit of context before I talk about my deload.

My Approach to Training

After years of making mistakes, I have finally settled on a sustainable approach to weight lifting, which includes a thoughtful implementation of progressive overloading.

I have spent a lot of time learning about my limits for different exercises in different rep ranges so that I can now intelligently push to increase every week.

The way that I progressively overload is by starting out my mesocycle with 2-3 working sets for each of my exercises for that session, and then each week after I try to add a few total sets for that week along with trying to match or improve upon the number of reps I hit for each set the previous week.

In this way, I can ensure that I am progressing and every week. But, as the demands of progression inevitably increase, the need for a more dedicated recover period become more and more apparent.

At this point in my training journey, I can pretty much predict at about which point I will need to deload (which is usually after four or five weeks of increasingly demanding training), but I only know that because I keep a very organized logbook for each and every one of my sessions.

On occasion, however, I will plan a deload for a specific week, but generally I try to use my logbook to guide my decision making for the appropriate time to deload.

A Look At My Logbook

Here is a look at how I am currently organizing my logbook in Google Sheets.

This has been my Monday AM session for the last several weeks, and I organize everything from rest times to number of reps performed. Each week for this mesocycle is all included in the same Google Sheet so that I can easily check my progress from the previous week and then set a goal for myself for the current week.

So what I like to do is let my body tell me when it’s time to take a break.

Take a look at a few sessions from my previous week of lifting for example:

I’ve included (in parentheses) the decreases from the previous week to this current week for a few of the exercises.

At first glance, only missing a few reps may not be that big of a deal. For example, I may have had a poor night of sleep or felt more stressed that day.

What is important to note is that it’s okay to have one bad day in the gym. Life happens, and sometimes our gym performance struggles. So I will usually chalk up a day like this as a bad day, and I won’t go into a deload because of one day of missing my numbers.

This changes though when I have multiple days of not hitting my numbers in the same week. I interpret this lack of performance as a sign that my body needs a break from the stress I’ve been putting it under.

Here is another session from my logbook in the same week:

I hit this session two days after the pair of sessions in the previous picture.

There was a much greater decrease in performance in a few of the exercises on this day, so I decided I couldn’t really chalk up the lack of performance to tiredness. Instead, I realized I had pushed my body hard for five weeks and that now it was time to deload and recover.

Again, I know that not everyone keeps a detailed logbook for their exercise programs (although we highly recommend it), so you may not be able to use a method like this to help you decide when you should deload.

Here are a few methods for determining the right time to take a deload week.

How You Can Time Your Deload Appriately

Just like most things in life, there isn’t a “one size fits all” approach to deloading. Depending on how you organize your fitness life, there are a few options for you to try:

1. The “Drop in Performance” Approach

In the last section, I spoke a lot about how I personally implement this approach.

Again, the idea is that if you are keeping a good logbook and trying to progressively overload, you will eventually run into a week where you aren’t quite hitting the numbers you want to be hitting - whether that be not performing the same number of reps as the previous week or even not being able to perform an entire set of an exercise.

Again, when you arrive at this situation yourself, make sure that it isn’t just one day of tiredness, but rather multiple days of “missing the mark” in your training before you decide to take a deload week.

What is nice about this method is that it sort of becomes predictable to a point.

Eventually you will start to realize that you have been deloading consistently every four weeks, and you can then start to plan for those deload weeks in future training cycles.

A benefit of knowing how long it takes for your body to reach a point where it’s begging for a deload is that you can begin to plan things around when this week approaches.

For example, if I know I am going to be going on a week long vacation in September, I may try to plan my training so that my deload week lines up perfectly with my vacation.

2. The “Planned” Approach

This approach is exactly what it sounds like: instead of waiting to see your performance drop (especially if you aren’t keeping a logbook), you can just plan a deload week into your training cycle at predetermined time intervals. At IVRY, we personally recommend every 3-6 weeks, but it totally depends on the individual.

Depending on how you look at it, this can be a more carefree approach to deloading because it doesn’t require you to burn any training sessions on subpar performance.

On the same page though, this method can also be less precise.

For example, maybe you have been taking a deload week after four weeks of pushing hard in your training. There is a chance that you could have pushed for a fifth week of hard training, but you would never know it because you chose to deload sooner than you may have needed to.

Again, we are digging into the weeds here a little bit, but I am all about maximizing my output in my performance, and I hate the idea of leaving a good week of hypertrophically stimulating training on the table. Because we are trying to improve, aren’t we?

That being said, this method is probably most conservative way to go about deloading because at least you are giving your body a break over the course of a regular period, and you can know that you are safely recovering. It just might not be quite as precise and appropriately timed as it would be by using an more auto-regulatory method.

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Hopefully you found all of this information to be helpful, and if you weren’t adding deloads into your workouts before, maybe we have convinced you to give it a try! The last thing you want is to be chronically banged-up when a focused time of rest and recovery is actually exactly what your body needs to continue growing optimally.

Part of what we include with our personal coaching is an intelligent implementation of deload weeks to ensure that there is plenty of recovery and a limited risk of injury.

If you are interested in learning more about our online coaching, or just want to ask a question or say hello, click here to learn more.

And, we are currently accepting new clients, so don’t be shy. Saying hello just might be the best decision you’ve made this year.

Deceptively "Healthy" Choices That May Hinder Your Fat Loss Goals

It’s funny how my concept of “healthy” has evolved and grown over my lifetime. I can remember grouping foods into “healthy” and “not healthy” in my head for a long time. For example, I used to think of the following foods and food groups like this:

• Fast Food = “Unhealthy”

• Salad = “Healthy”

• Pizza = “Unhealthy”

• Fruit = “Healthy”

And, you can probably see where I’m going with my list.

This is how I thought about “healthy” and “unhealthy” for a long time. To be fair, learning to categorize foods to some extent is a great educational place to start, but as I personally learned more about nutrition, my definition of “healthy” evolved into something much more specific (for the better).

The reason that my view of “healthy” vs “unhealthy” foods evolved is because:

1. Whatever I had been practicing for my nutrition for a long time was not working. How did I know that? Because I wasn’t getting the results I wanted.

2. I wanted a more wholistic view of the word “healthy” from an educational perspective.

3. My goals became more specific, and thus my nutrition had to be more specific as well.

What I learned about my assumptions between “healthy” and “unhealthy” was striking - especially regarding some of the apparently “healthy” choices I had been making that actually turned out to be setting me back in a powerful way.

My goal with this write-up is this: I want to present a consideration of a handful of diet choices we commonly make that appear “healthy” on the surface but might actually be a hindrance to our diet goals when misapplied.

#1: Ordering or Buying Products that Contain “Superfoods” or are Ambiguously Thought of as “Nutritious”

This was a big hurdle for me personally.

When I was in high school, I remember starting to care more about my diet choices for the first time. I was an athlete and I wanted to make choices that wouldn’t “slow me down” on the field.

At least that’s how I thought about it.

So, I would put avocado on everything when given the option because the internet said avocados contain healthy fats, which they do, but that was my only thought about avocados at the time. Healthy foods will make me a better athlete, right?

I had also heard that nut butters were a good source of healthy fats, so I gave myself the green light on those as well.

Now, this increase in fat intake was great for me in high school because I looked like a scrawny alien twig, but if I were to implement that same viewpoint now as an adult while making a focused effort to lose body fat, it would most likely be setting me back due to the excessive caloric intake alone.

For that reason, it’s always a good idea to know the macronutrient content of your foods along with the micronutrient breakdown that may qualify a food as nutritious.

Because in my opinion, the last thing you want to be doing when trying to lose body fat is eating foods you think should be helping you when they are actually slowing down your progress or even pushing you in the wrong direction. Unfortunately, plenty of well-intentioned people unknowingly make that mistake all the time.

On a coaching note, part of what Andrew and I do with our clients is educate them on basic nutrition while providing structured macronutrient goals so that we can be as optimal as possible with their body recomposition goal. In other words, we try to guide you through a calorie-controlled approach to your goal without ignoring the overall importance of eating nutrient-dense foods.

#2: Blindly Ordering Salads at a Restaurant as Opposed to Another Entrée

Back when my novice definition of “healthy” sat on the nutrition throne of my brain, I began to order salads out at restaurants.

Because salads are healthy, right?

Actually, yes! Salads can be amazingly healthy for us, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get fat from eating too many nutrient-dense salads.

Think about it. When most of us order salads at restaurants, we cover them in things like:

• Croutons - Mostly carbs and extra fat

• Cheese - Contains protein, but generally an equal amount of fat or more

• Fatty Dressings - Most salad dressings contain a LOT of fat.

• Avocado - High fat content, even though they are nutritious

• Fatty Meats - A lot of salads (especially Italian salads) can pile on heaps of salami, pepperoni, bacon, prosciutto, etc.

• Nuts (especially candied/glazed) - While nutritious, these nuts contain a lot of fat. And, if they are candied or glazed, they will also include a lot of sugar which equals extra carbs.

Realistically, if you have a caloric plan in mind or are keeping a mindful eye on your macronutrient intake, you could add a few of these to your salad and still reach your goal.

But, these toppings become a problem if you decide to add three or four of these to one salad because it dramatically changes the caloric total of the entire meal. It’s the cumulative calorie effect that results in weight gain.

Some things to add to your salad instead of some of the ingredients above to add another element could be:

• Grilled Chicken - high in protein and will help fill you up with a much needed macronutrient, especially if trying to hold onto hard-earned lean muscle tissue

• Vegetables - For me personally, texture is a big deal, so adding veggies with a little crunch to them is great! You could even try chipped cucumbers, celery, broccoli, carrots, and/or peppers next time.

• Egg Whites - Whole eggs can be great as well, but I prefer hard-boiling an egg and then chopping up the whites for some easy extra protein

• Beans - Rinse out a can of your favorite beans and add some extra protein to your diet. This is a great option for those that eat plant-based diets.

• Fresh Herbs and Spices - Talk about taking flavor to another level without adding any unwanted fats! Try using some basil, mint, dill, or cilantro with your salad. Just make sure you know the herb you choose will pair well with your other flavors.

• Lemon Juice - I like using just a little bit of oil and then squeezing fresh lemon juice onto my salad as a dressing. As it turns out, a little bit of citrus can go a long way.

Again, depending on your goal, any of the options above could be a good substitution or mindful addition.

#3: The Misapplication of Intermittent Fasting

I have been effectively using intermittent fasting in my current fat loss phase, so I’m certainly not making intermittent fasting the enemy here.

I still consume three to four large meals during my “eating window” (which is 10 hours for me instead of the commonly recommended eight-hour window), and I also consume several high-protein snacks.

But, where does it go wrong for some people?

In my opinion, here are two common ways intermittent fasting is frequently abused:

1. You’re narrowing your eating window to less than eight hours and only giving yourself time for one or two large meals.

   • When we do this, we can sometimes negotiate with ourselves and eat foods that are less nutritious or have unfavorable macronutrient compositions since we are sacrificing an entire meal. In other words, we lose sight of nutrition in favor of a game of calories and calories alone. Just because you could eat a plate of nachos and cheese for 1500 calories doesn’t mean that is going to lead to the body recomposition outcomes you want.

   • I’ve also found that intermittent fasting can lead to more snacking, and generally the snacks we tend to pick aren’t as nutrient-dense or macro-friendly as something we might cook for a proper meal.

   • Eating one large meal can also make people feel sluggish and lethargic.

2. Your protein consumption might not be as optimal as it could be.

   • If your goal is to lose fat while maintaining lean muscle tissue and you choose to enter the intermittent fasting world, you may not be able to eat all of the protein you could benefit from according to most evidence-based guidelines.

     • And, as I mentioned above, typical snack foods tend to be high in carbohydrates and fats and generally low in protein. So, if you tend to be a snacker while practicing intermittent fasting, your snacks may be a limiting factor in your progress.

     • If you need more clarity about how you could go about calculating your own protein intake, check out this blog.

Again, intermittent fasting doesn’t have to be the enemy, but it is often touted as a very healthy diet strategy even though it can easily be misapplied.

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Feeling Motivated?

Like I said at the beginning of the article, it’s probably a good idea to be very careful about making sure that the “healthy” choices we are making are actually choices that help us move toward our goals rather than push us further back.

I also mentioned that part of a coaching relationship with an IVRY Fitness coach is a personalized macronutrient goal to help you reach a specific body composition goal. So, if you have always wanted to make a change but have continuously felt stuck because nothing you have ever tried in the past has worked, consider reaching out to us.

We have open coaching slots and are looking for highly motivated clients that want to make a significant change in their body composition.

Click here to learn more, The journey always has to begin somewhere, so why not here and now?

9 Sneaky Ways to Get More Protein Into Your Diet

Let’s talk about how to get more protein into your diet.

If you’re reading this article, it probably means you’re in one of three positions:

1. You’re either skeptical about how high the evidence-based protein recommendations are for athletes/trainees who want to maximize their muscle growth response, or…

2. You’re already bought into the idea of eating a higher-protein diet, but you’re not sure how to practically eat that much protein on a daily basis, or...

3. You’re the parent of a young athlete and you’re trying to figure out how to cook and prepare food at home to support their goals.

In any case, this blog is for you.

But I have one quick disclaimer before we get started:

ONE QUICK DISCLAIMER

These tips and tricks only apply if you know that you are currently eating less protein than you could be eating for optimal muscle retention and/or growth. 

I just want to be clear that there’s no meaningful benefit to eating excess protein if you’re already eating plenty in the first place. That makes sense, right?

But, how do you know if you’re already eating enough protein? 

How to Know If Your Protein Intake Is Adequate

To start, you’ll need to track your food for a few days.

I recommend tracking your intake for 3-5 “normal eating days” using an app like MyFitnessPal or Cronometer and a food scale for ensured accuracy.

Once you have a few days of data collection, you’ll need to reference this article I wrote on how to determine an appropriate protein target.

But just as a brief summary, I think eating between 0.7-1.0g of protein per pound of lean body mass (LBM) is sufficient for nearly all of the muscle growth most people are hoping to obtain.

Then, when you know for sure that you’re under-eating protein relative to your goal, you can start digging into these tips like a grizzly bear in a picnic basket.

Now let’s get into a few tips and tricks on how to get more protein into your diet.

A SECOND QUICK DISCLAIMER

I originally published this article as a meat-eater, but I no longer eat meat or any other animal products (including fish, dairy, or eggs).

Because of that, this article has been heavily updated to reflect my own personal preference toward eating a plant-predominant diet.

9 TIPS FOR EATING MORE PROTEIN

Tip #1: Stop Being Bashful about Protein Shakes.

If you’re looking to get more protein into your diet as simply as possible, consider adding a plant-based protein shake to your daily routine. 

Or, consider doing a shake with a double scoop of protein or making your plain shake into a smoothie with berries and your favorite nut butter.

Why the double scoop though?

Well, not to get too geeky on you, but when it comes to building muscle, the muscle protein synthetic response appears to be optimally activated in doses of 20-40g of protein (with diminishing returns between 40-60g per dose).

You could, however, easily achieve this by using a higher-protein plant milk like soy milk to bolster the protein content of your smoothie.

Either way, consuming 40-50g of protein from your shake would be giving you an excellent hit of muscle protein synthesis to support the hard training you’re executing in the gym.

The key here is to stop associated protein shakes with “being a bro.”

Drinking protein shakes doesn’t make you a “bro” any more than wearing a pair of basketball shoes makes you LeBron James. 

So, if you’ve been avoiding protein shakes due to your ego, I would highly encourage you to drop the stigma and press into the bigger picture of achieving your body recomposition goal. 

What I Do Personally: I generally drink one plant-based protein smoothie a day for my first meal that contains one scoop of pea/rice protein blend, 300mL of high-protein soy milk, hemp hearts, and powdered peanut butter for a hit of 40-50g of protein.

For more details on my morning smoothie, click here,

Tip #2: Double Your Lean Protein Portions.

There’s no need to overcomplicate this one.

Instead of eating one chicken breast for dinner, you could eat two.

But as plant man myself, I’d love to see more people choosing plant proteins like tofu and tempeh over poultry.

Rather than eating one portion of seitan for dinner, you could serve yourself two.

Or, as crazy as this may seem, you could even make yourself two servings of chickpea pasta instead of one (if your caloric goals allow for this).

And, really this applies to any kind of lean protein you might be eating.

Just remember that it’s very important that your calories still be kept nice and tidy if you’re focusing on a body recomposition goal - especially if your goal is to lose body fat. 

For example, if your goal is to lose body fat, but you’re eating 600 calories worth of chickpea pasta each night because you took my advice to double your protein serving, that might actually be the wrong choice contextually because it’s knocking you out of the caloric deficit you need to lose fat.

In other words, make sure you account for calories above all else. It’s an easy mistake to make, which is why I wrote an entire article on it.

Tip #3: Sprouted Bread

Wait, bread has protein? Yes, it does!

In fact, sprouted bread in particular is a complete protein source, which means it has a fuller amino acid profile than some other plant-based products (which is a common critique of plant-based diets for muscle growth).

Practically speaking, if you start making your lunch sandwiches with a sprouted grain like Ezekiel bread, you’ll be able to sneak an extra 10-20g of protein into your meal. And although 10g may not seem like much all by itself, it can certainly add up across the entire day. 

You could also supplement a morning breakfast of oatmeal and berries with a slice or two of toasted Ezekiel bread for a protein-heavy start to your day.

What I Do Personally: I like to buy the Ezekiel bread you find in the refrigerated or even frozen sections at the store. People don’t think to look for bread there, but those products need to be kept cold since they’re typically made without the preservatives that allow for a longer shelf life.

Tip #4: Bagels

While we’re on the topic of how grains can get you more jacked, let’s touch on bagels.

Bagels are hands-down my favorite post-workout carbohydrate source. For whatever reason, there’s just nothing quite like a freshly toasted wheat bagel from Aldi with a plant-based protein shake after grueling training session.

Fortunately for me, the bagels I eat contribute 9g of protein per bagel. That’s a hefty bump, especially if your goal is to gain muscle while eating in a moderate caloric surplus.

To be fair, bagels are fairly calorie dense with around 260 calories per bagel, but if you’re a big person training to be even bigger - spending 520 calories and 108g of carbohydrates post-workout (with an added bonus of 18g of protein) might be a great idea.

The downside of bagels is that they aren’t particularly fat loss friendly for those eating calorically restricted diets, so I will admit that these will mostly often suit bigger people a bit better than smaller people.

Again, just make sure that the way you approach your protein intake is calorie-controlled for your greater goal.

What I Do Personally: One of my classic post-workout meals is almost exactly what I mentioned above: a whole wheat bagel, 20-40g of nut butter, 20-40g of raspberry jelly, and a plant-based protein shake for roughly 631 calories comprised of 43g of protein, 79g of carbs, and 19g of fat to jumpstart the recovery and growth process. 

Tip #5: Hemp Hearts

You may have never heard of hemp hearts, but they have been an absolute game changer for my oatmeal and salad game.

Plus, a full serving of hemp hearts packs 10g of plant-based protein and 13g of healthy Omega-6 fats. 

Just be careful not to get carried away with your calories from hemp hearts if you’re dieting for fat loss.

You don’t need to be scared of them, but it’s definitely worth noting that a full serving packs 170 calories, which can be more than 10% of your daily caloric intake if you’re a smaller person looking to consume less than 1,700 calories per day.

What I Do Personally: I spike my oatmeal with hemp hearts for a small protein bump and the added bonus of knowing I’m consuming my fats from healthy plant-based sources. If you want my go-to bowl of oatmeal, check out the graphic on the right. Just keep in mind that I would, in this case, supplement this particular bowl with a pea/rice protein shake to get within that optimal amount of 20-40g of protein per meal.

Beyond that, I used to drink a fully plant-based shake each morning with 30g of protein without the use of a plant-based protein powder when I was dabbling in veganism. So, if you’re vegan, hemp hearts might be a phenomenal way to increase your protein without the use of animal products.

Tip #6: You Could Use Egg Whites.

Although I no longer personally recommend the consumption of egg whites due to the disclaimer I gave at the beginning of this article, I do think it’s most transparent to mention that I consumed them heavily in the form of French toast from 2019-2020.

Why? Well, they’re essentially pure protein - and they are a complete protein, which means their addition to your diet will absolutely support your muscle building goals.

Just one serving of egg whites packs 5g of protein and only 25 calories.

If you’re new to tracking macronutrients, just know that that’s a really good bang for your caloric buck in terms of protein return.

Back in the day, I would typically eat them in servings of 300mL at a time.

What I Do Personally: I don’t eat them anymore due to ethical reasons, but they are a very common protein source for many physique enthusiasts.

Tip #7: Broaden Your Horizons with Seitan.

I know it sounds like the devil, but it’s really not unless you have a gluten sensitivity.

What is it?

Seitan is just wheat gluten prepared in a way that makes good sense of its “wheat meat” nickname. For a deeper dive, I felt as though this article was helpful in learning more about this ancient yet seemingly unknown plant-based protein source.

Fortunately, store-bought seitan seems to be increasing in popularity as plant-based diets gain more traction in the consumer space, which means you don’t need to stress about making your own.

Just go buy some at the store!

What I Do Personally: I like the chorizo variety of the Upton brand because it’s goes brilliantly in homemade Mexican dishes. When I’m in a hurry, I will literally just throw together a bed or rice, black beans, 1-2 servings of chorizo seitan, a dabble of nutritional yeast, and a spoonful of salsa for an extremely simple yet physique-friendly meal.

Tip #8: Chili

Chilis are nutritional powerhouses when it comes to dieting for body recomposition.

And although I’m well aware that the majority of my readers won’t be “as plant-based” as I am, I personally add a bag of Gardein’s be’f crumbles made from a textured soy protein for an extra 18g of protein for 120 calories per serving.

That being said, I know there are plenty of people out there who are scared of soy, and I empathize with you. And although soy is still heavily-debated, I found this resource featuring Simon Hill and Dr. Matthew Nagra extremely helpful in clearing up my own personal confusion.

But back to chili.

As an added bonus, throwing tons of beans in your chili is an amazing way to get a meal packed with fiber and extra plant-based protein.

It’s also a cheeky way to get a ton of herbs and spices you might be missing out in other areas of your diet.

Lastly, chilis are amazing for meal prep because it’s an all-in-one meal that you can toss into a single Pyrex dish for a simple heat-up.

What I Do Personally: When the weather isn’t too hot, my wife and I make a large batch of chili in the crockpot and eat high-protein dinners for a full week.

If you’re curious for the recipe, send me an email at ivry.fitness@gmail.com and I’d be happy to hook you up. 

P.S. Mix in 16g of nutritional yeast per serving of chili for an extra 8g of protein and enough B12 to last you a trip to Mars and back.

Tip #9: High-Protein Soy Milk

In my opinion, this stuff is almost too good to be true. Why did I make this number nine?

Silk’s version of this product packs an outstanding 20g of protein per 240mL, which is basically a protein shake all by itself given the known protein quality of soy.

How do you use it?

• Throw it in smoothies.

• Drizzle it into your oats.

• Use it as the milk for your cereals.

• Or even mix it into red pasta sauces as a thickening agent.

What I Do Personally: I drink about two cups of soy milk a day. Most often, I’ll have one in the morning as the base of my plant-based protein smoothie, and then I’ll sometimes drink a cup on the side of a peanut butter and jelly bagel post-workout.

Bonus Tip: The “Pre-Dinner Shake and Dine” Maneuver

What if you’re that person who is already annoyed at the idea of having to design every single meal around a protein source?

Well, I come to you with this final tip as a peace offering for a bit of added “normalcy,”

If you’re going out to dinner with friends and you don’t want to order the rubbery grilled chicken salad or settle for the hummus plate appetizer, just drink a low-calorie protein shake at home right before you leave and enjoy literally any meal on the menu assuming it fits the caloric needs you’ve established for your goal.

This is actually pretty genius for a few reasons:

1. Most importantly, you get to order the pasta you really want even though it’s basically a carbohydrate and fat explosion. Life is worth living (in my opinion), so if you want the pasta, why not pull a fast one to make that happen?

2. Secondly, you don’t have to look “uncool” socially. Although it doesn’t bother me personally, some people don’t like having to order the “high-protein option” in front of their friends because it just feels “uncool.” And trust me, I get it. You want to be jacked and lean and be able to order the pizza when you’re out with friends. It’s sexier and more mysterious that way. I’m tracking 100%, and this is an easy way to do it.

3. And lastly, the protein from the shake you consumed before you left the house might even curb some of your hunger and leave you more satiated before you even make your order. What does that mean? It means you might wind up eating even less at dinner and keeping your fat loss goals a bit more intact due to the added liquid volume and satiating properties of the high-protein drink. 

So, don’t be afraid to keep that trick up your sleeve the next time it’s time to have a meal out with the squad. 

And that’s that, friends! I had a blast writing this article, so if you enjoyed it, do me a favor and send it to a friend who might benefit from learning a few new tips and tricks about increasing your protein intake across the day.

Until next time,

-Andrew

"How Much Protein Should My High School Athlete Be Eating?"

You’ve got a smaller-framed high school athlete that needs to put on muscle, and you’ve finally made the decision to get serious about their weight gain goal.

Congratulations! Now you just have to wade through all the hype surrounding diet.

And, if you are at all like most parents, you probably have a lot of questions about protein in particular.

• “Does my athlete really need to be eating a lot of protein to put on muscle?” 

• ”If so, how much? Is there a magical number?”

• “And does this mean I should have them drinking protein shakes after their workouts?”

We hear you and we’ve got answers for you. Let’s get into it.

How much protein should your athlete be eating per day?

We’ve found that aiming to consume around 1g of protein per pound of lean body mass (LBM) per day seems to be one of the most commonly accepted practices for athletes that want to achieve that lean, athletic physique. And, to be honest with you, most people aren’t really taking that LBM stipulation to account at all.

In other words, in most cases it’s going to be a decent idea to simply use their bodyweight instead of that LBM figure for the sake of keeping things as simple as possible.

It’s also worth nothing that while some experts recommend a bit more protein per day (1.2g or more per pound of LBM) and other researchers and gurus allow for a bit less (as low as 0.7g per pound of LBM), this “1g per Pound Rule” still seems to be the most popular pick. 

But, why?

I think it’s because that 1:1 ratio of grams of protein to bodyweight is just a really easy way to calculate your daily protein intake. And, let’s be honest: “Easy” works really well for most people because “easy” is usually adherence-friendly and sustainable long-term.

Think about it this way. People like basic math, and basic math is easy.

If your athlete weighs 125 pounds, they’d eat around 125g of protein per day.
If your athlete weighs 150 pounds, they’d eat around 150g of protein per day.
If your athlete weighs 175 pounds, they’d eat around 175g of protein per day. Simple, right?

I think you get the point.

What does it look like to eat that much protein?

Depending on the size of your athlete and their protein target, it essentially comes down to eating 20-40g of high-quality protein every 3-5 hours.

Just because I know people like specifics, take a look at how I would personally split up my protein meals throughout the day if I were a 180-pound high school athlete with a traditional high school schedule.

SAMPLE DAILY Protein SCHEDULE as a Student-Athlete

6:30AM - Breakfast: 2 whole eggs and 140g of egg whites with oatmeal and toast for 38g of protein

9:30AM - Morning Snack: 43g of whey isolate and an apple for 35g of protein

12:30PM - Lunch: 6 ounces of lean protein, rice or potatoes, and a vegetable for around 36g of protein

3:30PM - Pre-Practice Meal: 43g of whey isolate and a bagel for 44g of protein

7:00PM - Dinner (Post-Practice Meal): 6 ounces of lean protein, a high-carb source, and a vegetable for around 36g of protein

This entire day of eating would yield about 190g of protein from mostly high-quality sources, which would be an amazing start to most 180-pound high school athletes’ pursuit of optimal muscle gain.

But as a quick note, you and your athlete can’t only think about protein and get the results you want. Protein, after all, is just one piece of the bigger puzzle. For a hearty write-up on all the things you’d need to consider, we’ll have a full description of that coming out soon.

Also, if your athlete is smaller than 180 pounds, be sure to tweak those protein quantities to fit their adjusted goal. On average, female athletes will probably need a bit less protein simply due to the fact that they will likely weight less than their male peers. If you’d like help making those decisions for your athlete, don’t hesitate to email us and ask about coaching.

Lastly, keep in mind that this is just how I would structure my own eating. If your athlete has food allergies or preferences against any of the foods mentioned, know that there are plenty of other meal options we could discuss with you.

Although we are not registered dietitians, we can certainly help provide resources to guide you in the dietary choices you make (including those who are vegetarian or vegan).

Does everybody need to be eating that much protein?

Of course not. I want to be clear that these recommendations aren’t for everyday Joe’s and Jane’s – they’re for high school athletes who really want to start taking their muscle gains seriously.

In other words, I’m not suggesting your sweet Grandpa Bob should be shotgunning 60g of whey protein after his mid-morning gardening session to support optimal hamstring and glute development. That would be, well, quite unnecessary (and also hilarious) because Grandpa isn’t trying to get a scholarship as the future star running back of the Alabama Crimson Tide.

Protein recommendations for people less interested in getting jacked and lean are, of course, much lower because they aren’t loading up their bodies with heavy loads with the focused intent of developing the size and density of their muscles.

Since proteins are widely considered the buildings blocks of muscle repair and growth, it makes sense to be eating more protein if you want to be more muscular.

Simply put, if you have an athlete that wants to get jacked and lean to support their sport performance, they are going to need more protein relative to the person that doesn’t.

So, let’s just make sure we’re clear about that.

What does it mean to be “taking things seriously” as a high school athlete?"

I’ve come up with the following checklist to help you make sense of that question for yourself.

Your son or daughter is probably ready to take their physique development “seriously enough” if they are:

1. Willing to train intelligently with resistance for hypertrophy 3-6 (or even more) times per week as a supplement to their sport specific weightlifting at school.

2. Willing to eat purposefully in a caloric deficit, a caloric surplus, or at maintenance for the desire body recomposition outcome.

3. Willing to prioritize their protein intake across 3-6 meals per day if/when possible.

4. Willing to get the majority of their calories and protein from nutrient-dense foods while saving “junk foods” for treats and special occasions.

5. Willing to optimize their rest and recovery as much as possible.

Is that your son or daughter? If so, you might give hiring a personal coach some serious consideration.

Playing sports in college can be a lot of fun, and - in my opinion - there’s no need to let your athlete’s lack of attention to diet and nutrition in high school be the difference between continuing the love of the game and letting it go forever once they graduate.

If they have a real chance at playing in college, why not optimize the odds?

So, what’s the takeaway here?

1. We think it makes the most sense to keep your young athlete’s calculations of protein intake as simple as eating 1g of protein per pound of bodyweight per day if you’re hoping to look as lean and mean as possible this summer assuming you aren’t considerably overweight or even obese.

2. Remember that there is no “one size fits all” amount of protein your athlete should be consuming, but there are evidence-based ranges that are likely to optimize your progress toward your physique goal. These ranges are calculated on an individual basis based on your current level of leanness. For more detail on that, check out this article of ours.

3. And, just as a bonus takeaway, no, your athlete doesn’t necessarily need to be drinking protein shakes, but it sure does make hitting their protein targets much easier on a consistent basis. I would personally recommend utilizing shakes once or twice a day if you have a serious goal to build muscle - prioritizing them pre-workout and post-workout when possible.

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If you feel like this blog brought you any value at all, consider sending it to another parent of a promising high school athlete. And, of course, we encourage you to take the time to flip through some of our other recent posts for additional content as well.

You can also find a different set of semi-daily content being posted to our Instagram at @ivry.fitness.

Lastly, we do have coaching spots available if you’re interested in hiring a coach to guide your high school athlete toward their muscle building goal. If that’s you, reach out. We know it’s a lot to wade through as a parent, and we’d be happy to walk you and your entire family through the process.

Until next time,

-Andrew

13 Must-Know Terms and Concepts for Body Recomposition

This is going to be an overview of the terms and concepts you’ll need to be aware of before you commit to a fat loss journey, a muscle building endeavor, or even just a slow but steady pursuit of looking a little bit better naked.

If you’re like me, you like specifics, which means you’ll want to know that all of the following goals would fit into this category of “things you should probably know before getting started on your journey” - just to make sure you’re not wasting your time before you even begin..

Who do these terms and concepts apply to?

• The normal guy who just wants to look a little bit better through hitting the gym sensibly a few times a week and getting more active overall.

• The guy in his mid-twenties or thirties who wants to get super jacked and look like Brad Pitt from Troy (or Brad Pitt from Fight Club)

• The mom who wants to lose 10-20 pounds and build some muscle along the way.

• The college chick who wants to develop her legs and glutes.

• The 30 year-old female who wants to compete in the bikini division someday.

• The skinny 15 year-old kid who wants to put on some muscle - either for sports or just to catch the attention of the cute girl in his class.

• The person who is 100 pounds or more overweight and wants to lose it all for the sake of being a healthier and more active person.

And, if you’re wondering how these terms and concepts could possibly apply to all of these goals at the same time, it’s simply because the fundamentals of body recomposition from an evidence-based perspective are the fundamentals for a reason.

Any deviation from the basics is just a more specific application and manipulation of those fundamentals in order to achieve your desired goal.

So, let’s get into it. What do you need to know before you get started?

Must-Know Terms and Concepts for Body Recomposition

1: You Need to Define Your Goal.

I’ve already written in-depth about this, so if you need a detailed outline of my preferred way of setting a proper goal, I encourage you to check out this blog I wrote entitled Five Really Important Questions to Ask Yourself Before Embarking on a “Fitness Journey.”

In short, just pick a specific yet realistic goal and write it down on a napkin.

Why a napkin? Because that’s what J.K Rowling did when she started writing the Harry Potter series, and it turned out well for her.

As an example, you could say something like, “My goal is to lose 10 pounds while maximizing muscle retention by September 1.”

It’s specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and totally awesome. 

Plus, there’s just something gritty about a napkin.

2: Calories

Thois may seem overly elementary, but there are actually plenty of people out there who don’t realize that calories are what dictate the majority of your “overweight-ness” or your “underweight-ness.” 

That means if you’re overweight, it’s primarily because you’ve eaten too many calories for too long. If you’re thinner than you’d like to be, it’s primarily because you’re not eating enough calories to gain the weight that would make you look “less thin.”

Calories are simply the unit we use to measure the energy that foods hold, so why all the fuss and confusion?

The nuance tends to present itself in which foods you get those calories from.

Can you really eat Pixy Sticks and protein shakes all day or is it “better” to get your calories from brown rice, mung beans, and tofu?

Is a calorie just a calorie? Well, it’s tricky.

For now, just make sure you’re fully on team “Calories Matter Most” before you get started, and you’ll be fine.

Otherwise you’ll be back to ripping Dr. Oz magazines off the tabloid shelves in desperation before you know it.

Sorry, Doc. But that headline about dropping 16 pounds every week is silliness unless we’re talking about 16-pound dumbbells.

3: Energy Balance

Literally every goal I mentioned in that list at the top of this write-up is going to require you to manipulate your energy balance in favor of your long-term goal in a periodized fashion.

When people say energy balance in the body recomposition space, they’re talking about the idea of calories in versus calories out, which is often abbreviated CICO.

In other words, we’re talking about how many calories you consume from food (calories in) and how many calories you expend through exercise (calories out).

What this means for you is that there are going to be times when you need to be eating fewer calories than your body needs (if your goal is to lose overall body fat), and there are going to be times when you need to be eating more calories than your body needs, which would be the case if your primary goal is to build muscle as an already-lean individual.

If you’re still confused about why we call it energy balance, remember that calories are a measured unit of energy. 

As Andy Dwyer once said on the television series Parks and Recreation, pizza and nachos - in some sense - are full of energy. And it’s true! But too much energy (calorically-speaking) leads to unwanted fat gain.

Negative and Positive Energy Balance

If someone is in a negative energy balance, it means they are eating fewer calories than they need, which leads to fat loss.

If someone is in a positive energy balance, they are eating more calories than they need, which can lead to muscle gain and fat gain depending on this person’s training habits..

One final thing to remember here is that everyone’s caloric needs are different depending on genetics, muscle mass, fat mass, training style, and overall activity level.

They can even change within the same person depending on your current dieting phase.

For example, 2,700 calories might be a deficit for me when 190 pounds but a slight surplus when 175 pounds.

4: Protein

Getting that lean, hard look might require you to eat a bit more protein than you are used to unless you are a naturally lean and muscular person.

For details on that, I’ve written extensively about how you can calculate your own protein needs here.

But, in broad strokes, know that an extremely easy way of making sure you’re getting enough protein to support your body recomposition goal is to simply take your goal weight in pounds and multiply that by 0.7-1 to find your daily protein intake in grams.

So, if you’re 150 pounds and you know you’d be a lean version of yourself at 120 pounds, it might be a good idea to start eating between 84-120g of protein per day.

You can see the math here:

• 120 pounds x 0.7 = 84g of protein per day

• 120 pounds x 1.0 = 120g of protein per day

5: Muscle Protein Synthesis (MPS)

Muscle protein synthesis in easy-to-understand terms is the body’s process of building new muscle tissue.

In my opinion, all you need to know is that most researchers agree that MPS can be stimulated every 3-5 hours with a dose of 20-40g of protein at a time.

So, if you have a goal to get optimally jacked, the current science would suggest you’re probably best to eat 20-40g of protein 3-5 times per day every 3-5 hours within your overall daily protein target.

Practically speaking, that means if your protein target for the day is 120g, you could eat the following amounts of protein per meal in order to optimize the muscle protein synthetic response (as the experts I respect currently understand it):

• 25g of protein for breakfast at 7 a.m.

• 25g of protein for lunch around 11 a.m.

• 20g of protein as a mid-afternoon snack at 3 p.m.

• 30g of protein for dinner and after your workout at 6:30 p.m.

• 20g of protein as a bedtime snack at 10 p.m. 

If you’re curious about what I do personally, most days look like this when I’m eating 140-150g of protein per day:

• 50g of protein for breakfast around 8 a.m. (my pre-workout meal)

• 30g of protein for my second meal around 1:30 p.m. (my post-workout meal)

• 30g of protein for my third meal around 4:30 p.m.

• 30g of protein for my fourth meal around 7:30 p.m.

For more examples, Josh posted on this very topic as well in more detail. 

6: Carbohydrates and Fats

The war between carbs and fats is real, folks. 

But, I’m here to simplify it as much as possible so you can walk away feeling confident about your diet choices.

All you really need to know is that your overall calorie intake and your daily protein intake matter much more than how you consume the rest of your calories from carbs and fats.

Seriously, there is absolutely nothing to be gained from overcomplicating this unless you're a highly competitive bodybuilder.

The only caveat here is to make sure your fat consumption never represents much less than 15-20% of your total calories since having some healthy fat in your diet is essential for proper hormone function.

Practically speaking, I can fully admit that I’m biased toward higher-carb, lower-fat diets simply because they’ve proven to work extremely well for me personally over the years - especially when dieting for fat loss. Preferentially, I also love carbohydrates, which makes diet adherence much easier when I allow for a higher-carb bias.

On the other hand, I am very aware of the fact that there are plenty of people who prefer higher-fat or even ketogenic diets. In my eyes, there isn’t a “right way” and a “wrong way” insofar as the diet quality is supporting your individual health.

My advice is to find what works best for your health, preference, long-term adherence, and perception of desired outcomes. If you like a certain way of eating, you can adhere to it sustainably, and you’re getting the results you want, you’re probably setting yourself up for success.  

7: Macronutrients or “Macros”

Macronutrients are simply the three categories of proteins, carbohydrates, and fats. And, some people call alcohol the “fourth macro.”

Proteins and carbohydrates each have 4 calories per gram while fats have 9 calories per gram. Alcohol has 7 calories per gram, and the sum of all of your macronutrients results in your total caloric intake.

If you hear someone say they “track their macros,” that just means they structure their diet in a way that allows them to eat a specific number (or range) of each macronutrient.

For example, my macros at the moment are roughly 150g of protein, 430g of carbohydrates, and 55g of fat per day. That would be 600 calories from protein, 1,720 calories from carbs, and 495 calories from fats for a total of 2,815 calories per day.

It’s also important to remember that your macros will change depending on which phase of dieting you are in.

If you are eating to lose weight, your macros will be lower. If you are in a phase designed to add body weight on purpose, your macros will be higher. 

For a deeper look into macronutrients and our experience tracking them, check out this post we made on Instagram. 

8: Flexible Dieting (IIFYM)

Speaking of counting your macros, what’s up with flexible dieting?

Basically, flexible dieting is a dieting strategy that allows you to eat pretty much whatever you want as long as it fits within your given macronutrient allotment.

That means if you have 150g of protein to eat in a day, it doesn’t matter if you get it from 5 servings of high-protein soy milk, a diverse mix of 5 different protein sources, or 5 plant-based protein shakes with PB2. Just “hit your macros,” and you’re “good to go” when it comes to body recomposition.

The prized perk of the IIFYM movement (which stands for “if it fits your macros”) is that you can technically eat ice cream and pizza in moderation while losing body fat if you want to.

And you really can! If this is breaking news to you, remember that calories really do matter most for fat loss.

Although I will say that most responsible advocates of flexible dieting still recommend you eat about 80-90% of your calories from whole food sources while enjoying that remaining 10-20% of calories from “unhealthy” foods you enjoy.

My biggest warning against flexible dieting is that it doesn’t account for your health. It only considers your immediate fat loss outcomes, which can lead to unhealthy, longer-term dietary habits that may prove difficult to break if dieting for health and longevity should ever become the primary focus.

9: “Clean” Eating

“Clean” eating could be considered the opposite of flexible dieting, which means you eat all of your calories from “clean” sources.

Now, the term “clean” is certainly up for debate, but what people are saying is that you should stick to the foods your mother told you were healthy and resist the temptation to have a KitKat before bed each night - even if it fits your macros.

A sample day of “clean” eating could look like this:

• Breakfast: sprouted whole-grain toast, avocado, and a plant-based protein shake  

• Lunch: leafy green salad with crispy tofu and a drizzle of tahini

• Snack: an apple

• Dinner: chickpea pasta with steamed broccoli

• Dessert: berry-based protein smoothie with soy milk and powdered peanut butter powder

You get the point.

For thoughts on a few potential risks of “clean” eating, give this Instagram post a look. 

10: Periodization

Periodization simply means that you don’t do the exact same style of training or dieting at all times during your journey.

If you’re looking to lose a considerable amount of body fat, you’ll probably need to eat below your needs for a while and then transition into a period of eating slightly more to give your body a break from the energy deficit.

It’s generally not thought of as a good idea to just lose 100 pounds in one go - especially if you’re interested in keeping the weight off once you get there.

Building muscle is the same way. Although a majority of your time should be spent in a caloric surplus, there will be times when you need to eat at maintenance or even in a deficit in order to support the bigger picture goal of putting on as much muscle as possible.

Think of periodization as the phases of your body recomposition approach.

As a side note, I think this is probably the most under-considered concept on the list, which is why most people go on their starvation diets, lose 50 pounds, and then gain back 60 once they realize that their starvation diet of chicken, broccoli, and lemon water wasn’t super sustainable after all. 

11: Hypertrophy vs. Strength

Hypertrophy is the style of training that is pretty much exclusively targeted at getting you “more jacked.” So, if you’re just out here trying to be the biggest dude at the nightclub, you want to be training for hypertrophy. That’s a good term to know.

On the other hand, some people will want to train for strength. 

Here’s the thing though: Training for strength and training for size are not the exact same thing.

This isn’t the place to discuss the nuances of those differences, but I highly recommend this video featuring Dr. Mike Israetel, Chief Sport Scientist at Renaissance Periodization, if you are looking for further explanation.

12: Supplements

Supplement conversations can get hairy, but most evidence-based folks in the industry agree that the only ones worth your time and money are the following:

Protein POWDERS or a Protein BARS

Hitting your daily protein needs is important for optimizing your body recomposition results, so if utilizing shakes and bars is a way to make your journey more sustainable, it’s probably a good idea.

I personally utilize both protein shakes and protein bars (plant-based) on a daily basis as a part of my diet, and you can read more about that here.

If you plan on opting for a plant-based blend, soy and pea/rice blends have been shown to offer the most competitive amino acid profile to its whey protein frontrunner.

If you’re looking for a specific brand, I’ve had great success with MyProtein’s Vegan Blend in the past.

Creatine Monohydrate

Creatine exists naturally in the body, but adding a dose of 3-5g each day is a common practice for people who really want to increase their performance capacity - specifically in terms of weight training. A lot of people even consider creatine monohydrate a “no-brainer” in terms of its effectiveness and cost availability - and it probably is. 

Even though I do not personally take creatine, I certainly used it in my early twenties and - for those who are wondering - I would personally buy this particular kind if I were to hop back on the train in the future.

Caffeine

Although caffeine isn’t going to make you any more lean or jacked all by itself, plenty of people enjoy its stimulative benefits before a hard workout. I only use caffeine occasionally, but not as a boost for my workouts. Frankly, I just enjoy a cup of coffee a few times per week because I like the taste.

If you’re curious about pre-workout products for their caffeine benefits, I personally think they’re mostly a waste of money.

And, if you’re not careful with your servings sizes and the rest of the caffeine you consume throughout the day, you risk flirting with unhealthy doses. Make your own choices, but that’s not something I’m interested in toying around with.

That being said, I do enjoy pump products from time to time when training purely for hypertrophy.

Multivitamins and Omega-3 Fish/ALGAE Oils 

If you’re not sure you’re getting all your vitamins from your diet, a multivitamin can be a good idea for some people. The same can be said of fish oils or algae oils if you’re unable to incorporate fatty fish into your diet or choose not to for personal reasons.

That being said, I am not a registered dietician, and I highly encourage you to do your own research on the matter before making an educated decision about what is appropriate for you.

13: Cardio

Cardio just refers to cardiovascular training, which normally means walking on a treadmill or using some other kind of walking or cycling device to elevate your heart rate.

In practice though, cardio simply becomes one of the two modalities we tweak to ignite further fat loss.

So, if someone tells you, “Ugh. I have to go do my 60 minutes of cardio,” they’re saying their coach has identified that doing an hour of treadmill walking is what is necessary for this person to continue to drop body fat at the appropriate rate to achieve the goal.

Or, maybe they’re coaching themselves and think that cardio is a good way for them to achieve their goal. They may or may not be right (given that cardio seems to be one of the most misapplied tools in the body recomposition toolbox), but at least you’ll know what they mean now.

Conversely, if your goal is purely to gain muscle, doing cardio probably isn’t necessary for the goal at hand, although plenty of people choose to implement a small amount of cardio for health reasons as a trade-off for more food in their diet. 

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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

Exposing the Silliness Behind the Excuse of "Not Having Time to Eat Healthy"

Have you ever heard people talk about how they just “don’t have time to eat healthy?”

For whatever reason, I hear that all the time, and I’m going to be honest with you: It drives me a little crazy on the inside.

So, I decided to write this article to put a stop to the madness.

That means the next time you hear someone leveraging their extreme busyness as justification for their terrible diet (and probably an unhealthy body composition), you can blast them with this write-up.

Because, let’s be honest, it’s probably something they need to hear.

Just kidding. Don’t be a jerk.

Only pass it along if they’re genuinely feeling discouraged about what they are perceiving as a lack of time needed to eat in a way that supports their goal rather than carrying them farther and farther away from it.

You’ll come off a lot nicer that way, and compassion is cool.

But, let’s get into it.

Why You Really Do Have Time to Eat Healthy

The excuse of not having enough time to eat healthy is super silly for one main reason: You have to eat something just to exist as a human being, so why not put forth the effort to make it good for you?

That’s kind of like saying you don’t have time to breathe clean air. You have to breathe some kind of air, but you’re trying to make the point to me that there’s no time to breathe the clean air - just the dirty air.

What?

On top of that, it takes roughly the same amount of time to prepare a bowl of oatmeal with berries and almonds as it does a microwavable Jimmy Dean breakfast sandwich loaded with enough calories to feed your favorite six year-old’s entire kindergarten class.

So, what gives?

What are people really getting at when they say they don’t have time to eat more nutritious foods?

Here are my theories.

Theory 1: You genuinely don’t know that eating healthier foods can still be quick and easy.

In other words, I want to give the benefit of the doubt to anyone out there who just doesn’t know any better.

Some people just non-negotiably associate quick and easy foods as “bad” foods.

For example, if you’re a busy corporate person who rarely has time to eat a proper sit-down lunch due to the high volume of sales calls you have to make each day, you might assume that eating the seemingly never-ending supply of leftover junk food in the workroom really is the only option - purely on the basis of convenience.

And, to be fair, I totally understand where you’re coming from.

Time is precious, and the last thing you have time for is to pop home, air-fry a block of tofu and some lightly seasoned asparagus, and chug 40 ounces of water when your paycheck is on the line.

So, you opt for the cold pizza and the leftover birthday cake in the workroom. I get it.

But, there are actually plenty of quick and easy snacks that you can grab in a pinch if time is really your greatest concern.

Here are my best practical tips for busy folks.

1. Meal Prepped Lean Proteins and Vegetables

Just commit to bringing your healthy meals to work.

And if you’re concerned about the time spent prepping your food as a reason not to do it, learn to fall in love with bulk meals.

During the right seasons, my wife and I will make a big batch of plant-based chili that we can eat from all week.

Also, remember that you don’t have to go day by day in terms of preparing your food.

Prep all five lunches on Sunday for a full week free of fat loss thought-fatigue.

You could also easily do this with a chickpea pasta or even Mexican medleys featuring exciting new products like chorizo seitan with beans, rice, avocado, and salsa.

2. Protein products, oats to go, or smoothies

Protein bars are a no-brainer unless you’re too proud to be “eating like a bro” at work in a pinch.

But, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve smashed one (but usually two) protein bars as a meal replacement on days when “life was busy.”

Or, if you’re an on-the-go breakfast person, you could toss 40g of oatmeal into a cup of soy milk with a scoop of plant-based protein the night before so that once the morning comes you literally just snag that bad boy out of the fridge and sip it in the car.

Better yet? Make yourself a full-blown smoothie with soy milk, plant-based protein powder, frozen berries or mangos, 1-2 bananas, and some hemp seeds for nutritional flare.

What could be easier?

Whether you’re 120 pounds, 250+ pounds, or anywhere in the middle, these are both quick and easy meals/snacks that can fit literally anyone’s macros.

Theory 2: You’re really just saying you’re a little too lazy to put forth the effort.

My second theory regarding why people are convinced they don’t have enough time to eat healthy is simple because they’re lazy and don’t want to admit it.

Why are you slamming Oreos during your 3PM lull when you could be eating an apple or a modest handful of heart-healthy nuts?

Now, it’s totally cool if you’d just rather eat your Twinkies and be left in peace because body recomposition isn’t a priority of yours, but let’s not be hiding behind the guise of “not having the time” to eat healthy when really you’re just being a lazy sack of potatoes.

The same goes for the snacks you choose to have around the house. What’s the difference in buying Doritos versus hard pretzels or even a less processed option like apples or carrots?

Sure, Doritos are delicious. I realize that.

But taste has nothing to do with time.

Even small adjustments like that can be a step in the right direction toward reorienting the way you think about quick foods and their nutritional makeup.

Theory 3: You’re unwilling to choose healthier eat-out food options even when they’re just as easy to order as the unhealthy options.

I’ve heard this one from “important business gurus” - you know, the types that are always flying around first-class and joining other important guys and gals for happy hours and luxurious meals in high-dollar restaurants.

For this group of people, it really just comes down to coming to terms with the seriousness of your goal.

Because the bottom line is this: You can get a leafy green salad with a lean protein and a low-calorie dressing on the side just about wherever you go.

You just have to make the choice to order it over the burger and fries or the house steak with loaded mashed potatoes and cheesy biscuits.

And don’t forget about your liquid calories when you dine out. There’s a big difference calorically between ordering a tall glass of water and opting for a few starter beers or a tasting of their finest whiskey.

Again, the choice is yours, but this certainly isn’t a time issue - it’s a choice issue.

And, I encourage all of my clients to take extreme ownership of their choices.

Summary

• Remember that quick and easy foods don’t always have to be unhealthy foods. Although it’s convenient to eat frosted mini donuts, it’s almost equally convenient to make a quick bowl of oatmeal with berries and nuts.

• Your “time issue” might actually be a laziness issue. If that’s you, be honest with yourself and take ownership of that reality rather than blaming it on a lack of time.

• Almost every restaurant has a healthiest option on the menu. Be willing to choose that meal if you’re serious about improving your body composition.

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And there you have it!

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And finally, if this is your first time interacting with evidence-based body recomposition and you’re considering hiring a coach, we encourage you to take the plunge.

You just have to find the courage to send that first email and say hi - no one is going to do it for you. Seriously, you’ll thank yourself later.

Happy eating, people.

-Andrew