Losing fat isn’t as simple as understanding the concept of a calorie deficit.
Or knowing that you need to “eat less, move more.”
Otherwise, there wouldn’t be an obesity epidemic in North America.
And if you only had to take the right combination of supplements, finely tune your circadian rhythms, and stare into the sun each morning to be in great shape – we’d all be there.
But the reality is that the oversimplification of fat loss isn’t helpful beyond your first 5 minutes of learning about how it actually works.
I was always the chubby kid who struggled to put on muscle and lose fat.
The typical advice of “just lift hard and focus on the basics” left me without the tools to actually get beyond an intermediate level of muscular development.
And people who want to go deeper than that are just seen as pencil neck nerds who are overthinking things.
It’s not that I wasn’t working hard at it either.
Immigrant parent
Entrepreneurship
Some kind of workaholism
I know how to grind.
It’s the same type of advice given to people who are trying to lose fat.
Just do the basics, bro.
It’s not helpful.
We need to go further beyond just understanding how a calorie deficit works.
You’re not stupid – you don’t need to hear the same thing over and over.
Fundamentals are key, especially for beginners
Simplifying the fundamentals so anyone can understand it is helpful the first 5 or 15 times you see it.
That’s why I wrote Body Recomp 101 – to bring you up to speed on the basics.
But let’s be honest here:
Are you struggling to lose body fat because you don’t understand what calories are?
It’s not because you don’t understand it.
It’s because you’re not applying yourself to the process.
And because there’s more to losing fat than just knowing how it works.
There’s an emotional component to it, too.
If you don’t believe that you can succeed, you’ll never try.
There’s a personal component to it.
How you manage your time and organize your schedule – those matter.
It is in my best interest to help people accomplish their body composition goals.
So I want it to be actionable and not just theory.
In-the-trenches type information that gets you doing something every day to move you forward.
Now, sometimes that information is going to push outside your comfort zone.
You need to go deeper
This is the nature of getting lean and building muscle in general.
At the beginning, you learn you need to eat more fruits and vegetables.
Boom, that’s enough to help you shed your first 10 lb.
Then you learn about setting daily step goals.
About weighing yourself.
Maybe you saw my video about MacroFactor – so you download it
(using code MARRA for a 2 week free trial)
Now you know how to track calories, weigh your food.
Hitting a protein goal.
The more you learn, the more focused effort you apply to the process, the further you can go.
And once you’ve hit a certain level of leanness with the habits and skills you’ve developed, you’ll need to apply them consistently for longer than you ever have in order to get to the next level.
It’s not always going to be fun
It’s not always going to be easy. You’ll be hungry
You might feel a little lower energy, or a little moody
That’s totally normal.
Being in shape is awesome, but don’t be surprised if you have to fight harder than you planned to in order to get there.
One client I’m working with right now just learned that.
She was seeing some up and down progress for about a month, but was being a little loose with her food tracking.
Eventually, she just got fed up and said “fuck this” I’m tired of this.
Put her foot down, started tracking every gram of every food she ate, and hit her calorie goals every day for 7 days in a row.
Boom. Scale weight responds immediately and definitively.
The fitness industry keeps you fat by continuing to coddle you and treat you like a total beginner with zero work ethic.
They forget that fitness goes beyond just theory.
It’s a deeply personal (even spiritual) process that will force you outside your comfort zone.
It’s a much sexier message to share that you just need to put butter in your coffee every morning…
Or just make slightly better food choices each day…
That’s easier than to tell you what it really takes to make serious, significant, consistent, and reliable weight loss progress happen week after week.
Break the cycle keeping you stuck where you are.
Invest in learning what it really takes.
Invest your time by watching videos.
Decide EXACTLY, clearly, what you plan to do.
If you can’t explain it to me in under a minute, you don’t understand it.
Or if you don’t have the time to invest, my 45-day fat loss program lays it all out, Four Point Fat Loss
Then invest your daily energy and focus into working your plan.
You don’t need to have everything work perfectly right away – trust me, it probably won’t.
But if you keep showing up and pouring intentional effort into your goals, and solving problems as they arise, you simply cannot fail.
That’s the brutal truth that nobody can escape.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a hotshot lawyer, or a CEO..
Nobody can entirely buy their way out of this process.
- You have to put in work
- You have to take action
- You have to feed it with focus
The grass is only greener where you water it.
Hope that helps.
-Matteo
