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Personal Trainer Confirms that Fitness Industry Leaves You with More Questions than Answers

January 23, 2012 by

Today with have an interview with Blair Baxter and he placed 5th in the latest Adonis Index Transformation Contest.

Check out his before and after pictures:

Adonis Index - Blair

Blair is very muscular, but before he dieted down, the muscles just weren't visible.

Adonis Index - Blair

If you have been training for a while, the muscles are there, but you need to get rid of the fat for them to become visible.

Blair is a personal trainer and in the interview he says that he’s probably let a few people down, because he has given advice that he now understands was useless. He openly admits the fitness industry is pretty pathetic and leaves us with more questions than answers.

He always thought that he needed to eat every three hours or his body will go into a starvation mode.

It’s an irony that at college he pretty much understood how the body works, when he wanted to lose fat, he just cut out the calories and instinctively ate less. Without any nutritional courses he knew that it’s just about calories in and calories out. Later on when he started following the fitness magazines he got mislead and bought into the whole bodybuilding lifestyle.

Blair’s Experience with the Adonis Index

Being a personal trainer made the decision to start following the Adonis Index workout a bit tough. Blair just wouldn’t want to follow a different training routine, after all he was fully capable of designing his own effective workout. He would follow the Eat Stop Eat and Anything Goes Diet principles, but not the workout, he felt like it wouldn’t work and he knows better. He was predicting that his shoulders would hurt, that it would not help him build any more muscle mass and it seemed too complicated to him. He was just sitting at his gym and finding excuses why he didn’t want to follow this training program.

It took him a while to get his mind over the fact that he is going to do somebody else’s program and not change anything. But Blair saw the pictures of the previous contestants and he knew that if this worked for so many guys before him, it would work for him too. So he decided to put his ego away and just try it for three months.

Blair said that he works out not because he likes working out, but because he likes the results. However, in the past he was usually jumping from program to program every month. For the first time he was able to stick to one program alone and finish it.

The basic Adonis Index program changes so often with so much variety because more variety and change keeps the program interesting and helps you to stick to it for longer periods of time. Make no mistake, this is completely by design. We know that most people have a very short attention span with their workouts and half the battle with designing a good workout is keeping you interested in it long enough to see the results.

If You Want to Show the Work You’ve Done in the Gym You Have to Eat Less

Blair was amazed by the results of just eating less, his muscles were actually starting to show up. He always thought he is supposed to just bulk up otherwise he would lose muscle. Now he was doing exactly the opposite and surprisingly enough, it worked.

In reality the muscles were always there, but covered by fat.

In the past there were a few attempts to lean out, but after a while he would always think that he is getting too small, so he would start bulking again.

Now he has quite a different perspective. Here is how he put it: “When you feel like you are getting too small and you are almost there you have to keep going”. And that comes from somebody who spent a good chunk of his life bulking up.

The permission to be light seems to be a big challenge for most guys, especially for those not used to being lean and light. But truth to be told, no matter how it feels or what you now think, being big and heavy doesn’t equal being a bigger man, that is not how it works.

And while Blair was afraid that he will disappear if he drops a few more pounds, he persisted thanks to support of his friend that got him to Adonis Index in the first place and got himself a fine placing in the transformation contest.

It may not make any sense to you now, especially if you are in your early twenties with the ‘skinny-guy complex” and you want to just get bigger, but eventually you will learn that it’s about looking bigger, not necessarily being bigger.

Once your body fat is lower, then your muscles will show up and create an illusion of you being bigger than you actually are.

Dieting Doesn’t Equal “No Fun”!

Sometimes when people hear the term calorie restriction they get scared off and think that they will suddenly lose all the fun in their lives. Well, that’s not how Blair felt during the transformation.

He had a barbecue every week at least once, went to several weddings and a few all you can eat events. That doesn’t sound like restriction or a “no fun” lifestyle, does it?

And that’s the key, if you understand that you have something like a calorie budget, then it’s no different than balancing your bank account. If you have 200 bucks a week for purchases, then you can buy smaller items each week for four weeks in a row or just save it up and buy something bigger at the end of the month, it’s up to you. Same with calories. If you fast during the day, then you can have some chicken wings and a muffin at dinner, it’s all about choosing what you want to eat when you want to eat it within your calorie budget.

Ever had a lean friend that would “eat for three” every time you went out for dinner? Many people would assume he was just born lucky with a high metabolism…

…or could it be that he was just using his calorie budget more wisely than you and didn’t each much (if anything at all) earlier that day and not telling anyone about it?

Let’s take a look.

Here is the thing, you don’t know how other people eat when they are alone and usually those who restrict themselves at social events are those who are out of shape, trying to put on a show to get praise on their hard work and blame the weight on their genetics.

Remember this, it’s never what you do socially, but what you do when you are by yourself and nobody is watching that will win the battle.

If you can manage yourself, you are halfway there.

Yes, you may not get all the comments about how you can stick to your diet, but it really comes down to whether you want to impress other people with your effort or your results. So, what will it be?

This is why the concept of “Never Let Them See You Sweat” is so great.

Blair’s friends would see him losing weight, but he was always eating more than anybody else around him at social events. To his friends it may have seemed like magic, but now you probably understand that he was just restricting, no lets say “managing” himself when he was alone. Blair didn’t want to impress everyone else with his dieting effort, he wanted to impress them with is dieting results.

If you have a big eating event coming up tomorrow, then just take a break from eating today and you will be able to eat pretty much whatever you want. Like Blair found out, you can live a day without food.

Does fasting scare you?

Well, do you think that your metabolism will suddenly break down if you don’t eat for few hours?

Doesn’t that sound a bit ridiculous?

Do you think that people in the past were timing their meals like they do now? What about regular people that are lean, but never cared about fitness? What about monks and other religious groups that regularly fast? Do you think all those people have “broken metabolism”?

If you look more closely you will find that there is no proof that your body will go to ‘starvation mode’ if you stop eating for 24 hours. It’s quite the opposite actually. It is quite healthy to provide your body a break from constantly processing food.

People will tell you that this kind of lifestyle is unhealthy, but what they are doing is just making excuses why they are not in great shape like you and justifying why they are not trying to improve themselves. And don’t kid yourself, this happens constantly…when you get in shape, be prepared for the negative comments and naysayers to try and diminish your effort and results. You have to grow a bit of thick skin and learn to shrug off these comments. Instead view them with sympathy because they desperately want what you have, but since they cannot fathom how you’ve done it they turn to criticism instead of asking for advice. Unfortunate as this is, it’s more common that you would think, and all of contest winners can attest to this.

Take home message from Blair:

  • Follow the workouts as they are laid out, don’t try to ‘improve’ anything
  • Most people have never committed to something for three months, be different, commit to sticking to the workout and really improve your shape
  • Don’t spend your best years of life trapped in a bulking phase while you can be lean and ripped
  • Listen to your body, if it needs a break, take it
  • Don’t label food. There is no healthy vs bad foods, it’s just a source of energy and nutrients, nothing more
  • If you save calories during the week, then you can enjoy your social eating events on the weekends
  • Keep a food log, Blair writes down everything he eats, so his clients can take a look at his food choices
  • It’s not about eating less than you are currently eating, it’s about eating less than you are BURNING
  • Take action without hesitation, don’t predict what will happen before it actually happens
  • There is a difference between working out hard intelligently and working out stupidly
  • If you want to lose fat, find a way to eat less
  • Keep going until you get where you are headed, don’t quit like most people
  • Eating more doesn’t make sense, you can’t boost your metabolism by eating more food
  • Understand that when you’re losing fat you will begin to feel small, but push through that feeling nonetheless. It’s just in your head and once you get lean, it will actually reverse and you will create the illusion of having bigger muscles.
  • The hard work you’ve been doing in the gym will show only after you diet down
  • Don’t listen to the conventional fitness industry advice. Everybody keeps repeating that you should eat six meals a day, bulk up, but nobody knows where they heard it, they just heard it so many times they think it must be true, so they keep repeating it

Words & phases mentioned in the podcast:

  • Eat Stop Eat aka ESE – Lifestyle and diet protocol by Brad Pilon focusing on balancing social eating events with fat loss.
  • Anything Goes Diet aka AGD – “Diet without rules”, forget about carb cycling, macro-nutrients or unhealthy foods. Eat what you like and lose weight.

Listen to the interview here:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Android | RSS

Filed Under: Contest, Podcasts, Transformation Tagged With: , ,

Tips on How to Place in 2 Contests, Lose 100 pounds and Get Ripped

January 16, 2012 by

Today we bring you an interview with Dan Richardson who placed 4th in the Open Division in the last Adonis Index Contest.

Check out his pictures:

Adonis Index - Dan (After photo)

Dan is incredibly lean.

Adonis Index - Dan (After photo)

Dan's back shot.

This is not the first competition Dan placed in. Right now he has three contest under his belt.

Here are the pictures from one of his previous contests:

Adonis Index - Dan's first before pics

Here is a compilation of Dan's before pictures from his second contest.

Adonis Index - Dan's first after pics

These are the after pictures from Dan's second contest.

This is basically how you do this. You lose fat and tighten up and place in the transformation contest and then you more muscles, reshape your body and compete in the Open category.

In the last contest he went from 172 pounds to 141 pounds. He cut as hard has as he could.

And over the range of 16 months he has lost 100 pounds. No, I’m not kidding, he really did lose 100 pounds. It’s pretty hard to imagine how much effort he had to put in to constantly stay in a deficit for more than a year.

Dan told us that the last time he may have overdone it a bit and pushed himself too hard. If you happen to listen to VI from time to time you know that this is somewhat similar to the experience that the Venus Index winner Alisha had.

This is why Dan decided to loosen up a bit and not go too strict to avoid any rebounds after this contest.

Maintenance Still Requires Effort

Dan thought that once he arrived at his desired body weight goal he would be able to stop cutting and go back to eating more, almost like he did before.

There are two things going on you need to understand and they are connected to each other.

First of all, even maintaining your look requires effort. Just like you have to work out to prevent your muscles from atrophying, you also have to do something similar with your diet. If you want to keep the weight off once you lose it, you just can’t go back to overeating. That’s a fundamental basic rule of how this works.

Once you lose fat and start eating more than you burn, well the difference gets stored as fat. However, this doesn’t mean you have to diet all the time, when you are satisfied with your bodyfat percentage, you can just enjoy the maintenance.

There are three eating patterns:

  1. Eating more than your body burns = Weight gain
  2. Eating less than your body burns = Weight loss
  3. Eating at maintenance = Staying at roughly a constant weight
This brings us to a next thing and that is “The Swing of the Pendulum”. A pendulum can be used as an analogy to weight loss and weight gain.
As you can imagine, you can’t really eat exactly at maintenance even if you wanted, because you don’t know the EXACT number of calories your body burns every day.
More accurately you could say that you are always kind of either losing or gaining fat, but it’s in            an almost unnoticeable way. If we use the pendulum analogy, it’s always swinging in some direction, even if it’s just a little. Finding how to eat to keep the pendulum swinging as little as possible is what eating at maintenance really is.

Social eating events like christmas, thanksgiving, weddings, birthday parties or Friday nights out with friends are also part of your diet and you need to learn to balance those days with other less indulgent ones. On those sort of events you will most likely eat more than your calorie expenditure that day and you will have to make up for that either upfront, after or both.

That will also be a part of maintenance. As you can see, even maintenance requires some effort, not as much as a full cut, but it’s still work on your part.

If you are like Dan and have “gorging urges” from time to time, you will have to find out how to manage them to keep your six pack.

Dan’s Second Contest Walk-through

Dan tried a lot of things. For example he wanted to improve his commitment and made a deal with his friend that each week he didn’t drop an inch on his waist, he would give him 100 bucks. And it worked, he really lost all the inches he wanted. However, at the end he rebounded and put on 10 pounds.

This was a big issue for him.

He could gorge himself back to where he were before if he allowed it. Like he said, he can’t eat whatever he wants whenever he wants like some guys recommend, because there is no stopping him. Even 10 000 calories is not a ceiling for him.

This is why he discovered that he needs to count calories and weigh himself regularly, otherwise he will gain pounds of fat and spend the next month cutting back.

He tried to stop weighing himself like some previous contestants advised, but that didn’t work for him, because an inch on his waist doesn’t seem like a big number, but 5 pounds does.

Pounds on the scale held him more accountable and gave him a range that he knows he needs to stay in.

Being lean holds a new set of challenges, it’s not like you lose all the fat and all of life’s problems disappear. While a lot of problems get solved, there will be new challenges you need to focus on. For Dan it was finding new eating habits.

He also realized that he needs to count calories, because he would easily eat his way up to 10 000 if left totally unchecked all the time.

He set a new pattern that is somewhat similar to other contestants, restricting during the week and saving the calories for the weekends.

He found out that there is a totally different tension between his diet and himself. Being 100 pounds heavier he would eat whenever he wanted, whatever he wanted and how much he wanted, not restricting himself at all. This tension meant a completely new approach. For example he stopped doing 24-hour fasts twice a week and started doing 16-hour fasts every day.

When you are lean, you have to stay in a smaller deficit for shorter periods of time, because if you don’t you may end up overeating afterwards.

The last thing he changed was cardio. He decided to put most of the energy on the resistance training and added just a few sessions of steady cardio a week 30 minutes each.

If you’re like Dan you may want be careful with the cardio, because if you overdo it, your hunger will kick in and you will end up eating what you just burned.

Take home message from Dan:

  • You need to have a purpose behind what you are doing, a good and convincing ‘why’
  • Establish a new lifestyle that requires you to be in that new shape
  • Don’t worry about skinny comments. After a while people will get used to your knew look. Focus on building muscles.
  • Write down your goals, remind yourself of what you want to achieve and why you want it
  • If you feel like you are burnt out, pull back a bit, find your sweet spot. You need to maintain your look for the rest of your life, so you have to find the balance
  • The minute you stop fighting for this, it’s over and you’ll end up back to where you were before
  • Have realistic expectations and build a lifestyle that is sustainable for more then just three months
  • Don’t do it for other people, because in reality they don’t really care and probably are just jealous of you looking better than them
  • Breakfast opens doors for eating earlier and gives opportunity for overeating, be aware and consider skipping it
  • Some guys don’t weigh at all to avoid obsession with weight numbers, but if the weight holds you accountable then by all means weigh yourself every day.
  • The support in the community is huge, he once tried to unplug, but that was a mistake that set him up for failure for several weeks. In the community you can find guys that are further along the way than you and will hold you accountable.
  • Men always try to get bigger and be more superior, however what really matters is the shape, not the weight.  Just because you wear small or medium shirts doesn’t mean you are less of a man.
  • Don’t obsess yourself with shirt size or what is on the label
  • Buy new clothes that fit you’re new body and ditch the old ones
  • You should really progress to a smaller shirt only when your back and shoulders will tell you, not your waist
  • Don’t aim to get heavier. The metrics you are after are based on your perfect AI – wider shoulders and slimmer waist, bodyweight doesn’t matter

Words & phases mentioned in the podcast:

Listen to the interview here:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Android | RSS

Filed Under: Contest, Podcasts, Stories, Transformation Tagged With: ,

The Only Downside Is the Need for New Clothes

January 9, 2012 by

Herman Douglas placed 3rd in the Sixth Adonis Index Contest in the Open category.

Check out his photos:

Adonis Index - Herman Front Pictures

Herman was one of the most muscular guys in the contest.

Herman-Douglas-Back

Herman was pretty surprised when he saw his back shot.

Herman has been working out since 9th grade, so he’s a pretty experienced lifter. While he has a lot of experience in the gym, he was never in a really exceptional shape. And because he was afraid of losing all the muscle he ate a lot of calories that in reality prevented him from losing any fat.

Herman is 5’9” and was always scared of being lighter than 200 pounds. Like he said, it is pretty ridiculous to think that somebody his height should weight that much.

If you are working out that sort of weight can look good in a shirt that perception drastically changes when you take it off.

For Herman it wasn’t until his wife took some pictures of him, especially of his back. Only then he realized how much fat really is on his body. Most guys never really care how they look from the back and focus on the mirror look only. When Herman saw that there is a lot of fat hiding from him or from what he can see in a mirror, he was really surprised. He thought he was in much better shape.

After a friend introduced him to the Adonis Index he started to wonder if this new approach would get him some results. It still took him some time to get over the fact that he needed to drop not just 10 pounds, but really somewhere around 30 pounds of fat to get in decent shape.

Stop Using Weight as a Fitness Indicator

A lot of guys think that they need to get to 200 pounds and while it’s impossible for the vast majority of guys to be that heavy while being lean, there is no need for that either.

If you think you need to get big and hit the 200 mark as soon as possible, you are looking at it from the wrong perspective.

Ask yourself this: “Do I want to look good and enjoy all the benefits of having a killer looking body?”

If so then stop focusing on getting bigger and rather take a look at yourself and concentrate on a specific shape and proportions. Shape and proportion are what matters and what will determine whether you are in good shape or not, not how much you weigh.

There are several issues with using weight as an indicator whether you look good or not.

Weight itself tells you nothing. Weight is directly proportional to your height. A 6’4” NBA player will have genetic potential for building more muscle mass than an average 5’10 gym rat. So setting up a weight goal without considering other factors just points out on a lack of perspective.

Be different from other guys and don’t set your goal for weight gain, focus on the ideal shape and proportions instead.

When Herman first heard from his friend that he should be 30 pounds lighter, he wasn’t ready or in a state to hear such advice. The idea of being over 200 lbs was still in his head and he was afraid of letting it go.

He was happy with the weight and he looked good in clothes. He just didn’t want to admit to himself what was really going on. He, like many other guys was scared that what he believes may not be true and didn’t want to shatter his belief system.

It took him a while, but seeing his friend getting in shape, he decided to give this new idea a shot and at the end he is glad he did.

What Herman Did to Get in Shape

Once he got over the belief that he needed to be heavy, he could start eating less calories and actually lose weight.

At first he needed to lose a lot, so he was eating roughly 1000 calories per day, however this was getting tougher every week and he was forced to raise his caloric intake and he gradually went from 1000 to 1800 over the next couple of weeks. And this is something you can expect to happen, if you have a lot of fat to lose (let’s say 30 pounds) then at the beginning you will be able to eat very low, however as you progress and get leaner, you will have to start eating more and more and slightly optimize to maintenance once you get to a single digit body fat number.

This is of course all very personal, so you have to calculate your own caloric needs based on your BMR, physical activity, current weight and your goals.

For Herman once he lost most of the fat he had on his body, he found his “sweat spot” around 1800 calories. This allowed him to push hard in the gym, while still being able to lose some fat and satisfy his hunger.

Herman is 5’9” and did the Adonis Index workout and some additional cardio, so your number will be different, but the key is to calculate it and act according to it.

Herman did some cardio, but as he got leaner and leaner he had to cut back on it because it just wasn’t sustainable. And this is important, find what works long term and stick to it. Even though extra cardio worked at the beginning when he had a lot of fat to go, as he got closer to his ideal waist, it got tougher and then he was faced with a decision – eat more or cut cardio. He decided that there is no reason to do more work for the same results, so he stopped doing the cardio and focus mostly on his diet.

The result of all this?

Before he was wearing size 36 pants and his knees and back hurt. Now he is wearing 33 and even that feels too big. Plus he is no longer scared of having heart problems like his father. He is healthy and he feels healthy.

The best thing was that other people noticed this transformation and complimented Herman on his work.

This was all possible only because he overcame his belief of being big and heavy. It’s not worth trying to be heavy, it’s a waste of time, unless you are 6’4’’ you are not supposed to be over 200 pounds and there is no reason to spend good years of life being overfat.

Now when Herman gets in front of a mirror the only thing he can say is “wow, what a difference”.

When you wear clothes, they just cover it up. Clothes hide the fat from your eyes and will trick you into believing that it is okay to be that big.

Here are the two goals you can pursue, decide however you like:

a) You can be big

  1. In clothes you look good, it’s obvious that you work out
  2. You feel like a man, because everybody is addressing you as “the big guy”
  3. You can wear extra large T-shirts and feel really dominant
  4. You are covering up your belly fat and love handles
  5. You won’t be confident taking your shirt off
b) You can be ripped
  1. Other people can tell that you work out
  2. Your arms will have incredible muscle definition
  3. If you wear clothes that fit, you will really stand out in almost any group of people
  4. You are very confident taking your shirt off
  5. When you take off your shirt everybody will make a comment about how shredded you are
  6. People will ask you for advice and will want to know what you did to get into such a shape
  7. Girls will make excuses to touch you (I know how it sounds, but it is true, but you probably won’t believe it till you experience it yourself)

Take home message from Herman for guys who have been training for a while, but have been just carrying too much weight:

  • Mirror is different from reality, don’t rely on it, because it sends back a false reflection
  • It sucks being heavy
  • Give yourself permission to be light
  • The leaner you get the harder the fat loss will be. You will have to up your caloric intake a bit to sustain the diet.
  • If people are used to you as the big guy and you suddenly start to lose weight, they won’t be very happy about it and might tell you that you are skinny or that it is unhealthy. Don’t listen to them, they don’t understand what you are doing and why you are doing it. And most importantly they are subcutaneously making excuses for not getting in shape themselves.
  • If you decide to take professional photos, it will take you some time and trial and error until you learn all the proper posing, how to flex and hold the muscle, what lighting works the best, in what time of the day are your muscles most defined, expect it.
  • You won’t notice how the food you eat affects your look until you get lean, only then you will notice that certain food makes you more cut and other more bloated
  • Once you get in shape, you will face a new challenge – Learning how to dress properly to show your brand new body
  • The leaner you are the bigger you look. The fat mass and shirt has to come down for you to look bigger. While this sounds strange, it’s is true, it’s the muscle definition that creates the illusion that you are bigger.

Words & phases mentioned in the podcast:

Listen to the interview here:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Android | RSS

Filed Under: Contest, Podcasts, Transformation Tagged With: , ,

Commitment Equals Results, So Are You Committed Enough?

January 2, 2012 by

Today’s interview is with Andrew Peters, who won the sixth Adonis Index Transformation Contest.

Check out his pictures:

Adonis Index - Andrew front picture

Andrew is still getting over the fact that this is how he looks now. No kidding, when you undergo such an amazing transformation, it might take some time until you get used to that new look.

Adonis Index - Andrew back picture

Andrew has a great muscle definition.

Adonis Index Andrew front picture

Want to win the next contest? This is how you take the photos.

Andrew is 24 and has spent the past few years playing rugby and lifting weights, however his training lacked structure, a goal, and a serious commitment. As a result he didn’t have the body he wanted.

He realized that in order to succeed he had to changes his approach. He wanted to get in shape, but didn’t wanted to look like some huge bodybuilder.

He was after more of a model body shape and it was also obvious that something had to change in his life.

He searched for a workout program that would meet this requirements and that search lead him to the Adonis Index. What might surprise you is that he wasn’t a believer at the beginning and it took him almost two years until he decided to try the contest and the workout…and in as little as three months he completely transformed his body. The only things he regrets is not trying this approach sooner and wasting two years of his life doing other workouts.

Before training with the Adonis Index he was trying to change, but his effort was misplaced.

This is probably the most common issue with muscle building. Guys don’t understand that it’s crucial to have a well-designed workout program, not the newest or the most expensive supplement. While certain supplements like Creatine might help, if you don’t have a good workout plan then nothing else really matters. But since supplements are easier to sell and people seem to want magic pills most of the marketing is focused on selling them…this leads to a belief that supplements are the building blocks of muscles.

Well, they’re not.

You should make it a priority to get a workout that:

  1. Has purpose behind the training and targets some specific goal you want (ex.: building a V-shape dominant body with the perfect AI)
  2. Is designed by someone who looks the way you want to look (assuming it’s not a performance based workout)
  3. Focus on certain muscle groups more than others to build an overall shape and look
  4. Have variety of exercises, reps and sets (if you’re doing the same thing week after week, you will get bored and won’t stick to it for very long, plus variety can help you hit the muscle from different angles)
  5. Difficulty gradually advances (aka Progressive resistance)
  6. Doesn’t requires you to buy expensive supplements or follow some insane high protein diets

The thing that won’t hurt you either is having a deadline. For Andrew there just wasn’t enough urgency, but when he decided to participate in the Adonis Index Contest, the training suddenly had a deadline and things got serious. Plus he was putting his money on the line now since he booked a session with a photographer three weeks in advance.

What Andrew Had to Change in His Lifestyle

You might guess that winning a fitness competition and transforming your body would require some supper-strict lifestyle without any social interactions and you would have to be focused on the diet and training only.

While it obviously requires more effort and focus to get in shape than to maintain your look, it’s still about finding a balance with your social life.

The only things that Andrew did was walking every day, cutting a few calories and training on the Adonis Index system a few times per week. He was already hanging out in the gym, so this wasn’t such a stretch.

Getting in shape is not that time dependent.

Cutting calories doesn’t require any extra time, quite the opposite, because it can free you from constantly preparing food, eating and washing the dishes. Just think for a while how much time you spend doing those things every day.

What about the workouts?

Well, even if the workout session took you 90 minutes and you trained let’s say 5 times a week then it would still only be an 8 hours commitment per WEEK.

A week has 168 hours, so 8 hours of focused training dedicated to improving your body and possibly your social life doesn’t sound that much, does it?

Most people spend at three times that many hours in front of a TV or playing video games, so if you are one of them you only need to cut out 1/3rd of that and you suddenly have the time needed to work out.

Just be honest with yourself.

Some people get up at 5 am just to squeeze in the workout session before their work.

Find that time, it’s worth the effort.

It Was Mostly a Mental Game

While any change requires physical effort, usually the hardest part is mental.

You might guess that somebody who is in shape is motivated 24/7, however like Andrew discovered, it couldn’t be further from the truth. There will be days when you will wake up in 6 AM feeling like crap, annoyed by the rain and cold and definitely not feeling like working out or doing something worthwhile.

This is something that you have to expect to happen and find a way to punch through it.

Sometimes you will look at yourself and won’t see any results. You will trick yourself into thinking that it’s pointless to continue dieting, because in your mind it’ll seem like nothing is improving in the mirror or because the scale is still the same. You will find a reason to quit. It’s those who stay on track and push through these moments that succeed.

Andrew had the same problem, he wanted to quit the diet, but he decided to adjust the amount of calories he ate everyday and kept on going. He knew this would work and that it was just a matter of time and consistency.

The result?

After 12 weeks he got ripped.

Take home message from Andrew:
  • You don’t just wake up totally motivated every single day, there are tough times too, but you’ll get there
  • If you’re having a hard time with really low calories , you may consider eating more closer to your BMR more often
  • It’s best to focus your workouts on building muscle and let your diet take care of fat loss
  • If you want to create an even bigger deficit then try some low intensity walking for few hours per week
  • Listen to podcasts to keep motivated during the contest
  • Don’t stress yourself about progress, it takes time. Just keep going and compare results after weeks or months of consistent work
  • You won’t get ripped after just one workout, remember it’s just one of the next eighty days so you need to keep going to see significant results
  • Three months are nothing compared to the years you were out of shape
  • Diet and workouts are not effortless, but the real challenge is the psychological side of the transformation
  • You have to build certain habits to reach your desired shape (ex: waking up at 5am and going to the gym first thing in the morning)
  • Limit you alcohol and fast food intake
  • Realize why you eat, usually it’s not because you are hungry
  • Get in shape first, because once you see what you are capable of in the mirror, it’s easier to improve other areas of your life
  • Find out your core reason behind your workout and diet, why do you want to get in shape? (ex: happiness, being confident and calm with yourself in social interactions etc.)
  • Write down your goals, you will make it more real when you physically write them down on a paper
  • Some people will not like you improving yourself, the problem is in them not in you. They are just rationalizing why they are not in shape and you are
  • There is no secret to getting in shape, just eat less and work out properly, if you keep doing that for few months, you will see amazing results
  • Book a session with a photographer or a friend who will volunteer to take your pictures in advanced to have a deadline
  • Make a commitment that you will do whatever it takes to achieve your goals
  • There is never going be the perfect time to get in shape so START NOW!
  • Participate in a fitness contest and challenge yourself
Words & phases mentioned in the podcast:
Listen to the interview here:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Filed Under: Contest, Podcasts, Transformation Tagged With: , ,

Contest Winner Shares His Best Tips & Tricks

December 26, 2011 by

Today’s podcast is very special. It’s an interview with the Adonis Index Open Contest winner Ryan Williams.

Ryan has been on board for several months now and he didn’t have a long way to go, but he definitely took it to the next level.

Check out his pictures:

Adonis Index Contest - Ryan William

Ryan not only got in an exceptional shape, but he also took great pictures.

Adonis Index Contest - Ryan William

Ryan's back shot.

 

Ryan thought that it’s near to impossible to get ripped and look like a Hollywood action movie star. He thought that it would require a very strict lifestyle and an incredible amount of work, which would be impossible to fit into his work schedule which requires a lot of traveling.

However, with two kids (six and two year old), wife and regular trips across continents he managed to get in a great shape, a cover model shape you would say.

The best part?

He is willing to share how he did it.

You have a chance to learn how he planned his workout, structured his diet and the other stuff he did to get in shape, you can take his best tricks and tweak them to fit to your own lifestyle.

New Approach Got Him Results

Ryan revealed that before finding the Adonis Index he was eating a lot, definitely more than his body could burn.

He, like many other guys, thought that he can muscle his way to leanness, he thought that if he got big enough and built enough muscle, his metabolism would be so fast that it would burn all the fat on his body. On top of that in the past he read in a fitness magazine that he should never eat below 2000 calories. He never really weighed himself, but Ryan’s estimate is that at one time he must have been way over 200 pounds, probably even close to 250.

It wasn’t until he found Eat Stop Eat and Adonis Index that he realized this is probably not the best approach to take to get in shape.

Probably the biggest revelation for Ryan was that he could just diet once and stay like that forever, just do some micro diet management for maintenance and that would be it.

He set his daily calories intake at 1800 calories and added two fasts on top of that. He wasn’t counting calories, he was doing more of calorie guessing and just eye balling the food to know the rough calorie content.

In the past he never followed a real muscle building program either. It was always just a mix of bodybuilding splits that he thought he should do from what he read in fitness magazines. In his own words: “I just trained the mirror muscles, that was it.”

The biggest shock once he started doing the Adonis Index workouts was of course the training volume. He thought that he was over-training and doubted that he could do it. However, after a few weeks the soreness went away and he realized that it wasn’t over-training, but rather under-conditioning, he just wasn’t used to such a physical stress before, so his muscles needed some time to get accustomed to such a high volume and intensity of training.

Another important fact Ryan mentions in the interview is the importance of periodization, which is crucial, because if you don’t change your workout often enough, you will get bored and you will not enjoy your workouts.

And how do you plan on sticking to something if you don’t enjoy it?

You Need to Have a Flexible Approach

Ryan said that what got him hooked about Adonis Index was the fact that it is oriented on aesthetics and proportions, the goal isn’t to just get big, but to actually achieve a specific shape.

Ryan is an opera singer and sometimes he needs to perform without his shirt on, in the past he would do some crazy strict fitness stuff like eating six times a day, eating tons of protein, because he was afraid of losing his muscles for the show and training a lot. Basically this made him a slave to his diet and gym routine for the sake of looking good on stage, however after the show he would always go back to looking pretty average.

The big mind shift came once he tried the program.

Six months is all he needed to get in the best shape of his life (sounds like something several previous contestants have in common). Don’t get me wrong, Ryan has some training history, but once he got in decent shape for his show, he gained all the weight back right after that show, he could never keep that shape for more than a short period of time.

Basically this lifestyle was killing him and he couldn’t sustain it for long term. He travels a lot and of course wants to spend some time with his wife and two kids when he is finally at home, so you can imagine he is not interested in preparing his six meals every day and spending half the day in the gym.

He combined the Eat Stop Eat and Anything Goes Diet principles into his workout routines and almost without any significant effort lost more than 20 pounds of fat. No countless hours spent on cardio, which he could never do for more than a month in the past anyway.

He let the diet take care of the fat loss and dedicated just 90 minutes, five times a week to training for muscle gain and aesthetics.

Obviously this worked almost like a magic and at the end he has a cover model body.

The best part?

He is able to sustain this after the show and keep his abs visible.

You need to find a flexible approach that allows you to change things as you go, is easy to implement into your lifestyle and is sustainable for years not just weeks.

You do want to look great for the rest of your life, don’t you?

In that case you need to find a way to stay in shape with very little effort while being able to enjoy your life in its fullest way possible.

Let’s clarify one thing though, there is a difference between your “regular look” and your “photo-shoot look”. Sometimes guys have a hard time getting over this one, so let’s break this down.

When fitness models are preparing for a contest or a photo-shoot, they know they will be in that shape for just a few hours. When you get down to single digit body fat, your look becomes transient based on the physical activity you do and the specific food you eat. Not that eating tacos would make you fat, but if you have a visible six pack abs and you can see different muscle fibers on your shoulders, each food will have a different affect on your look. Some foods will make you look sharper, some will make you more bloated. This is something you will have to experiment with once you get to this level.

And fitness models know this, they know exactly what foods affects them and how. They know what time a day and after what amount of hours after training they look the best, most cut, and most shredded. Put aside the drugs and photo editing, they know their bodies well and they surely know how to take advantage of that for the photo shoot. So, the point is that if you think that you are going to look like a cover model 24/7, you have some big disbelief that you need to get over.

You will look different in the morning, in the evening, after eating a big steak with fries, and after eating a bowl of apples. That is just how your body works, it changes it’s look very frequently based on your action. If you are over 10% body fat you may have not noticed those change. The reason for that is simple, you have fat on your muscles that prevents you from seeing those changes.

The fitness industry and it’s models are extreme, they’re like looking at a concept car at an auto show, it’s got wings and all sorts of fancy stuff that looks like it’s borrowed from Star Trek, but the car you buy doesn’t look like that, even if you buy a Ferrari, it still looks like a car compared to the concept models at the show. Your body is pretty much the same, the body you “buy” or build and live with on a daily basis is different from the one that fitness magazines are “selling” you.

Bear that in mind when reading magazines and looking at the models.

This is why it’s pointless to compare your pictures you took on your vacation with the one on a cover of a fitness magazine.

You Don’t Need to Hire a Professional Photographer to Get Good Photos

While some people decide that once they put the effort into the training and diet, they want to maximize the outcome by getting a professional photographer, Ryan did it almost all by himself. For him it would be too complicated to get a photographer, so he borrowed a camera from a friend, got up a bit earlier before his kids woke up, hung a lamp from the ceiling, put some black clothes behind him as a background and asked his wife to take the pictures.

And the result is pretty good. He proved that if you can’t get a photographer and a studio, you can take great pics yourself and still win. Don’t let the opportunity of winning a contest and some money slip through your fingers just because you think you need a photographer.

Take home message from Ryan:

  • Use the Adonis Index community, they are honest awesome and helpful people
  • “Contest was fun, it was definitely a good push that helped me to get in a better shape”
  • Figure out what is sustainable and what fits your lifestyle, it won’t be the same as thing as it is for the next guy over
  • Ryan is a “sprinter”, he can put a lot of energy into something for a short period of time, if you are the same, try to incorporate some of his tips into your routines
  • If you are tall and lean or don’t have much fat to get rid of try to guess calories rather than count them
  • You will have little slip ups, as long as you keep making progress you will get to your goal, so don’t worry it is okay to make mistakes, some would even say necessary
  • Being in shape is something you want to keep for the rest of your life, so find what works for YOU
  • The goal is to make it sustainable, fitness models can’t sustain the look for they have for the show for very long, so don’t aim for the impossible
  • Find your motivator, for Ryan it was his job and the fact that he is required to take his shirt off from time to time on stage in front of a lot of people
  • Train for aesthetics, but don’t train just your mirror muscles, train it all and just focus a little more on the muscles that make up the best AI ratio
  • Take pictures, you will see your muscles from completely different angles then you are used to and you will be able to notice how thick, wide and shaped your muscles naturally are
  • You don’t need a professional photographer to take good pictures, just play with what you got
  • Everybody looks different and have different genetics, so don’t compare yourself to others

Words & phases mentioned in the podcast:

Listen to the interview here:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Android | RSS

Filed Under: Contest, Podcasts, Transformation Tagged With: , ,

He Got Ripped without Counting Calories or Doing Cardio

November 7, 2011 by

Brad Greyeyes Brant has a very interesting name, but what is even more interesting than his name is the fact that he placed 4th in the Adonis Index Contest specifically in the transformation category.

He went from being lean to being ripped, just take a look:

Brad B Adonis Index Transformation Back

He has achieved a great muscle definition, just look at his shoulders.

Brad Adonis Index Transformation Front

From average to ripped.

When Brant first got interested in getting his physique handled he was 260 pounds. Even though he is 6’5”, 26o pounds is a lot. At this point even taking stairs was starting to be an issue. Just take a look at how Brant looked at this weight several years ago.

Brad_before_working_out_and_Adonis_Index

This is a picture of Brant at a body weight of approximately 260 lbs.

After looking at himself in a mirror Brant decided to get in shape. And he started as most guys would, he found some muscle building and fat loss programs designed by a bodybuilder, he signed up for them and followed it for about six months.

He was doing about an hour of cardio each morning seven times a week. He was training at specific times of the day, if the program said go to the gym at 5 p.m., he would go at 5 p.m.

He was timing his meals to the minute, always made sure he ate every three hours no matter where he was or what he was doing.

Even though his wife was very supportive, this approach was incredibly inflexible. Could you imagine not being able to eat your birthday cake? Or have a Christmas dinner with your family? This is exactly what he did.

Brant is the type of guy who is all out or nothing at all. He though that his approach was a sign of dedication, but in reality what it really was, was an obsession.

He Found Out He Can Enjoy His Life & Look Good at the Same Time

After a while Brant came across Brad Pilon’s blog and once he read what Brad eats during his day he was completely confused. Because Brad is in exceptional shape and he eats like an average person (some would even say like a kid), brownies, pizza and pasta are regular foods in his meal plan. In his schedule there was nothing about eating every three hours, having protein with each meal or preparing his meals upfront. Brad was just saying that he is enjoying his food and that the only thing he aims for is to limit the amount of calories to keep lean.

On his blog he noticed the workout Pilon was doing and he decided to give it a try. He bought the Adonis Index Workout and started following it.

Brant never wanted to look like a huge bodybuilder, so the Adonis Index philosophy of building a proportioned body with lean waist and visible six pack abs was something he was interested to build for himself.

He gave the workouts a shot and after seeing the results never looked back

It’s all about what you truly want. Is it a really good looking body or do you want to be strong and focus on performance? What do you really want?

Brant has chosen the look and even though he made this choice ironically he is stronger than ever.

However, you still need to know what you are after. Most guys really want to just look good, strength and performance is secondary but many guys cannot separate the two ideas.

If you have the same problem with getting over the goal of becoming stronger, you need to understand something. Strength is relative and specific to only those exercises you do on regular basis. For example you can get really good at incline dumbbell press, but completely suck on regular barbell bench press. Another example, Brant’s dad is incredibly strong, because he is used to doing physical work, however he can’t do a pull-up. On the other hand Brant is not as strong as his dad overall, but pull-ups are not an issue for him. Strength is relative.

And if you are not a competitive power lifter then there is no point in aiming for strength for it’s own sake. Set the goal of improving your physique and the strength will come along with it.

Brant’s Tips to Get Contest Ripped

Brant placed 4h in the contest and that is an incredible accomplishment and requires a big amount of effort. Let’s take a look at what it is that Brad did that was different from other contestants.

Because in the past he was obsessed with fitness and over complicating things, he took a very simplistic and flexible approach this time. From a diet stand point he followed the Anything Goes Diet and decided to just guess the amount of calories he eats and keep it really simple.

He calculated that his BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) is about 2500 calories, so he has a budget of 2500 x7 calories per week.

The way he was guessing his calorie intake was that he calculated things in 500 calorie chunks. This way he is not obsessed with counting calories and still knows what he puts in his mouth and never overeats. This approach seems to work quite well for people with high BMR’s (however if your BMR is 1600, you might need to adjust it to a smaller chunks).

Brant usually eats whatever he wants during the weekend and just creates a deficit during the week. If he happened to eat a little bit more, he would notice it in the mirror.

Today Brant is leaner than ever, he is in the best shape of his life and with significantly less time invested in fitness than before. He can eat what he is served when he visits his father in law who is Italian and makes delicious meals. He can enjoy birthday parties and doesn’t have to sneak away on Christmas to eat his protein rich, “clean” meal.

He doesn’t do any cardio, and his workouts are focused on building muscles.

He also stopped caring about what other people think in the gym about him and the weights he lifts. This is a very important aspect of your training, in order to really train properly you need to focus on yourself and let go of your ego.

Brant went from being called skinny to getting compliments on his shape. Suddenly he is confident wearing fit clothes and can look great and feel great as well.

Body weight is also no longer an issue.

The only thing he cares about now is how he looks in a mirror.

Here is the take home message from Brad:

  • Keep it simple as long as it is working
  • Do what you want to do, as long as you are happy with your results keep doing it
  • Weigh yourself before and after, not during the contest, get to learn your body, you will see whether you are moving forward or not, the scale can mess you up and can tell a different story than the mirror or your clothes
  • In order to build muscle, you need to train really hard
  • The quickest way to lose fat is to eat below your BMR
  • Getting and staying in shape is a lifestyle and it doesn’t have to be complicated
  • Your body measurements are much more important than your body weight, especially if you are very tall or short
  • In order to get great results you need to enjoy the process of getting in shape, so find your way to do so
  • The path will be as difficult as you make it
  • You can grab a slice of pizza instead of steamed vegetables even now and then, it won’t mess you up as long as you account for the calories

Listen to the interview here:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Android | RSS

Filed Under: Contest, Fat Loss, Podcasts, Transformation Tagged With: , , , , ,
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