Diet & Workout Regiment for Summer Shred

Mapping Out The Comeback

The start of any hero ark must begin with 2 things:

1. Establish where you are currently at, and

2. Where you want to be

You’ve got to be ruthlessly pragmatic, self-aware and brutally honest about your priorities and current state of affairs. If you’re working 65 hours a week and can only make it to a gym once a week, you have to be realistic about what type of lifestyle changes you are both willing and capable of making.

Luckily for him, he’s got both the ability and the desire.

I asked if he wanted his pants to fit better or if he wanted to get properly shredded. His answer?

He just wants to look athletic again. A totally attainable and reasonably ambitious target. Based on his heigh and weight we both think he can lose about 25 lbs and see where to take it from there.

At 2 lbs a week it should be attainable within 13 weeks (~3 months). He’s going to start next week. Next up I’m going to share what I shared with him. This is the outline of his plan for diet and exercise.

Diet & Lifestyle

Remember - 90% of weight loss is your diet. Since this is our #1 goal here, this needs to be a priority. You can be in the gym every single day for 2 hours and fail to improve your physique, especially if your goal is to lose weight and lean out. You absolutely need a high protein diet and cannot regularly be going over your calories.

Food You Should Always Have at Home

The idea here is having foods that are either low in calories (ie baby carrots) or high in protein (greek yogurt) or both. You should enjoy eating them and ideally they will hold up in a fridge for at least a few weeks.

• Low fat greek yogurt (always have a big ass tub, 2% or less), and bring it to work with you

• Baby carrots

• Fresh fruits of choice, apples, bananas and watermelon

• Frozen berries (for smoothies)

• Low fat fairlife ultra filtered milk (has twice the protein and less cals)

• Egg whites & whole eggs

• Quick oats

• Protein wraps (pic below)

• Canned tuna (with light mayo, hot sauce and celery is great in a wrap)

• Frozen chicken sausage (they sell them at safeway, insanely tasty and fantastic macros.

• Beef jerky (kinda expensive but goated)

• Crispy Minis - you can crush an entire bag guilt free, good alternative to chips

• Dark chocolate, I personally still love sweet foods, dark chocolate is a good option plus it boosts nitric oxide for good pumps

Foods I would generally try to avoid

• Peanut butter (generally when I’m cutting I don’t eat any nuts because it’s super easy to eat a ton of PB which is insanely dense in calories)

• Be conscious of the amount of oil and butter you’re using when cooking

• No more fried food, order house salad with burgers when you’re out etc

• You can 100% still eat bread but try to limit most of your carbs to rice and potatoes (whole foods). And if you’re eating bagels/bread try to consume whole grain/wheat.

• Chips, pizza, white pasta (you can still eat them just try to only once or twice a month)

• Sugary breakfast cereals or anything with a lot of sugar in general

• Full fat cheese and regular milk (low fat cheese and ultrafiltered milk are simply better)

Easy Snacks & Macro Friendly Foods

• Greek yogurt, protein powder & berries. It’s like 300 calories and 45 grams of protein so it’s a great snack any time of day.

• Sauces: mix 1 part low fat greek yogurt and low fat mayonnaise with your choice of spices/hot sauces for a great low cal sauce. I.e. mix in sriracha, cumin, honey and you’ve got a sweet and spicy sauce for chicken. Helps lean chicken breast and dryer meats be less boring.

• Hard boiled eggs

• Veg & hummus

• Cold cut wraps, low fat mayo, with protein wraps. Easy 350 cals and 40 grams of protein

• Protein ice cream - look up any recipe online. I’ve heard that the ninja creamy is awesome for this but kind of expensive ($250). A regular blender works fine. Protip, add xanthan gum for better consistency.

• The overloaded protein shake (ingredients below)
  

  

• The idea of all these snacks and shit is to consume as much food as possible that has a lot of volume but low calories and or high protein. Most of these foods you could eat until you're in physical pain and still not blow through your calorie count for the day.

• Chickpea pasta (or any of the alternatives, black bean, lentil, edamame - chickpea is just the best tasting imo).

• I always try and have fruit on hand and protein bars when I’m leaving the house.

• If you have to eat when you’re out, try and go for things like Chipotle/Que Sada - it’s great value for the amount of protein you get. Just limit the amount of sauce and rice they give you and you’re mint.

General Meal Plan

Daily Eating: Total Calories: <2,500 / day (this is based on moderate weight loss for someone his weight and height - use a calorie calculator to find your own caloric intake for your own goals)

• To simplify things I want you to eat 3 meals a day and a snack.

• Your breakfast and main snack are up to you but I’ve given guidelines below.

• I want it to be super easy so you’re only ‘cooking’ once a day.

• You can break these rules every now and then but in general always try to:
  1) eat at least 210 g of protein AND 2) eat less than 2,500 cals per day

Breakfast - this should be a simple, low calorie but super high protein meal that you make religiously. If you make it a habit, it’s way easier to hit your protein everyday. Aim for at least 60 grams of protein and less than 500 cals. I drink the same protein shake every single morning.

Snacks - Have one snack a day that is high in protein and low in cals. Example - jerky, eggs, greek yogurt, a simple protein shake (fairlife milk & scoop of protein). Find something you enjoy that is super easy to make. I prefer yogurt & protein powder or chicken sausages.

Lunch/Dinner - Below is a general meal plan for dinners and lunches with the idea being that you cook once a day and eat that meal for dinner and then lunch the next day. Overall I’m sure you have a ton of meals that you could make that follow these guidelines:

• I want him to roughly consume about ~250 to 300 grams of mostly lean protein per meal

• ~100 grams of carbs (rice or potato) per meal

• and some vegetable (because they fill you up and have good nutrients)
  

  

Exercise Plan/Split

General comments: I chose movements that are highly stabilized and isolate each muscle group. If there are exercises you enjoy more than the ones I’ve written down, feel free to replace them. The only rules I want you to follow are these:

• Lower volume than you’re used to = no more than 6 total sets per session per muscle group. I.E. pick 3 chest exercises and do each exercise for 2 sets each.

• Prioritize heavy stabilization, example - chest supported row > bent over row

• Rep range: 8 to 12

• Go to absolute failure: if you can’t do the whole rep, do a partial rep until you can’t push. This is part of the reason why I like using machines, partial reps are much easier on a chest press machine than on a barbell bench with no spotter.

• I don’t mind if you squat, deadlift etc but you will be much more prone to injury which will be an immense setback therefore I advise that you don’t do it frequently. You’re not training to be a powerlifter, you’re training to look and feel good - think about your goals here and just be smart.

• 3 full minutes of rest between sets. If you’re going to failure you’ll need it.

The workout splits follow the following criteria:

• Optimize for maintaining muscle mass while in a pretty deep deficit

• Reducing time spent in the gym (nobody has time to workout 2 hours a day)

• Optimal recovery, and

• Mitigate against the risk of injury

How the splits works:

• Day 1: Chest & Tris - Mid/Upper Chest

• Day 2: Legs & Shoulders - Quad/Glute

• Day 3: Back & Bis - Upper Back

• Day 4: Rest day

• Day 5: Chest & Tris - Mid/Lower Chest

• Day 6: Legs & Shoulders - Quad/Hammies

• Day 7: Back & Bis - Lower Back

• Day 8: Rest Day

Rest Days:

In general you can do whatever you want on your days off. If you need to take more days off because you’re busy or are just sore, go for it. Try to at a minimum go for a walk and get ~5k steps in on days you’re not physically exerting yourself at the gym or doing cardio.

Guidelines you need to follow:

• 4 days a week of relatively intense exercise (heart rate should get over 140 for > 20 minutes in the day). Either in the gym or a cardio session and 1 day of >30 minutes of cardio.

• Every day I want you to try to do some type of exercise: go for a 15 minute walk, walk on a treadmill, ride your bike, swim, golf.

Warm ups & post lift

• Do whatever you need to do for warmups. If your shoulder is bugging you, get some blood moving to it. For leg days I like to walk on the treadmill for 5 minutes. I don’t do much of a warm up unless it’s a leg day and it works for me. Personal preference.

• After every single lift I want you to finish with 15 to 20 minutes of either A) walking on an incline (10% grade or steeper) at speed of 2.5 or faster or B) stair climber.

• If you have to choose between getting a lift in or cardio, prioritize cardio as you’re prioritizing weight loss.

• Mix in abs in between sets of other muscle groups once or twice a week. Recommend leg raises & ab crunch machine.

Workout Split 1 - Only 2 sets per exercise for all movements

Workout Split 2 - Only 2 sets per exercise for all movements

Do you have an overweight friend that should read this? Share this with a friend 🙂.

Let us know in the comments if there’s a topic you’d like to know more about.