Ever stumble across a line in a book, or hear someone you look up to say something makes you say...

"Oh shit..."

I'm talking moments and ideas that completely change how your perceive your life, and the world around you.

Here are my top five "oh shit" ideas.

1. Willpower Is NOT A Finite Resource… It’s An Emotion

This is an idea I came upon very recently in Nir Eyal's book Indistractible. (Highly recommend.)

We've all been conditioned to think of willpower as something that "runs out" after an extended period of hard work.

^Hard work calls for some time on the couch, as you wait for you drained willpower reserves to refill... right?

Well, as Indistractible discusses, recent research seems to show that willpower isn't some finite resource we "run out of".

Instead, it seems it's similar to an emotion like anger or sadness - we don't "run out" of these - they're triggered by our current circumstances and environment.

None of this is to say we shouldn't take time of to rest and relax.

But just be aware when rationalizing why "you need a break" is actually a false belief stopping you from achieving your goals.

2. Everything In Your Life Is Your Fault

Look - incredibly unfortunate things happen to great people. There's no denying that.

But the reality is - someone out there who had it worse than you, has achieved what you want.

Really, wherever you're at right now in life is 100% a product of how you've reacted to the circumstances you've been dealt.

I spent years on the flipside of this train of thought - constantly thinking about how unfair my life was... literally spending hours of my day imagining what my life could have been like if certain events never happened.

Thinking like this gets you nowhere.

The only person that has the power to change your situation is you. And change ONLY comes from actually putting in dirty, grueling work - day after day.

Not from thinking about doing the work.

Not from complaining.

Not from gossiping about how "lucky" those who have what you want are.

No matter your circumstances - the ONLY way to get what you want is to take ownership of your life, quit complaining, and do the work.

3. You’re A Better Version Of Yourself When You’re Present.

The ability to be present is a huge gift - both in your leisure time with the people you love, and in your work.

This is why practicing meditation has had such a life-changing effect on me.

In your relationships - the ability to be present gets you out of your head. You stop trying to impress people. You stop thinking about the best way to respond, and actually listen to people. You let your guard down, and build much deeper relationships.

In your work - being present creates flow.

Remember a time when you were thinking really hard on a project. Every centimeter of progress feels clunky, and painfully drawn out.

Now, remember a time when you were in the zone. Everything is seemingly effortless - you're amazed at your ability to create such quality work, and the ease at which it flows.

You were in a flow state.

When this was going on, were you thinking?

Being present is the antidote to overthinking - in relationships & in work.

Admittedly, it's hard - and something I struggle with constantly. But meditation has helped my cause tremendously.

If you're interested, I highly recommend the Headspace app.

4. The Compound Effect Of Small Distractions Is Massive

In the amazing interview between Cal Newport and James Clear, Newport at one point mentions the huge cost time cost that seemingly small distractions have over the course of your life.

This ties into the idea of "attention residue" - basically, when our brain changes tasks (think: checking an email in the middle of writing a blog post), some attention residue is left behind. Even if you're not consciously processing it - your brain is still circling the previous task - and making you less effective at the current one.

Every time you check social media or ESPN (even if only briefly), in the middle of an important task, you're leaving attention residue behind.

Over the course of a day, all these little pieces of attention residue add up to A LOT of wasted or ineffective time.

Over the course of your life... terrifyingly large.

For important work, it's incredibly helpful to block out uninterrupted chunks of time, away from notifications & temptations.

5. Nobody Thinks About You

If you're anything like me, you've probably spent countless hours over-analyzing every interaction you've had with others.

"I can't believe I said that."

"I can't start promoting my business on social media! What will ______ think?"

You get the idea. We've all tormented ourselves we these thoughts endlessly.

We're always thinking about how other people might perceive us... and everyone else is caught up in the same thought loop.

Basically, the people that you're scared are judging you... are actually too busy worrying if you're judging them... to actually think about or place judgement on you.

To quote Steven Pressfield:

"The amateur fears becoming who he really is because he fears that this new person will be judged by others as “different”. The tribe will declare us “weird” or “queer” or “crazy.” The tribe will reject us.

Here’s the truth: the tribe doesn’t give a shit.

There is no tribe.

That gang or posse that we imagine is sustaining us by the bonds we share is in fact a conglomeration of individuals who are just as f*cked up as we are and just as terrified. Each individual is so caught up in his own bullshit that he doesn’t have two seconds to worry about yours or mine, or to reject or diminish us because of it.

When we truly understand that the tribe doesn’t give a damn, we’re free. There is no tribe, and there never was.

Our lives are entirely up to us."

Program design. It's more than just a bunch of exercises thrown into a spreadsheet or PDF.

Building you the perfect training program is an art form.

A well-designed training program affects so many different areas of your life...

→ Whether you increase movement quality, and get rid of nagging aches and pains... or burn out on training, and building your best self altogether after a few painful years.

→ Whether you experience life as the leanest, strongest, most confident version of yourself... or spend the rest of your life wondering what you're doing wrong in the gym.

→ Whether you fall in love with training and progressing your body each month, creating a lifelong habit... or dread the gym, managing a painful session every few months.

You get it.

A smart training program can make or break your results, longevity, and enjoyment in the gym, and dramatically affect your life outside of the gym.

My online clients get amazing results, because they follow smart, individualized training programs.

(Everyone needs to understand how good their results can be when following a smart, science-based program. That's why I wrote you LEAN: A 12 Week Training Program For Functional Strength & Lean Muscle. CLICK HERE to be notified when it releases on Black Friday.)

I'm passionate about designing amazing programs, because truly it can make a massive difference in your life.

Regardless of if you're programming for yourself or a client, here 7 training tactics that will skyrocket your results.

1. Periodization

Periodization is defined as "The strategic implementation of specific training phases. These training phases are based upon increasing and decreasing both volume and intensity when designing a training program." (1)

Periodization means that you're not just doing the same reps, weight, and exercises over and over again (common mistake)... but also that you're not just doing things at random, and hoping for good results.

A smart approach to training progresses  or regresses volume and intensity by manipulating sets, load, and reps across a training phase.

On a larger scale, a periodized program implements multiple phases with different focuses, but all driving you towards the same outcomes.

This is exactly what LEAN does. Each 4 week phase has a different focus, but weekly progressions are also built into each phase, with the overarching goal of getting you closer to your leanest, strongest body every week.

2. Unilateral Work

Bilateral movements (movements where you use both limbs simultaneously) like barbell squats and deadlifts are great...

But I'd argue for functional strength, unilateral movements (movements where you're only training one limb) are just as important.

When you only train bilaterally, one side inevitably works harder than the other. This leads to imbalances, pain, and sometimes injury.

Unilateral work remedies this.

Plus, the ability to do things with one arm or leg (and keep your core strong and stable in the process) is crucial to feeling lean, strong, and athletic.

Finally, unilateral work is just straight up fun. The way a front rack kettlebell split squat, or 1-arm dumbbell push press challenges your entire body is par none.

Programming a mixture of both unilateral and bilateral movements is key to creating fun, balanced, and pain-free programs.

3. Metric-Based Lifts

One of the biggest things most people are missing in the gym?

Heavy weight.

Not that you should always be focused on lifting the heaviest weight possible - but with a smart approach, it'll make a world of difference for your results.

See muscle growth (an essential part of getting lean and strong for both men and women) comes from three primary mechanisms:

1. Mechanical tension - Created by lifting heavy-ass weight. By progressively increasing the amount of tension you put on a muscle, you force growth.

2. Metabolic stress - The burning feeling you get when you do a high-rep set of curls. Metabolites are accumulating in your muscle cells, leading to cell swelling, hormonal changes, and a variety of other factors that are thought to influence muscle growth.

3. Muscle damage - Adequate training stress -> muscle damage (often experienced as soreness) → recovery → growth

Out of these three factors, mechanical tension is thought to be the most important.

Lifting challenging weight → more mechanical tension → more results.

This is why I always start an online client's training day with 1-2 "metric based lifts". "Metric based: because here, you need to be tracking the numbers, sets, and reps you hit super consistently, and constantly working to improve.

If you're training 4 times per week or less (95% of people can get the body they want training 4 days or less), the first movement of the day will always be some variation of a squat, deadlift, bench press, or overhead press. (Again, this needs to be individualized to you - e.g. if you have shoulder issues, you'll be doing an incline bench. Back issues? Try elevated deadlifts. One of my favorite things about LEAN is it allows you to individualize your metric based lifts to you.)

You won't switch these movement patterns up much month-to-month. At the most, just a slight variation of she same pattern. The goal here is to get stronger at the same movement for months on end.

The second movement will typically work an opposing muscle group to the first. You will always want to alternate between push and pull movements with the first and second movements. (E.g. if your first move was a bench press, your second move could be a row. If training full body - if your first move was a deadlift, your second move could be a bench press.)

4. (Well Programmed) Cardio

There's an old stigma...

"Cardio kills your gains."

This doesn't have to be true.

In fact, smart cardio programming should actually allow you to make faster progress in the gym.

Your energy for different activities in the gym comes from three main energy systems:
1. Anaerobic-Alactic System

2. Anaerobic-Alactic System

3. Aerobic System

When you’re lifting, you’re primarily using the anaerobic energy systems... but this doesn't mean you can neglect your aerobic system.

Your aerobic system is what helps you recover from anaerobic efforts (lifting). So better aerobic fitness will allow you to recover and progress faster in the gym.

A stronger aerobic system also allows you to get into a parasympathetic or "rest and digest" state quicker. This creates better resiliency to and recovery from all forms of stress - training and life.

A smart training program trains both the anaerobic and aerobic energy systems in the proper doses.

In LEAN, this is a blend of conditioning circuits to end training sessions, as well as days devoted specifically to aerobic or anaerobic training.

5. Effective Reps

LEAN has you closely track reps in reserve (RIR) - the number of reps you have left "in the tank" at the end of a set. Here's why.

The closer you take a set to failure, the more muscle fibers it recruits and fatigues. Thus, the closer a set is to failure, the more effective it is at stimulating muscle growth (because it recruits and works more fibers.)

But, only the last ~4 reps before failure recruit and fatigue enough muscle fibers to stimulate growth. These are effective reps.

This is a big missing component of most training programs, that severely limits your results.

Now, it's also not smart to take every rep all the way to failure - we need to manage fatigue properly to help you build your leanest, strongest body.

Ending your sets with 1-3 reps in reserve is a good rule of thumb.

6. Deloads

As you get more advanced, focusing on properly managing fatigue gets more and more important.

A deload is a period of recovery (typically a week), where we reduce training stress. This allows your body, mind, and motivation to fully recover, and come back stronger in subsequent weeks.

Without proper deloading, many intermediate-advanced trainees will find progress and motivation in the gym decreasing, despite their best efforts.

Now, if you're periodizing your training properly, deloads should already be a part of your program. (You'll take one every 4th week while following LEAN.)

As individuals get more advanced, every 4-8 weeks is pretty typical for a deload.

General deload guidelines:

• Increase RIR by 2 on all movements
• Reduce Weight by 15-25% on all movements
• Decrease volume by 1 set on all movements

7. Make It Fun

 The MOST underrated aspect of building the a plan that will get you and your online client great results...

It should actually be something you look forward to.⠀

A training program that gets you excited to hit the gym is one you’ll go hard at, and one you’ll stick to. More than anything else, that is how we create a lifelong habit - by turning this into something you want to do, instead of something you need to do.

If you didn't notice, I mentioned my new training program ebook LEAN a lot in this blog. Needless to say, I'm pretty damn excited to get it in your hands. I KNOW this will be a gamechanger for your results and enjoyment in the gym - so stay tuned for it to drop Black Friday. (Click here to get on the presale list.)

7 weeks until 2020... and 7 weeks until everyone starts scrambling to get “summer ready”.

Ironically, this is also the time most people give in to that "inevitable holiday weight gain".

But not you.

What you're doing over the next 7 weeks is going to set you up to successfully build the leanest, strongest and most confident version of yourself in 2020. But starting right now is crucial, because completely transforming your body takes a long time. So the sooner you can start, the better.

Ready? Let's talk through the smart nutrition strategies my online clients are using to keep progress rolling through the holidays.

1. Realize That The Holidays Are Only A Few Days Of The Next 7 Weeks

Over the next 7 weeks, we're celebrating 3 days:

• Thanksgiving
• Christmas (Best holiday)
  
• New Year's Eve

2. Design Your Environment

Managing the other 44 days of the year starts with removing temptation.

To quote John Berardi':

"If a food is in your house or possession, either you, someone you love, or someone you marginally tolerate, will eventually eat it."

If you put yourself in situations that force you to rely on purely on willpower, 9 times out of 10 you'll cave in eventually.

This doesn't make you weak, or a bad person - just a person that needs to focus more on environment design.

My most successful online clients aren't the ones with the strongest willpower - they're the ones that learn how to put themselves in situations that don't require a lot of willpower in the first place.

Like James Clear says: "Make it easy"... by keeping holiday treats, candies, etc. out of your house. This way they won't be a daily temptation.

Now if  you want to occasionally enjoy a holiday treat, that's fine! Go to the store, buy some, eat it in a reasonable portion, and throw away the rest. This requires you to make a conscious decision to go acquire the food, and removes it from the realm of mindless eating. Don't keep it in your house.

Similarly, don't keep leftovers in your house after Christmas & Thanksgiving day. There's this weird thing where people feel compelled to finish leftovers to avoid being wasteful... but only if they're really good leftovers.

3. Use THIS Strategy On The Big Days

The day of each holiday, you first need to weigh what's most important to you.

I talk about this with each my online clients going into the day - you need to know what what you specifically need to do throughout the day to feel fulfilled & guilt-free.

For some clients, this means not stressing any strategies, and just eating as they please and enjoying family time.

Other clients want to find a way to make these days work with their fat loss.

The biggest thing to realize is, there's no wrong answer here - so it's best to think about what you want most out of each day beforehand.

For my online clients that do want to approach the day strategically, here's the plan:

→ (Probably) no tracking - Really, using the strategies below you can crush the day without having to worry about tracking. I always leave the option of tracking calories or no up to my online client's preference in this situation. So if you want to be sure you're on point for the day, go ahead and track. If you don't want to sweat tracking, you'll be fine.

→ Go for a 30 minute walk first thing in the morning - Days like this, your movement takes a big hit. Offset some of this by getting in some morning movement. If you can hit the gym, even better (but don't sweat it if you don't want to spend extra time away from your loved ones).

→ Intermittent fasting until noon (or 90 minutes before the main meal) - Nobody takes much "emotional value" from breakfast on holidays. We're all scrambling to prep the later meals (or in my case, to order a present on Amazon so I can at least say "it's on the way".)

Skipping this allows you to save up calories to spend on the later meals.

→ Protein + veggies at noon (or 90 minutes before the main meal) - The main goal of this meal is satiety.

You're going to be pretty hungry by this point, and very tempted by all the tasty foods around you - so this meal will fill you up, and tide you over until the main meal.

Protein is the most satiating food, with fibrous carbs coming in second. You're ticking both of those boxes here.

For the protein, I'd focus on something leaner to save up calories - something like chicken breast, lean ground turkey, non-fat cottage cheese or Greek yogurt, tuna, or even a few scoops of protein powder.

For veggies, it's hard to go wrong really. Just eat a large bowl.

Since you'll have quite a bit of fiber and protein in your belly, it'll be much easier to eat a reasonable amount of food at the main holiday meal, without feeling tempted to overdo it, simply because you're so full.

If the main meal isn't until later in the evening, simply repeat this protein + veggies meal 1-2 more times - you want to avoid going into the main meal famished.

→ Eat lots of protein at the main meal - The beautiful thing about holiday meals is, they're typically abundant with protein. Turkey, ham, roast beef... it's great. Load your plate up with at least 3-4 palm-sized servings of protein. Be sure to add at least 1-2 fist-sized servings of veggies as well. Fill the rest of your plate with whatever.

Eat all of your protein and veggies first. By this point, you'll be relatively full. You'll still be able to enjoy the other foods, but eating your protein and veggies first encourages moderation.

→ Go for another 15-30 minute walk after the main meal - Again, we're making up for the fact that you'll likely be sitting most of the day. Recruit the whole family for this one (this will also aid digestion, and help everyone feel much better than the typical holiday food-coma.)

4. Push & Pull Calories

What you do with your calories and on a daily basis makes very little difference, as long as what you do on a weekly basis is on point - a single day of over-eating is easily correctable.

As long as your weekly deficit is the same and you’re hitting your protein goal daily, you should get very similar results. I like to call this shifting calories. You’re saving up calories ahead of time or eating less in following days to keep your weekly calories on point.

This approach is amazing for online clients, because it gives them a lot more flexibility within their diets. Understanding this concept allows you to finally be free from the “F it” mindset we easily fall into when falling off track with our diets.

So if you really feel like you overdid it on a holiday, simply reduce calories by 200-300 on the subsequent days, and work to get an extra 2,500 - 5,000 steps.

You'll easily make up the difference.

5. Make Training A Priority (And Follow A Plan You Love)

The holidays are when people usually let their training fall to the wayside.

This leads to less calories burned, and backtracking in the gym - both put you further from your ultimate goal of building the leanest, strongest, and most confident version of yourself.

Make your training at least 3-4x/week a non-negotiable. Falling out of the habit of training now makes it much harder to start again with the new year.

Now, if if any of the following sound like you...

• Always dragging yourself to the gym because you hate training
• Training consistently (and on point with nutrition) but not seeing progress
• Suffering from achy joints & pain created by your training program
• Not following a structured program at all

Needless to say, this program is going to be legit.

If you're a coach, it's packed with education on how to create better, science-backed programs for your clients.

If you're coaching yourself, even better. You'll know the why behind what you're doing in the gym, and have a training program that will guide you to the best shape of your life over the first few months of the new year.

Black Friday. Be ready.

But, I'm not just here to plug the training program and want to give you more free education and value...

→ This blog teaches you exactly how I build training splits for online clients, from beginner to advanced.

→ This infographic gives you a free upper/lower split that will help you get leaner, stronger, and more confident:

Some quick notes on the program:

• Goals - Get you functionally strong, with lots of core & backside focus, and unilateral work to keep you athletic and balanced.
• 4x/Week upper/lower split - My all-time favorite split for online clients who want to look and feels great without living in the gym.
• Primary movements - Goal is progressive overload with good form. Push the weight!
• Everything else - Weight is still important, but be sure to “feel” your muscles working.

Holiday weight gain is far from inevitable.

Don't take the next 7 weeks off. Use them to jumpstart your 2020 transformation.

Today, I'm literally opening my email inbox to you.

The emphasis my coaching service puts on empowering you through education to be the best version of yourself, means I spend a lot of time going super in-depth answering your questions, and there's definitely a trend for the most frequent questions clients need help with.

Because I want to give you more education, here are my answers to the four most common questions I get asked by online clients (pulled straight from my inbox).

If you want realistic strategies applicable to every day life, this is the blog for you.

How Do I Keep My Nutrition On Track While Traveling?

This is THE most common question I get.

To get sustainable results, it's crucial that you learn how to manage your nutrition when you're traveling or busy. Because in the past, these were the times you "fell off the wagon". It doesn't make sense to wait until you're "not busy" to hire a coach - until you learn to manage the busy times you would normally lose your progress, you'll constantly find yourself starting over.

Holidays coming up? Lots of travel for your job? Perfect, let's get to work. I'll teach you exactly how to manage fitness, so no matter what life throws your way, you'll know how to maintain a lean, strong body.

Yeah I could go off about this for a long time... but anyways, here are my recommendations:

1. Implement Intermittent Fasting

The biggest problem you'll run into while traveling or on vacation?

There's a lack of low energy-density foods around you. Between eating most of your meals at gas stations and restaurants, the calories add up quickly.

One of the easiest tools to help manage this is following something like the classic 16|8 fasting strategy... which is a cooler way to say...

"Don't eat your first meal until noon."

Now, fasting isn't fat loss magic - you won't suddenly burn more fat using this approach. But, it seems to be easier for most of us to skip breakfast and "save up" calories for later in the day, than it is to eat tiny meals throughout the day, and hope.

Especially if your food options are poor (9 times out of 10 they will be for breakfast on the road), you're better just not eating until you have more quality options available (traditionally lunch & dinner have more protein-rich options).

2. Consider The Emotional Value Of Meals

Every meal you eat you take a certain amount of "emotional value" from. Some meals are about more than just the food - the people, places and context give the meal a certain psychological benefit. These meals are high in emotional value. (E.g. I was just talking to a client about her sister's upcoming wedding dinner being a meal of high emotional value.)

Meals that are high in emotional value, are likely worth the trade-off of not eating 100% on plan, for the sheer amount of enjoyment you get out of it. (Also, don't get to carried away with this concept - if you're like me, it's easy to rationalize why every meal is high in emotional value.)

It's easy to say "screw it, I'm traveling" and eat a ton of calories with every meal... when really, you would have enjoyed that meal just as much with a chicken salad.

Be strategic with your calorie splurges, save them for high-value meals.

Touching back on intermittent fasting, breakfast is typically the lowest emotional value meal of the day. We're tired, grumpy, and really don't even think much about what we're eating. So when traveling or on vacation, it often makes sense to skip breakfast altogether, so you can get more value out of your later meals.

3. Focus on Protein + Calories Only

Traveling is a stressful thing for most people.

Shit, vacation is stressful for some people. As the father of 9 kids, I'm pretty sure vacations were the most stressful events of the year for my poor dad as we grew up.

Point is, during times you as a client are going to be extremely stressed, the best thing we can do is simplify.

This means if you're tracking macros, for the duration of your trip we focus on protein and calories only. Changing our approach like this for a few days won't hurt your results, and it's much easier to manage in situations where you have very little control of your food.

4. Stock Up On Protein

I would highly recommend having the spot you're staying at stocked up with lots of lean protein sources (the hardest thing to come by on the road).

Not only will this help you hit your protein goal daily, but also better manage eating at restaurants better. A strategy I've often implemented with clients & myself - eating a serving of lean protein right before you go out. If you're ravenous, the odds of blowing your calories out are much higher. Having a bit of protein in your belly will satiate you, in turn giving you much more willpower to handle your meals out.

Protein suggestions:

• Greek yogurt cups
• Cottage cheese cups
• Jerky
• Flavored tuna packets
• Protein powder
• Cheese sticks
• Chicken breast slices or rotisserie chicken
• Hard boiled eggs
  

It's also smart to stock up on fruit. The combo of the fiber from the fruit + the lean protein sources from above will keep you full, and make it easier to avoid more calorie-dense snacks.

5. Choose Foods & Meals With The Fewest Ingredients When Eating Out

A less complex meal is easier to track accurately. Identify options on the menu with the fewest possible ingredients, and roll with one of those. The fewer ingredients your meal has, the more room for error you're removing. I already have an entire blog on The Best Strategies For Tracking Your Macros At Restaurants And Social Events, so I won't go to in-depth here.

Some solid options:

• Salad with added protein (Be sure to take into account any add-ons like dressings, eggs, nuts, etc.)
  
• Steak
  
• Grilled Chicken Entree
• Fish Entree
• Pork Loin

Work And/Or My Significant Other Create Situations Where I Have Very Little Control Over Many Of My Meals. How Do I Still Hit My Calorie & Protein Goals? 

My clients tend to fall into two main groups:

1. Other coaches

2. Super busy professionals

This is a super common issue for the latter. Maybe it's a constant stream of business dinners. Maybe their significant other isn't quite used to this new lifestyle and way of eating. Just like everything else in nutrition, it all comes down to planning ahead. This is a situation where I'll generally hold you accountable to planning your macros ahead of time, and emailing them to me so we can be sure you have a solid plan of attack in place.

Below is literally an email I sent to a client on this topic not long ago.

First of all, you have to realize eating meals out is less optimal for your progress. Many aren't really "optional" (e.g. work dinners), but also realize the more you eat out, the more room you're bringing in for tracking error.

That said, let's figure out how to best manage this.

So - since I'm here to educate you on how to do this on your own in the future, this is going to be a collaboration, not just me telling you "eat this".

Generally the best strategy here is to split this up into 4 meals, or 3 meals and a snack.

Ok, so I'm going to lay out rough sample days here - I want YOU to come back through, and plug in your foods in specific portions and what foods you think you'd like best at each meal. I would say the best thing you could do would be to take the template I'm giving you here, and plug it in to MyFitnessPal.

^That would look something like: "Ok, so I know I need a protein source here that = about 30g protein, I'll plug in ____ (greek yogurt, cottage cheese, or whatever protein sounds appealing at that meal).

So you would:

1. Plan out all of your proteins for each meal FIRST. Adjust the portion-sizes as needed OR add another protein sources as needed to get 25-40g at each meal.

2. From there, you'll see "Ok, now that I've for sure hit my protein goal, I have ____ calories to fill with carbs and fats (it'll likely be 700-900 on weekdays)." From here, add in carb sources and fat sources as desired with each meal, and adjust portion sizes as needed to make it work with your calorie goal.

I know this is more work for both of us than if I just gave you a meal plan, but this is teaching you how to do this for a lifetime.

I've also provided sample templates for each day below - I want you to take these, along with the instructions above, make them your own, and then shoot 'em back to me. I'll give you my feedback from there.

Weekday where you have no work lunches/dinners:

Here, since you don't really need to "save up" calories for anything, you can have more carbs and fats with each meal. This also means you can work in more foods that are a combination of protein + fat, protein + carbs, etc.

The below foods are purely example, and shouldn't be followed exactly. Plug in your food choices that fit the examples.

Meal 1:

Protein: Something like 2-3 eggs + cottage cheese or greek yogurt (~25-40g protein)
Carb: Fruit of your choice. Something like an apple or banana and some berries. (Or you can save this for a snack later.)
Fat: You'll get plenty from your eggs here.
 
Meal 2:
Protein: Something like Salmon or turkey meatballs (~25-40g protein)
Carb: Potato OR sweet potato (~30-40g carbs)
Fat: Avocado
From here, I would add in veggies & condiments for another 10-20g carb
 
Meal 3:
Protein: Something like lean ground beef/turkey/chicken, or a lean steak (~25-40g protein) (Think: things like turkey meatballs)
Carb: Rice
Fat: avocado, olive oil, etc.
Add in things like peppers, onions, salsa, etc. for another 10-20g carb.
 
Snack:
You could do something like - Greek yogurt or cottage cheese (~20g protein)
Cheese stick or almonds
 
Weekdays with work lunches or dinners and/or potentially dinner with significant other's family:
Here, to "save up" more calories, we basically want to focus on eating leaner protein sources (ones that are primarily protein), so you'll notice in the example below, we drop a lot of the fats, and reduce carb source sizes as well.
 
Meal 1:
Here I would opt for something like an egg white omelet with spinach & salsa, paired with a non-fat greek yogurt with a bit of fruit mixed in. This will still give you your protein goal, but you're saving a lot of calories via fat, and eating less overall carbs.

Meal 2:

Here, I would do something like a chicken or ground turkey stir-fry. The protein source is obviously your meat. Lots of stir fry veggies will help keep you full, and you can realistically add in a smaller serving of a carb source and be fine here.
 
Meal 3:
This is your work or at your significant others, or your work dinner - not entirely under your control, so just focus on smart choices and prioritizing protein. Using our strategy, you have lots of calories saved up from the rest of the day.
 
Snack:
Something like Greek yogurt or cottage cheese

How Do I Make A Night Of Drinking Fit My Macros?

You'll really start to see a trend here - the most important thing is simply having someone to hold you accountable to planning ahead. The strategy here is very similar to the one used above.

1. Start by plugging whatever you're planning to eat/drink while out in first. This doesn't have to be perfect, but we need a rough estimate so you know how to be smart with the rest of your day.

2. Plan the protein sources you need throughout your other meals of the day to hit your protein goal. Basically, just choose a protein source for each meal, and adjust the portion-sizes as needed or add another protein sources as needed. Be sure to hit this before you go out... you really quit caring about protein goals and whatnot once you start drinking.

3. From here, add in carb sources and fat sources as desired with each meal, and adjust portion sizes as needed to make it work with your calorie goal.

^And that's how you plan ahead for a night out.

Any time we're looking to "save up" more calories for later, the name of the game is focusing on eating leaner protein sources, and reducing calories via carb & fat sources.

If you need to save up a lot of calories, I'd implement a PSMF (protein-sparing modified fast) day. Here, the goal is to keep calories as low as possible, while still hitting your protein goal. Basically, you just focus on eating lean proteins and lots of veggies. So your day could look something like this:

• Fasting until noon (black coffee only)
• Meal 1: Non-fat, plain Greek yogurt mixed with whey protein
• Snack: Tuna mixed with non-fat cottage cheese (actually super good)
• Meal 2: Lean ground beef or turkey with seasoning, mixed with salsa and veggies
• Meal 3: Sweet potato with chicken breast and veggies

Here, you'll also be swapping fats for alcohol (following this strategy, you'll have saved up a lot of calories through the day because this is a very low fat sample day). This is a good strategy because eating more carbs will help soak up the alcohol, and fat and alcohol are metabolized by the body most similarly.

That said, the biggest enemy to your fat loss here isn't actually the alcohol, it's drunk eating. We don't want you drinking on an empty stomach - as soon as you get a few drinks in, you'll lose a lot of inhibition, and (from personal experience) you're a lot more likely to smash a whole pizza. This is where the strategy of "saving up calories" before drinking backfires.

SO, to prevent this, we want to get you eating a very satiating meal 1-2 hours before going out. I'd recommend focusing on your two most satiating foods (lean protein & fibrous carbs), while still keeping fats low to swap for alcohol.

Some solid, high-fiber foods:

• Berries
• Apples
• Bananas
• Avocado
• Carrots
• Beets
• Broccoli
• Artichoke
• Oats
• Quinoa
• Potatoes & Sweet Potatoes

Basically, this meal should be 25-40g protein from a lean source like chicken, ground beef/turkey, tuna, etc. + 25-50g carbs from high-fiber sources like potatoes, veggies, fruit, etc.

This helps you enjoy yourself in moderation. I use this every time I drink. Most of my clients do as well.

All that said, you can easily drink thousands of calories without realizing it.

The easiest thing to do - get liquor with diet soda. Crown and diet is my personal favorite. By switching to diet soda, you're saving yourself ~100 calories per drink. A beer is also only ~100 calories, but you can drink A LOT more beer... so I'd stick with liquor. Vodka water, whiskey & water or whiskey & diet, etc.

The Lifestyle Diet - a free ebook I released is your complete guide to managing situations like this. Download it here now.

Why Do We Need To Take A Diet Break?

The concept of periodizing nutrition is still somewhat foreign in the nutrition coaching space - which is disappointing, because it's an essential part of what I do with you as a client to help you acheive your leanest, strongest, and most confident self, while maintaining a healthy metabolism & hormones. A periodized approach to your nutrition equals much more sustainable results.

That said, it can yield a "why are we stopping?!" moment when I tell a fat loss client that we're taking a diet break. Again, it all comes down on educating you as a client on why we're doing things, so you can sustain your results in the future.

When you diet, you experience something called "metabolic adaptation".

Your metabolism downregulates as a response to you eating fewer calories and your body getting smaller/lighter.

• Since your body is smaller, it requires fewer calories to fuel basal functions. Thus, your Basal Metabolic Rate is lower.
• Moving your smaller body requires less energy, so you burn fewer calories via exercise. The Thermic Effect of Exercise is lower.
• You're eating less food, so you burn fewer calories during digestion. The Thermic Effect of Food is lower.
• You’re hungry and lethargic. In a subconscious effort to maintain homeostasis and prevent fat loss, you'll move less. As you take in less energy (calories), you’ll naturally expend less energy.Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis is decreased.
• When calories are reduced, levels of the hormone Leptin decrease. When leptin drops, your body reduces energy expenditure, and levels of Ghrelin (the hunger hormone) rise. Obviously, this makes you hungry, making dieting more difficult. The increased hunger signal is another mechanism your body uses to try to maintain its body fat. Evolutionary, it makes sense for your body to want to hold onto body fat, as periods of food scarcity could be in the near future.
• Cortisol levels rise. Cortisol is the “stress hormone”. While some cortisol is good, the devil is in the dose. Since dieting is a stress, dieting is associated with increased levels of cortisol. Constantly elevated levels of cortiosl lead to more ghrelin release, poor training recovery, and poor sleep (which leads to even more hunger, and even fewer calories burned.)
  

The longer you diet, the more pronounced all these adaptations get.

To add to all of the physiological adaptations, dieting is just very hard psychologically. Honestly, this is the biggest problem that stalls people fat loss - you're just sick of dieting, and not able to adhere consistently enough to make progress.

Enter: Diet breaks. A great tool for adherence, and reversing many of the negative adaptations to dieting - returning the hormones leptin, ghrelin, and the thyroid hormone T3 to more normal levels. Basically, they help you "reset" your body (not entirely, but lots of benefits) and make weight loss easier, more sustainable, and healthier when you go back to dieting.

The length of a diet break can vary A LOT. Typically 10 days to 4 weeks. 10 days is the minimum amount of time it takes to most of the physiological benefits of a diet break. It often takes longer (up to 4 weeks) before you'll feel mentally ready to diet again.

So now I really am opening my inbox up to you.

Really. This is an open invitation to shoot me any questions you have related to nutrition, training, being a better coach, etc.

I LOVE helping others, and giving, so let me help you out. Shoot me your questions to jeremiah@bairfit.com.

Imagine this...

You're in the best shape of your life right now. You feel amazing, and your confidence is at an all time high. Because of this, you're able to bring a better version of yourself to every area of your life - business, your relationships, your downtime.

You truly feel like a different person.

We're painting this picture in your head because I want you to understand how much my own transformation changed me, and how much you're capable of changing following in my footsteps.

This is my 9 month transformation (June 2018-March 2019).

As you can see, I’m NOT the person who’s naturally lean and strong. In fact, when this transformation started people were literally emailing the gym I worked at, saying I didn’t look like I worked out.

The emails didn’t bother me. But they did get me thinking…

“If I really want to inspire thousands of other people to build the best versions of themselves… shouldn’t I be practicing what I preach?”

Everything I do is centered around helping you become the best version of yourself. Seeing others find excitement, confidence and fulfillment in life IS the thing that makes me most excited and fulfilled. 

^I’d know this for a few years... but this was the first time I’d correlated looking a certain way with  impacting thousands more lives.

This realization started a crazy transformation for my body, my mindset, my business… really my whole life.

I've broken down what I did over this 9 month time-frame into 10 simple steps you can follow to build a leaner, stronger, and more confident version of yourself.

STEP 1: Learn Your Why

Listen, no one ever makes a crazy transformation without a powerful why.

I realized (as shallow as it seems), until I "looked the part", I would never be able to create the change I wanted in the world.

I thought about looking back on my life in 20 years, and being disappointed… I could've helped so many people become better version of themselves… I could've lived a much more fulfilling life, and accomplished so many of my dreams... but I was too lazy to fit the role.

^This thought terrified me, and made me realize I had to change.

You might be able to relate. Have you had trouble creating change in your life?

It all comes down to pain.

It’s easy for us to see how uncomfortable it is to change, without weighing how painful life will be if we don't change.

Some powerful questions for you to consider:

What is NOT changing costing you?

• What experiences are you missing out on with family and friends?
  
• Are you less confident?
  
• Is it affecting your mental state?
  
• Your relationships?
• Your business?

Now ask yourself - How will you feel about your life 20 years from now?

Looking back, will you be able to say that you lived as your best, most confident self… or wasted potential?

I talk new online clients through this on our initial strategy call. It’s a crucial part of why my clients crush it - they know why they have to change.

STEP 2: Get Clear On What You Want

Next, I got clarity on exactly what I wanted.

You know that helping people get leaner, stronger, and more confident is my thing.

I realized if I wanted to help as many people as possible achieve this, I first had to be the living picture of what you can expect to achieve working with me as an online client.

The mistake most people make is throwing out blanket statements like "I want to get in shape."

How do we know exactly when you’ve arrived there? How do we measure your progress? How do you define "in-shape"?

BE SPECIFIC WITH YOUR GOALS.

I established: “I know I’ve achieved the result I want when I can count 5 visible veins in my abs.”

A huge part of the initial strategy call and in-depth lifestyle questionnaire I send you when you start online coaching is getting hyper clear on exactly what you want. This allows me to reverse engineer and establish a timeline for your transformation, the progress you need to see weekly, when to adjust your plan, and the specific steps you need to take daily - it allows us to create a plan fit specifically to you.

STEP 3: Redesign Your Environment

At the start of this transformation, I was working out at the same gym I trained clients at. I loved my clients, but whenever I tried to train, I had strong associations with feeling lethargic, and was often interrupted by members of the gym that needed help.

This environment wasn’t conducive to building the body & life I wanted, so I changed it.

I got a membership at a gym across town, where I didn’t know anyone. With the new environment, the lethargic feelings I associated with training were gone. It was much easier for me to work my ass off.

Familiar environments trigger habits. (E.g. starting training in my old gym and immediately feeling lethargic.)

You can briefly use willpower to “do better”, but you'll eventually fall back to our old habits. Your environment controls your habits, and your habits control your life.

A major focus in online coaching is teaching you how to completely rework your habits and environment to set yourself up for success. This article teaches you tons on how I help you redesign your environment and build new habits.

STEP 4: Get Accountability

I knew motivation would ebb and flow, so I decided to increase the pain of staying the same even more by investing in a coach.

When you invest in a coach, the fear of letting some you deeply respect and want to impress down, along with the potential of a financial investment going to waste makes NOT accomplishing what you want even more painful.

Hiring a coach got me consistent as hell with all of the things that I knew I needed to be doing.

When you’re an online client, you’ll hear me say all the time…

“There is no secret outside of us getting you really damn consistent with your nutrition & training.”

It doesn’t take overly complex macro splits, or training 7 days per week to build the body and confidence you want - it just takes consistency with a smart strategy.

Accountability creates consistency. This is exactly why I still have a coach 1.5 years later. If you're ready to change, I highly recommend doing the same.

STEP 5: Have Fun With Your Training

Have you been following the same training program (or worse, no program) for months... or even years?

While what you’re doing might not be bad, it’s also probably not fun, engaging, or stimulating.

This is where I was.

When someone else started writing my training programs, I was having so much fun in the gym with new movements and styles of training, I pushed myself a lot harder. As a result of this and my nutrition being on point, I was able to build a lot of lean muscle and lose fat simultaneously.

I didn’t follow a crazy complex plan (Upper/Lower Split 4x/week + 2 cardio days), but I loved it and was consistent.

More fun, paired with the confidence what you’re doing in the gym will give you the exact results you want makes a night and day difference as a client.

STEP 6: Prioritize Your Nutrition

The gym is where you create the stress stress for build lean muscle and strength.

Your nutrition is where the nutrients come from that fuel your recovery and actually let you progress. It’s also where most of your fat loss comes from.

Problem is, most people focus strictly on training, and forget nutrition entirely.

Big mistake. Nutrition is 50% of the equation when it comes to building lean muscle and strength, and 90% of the equation when it comes to getting leaner.

Hiring a coach got me super consistent with my nutrition. I stopped saying screw it on the weekends or when I didn’t feel like tracking, because I had someone holding me accountable.

This is exactly why educating you on how to manipulate your nutrition to create your leanest, strongest, and most confident self and maintain your results in sustainable, flexible lifestyle is my primary goal as a coach. For more on how to set up your nutrition for any goal, check out this article.

STEP 7: Get Organized

This transformation coincided with the most stressful and busy time in my life. (Being busy isn't an excuse ;)).  A few months in to the process, I quite my job at the gym to go all-in on my online business.

The first few weeks, I was a mess - my gym-time was taking away from what I needed to do at work, and vice-versa.

I wasn’t hitting my macros, I was missing workouts, and I was less productive at work than I needed to be.

If you’re like me or most of the awesome people I coach, you probably keep “running out of time to eat healthy” or “running out of time to go to the gym”.

The solution is to get more organized - this saves you a lot of time and gets you better results.

• I started planning out exactly when I would workout each day, during a time when I knew I wouldn’t be distracted by work.
• I planned a time to meal-prep weekly, so “not having time” to cook healthy wouldn’t be an issue anymore.

These two simple steps made an INSANE difference in my results (and productivity). A huge part of what I do now as your coach is hold you accountable to getting more organized so you quit “running out of time”.

STEP 8: Sleep

I was getting 5-6 hours of sleep per night the few years before this transformation.

Work, alcohol, friends, relationships… lots of excuses. Really, I just wasn’t making sleep a big enough priority.

Without adequate sleep, your body won’t be able to recover fully - so you won’t build lean muscle or get stronger from your training.

Plus, you’ll move less, won’t push as hard in the gym, your hunger hormone levels will increase, and you’ll have a harder time saying “no” to foods that don’t serve your goals - this makes getting lean much more challenging.

This is exactly why I have online clients track their sleep every night, and hold them accountable to improving it.

I made getting 7+ hours of sleep per night a non-negotiable in my life, and it made an insane difference for my results.

STEP 9: Periodize Your Nutrition & Training

This wasn't one Herculean push to get in amazing shape.

I got into the best shape of my life in a sustainable fashion because I followed a periodized plan.

I took 2 week diet breaks every 8-12 weeks to ensure that I stayed in a good place hormonally and metabolically. Ditto for the post-diet maintenance phase to allow my body to normalize and be sure I knew how to sustain my results. (For more on how we periodize your nutrition when you start coaching, check out this article.)

With my training, I took deloads every 4-8 weeks, to ensure that I gave my body time to reduce fatigue and fully recover.

With clients, when I schedule your deloads is highly individual - I use your biofeedback (things like stress, motivation, mood, and hunger), along with the weights I see you lifting in the gym (I see all your weights lifted in a tracker sheet to hold you accountable to pushing and progressing), to time your deloads. But the general deload guidelines I give are:

• Drop RPE by 2 digits on all exercises
• Reduce Weight by 25% on all exercises
• Decrease volume by 1 set per exercise

STEP 10: Measure & Adjust

I’ve beaten the “track metrics” horse to death at this point, so I won’t go too in-depth here. But we need to know how your body is changing with your current nutrition & training protocol, so that we can adjust these according to the results you want.

I started:

• Tracking body measurements
  
• Tracking weight 3x/week
  
• Tracking biofeedback
  
• Tracking weight lifted
  
• Taking progress pictures

I wasn’t just hoping I was making progress - I 100% knew where I was at, and when we needed to adjust nutrition or training.

This is also why I have all my online clients track the above metrics. Knowing where you're at, and how you're changing tells us exactly when and where we need to adjust your nutrition & training.

And that’s the 10 step process I used to completely change my body. This is exactly what you’ll go through on your journey to the leanest, strongest, and most confident version of yourself when you start coaching.

Note how none of these are over-complicated strategies you’ve never heard of.

Having someone to hold you accountable to a smart nutrition & training strategy fit to your goals and lifestyle is “the secret” to transformation.

Living life with the lean, strong body you want isn't as hard as you've been told.

It doesn't take living in the gym, or being obsessive about food.

Most importantly, you don't have to yo-yo between enjoying your life and feeling confident in your body. As someone who's escaped this yo-yo pattern, you can have a body you feel confident in and a fun life. This is what I teach you as an online client - how to turn living lean & confident into a  sustainable lifestyle.

Ready to implement the exact strategies my clients and I use to make living lean a lifestyle? This is your roadmap.

1.Lift Weights 3-4x/Week

You don't have to live in the gym to build a lean, strong body - in fact, 90% of my clients train 3-4x/week.

You might say...

"I've gone to the gym 4 times per week forever, and my body hasn't changed at all!"

...and that is exactly the difference following a cohesive program that has your nutrition, training, and biofeedback all accounted for.

Tons of my online clients come from the same situation.

You don't need you to train more, we're simply creating a better program for you, and giving your body the support it needs to progress, through proper nutrition and managing life-stressors.

If your goals are to look better, feel better, move better training 3-4x/week will be plenty of training volume for you to create a lean, strong body.

For best results, follow either:

• 3x/week full body split
• 3x/week lower/upper/full body
• 4x/week upper/lower

Check out THIS BLOG to learn how I would write and individualize each of these training splits for you.

2.Learn How To Get The Most Food Out Of Your Calories

3.Eat Protein At Every Meal

You know protein is the most satiating food - it makes sense to try to spread it fairly evenly across your day to keep yourself full.

In fact, my online clients structure their days around lean protein - meaning the number one focus of all your meals should be including around ~25-40g protein.

Once you know what sources and quantities you'll be using to hit your protein goal, add in carbs and fat sources from there.

Easy lean protein sources:

4.Have Fun With Your Cardio

Cardio and fun... two words you don't usually hear in the same sentence.

Because everyone's been told "cardio sucks" for so long, too many people fall into the trap of avoiding it altogether.

Now, while it's not as important as your nutrition or lifting, it does help your health, recovery from your training, and overall sense of well-being and fitness.

This is why I don't let my clients skip their cardio - we just make it super fun for them instead, primarily using two strategies:

1. Finishers

5.Devote 10-30 Minutes Per Day To Self-Care

Most of us are insanely stressed.

If you're anything like most of my clients, you're constantly feeling the pressure to work more and push harder.

While this isn't always a bad thing, always being "on" is detrimental to your body composition if we don't take steps to manage it.

With an overabundance of stress, you'll have chronically high levels of cortisol "the stress hormone". This creates:

• Poor sleep, which leads to less movement (calories burned), less muscle mass, and worse recovery from training
  
• Worse hormonal balance
• Increased hunger

6.Walk 10K Steps Daily

The main reason people who experience dramatic weight loss tend to regain it? (Outside of eating excess food).

Those who lose a lot of weight tend to have a reduction in non-exercise activity thermogenesis (N.E.A.T.) - all the movement that happens outside the gym. Fidgeting, pacing, doing the laundry, etc.

After losing a large amount of weight, you body wants to return to it's old norm. One of the ways it encourages this is by subconsciously reducing your N.E.A.T.

You could just try to fidget all day... but setting a daily step goal to ensure you don't experience a drastic dip in N.E.A.T. makes more sense.

This is one metric I hold my all my online clients focused on getting or staying lean accountable to. It's too important to overlook.

7.Change Up Your Training Every Few Months

8.Implement "Flex Days"

9.Plan Maintenance Phases Into Your Year

This really ties into nutritional periodization and training periodization - both huge pieces of my coaching philosophy.

Basically, we plan out months in advanced the different phases of your nutrition and training, all working together to push you towards the same end goal with better hormones, more lean muscle, and a healthier metabolism.

A key piece of this (that most coaches don't focus on) is maintenance phases.

When changing your body composition, pushing too hard for too long in either direction can be detrimental.

• Dieting for long periods of time in a large calorie deficit reduces metabolism, hormones, and potentially lean muscle.
• Pushing the training volume and calories for muscle gain can eventually be detrimental to your hormones, and lead to excess fat gain.

In either situation, you spending some time at maintenance helps.

In simplest terms, maintenance phases "prime" your body for muscle gain or fat loss.

By not pushing too hard in either direction, we're allowing your hormones to normalize, potentially increasing your metabolism, and letting your body full recover before another hard push.

The easiest way to work really hard and never get the results you want? Failure to take maintenance phases.

10. Get Accountability

The most important part of creating the leanest, strongest, most confident version of you is consistency.

That's why all of my online clients get such crazy results.

They're crazy consistent and accountable to a smart nutrition and training program.

Regardless if you're brand new to fitness, or a coach yourself - if you're not getting the results you want, the missing piece is accountability and consistency.

If you're ready to get the body and confidence you've always wanted, CLICK HERE to apply for online coaching.

The Power Of Habit

Context Control

How To Change A Habit

Breaking The Habit Loop

Summary

Do you need to know exact function of the Multifidus to build a strong core? Nope.

Just understand that feeling your absolute strongest and best requires a lot more than just crunches.

Now, before diving into the training strategy we'll both be using for a strong, aesthetic core, I need to make one thing clear - you have to be lean to achieve a core that looks great. Getting lean comes primarily from your nutrition. If you’re ready to build a lean, strong body I highly recommend combining this training program with nutrition coaching.

Training Your Core For Aesthetics

Anti-Movement Training

Breathing

Your Core Training Blueprint

Download your FREE Core Training Blueprint below ↴