What lean and strong people are doing to stay fit and healthy.
Get in the best shape of your life by following these 5 simple tips from people who already have what you want.
One of the biggest questions in fitness is how you can effectively lose fat.
Let’s face it, many people secretly want to look and feel their best by being in the best body shape. But not all people are ready to do the work. The reason? Endless workouts and a life tied to the gym don’t sound sustainable to them.
There is some good news for people who desire a holistic, and sustainable approach to fitness in order to achieve their fitness goals without doing much of the BS thrown around in the fitness space.
Yes, you can become fit, strong, and healthy without going to the gym every day.
You can achieve the best shape of your life without giving up carbs.
You can lose fat without doing a lot of exercise.
You see, the fitness space is full of BS.
Ever since people were locked down and told not to move because of a virus that was said to wipe out millions of people, the fitness space has exploded with trendy diets, exercises, and supplements that promise quick fixes.
I suppose this happened because many people were hooked on mobile phones looking at things on the Internet. So it was appropriate to promote to them some BS. Indeed, fitness and health is a big business and many people are still unaware of the problem let alone the solutions. But it is time over for ignorance as we usher in people like me who are ready to share noBS knowledge to help people like you who want to achieve the best body shape and health of their lives.
Over time I have come to discover that fitness is health. Diseases that result from poor fitness such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and obesity are some of the world's leading causes of death. And coincidentally these health problems are common in people with excess body fat. Becoming fit therefore is a powerful investment in your health. You can see it this way; When you begin getting rid of excess body fat(by becoming fit), you are saving yourself from the disposition of these diseases. And that means that you are likely going to live longer and better. Of course, you may not get to 100 years. But you are going to live your best life when your health is on point.
Anyway, when it comes to losing body fat, there is no need to complicate things according to a 40-year-old founder and father.
Dan Go is a high-performance coach who has helped hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs transform their bodies. He is 40 years old at the time of writing this. He has spent over 20 years in the game and when it comes to fat loss, he believes it all goes down to habits.
So what are the habits?
Here are 7 habits of fit people;
They drink water.
They limit alcohol
They exercise daily.
They prioritize their sleep.
They limit processed sugars.
They eat a diet made of whole foods.
And in a nutshell; fit people are fit because they do the boring things consistently.
One fact about positive habits is that they are always boring and need some repetition and consistency. Because it is in the repetitions where growth occurs. However, people just don’t like boring staff and that could be the reason why many struggle with excess body fat.
Dan Go further stated that a great body is built over years of getting stronger and eating the same foods over and over. Here again, he is insisting on the idea of repetition of things even if they are boring and hard.
On a personal note, I have done most of those habits and in just 3 years of consistent efforts, I am in the best body shape of my life. I am stronger than many because I can lift more than my body weight from the ground. My deadlift record stands at 115kg. It was so hard when I hit it and took me years of practice to break into that lifting territory.
I have helped several men with fitness knowledge based on my experiences and I can see them even having better results than myself. I can testify
Looking at those 6 habits, for you to get in the best body shape, look better, and feel better than 90% of people, you only need 2 things. Focus only on these two things that lean and strong people like Dan Go and myself are doing and you are going to see big results following.
The first is to modify your lifestyle.
The second is to do the right physical exercises.
Many people who begin a fat loss journey fail because they fail to modify their lifestyle to achieve results. Let us say for example you normally drink alcohol and eat a lot of processed food ordered from outside kitchens. Alcohol eating every time you feel like it does not normally go hand in hand with fat loss. If you stick to this kind of life, you are going to be frustrated. Whether you like it or not. But if you decide to limit the calories you eat by cutting off unnecessary eating and drinking, it is going to be much easier to lose fat. Facts are supporting this statement. To speed up the process of fat loss, you need to add in physical exercises. I have seen and heard multiple stories where people do the wrong exercises for the wrong reasons. And more so in this case, picking the wrong exercise hoping to lose fat. As you are going to see further in this article, losing fat happens when you burn more calories than the calories you eat. If you do exercise which burns the most calories over the longest time, you are going to lose fat. Truth is, not every type of exercise is the same. And you are going to see that later.
My friend Partick who made the personal decision to return to fitness after failing to get results in the first attempt also thought that the fitness space had a lot of BS. At one point he told me how people at the gym he once trained were advising him against eating meat and made him do a lot of jumping exercises with the goal to help him lose fat. Following that advice, he saw no results and stopped training for some time.
Do you know what Patrick did?
He started reading and researching about fitness. He read blogs and listened to some podcasts. The conversations between Patrick and I suddenly started to revolve around fitness and mindset whenever we sat down. Patrick finally returned with a much new spirit. One day we hung out and I was telling him about the simple secret of fitness and health. “Lift heavy weights, eat real foods.” This is something I learned from a Master writer and marketer called Ben Settle aka eLBenbo.
Patrick nodded in agreement to this idea.
Seriously, I have been at gyms that put people into the wrong exercises while also selling people processed foods. We have seen that modifying your life by changing your eating habits, and sleeping patterns, and doing the right exercises is the cornerstone of fat loss. Unfortunately, the gyms that should be helping people achieve their health and fitness goals are the same gyms miseducating and misinforming people. Please remember that much of the time you won’t even need a gym to get in the best body shape. But if you can get it, the best and faster results you will see.
One day in November of 2023, A girl who lived in the same apartment where I lived came to me. Brown and slim girl stood at my door as we conversed. She leaned and held on the grill exposing her pot belly under her orange top.
Now this girl was asking me how she could get started with the gym.
“What is your goal?” I asked her.
She said she wanted to lose belly fat.
Surely, I encouraged her to take the step and start exercising and told her about the best gym in our hood. But you know what? I made a mistake. I skipped to tell her that if she was having extra fat, she should consider working on what she ate by fixing her diet first before starting exercise. For one reason, exercise normally makes you hungrier. When you start any form of exercise, you are going to tend to eat more food than usual. So if your goal is fat loss, and yet you are an uninformed beginner like my neighbor, exercise could even make it harder especially if you don’t teach yourself to feed correctly. However, that does not mean exercise cannot help in fat loss. As a matter of fact, taking the step to exercise can accelerate fat loss. You are going to see later in this article how to exercise and what type of exercise to do for fat loss.
Weeks passed and she never started exercise but my hope is that she was able to fix her feeding habits.
Anyway…
For the sake of the pretty girl next door and many other Fe-males, let us look at exercise for women and girls before we continue.
Indeed exercise is okay for women and girls.
There is a widespread notion that exercise especially lifting weights tends to make women unbeautiful and manly. That is false. It is true though that improper training will naturally make a woman ungraceful. But when done properly, training gives a woman the best shape of her life and added health benefits of feeling well and being strong. Without well-conditioned muscles, even the prettiest woman in the world will look shapeless and flabby. But when she trains especially using the resistance training approach (which you are going to see later in this article), she will get visible effects that are more feminine. Without a doubt, she will not look like a man. Instead, she will have an improved posture and hence stand and walk well.
She will have an outlined figure.
She will be more admirable and attractive.
Her hormones will be balanced and her moods and feelings will stabilize.
So, women who are doomed to a lifestyle where they don’t move a lot and are carrying an extra load of fat under the belly are now assured of wonders by resistance training through lifting weights.
Anyway, here are 5 simple tips from people who are already in the best body shape to help you cut off the notorious belly fat and improve your overall health all backed by research studies.
Let us dive in.
Eat a high-protein diet.
Multiple research studies have shown that protein-rich diets lower the risk of obesity. This is because protein-rich diets are very hard to overeat, to begin with.
Foods like meat, eggs, cheese, beans, and yogurt make you feel full and satiated.
Therefore you won't eat a lot and binge on food if you are not feeling like eating. Proteins help you control your appetite and hunger.
Start resistance training.
There is a big debate about cardio and strength training when it comes to fat loss. Which one is better? Do you know what? It is true that cardio exercises like running, jumping, cycling, hiking, or walking over long distances burn more calories minute by minute than resistance training. Despite all that, resistance training is still the best approach to fat loss.
And so you may ask yourself what really is resistance training?
Resistance training is using external force on your muscles to achieve strength and sculpt your body.
You see, when you do resistance training you also burn calories. More calories than when you do cardio exercises. This is how it works. Despite the fact that cardio burns most calories minute by minute, resistance training burns more calories in the long run. After cardio, the intense process of burning calories stops. However, when you do resistance training, the burning of calories can continue for up to 48 hours.
The best way to do resistance training is to go to a gym and start doing major barbell exercises. Do the squats, lunges, deadlifts, bench presses, overhead presses, and rows. Get someone to help you with the techniques or use YouTube. Someone like Chris Heria on YouTube has a lot of beginner-friendly fitness tips bot to do at home or at the gym. Watch and imitate.
The major barbell exercises are surely heavy exercises optimized for strength and will make you burn a lot of fat in the gym and away.
Which now moves to the next point. Which you are going to do away from the gym.
Eat in a caloric deficit.
People think that fat loss is a game of depriving yourself. In reality, it is about making informed choices to get a difference between the calories you consume and those that you burn. When you are in a caloric deficit, it means you are burning more than you are consuming. This is how you lose fat. And this is how you pave the way for a lean body.
And don’t get it wrong, eating in a caloric deficit does not mean that you will stay hungry. No!
In order to remain in a caloric deficit, eat more real foods rich in proteins and healthy fats and oils. As said before these kinds of natural foods are much harder to overeat than fast foods. Think of a plate of chicken Inn chips and a plate of beef with eggs and some cabbage salad. Which one are you going to have more plates of? From experience, the plate of chips is nothing to me and so I’m likely going to overeat. I might even ask for a second one. On the other side, a plate full of eggs and beef and cabbage salad can be a meal that serves even two big people.
Remaining in a caloric deficit doesn’t necessarily mean you are going to eat less food. Here is the best approach to remaining in a caloric deficit. Cut off unnecessary snacks and sugar-sweetened drinks like soda. These drinks normally carry crazy amounts of calories yet also have low nutritional value. The same goes for candies and snacks. Opt for drinks like water, black coffee, or tea, and protein-rich foods over snacks and sugary drinks. Alcohol is also something you want to avoid if you want to reduce your body fat. Because yes, alcohol carries a lot of calories and it is going to impede your fat loss efforts.
Many people always think that excess body fat comes from eating fats. No, it is the accumulation of sugars that are turned into the fat under your belly, anywhere else it can et a space. So to avoid that, you are required to reduce sugar intake from soft drinks, alcohol, and snacks. And then eat foods that fill your appetite not, foods that make you crave more eating.
Without a doubt, eating less but healthily is a sustainable way to lose fat. Makes much sense that way.
Onto the next one…
Get 8 hours of sleep.
There is a perception that when we are resting and sleeping, that is when muscle building and fat burning occur most. I like to think that is true. That is why prioritizing sleep is a non-negotiable if you want to achieve the best body shape. Research suggests that lack of enough sleep can badly affect your fat loss efforts and impede your recovery from resistance training in order to build muscle and become strong.
It is critical to stick to a consistent sleep schedule every day. And the recommended hours of sleep is 6 to 9 hours. Some people can thrive with as little as 6 hours and others thrive with more up to 9. Another thing to keep in mind is to sleep and wake up at the same time. Maintaining this consistency helps regulate hormones and bodily functions as well as recovery from training.
Manage your stress.
Today’s life has a lot of things going on.
There is a lot of noise and chaos in the modern world. From maintaining relationships to working, life can be full of stress. Couple that with the fear of missing out on things, and you notice that stress is becoming almost a norm in people’s lives. And guess what? stress and fat loss never go hand in hand.
You see, when your entire system is stressed, your efforts to fat loss efforts are also stressed. That is why you need to design and follow a routine that promotes stress management and relaxation. There are several techniques you can use and one of the best of them all is called meditation.
When I say meditation, I do not mean yogic or Buddhist stuff. Meditation is the simple act of sitting down in silence and doing nothing at all. You need to do this when you wake up and before you go to bed. And if you can get a few minutes during the day, go ahead and sit alone in silence doing nothing. Even if 15 minutes is all that you can have, it is surely better than none.
Another way to reduce stress is finding and engaging in a hobby that you like. Something like reading a novel, watching a TV drama, painting, or writing. What reducing stress does is that it contributes to a calm mind. And a calm mind leads to a healthy body and eventually leads to fitness and health.
Another very obvious thing that reducing stress does is that it regulates your hunger hormones hence you are likely to eat within a caloric deficit.
So go ahead and manage your stress level by calming your mind and avoiding mindless distractions. It goes a long way in your fat loss.
Conclusion.
The practices I have written about here in this article are the only ones you need in order to solve one of the biggest questions in fitness. The question? How to lose fat and keep it off.
Truly, from the BS thrown around in fitness, you need to step up and avoid what the masses are doing. You need to follow what lean and strong people are already doing. Because to them, these techniques have worked and are still going to work for you. Get in the mindset of a winner by taking your efforts as a journey rather than a destination. Understand that it may get boring sometimes but boredom is the actual grind. Boredom is like repetitions and the more you repeat these tips over and over again, the better feeling and body you are going to have. Now go and start building an enviable body by melting down the excess fats and becoming stronger so that you can feel better, think better, and live better.
God bless you in what you decide to do.