Some time ago I helped a friend of mine get in shape. He wanted to be ripped for vacation and had three months to do it.
And I’ll be damned if he didn’t do it.
My friend lost 27 pounds in 3 months.
When I say I ‘helped’ him I use that term loosely, because the truth is I didn’t do much.
He did all the work. I just threw some advice out here and there.
“Eat this, lift that.” was my main instruction.
I corrected his lifting form through videos he sent me. He listened to feedback diligently and thought about my suggestions critically.
He asked questions about “Why eat this”, or “How to do that”. HE WAS ENGAGED. My friend was invested in the process. He gave a shit. He had a goal to hit and was determined to achieve it.
How Bad Do You want It?
Anyone can get ripped. Anyone.
Why is that?
The question is – how bad you want it?
I’ll prove that with a little backstory of my friend Kiely.
This guy lives in New York city. A place with tens of thousands of food options, a killer night life, and moves at a pace that would make most people’s head spin.
Not only is he surrounded by temptation and distractions 24/7, he must meet the high standards of a demanding job in technical sales.
But in spite of all that, he found a way to make it work.
If a traveling salesman in the busiest city in America can find time to workout and eat right, why can’t you?
You can. You just need to follow through.
Follow Through and Do the Work
Why do most people fail to lose weight?
They quit. Plain and simple.
It’s okay to quit. As long as you keep trying when you fail. It’s not okay to give up and stop trying.
It takes time to see results. Most people don’t finish what they start. I help out several dozens of people from around the world. Most of them for free.
They all have challenges to overcome. Some grew up poor and live in the slums, others are working and earning advanced degrees in the richest cities in the world, while others are serving mandatory military service.
No matter their situation or station in life, the ones that stick to the plan get results.
Fitness is a labor of love for me. And I’ll help anyone who is willing to help themselves. I help everyone that takes the initiative to reach out to me for help. I do everything I can for them except feed them and lift the weights for them.
To achieve a goal you need a plan. A tried and true plan that you know can work. You know a plan can work if it worked for others. When you know it works you trust the process. When you trust the process you fully dedicate yourself to work the plan. Then keep working until you see the results you want.
I think that’s why Keily reached out to me for help. He saw that I made a radical change in my own physique after posting my body transformation on instagram.
The picture in particular was my before and after picture showing my contest prep results. In March 2018 I competed in my first bodybuilding competition. It took me less than 3 months to lose 35 pounds.
Ultimately, his accomplishments are his own.
He took care of the small daily disciplines that add up to big results over three months:
This story reminds me of a quote from Derek Sivers:
“If knowledge was the answer to all our problems, we would all be billionaires with six-pack abs.”
Knowledge counts for jack-shit until it’s applied in the real world.
You need a goal, a plan, and a framework to work from.
Everyone has obstacles to overcome.
Everyone has commitments that make eating right and training consistently a challenge.
People have a life outside the gym and want to LIVE IT TO THE FULLEST.
The reason I love this account is because it gives an honest look at what it takes to get ripped.
This guy faced the the toughest conditions imaginable. Always on the go and constantly surrounded by temptation in the city. At any moment he could have given up like most folks do.
The following is the unedited. Un-abridged account of my friend’s three-month transformation.
Enter Kiely:
Kiely’s Diet and Workout Regimen
This section was written directly by Kiely.
Workout and Diet Duration: 3 Months
Starting weight: 211lbs
End Weight: 184lbs
Net strength change: Deadlift: +10lbs, Bench Press: -20lbs, Squat: +0lbs
The Goal and The Plan
Initially I started this diet because I wanted a discipline challenge.
I’ve been doing Brazilian jiu jitsu and wrestling since I was in HS/college, so I’ve done variations of a “cut” diet before, but never for more than 2-3 weeks maximum with a max loss of 12lbs.
However, that past experience was definitely to my advantage – the hardest lesson you learn after your first time dieting is that it requires acceptance that you’re just going to be consistently uncomfortable.
This is especially true if you’re someone like me who generally eats healthy, but eats a lot.
The idea that you can do this by taking any sort of easy route doesn’t make sense, and I think that’s how a lot of people get caught up oscillating between diets permanently.
Following the 80/20 rule, 80% of the pain would come from the diet, but would ultimately contribute to any success I had.
To get me through the pain of a diet, I know I needed an end date that has an event/focus to keep myself accountable.
During my wrestling and (more so) BJJ years it was always with a match or submission tournament at the end of the tunnel, and with a more clearly defined weight goal.
This time around, I was more focused on body aesthetics, so I chose my July 4th vacation as a deadline – (mainly because I knew I was going to be in a swimsuit).
I was going to do this by maximizing fat loss over a total period of 3 months, while also trying to minimize strength loss.
After working with Jordan, he came up with a diet guideline for me, generated a starting point for my macros, and gave me some suggestions for maximizing results with as little pain as possible.
My job as an outside sales rep means I travel a lot, and don’t have a consistent routine in my life. My biggest concern was being able to find flexibility in a diet, and ensure I was eating the correct foods to fit my macros while on the road.
A lot of creative thinking came into play for this, but this is in general would Jordan and I settled on:
Prior to diet: 3500-4500 calories daily, eating whatever. Having a company card on the road, plus living in NYC with great food everywhere didn’t help. My maintenance calories for my size (6’2”, 211) was about 3164, with 22,146 per week.
Starting Macros and Calorie Count
Daily ~2400 calories, 260g Protein, 120g Fat, 130g Carbs.
Exercise Regimen for Fat Loss and Strength Retention
Weightlifting cycle of pushing exercises 1st day, next day pull exercises, next day legs, then rest day. Then repeat. Cardio was 20 min low intensity at the end of each workout.
The 1st Month
The first month was a lot of fluctuation to the diet, as I had to find what worked for my routine.
That first week cutting to 2400 cals was brutal. Low energy was a huge issue, since I was so used to running on high amounts of carbs, and my body was switching over to using stored energy.
After the first week I started to do a nearly complete fast in the mornings doing only a cup of black coffee and some almonds (about 100 cals).
This was conducive to being on the road, and I found that I wasn’t terribly hungry in the mornings anyway so I would save my calorie allotment for later in the day and closer to my workout when I needed it.
Lunch would usually consist of a salad with some lean protein source (eg. salad with grilled chicken).
I would then get my lift in, drink my protein shake to hold me over for an hour, and then eat dinner at about 7-8pm which consisted of a variation of a protein source that was different from lunch’s, and an enormous amount of vegetables.
More fibrous vegetables were low in calories and would fill me up to psychologically make me think about something other than a burger.
Dinner was always the largest meal of the day and would put me at about 2200 cals for the day. Having a large dinner was nice since it would tide me over until I went to bed, where I would drink a casein shake right before to stave off hunger while trying to sleep. That would be the usual last ~200 cals.
I also found that smart snacks were a useful tool. Getting from lunch to dinner especially while on the road was the hardest stretch, especially when I had a hard lift to look forward to after work.
These snacks would be usually some nuts and a moderate source of healthy carbs.
This was a measured decision – I found that my lifts would start to lag if I didn’t properly time my allotted dosage of carbs during the day.
The sweet spot for me was 1.5-2.5 hours before my workout, and I’d get in about 30grams of my 130g daily carbs in a snack.
This made it so my lifts were maximizing productivity and not me just gritting my teeth and feeling exhausted.
At the suggestion of Jordan (and with a little tweaking on my part) I would break my lifts down like so:
– 1 compound lift (eg. squat for leg day) 5 sets at 12, 10, 8, 6, and 10 reps.
– 4 isolation lifts following the same rep structure
-20 min low intensity cardio (eg. stationary bike)
My cycle made it so that in any week I was working out 6 days, with one rest day. Another important thing I introduced in the first month was a cheat meal.
Initially I had enough motivation and mental drive to get through two weeks sticking to the diet, but it became clear I would cave if I stayed so rigid.
I also really enjoy trying new food and restaurants in the city, and I cared about quality of life.
So I made my rest day a cheat meal day, where I would eat as much as I wanted, and whatever I wanted, but for dinner only.
I set rules for myself, and I could eat whatever only within an hour window, but beyond that I was cut off.
I also made sure that the next day I doubled down on cardio to compensate.
The prescribed theory is that if your body is in carb/calorie deficient state (a more sympathetic activated mode), it is already efficiently running on stored energy from fat. Introducing a mass of carbs for only one meal wouldn’t break the elasticity of the sympathetic mode you’re already in, so you’re basically capitalizing on the inherent wiggle room.
Again, it’s a theory, but it became a paradigm I adopted to try and mitigate any hinderance a cheat meal would have. As far as I could tell, it wasn’t a placebo effect.
Month #2
Net weight loss after first month = -9lbs ( Bodyweight = 202lbs)
Not a ton of physical changes I noted yet, but Jordan said that was to be expected.
This was the hardest month because you’re not really seeing a ton of aesthetic improvement and you’re still trying to stay consistent with your diet.
The exercise became something I looked forward to each day, and I would incorporate new isolation lifts that I wanted to try out (a lot of them suggested by Jordan).
I was hitting my stride with the exercise, but the diet was getting VERY difficult – purely because I had gotten so bored by the food I was eating.
I made more of an effort to research other options, especially certain restaurants on the road and their low carb lean meal options.
A lot of middle class fancy restaurants like Chili’s catch a lot of flak (and frankly have a depressing vibe to them) but they offer a lot of solid options for this type of diet.
The introduction of those restaurants helped introduce some more variation to my meals, and made it a lot easier.
Alcohol Consumption
The first month I realized how I grossly underestimated my calories from alcohol. Big mistake.
I just switched to liquor, tried to stay within 2-3 drinks, and also tried to keep my bar day on my cheat day.
Cue the eyeroll from my friends – obviously this didn’t happen every week. But it was something I’d shoot for. The reality is I lost ~9 lbs the first month, and it would have probably been more had I been more strict with my alcohol intake.
You can alter this to fit your weight loss goals obviously, but for me I was staying on the wagon.
The 3rd Month
Net weight loss after Month #2 = -16lbs (Bodyweight = 195lbs)
This to me was the easiest month.
I had ironed out most of my issues with the routine and diet, and started to incorporate some fun changes to the exercise routine.
For example, I would still have a rep structure for my compound lift that would focus on maintaining strength (6-8 rep at the top of the pyramid which works for me), but every other exercise I would increase to 4 sets of 15 reps.
One of the isolations I would make sure to do a dropset pyramid. This definitely helped to amplify fat loss and vascularity. This is also when I really started to see results, which was encouraging to finish strong.
At the suggestion of Jordan I increased my cardio to 30-40 minutes at the end of each workout, with twice a week getting in an hour.
After 2 months of doing cardio and a hard lifting routine, I was in great shape, and could up the intensity on the cardio too.
Final Results:
Net weight at the end of 3rd month = -27lbs (Bodyweight = 184lbs)
I looked much more sculpted than I did starting the diet, and overall lost 27 lbs, which was huge for me.
There were a lot of takeaways from this experience. I think that any diet for someone who’s not focused entirely on aesthetics and fitness (and has a full time job) is pointless unless it is something that you genuinely think you can follow indefinitely.
Following this diet I immediately put on an additional 10 lbs and have been hovering at 195lbs since then, which is a sweet spot for having the right amount of energy I need to still do BJJ and not fall asleep on customer calls.
I’ve incorporated a lot of changes from the diet into my daily routine going forward, but that additional 10 is reserved loss for those times when I have vacations coming up.
Some things I still keep incorporated are minimizing my carbs to healthier, non-fried sources, and minimizing my large meals to the weekends.
Little changes, but they help to keep my fat % in check – mainly just changing my mentality to the weekdays as “workdays” for the diet has been a huge success.
Overall, I’ll be going to Jordan to help prescribe good starting points for any type of diet I do, an more importantly, what goals I’d like to hit.
So what did we learn?
Ok, it’s Jordan again.
Getting ripped is hard work. The hard part is keeping the disciplines daily.
You can read and research fitness articles until they throw dirt on you.
It takes just a little knowledge, some independent thought, and a lot of action. That’s the recipe for fitness.
Take what you need and make it your own. Take what works for others and adapt it to work for you.
Oh, and get started yesterday.
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