How to Simplify your Fitness and Fat Loss Journey
Every year, people start a new diet or training program and fail. However, did you know that 95% of people who lose weight will ultimately regain it??
Not only is this statistic terrifying, but it’s also incredibly frustrating!
I get it because this is why I have a strong passion for nutrition because I’ve been there too. I literally spent years yo-yoing between 180lbs-240lbs, yet my experience taught me a ton on how to actually make living lean sustainable. This gets me excited and passionate to help others avoid making my mistakes.
Over the course of my coaching career, I’ve been fortunate enough to help hundreds, if not thousands of people. During that time, I’ve answered COUNTLESS questions. Being the passionate coach I am, I want to give them the whole picture and details so they can make the best decisions.
The end result? My clients become more confused and overwhelmed with what exactly to do.
Which is the reason why I wanted to write this article. I wanted to write something that avoids being overly complicated, yet keeps things simple, yet highly effective.
So, what are the most simple and basic changes you can start making that don't require you to massively overhaul your life with too much education, too much work?
What are things you can do right now to keep your fitness routine on track without massively overhauling your life?
With all that being said, here are the 5 Fitness Fundamentals you can do every day that will help you achieve your goals. If all you did was these five things, you’ll achieve your fitness and health goals
The Five Fundamental Steps to
Starting your Fitness and Fat Loss Journey
1) Avoid Heavily Processed Foods
Think of foods that come from wrappers, bags, and/or other highly processed foods. These heavily processed foods are specifically designed to get you to eat more. This is called hyper-palatability and this is what food manufacturers aim for as they want you to eat their food, even if you are full.
While these foods aren’t inherently bad or unhealthy, yet you can find healthier, minimally processed food alternatives. (i.e. 96/4 lean ground beef vs Beyond Burger Patties) These minimally processed foods will contain fewer calories, less digestive issues, and are better absorption within your body. Those last two points are the main reason why these foods aren’t “good” for you.
This is a problem because, over the last few decades, our diets went from traditional whole, natural foods which only had 1-2 ingredients (i.e. meat, eggs, milk, fruit, potatoes, rice, etc.) to transition to more processed foods. Studies have shown that people, on average, eat at least 500 MORE calories from processed foods than whole, minimally processed foods.
This equates to 1 pound of body fat per week!
So you could potentially lose 1 pound of body fat by simply selecting and prioritizing more natural, minimally processed foods! How crazy is that?!
So instead of ordering out, cook your favorite foods at home. This way you’ll be in full control of the ingredients and calories you’ll be eating. It’s human nature that if you tell them you cannot have something, then they’ll want it even more or feel like they’re sacrificing too much. So by focusing on minimizing your processed food consumption for a similar meal using whole food products, you’ll be on the fast path to improving your nutrition and fitness.
2) Eating Plenty of Protein
At Mack Performance, protein is the staple in our nutrition plan. Debate, it may be the most important macronutrient. The reason is simple – it is an essential macronutrient, which means you literally cannot survive without consuming it.
Protein is what helps us rebuild muscle tissues and keep our body (muscles, nervous, and immunity) running optimally. We need protein for enzymes in our body, skin, and hair growth, and many hormones like adrenaline, testosterone, and growth hormones.
Most people grossly undereat protein throughout the day and week. Most people firmly believe they are eating enough protein until they start tracking their nutritional to realize how little they are exactly eating.
Your body needs protein and when it comes to changing your body composition and here’s why:
Protein rebuilds muscle tissue which allows us to recover from working out quicker and allows us to recover quicker allowing us to build more muscle. The more muscle we build, the more fat our body will burn.
Protein has a very high Thermic Effect of Food (TEF), which means it takes more calories to digest. This means if you had 100 grams of protein, then your body will burn 30 calories simply by breaking the protein down into usable amino acids.
Protein is extremely hard to store as body fat! Here's the proof. This 2015 study took 48 randomized, resistance trained men and women and had them either:
Consume a minimum of 1.36g/lb of protein daily
Maintain current dietary habits for eight weeks while undergoing a standardized resistance training program designed to increase lean body mass.
From the Study: “ Compared to the control group, the high protein group consumed significantly more calories (+490 calories) and protein (3.4 vs 2.3 g/kg) From primarily whey protein shakes, leading to a diet that was 39%, 27% fat, and 34% carbohydrates. Both group significantly increased FFM (muscle mass) and significantly reduce FM (Body fat) compared to baseline, but the reduction in FM (Body fat) was significantly greater in the high protein group compared to the control group (-1.6 vs. -0.3kg). According, body weight gain was also significantly less in the high protein group compared to the control group.”
The high protein group ate ~490 calories more than the lower protein group and lost more fat!
So how much protein should you eat? A good starting point is having half your bodyweight in grams of protein. For example, if you weigh 200lbs, you’ll need 100 grams of protein each day.
While this may seem like a lot, this is actually quite doable!
What I like to teach my online clients is to “build” each meal around your protein first. So, let’s say you’re cooking dinner. You’ll selec your protein (aka chicken, ground beef, turkey, fish, etc.) then build around that food item with your vegetables, carbs, and fats. If you do this the other way around (choosing your protein last), then it’s extremely difficult to reach your protein target.
This rule works extremely well in junction with our first Fundamental Rule (Avoid heavily Processed Foods) as protein is predominately whole, natural food choices. Therefore, by building your meals around protein first, you’ll naturally be selecting minimally processed foods.
3) Build Muscle to Build a Faster Metabolism
Why is important to build muscle (outside of being stronger and living lean)? It’s important because muscle is a very active tissue. It burns a lot of calories, sculpts your body, it helps you stay mobile and strong.
Muscle plays a critical role in helping you to boost your metabolism. By having a faster metabolism, this allows you to eat more and still be lean. As you can imagine, It’s very advantageous to have a faster metabolism.
The fastest way to develop a faster metabolism is prioritizing strength training within your training program, specifically the big compound exercises (i.e. bench, squat, deadlift, push ups, split squats, etc.)
Compound exercises are essential for building strength and muscle as they stimulate multiple muscle groups at once. By using multiple muscle groups, this will allow you to build both a powerful physique and metabolism.
While I could talk all day about the benefits of compound lifts over isolation work, here are a few benefits I want to highlight:
1) Better for Overall Progress:
It doesn’t matter if your goal is to build your physique, getting stronger, or just being healthier, compound lifts are necessary within your program. Your body, metabolism, and overall progress will skyrocket with a heavy set of 5 rep squats rather than doing a 100 rep glute kickback.
2) Time Efficient:
We are busier than ever. You cannot afford to spend 2 hours in the gym. Hell, it’s probably hard enough to sneak in a 45-minute workout! I get that. By focusing on compound lifts, this will allow your workouts to be time-efficient so you can get in, get out and enjoy the rest of your day.
3) More Effective than Isolation Exercises:
Deadlifts and squats utilize 200+ muscles in your body to perform. By engaging more muscles, this means you’ll burn more calories, get better gains and progress. The majority of your workouts should consist of compound exercises so save the isolation work towards the end.
4) Increase Daily Activity Outside the Gym
When it comes to exercise, we typically think of some form of vigorous exercise that leaves you exhausted. However, not all exercises need to leave you in a drained state to boost your metabolism and burn additional calories throughout the day.
While there are many components of your metabolism, the one I want to highlight is your Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis or N.E.A.T for short. NEAT represents all the calories you burn in your everyday life outside the gym, such as walking.
Without questions, walking is the most underrated exercise. Most people constantly neglect or completely disrespect walking altogether for not being “challenging” enough. The challenge doesn’t lie in the exercise, rather consistently hitting your daily step count!
I give all my online clients a daily step count goal to help them stay active throughout the day, managing stress levels while burning additional burns. This is a sneakily way to burn calories and help you break through a fat loss plateau.
One of the more effective ways to get more daily activity is to attach it to your daily routine. This will allow you to be more consistent with it rather than adding another thing to your already busy schedule.
Here are a few simple, yet highly effective ways you can increase your daily activity:
Park at the far end of the parking lot to get some extra steps in
Go for a 10 minute walk after eating a meal
Get off one bus stop early and walk home.
Get a dog and walk around for 15-20 minutes. Note - this is an excellent way to get an accountability buddy
Routinely clean your apartment/house. Clean up your kitchen after every meal, tidy up the common areas
Watch less TV.
Do meal prep. This is an excellent way to burn a few extra calories while setting yourself up for success nutrition-wise.
Take the stairs instead of the elevator.
Have more sex :)
It’s soo much easier to incorporate extra movement throughout your rather than adding a 30-60 minute boring as hell cardio session that you are mentally dreading.
5) Get A Good Night of Sleep
Did you know, as many as 30% of adults sleep fewer than six hours per night, which is the minimum amount of necessary sleep? If you think you can get away with fewer than six hours of sleep, then allow me to drop some knowledge. Sleep is a necessity for life as it has a huge impact on your quality of life. Just as we need food, water, and exercise, we need sleep to survive.
Now, we all know we need to get better sleep, so why don’t we actually do it?
It’s easier than ever to rationalize poor sleep because we all love to embrace the “grind” and “hustle” of today’s age. We feel superior to others for sleeping less and wear it as a badge of honor.
Poor sleep quality can have a huge effect on your life by negatively impacting your workouts, recovery, sex life, mood, dietary decisions, and can lead to potential health problems (think obesity and hypertension).
But don’t just take my word for it. This is backed by science.
There was a recent 8-week study done that focused on the effects of sleep restriction on weight loss when in a calorie deficit. There were 36 people in the study and got their baseline body compositions (muscle and fat mass) tested in week one.
15 of the people (Group A) simply used a calorie deficit for the 8 weeks. The remaining 21 individuals (Group B) used a calorie deficit combined with sleep restriction for the 8 weeks. They were instructed to reduce their time in bed Monday-Friday and could sleep in as much as they wanted on the weekends (to “catch up” on their sleep). Despite “catching up” on sleep, this group averaged 169 minutes of less sleep for the entire week.
The results: Group 2 loses an average of 39% of their total weight loss as muscle mass and 58% as fat mass. When sleep was not restricted, Group A only lost 17% of their weight as muscle mass, but 87% as fat mass. That means both groups lost the same amount of total weight, but the group with more sleep lost more fat and less muscle!
So not only will getting more sleep helps you keep your muscle, but it will also help you have more energy, help reduce cravings, aids in recovery and building muscle, and keep your metabolism running optimally.
So, there you have it.
Here are my five fundamental steps to starting your fitness journey. If your goals are to achieve a healthy and fit body, then follow these five rules. These five rules will allow you to fit better into your clothes, improve your gym performance, develop a better relationship with food AND achieve the results you want.
Two other critical factors to whether your diet succeeds or not?
Accountability
Structure and a clear plan to follow
My online coaching service provides you with both. At Mack Performance, I firmly believe that the best diet is the one you enjoy while making long-term, objective-based progress.
Together, we’ll create a tailored plan to get you to the physique you’ve always wanted, and expertly guide you through every step of your transformation.