How I finally got lean at age 36
In the last few hours after sharing an image of me shirtless, I got +100 questions in the lines of: “HOW DID YOU DO IT?”. So I thought I’d spent the night writing it out without the boring details but the general, good-to-follow rules.
It’s not about narcissism. It’s not about egocentrism. My first principle is to “Honor my body” to be healthy and live a long life for my family. My wife married me, and I owe it to her to be as healthy as I can be for as long as I can be. I want to be energetic for my children: to play with them as many times as possible for as long as possible.
I won’t sugarcoat it, and I won’t say it was the easiest thing ever so everyone will be happy and clap my story. However, it’s certainly something anyone can do, if they really want to get lean.
I’ve never been obese or extra-overweight, but I’ve never been thin either. I’ve just always had (and hated) my belly and my love handles. It brought to decisions many of us are all too aware of: never (ever!) take your shirt off in public or (God forbid) let anyone take a picture of you shirtless while at the beach or swimming.
For many years I’ve followed a version of some of the rules below, but never seriously. The real transformation happened in the last 6–10 months when I decided it was time to stop half-ass what I was doing and get half-ass results. It was time to step up. It was time to finally embrace a healthy lifestyle, which is also the first step of the journey.
Step#1: Embrace a healthy lifestyle.
As it’s often the case, it is not about the goal itself, it’s about who you have to become to reach that goal. What fears do you have to overcome? What habits do you need to learn?
Do you have what it takes?
Can you become that person who works out 4 or 5 times a week?
The person who skips the second piece of cake at his mum’s birthday?
The person who goes to sleep early to wake up early and workout?
The person who checks the food labels before eating to see if they fit the caloric intake of the day?
The person who spends Sunday nights planning the week ahead.
All of the above are not rocket science. It is is not difficult. But it requires commitment and showing up (Steps #4 and #6).
Having a “beach body” is a lifestyle, and if you are not ready to exchange some vices for healthier habits, you’ll never get there. I thought I had already a healthy lifestyle, but the difference between OK and extraordinary is not small and takes a lot of work.
Let’s dig deeper into food habits now. Which makes up for about 80% of everything.
#STEP 2: Measure your weight and your fat percentage every day
“What gets measured, gets managed.” -Peter Drucker
As you can see from the graph below, the last few years have been a roller coaster of weight and emotions.
Still, I would suggest starting measuring weight and body fat percentage from the beginning. If you don’t know where you are right now, how do you know where you want to be? Or if what you’re doing is working? Someone said the only measure that really counts is the mirror, but I can tell you that my mirror has been looking back at me for many years, and it wasn’t a lovely look it was given me.
#STEP 3: Count calories and macronutrients. EVERYTHING must be counted.
The other thing you must measure is food. Here I will lose half of the readers, but there is no way around it at the beginning. If you’re not an expert at it, you need to measure the calories and the macronutrients you eat. For instance, many don’t seem to mind how much extra virgin olive oil they put on salads, and all of a sudden, a meal that could have been 300 kcal and 20gr fat is 1000 kcal and 80gr fat. If you don’t know what I am talking about, you need to start counting.
The math is not as simple as calories in < calories out, it’s a little bit more complicated than that, but not too complicated. First, you’ve got to understand what your maintaining expenditure is. If nothing in your life changes, what is the caloric intake you can have? For instance, mine is about 1850 kcal. With that amount of calories taken on average every week, I would’ve just maintained exactly my own weight. Which is most likely what happened in the last 10 years. It took about a month of measuring and testing to find out, and after that, I reduced my caloric intake to 1650.
Step #4: Commit. Be consistent and detailed every day.
If you decide to commit, you’ve got to be consistent. 1650 kcals are not much, and to keep it going for 20 weeks (with a few “diet breaks weeks”), you got to be consistent. What about pizza? If you know you are going to eat pizza, you most likely have to have a light breakfast and skip lunch. It also means that you cannot have ice-cream if it does not fit the day’s caloric intake. You really want ice-cream? Go ahead, but then you must eat less for dinner. Or more salad. There are no days when you forget to record the food.
Since January, I have measured almost everything I have been eating. To many, it may seem too much trouble to go through, and I understand that. But to those who want to try, I can assure you: after a few weeks, you’ll get the hang of it. I also enjoyed planning the day before what I would eat, so I would know exactly what kind of snacks and cheat meals I could have.
It helps to eat similar food often, so you can create those “meals” in your calorie-counting app and record them with a couple of taps.
A typical day could be:
Breakfast: 2 egg whites. Then a bowl of 50 gr of porridge with 50gr blueberries, a spoon of honey (3gr) and 3 pecan nuts. Black coffee.
Lunch: 150gr lean chicken & mixed salad, 1 spoon of olive oil
Snack: Protein smoothie (whey + blueberries + banana)
Dinner: 80gr Fullcorn rice + 180gr chicken or salmon + steamed vegetables
Snack: 250gr Quark and an apple
Total is about 1500 kcal, 150 carbs, 160 protein and 30 fats… which means I still have about 150 kcal to play with. Maybe an additional snack, some cashew nuts?
Step #5: Eat clean, homemade food
Yes, I’ve had pasta, I’ve had bread, I’ve also had pizzas and a few burgers, but 99% of them had one thing in common: they were homemade meals.
Are you ready to become the person who does NOT eat lunch outside? Are you ready to make your own burger and measure how much ketchup you put in? Or how about skipping ketchup altogether?
Overall, you can eat everything as long as it fits in your daily caloric intake. If you cook your own meals, it’s just simpler to measure exactly how much of each ingredient you’re eating, and you’re able to play more with it. You’ll soon find out that a tortilla bread has little carbs and become burrito expert. The difference with eating out is that you never know what they really put in or how they cook it.
I know in these unprecedented times we should support local business, but let’s not confuse laziness for good-will, which is often the case. If you can find a local restaurant where you can eat clean, know how they cook and so forth, then absolutely. Otherwise, it is hard to combine what we’re trying to achieve here with dubious sauces.
I’ve learned so much about homemade healthy food that I thought it could help others too. So here’s Food for Lazy Busy People, 50 recipes to cook in 25 minutes or less. (sorry for the ad!)
Step #6 Show up.
Enough with the food. Let’s move to others, equally important, parts.
I have a family, a full-time job, and a couple of other projects that take most of my time between 9 and 10 PM, so I’ve decided the only time I can work out is in the morning before 8. Every day, I wake up early, workout, and come back in time to have breakfast with the whole family.
“Show up” means to find the time to work out also during weekends, even if it’s just 30 minutes.
“Show up” means you show up, even if you’re tired. A bad workout is better than no workout. Remember that always.
“Show up” means that if you feel a bit tired or sore, you take tomorrow free, never today.
Today it’s a workout day.
The theory, so beautifully explained by Jocko Willink below, is that come tomorrow, you’ll forget all about tiredness and soreness, and you’ll work out once again.
Show up meant that on my free days, I tried to close the Apple Watch steps ring anyway. So a walk or a hike is a must on a free day.
Step #6+: Show up and FOCUS.
I used to hal-ass my workout because I wanted to listen to books or podcasts at the same time. Show up now means also FOCUS. No external distractions. The workout is the main focus for the next 45–60 mins.
Step #7: Get an online personal trainer
You can do everything of the above by yourself, or you can get someone to plan your nutrition, your workouts, and to keep you accountable.
I understood all the previous steps already, I’ve known them for a while, but I’ve been always slacking a little bit, not really measuring everything, not really working out with focus, not really having a clear goal in mind.
In January a good friend with a great body of mine whose body I admire told me his secret weapon was an online personal trainer. Of course, the first thing I thought was that I couldn’t afford that. And the first question he asked me back was: “How much would you invest in yourself and in your health?”
“The healthy man has a 1000 dreams. The unhealthy man, but one.” -Indian proverb
How important was my health for me?
Talking with him I realized I was already investing in health by paying the subscription to the gym, by paying new running shoes I didn’t really need, by paying in low energy. I also like to invest in funds and stocks and I thought that no stock in the world could give me the return on investment than the body of my dreams would.
So even with all my doubts, I called an online personal trainer.
I told him: “I don’t want to be a 40-year-old dad with a belly, low energy, and low confidence. I owe it to my wife and my children. They deserve to see the best and healthiest version of myself I can possibly be… for as long as possible.”.
He was like: “What if I told you you will be shredded in June in time for your holidays?”
Ha! “Beach body ready?” At 36 years old? That’s not a thing.
But I knew if there was one possibility to be in great shape I needed extra help.
The truth I knew was that if you look good, you’ll feel better. You’ll have more energy, you’ll be more confident, and that will have a positive impact on everything else that you do in Life as well.
You probably can find some others online, but my personal trainer is FP Pavons and this is a free, public endorsement for him it has been such a great journey that I will continue with him until I know everything he does.
What is the added value that a personal trainer?
First of all, you’ll have a really detailed and tailored made plan. Whatever your life situation, whatever your commitments and special events, he’ll take care of those. If I had a wedding to attend, a birthday party, a company party, anything where I knew it would mess my week, he’d knew about it. The great part is that it wouldn’t mess my week anymore because he would take it into account while planning. Tailormade means, for example, I can tell him which machines I like to do at the gym, and which ones I rather avoid. In the last months, he modified the plan according to the gym’s closure and made me a home-program instead. To be honest, I would have never trusted anyone who would have said that an online trainer can follow you and check your form, but if you put in the time to make videos and reply to his questions, he’s there for you. Every week I would either send an email or make a video with everything that I wanted to know, and every Monday, he would reply to me with all the information I needed for the week ahead.
Finally, a personal trainer holds you accountable. Your partner, Your friends, they won’t hold you accountable. But a personal trainer does not care about your excuses, it only cares about giving you your dream. And therefore, I think having an online personal trainer is crucial.
STEP #8: Wake up. Repeat.
The last and most boring, but fundamental step is to just do it and fall in love with repetition. The workouts will get boring sometimes, the food will get boring, the counting calories will get boring. But you gotta do it again, and again, and again. Forever.
Embrace a healthy lifestyle, and it won’t be boring, it’ll just be your life.
And when you feel tired or bored or frustrated, my advice is to take a good night’s sleep and wake up the next day to do it all again, with more power and energy than the day before. Because this journey leads to a greater you.
And if you’re in the best shape of your life, you’ll glow and enlight everyone around you too.
If you have any questions, please get in touch on Twitter or on Instagram. I promise to answer to every message even if it’ll take a few days.
6 To Thrive
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