Long time no speak.
Sorry for being absent
from in your inbox for quite a while.
This of course will make no sense for those of you who have signed up to my emails recently, so if you've just joined, welcome to the clan.
In short, I was putting a ridiculous amount of pressure on myself to email every day, but in reality this was kind of pointless - I was FORCING the ideas for these emails to come instead of just messaging you all when I actually had something decent to
share.
So that stops now - I'll be emailing regularly, but some weeks it might be once per week, and on others it might be every day, or somewhere in between, depending on what I've got to share with you all.
Today's "lesson" comes from the success that my friend and client Mike had in the lead up to his photoshoot last year. I wanted to write something really witty and clever here before his pictures, but the phrase "pictures speak louder than
words" has never been more appropriate than here.
A transformation of this standard doesn't happen by accident, quite the opposite in fact.
Today, I'm going to share with you the things
you can put in place right now to make your own incredible transformation, in six simple steps:
#1 Get Into a Calorie Deficit and Eat High Protein
It's literally a physical impossibility to lose weight and fat without being in a calorie deficit. Go back and read that sentence again... it's that important.
If you eat high enough a protein intake this will help you to lose
the majority of the weight from body fat, whilst also protecting your muscle mass. It'll also help keep you full too, because whilst on a diet you're gonna be huuungry.
Throughout Mike's cutting period, his calorie intake ranged between 1800-2200kcal/day which had him losing 0.5-1kg per week, which we settled on through experimentation and tweaks each week. He ate 180-200g protein per day too, which was roughly his bodyweight in kg x 2.5. A further calorie burn
was added via some cardio in the form of brisk walking.
Nice and simple.
He was incredibly consistent with this EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. Which brings us nicely on to...
#2 Adopt Fat Loss Habits
Habits hold the key to why we do what we
do - they can be defined as the actions you perform without thinking every day. When you're doing tasks and behaving in a certain way out of a learned habit, doing new things become much more effortless.
Your current habits are the reason why you're currently perhaps not in the shape that you want. If you want to get in great shape, you need to erase these habits and come up with some new, fat loss positive ones.
For example, some
habits that we put into place for Mike, based on his own lifestyle and needs:
+ Every day he'd eat breakfast in the late morning to help reduce his eating "time window" to make it easier to eat fewer calories
+ He'd go for a short walk before and after his evening meals to help with appetite control
+ Go shopping for similar foods each week to take the decisions out of what to eat each day
Want to come up with your
own fat loss habits? Start small, only try and adopt a new habit one thing at a time, and make sure you make a point to do that "thing" regularly, i.e. every day so that the repetition sinks itself in.
#3. Be Flexible
Being flexible can be defined as being "capable of bending without breaking" which in the case of a diet or training program, is essential.
If your job
doesn't revolve around you training and dieting so you can look absolutely banging year round in a pair of shorts or in a bikini, then life is going to get in the way... demands from your job, kids, other half amongst other stuff is going to make getting shredded difficult. Therefore, your program MUST have flexible elements in it to ensure this stuff can be managed.
How did we do this with Mike?
+ Each training session didn't have to be
done on "set" days... we just had to get them done across the week
+ We didn't have rigid meal plans, requiring him to eat "x" amount of food at "x" time - just example meal plans and macronutrient goals to hit for the day
+ A volume quota of heavy sets to hit across the course of a week, so he could spread out his sessions as he saw fit
#4. Just Turn Up
If you go
the gym regularly, you will soon realise that training sessions will be a mixed bag. Some will be good training sessions... the weights feel light, you can push the rep progression hard, while conversely, some will be bad training sessions. Yet despite having some bad sessions, it doesn't cancel out the good ones, so you'll still make progress regardless.
Unless you're badly injured or ill, even a bad session is better than no session at all. In
Mike's case, some training sessions didn't go exactly to plan in terms of hitting the expected numbers, or on VERY rare occasions there would be slip ups with his diet. However, he was ready to get back on with the process straight away and continued to do so until the photoshoot day.
This highlights the importance of just showing up consistently, even without perfect conditions to still get results.
#5. Have Some Support
Whether we like to admit it or not, we all need support. This might come from friends, family, coaches, from online "forums" like Facebook or Instagram, where there are other people with a common interest to you.
This support helps you through the hard times, which are an inevitability. Your ability to work through the difficult times are key in your success rather than trying
to avoid them outright, because the latter will never happen.
Mike's family were totally on board with his transformation and the process that came with it. They ate similar meals to him, were company on his cardio walks and only slightly took the Mick out of him when the photoshoot pictures were made public.
#6. Adhere to the 80/20 Rule
80% of your results come from 20% of the things you can do to lose body fat.
Of course, that's not going to be EXACT, but it's gonna be pretty damn close.
So, what is included in that 20%?
The 5 other steps that I've just talked about. Focussing on these rather than on the other potential 80% will yield you the majority of your
results.
Obsessing over other variables like timing your carbohydrates, which supplements to take, the quality of your food (e.g. organic), and will exhaust your time, energy and resources and provide very little return, whilst taking away from your ability to focus on the 20% that really brings in the big bucks.
Much
love,
JB
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James Blanchard
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