Getting Shredded Made Easy
The plan I used to go from fat to fit in 8 months
Hey!
I’m Bryan, and in this post I’m going to show you how, after decades of repeated failure, I lost almost 100lbs in 8 months, gained over 10lbs of muscle, and maintained ~10% body fat for the past 3 years. I’m also going to give you ALL the tools and info you could possibly need to do it for yourself as easily as possible.
I became obsessed with fitness and nutrition over 20 years ago and, since then, I’ve gone through countless exercise and diet programs in an attempt to reach my lifelong goal of obtaining 6 pack abs.
None of them worked.
It’s not that I saw ZERO success, it’s that whatever success I did find repeatedly proved to be unsustainable for me, and I always wound up right back where I started, if not even further behind. Regardless of what I did, I could not escape the feeling that I was trying to FORCE someone else’s routine to work for me. As a result, everything I was doing felt much more difficult than it needed to, and I inevitably burnt out somewhere along the road.
I had years, and thousands of hours of knowledge and experience under my belt but, for the life of me, I could not figure out how to get these tools to work for me...
So, why does this program actually work where others fail?
Simple.
No one can teach you how to live as yourself…
Every single weight loss program you’ve ever encountered uses knowledge and strategies that work for the largest number of people possible, but never for everyone. If you don’t feel like a program meshes with your personality and lifestyle; with your identity, then that program has very little (if any) chance of working for you. If you’re anything like I was, then you’ve never found a weight loss program that meshes with you well enough to help you reach your goals, and keep them.
What makes The Anyone Plan different?
I cannot teach you exactly how to reach your goals, and neither can anyone else. What I can do is teach you how to discover your OWN path of least resistance to building your dream body, and in the shortest possible amount of time. In other words, I can teach you how to locate and travel down the ONLY path which guarantees your success, because that path is FOR you!
This program works because it contains only the things you are capable of doing, and none of the things you find miserable and unsustainable (the routine-killers). This program utilizes powerful psychological techniques to build a routine that CANNOT FAIL.
Getting into shape is 100% psychological; the trick to making it work is to locate and use your unique, psychological peculiarities. That is what this guide will teach you how to do!
The Rules
These are the rules of the plan that we are aiming to follow perfectly. Your plan likely won’t be able to follow all of these rules right from the start; it will evolve and improve alongside you, but our goal is to quickly reach a point where ALL of these rules are followed. Following these rules will inevitably lead you to the body you desire so, ultimately, our goal is to tailor your plan so that following these rules becomes as easy as possible for the perfectly unique person you are.
Eat 1 gram of protein per 1 pound of bodyweight (or very close). If you weigh 200lbs, you will eat 200 grams of protein each day
Eat calories between 10-30% below your maintenance level (500-1000 calorie deficit for most people - more info later)
With the exception of occasional protein shakes, we will avoid drinking calories as often as possible (especially alcohol)
Strength training 2-3x per week, 5-15 reps per set, for at least 30 minutes per session, at high intensity - hitting all muscle groups each week. Keep at least 2 days rest between weight training sessions! (Workout options and tips below this section)
Walk a minimum of 6k steps per day
Get a minimum of 7 hours of sleep each night
Stay well-hydrated (roughly 0.5 ounces of water per 1lb of bodyweight, along with sufficient electrolytes (magnesium, potassium, and sodium))
TOTAL TIME INVESTMENT PER WEEK: 2-3 hours
That’s it!
Everything else will be perfectly tailored to ensure we quickly reach a point where all of these rules are followed.
Just to nail the point home, these are the rules ALL of our plans must ultimately follow, but the ways in which your plan follows them will be unique to you. Everyone who ever lost weight and gained muscle ultimately followed a set of required rules very similar to the ones I’ve laid out. The “secret” to getting into shape is to figure out how to neatly fit these rules into YOUR unique life and personality.
The rules rarely, if ever change much, but the ways we teach ourselves to follow them are perfectly unique to each person, and can change whenever we need them to!
Lastly, before we get to the personalization process that makes this plan work, here’s a strength training routine you can aim for, or use to customize your own routine. Remember, you do not NEED to use this plan, as many other plans can also work. This example plan is a simple, quick, and effective plan for those looking to maximize efficiency and gains:
The Workout Plan
Your goal each week will be to workout every muscle group once - spaced at least two days apart to ensure proper rest/recovery. The best way to do this is with one of the following “splits”.
Working out 2 days per week: Upper body, lower body split. (Example: Upper body Monday, lower body Thursday)
Working out 3 days per week: Push, pull, legs split. (Example: Push Monday, pull Wednesday, legs Friday)
PUSH = Mostly chest, shoulders, and triceps
PULL = Mostly back and biceps
LEGS = Mostly quads, hamstrings, glutes, core, and calves
For PUSH and PULL exercises, choose 1 GREEN exercise for each muscle group, and 1 RED exercise for each muscle group to do 2 sets of 6-15 reps (just choose 1 green if no red exercises are listed for that muscle group!).
For LEGS, choose 2-3 GREEN and 1 RED exercise for 2 sets at 6-15 reps.
If you can do more than 15 reps, you need to add more weight, or choose a different exercise! Remember, no single workout should take longer than 45 minutes. If it does, you’re either doing too many sets, or resting too long between sets (rest a minimum of 2, and a maximum of 4 minutes between sets!)
If you need help with exercise form, YouTube is your friend (or you can ask me)!
PUSH EXERCISES:
Chest exercises: Bench press, pushups, dips
Shoulder exercises: Shoulder press, dumbbell lateral raise
Triceps: Military pushup, diamond pushup, skull crushers, tricep push down
PULL EXERCISES:
Back: Chin/pull ups, lateral pull downs, rows, dumbbell lawnmower row, standing barbell row, inverted row
Bicep: Barbell curls, dumbbell curls
LEG EXERCISES:
Quads/Hamstrings/Glutes/core: Squat (Great and quick squat form demonstration), walking lunges, bulgarian split squats, ATG split squats (great for strengthening knees!), good mornings, deadlift
Calves (many people choose not to train calves, but it’s ultimately up to you): Double leg calf raise, seated calf raise
BODYWEIGHT ONLY GUIDE (For those without access to equipment or a gym)
Lastly, ALWAYS go to failure, or very close - and lift slowly, with intensity!
If you’re lifting weights without going to failure (or very close), then you’re wasting your time! Each set must be taken to AT LEAST within 2 reps of total failure. For best results, all reps should be performed slowly (especially on the eccentric movement of the lift), counting to a minimum of 3 seconds moving the weight in each direction (4-6 seconds, or longer, is typically better). Do NOT throw the weight around! Move it with purpose.
Alright, onto the personalization process (finally)!
Personalization
Here we’ll go through the following step-by-step process in order to build a starting plan, and improve on it week to week. Make a copy of this post and fill in your own answers, or simply write them elsewhere.
Before we jump into this process, we will first need to determine our maintenance calories (the number of calories we need to eat in a day to stay at our current weight).
Follow this link, input your information, and save the numbers!
This is the number we’ll be using to figure out how many calories per day we should be eating. Depending on how active you are, your BMR (basal metabolic rate) will change day to day. It will also change with your weight; decreasing in number as you lose weight. Because of this, we will need to recalculate and use our new number every 5lbs or so that we lose.
Our goal is to eat calories that fall between 10-30% BELOW our BMR.
If your BMR is 2200, then your daily calorie consumption should be between ~1,500 - 2,000 calories per day. If you are beginning your program with a higher body fat percentage (typically more than 30lbs to lose), then you can safely eat on the lower end of the range (~1,500 calories, in this example) until your weight loss begins to slow down week to week.
Note: Counting calories is not ABSOLUTELY REQUIRED, but your weight loss journey will likely be significantly more difficult if you refuse to track your food at all. Not only that, but learning to count calories is an invaluable skill for too many reasons to list here. It doesn’t take long to learn and, once you’ve mastered it and have your nutrition dialed in, you likely won’t even need to do it anymore - it simply becomes intuitive for most people.
Lastly, before we personalize, here is a list of helpful tips and suggestions you can use to make customizing your plan as easy and efficient as possible. You do not need to use ANY of these tips/suggestions, but there is a good chance that at least one of them will prove very valuable to you, and make your weight loss journey significantly easier!
Customization Tips/Suggestions (Reference this while beginning and “upgrading” your plan week to week):
Try eating VERY low-carb (Keto - less than 50 grams of carbs per day, for most people) for the first month or two. Depending on your metabolic health, eating very-low carb for a while may drastically improve your metabolism/metabolic health, as well as result in RAPID weight loss early on in your journey. The carnivore diet (a keto alternative) is also favored by many people attempting to lose weight quickly, and to help diagnose nutrition-related physical and mental health issues!
Try intermittent fasting (IF), if only temporarily.
IF can make weight loss laughably easy if you can get through the “learning to deal with hunger” phase in the first few weeks. Once you’ve learned this, not only will hunger become less burdensome in your everyday life, but you’ll now be able to take a large chunk of the day where you don’t need to worry about what you’re eating at all! Some people will even go as far as eating only one meal a day (OMAD). The most common IF method is the 16/8 split, which means 16 hours out of the day (including while sleeping) will be fasted, and the other 8 are the hours we are allowed to eat in. IF has countless other benefits as well, so if you haven’t tried it yet, I highly recommend it!
Try the 10:1 calorie to protein ratio trick while shopping for healthy food.
1. Look at the nutrition facts
2. Look at the calories per serving
3. Look at the protein per serving
4. The protein per serving must achieve a ratio of at least 1 gram of protein per 10 calories.
If the food has 100 calories per serving, it must have at least 10 grams of protein. This tip works at least 95% of the time because it is practically impossible for the other macronutrients (carbs and fat) to be found in excess so long as the protein achieves this ratio. Grocery shopping made easy!
Micro Workouts
Don’t have enough time in your day to get a full workout in? Try micro workouts! Whenever you find yourself with a free minute, take that time to quickly do some pushups, squats, jumping jacks, etc. Whatever exercise you choose, perform it near maximum intensity for at least 30 seconds, then stop. Do this a minimum of 6 times throughout the day for best results. Note: This cannot replace strength training sessions if your goal is to build muscle.
Forced Minimal Effort
Don’t feel like getting in a workout today? Try this: Whatever it is you need to get done, just tell yourself you’re going to half ass it and just go for a few minutes today. Something is better than nothing, right? 90%+ of the time, you’ll find it easy to keep going once you’ve gotten started. Getting started is usually the hardest part, and this tip works great to get past it!
Atomic Habits
If you haven’t read the book “Atomic Habits”, I highly suggest you read it. While designing our routine, we will be considering the information laid out here in order to make establishing our new habits (and eliminating our bad ones) as easy as possible.
Whenever you want to change your behavior, ask yourself:
How can I make it obvious?
How can I make it attractive?
How can I make it easy?
How can I make it satisfying?
“A habit is a behavior that has been repeated enough times to become automatic.”
“The ultimate purpose of habits is to solve the problems of life with as little energy and effort as possible”
Any habit can be broken down into four steps:
Cue – triggers your brain to initiate a behavior
Craving – the motivational force behind every habit
Response – the actual habit you perform
Reward – the end goal of every habit
The Four Laws of Behavior Change
How To Make A Good Habit
Make it obvious
Make it attractive
Make it easy
Make it satisfying
How To Break A Bad Habit
Make it invisible
Make it unattractive
Make it difficult
Make it unsatisfying
Fasted walking with a weight vest
Want to optimize your walking and burn an INSANE amount of fat while doing it? Strap on a weighted vest and go for your walk in a fasted state (haven’t eaten for at least 10 hours). Do not underestimate the fat loss potential of this activity! There is arguably NO BETTER fat loss “exercise” in existence!
Best/easiest protein sources
My personal favorite protein sources: Beef, chicken, fish, turkey, lamb, elk, deer, bison, eggs, cottage cheese, whey protein shakes and powder (low or no sugar), Fairlife protein shakes, Quest products. Eat these foods often, and you cannot go wrong!
Need to burn more calories? Add in some zone 2 cardio
Cardio is not the best way to lose weight, but that doesn’t mean it’s useless! If you’re doing cardio for weight loss, then zone 2 cardio for 20-40 minutes is where you want to be. Zone 2 cardio is achieved when your breathing reaches a point where speaking full sentences becomes difficult. If you cannot speak your words clearly due to breathing too heavily, then you’re going too hard!
Things you should rarely, if EVER eat or drink
Alcohol, sugar, seed and vegetable oils (soy, canola, palm, safflower, sunflower, rapeseed, cottonseed, etc.), heavily processed foods (frozen, fast food, ready-to-eat, etc.), plant-based food substitutes. If you must consume these things, consume them as infrequently as possible.
Things you should eat and drink as often as possible
Healthy fats (animal fats, coconut oil, olive oil, avocados, etc.), animal products in general (meat (especially red meat), dairy, eggs).
Supplements that ACTUALLY work (Boost energy, mood, hormones, recovery, etc)
Magnesium bisglycinate (daily)
Collagen (daily)
Fadogia Agrestis + Tongkat Ali (daily - cycle 4 weeks on, 1 week off)
Boron (daily)
Shilajit (daily)
Vitamin D (daily - NOTE: direct sun exposure is 100x better than taking a supplement)
Creatine monohydrate (daily)
Things that will TANK your hormones and make muscle-building and weight loss much harder
1. Screen time, especially in the first hour of the day (Porn, gaming, social media, etc.)
2. Eating/drinking lots of highly processed, “healthy” versions of junk food (“keto-friendly” snacks, microwave meals, plant-based foods/drinks, etc.)
3. Lack of sleep
4. Social isolation
5. Stress, fear, and resentment
6. Frequent feelings of helplessness (eliminate as many from your life as you can!) See this article for more details: https://gosugains.substack.com/p/the-cause-of-all-depression-anxiety
Personalization Process
Alright, time to build and personalize our plan!
Set a long-term goal
Long-term example: Lose 30lbs in 3 months
Make the goal as deep and personal to you as you can. Instead of just “losing weight”, it might help to frame it as something like, “lose enough weight to remove the shame of being shirtless in public.” Remember, this plan works because we are utilizing every psychological advantage we can!
Picture yourself transforming, and focus on the elements of the transformation that motivate, excite, and inspire you the most! Accept that you deserve this transformation, and that you CAN achieve it.
What does the first week of our routine look like for pursuing this goal?
Keeping the 7 rules in mind, what should our first week look like? The point of this step is to figure out what you’re ready to do IMMEDIATELY, while carrying you closer and closer to perfectly following the 7 rules, eventually. What can you do this week that will bring you closer to following these rules?
Keep in mind that although our goal is to make this as easy as possible, we still need to challenge ourselves in SOME way, and improve on these challenges each week until we arrive at a sustainable routine that follows all 7 rules.
Example: This week I’m going to cut out all soda and get it out of my house, walk at least 5k steps per day, try to count my calories, and eat at least 40 grams of protein with every meal.
Note: Your first week does NOT need to be difficult at all. With that being said, it’s important to understand that it will be MUCH easier for you to lose weight in the first 3-6 weeks, and more difficult after that period. Some people see their best results by slowly easing into a new routine, and other people thrive on seeing rapid results by going hard right from the beginning. Throughout this weight loss guide, it is important to constantly ask yourself what YOU are most likely to succeed with, and not with what other people are.
Do your Week 1 plan, then customize!
Note: We will repeat this step every week until we arrive at a perfectly unique plan that follows all 7 rules.
At the end of each week, we will ask ourselves the following questions:
What did I do well with this week, and what did I do poorly with?
What did I enjoy doing, and what did I dislike?
What was easy for me, and what was difficult?
What will I change for next week?
This process should take 20 minutes AT MOST. Don’t overthink/complicate it; listen to yourself, be brutally honest, and don’t be afraid to get something wrong. That’s the point of this process!
The answers to these questions will help us to “upgrade” and make changes to our routine each week. Keep in mind there are no right or wrong answers here; the point of asking ourselves these questions is to teach OURSELVES how to “get good” at losing weight in our own perfectly unique way. Losing weight is a skill, and we can’t expect to be amazing at it right away!
Using our answers, we will make adjustments to our routine.
Example:
I did well with cutting out soda and walking
I did poorly with eating 40 grams of protein per meal, and tracking all my calories
I enjoyed: walking around my neighborhood in the morning before eating, and trying out no-sugar soda substitutes.
I didn’t enjoy: Walking on the treadmill at night, dealing with hunger cravings, or trying to cram in 40 grams of protein with each meal.
What was easy for me: Walking first thing in the morning, replacing soda with healthier options.
What was hard for me: Counting calories accurately, especially when eating out. Eating enough protein (40g per meal).
What will I change for next week?: Using our answers from questions 1-3, now it’s time to “upgrade” our routine for next week.
Example:
Next week I’m going to:
Walk 8k steps per day, first thing in the morning - I enjoyed the walking and found it easy to do in the morning while outdoors, but difficult to do at night on a boring treadmill, so I’m going to take advantage of those facts.
Get some healthy snacks to help with protein requirements and hunger cravings
Learn about the best sources of high protein to make my protein requirements easier (taking some time to learn each week will almost always be part of the process!)
Add in 1 bodyweight strength training session for the week
Pre-prepare some meals to make tracking calories easier
Repeat until you’ve achieved a plan that follows all the rules!
This process is the essence of why The Anyone Plan works.
Set a goal
Establish the rules we’re aiming for
Start wherever you can - keeping the rules in mind, and including them more and more each week
Evaluate what works and what doesn’t from week to week. Keep what works, throw out what doesn’t (if only temporarily because it may work later!)
Upgrade the plan and learn more each week until you find yourself doing a routine that follows all the rules, in your OWN way
In my experience, most people are able to find themselves engaging in a routine that follows all the rules within 2 months of starting - losing plenty of weight in the process. The sooner you can follow all the rules, the faster you will arrive at your goals. Ultimately though, we want to achieve consistency and sustainability, which means the process won’t happen in the same amount of time for everyone. Some people may be able to follow them all right from the start, while others may require months to get there.
The fastest weight loss program in the world is of no use to us if we can’t actually do it!
“I’m interested in this plan, but I’d like some help with it/I have some questions.” > https://calendly.com/gosugains