We live in an unfortunate society where obesity is far too common. The negative consequences of being overweight are numerous but, as a man, the main two you should be worried about are:
1. Increased risk of a shit ton of chronic diseases
2. Low self-esteem and the negative affects this brings to your ability to gain respect from other men and attract women
…Not to mention that you’ll generally feel like crap, have lower testosterone levels, and, well, be fat.
Part of the problem is the lack of quality information out there. Far too many doctors and supplement companies are pushing gastric bypass surgeries and ineffective weight loss pills. The truth is that there’s a simple way to lose weight, and do so quickly. Yes, it’s going to take some discipline, but that’s all the more reason to bite the bullet and make it happen.
1. Lift weights
The main reason to lift weights is because you want to retain your lean mass while you’re losing weight. Losing weight without lifting weights will result in a loss of both fat and muscle tissue, and often leads to the infamous “skinny-fat” condition where you drop the pounds, but still look chubby.
This is because lifting weights provides your body with the necessary stimulus to hold onto your muscle—it gives your body a reason to burn fat instead of muscle (1). I suggest doing a full body routine three times per week.
2. Do some cardio
Cardio will accelerate your weight loss by burning off extra calories. A 30-minute session of moderate intensity cardio can burn a few hundred calories… And it only takes a deficit of approximately 500 calories per day to shed a pound per week (2). It’s also good for your heart.
3. Intermittently fast
I recommend intermittent fasting because you’ll eat less food throughout the day if you only eat during eight hours of it. I don’t recommend it because I think there’s some fat-burning magic that happens when you do so. The basic way to accomplish this is to only eat between noon and 8pm. A moderate-sized breakfast and dinner, with a snack in between, is a solid plan for reducing your overall calories.
4. Drink lots of water
There are numerous health reasons to drink more water. It improves energy, joint health, and digestive functioning. But the reason I advise it for weight loss is that it makes your stomach feel fuller… And when you feel fuller you will eat less. Drink a large glass of water before and during each meal to take advantage of this technique.
5. Drink green tea
Caffeine helps you burn fat it two major ways: it curbs your diet and it can cause a slight amount of thermogenesis and fat oxidation (3). I recommend green tea over coffee because it’s easier on your stomach and it contains numerous antioxidants that coffee does not.
6. Use circuit-style weight training
Circuit style weight training is simply when you take a set of exercises, usually three or four, and you do them in a series back-to-back with minimal rest in between. This is beneficial for weight loss because it elevates your heart rate more than traditional one-set-at-a-time weight lifting, and thus burns more calories. Here’s a basic bodyweight-only routine that can be performed in a circuit.
7. Eat “healthy” foods
Traditionally healthy foods are high in fiber and calorically sparse (they contain relatively few calories for their volume). This means they’ll fill you up more than “junk” foods. A few “healthy” foods include chicken, fish, vegetables, rice, potatoes, and squash.
8. Eat less
This is the golden rule. You must eat less in order to lose weight. You must provide your body with fewer calories than it requires to function. This forces it to harvest this energy from fat and muscle stores on your body, and results in weight loss.
If you’re trying to lose weight, I suggest you take a look at my new training program “Body of a Beast.” Read reviews and get it here.
Read More: 4 Fitness Myths That Are Pure Bullshit
References:
1. Layman, Donald K., et al. “Dietary protein and exercise have additive effects on body composition during weight loss in adult women.” The Journal of nutrition 135.8 (2005): 1903-1910.
2.Bortz, Walter M. “Predictability of weight loss.” JAMA 204.2 (1968): 101-105.
3. Westerterp‐Plantenga, Margriet S., Manuela PGM Lejeune, and Eva MR Kovacs. “Body weight loss and weight maintenance in relation to habitual caffeine intake and green tea supplementation.” Obesity research 13.7 (2005): 1195-1204.
Rule 1 to infinity: Don’t eat shit. Fat loss is really 90 percent nutrition and 10 percent exercise. Ponder on the fact that there are fat athletes, from high school football players to professional MMA fighters. They train more than 20 hours a week, much more than joe blow’s 30 min a day 5 times a week, yet are still fat.
And find out what meal plan works for you cause everybody is different, I have a friend who gets ripped only eating protein and fat and that does nothing for me but when I cut fat and just eat lean protein and carbs like oatmeal, rice, and sweet potatoes I get lean and feel great. there isn’t one plan that works for everyone that I know of so its best to experiment and after a couple weeks look at results and go from there on what to change
This aspect can not be stressed enough. Stay away from processed foods is a golden rule. Eat lots of protein and cut down on sugar. Diet is the crucial ingredient in maintaning a healthy weight. Everything else is supplementary.
try wind sprints over jogging for cardio:
http://www.readysetgofitness.com/newsletter/10_New%20Research%20shows%20how%20to%20increace%20HGH%20530%25.htm
Body weight squats at the same intensity will produce the same metabolic effect. You can do the squats without moving more than a foot from your bed, thus in all weather conditions, and with a much lower risk of injury. Equipment cost drops to zero.
If you wish to improve your sprinting you are going to have to sprint, because it is a specific skill, but that’s something different.
Jogging and any form of ‘steady-state’ cardio is seeming to be outdated from many sources. I think people get to where they can run for an hour and think they’re getting in better and better health. It’s really just an adaptation. It’s better condition (for that repeated activity) but it’s not better health. The improvements in conditioning are misread as improvements in health. I’ve gone crazy with cardio before, got washed out, had some (normally polite) people openly express concern over my appearance, was depressed and generally felt like I wish shrinking. Heavy cardio post-30 can wreak havoc on your hormonal state. Rip a thousand calories from your system in an hour and your body goes into shocked ‘starvation mode’ Hormone production shuts down because the body can survive that, preserving calories for more crucial functions. Yeah, you get used to it so it’s not as alarming as it sounds but it’s still to be avoided. Middle-age cardio hags are my proof. Alberto Salazar had heart issues by his early forties. Many of those extreme distance guys just drop dead young. Jim Fixx. Extreme cardio thins out the heart walls to accommodate the activity. The heart’s a muscle. You exercise it of course but an hour straight isn’t necessary. Bursts are where it’s at imo. You don’t workout your bicep muscle by doing 45 minutes of air curls, do you? That’s my take. I have a real arrogant in-law, super woman type who’s still into triathlons. Talk about outdated. Pushing forty, she looks okay but the wall is going to clobber her. Vascular, wiry, wrinkles on the way. The wasted, wiry hips of super cardio middle age women make me sick. Ligaments, veins, knobs and bones everywhere. Gross.
Weight room only. Mix in some hikes and run some shuttles/sprints on the grass a few times a week for 30 minutes.
Every fat obsese women in the West needs to read this article. Don’t forget to add point 9:
Men are only attracted to thin girls, not fat land whales.
I think lifting weights is not necessary when someone wants to lose weight, just a lot of cardio and a diet with sugars, bad cholesterol and carbohidrates reduced to the minimum. Quit drinking Sodas and Fried food.
“I think lifting weights is not necessary when someone wants to lose weight . . .”
You are correct. All that is needed is a calorie restriction. But the author is not writing about losing weight, he’s talking about losing fat, and says so explicitly in the title.
Fat and weight are not the same thing. Doing it your way will reduce weight, but tend to increase fat percentage, and even a marathoner is best served with the lowest practical absolute fat mass and highest practical muscle mass.
It’s the muscle that produces the power part of “power to weight ratio.”
I used to be 330 pounds 2 years ago and I’m about 270 now. People think I’m 230-240 because I put on muscle while I was losing the fat. I still have fat to lose, and I’ve been as high as 360 and as low as 260 as an adult. I look better now at 270 than I did at 260 because when I dieted down to 260 several years ago, I did it without building muscle. I also feel much better and will sustain the fat loss this time because I feel a much more tangible reward from building muscle all over my body. Just getting lighter does not feel nearly as good.
Green tea has estrogenic properties, heads up:
” Harvard Health Publications cites green tea as reducing estrogen while it aids in other areas, including cancer prevention”
I’d rather keep to coffee and not fuck with my T levels in an environment where T levels are already on the decline.
“Harvard Health Publications cites green tea as reducing estrogen while it aids in other areas, including cancer prevention”
Reducing estrogen is a good thing. Our environment is loaded with xeno-estrogens from plastics; pesticides and preservatives. These are compounds that your body reacts to as if they were estrogen.
Google “xeno-estrogens”. You’ll be shocked how much estrogen is out there. Also Google “estrogen dominance”.
You’re right. I pasted the wrong thing. I thought I read somewhere before that green tea INCREASED estrogen rather than DECREASED. I’ll have to research more. I’m hoping it’s not one of these scientific points of contention where there is no solid proof and it’s all conjecture based on various “for” and “against” studies.
Might be.
I looked it up after I read your post and found myself on the blog GoodLookingLoser where he lamented that he had to cut back on his green-tea drinking.
If I gotta drink less green tea I’m gonna be annoyed.
Too much coffee increases cortisol, which is antagonistic to T production.
$hit. I gotta look that up.
And coffee does have some antioxidants in it as well. https://www.bing.com/search?setmkt=en-US&q=coffee+antioxidants
Great article, lifting weights makes fat loss way easier, since strength training increases your insulin sensitivity and makes you burn more calories while at rest.
There is another key recommendation to weight loss: manage your sugar intake. Minimizing the amount of sugar you consume will compel your body to obtain energy from fat instead of the short-term energy fix that sugar provides.
On a calorie restricted diet it really doesn’t matter. At the end of the day the the calories required from fat storage will be the same; the deficit.
There are plenty of other reasons to restrict sugar (all sugar, like lactose and glucose) though. One of which is that it’s a short-term energy fix, which can drive longer term hunger if it displaces other nutrients.
Being hungry is the biggest impediment to maintaining a calorie restriction. It’s a primal force. Fight it long enough and you will lose. If you don’t lose, you will be dead.
Sugar also spikes insulin levels which facilitates fat storage. I think it’s more complex than the ‘calories in/calories out’ message. There are hormonal issues to think about. But whatever the reasoning; just don’t eat sugar at all. It kills everything. It spoils your taste buds, gives you deceptive appetite levels, inflames your cell structure. It’s terrible.
A Calorie restricted diet is not the same thing as an ad lib diet. Fat is not the same thing as weight. These parameters are important to keep straight.
Unless you are locked in an insulated coffin or some such, when Calories go out, they are gone. They no longer interact with your system in any way. They are what they are.
If you have not taken in enough mass you can exchange for energy, the deficit must come from your own mass.
“There are hormonal issues to think about. ”
Yes, that’s why you should strength train when Calorie restricted. It’s what stimulates the hormonal balance to preserve muscle and shed fat. That is a matter of composition, not weight.
Want to become more metabolically conservative of energy so your Calories out go down? That’s easy, just get rid of your muscle and bone, which is what will happen if you don’t strength train, because of the hormonal balance stimulated when Calorie restricted and not stressing the muscular system. It’s a basic survival adaptation to ditch energy expensive tissue that isn’t being used.
Strength train while in a Calorie surplus and the hormonal balance stimulated will add muscle if there is sufficient protein available to do so; and bit of fat, because fat is structural. The term for a person with no fat is “puddle on the floor.”
A surplus of sugar in the blood stream with nothing in particular to do (used for energy or stored as glycogen) will stimulate a hormonal balance that stores it as fat, because sugar is corrosive, and thus, in excess, toxic.
If you go into Caloric restriction later in the day, maybe because you’re sleeping, it can be pulled out of storage again to be used to cover the deficit, so just because it was stored as fat does not mean you get fatter, if . . . the hormonal balance is such that it can be released. If it isn’t, you’ll still lose weight, it’ll just come from somewhere else.
“It spoils your taste buds, gives you deceptive appetite levels, inflames your cell structure.”
And by cross linking proteins literally tans (as in leather) your skin and artery walls.
It’s the body’s rough equivalent of Nitro-Hydrazine “fuel.” Better to run on diesel as much as you can.
Green tea lowers testosterone. Fuck that.
But apart from that, I love Jefe’s articles. Best writer on RoK in my opinion.
Thank you.
Also I’ve never heard this about green tea, have you seen a study that found this? I’m curious if I should stop.
I don’t recommend eating anything that is grain based or high in carbohydrates. Humans really have no business in eating grains except selling it to make money. Reduce fruits to a minimum, maybe eliminate it completely.
Eat natural fats and minimally processed meats. Tons of fresh vegetables.
Basically, eat what a caveman would have been able to eat.
Yep. primal blueprint is the way to go.
Reduce/Eliminate fruits? I can’t agree with that. If you’re going to greatly cut down on grains then the calories from fruit wouldn’t be an issue anyway. I would say to eliminate fruit juices though.
I used to think that way, and was eating a lot of fruits. Started to gain fat even exercising. Then I made the switch to eliminate all fruits to reduce my consumption of fructose. After that, the fat started to disappear.
not even bananas?
Bananas has one of the higher sugar content. 20 or so grams each.
Having fruits from time to time won’t hurt you. Have a small bite. I personally have eliminated fruits to lose fat. Once I get to where I want to be, I will enjoy fruits again but only as a treat.
The whole caveman diet is utter nonsense. Does the paleo diet involve catching/growing your own food and then starving if the getting isn’t good? Or what about consuming large amounts of insects or the scavenging of bone marrow – protein/fat sources our ancestors exploited before the development of grass fed beef. Cause that’s what happened to old cavemen back in the day without refrigeration and modern conveniences. Even better, most people living over 10,000 years ago didn’t live past 40, and a huge majority died below the age of 18. I doubt there diets made make much sense to modern man.
Reenactment isn’t the point man. Actually most of the people in the world eat bugs. And marrow is one of the tastiest foods out there – fancy restaurants will serve it as an appetizer for $20 a plate. They died early because of violent deaths – getting killed hunter or foraging or killed by another person. They lived normal lifespans if they made it past those dangers. Their diets make plenty of sense.
I’ve been eating that way for 6 years and here are my results;
http://themanthemyth.com/what-now/
I work out less than 2 hours a day and I’m below 10% body fat year round without counting calories. I include dairy because I tolerate it but that’s all the paleo diet is about. Find out what food works for you – cutting out processed crap is a great start for 99% of guys out there.
3, 4, 7, 8 are the most important. exercise leads to increased appetite, and for the undisciplined this means gorging.
“The basic way to accomplish this is to only eat between noon and 8pm. A
moderate-sized breakfast and dinner, with a snack in between . . .”
It’s a strange world we’ve made when eating three times a day, every day, is called “fasting.” Even Martin Berkhan, whose Lean Gains program is basically what you are advocating here, stepped away from the IF label. It’s just delaying breakfast and not snacking after dinner.
“Traditionally healthy foods are high in fiber and calorically sparse . . .”
If your last name is Graham or Kellogg. Even if it is, it’s a tradition that ignores 99.999. . . percent of dietary history. I’m not advocating paleo, but before you start stuffing yourself with fiber, you might want to read Graham and Kellogg who started the craze. Pad your forehead first.
Then read Owsley as an antidote and go buy yourself some steak, eggs and liver.
” . . . chicken . . .”
Became a “healthy” food because chicken breast is high in protein, but low in fat. Thus it’s good for maintaining your protein intake while calorie restricted. But nearly fat free white meat is incomplete as a nutrition source. If you aren’t cutting you should eat a mix of dark and white, with the fat. Together they equal red meat, so you can just get a hunk of beef or woodchuck instead if you don’t particularly like chicken. It’s just as healthy.
” . . . rice, potatoes . . .”
Basically sugar. The potatoes have some vitamins and minerals, which if you’re a serf trying to live and work hard on practically nothing because you have no other choice will be needed, but a whole plate of potatoes can’t hold a candle to a mouthful of liver.
Read the actual nutrition data on various foods and what you’ll discover is that most of what you’ve heard at the gym and read in Men’s Health and Shape is a load of crap.
Well cooked bacon and liver are the most nutritionally dense foods, and actually more satisfying, because of the high protein content, long term than sugar and fiber (more commonly known as cardboard, sawdust or string. Do you really think your diet needs more cardboard, sawdust or string?).
The idea that high fiber, low calorie food is “healthy” is insane. If you believe it, you suffer from Slave Mind (having adopted the forced life of the slave as positive virtues to be maintained). It’s the diet you feed to beasts you intend to work to death at minimum cost.
Like a Chinese coolie or Irish tenant farmer.
Calories, even on a reducing diet, is your life force.
thanks for writing that, because i probably wouldn’t have bothered. but it’s bang on point. this one comment is better than the rest of the main article’s advice.
jefe we <3 you. you’re one of the only ROK authors right now not spouting MRAesque bitchassness. I’ve also noticed a lot of beta sentiments and game advice from ROK lately.seriously most of the authors on ROK are most likely betas at this point. you are one of the only authors that maintains the “improve yourself and your game” model of the red pill and not the “lets complain about feminism” model. keep it up man.
Thank you. When you focus on yourself external factors and bullshit mean less and less to you.
Better advice than 99% of the bullshit out there
Despite my criticism elsewhere in the thread, I want to go on record seconding this. Even if I think the ore could use a bit more refining, it is a nugget of gold in a river of shit.
I mean any search on google is likely to bring up bad advice. “cut carbs out of your diet!” “Take the stairs more every day!” The bottom line is sugar makes you fat, cardio burns fat, and resistance training makes muscles=calories burned
To understand the true nature of a baseball, I have to understand quantum physics.
To understand its trajectory I have to understand General Relativity.
To throw the ball and hit a target I don’t need to know a damn thing about either.
Too many people spend their time obsessing about micro effects below the noise threshold. They never get around to actually throwing the ball.
Stick to the empirical basics and you just git ‘er done.
I will point out, however, that one of the bits of bad advice you’ll find with a web search is the idea that the point of exercise is to burn fat. That’s like saying the point of driving a car is to burn gas.
The point of burning fat is to do exercise.
Just wondering what Jefe looks like. When it comes to fitness I don’t take the advice of anyone unless it has worked for them and they look good as a result of it.
One of the fittest people in the history of the world. Is this what you had in mind?
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ga2COoXtxag/TtoGH-ZiWnI/AAAAAAAABQM/UkE2ozxcqio/s400/vasily+alekseyev.jpg
why do power lifters have giant guts? Does it help with balance when squatting?
To the extent that it improves leverage markedly.
Also bear in mind that all lifters, if not limited in body weight by the rules, will be fairly soft, because you actually have maximum possible muscle mass, and thus strength, with a fair amount of fat.
Fitness is measured by function, and the function of a lifter is to add more weight to the bar. If they look in a mirror it’s only to check their form, but it’s the numbers that are the goal. Just as a lean and mean sprinter judges his fitness by looking at a watch. His relative leanness is an effect of his function, not the end goal.
You’ll limit yourself with that mentality. Action > Speculation.
I’ll limit myself by wanting to see proof?
Actually yes. Doesn’t seem logical but it is true. Term is ‘analysis paralysis’. Waiting for the perfect answer / solution before taking any action.
Yes, you will limit yourself this way. If you want definitive proof that anything try it for yourself. Action.
I will yet again have to agree with some of the comments. You’re limiting yourself by only following advice from people who look the part. Some of the best coaches and Pts are people who have tried to be the best and worked for it, without having the talent to reach that level. While some pros who gives advice don’t know shit and only got the juice and talent to thanks for their results. I would recommend that you instead follow reason and logic and trainers testimonials.
I lost over 100 pounds between the winter of ’05 and the fall of ’06. Do your cardio first thing in the morning on a totally empty stomach. (Coffee or pre-workout drinks are obvious exceptions.) The weight fell off when I did that.
I must say that’s freaking awesome for you! I hope you’ve been able to keep the fat off and that you’ve built a physique you’re happy with.
I have. Much more self-confidence and poise.
As an fitness coach it always gladdens me to hear people succeeding with their change without falling back to old bad habits. Best of luck in all your future endeavors Chris.
I just got Insanity Max:30 in the mail. I’m going to add to the end of my workout & see how it is. It looks really good from initial impressions.
Do 30 minutes of burpees while watching YT videos.
Send me 120 bucks.
Perhaps, but there’s a lot more variety on that & I get more motivated with someone yelling at me.
Variety:
“I get more motivated with someone yelling at me.”
I understand that some people seem to need that for some reason, but I’ll note, as something to think about, that these people are very rarely referred to as “winner.”
Or, as you may not be interested in winning, per se, I’ll rephrase it in RoK terms:
That’s a beta trait. You might want to work that.
Then you can either call me a loser to my face or fuck off…your choice….bitch
When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.
And even the teacher should be a student. I can teach people how to break my records if they have the talent to do so, but I am currently learning from Graeme Obree, who operated on a higher plane than myself and can, perhaps, teach me to break my own records.
If I break my own record, have I rendered myself a loser?
Things that should make you go, “Hmmmmmmmmm.”
For 6 months I fasted 2 days a week, usually Tuesdays and Thursdays, from about 8 on Monday night until Wednesday morning, same for Thursdays. Like the 5:2 but eat nothing just drink spring water. Tap water here is fluoridated.
Every morning I have my kettle bells in my bedroom. 30 minute workout, swings, goblet, etc., whatever takes your fancy, then abs. Don’t do any longer than 30 mins. Shed about a stone, and got ripped. Didn’t really change my diet otherwise, stomach shrank so fuller on less food.
Getting back to it again. Got lazy, shit going on, etc.
Fasting takes a little getting used to…. feeling cold, etc. but once you get over the initial hurdles it gets easier and the payoff is worth it…..
thats cool to see positive results! To other guys reading this- be careful. A lot of people injure their wrist/forearm/lower back using kettles. I tried it once, totally unnatural movement/pressure on your wrists. Would you swing a 13 lb bowling ball in its bag over your head? I didnt think so. This workout is pretty popluar with the middle aged women at my gym btw…
Technique is everything using kettle bells. I had an underlying strength anyway as my work is very physical. The middle aged ladies at your gym throwing around 35 lb bells? Nice…… I wouldn’t recommend throwing them over your head either…. : )
Love the intermittent fasting. I eat between 3:30 am and noonish (I’m up at 2 so I can have the gym to myself). The benefits are as advertised. Good article.
Would it be recommended to have protein bars/shakes as meal replacements?
You can’t replace a meal with protein bars/shakes. If you try, all you do is replace a potentially decent meal with a pretty crappy, yet expensive, one.
At the price, why not go for the wild caught Alaska salmon? Or save some money with eggs?
There’s the issue of the pre-digested protein there. High amounts of protein from shakes/bars hit your bloodstream all at once, sandblasting your kidneys and liver, effectually. A pile of meat in your stomach is gradually digested for a natural flow of protein through your system. Protein shake–Bam all at once. No stomach in human history ever dealt with that until we did forty years ago. Stay away from that expensive crap. There’s a lot of sugar in it too.
I will have to concur – you should not use supplements as meal replacements. But not due to the content in the supplements but because the lack of it. The protein is great and will cause no harm to your kidneys or liver (if there is no pre-existing damage or sickness), but you won’t get all the micronutrients you need to live a healthy life.
Jefe, your stuff seems similar to other “Beast” products roaming the internets.
I’ll give it a try.
As a hulk of a man (1.93m/130kg) i have an intense interest in loosing the extra fat while keeping my muscles (26% bf now).
Also nutrition is more important than exercises with varying degrees depending on your body fat and history (90%/10% for fat guys with little to no exercise history and about 60%/40% for those who have some exercise/workout history).
9. Rape and Murder.
The constant shock, chaos, exhilaration, and euphoria will keep your heart rate up without a doubt!
1. Eat Less
I’ve followed a great deal of Jefe’s advice, eating less and lifting more is the key, I’ve seen more gain after reading his book Shredded Beast in 6 weeks than I have seen in the last 6 months
The Dukan Diet book is a excellent source for ketogenic weight loss. It gives the way, why it works science wise, recipes and more importantly ( not found in any other protein based keto diet )- the transition phase ( plus same as above ) to integrate fats being shed into bloodstream, if I recall correctly ), and lastly, the process to continue after keto fat burning/ transition integration – how to reintegrate foods back into the trans phase. Plus ,if you needed to lose a fair bit, how to eat well using Dr D’s principals.
Excellent article, also.
Oddly enough, I plateau when eating “healthy” per usual Internet gym bro standards. A large pizza, Chinese buffets, cheeseburgers, omelets loaded with bacon, sausage, and cheese, fast food, all work for me. And I’m no skinny ectomorph at 5’9 200. I work each muscle group once per week. I drink a lot. I get shitty sleep. I have a flat stomach.
Broscience doesn’t work for everyone. Especially this calorie restrictive boiled chicken breast nonsense. Taking in huge amounts of calories is the best anabolic.