Fitness Advice from a Wholly Unqualified Meme Page Admin

Read and follow at your own risk!

I just want to preface this article with the fact that I have no formal experience in fitness. I want to share things that have worked for me along my fitness journey. As someone that has always struggled with the roller-coaster of weight loss and gaining that weight back, these tips should help you to change your mindset. SHOULD. The hardest hurdle to cross is learning to say ‘No’ to the urges to overeat or to eating crap.

Motivation

The biggest determinant of creating a successful diet/fitness plan is having the “drive” to lose weight, get fit or, in my case, both. Although our reasons for choosing to get in shape will likely be different, without adequate motivation, your plan will likely end in failure. To start your journey, you should set realistic goals, work hard to achieve them, but not get too discouraged if you don’t hit your target on time. The hardest part is the first couple of months; you will not see or feel much progress at first, but once the pounds start to fall off and you can feel the gains, it becomes MUCH easier to stay motivated and keep going. There will be setbacks, but your goal should always be to be better than you were yesterday. As Jordan Peterson said, “Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.” As long as you are continually progressing and learning from your mistakes and maintaining that “drive” to get better, you will keep seeing progress, regardless of the roadblocks that you may come across. The best way that I have found to do this—and I know a lot of dietitians are opposed to this—is to weigh in every single day, at the same time. Seeing the daily changes in your weight allows you to course-correct if you eat cheat meals on the weekend and realize what only a couple days of bad eating can do to your body. I suggest using a smart scale that will automatically track your weight from day-to-day and give you some other important body metrics. I picked up this smart scale on a Prime Day sale, but it is regularly under $50.

Diet

Everyone has their own opinion of what makes a good diet plan. Many swear by intermittent fasting, keto, Atkins, the Mediterranean diet and dozens of others. Intermittent fasting works well if you live alone and don’t have a wife or kids that need three meals a day and you can stand to skip breakfast and lunch. Keto is probably the most restrictive, but can produce results rather quickly. It’s also near impossible to maintain long-term as carbs are still an important food group that are difficult to completely avoid and as soon as you begin eating normally again, the weight will return. My suggestion is to find something that you are able to maintain long-term consisting of foods that you enjoy eating and are not too labor-intensive to prepare. A high-protein, low-carb diet that puts you into a slight calorie deficit should be the main goal. Protein from whole food sources takes longer to digest, keeps you full longer and assists in building/maintaining muscle structure. Cutting out too many calories is completely unsustainable long-term and the people pushing 1200 calorie/day diets are probably not people worth listening to. If you starve yourself to lose weight, your body will not know what to do once you start eating normally again and the weight will come right back.

Personally, I have been eating a meat-heavy diet and cutting out carbs wherever possible. Obviously, chicken is the most healthy, but I generally just buy whatever is on sale and when I cook, I will cook extra and “meal prep” the rest to take for lunch at work. Sticking with meat and non-starchy vegetables is fairly easy to do if you have any cooking experience as the possibilities are endless. For breakfast, I stick with some variation of eggs and try to resist the urge to drink sugar-loaded coffee, but I must admit that that is one of my worst addictions. If you need snacks, I have been eating air-popped popcorn (recently bought one of these and LOVE it, tastes almost just like the movie theater’s when paired with Flavacol popcorn salt!) or protein bars (my favorite right now are Built bars, the Coconut Marshmallow are literally better tasting than candy bars and only have a few carbs).

The most important thing with dieting is to not restrict yourself so much that your life becomes miserable. Eat cheat meals. Eat things that taste good. Just always keep track of progress and don’t fall too far off the wagon.

Exercise

If you’re like me and HATE cardio, I’ve got good news! Don’t go to the gym and run on the treadmill for an hour. Those people are losers and generally have no muscle structure. Who the hell is going to need to run a marathon, even in a SHTF scenario? Focus on building muscle when you go to the gym. Leg day sucks, but it’s worth it to not have twig legs. If you hate squat, do leg press, just start somewhere, and although you may not be focusing specifically on cardio, building muscle and getting your blood flowing will still do wonders for your heart and cardiorespiratory endurance! For arms, shoulders and core, make a good rotation between bench, incline, dumbbells and cable machines to ensure you are hitting all of the major muscle groups (free weights are obviously superior to machines as they hit your stabilizing muscles, but if you’re afraid to bench without a spotter, hit what you can!). If you want to work on cardio in the gym, hop on a treadmill at an incline and walk at a brisk pace, but as I mentioned before, that shouldn’t be your main focus. I prefer to go on hikes and catch some sun (yes, even in the summer hell that is Texas) rather than walking on a treadmill staring at a tv.

If you can’t make it to the gym as regularly as you like, grab a good set of adjustable dumbbells (I have these and they work great!) and a kettlebell or two; you can target most major muscle groups without taking up too much space in your house. They don’t replace the gym, but are a good substitute.

Supplements

Most people get all of the vitamins that they need through a regular, balanced diet. If you’re not omitting whole food groups, then you likely don’t need a multivitamin. If your goal is weight loss, just know that there is no “magic pill” for that. Most “weight loss” supplements on Amazon with good reviews are inflated by people that are offered free product in exchange for their reviews, so keep that in mind. However, there is evidence pointing to several things that can assist you in losing weight, but there is nothing that will allow you to lose weight without changing your habits.

For workout supplements, I have tried many, but most suck. Like dieting, if what you are trying to eat tastes like ass, you’re probably not going to keep eating it. Find stuff that tastes good (or is at least palatable) and stick with that. Below are a few of my recommendations from my many years of trying different supplements (and many arguments with the wife about buying ANOTHER tub of protein powder):

Pre-workout: For pre-workout, I now buy Bucked Up exclusively (aside from the occasional Bang that I drink, but I don’t use it as a pre-workout so it doesn’t really count). Their taste is second to none and you get good pump from many of their different products. Also, their selection is outstanding with different products geared towards different people (I’m a caffeine addict so I like either Woke AF or BAMF, just be careful with either of those if you don’t live off of caffeine). The only down-side is that they rarely have sales and their supplements are a little pricey.

Protein Powder: There are a few different protein powders out there that are drinkable. My personal favorite is Redcon1’s MRE Lite. This powder comes from whole food sources rather than whey so it is easier on the stomach and is the only powder I’ve found that is drinkable with water. Redcon1 also has deep discounts almost every day. Runner-ups would be Ghost and Quest. Ghost’s Oreo is delicious in milk and Quest has a wide range of flavors and all that I have tried have been pretty good. Many people swear by Optimum Nutrition and Syntha-6, but all that I have tried have been pretty bad. If you can afford Ready-to-drink protein shakes, Core Power is delicious and tastes like a milkshake with a healthy amount of protein and not too many carbs.

Protein Bars: Most protein bars out there either taste awful, or they are glorified candy bars (in some cases, candy bars have better macros). One brand that I have discovered that I really like is Built Bars. Their bars taste better than candy bars with decent macros. They’re not huge so they won’t replace a meal, but they will satisfy a craving between meals. Their Puff bars are my favorite, especially the coconut marshmallow. There are many discount codes out there and they have ‘Factory Seconds’ sales fairly often.

For the record, I am not affiliated with any of the above companies, these are my honest, unbiased opinions

Wrap Up

I sincerely hope some of this helps you out along your journey. As I said in the beginning, I am FAR from a “fitness expert” and I am always open to listen to new ideas and suggestions and would love to hear everyone’s comments. My main motivators were the fact that I was sick of not being happy with my own self and the drive to prepare for the coming hard times. There will likely be food shortages, there will be unrest and if you’re not in shape, your life will be exponentially harder. Best of luck out there and remember, “A year from now, you will wish you had started today”!