Yep, it’s me, Josh!
Do you know what’s making me so angry in this photo? Fat, that’s what. I’m angry at those spongy sneaky clingy stubborn fat cells that refuse to accept an eviction from your body.
I say we murder them.
One little fat cell at a time!
Now grab your fat blaster and let’s get to it!!!
Uhhhhhh….
Okay…
Or just keep sitting there until you finish reading this, that’s cool too!
Look, let’s be real…I’m not here to sell you a fitness course, a meal plan, a secret workout routine, an app for your iphone, or any type of weight loss or fitness magazine subscription so let’s just skip all the magic marketing nonsense and get right to it.
You’re here because you want to lose a few pounds.
I’m writing this because I want to help you lose a few pounds!
You’re probably thinking: why should I listen to one word this guy says?
Don’t listen.
Just look.
Here are some pics of me from a few years ago.
Whew…
Tough to even look at those pictures these days.
I was hovering on the edge of depression back then. I was angry a lot. I was frustrated. I was always tired, never feeling like I had enough energy.
All in all, I was just ashamed of myself.
I felt a hundred pounds heavier than I actually looked. My clothes were not fitting right. My skin wasn’t fitting right. Being overweight was not acceptable. Not for me. Not for my life.
Deep down, I knew I could do better.
But no matter what I tried it seemed like my willpower and self-discipline were not up to the task of accomplishing what I wanted to accomplish.
Anyhow, enough sliding down this depressing black hole of my days as a normie. This is supposed to be about why you should listen to one word I say.
Bottom line: I was fat and miserable.
And I certainly didn’t want to be fat and miserable.
So I decided to change.
It took me quite a while, but I eventually figured out how to blast the chubbiness off my body.
Here’s a few pics of me now.
So why should you listen to this sweatband wearing weirdo babble about fitness and weight loss?
Because I’ve been where you’re at!
And (Thank God!), I was lucky enough to stumble across a few key principles that got me to the other side of fat boy river.
Again, I’m not trying to sell any infomation to you. This is not a bunch of marketing jargon. I don’t have a course to sell. I don’t have a book to sell. I don’t have a secret system to sell.
I’m just some weirdo guy who remembers how frustrating it was to live in a body I didn’t want to be living in but to feel like it was damn near impossible to actually transform that body into something I was proud of.
It’s not impossible.
Actually, it’s easier than you may think. But you’ll never get there if you keep doing the same normal things everyone else is doing.
The unfortunate truth is that in today’s society being overweight is normal.
Normal is gorging on donuts and cookies and fast food.
Normal is overeating.
Normal is trying to lose weight, giving up, and then falling in love with these nutty justifications of how it’s not possible to lose weight because of thyroid problems, or genetics, or a because of age, or because of low self-disciple or weak willpower.
Normal is excuses.
Normal is accepting a life you’re not happy living.
The normal average American gains five pounds each and every year.
That’s normal.
Don’t believe me, check this out:
At first glance, this chart looks like the zombie apocalypse has happened.
And in a sense, it has.
But it’s not a virus infecting the world. Instead, the disease is mediocrity. Normal is the outbreak. Average is the epidemic.
The fat-apocalypse is among us.
Anyhow, what’s the point of all this crazed rambling?
It is this:
For weight loss (and life) if you want to look, be, do, or live differently, then you have to be, do, or live differently from all the normies.
You have to be different to be different.
It doesn’t matter if you’re determined to lose five pounds or five hundred pounds. Regardless of your goal, in order to achieve it, you must do things different from those who have not already successfully achieved your desired goal.
You’re gonna need to get a little weird.
With that said, welcome to FitnessForWeirdos!
Now let’s murder some fat!
The first step is to understand the Three Weirdo Fundamentals of Fat Loss.
The Three Weirdo Fundamentals of Fat Loss
To start your ninja-weirdo-weight-loss-training, you first need to understand the difference between weight loss fundamentals and weight loss tactics.
Both are necessary.
For whatever reason, normies are obsessed with weight-loss tactics, but act like they’re allergic to weight-loss fundamentals, whereas Weirdos are at a complete opposite.
Weirdos obsess over the fundamentals but concentrate only on those few specific tactics that allow them to conform with the fundamentals.
This makes all the difference.
So what specifically is a weight-loss fundamental and a weight-loss tactic, and what is the difference between the two?
For the purpose of this guide, a fundamental is an absolute fact.
To live on planet earth, you need air to survive.
This is a fundamental truth. If you no longer have access to air, then you will cease to survive.
In the game of weight-loss, there are three clear-cut fundamentals that must be adhered to in order to make fat disappear.
They are:
- Fundamental #1: You must strengthen your self-discipline and willpower to a level where you can actually stick with the system or method you have committed to stick with.
- Fundamental #2: You must consistently consume less calories than your body can burn.
- Fundamental #3: You must keep doing the thing that is working for as long as you want the thing to keep working.
These three fundamentals are absolute truths to losing weight. Skip any one of them and you WILL NOT succeed.
Tactics, on the other hand, are specific actions and strategies. For weight-loss, these tactics come primarily in the form of specific diets, exercises, cardio routines, supplements, meal plans, workout routines, etc.
There are a million variations of tactics, but only three fundamentals.
Without adhering to the fundamentals, you will not lose weight. This applies no matter which tactic you try and no matter how many Ozempic’s you take.
If you get the fundamentals in place, then your fat is essentially sitting on death row.
But if you only concentrate on tactics, then you will most likely give up before you notice any changes in your body.
Okay, enough jibber-jabber. If you choose to break from the normies and join the world of the Weirdos, you have to start in the correct spot. Which leads us to the first of the Three Weirdo Fundamentals of Weight Loss. Buckle up, because this one simple fundamental has the power to completely change your life. It certainly changed mine!
Weirdo Fundamental #1:
You must strengthen your self-discipline and willpower to a level where you can actually stick with the tactic you have committed to stick with.
Okay, I’m only going to say this once.
(Actually, I’m probably gonna say it a bunch, but I’m only gonna say it once right now!)
YOU KEEP STARTING IN THE WRONG FREAKING SPOT!
Don’t believe me?
Tell me if any of this sounds familiar…
One day, for whatever reason, a ray of motivation rains down through your window, ringing a little alarm inside you that says it’s time for you to change. Maybe this is because your pants are fitting a little too tight. Maybe it’s because your energy levels are always so low. Maybe it’s because you’re just not happy with how you look and feel.
For me, this ray of motivation once hit when a girl I liked (who I’d not seen in a very long time) was coming in town and I did not want her to see the fattest version of me. On a separate occasion, the magic ray of motivation struck after I got angry because I overheard someone I respected talking about how fat I was behind my back. The motivation once came shining into my life after I experienced a debilitating back pain where I had to call 911 and the EMT’s had to break into my house and help me out of bed and onto a stretcher.
We all have our reasons, and whatever your reason to lose weight and get in shape, on this unique morning the ray of motivation comes through your window and latches onto your very consciousness. You hop out of bed and your willpower is super strong. Your determination is fierce. Chickpeas are bought, protein shakes drank, a gym membership procured. HITT training begins, you beat feet against your neighborhood streets, running like you just robbed the Sistine Chapel.
You’re eating good.
You’re exercising.
You’re weighing yourself every morning.
Sunday comes (finally!) so you take a cheat day to maintain your sanity. On Monday morning though, you’re right back in the gym.
A week passes. Then two. The meals drag on: chickpeas and salads. Day-after-miserable-day.
Running is starting to suck.
Your ankles are sore.
Your toes ache.
Your shoes seem wrong.
The gym is always so crowded.
Chickpeas taste like medicine.
A full month passes. You weigh yourself. Your scale is broken. You go to Wally World and buy a new one. Is this scale broken too?
You feel the same as you did before you started: Tired.
You look the same as before you started: Fat.
The weight has not slid off as you expected. Your motivation begins to falter. Your seemingly perfect plan now seems not so perfect. It feels like you’ve been doing everything right but have still made zero progress.
A holiday comes. Or your birthday. Or a friend’s wedding. Christmas is here. A barbecue invitation shows up. It’s the Superbowl. It’s 4th of July. You go on a family vacation. And you’re not gonna eat chickpeas and salads on this special occasion.
Pizza ends up in your mouth.
A few handfuls of peanut M&M’s.
And some ice cream.
And cake.
And a coke.
And an entire bowl of Doritos.
Well, hell.
You slipped up.
You ate like crap and it wasn’t even on your cheat day. Now here you are not even working out today either. But it’s okay, because tomorrow you’ll go extra hard to make up for today.
Tomorrow comes. There’s left-over cake on the kitchen counter. There’s three slices of pizza remaining in the fridge. You’re tired. Your belly hurts. You have a food hangover. You’ve been so good for so long, you deserve a few days off. Actually, you need it. You need a few deload days. You need this time to trick your metabolism. A quick break will allow you to come back with renewed motivation.
A few days turns into a week.
A week turns into a month.
A month turns into a year.
One year turns into two.
But then, one day, a ray of motivation rains down through your window, ringing a little alarm that lets you know it’s time for you to change. This time will be different. You know it will be. You just know. Because you have more motivation this time. You’ll utilize more self-discipline. You want it more. Your life is easier now. You have a new plan. So you buy some chickpeas, drink a protein shake, call the gym about a membership…
Does this circle of failure sound familiar?
It should, because this is how normal everyday average people (your neighbors, your friends, your coworkers, the old normal version of yourself, the old normal version of myself) go about attacking their weight loss and fitness goals.
Fun fact: This method doesn’t work!
And the reason it doesn’t work…
Because You Keep Starting In The Wrong Freaking Spot!
Let me ask you a question. If you’ve ever tried losing weight or getting in better shape, what was your starting plan? How did you come up with your plan? And if you’ve never tried losing weight or getting in better shape, what is your plan now?
Most people (normal people) will start by doing what they perceive to be the most common-sense approach. Basically, they do what they’ve seen others doing. Meaning they slip on their sneakers and shove their earbuds in and go for a run, sweating and grunting and pushing themselves as hard as they possibly can.
Or they’ll join a gym and wander around until they find an exercise machine that doesn’t look like a space shuttle, and then they’ll hop on and sweat and grunt and push themselves as hard as they possibly can.
A handful of normies will hire a personal trainer or a fitness coach and they’ll pay to have this person tell them how to sweat and grunt and push themselves as hard as they possibly can.
Some will follow a canned workout from the internet or an exercise routine from an App. Others will watch a series of Youtube videos or read a book or a blog post or a magazine article.
And in each of these cases they will end up making the following mistake:
They’ll start by sweating and grunting and pushing themselves as hard as they possibly can. They’ll start as hard as possible. With grueling workouts and extremely restrictive diets. They’ll lean into the ‘no pain, no gain’ mentality. They’ll watch Rocky eight times in a row, searching for that magical Eye of the Tiger.
But here’s the thing, when you start like that, with a high level of pain and discomfort, the probability of quitting increases each and every day you continue.
If there’s too much pain and discomfort for too long a time period, you will eventually give up.
Your level of motivation does not matter.
At some point, if the pain and discomfort is too much, that pain will strangle your motivation.
The pain and discomfort will kill your willpower.
It will win.
Said another way: too much intense and repeated pain and/or discomfort, done day after day, will force you to quit.
It’s not your fault. It’s not you being weak. It’s not because you don’t have enough self-disciple or enough willpower.
This is just your brain being your brain.
It’s just you being human.
And as a human, there’s only so much pain and discomfort your brain will tolerate, and if you start and continue with a diet you don’t much like and with a workout routine you dread, it’s not a matter of if you will quit, it’s a matter of when.
If you start like this (like all normies start) then you will quit at some point in the future and then you will be right back where you started (which was in the wrong place to begin with.)
A perpetual cycle will form, and it will be of you starting full of fire and grit only to have your own mind crank out endless justifications of why you should quit.
Your brain will begin to jibber-jabber about how it’s the weekend, or about how all your friends aren’t doing these things, or about how you deserve a few days off, or about how much your plan sucks, or about the legitimacy of cheat days or the logic of a deload week, or how you’re not ready to keep going for some reason or another.
Let me say it once more: starting with a workout routine you absolutely hate and with a diet you do not enjoy has little to no chance of working.
You will not end up sticking with it. Not for the long term.
But this is exactly how normal people all over the planet choose to start a fitness and weight loss program.
They want to start as difficult as possible.
Right now, today, all across the country, there are normies starting this way. They’re starting a fitness program by doing HITT training, or by focusing on an extremely super hard-core restrictive diet. They want to punish themselves in the gym. They want to walk from the gym hunched over, sweat pouring down their face. They want to brag about how sore their thighs are the next day.
They want to hurt.
You tell me… is this logical?
Of course not.
It’s crazy!
But as crazy as this may seem, I get why normies start this way.
I did it too. For many, many years.
You’ve most likely started this way as well.
Normal people (who don’t know any better) are starting this way because they’re focused only on the immediate goal rather than focusing on the process of obtaining the goal.
They want to do everything now, thinking that by doing so, it will get them to their goal quicker.
But in reality, they are only making things so difficult that both their brain and their body will not be able to handle the long-term process of continuing.
And to stay fit and in good shape, you must continue the process.
Today.
And tomorrow.
And the next day.
And the next.
And the moment your foot comes off the gas and the cookies go back in your mouth, that’s when you’re depressed and buying a bigger pant size again.
That’s when you have to start over.
Normal people repeat this failure loop over and over and over and over.
They’re continuously in a cycle of starting and stopping, of trying this tactic and then trying that tactic, of looking for the newest workout, the newest supplement, the newest diet that will give them their dream body as quickly as humanly possible.
Unfortunately, if they stay this route, they will end up going through this cycle forever, always searching until they finally give up and accept their excuses and justifications as reality.
Don’t fall into this trap.
Don’t start by doing the normal things that all normal people are doing.
Be different.
The first different thing you should do is to start with a task so freaking easy that your mind cannot possibly come up with a valid justification for not completing the task.
This is what I did.
And trust me, even when the task is ridiculously easy your mind will sometimes still hee-and-haw. It will still try talking you into and out of all sorts of things. Your mind is the most savage negotiator in the world.
It’s like a five-year-old in a toy store. Nagging and begging and pleading until it eventually gets its way.
Give your mind two or three weeks of enduring a severely restrictive diet or of going to the gym and doing those grueling workouts and it will revolt. It will suddenly remind you of how important it is to do the laundry. Or the dishes. Or the yardwork. Or to check emails.
It will insist that you need to lay down and finish watching the TV series you’ve been neglecting.
It will barter. It will conjole. It will beg.
And that’s your brain’s job. To keep you away from the things that will cause you pain and discomfort, and to bring you closer towards the things that will give you pleasure and safety.
Your brain does not want to start as difficult as possible.
That is not its job. That goes against its very nature.
If you don’t enjoy HITT training, then your brain is going to give you a million different reasons why HITT training should not be done consistently.
If you do not associate a hard-core super restrictive diet as pleasurable, then your brain’s job is to keep you from doing it.
Your brain doesn’t want to punish itself in the gym. It doesn’t want to walk from the gym hunched over with sweat pouring down its face. Your brain doesn’t want to brag about how sore its thighs are the next day.
Your brain doesn’t want you to hurt.
Consciously, you want these things because you think they will bring you to your goal quicker, but unconsciously your brain does not want these things because they cause you pain and discomfort.
And here’s the BIG lesson I learned:
If You Are Always Fighting Against Yourself, You Will Never Win.
This is essential.
In order to win the war against fat you must become an ally with your brain.
In order to do this, it’s imperative that you start with simplicity. And by ‘starting with simplicity,’ I mean you have to start super easy.
What normies fail to realize is that self-disciple and willpower are muscles.
And like all muscles, you must first strengthen them and then continuously use them in order for them to become stronger and stronger.
Imagine that you see a ten-year-old in the gym doing bench presses. The kid only has one five-pound weight on each side of the bar.
Weak, you think.
Ten pounds ain’t nothing.
You go over there to help the kid out. Cause you know this game’s all about earning that strength, and to earn that strength you gotta challenge yourself!
It’s about time for this kid to learn that lesson as well.
So you put two hundred and eighty pounds on the bar. “Ready?” you ask the kid.
You get a terrified look in return.
You lift and lower the weight onto the kid’s chest.
I don’t need to paint a picture of how this story would most likely end.
In the emergency room, probably.
Obviously, I think you and I can both agree that doing something this stupid would be a bad idea.
That much weight at one time could kill someone not strong enough to endure it, but this is exactly how normies treat their self-discipline and willpower.
They try to power through by utilizing strength and brute force that they have not yet earned when in reality they need to start slow and easy and steadily build up their strength until eventually they reach a level that allows them to achieve their goals.
The goal is to start easy so you can become stronger, not to start hard only so you can eventually give up (again).
And when you start hard, your brain will want to quit. Which is why, when it comes to making peace with your own brain, you should be starting so easy that you cannot in any reasonable situation see yourself as not being able to complete the task.
I realize this goes against ‘hustle culture.’
I understand it goes against all the popular advice you’ve heard from fitness coaches and gurus and Nike commercials.
But here’s the truth…
Fitness Gurus, Personal Trainers, Health Coaches, Magazine Articles, Dieticians, and your super-jacked friend with all the cool tattoos are teaching you what is currently working for them rather than teaching you how they started.
And this is not helping you.
Look…I’m not casting blame here.
None of these people are doing this intentionally, but, regardless, they are doing it.
It’s happening.
And when they tell you what’s working for them, you eat it up. Because it’s exactly what you want and think you need to hear.
But it’s bad advice. It’s untimely advice. And it’s causing you to fail rather than to succeed.
Quick story to explain this in better detail…
Every year I attend a few different training events for work. Last year at one of these events one of the other attendees (who I’ve known for years) comes up to me and comments on how much weight I’ve lost.
To my pleasure, he won’t stop babbling about it.
Over the next several days, every time we run into each other he makes a comment about the transformation in my physique. (This guy knew me when I was chubby.)
One morning, I bump into him at the hotel gym.
He’s on the exercise bike pouring sweat, drenched, huffing and puffing. Literally groaning like he’s on a torture machine.
I get on the treadmill on the other side of this tiny hotel gym.
Now I’m a walker, not a runner, so I begin to walk. As soon as he finishes his torturous cardio routine, he comes over to the treadmill and tells me how he just went hard for 20 minutes on the treadmill, then 20 minutes on the elliptical, and then another 20 minutes on the bike.
Ugh! Prisoner of war routine.
It sounds completely miserable.
But of course I make all the polite snorts and sounds and find the right words so I can come off as somewhat encouraging.
Anyhow, a few days later, the hammer drops. He straight up wants specifics. What am I eating? What is my workout routine? What supplements am I taking? What exactly am I doing?
As he described it, he had seen me working out and it didn’t look like I was going all that hard.
There he was on every damn cardio machine in the hotel gym, fighting to keep his heart from beating out of his chest and I was reading a book on the treadmill.
At first glance, it surely seems unfair – for the guy with six pack abs to ‘not be going all that hard,’ and then for the guy who is by no means a model of good health (he’s not ‘Fight Club’ Brad Pitt if you get my drift) to be pushing himself to the brink of utter exhaustion.
I get his frustration. And his confusion. And his desire to figure out ‘The Secret Sauce.’
Because, essentially, he is exactly where I was at only a year earlier.
He’s overweight and frustrated and weight loss and fitness are beginning to seem like an impossible puzzle to crack.
I tell him I’ve been primarily paying attention to my calories, which is true, but of course he wants more specifics.
I then explain how I eat roughly 2,300 hundred calories a day and that I focus on getting a minimum of 140 grams of protein per day.
He scrunches up his face and asks what 2,300 hundred calories looks like. “How much food is that?” he asks, “Can you still eat McDonalds and stuff?”
Now you may think this is a silly, lazy question, but the truth is that yes, I still eat McDonalds and pizza and fast food and stuff.
Not everyday I don’t.
Not for every meal.
But if I wanted to eat McDonalds everyday I’m pretty confident I could make that work with my eating habits. But I have zero desire to eat McDonalds every single day anymore. I love my lasagna lunches, and my steak dinners!
Anyhow…
I then gave him a brief overview of my workouts.
But here’s the thing.
Later that night, I realized I screwed him up more than anything. I did him a disservice by telling him any of that.
Not because anything I told him was untrue, but instead because when I started on this fitness and weight loss journey, I didn’t start with the same workout routine I now utilize.
I didn’t start by eating 2,300 calories and 140 grams of protein.
If I had started by doing those things, I would probably still be chubby and miserable today.
I would have quit shortly after I started.
I’d still be wasting time on YouTube and browsing through Men’s Health Magazine searching for a secret diet or a celebrity workout routine that would work for me.
My coworker most likely left that conference, went back home, and tried to start losing weight by starting at my current destination rather than starting at where he needed to start.
And if he, you, or anyone else, starts their own personal journey at my current destination (or at anyone else’s current destination) then you’ll never reach your goal.
This is not because you can’t or won’t ultimately succeed or because me or anyone else is too cool for school; instead, it’s because success in weight loss and fitness comes from running the race by starting at the beginning and then progressing to the finish line. But no one can start where others are finishing and still expect to get the same results as those who have ran the entire race.
Long story short, I gave him bad advice.
I should have said, “Let me show you how I started, because without starting in the right spot I never would have gotten to where I’m at now.”
Imagine if Elon Musk allowed you to job shadow him for a day because your goal is to be a billionaire. He flies you out to Tesla HQ, and to SpaceX, and to all these different businesses and you sit in on the meetings, and you watch as Elon Musk divvies out a variety of task to his employees. You observe him making high level decisions and coordinating all the highest leveraged opportunities.
Awesome. You’re pretty pumped from watching Elon. You go home and grab a couple of your friends and try to talk them into helping you build a spaceship company.
Seems like a pretty ridiculous idea when you read it in black and white, doesn’t it?
Your friends think the same thing.
“Stupid,” one of them says.
“But Elon is doing it!” you scream.
And you’d be right. Elon Musk is running a spaceship company.
But you and I…
We’re not Elon Musk!
And we are not Elon Musk because neither you nor I started where Elon Musk started and then persevered through the turmoil’s and struggles that Elon Musk had to face.
We did not run that race!
No one can be like Elon Musk unless that person travels on Elon Musk’s journey.
Elon Musk didn’t start where he is today. He started in a small, dark little room writing code for hours on end and then sleeping on a blanket on the floor and then waking up and coding some more.
Point being: you must start from the beginning. You can’t start at someone else’s destination and honestly expect to immediately earn their same results.
Right now, you may be thinking okay…okay…okay, enough is enough, just tell me where and how to start already!
Easier.
That’s where you start if you truly want to succeed.
You start with one single task that is so easy that it is nearly impossible for your brain to convince you to quit.
And you do this task consistently.
Every single day.
For a minimum of 1,000 days.
I can almost feel you sighing and frowning and shrugging and groaning and shaking your head in disgust.
You’ve read all that…to hear that?!
To hear about starting easy and being consistent!? Well, that’s no secret.
Everyone knows you can succeed if you just start slow and do the thing consistently for a long, long time.
It’s not what you want to hear. And I get it. I’ve been where you’re at.
You want results and you want them now, but here’s the thing:
That’s the same thing everyone wants; it’s the same game everyone is playing.
And all the people playing that way are losing.
I was losing at that game and had to change.
You are losing at that game and need to change.
If you have not yet reached your goals, then it is probably time to try something different.
It’s time to play a different game.
One that is easier and slower but is guaranteed to get you to your ultimate goal.
Aren’t you tired of chasing all the fad diets and Instagram workouts and then not reaching your goals?
Look…when you filter out all the bullshit fitness and weight loss consist of only two components.
One is starting. The other is continuing.
And that’s it.
Don’t believe me?
Think of the last time you tasted the motivation milkshake and went all gung-ho on getting back in shape.
Now imagine if you would have never stopped doing the workout routine and the diet you were doing.
What if you had stuck to it and not quit?
I think you and I can probably agree that had you never quit, you would most likely not be reading this right now.
You wouldn’t need it.
But you didn’t continue. You gave up. And you gave up because your brain eventually decided that the diet you were doing or the workouts you were doing were too hard and not worth the pain and discomfort anymore.
You must end that cycle.
You must first start by strengthening your self-disciple and willpower.
And you do this by starting super easy on one single task at a time so that this time you can actually continue your journey without quitting.
And when you do this, here’s the honest truth: you’re not going to see a life-changing transformation right off. Not in two weeks, or three weeks, or even four weeks.
During this first phase of weight loss the goal is not about losing weight or building muscle, rather, the entire objective of this first phase (starting super easy on one single task at a time) is to build up your self-disciple and your will power.
The goal of this phase is to make you stronger, yes, but instead of primarily focusing on building your physique, you will be primarily focusing on building up the mental strength which will allow you to continue on your journey until you reach the finish line rather than giving up early like you and I have both done so many times before.
Ensuring that your brain does not revolt is far more important than the quality of any short-term diet or workout.
Look…this has turned into a much longer article than I ever intended, but I don’t want to end it with something as ambiguous as ‘start easier’.
I want to leave you with honest actionable advice that if acted upon will change not only your self-discipline, your willpower, and your physique, but ultimately your entire life.
With that said, there are probably thousands of tactics you could implement to strengthen your self-discipline and willpower, but here is the one tactic I suggest you start right now (and I suggest this because it’s what worked for me):
Walk.
Today.
And tomorrow.
And the next day.
And the next day.
And the next day.
And the next, and the next, and the next, and keep going and going and going.
Why?
Because walking is moving and moving burns calories and burning calories kills fat! But more importantly, for most people reading this, walking is relatively easy. However, there are rules to this easy Weirdo Walk-a-thon.
They are:
- You must walk for a minimum of ten minutes every single day. Walk in your sneakers if you want, or in a pair of high heels, or in flip flops. Walk outside on the pavement, or inside on a treadmill, walk on a rooftop, walk in the subway, walk wherever you choose, wherever you’re the most comfortable; it doesn’t matter how you walk, or what you wear, or where you walk, but every single day walk for ten consecutive minutes straight. No excuses. No exceptions. Just walk!
- This ten-minute walk must be intentionally for health and fitness. So if you’re walking at work as part of your daily routine, or to lunch, or for any regular daily activity then that is NOT intentionally for health and fitness. That kind of walking is to get you somewhere. For this Weirdo Walk, strap on your Gameface and walk solely for the sake of murdering calories.
- You must walk every single day for a minimum of ten consecutive minutes for a duration of one thousand consecutive days. Yes, that means even on the weekend, and on your birthday, and on Festivus-For-The-Rest-Of-Us! Ten consecutive minutes. Every single day! For 1,000 consecutive days.
If you’re thinking this sounds difficult, then commit to something easier.
Commit to walking five minutes every single day.
The goal of doing this isn’t to ‘feel the burn’ or to walk-til-you drop, it’s to commit to something that is relatively easy and that you believe you can do consistently for a long time.
If you’re on the other side of the fence and you’re thinking that walking for ten minutes every day sounds way too easy, then good!
Get to it!
But I will forewarn you.
It is not necessarily the action of walking that may prove difficult, it’s the everyday aspect of the action.
It’s going to be the day you had to work late and you’re exhausted and your feet hurt. That’s the day your brain will pounce.
It will be on Christmas, or New Years, or when you’re in Hawaii on vacation with your family. It will be when you have the flu, or when you’ve traveled all day and your plane was delayed and you got stuck in a rainstorm and your child is sick.
These will be the days when your brain will whisper about how sensible it is to take a break. Your brain will say ‘everyday’ is too much. It will tell you that you really, seriously don’t have time. It will sell you on the idea that none of your friends are doing anything this weird. It will convince you to start the routine back up tomorrow, or after the vacation, or when you feel better, or after the holidays, or on monday.
And this will be the real test.
If, in these most challenging of moments, you are able to rebuke your biological brain and remind it that you merely need to complete an easy little walk for a measly ten minutes, then that’s the point where your self-discipline and willpower will strengthen.
You will need to remind your biological brain (which will be tired and fed up and as cranky as a two-year-old) of how easy and quick the activity will realistically take.
Easy is your only argument that will convince your brain to continue.
And this is how you start.
And the entire reason you start this way is so that (this time) you will have built up your self-discipline and will power to the point where you can continue on your journey without allowing your brain to convince you to give up.
And if you find yourself still giving in to the incessant whining of your biological brain, then start even easier.
Easy is the key.
Easy is the secret sauce.
It’s where you must start.
Because if you cannot do ‘easy’ for a long duration of time, then you will never ever, ever, ever, ever, not-in-a-trillion-years be able to endure an extremely restrictive diet and a grueling workout routine for a long enough duration to obtain (and maintain) your weight-loss and fitness goals.
If you can’t continuously do the easy things, then there’s no way you’ll continuously be able to do the extremely difficult things.
But here’s the good news: losing weight and getting in shape is not extremely difficult.
It is actually relatively easy.
You just have to do the easy things consistently for a long period of time.
This is where normies completely fall apart.
They would rather try the extremely difficult things and then they give up.
And then they find a different extremely difficult thing and they try that.
And then they give up.
And then they find yet another extremely difficult thing and they try that.
And then they give up.
And on and on it goes.
Please!
I beg you.
Please, please, please, please, please…
Be Different.
It will change your entire life.
Please feel free to email me at [email protected] if you have any questions on where you should start your weight loss and fitness journey or how you can steadily strengthen your self-disciple and willpower.
Again, I’m not trying to sell you a course, a book, or any info.
I just want to help you reach your health and fitness goals so you can feel, be, and live a healthy life where you are proud of both yourself and your body.
Hope this helps to bring you closer to your goals!
Hit me up if you have any questions!
I’m rooting for you!
Josh
Frequent Questions About This Article:
Absolutely. The goal is to build up your self-discipline and willpower by doing one single easy simple thing every single day for a minimum of one thousand days. What that single easy simple thing consist of is entirely up to you. It can be pushups, jumping rope, underwater yoga, backflips, axe throwing, whatever…just choose something you think will be easy and stick with it. No matter what!
Is your question not here?
Hey Human!
Have You Started Walking Everyday Yet?
If So…
Congrats!
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