When you begin learning about nutrition, strength training and get into fitness community you might begin to think that in order to look good you need to eat only certain foods, eat only in certain times and train only in certain times. I have a tip in here, don’t listen to all those weird advice and recommendations you see all around you. There is a fitness obsession nowadays and yes like with everything else there can be little bit too much of something.
You should always have the purpose in front of you and I mean the purpose of building a better body, not the actual body shape goal.
Yes you have to know what your goal is, however if you do not understand why you want it (ex. For better social life, more women in your social circles etc.) then you can get into trouble.
So, instead find balance and shoot for the flexible fitness lifestyle, something that bodybuilders will never be able to relate to.
Find Balance Between Strength Training and Your Life
You have stuff going on in your life. Family, friends, girlfriend, job, sport activities and other likes, why on earth would you give up all this just for strength training and nutrition?
Fitness professionals like bodybuilders and top fitness models are obsessed with fitness and related things like meal timing, strength training etc.
You don’t have be obsessed by healthy food, meal timing and other crap to lose fat and get a good looking body.
When I first started improving my body I thought that these are the only things that matters. That you need to be 100% focused on training and eating. How stupid was I. On the other hand I know that it was a part of my development. But many people do not get over this stage ever. Their workouts are everything for them. If they miss single one workout they get angry and go crazy.
While consistency is important with your workouts, you don’t need to train the whole year. You can train in chunks instead, for example you can train very hard for three months and then for another three months you may just focus on maintaining your body and even skip a some workouts.
Let’s say your goal is to build a great body that will attract hot women, which in reality means that they will smile at you more, touch you a lot, look at you and hold eye contact, be open for communication. It also means that you will be more satisfied with your look and confident in your own skin.
Do you think you need to train twice a day, seven times a week, 360 days in year to get that body?
Do you think you need to weight your food, eat on specific times and eat only certain foods to get that body?
If you browse some bodybuilding websites or forums focused on strength training and nutrition you might get a strong impression that this is the only way to get a good looking body.
Well, as I said earlier bodybuilders are not the best people to go for an advice to. They live to train and eat. What WE want is to train and eat to live.
That is completely opposite attitude, we don’t want our lives to revolve around gym and fridge, do we? While our goal is to build a great body, we need to be focused on improving other areas of our lives, for example our professional and social life.
So, if fitness lifestyle with 360 strength training sessions per year, 8 high protein meals per day is not a way to great body and fulfilling life, what is?
Well I can’t give you a clear answer, because the best approach is the one that fits you the best.
Let me clarify this.
You don’t need to go to the gym and do strength training workout each day for the rest of your life.
I know people who only have two hour window for strength training from 7pm to 9 pm for training. I know guys who can’t eat under 2000 calories on weekends, because they spend a lot of time with their families including dinner and lunch. I know guys who can only train four days a week and can’t afford any supplements. Or guys who can only train at home.
Whatever your lifestyle obstacle is, you definitely CAN get the body of your dreams, the only thing you have to do is get more creative and resourceful. Whatever your constrain is – money, time, age you have to find a way around it. Just remember, almost nobody has perfect conditions. But often times those who do not have the perfect conditions do on the other hand get the best results.
There are only basic things you need to do and these are:
- Doing strength training
- Following a quality workout
- Eating less than you burn
Strength Training and Your Workouts
You should train for 4-5 days a week. You will need about two hours of free time on these days to get into gym, do your workout, take a shower and get back to home or work. (Both of these things the number of workouts per week and time needed for one workout may differ depending on the workout program you will have)
The other thing is that you absolutely MUST get a proper workout plan. This is not as expensive as you might think, you need only few bucks for a workout that you can follow pretty much for an entire year.
Here are some workout programs that are worth trying:
- 7 Ultimate Full Body Workout Routine with Dumbbells
- 10 Best Beach Body Workout Programs For Women
- 5 Barbell Exercises to Build Muscle, Power and Strength
Preferably you should get about 4 different workouts and cycle after each other. However, if you are running low on money, then pick the one you like the most and follow it precisely as it is written.
Okay let’s more on from the the workout problems to gyms. Can you afford a gym membership? Often times there are different payment options. If you train five times a week, which most workouts are designed to be followed for this amount of days in one week, you might consider a year membership instead of just membership that is for 30 entries only. If you go there regularly you might wanna ask for a discount. Just tell the manager that you go there often and you are regular customer, but you are running low on money and it would really help you to get a discount. It shouldn’t be a problem.
If you live somewhere where is not a good gym, or you would have to drive for hours to get there, you might wanna consider a home based gym, while I do not recommend beginners and inter-mediate guys to start doing strength training in a home gym, if there is no other option and you are 100% sure you can handle it then go for it. Basic home gym will cost you about 2000 bucks. Maybe less, depends on where you live and how much “iron” are you going to buy, just please avoid buying some fancy new machines, they are totally useless.
Eating Less than You Burn
You should know that if you have a balanced diet, then fat loss is only about calories in and calories out.
So, what I want you to do is:
- Calculate your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate)
- Track what you eat for two weeks
- Compare these two numbers
If you eat more than is your BMR plus your daily activities expenditure, you will gain fat. You want to eat less than you burn.
This is easier said than done, so we need to do some planning here. I’m not talking about timing your meals though.
I want you to realize what are your lifestyle obstacles and work around them.
Maybe you have to eat big dinner with your family every day apart from Tuesdays. Maybe you have to have morning coffee with a donut with your boss, because of the morning meetings.
You don’t have to violate these habits and you don’t have to explain to your girlfriend or kids that you can’t eat pizza with them on Saturday evening.
So, what you can do instead is eat the donut or two in the morning and pizza in the evening if this is something you can’t skip, but skip the lunch and don’t eat anything for the rest of the day. With this you will create enough deficit for the pizza in the evening with your family. Just do the math to be sure that you will still lose fat while eating those high caloric foods.
This was just a one example of how you can get over your lifestyle constrains. Whatever your case is you can apply the same approach to yours.
Conclusion
Forget all the conventional fitness wisdom and acquire balance in your life.
If you can’t change certain things, you can work around them.
Eating and training like I have explained in this article will provide you with flexibility whenever you need to change your eating and training times.
Strength Training needs consistency and hard work, which on other hand dozen mean obsession!
Share with me, what is your lifestyle collagen or constrains you have to overcome? What do you think are your options?
