The Three Keys to Achieving Your Fitness Goals (For Beginners)

It took me so long to weed through all of the malarky and actually figure out how fitness worked. Hopefully, I can help you get results and stop falling down the rabbit hole of confusing YouTube fitness influencers.

Photo by Sven Mieke on Unsplash

The biggest thing that enabled me to achieve my fitness goals was actually understanding how the heck everything worked. Once you understand how it all works, you don’t have to follow the latest fad diet or influencer’s workout routine that is unsustainable, you can create a personalized routine and diet that actually works for you!

Weight Loss • Calories in Calories Out

Many people simply want to lose weight, they don’t care too much if they lose both fat and muscle, they just want to see their clothes fit better and that dang scale to say what they want it to say. I’ve got good news for these people: it’s incredibly simple to merely lose weight. Notice I said simple, not easy.

Weight loss literally comes down to calories in calories out, that’s it. If you’re in the category of simply wanting to lose weight, don’t get bogged down by your macros (fat, carbs, and protein), just focus on calories. If you’re in a deficit for long enough, you will see results.

It is true that as we get lighter and have less muscle mass that the amount of resting calories we burn each day gets less and less meaning that you need to reduce your caloric intake or boost your caloric output to continue to shed weight.

Approximately 3,500 calories is equal to one pound of fat meaning that if you’re in a 3,500 calorie deficit every week you’ll lose a pound a week. So if you’re 200 pounds with a goal weight of 160 pounds, if you stick with a 500 calorie daily deficit you can expect to be at your goal weight around your 40th week. Keep in mind that it likely won’t be a linear path to that 160 because your training routine will dictate your water retention and muscle mass among other things which will have a direct impact on your weight.

Another key thing to keep in mind is that a 5'0" 130 lb woman with 100 pounds of lean muscle mass will burn significantly fewer calories just to exist than a 6'0" 180 lb man with 160 lbs of lean muscle mass. To determine what your calorie intake needs to be you need to go calculate your TDEE. Go! Do it!

Here’s the thing: It took me so long to come to terms with this notion of calories in calories out. I was in denial saying to myself that as long as I was doing weightlifting that my body would turn all fuel into muscle growth so it didn’t matter what I ate! Don’t be like me.

Muscle Growth • Blast, Fuel, Rest, Repeat

Muscle growth is a whole other ballgame but equally as simple. Your muscles grow when you put enough stress on them to tear the muscle fibers making your body grow the fibers back bigger and stronger so that next time you put stress on them you can handle the load. However, the sly thing that we humans do is we increase the volume (more reps and/or more weight) the next time so the same thing happens! F**k you, biceps!

This strategy is called progressive overload and is the key to muscle growth.

Now, muscle growth is also dictated by the amount of protein you put in your body. Protein allows your muscles to grow back stronger so it’s important you get enough protein so that when you say f**k you to your body repeatedly, your body has the necessary nutrients to actually grow your muscles. There is a wide range of recommendations on how much protein to consume, and it really depends on your goals.

If you want to be a walking house then shoot for the bodybuilder recommended 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight, but to be honest, I find this to be incredibly unrealistic for myself. I simply try to get as much protein as I can comfortably get in a day which is usually ~100 grams and I’m very happy with my body! This article is not for bodybuilders, it’s for everyday people looking to understand exactly how to achieve a superior physique.

Another important part of muscle growth is rest. You need to allow your body about 48 hours of rest between difficult anaerobic (resistance) workouts where you put lots of stress on the body so it can actually repair your damaged muscles. For example, you may do a chest workout on Monday which means you shouldn’t hit your chest again until Wednesday! For me, I have no issue doing aerobic exercise every day but it is paramount to rest between anaerobic workouts on particular muscle groups otherwise you simply won’t see growth.

This is where stuff gets tricky: how in the world do you eat in a caloric deficit, put enough stress on your body, rest, and eat enough protein all at the same time? Hint: it’s hard.

That’s why a lot of fitness folk swear by bulking (eating in a caloric surplus to focus on muscle growth) and cutting (eating in a caloric deficit to focus on fat loss) because you basically are doing these two things separately which is simpler and, if done strategically, can lead to bigger muscles with lower body fat over a long period of switching back and forth.

Other people swear by lean bulking or muscle retentive cutting. The concept behind these two approaches is that you eat in a slight surplus or deficit (200–300) so that you’re gaining the most muscle while simultaneously gaining the least fat (or losing the least muscle while losing the most fat when doing a muscle retentive cut).

Here’s the thing: I find the slight surplus/deficit to be too specific. I can’t maintain a diet that has to be insanely planned out. Some people totally can and power to ’em, but I cannot!

Sustainability • 6+ Months, Not 1 Week

At the end of the day, if you’re not able to sustain these habits for 6+ months, you won’t see that dream bod peek its beautiful head out. The sooner you can wrap your head around: I won’t be where I want to be for 6+ months, the sooner you’re going to be able to appropriately plan your diet and training so that you can actually keep them up.

What Works for Me Workout-Wise

• 300–600 calories burned cardio workout every day (the Peloton my brother gave me has been amazing and acts as my primary source of leg resistance training and cardio). I will switch off days between aerobic cycling (high cadence and low resistance) and anaerobic cycling (low cadence and high resistance) so that I’m not destroying my legs every day. I find that my legs have the ability to recover far faster than my upper body.
• Push workouts (chest, triceps, shoulders) 2–3 times a week.
• Pull workouts (back & biceps) splits 2–3 times a week.

This works for me because the best way for me to build a habit is to do something pretty much every day rather than every few days. The key is finding something that works for you that can help make your daily caloric deficit easier to hit. Some great forms of exercise: walking, running, swimming, sports, plyometrics, yoga, pilates, cycling.

What Works for Me Diet-Wise When Cutting:

• Black coffee and water only until 12 PM
• 200 calorie protein bar around noon (surprisingly satiating)
• 100 calorie supplement drink (whey protein, creatine, essential greens, mixed with water to mitigate calories)
• 100 calorie banana
• I like to snack on carrots (4 calories per ‘rrot)
• 200 calorie glass of protein chocolate milk around 4 PM.
• Eat whatever I want for dinner with an emphasis on protein-rich meals because I’ve only eaten ~700 calories on the day by dinnertime.

This plan works for me because I know I need to eat delicious foods that aren’t boring for dinner to sustain so my diet is built around the ability to eat a 1500–2000 calorie dinner and still be in a deficit.

The reason diets “work” isn’t because there’s some hidden fat-burning methodology to being vegan or eating low-carb… diets work when they assist in lowering your caloric intake — that’s all. Eating lower carbs likely means you’re eating more protein which is known to be more satiating than a bowl of pasta! It helps to reduce your caloric intake when you feel full for longer.

I like intermittent fasting a lot but I first started it because the fitness industry told me that fasted cardio burns more fat and that just fasting, in general, puts your body in a boosted metabolic state. While there may be truth to that if you stretch and prod at those statements, at the end of the day intermittent fasting is simply a tool to lower caloric intake. Don’t view diets as these magical ways to burn fat, view them as tools to find a sustainable eating plan that actually works for you.

The reason processed foods “make you fat” isn’t because they just jump straight to your waistline, it’s because they’re typically extremely caloric and/or delicious which makes you want them time and time again. But you can eat chicken nuggets every day and still be ripped as long as you’re in a deficit.

Another thing that helped me was thinking about what the purpose of fat is: when your body has excess energy, it stores it in case it needs to tap into that energy in the future! What your body does not account for is that you have hundreds of venues near you stocked to the brim with any food you can imagine and that “hunting for food” is really just going for a walk or sitting in a moving chunk of metal (driving) for a few minutes.

Your body is under the impression that you need to store energy for the next time you fail to hunt down a deer for dinner… we’re still animals and our physiology behaves as such. We just have too much access to addicting, calorie-dense food!

You Likely Won’t Get the Instagram Body • Sorry

This is something I’ve had to come to terms with, while I do consider myself to have a solid body that makes my girlfriend say “nice body”, I don’t have the IG 8-pack with unfathomably low body fat and huge muscles. No. I have a lean body that is low body fat with pretty average muscle mass, and I’m happy with that! For me, I’d rather have a ripped body with less muscle than vise versa, but you could be the opposite.

If I wanted the IG body I’d likely have to dedicate the next three years of my life to a stricter diet with stricter macros and calories and a stricter workout regimen. Strict ain’t it for me. Sustainable is it for me. I’ve found a sustainable program that gets me the results I want, that’s pretty awesome!

Actual Health

Keep in mind that these weight loss and muscle growth tactics are simple but whether or not you have 14-pack abs says little about your actual health.

Someone could be juicing with steroids and only drinking 200 grams of whey protein a day, look amazing aesthetically but have their organs slowly failing due to pure testosterone and whey leaking all over the body.

Someone could also be anorexic but look really ripped merely because they’ve achieved low body fat through extremely unhealthy means.

Don’t fool yourself into thinking that restrictive diets and achieving a visually pleasing body are inherently healthy. It can easily not be.

Exercising is usually healthy so I’d prioritize resistance and aerobic training over freaking out about your diet if you simply want to get healthy. Chances are that through long-term exercise you’ll begin to shed unhealthy levels of fat and will improve your overall health. Without much concern for your diet, you likely won’t achieve super-low levels of body fat but there are many health detriments to being below 10% body fat anyway.

Health ≠ Aesthetics.

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