The fastest way to make visual changes to your body is losing fat.
And there’s one thing that’ll help you lose fat faster than anything else, but most guys suck at it.
I’ve lost 50 pounds now twice in my life.
I’ve been skinny, I’ve been fat, I’ve been skinny fat, and everything in between.
Here’s a harsh truth about losing fat that I wish I knew sooner.
Everywhere online nowadays, people tell you to lose weight slowly.
There are some grains of truth to that.
But there are two major downsides that come with it.
Today I’m going to show you:
How fast fat loss can help you get in better shape
How to do it without losing muscle
Without regaining the weight
How to gamify it for added motivation
So you can start seeing results in the mirror sooner.
So you can feel excited about getting started.
So you can just get it over and done with already.
I spend as little time as possible throughout the year actually losing fat.
It eats into the time I could be spending eating for muscle growth, or at maintenance.
And when you take it seriously, it happens faster than just about anything else in fitness.
Most people are just waffling.
Before we dig in, Four Point Fat Loss is now live.
If you want to lose your stubborn belly and lower back fat on autopilot without some BS diet, check it out.
Why slow sucks
When you’re losing weight slowly, it’s demotivating to see slow or very little progress.
You probably won’t see visual changes in the mirror for a matter of weeks or even months.
Unlike my back hair.
Which has seemed to grow faster and thicker every year that I’ve been alive.
Soon it will have joined the hair on my ass cheeks, forming a complete connection from my scalp all the way to my ankles.
When progress is slow, it’s easy to wonder if it’s even happening at all.
So slow that it’s difficult to even track with the scale.
Imagine you’re aiming to lose half a pound per week.
But for the next month you just had some weird body water stuff going on.
Those weight fluctuations could be due to:
Stress
Salt
Fiber
Carb intake
Fluid
That can make it seem like you haven’t lost any weight for that month.
If you couple that with the fact that your clothes are pretty much fitting and feeling all roughly the same, then it’s tough to keep going.
Some guys don’t even want to start losing weight because they realize how long it’s going to take.
If you think it’s going to take you 80 weeks of a calorie deficit to lose this weight – how motivating do you think that really is to get started?
How slow is too slow?
If you’re losing 0.5% of your total body weight each week, that’s a conservative loss rate.
And if you’re going much slower than that, I’d wonder really what the point is.
For a guy who’s 250 pounds who wants to be 200 pounds, that’s gonna take him about 40 weeks at that pace.
If you factor in slip ups, vacations, and unexpected difficulties, it’s going to take that guy over a year to lose the weight.
Do the math for your goals
Figure out what half a percent of your total body weight is.
Then figure out roughly how long it’s gonna take to hit your goal weight.
Or just use my free weight loss calculator for this.
It’ll spit out a six month plan with specific weight milestones of where you should aim to be by when.
That’s what my client Doug did.
Then he shot me a message asking for some help to make it happen.
Wheel spinning
You’ve probably experienced this before.
You decide that you want to get leaner and start losing weight.
But you never really focus in and make a serious effort at making it happen.
It just becomes this nagging voice in the back of your head that’s like…
“Eat a salad”
“You should work out”
Then you end up feeling guilty because you never make a full effort towards it.
But worst of all, you don’t see much happening in the way of results.
Stop robbing yourself of your most powerful tool for staying motivated.
If you’re consistently putting in effort without seeing any results, that’s going to tank your motivation.
Instead we could increase your effort levels from a 4/10 to 7/10.
The results you get are far more significant.
That’s going to send your motivation through the roof.
The guy in the picture above… yeah, he pushed hard, he was focused with his diet and his workouts.
But where do you think his motivation is at right now?
Do you really think this guy is going to be giving up anytime soon?
Nothing is more motivating than results
I read comments like this every day.
“Hey man, I’ve been at this for three months and I’m not losing any fat.”
“I’ve been going to Orange Theory three days a week and my weight isn’t moving.”
Painful.
This should never happen.
Realistically, two weeks of a plateau is all you should be looking at before you make a change.
That’s a bit more of an in-depth topic called self coaching we’ll talk about soon.
Instead of all this, you could try going with a more aggressive fat loss diet.
Especially if you have a lot to lose.
You’re going to feel excited when you see the scale moving closer to 1% of your total body weight every single week.
In the case of the 250 pound guy, that’s two and a half pounds per week.
Here’s what that’s going to feel like:
Every 10 days or so, you’re going to notice your face getting slightly leaner
Every month or so, you’re going to be moving a belt notch or two
You’re going to notice a difference in the way your clothes fit and feel
People are going to start noticing the progress you’re making
Eventually, you’re going to step out of the shower, look in the mirror, and have a holy shit moment where you can’t believe the progress you’ve made.
You’re getting regularly rewarded for all the effort that you’re putting in.
If you can tap into that energy and momentum, you’re set.
Especially if you have a lot to lose.
You’re going to feel excited when you see the scale moving closer to 1% of your total body weight every single week.
In the case of the 250 pound guy, that’s two and a half pounds per week.
Here’s what that’s going to feel like:
Every 10 days or so, you’re going to notice your face getting slightly leaner
Every month or so, you’re going to be moving a belt notch or two
You’re going to notice a difference in the way your clothes fit and feel
People are going to start noticing the progress you’re making
Eventually, you’re going to step out of the shower, look in the mirror, and have a holy shit moment where you can’t believe the progress you’ve made.
You’re getting regularly rewarded for all the effort that you’re putting in.
If you can tap into that energy and momentum, you’re set.
But won’t you lose muscle if you lose weight quickly?
You’re gonna be fine.
Especially if you have a lot of fat to lose.
You could probably even push up closer to 1.25% of your total body weight each week.
Especially if you have the following things in place:
1) You’re lifting weights in the gym, using focused effort to grow new muscle.
If you’re not lifting weights… what are you doing?
Come on.
2) You’re eating plenty of protein
Nothing fancy needed here.
Just eat a protein dense food every time you sit down to eat.
If you want a more detailed breakdown…
Check out my new free guide – Body Recomp 101
It’ll teach you how to lose fat while building muscle at the same time.
3) You’re sleeping 7 plus hours a night
When you restrict your sleep, something magical happens.
You build fat while losing muscle.
Avoid that.
Again, more detail in Body Recomp 101.
What about here?
Do you think I lost muscle?
Do you think I just maintained the amount of muscle that I have?
Or do you think that I maybe built some muscle along the way?
Genuinely, I’m not trying to sway you in any way. I’m just curious what you think.
By the way, if you’re overweight or obese and you haven’t been training with weights for very long, If you start weight training while you’re doing this fat loss thing…
You are very likely to be building muscle while you’re losing the fat.
Fast weight loss causes weight regain
Think about that for a moment before you take it as fact.
Is losing weight quickly really what causes you to regain the weight afterwards?
Or is it actually that you’re just unable to maintain your new weight after?
If you look at weight loss research, the number one correlation for weight regain after weight loss dieting is a cessation of the behaviors that led to the weight loss in the first place.
So maybe you start indulging in all your favorite treats again way too soon.
You start overeating and you’re no longer tracking your food intake. You stop being as active and you stop hitting a step goal.
There’s nothing special about it.
That’s just a recipe for weight gain.
And what a frustrating, time consuming, and annoying thing to put in all this effort and energy into losing all this weight in the first place only to gain it back again.
I know it sucks because I’ve done it myself.
But dieting hard and fast is not the culprit here.
It’s an inability to maintain your weight.
And it’s super easy to do.
Once you reach your goal weight or anywhere along the way where you want to take a pit stop, you just bump your food up.
So if you’re eating 2, 500 calories a day and you’re losing a pound a week, boom, you just bump your food up to 3000 calories and see how that goes for a week.
If you maintain your weight, perfect.
If you’re still losing weight on 3000 calories, add a little bit more until you’re just maintaining your weight and just hang out there.
It’s going to be so much easier relative to fat loss dieting.
You need to get serious and focused about this if you actually want to see real significant results that people notice.
Start tracking your food intake, step on the scale first thing in the morning.
Stop being so soft on yourself and just make this happen.
Aim for hard and fast fat loss to start, and let your progress give you the motivation you need to continue.
Here’s what I recommend.
1) First thing, set a goal.
No need to be fancy with it.
I just want you to clearly and specifically answer these three questions.
What do you want to accomplish?
By when do you want to accomplish that?
And why is this important to you?
2) Focus on the most important things.
There are only four numbers that you need to focus on.
your daily calorie intake
your daily protein intake
your daily step count
your body weight
This is The Four Point Fat Loss Framework that I’m teaching in my brand new course launching June 29th.
You can grab Four Point Fat Loss here before the price goes up.
You’ll shrink your waistline and see the results you want in the mirror without having to do some BS diet or hours of cardio.
3) Gamify it
Go into your pantry and count out 45 grains of rice or 45 pieces of pasta.
Every day that you are on track you take out one of those noodles.
Until you get to the end of the bowl.
Once that bowl is empty, you won’t need any more motivation hacks.
4) Document and adjust
Don’t end up being the dude who goes three months without losing any weight.
You need to document what you’re doing so you know what’s working, what’s not, and why.
You can use a spreadsheet, even the notes app on your phone, or just send yourself an email every weekend.
This is your captain’s log.
It gives you clues as to what you need to be doing in order to continue driving progress.
Six weeks of focused effort will take you further than six years of half assed effort.
The time’s gonna pass either way.
It’s up to you where you want to be at the end of it.
Hope you have a great weekend.
-Matteo
PS: in case you missed it – Body Recomp 101 is my free guide to losing fat while building muscle at the same time.
It’s better than most of the paid products out there on the topic.
