I know you guys and gals are looking for actionable tips to get fit and lose weight quickly. Over the years, I’ve learned how to shed unsightly fat, strengthen muscles, and enjoy increased cardiovascular fitness in as short a time as possible. If this is sounding like another guru-type intro to sell you a super-special, expensive weight loss diet or workout program, I promise it’s not.
All the information on this site is free to use. Come back as often as you like — I’ll never even ask you to buy me a coffee. It doesn’t matter if you want to learn how to lose 10 pounds, 50 pounds, 100 pounds, etc. You don’t need a professional diet plan or gym workout to enjoy rapid weight loss, increased strength and better all-round physical fitness.
Get started.
We all have the gift of time. I hope at this point in your life, you realise the minute that just passed will never happen again. I’m not trying to fill your head with a bunch of woo-woo crap here, this is just how it is. You have time, but nobody can afford to waste it saying “I’ll start tomorrow.”
You’ve likely heard this before. Both of us likely understand what it feels like to hear this kind of advice when it seems like there are so many factors standing in the way of our physical goals. The fact is, no matter what you have going on in your life, you have the time to start exercising.
You definitely have the time to start eating your way to your physical goals. Be those particular goals weight gain, weight loss, or simply increasing your cardiovascular fitness. It can seem hard, I know, but it isn’t impossible. Getting started is the hardest part, trust me.
Gimme 20 — start exercising today!
I once heard Joe Rogan telling a story about a friend of his who runs marathons. The guy used to weigh hundreds of pounds and one day decided to run as far as the nearest telephone pole. What do you think he did the next day? He ran past that first pole and made his way to the next.
You can go outside right now and sprint 20 steps to your mailbox or the nearest telephone pole. You could easily do 20 push ups or body weight squats, even if you have to break things down into a couple or few sets. Could you repeat that same simple workout tomorrow? I’m guessing yes — 20 steps or reps — that’s all!
Once you’ve managed to repeat the last step a time or two, increase and keep increasing exercise duration and intensity to infinity. It doesn’t matter what kind of exercises you’re doing right now, just that you’re exercising at all is enough to get the ball rolling.
Get out and start exercising today:
- Jogging (This one is a go-to for most people who want to get fit, run a kilometre or half-mile if that’s all you can handle.)
- Interval sprints (Interval sprints are a great starter because you don’t have to maintain a balls-out pace the entire workout.)
- Jumping jacks (Who doesn’t know how to do a jumping jack?)
- Run stairs (I don’t care if you can only find a place with 5 stairs total, that’s enough!)
- Head to the gym for a resistance workout (Circuit training and beginner CrossFit are great for burning fat and increasing cardio.)
- Jumping rope (You can buy a decent speed rope at your local dollar store chain or Winners outlet on the cheap.)
If you have a child, teenager, or dog; use them to help you reach your goals. Small children and dogs, in particular, offer continuous exercise inspiration. They’ll keep you going when laziness tries to kick you down. My dog, Darcy, is almost 8 years old and is still always up for a workout any time. Try outrunning a dog for a month or two and you’ll be fit as a fiddle in no time!
Be consistent and focus on daily exercise until you start to feel your fitness levels shifting. Rest days are for pussies, and are just an excuse to take a day off. In order to make something a routine, you need to do it for at least a month. Once you’ve made exercise a must-do in your daily life, you can start to tweak your routine to accommodate other goals such as bodybuilding, endurance, and athletic competition of all kinds.
Start implementing a low carb diet now.
Diet is super important when one is on a mission to get as fit as fast as possible, and to maintain that fitness long term. I’ll give you some tips to put together a bad ass workout program in another post some day soon. For now, let’s touch on some diet tips you need to start implementing right away to reach your fitness goals. Diet is the most important factor in any weight loss, weight (muscle) gain, and continuous weight management plan.
Carbs (aka. sugar) are a literal killer. They might not be the source of all your problems in life. However, they’re the number one reason for gaining fat, and are the source of most major health problems that eventually lead to an early death. Carbs lead to fast weight gain, and I’m not talking about big muscles here. Carbs cause the release of our energy storage hormone, insulin. More insulin equals more fat in sedentary and/or diabetic folks. Excess insulin also causes diabetes, heart disease, and degenerative brain disease (to name a few) no matter how healthy you might seem right now.
Truth is, we don’t need very much sugar in our diet in order to function properly. Not unless you’re a professional athlete or someone who engages in rigorous physical activity for the majority of your day. A low carb diet also promotes increased brain activity, and leads to rapid weight loss. How much weight loss, you ask? Cut your carb intake down to 50 to 100 grams of sugar per day, and you’ll lose over 5 pounds in your first week, guaranteed.
Don’t get too excited yet:
This initial weight loss won’t erase much fat from your body. It’ll mostly be excess water weight you’re holding because of all the carbs you were taking in before. If you’re familiar with the fact that sodium makes us retain water, you’ll love this: High carb intake makes your kidneys hold on to excess sodium from the diet, rather than excrete it. The body then has to hang on to more water in this case in order to maintain proper ratios in our blood and bodily fluids.
Our bodies also use extra water to store glycogen in our muscles and liver. Still, humans don’t require many carbs to keep going. Ketones are there to fuel the body when sugar is absent. Ketones are the byproduct of fat breaking down in the body and being released into the blood. Those ketones are then used by our cells as energy in place of sugar. You can also buy synthetic ketones on Amazon to use as an energy supplement while on a low carb diet.
The combination of less insulin, fewer dietary sugars, and a reduction in sodium levels will all help lead to really fast weight loss. You won’t be lugging around all that extra weight, or dealing with the energy crashes that come soon after consuming sugar.
Best weight loss foods.
I don’t want to ramble much more on the whole carbs-equal-fat thing. Serious bodybuilders and endurance athletes definitely need carbohydrates. The majority of you out there reading this blog right now do not. A diet rich in healthy fats, moderate protein, and minimal carbohydrates is the key to fast weight loss, increased energy, and weight maintenance. You should also check out this post on eating an all meat diet to shed more pounds even faster.
Animal protein is the perfect weight loss food.
The great thing about meat — beef, chicken, eggs, fish — is that it’s really hard to over-indulge on these foods. How many steaks can you eat in a sitting? Bet one is enough to get you through several hours. The average steak has 700 calories, 62 grams protein, 50 grams of healthy fat, an entire days supply of vitamin B-12, and loads of iron and magnesium.
Avoid all processed foods.
Anything that comes in a box, which has ingredients you can’t pronounce, that you have to put into the oven or microwave before eating should be avoided. Breads and pasta are processed, and very high in sugar, too.
Dairy is a diet killer.
Almost all dairy products are high in sugar. Worse, the sugars in dairy are hard for humans to digest. A little cream in your morning coffee won’t kill you, but stay away from drinking milk or eating cheese and yogurt (especially the flavored kind).
Fruits are high in sugar.
An apple has as much sugar as a couple of your favorite small store-bought cookies. Avocados, which have near zero digestible sugar, tomatoes, and a handful of berries now and again is about all the fruit you should be putting in your mouth.
Eat vegetables that grow above ground.
Root vegetables like potatoes, squash, whole onion, and other root vegetables are high in starchy sugars. Salad greens like spinach, chard, lettuce and others are high in nutrition and low in sugar. Cauliflower is great and has lots of uses in low carb bread and rice alternative recipes. Celery and cucumbers are also low in sugar and filling, too.
Nuts are high in calories.
Nuts such as almonds are often recommended on low carb diets. They can make for a great snack in moderation. A small handful of most nut has almost 200 calories, which is fine. However, it’s easy to overdo it, since nuts aren’t as filling as meats and vegetables. If you decide to sit in front of the tube and mange on an entire bag, don’t say I didn’t warn ya!
Eat lots of salad greens and fatty avocados with your meats of choice, and consume low carb fruits like berries and tomatoes in moderation. Avoid dairy at all costs. Be careful with nuts. Do this and you’ll get all the nutrition you need to get fit and stay healthy.
Ready to get started?
Plug your details into a daily caloric need’s calculator, to determine how many calories you need to cut from your diet, and additionally burn during exercise to meet your weight loss goals.
A calorie calculator is also necessary if you intend to start lifting in order to gain muscle. With bodybuilding, you need to take in at least 500 extra calories a day to put on muscle weight.
If you aren’t currently overweight and just want to increase your physical fitness, I’d still recommend implementing the diet advice listed above to improve health and protect yourself against diabetes and heart disease in the future.
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