Hello everyone, today we have a guest post from a friend of mine, Vaclav Gregor. Vaclav is a fitness expert on MusclePyramid.com and regular contributor to the Adonis Lifestyle team. He’s got some great advice on pursuing your ideal body while still maintaining your social life and psychological sanity that I think many, many people need to hear.
Hope you enjoy!
Chris
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Hey, my name is Vaclav Gregor and a while back Chris asked me to give him my insights on fitness and why I think simplicity is crucial. Well, as I wrote down my answer and thought about it I realized just how much complicated people make it.
So I’ve decided to write a full article for you about this issue. Today you will learn how to gain control over you body, but keep enjoying your life. Probably even more than you do now.
How, you ask?
Well, not only is it possible – it’s the right way to do it. Is it even possible or is this some kind of marketing fairy tale?
Who do you work out for?
Yourself right?
You wanna look good and feel good? That’s the goal.
If that’s so, what good is it to you if you won’t get out there and won’t take advantage of your new better looking body and confidence boost?
Today I will show you three clever tips that will help you understand this and become the person who is in shape, but still knows how to have fun.
And no, by fun I don’t mean getting wasted every single night, that’s not fun, that’s stupid.
By having fun, I mean going out with friends and your significant other, having a couple of drinks, and eating the food you are served and want to eat.
You don’t have to be the weird fitness guy/gal in the corner who is eating his sixth protein rich meal of the day.
Make fitness simple and flexible
If you have watched the fitness media lately, you may have gotten an impression that getting in shape might be easy, but the process itself is complicated and requires all of your time and dedication.
Well that’s BS. This might help sell your products if you have a supplement company or diet programs, but not so much if you wanna get in shape by using all those traditional approaches (that BTW doesn’t work for 95% of population, you need some awesome genetics to be able to get results, but then again if that’s the case then it doesn’t matter what you do, because you will always get better results).
Actually, what I’ve found out (and believe me I was happy to find that out) are two things:
Getting in shape is harder than people think, I mean seriously the benefits being in killer shape are just huge, and if it was that easy then everybody would be walking around jacked, not overweight like most of the population.
Why is this good news?
In my opinion it’s not just good news, it’s great news, because everything valuable in life requires some hard work (common sense, but most people don’t live their lives with this mindset), so don’t be discouraged by this, but rather empowered, because you are among the few who understand that if you put in the hard work that most people aren’t willing to, you can and WILL enjoy the benefits that others can’t and never will.
The second even better realization I had was that getting shape is in fact a very simple process.
Now this will probably go against everything you have ever heard from the so called experts, but it’s made around logic, common sense and most importantly science and how your body actually works, not what some clever marketer thought would make for a nice sales copy.
Fact is that your body from a “fitness stand point” can do only two things:
- Build or lose muscle
- Store or lose fat
Everything else is made up marketing, I’m not saying that’s bad, but just that you need to understand this if you ever want to get in shape.
And if you want to build bigger muscles, well then obviously you need to train harder, more often and more efficiently – more you train the muscles, bigger they get, less you move with less resistance, weaker they get, simple right? I told you, getting in shape may be hard, but it’s not complicated.
Here comes the second part, you may be saying okay Vaclav, that’s muscle building, but what about fat loss, don’t I need to follow some strict and complex diet?
Hell no!
Fat loss is also incredibly simple. You eat more food than you need to, so your energy intake is higher than what your body burns (measured in calories) and that means the extra energy is going to get stored somewhere. The source itself is actually irrelevant, so it can be chocolate or apple, doesn’t matter. Calories are what matters, and to answer your burning question if all calories are the same, then yes all calories are equal, because calorie is a measuring unit just like inch or kilogram.
The energy (measured in calories) either gets used as fuel or stored for “worse times” and to be used later. This was very beneficial in the past when we had to grow and kill our own food or had to wait weeks for better opportunities, but not so much today when there is abundance overabundance of food, especially of the type of food that is high in calories and that you just cant stop eating, think of chicken wings, chips, chocolate or whatever it is for you that you really love and can’t stop yourself from eating.
The food is not bad or unhealthy as long as you keep it in moderation.
Once you understand that it’s this simple and your diet can be quite flexible, you can easily make it around your lifestyle.
Which brings us to the next part…
Spend Your Life Outside the Gym and Kitchen
Most people don’t understand the importance of looking good and taking care of your body and that’s fine, more opportunities for us who do. However, what most fitness and health aware people fall victim to is that they think they have to spend their life cooking, eating, working out, sleeping and that’s all there is otherwise their hard built bodies will go away.
That’s not the lifestyle you should seek.
Personally I spend about 90 minutes a day in the gym and the day has 24 hours so big deal, and probably around an hour cooking and eating.
And I get 10 times better results than my friends who spend two hours in the gym, read about fitness for two more hours and spend 3-4 hours shopping for food, cooking, eating and cleaning the dishes.
That’s quite a big difference.
But it doesn’t there, what about the rest of the day, do you feel tired after eating or exhausted after your training? Are you fresh and energetic or not very productive because you are burned out form your perfect fitness lifestyle?
I’m not, quite the opposite: I have more time and energy than ever.
Make your fitness lifestyle work around your life and for you don’t become its slave!
Go to the gym when you have the time and feel most energetic, for me Around 11am works the best, also allows me to do the most important work tasks first thing in the morning.
Then when I get back from the gym, I don’t have lunch and I just do some work or stuff to school. I usually fast from dinner to afternoon meal. I start introducing food around 3pm. Till then I just drink water and have one or two cups of coffee, which is my daily limit.
Then I might take a nap and after resting for 20-30 minutes I go out to some events or do more work, go to appointments or whatever is on my to-do list.
And evenings?
I don’t have TV, so I just go out , have fun, eat, drink – whatever.
That’s quite different compared to eating six meals a day, spending half a day in the gym and then reading new fitness magazines later huh?
I do suggest going to bed before 11pm and limiting the alcohol, but I think you get the point – it’s possible to get and stay in shape while living your life at it’s fullest and being and keeping your social life (your social life will probably get even better once you improve your look, just keep that in mind).
Focus on the Big things, not the Minutia
Most people focus on the minutia, so what that means is that they make sure they take their post workout shake exactly 7.4 minutes after the workout, that they drink the night protein exactly 20 minutes before going to bed and that they eat breakfast one hour after rising or after their morning cardio.
Yes, I’m purposefully making this ridiculous numbers up to beat on those routines, because they are detrimental to you.
This is minutia, what you need to do instead is to focus on things that are responsible for most of your results.
What do you wanna do is focus on the big things, stuff that really matters.
Do you know Pareto’s principle?
It says that 80% results comes from 20% work and it’s exactly like that.
If you don’t have the important things covered, none of that sh*t you do with supplements matters.
The big things are your workout plan and your diet plan.
Workout plan being responsible for your muscle growth and body recomposition and diet plan being responsible for losing fat and later maintaining BF% just like we talked about at the beginning of this article.
Stuff like supplements or other small things can help, but should come later when the big stuff is handled.
Obviously, it’s tempting to fall for magic pills like supplements, but I think you know better than that.
I’m not saying that supplements are bad, it’s just something you shouldn’t concern yourself with if you are not regularly working out with a solid workout plan and don’t have your diet handled yet.
Who am I and how can I help you
My name is Vaclav Gregor, I’m from Czech Republic and I focus on helping young, busy guys who are not satisfied with how they look to build a peak physique and transform their life. I’m a believer in doing things differently and having connections to some scientists, bodybuilders and other behind the scenes guys helps me see the truth about fitness, steroids and supplements.
If you wan’t to get in shape without spending fortune on useless supplements and other magic pills and want to get real results with simple approach that’s suitable for your busy lifestyle then check out the article called 37 Simple Tips and Techniques Proven to Get You Ripped I wrote for you at my blog Muscle Pyramid here: http://musclepyramid.com/37-tips-get-ripped
[...] Can You Be In Killer Shape And Still Have A Life? Here are 3 tips simplify your workout and diet so you can still have a life. [...]