If you’ve ever heard fitness experts discuss intermittent fasting, then you know things can get… intense. Everybody is skeptical of “miracle diets,” because we’ve all been burned before.
I feel your pain. I spent years believing my fitness hinged on me eating six meals a day.
All that changed when I learned about intermittent fasting, and here’s why:
Intermittent fasting is not a miracle diet. In fact, it’s not even a diet really.
“The most valuable commodity I know of is information.” – Gordon Gekko, Wall Street (1987)
Gordon wasn’t talking specifically about fitness when he uttered this famous line, but his words hold the key to success in the gym. Forget about tips, tricks, and gimmicks.
The only way to make consistent progress when you work out is to track your lifts.
When someone finishes a fitness program that helps them shed body fat and add lean muscle, there’s one question they ask more than any other:
“What’s the best I could look?”
Coming off the high of seeing newbie gains, this newfound fitness nut wants to know the next steps that will take them from looking good to looking like Schwarzenegger.
The question they’re really asking is, “What’s my genetic potential?”
If you’re new to fitness, there’s probably one word you’ve heard more than any other when it comes to your diet—protein.
Protein is essential to proper fitness, but finding out how much you need can be difficult. It might feel like you get a different answer depending on who you ask.
The truth is shrouded in mystery thanks to misinformation from the supplement industry and outdated beliefs about nutrition.
Men do UFC Fit because it’s tailored for men’s bodies, the same way women go to jazzercise because it’s made for female fitness, right?
Wrong.
Misinformation—and the mountains of money it provides—fuel the fitness industry’s reluctance to admit this one fact:
There is no difference in how men and women get fit.
As someone who designed an entire fitness program around getting and maintaining six-pack abs for life, I understand the allure of chiseled abs.
We all want to eliminate belly fat and have a flat stomach.
If we’re being honest, our Google search histories are littered with results for six-pack shortcuts, belly flab blasting pills, or topical gels that promise us miracle results.
I looked around in embarrassment.
When I first got into fitness, I dreamed of going to the beach and getting the chance to show off my body to the hoards of admirers.
But here I was, 4 years into training and known as “the fitness guy” among my friends, and still horrified at the thought of taking my shirt off in public.
“Work very hard on your workouts, but do as little as possible in between them. Extra work will defeat your purpose.” —Peary Rader, American bodybuilder and Olympic lifter
My man Peary had it right: You don’t need to work out every day to get fit.
There’s no blanket answer for the question of how many times a week you should work out, but there are specific schedules you can adopt depending on your fitness goals.
My name is Jay Kim and I have a confession to make:
For over a decade, I was really bad at fitness.
Sure, I checked all the boxes of a so-called “fitness guy.”
I met every criteria but one: I was fat.
If the story ended there, I’d be a less-than-ideal fitness coach. Fortunately, it doesn’t.
After a decade of frustration, dead ends, and driving my wife to the point of wanting to murder me—we’ll get to that part of the story in a moment—I did something I never would’ve thought possible.
I hacked fitness. · Continue
If you’ve been in the fitness world long enough, you’ve probably heard this line from one or more muscle-bound gym bros regarding post-workout essentials:
“If you don’t drink a protein shake after you lift, you’ll lose all your gains.”
The advice seems legit seeing as how it comes from a guy whose cutoff t-shirt can barely contain his spray-tanned torso. Turns out, he’s wrong.
