The #1 Fat Loss Plan For Men:
It is not fun walking around this life hating the way you look and feel. Unfortunately this is the reality for most men, maybe yourself included. Fat loss for men is extremely simple and I am going to break down the #1 plan for you here today. But before I show you how men can lose fat for good! I want to highlight some things for you…
Being overweight and or obese is a burden physically and mentally. Although the very trendy body positive movement going on in the past few years may try to convince you otherwise, they are doing you a disservice because it is important to remember that obesity can kill you.
Also in my decades experience as a personal trainer helping men lose weight, I have never come across someone who lost weight and got healthy and said they wished they were obese again. This is just not something that actually happens. Being healthy and not overweight and obese actually makes life more enjoyable both physically & mentally. It is time to take charge of your life and implement the #1 fat loss plan for men.
The statistics for being overweight & obese in America are actually insane right now:
- 1 in 3 men are overweight
- The percentage of men who are overweight is greater than the percentage of women who are overweight
- 2 in 5 adults are obese!
Nowadays men are more out of shape and miserable than ever before and these statistics show that! I have been a personal trainer for a decade now and I can’t believe that ever year I see more and more out of shape, overweight and unhealthy men walking around (maybe you’re one of them). It is disheartening that this is the reality. I truly believe it has been caused by 2 main factors…
- Access to high calorie, highly palatable foods basically instantly.
- Life being too comfortable.
But we will talk more on that in a later post…
These statistics need to change fast! I want you to start bringing these percentages down, I want you to take responsibility for your life and make the change today!
So what I am going to do is breakdown for you now the #1 fat loss plan for men. Having worked with men 1 on 1 for a decade now, helping them lose belly fat and build muscle, I have a pretty good idea of how this stuff works and how to make it as simple as possible while still getting amazing results.
So here we go…
Exercise For Fat Loss:
Weight Training:
You want to shoot for 2-4 weight training workouts per week. This is not circuit type training! We are talking bodybuilding, powerlifting, power-building! Our goal is to build muscle with these workouts, we are not trying to burn as many calories as we can with these workouts.
The more muscle you have, the more calories your burn when you’re sitting down doing jack nothing! You will see all of this muscle you have built as you continue to burn fat with the diet and cardio protocols I will be sharing with you shortly!
Also, lifting weights and getting stronger does not only have physical health benefits but it also positively effects the mind! It will help you gain self confidence and its a fact that when you feel good and you feel strong this will motivate you even more to continue on this weight loss journey.
A simple weight training plan to follow would be any of the following:
- Mon: Full Body Training
- Thurs: Full Body Training
OR:
- Mon: Upper Body Training
- Wed: Lower Body Training
- Fri: Full Body Training
OR:
- Mon: Push (Quads, chest, shoulder, tri’s, abs)
- Tues: Pull (Glutes, hamstrings, back, bi’s, calves)
- Thurs: Push (Quads, chest, shoulder, tris, abs)
- Fri: Pull (Glutes, hamstrings, back, bi’s, calves)
Cardio Training:
You don’t have to be an endurance athlete to do cardio! You don’t have to run mile and miles and miles to do cardio!
Cardio is short for cardiovascular, the cardiovascular system of your body is responsible for pumping blood and nutrients throughout the body to your muscles and organs! That is extremely important. Lets not forget to acknowledge that the most important muscle in your body is your heart! So it is extremely important to exercise in a way that promotes heart health.
What we want to do is get between 20-40 minutes of cardio at least 5 days per week. If you can do that, heck, even 2-3 days a week thats a good start!
The type of cardio you should start with is walking! Yes, it is that simple, walking is a form of cardio and it can be done pretty much anywhere at anytime. So get your pair of walking shoes on and get moving!
I have a client, he’s a giant man… He is 6’4″ tall and weighs 265lbs. Before he weighed 265lbs he weighed 320lbs! He lost all of this weight by walking! He adjusted his diet slightly over time and just walked every day, and never missed a day.
He is a military vet and got discharged after 20 years of service as “100% disabled” after being blown into a wall by an IED. This left him with serious injuries that no one was addressing properly, I will explain in a later post how we got him to eliminate almost all pain, but for now we will stick to his walking success!
When we first started together he couldn’t even walk to the end of his driveway without getting winded and being in pain. We incrementally increased the distance he was walking overtime to build up his heart, lungs and muscles. Fast forward two years and now he is doing a 200 MILE RACE for charity (check out the charity here: Jar Of Hope).
If he can do this… You can also, there is no excuses possible.
We are performing cardio mostly for its health benefits. But a fantastic byproduct of doing cardio just for health is that it also aids in the fat loss process. By walking more every week you are inevitably burning more calories. The more calories you burn every day the more fat you will be able to lose.
So that is the basics of exercise for supporting fat loss and overall health and well-being. It is now your turn to take this information and use it. Nothing in your life will change if you don’t take action on it.
A simple cardio plan to follow would be any of the following:
- Mon: 30 min walk
- Tues: 30 min walk
- Thurs: 30 min walk
- Fri: 30 min walk
OR:
- Wed: 30 min walk
- Sat: 60 min walk
- Sun: 60 min walk
OR:
- Mon: 20 min walk
- Tues: 20 min walk
- Wed: 20 min walk
- Thurs: 20 min walk
- Fri: 20 min walk
- Sat: 20 min walk
- Sun: 20 min walk
Create any walking plan that fits your schedule but do not miss a day when you are suppose to get it done! Cardio is an important factor to help men lose fat for good!
Nutrition For Fat Loss:
Step #1: Stop drinking B.S!
Drinking calories is a sure fire way to make losing fat harder than it needs to be. Most people (maybe you included) don’t question what they are drinking. They just drink it because it tastes good without ever looking at the nutrition label.
Most drinks out there contain between 100-300 calories! If you drink a Gatorade, a soda, a glass of milk in one day that equals roughly 400 calories extra that didn’t come from food! If you did that every day of the week it would be almost 3,000 extra calories a week just from liquid! Considering that 1lb of fat is equivalent to 3,500 calories… You could be almost be losing 1lb of fat per week just by eliminating calories that come from drinks that you do not need! Just say no. Saying no makes you a stronger human being.
Start gaining some control! Starting with not drinking your calories is a great way to lower your calories and kick start the fat loss process.
Drinks to eliminate:
- Sodas & soft drinks
- Sports drinks
- Juices & sweet teas
- Coffee with cream & sugar & energy drinks with sugars
- Milks and smoothies
Drinks to include:
- Water & flavored water
- Seltzer & flavored seltzer
- Black coffee & plain teas
- Sugar free juices, sodas, sports drinks & energy drinks
- Lower calorie milk like almond milk
We can’t talk about drinking calories without talking about alcohol consumption! You have to stop drinking a lot of alcohol. Alcohol consumption will always make the fat loss process harder than it needs to be.
1-2 drinks a night is not something you want to be doing when you are trying to lose weight, and honestly it is not something you want to be doing if you want to live your best & healthiest life in general. But having no drinks during the week and then overdoing it with 10 drinks over the weekend is also not something you want to be doing.
Start simple! If you’re drinking 2 drinks every night, I want you to cut back to 1. Do this for an entire month. Then after a month of doing this I want you to cut it back from 7 days a week to 4 days a week. After another month of this, I want you to cut back your alcohol consumption to 2 days per week instead of 4. So on and so forth until you are able to control what would be a comfortable amount of alcohol consumption where it still feels social without having to cut it out completely.
Alcohol is loaded with calories. It is overlooked because theres usually not even a nutrition label on alcohol products. But alcohol contains sneaky calories, for example, here are some average calorie counts for alcoholic beverages:
- 5oz glass of wine: 120-150 calories
- 12oz light beer: 100-140 calories
- 12oz IPA beer: 200-400 calories
- 1 shot of vodka: 90-100 calories
- 1 shot of tequila: 90-100 calories
- 1 shot of whiskey: 90-100 calories
- These don’t include cocktails which contain sugar syrups and other ingredients that may increase calories count!
As you can see, alcohol can easily sneak hundreds if not thousands of calories into you life every week. It is extremely important to understand this and be honest with yourself if you are over doing it with your alcohol consumption.
Alcohol also reduces your inhibition! Meaning when you drink alcohol and there is crappy food around, you are more likely to say screw it and eat as much of the crappy food as you can. So not only did you get hundreds of more calories in your diet from alcohol you may have gotten hundreds of more from the food you eat while drinking alcohol, which will haunt your fat loss progress. We make bad choices when we drink too much alcohol because it reduces our inhibition, our ability to restrict ourselves.
Not only does reducing alcohol consumption help with fat loss but it also of course helps in making you an overall healthier human being! It is important to remember that alcohol is a toxin, that is why they label someone as intoxicated when they get pulled over while driving drunk!
Am I telling you to never drink again? Absolutely not. It is a tool we have in this world to enhance social experiences. I happen to love whiskey! I just make sure not to abuse it and have it all of the time. Learn to be mindful of your alcohol consumption!
Step #2: Stop Eating Junk Food!
You are an adult for gods sake! Be a man, grow up and be an adult. You’re going to eat real food for a change.
Foods to eat:
- Lean meats, lean beefs & lean fish
- Eggs, Greek yogurt
- A ton of vegetables
- A ton of fruit
- Potatoes, sweet potatoes, rice
Foods to eliminate:
- Snack foods (chips, pretzels, etc)
- Pastries (cookies, cakes, brownies, ice-cream)
- Sweets (candy)
- Fast foods
- Fried foods
- Breads and pastas
How to structure your diet plan every day with example meals:
- Breakfast (2 whole eggs with 1/2 cup egg whites / 4 slices turkey bacon / 1 potato cut as home fries)
- Snack (protein shake)
- Lunch (1 cup greek yogurt with 1/2 cup berries berries / serving of oatmeal)
- Snack (protein shake)
- Dinner (half a plate of grilled chicken with half a plate of vegetable and 1 sweet potato)
Do you need to eliminate junk foods forever? No. But when you are really trying to lose weight you have to limit these tremendously. Once you lose weight and learn to maintain your new weight you can begin to add some of these foods back in every once in a while. These should be additives to your diet… not your diet.
Stick to this nutrition plan for at least 12 weeks and you will see seriously good fat loss results there is not a single doubt in my mind.
Finally, You Need Some Sleep & Rest
Sleep…
If you want to make your fat loss process easier and lose fat for good then you need to be getting some good sleep! Now you will hear “gurus” out there telling you that if you want to be your healthiest and live your best life then you need to get between 8-10 hours of sleep every single night. But listen the reality is…
If you’re a man with a busy life, family, work, kids, school, etc. You’re not getting 10 hours of sleep, period. I myself get between 6 and 6.5 hours of sleep per night and guess what I am still energetic, running 2 businesses, hitting physical training goals and getting things done and still feeling great, even dealing with my rare disease Ehlers Danlos Syndrome.
Not everyone needs 8-10 hours of sleep. If you can get that many hours and still get everything in your life done then all the power to you! But 6 hours is enough, if you are sleeping in a rhythm.
A consistent sleeping rhythm is more important than the amount of hours you are sleeping. For example: going to bed at 11pm and waking up 5:30am every day of the week is better than getting 8 hours of sleep one night, 4 hours the next night, 10 hours the following night, 5 hours the night after that, so on and so forth. Doing this will never let your brain and body regulate and find consistency.
Your body works best in rhythms and patterns. Make sure you start to get to sleep around the same time every night and wake up around the same time every morning in order to get your brain and body on a solid day & night rhythm!
Being tired all of the time is not good for fat loss. Similar to how alcohol reduces your inhibition so does being tired all of the time. When there is food in the kitchen area at work or 2 donuts on the kitchen counter at home that your kids had left over from a birthday party, you are more likely to eat those foods because you’re tired and don’t feel great.
Sometimes it is even unconscious, you just eat the food in front of you without a second thought because you just want something to boost your mood.
Make sure to prioritize your sleeping schedule! Pick a time to go to sleep and a time to wake up and stick to that as best you can for the next 12 weeks.
Rest days…
Make sure to take 1 day a week to completely rest and recover. Whatever day fits your work and family schedule, it doesn’t matter, as long as you are taking this day to completely unwind and chill out the best you can.
If you have to get some responsibilities done in the morning then it is what it is, but try your best to just rest and recover. This does not mean you fall off the fat loss plan! You don’t go eat a tub of ice cream and down a 6 pack of beer because it is a complete rest day! You are still following the protocols, you’re just taking a day to regroup.
That Is The #1 Fat Loss Plan
Remember, nothing in your life will change unless you take massive action on the information I just gave you. Don’t wait until tomorrow or Monday to start this. Start right now, go for a walk and begin to plan out in your head how you are going to structure your life for success!
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If you don’t eat a lot of vegetables it is important to get the nutrients they contain from somewhere! Check out why you might want to consider a greens juice: Click here