Here’s your new interview with one of the winners from the 8th Adonis Index Transformation Contest.
Today John talks to Anthony Rivest who placed 5th in our last 12-Week Transformation contest.
Check out his transformation pictures:
Anthony’s 12 week mid term results.
Anthony was very proud of the progress he made in his 12 week transformation. His next goal is to achieve his “ideal” AI numbers.
However, it’s his amazing pictures that we’d like to highlight in this blog post.
The phrase, Do it yourself (DIY) refers to building, modifying, or repairing something without the aid of experts or professionals.
Surprisingly enough, Anthony didn’t hire a professional photographer nor did he did do anything crazy for his photo-shoot prep.
It was all homemade, just a bed sheet, mild water depletion, and a short fast.
The result? No pressure, no money spent, and zero stress.
Anthony even had cake and fajitas on the day before the shoot!
While there are several different approaches to arriving “photo-shoot ready”, most of them are essential only if you are well-developed and taking performance enhancement drugs; otherwise not really.
Let’s Uncover the Mystery Around Dieting
Since Anthony is a bit taller than most people his BMR is significantly higher and so is his appetite.
This means that when he eats, he eats a lot of food at one sitting. Let’s break down his approach a bit and maybe you can incorporate some of his techniques into your lifestyle.
For the most part it’s based on the principles of Eat Stop Eat and Anything Goes Diet, it also happens to be an approach that lots of people in the Adonis community have incorporated.
The thing is that apart from the many flaws that the traditional approach “eat every three hours” has is that if you eat light meals all the time you will never feel satisfied and that can lead to some serious binge eating.
This is why it makes more sense to have fewer, but big meals.
You will also spend less time on cooking, eating, cleaning the dishes.
Not eating AKA fasting not only saves time, removes the thinking about food, but it also helps you stay more focused and productive.
Anthony also told us that fasting helps him with school, he even credits getting better grades because of it. When all the students get back from launch break to class, they feel tired, but Anthony is full of energy and he is able to concentrate.
And it’s not just that skipping lunch helps, skipping breakfast is the same. You have to realize that as soon as you have at least a medium size meal you will feel tired and sleepy, definitely not like learning or working.
Most people say that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, well what it seems that actually skipping the breakfast and eating food later is the best thing you can do.
It’s literally breaking the fast, so try to move it as far into the day as possible. …And my guess is that you aren’t even hungry when you wake up, just thirsty and need to drink some water, so maybe you are mistaking hunger for thirst.
If you are not ready for a full fast yet, try to gradually move the first meal of the day further ahead.
If you wake up at 6am, regularly eat at 7am and want to benefit from the intermittent fasting, try to move your first meal to 10am.
Once you are comfortable with that you can move that first meal to 2pm and then try to do the full 24 fast. Just give it a few weeks until your body gets used to it.
It’s better to start your day with a coffee and if you are like Anthony, you would start your day not only with coffee but also with your workout.
If you do your workout in the morning, you have the rest of the day to do whatever you like. However, if you planned the workout for the afternoon, chances increase that you may skip it.
This may sound non important but this is one of the reasons people don’t get results – they just skip the workouts…and there is always an excuse…
- I’m too tired
- I need to finish my work
- I have stuff for school
- I’m going out with friends
- I’ve just eaten
- I’m hungry, I need to eat
- There will be too many people (and meatheads!) in the gym
…and so on.
Set the conditions in a way that your success will be inevitable.
In the morning it’s usually easier to get things done, you have more energy, you are fasted, there is less excuses to choose from, there is enough time, you have more will power and nobody is bothering you, because most of the people are still sleeping. Simply nothing comes up in the morning.
On the other hand some people prefer working out at noon because that’s when they are the strongest.
Try both for a couple weeks and go with the option that feels the best.
Are You Overtraining?
Anthony never wanted to be a big freak that everyone is staring at (in reality it’s mostly guys who stare, women think it’s disgusting).
What Anthony wanted was to build a good looking body and become a guy who projects leadership and confidence. And since you are reading this my guess is that you have a same goal. Anthony was using the main AI systems and the boosters (not just one, but several) and he was training 7-10 days straight without any break.
You may think that this could result in overtraining, but this term is overrated, misunderstood and misused a lot in the fitness industry. You would have to be a professional athlete or military to reach your limits and experience true overtraining. If your training seems too much it’s because you are under-conditioned.
Stop Focusing on Weight and Trying to Impress Other Dudes in the Gym
Anthony had to give himself a permission to be light and permission to lift light.
This is important and a lot of guys struggle with it. Stop trying to impress that big guy in the gym.
Realize that athletes or models, are outliers with amazing genetics and lots of them are using various drugs.
And it’s not like you are walking with a weight label on your forehead, nobody gives a sh*t about how much you weigh. The only time weight would matter would be if you were competing in a sport with weight classes, i.e. boxing.
As far as people in the gym are concerned, nobody cares how much heavy you are or how much heavy you lift, everybody is doing their OWN thing. We can be very self-conscious and self-absorbed, just think for a minute, the gym is basically a room full of people just staring at themselves, so why would you work to try to impress them?
What’s Your Goal Really? Find Your “Why” and You Are Half Way There…
You need to find your why, what is it that drives you? To feel comfortable around women? To become a better boyfriend? – these are all great reasons and will work well as your motivation.
For Anthony it’s becoming a great model and actor. There are a lot of reasons for you to want to improve your physique.
Remember, if you do the work, the results will come.
Tips from Anthony:
- What works for me is having two big meals a day, when I eat I like to eat big
- I really like to sit down and enjoy food, but I do this at the end of the day, so I can be more concentrated when needed
- Most people will do better pushing the first meal further back in the day
- Every single morning I wake up and get my AI workout done, I know when I wake up and take action; I’m one step closer to my goal
- You don’t need supplements, I took no supplements during the contest, honestly I just started taking creatine a couple weeks ago
- Visualizing and doing affirmations in my head helped me stay focused
- You need to have a big enough “why”
- It takes time, patience is get results
Links from the interview:
- The “Photo-Shoot Ready” Recipe – Article from Allen Elliott about preparing for a photoshoot
- Eat Stop Eat –
DietLifestyle protocol designed to help you to lose fat and regain freedom in your food choices
My young Adonis Journey started April 12th. The real dedication to work towards one of my greatest goal, have the most aesthetic physique possible naturally, at my height of 6’3.5”. The Adonis philosophy is the best thing that happened in my life so far. I love to… Continue reading here
Listen to the interview here, and please “like” it when you’re done:
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About Allen Elliott