Are you happy?…
With your physique? Your current diet? Your Training routine?
Are you satisfied with your diet? Have you invested in personal trainers, listened to online fitness “gurus” , fitness plans and got little to no results?
How many times have you gone on a brutal training plan that someone suggested to you that leaves you feeling like crap. Have You had the temptation to give up on your “diet?” Do you constantly find yourself whether all this is worth it or not? Does this sound familiar?
If you can relate to any of these questions, and you’re discouraged to give up then you might want to listen. This may change how you view fitness all together.
My story:
Fitness was always my passion. I first got into lifting weights and strength training when I was 15. The progress I made that year that changed the way I looked at training and developed a passion for it ever since.
I’ve always loved the idea of improving our physique, challenging ourselves, and the discipline involved.
Over the past few years I’ve done many methods trying to achieve my physique goal.
I certainly have made progress, by gaining strength and size. Finding a balance between having a social-life, school, being vegan, and a strong love for chocolate and french fries made my fitness goals harder.
From everything I understood about fitness back then, it wasn’t possible.
When I was 15 years old I made gains very quickly since I had no prior lifting experience but I weighed around 150 pounds. At 16 years old my friends brought me in to public gym and trained there after school for about a year. At this time I had completely stopped doing all the compound exercises I learned in my strength training class and started pumping out 7-8 isolation movements with very low weight and high reps, and that along with the “eat big, get big” mentality I ballooned up to 185 pounds.
That period being the first few years of training I made decent gains, but had no foundation since I had stayed away from important compound lifts like the bench press, squat, overhead press etc.. The only compound movement I can recall me doing was dead lifts with imperfect form. I slowly began to realize I was making little to no gains and my “bulk” was actually making me chubbier and lost a lot of definition.
Upon turning 17 years old, I noticed I realized I need to lose some weight. I bulked up and didn’t achieve the look I had in mind. My face was fuller and the definition I had before was gone. I stepped on the scale and it weighed me in at 186 pounds. Right then and there I decided I wanted to change.
At 17 years old I researched and listened to all the fitness “experts” I could find. I saw a YouTube video about low carb diet. Tried it. Hated it. Lost some weight. I weighed in at 170 pounds but was absolutely brutal and miserable. Being vegetarian at the time and cutting out my carb intake brutal.
My low carb diet was sustainable and after I went back to eating as I typically did at the time I gained some weight back on. Several months later I learned to track and count my calories and macros and got better results. I was down to 168 pounds.
Summer came around, I graduated high school and really wanted to focus and keep learning about fitness. I wanted to get even lean. This summer was the most dedicated I have ever been when it came to training and nutrition. I counted my calories, tracked macros on a app on my phone, trained 6-7 days a week, and learned about HIIT cardio.
I was eating very low calories (1300-1400 calories)
You see I made a common mistake that people who are trying to lose weight and get leaner make. When my fat loss hit a plateau I kept lowering my calories more and more. My caloric deficit was originally moderate at 1800-2000 calories a day. I was obsessed with my end goal of getting lean that I had :
- Lowered my calories to an unhealthy level
- Added more cardio on top of my typical cardio sessions per week (was trying to expand my daily caloric expenditure even more)
- Workout sessions consisted of obscene amount of volume ( super sets, drop sets) with little to no heavy compound lifting.
All of the above resulted in health issues, muscle loss and feeling drained of energy 24/7.
I gave up at this point. Took a break at tracking macros and intense cardio sessions and training. Did more research and discovered a diet structure called Intermittent fasting.
I first read about this concept from Brad Pilon and stumbled upon others following this. Implementing this right away while practicing flexible dieting and it was smooth sailing since. I spent some time reverse dieting to get my metabolism back up from that unhealthy period of ridiculous amount of low calories. This fixed my nutrition portion of my fitness, but my training style was not correct. I was still following the typical bodybuilding magazine workouts with an obscene amount of volume 7 days a week.
Although I may have seen some glimpses of results, I wasn’t achieving the physique I had in mind. I sought after the athletic looking : lean, dense and angular look. Look that had the GQ, male model aura to it. Not the puffy bodybuilder look that seems to be common these days.
This is when I met my mentor Michael, who was a regular at a gym I went to at the time. We were having a conversation about training and he asked my stats on my lifts. “Andi how strong are your lifts?” I still remember Michael’s face when I told him I don’t train heavy and only do isolation movements.
That same week, Michael showed me how to properly perform each compound movement. (incline bench press, overhead press, squat, dead lift.)
From that week on I completely changed how I trained. I tracked my key lifts on the notes on my phone and focused on finally getting strong.
This is where it all changed. Once I focused on getting my relative strength up, flexible dieting with intermittent fasting and cutting back on the interval training sessions, I got closer and closer to my goal physique.
Fast forward a few months and my muscles had the dense and hard look I was after. I was getting leaner and had gotten stronger than ever.
After tossing the bodybuilding magazines, ditching the pointless supplements and focusing on what mattered:
- Improving my Strength on a few compound movements.
- Flexible dieting with Intermittent fasting on my Vegan diet.
- Being Strategic with my cardio.
My physique was finally progressing in the direction I wanted.
I want YOU to dominate your fitness goals, help you finally reach that physique you are after without making the same mistakes I did, and whether you’re vegan or vegetarian or in the process of becoming one I will teach you how to live your life to the fullest while still getting in the best shape of your life.
If you’re ready for that subscribe below and ill show you the way!
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