If you're someone who hates going to the gym, but wants to get started on their health and fitness, then this article was hand written for you.

My guess is that if you're reading this, your goal is not to be shredded like parmesan cheese. You probably want to lose a little bit of fat, gain a little bit of muscle, and be able to do so without hating your life. Shit, maybe even ENJOY the process.

Sound too good to be true?

Keep reading and find out for yourself.

1. Your calories have to be in check

You are never going to lose an ounce of fat if you are eating too many calories. If that hurts your feelings or goes against your "beliefs"....then I hate to be the bearer of bad news because this one is straight facts.

The rest of this list is useless if you are eating too many calories - that is the whole reason we gain fat in the first place, too many calories.

-Not sugar

-Not carbs

-Not gluten

-Not pizza

Just too many calories.

How do you know if you're eating too many calories? Well when you wake up and weigh yourself every morning (yes, you should be doing that) and your weight begins to go up - newsflash! You're eating too many calories and in the process gaining weight. It's okay, it happens to the best of us. In addition to tracking your weight each day, if you're serious about losing fat and building muscle, I highly encourage you to track your food, at least for a bit. It's what I have each and every one of my 1-1 coaching clients do to build awareness around their food intake and in the process they learn a lot about food and it can be a very eye-opening experience.

Don't get me wrong, tracking calories is a pain in the ass. Plain and simple. But most things worth doing are hard, so suck it up and quit being a baby.

But guess what? Tracking macros actually gives you freedom.

"Huh? You mean tracking everything that goes into my pie hole gives me FREEDOM?"

Let me explain - maybe you heard somewhere that in order to lose fat and build muscle you need to eat something like chicken, rice and broccoli 7 times per day. While that strategy might work, it's not because you ate chicken, rice and broccoli. It's because you happened to eat few enough calories to start fat loss.

But you could have also lost fat by eating chicken, rice and broccoli and having a piece of cake and tracking it all in an app like Cronometer to ensure that you are still under your total calories, and it doesn't suck as much.

Bottom line - if you're eating too many calories, you're not going to lose fat.

Plain and simple.

2. Make protein the star of every meal

Now that you've got your calories in check, it's time to choose where those calories come from.

Going into every single meal, your fist thought should be "What deliciously anabolic protein am I going to consume for maximal gains?" 🤔

Okay you don't have be a douche about it like me, but nonetheless you should be conscious about your protein intake.

But what's so important about protein?

Great question, here's a few reasons why protein should be the star of the plate:

• Protein is necessary to build lean tissue - AKA big juicy muscles that will cause people to flock to you and ask how you built them (in which you will reply "I built them with protein")
• Protein has the highest thermic effect. I'm not going to go into crazy detail here, I'll save that for another post, but basically your body burns calories in order to digest calories. And protein in the most "expensive" in doing so. Meaning your body will use more calories to burn 100g of protein than it will burning 100g of fat or 100g of carbs.
• Protein is very satiating. Are you a snacker? Someone who can be found grazing in the office break room? (Do people still work in offices??) If so, try eating enough protein consistently for a few weeks and watch that snack habit dip faster than your friends do when the happy-hour bar tab comes around.
• It's tasty AF. I mean for real, need I say more?

If those aren't enough reasons for you to start making protein the main event, then idk what to tell you bro.

3. Don't drink your calories (sodas, juices, etc.)

Someone who wants to be less fat should not drink their calories. I'm not necessarily referring to alcohol here, we'll get there later as it is a huge determinant of your progress, but I'm referring to non-alcoholic caloric beverages. These are just a straight up waste of your calories. Like seriously, who's still drinking sodas?? I remember when I used to drink two sodas per day.

Guess what? I was super fat.

Things like:

• Fruit juice
• Sodas
• Sweetened Teas
• Sugary energy drinks
• Kool-aid

Should be avoided at all costs. Evey once in a while it's okay, you need to find balance. But for everyday meals, these gotta go.

I'm not gonna lie I struggled to come up with a list here because I haven't had a sugary drink since 2004. (That's a lie and even it wasn't, weird flex bro).

Don't drink your calories.

Stick to water, or bubbly water AKA spicy water AKA sparkling water.

4. Be mindful of sauces and dressings

If this is news to you, you're probably not going to be happy with me. But...

Sauce and dressings have calories too...and lots of them.

• Ranch
• BBQ Sauce
• Ketchup
• Aoli
• Spread from In-N-Out burger
• Sour cream on your Chipotle
• GUACAMOLE

And these calories can seriously add up. We're talking a few hundred calories per serving - which could be the difference of you being less fat - or more fat.

I'm not trying to be a party-pooper here, just be mindful of these calories dense food intensifiers.

And hey, if you track it and it fits - knock yourself out.

5. Alcohol must be accounted for

I'm all for having a good time and throwing a few back, don't get me wrong. And sometimes it's absolutley necessary to "let the dogs out" and get loose as a goose.

But if fat loss if your goal, getting your booze in check in non-negotiable and progress simply won't happen if you don't address this.

I actually made a SICK video talking all about this stuff - check it out HERE

Alcohol makes you more fat in a few ways:

• It is highly caloric in and of itself
• It leads us to making poorer decisions. (Hint: late night Taco Bell typically doesn't happen when you're sober...typically).
• Alcohol ruins your sleep (which does a whole lot of other bad things)
• When you drink alcohol, your body has to digest and process all of the alcohol in your system before it can digest anything else, which typically takes a long time and leads to more fat gain.
• Alcohol ruins your strength gains
• Alcohol reduces muscle protein synthesis.
• Alcohol reduces testosterone.
• Alcohol reduces growth hormone and increases cortisol and estrogen.
• Alcohol causes strength loss.

You don't have to give up alcohol, or anything else for that matter, in order to lose fat.

But you do have to mindful.

Some general guidelines to follow for alcohol consumption:

• Men: No more than 4 drinks per day OR up to 14 drinks per week.
• Women: No more than 3 drinks per day OR up to 7 drinks per week.

6. Make sleep a priority

This one doesn't matter what your goals are - fat loss, muscles building, running a million dollar empire - if you neglect your sleep, you're fucking up.

If there's ONE thing that you could do that would have a multiplier effect on every other aspect of your life, I would say it's getting enough quality sleep.

Maybe you live your life based on the "you can sleep when you're dead" mantra, but that's probably going to cause you to die even sooner than if you'd just chill out and go to bed because according to the research, sleep is among THE most critical factors for peak performance, memory, productivity, immune function, and mood regulation.

Here's a quote from a book I'm reading, "The Organized Mind":

Even a mild sleep reduction or a departure from a set sleep routine (for example, going to bed late one night, sleeping in the next morning) can produce detrimental effects on cognitive performance for many days afterward. When professional basketball players got ten hours of sleep a night, their performance improved dramatically: Freethrow and three-point shooting each improved by 9%.

So just imagine how those 2-3 nights per week out on the town until 3 am can set your whole week, even month off.

Not convinced yet? Fine, here's more facts to scare you straight and get you to go to sleep:

• Adults should get 6-10 hours per night. According to the CDC, 1 out of 3 working Americans gets less than 6 hours of sleep.
• In 2009 sleepiness was responsible for 250,000 traffic accidents and one of the leading causes of friendly fire in war.
• Sleep deprivation was ruled to be a contributing factor in some of the most well-known global disasters:
  • The nuclear power plant disasters at Chernobyl (Ukraine)
  • Three Mile Island (Pennsylvania)
  • Davis-Besse (Ohio)
  • Rancho Seco (California)
  • The oil spill from the Exxon Valdez
  • The grounding of the cruise ship Star Princess
  • The fatal decision to launch the Challenger space shuttle.
  • The Air France crash in June 2009 that resulted in 288 people dying because the pilot was running on 1 hour of sleep.

It’s also associated with increased risk for heart disease, obesity, stroke, and cancer.

So yeah. Get some sleep.

Here's some guidelines:

• Aim for 7-9 hours but the more the better
  • I know for me personally I perform best on 9 hours of sleep and for me, that translates to being in bed for 10 hours.
• Keep your room dark
  • Blackout curtains
  • Sleeping mask
• Wind down before bed
  • Get off the screens an hour before bed
  • Reading can help here and I typically go for fiction versus non-fiction before bed.

So there you have it...

If you read this and feel like this is a lot to change in one day....you'd be totally right. I don't expect you to make these changes overnight, and in fact would highly encourage you to NOT try and tackle all of this at once.

Take a look at your own life and habits and refer back to this article and start with just one tip (that sounded wrong) and go from there.

Still not sure about all this stuff and want to follow a proven method to lose fat, build muscle, and not hate your life while doing so, then click the little button below to find out more about my 1-1 coaching program.

Peace ✌️