I almost drop kicked a professor in college.

And I’m talking about the full on off-the-top-turnbuckle-out-for-the-count-WWE type drop kick.

Why would I do this? Well I could tell you the whole story. But I’ll keep it brief and give you the short version.

My sophomore year of college, where I majored in theater, I was asked to build a 10 foot tower with stairs for a production of Sweeney Todd.

I spent the entire weekend assembling the stairs, the landing, and attached casters so the tower could roll on and offstage. After 36 hours in a dark and dusty theater, the tower was complete.

Until my professor showed up to survey my work.

“Robbie? Why are the stairs on the right side and not the left?”

At first, I thought he was joking. I’d followed every step of the blueprint. So I responded by saying, “because that’s what’s your blueprint called for.”

He stood there staring at the tower I had constructed and he started to laugh as he said this next.

“Well, shit. I flipped the blueprint around by accident. The stairs are ‘supposed’ to be on the left side of the tower. My fault. Take the entire thing apart and move the stairs to the opposite side, shouldn’t take you long.”

I was pissed. So pissed I imagined drop kicking this professor.

All weekend I thought I had the right instructions, and in the end, I had to overhaul the entire monstrosity.

The same thing happened when I first started working out. I thought had a foolproof blueprint for success:

• Lift weights
• Run on the treadmill
• Eat salad
• Drink protein shakes
• Make gains

Except, I didn’t have a blueprint at all. I had “ideas” of what worked. Assumptions I’d stacked together from magazines and the internet about how to burn fat and build muscle. But I had no real concrete plan.

And for years, I made the same stupid fat loss mistakes, over and over.

But I’m not the only one who’s made these fat loss mistakes. You have, too — or, you’re making them right now.

Fat Loss Mistake #1 – Health Food is the Best Food

Mmmmmmm, salad. Fat losses greatest weapon.

You can load a salad full of healthy veggies, lean proteins like ham, chicken, or shrimp, maybe add a little cheese, some corn, or even avocado. Mix all that together, and you have a meal that can keep you full for hours.

My grandfather called salads, “rabbit food,” and that’s how millions of people still see them. And due to this (misguided) view, people drown their once healthy salad under ranch, blue cheese, or olive oil.

I did the same thing for years. During one of my weight loss attempts, I had a salad every day at lunch and suffocated my spinach in olive oil. Because ya know, olive oil is healthy.

And maybe you’re using some organic, extra extra virgin, cold-pressed, non-GMO, raised-by-monks-who-sang-to-the-plant-three-times-a-day olive oil; and it cost like $15 at Whole Foods, so it’s like, totally healthy, right?

(fuck, for $15 it better give you an orgasm)

Before we go any further, though. Can someone explain to me why food today, especially, supposed “health” foods, are plastered with more endorsements than a race car?

Endorsements that are nothing more than hot words created to sway our beliefs that this product is “better” for us.

Bourgeoisie words like organic, gluten-free, free-range, and all-natural are powerful marketing terms. But, more often than not, we’re convinced by our own cognitive dissonance that what we’re eating is “healthier.”

Let me explain with a quick story. (hops in DeLorean)

In 2010, I got a big boy job.

At least it was the most “big boy” job I’d ever had. I worked for the government. And no, don’t ask me what I did, because then I’d have to kill you.

I made more money in that position than any job I’d ever had. And spending some of that money on a gym membership and supplements seemed like a damn good idea.

Plus, I lucked out that in the same shopping center as our office, there happened to be a gym three doors down. With an hour long lunch break, I could get in and out of the gym in 45 minutes and be back within the hour.

This was my plan: (And there will be more about this “plan” for the next few points, so memorize it now.):

• 15 minutes of cardio (because warming up, bro)
• 30 minutes of lifting
• Post workout shake, because that’s how you get muscles
• Then eat a salad at lunch, because that’s how you lose weight

And since in my mind eating salad equaled guaranteed weight loss, I skipped having ranch dressing (my favorite) and opted for honey mustard.

Read that last part one more time:

“I skipped ranch and opted for honey mustard.”

Why would I do that? Ummm…..because honey mustard is healthier?

My salad had a ton of lettuce, some cheese, hard boiled eggs, and diced deli ham. Overall, it wasn’t a bad salad.

At least, it wasn’t until I dumped close to a ¼ cup or more of honey mustard on it. Which, if my calculations are correct, added anywhere from 200-300 calories.

Standard honey mustard dressing that you’ll find in the grocery store has about 50 calories per tablespoon.

Are you “really” satisfied with one tablespoon of dressing? No, you’re not.

Now imagine if you’re using olive oil, which has 120 calories per tablespoon, and you “pour” it over your salad without measuring it out. You could easily add 250-400 calories in no time.

I’m not saying that olive oil is “bad” for you. Google its benefits and you’ll find tons. But, as the cliche goes, “too much of a good thing is bad for you.”

Healthy food isn’t a magic elixir for fat loss. Health food still has calories. And when you’re focused on fat loss, there’s one truth you can’t escape: calories matter.

Fat Loss Mistake #2 – Calories Don’t Matter

Fact: there are at least two times in my life where I paid zero attention to my caloric intake.

One of those times involved the few months I went hardcore Paleo. Though I could dive into that here, I won’t. But let’s just say while working on this article, I totaled up the calories I ate during my Paleo days, and it wasn’t good.
But let’s stay in 2010 during my time as a government employee.

I assumed that to achieve my goals, all I needed was to exercise four or five days a week, eat a salad at lunch, drink a protein shake, and my physique dreams would come true.

And since numbers provide context, check out the infographic below for a brief look into my diet during 2010.

**Note: some of this I’m 100% certain of. Other parts, not so much. But overall, it paints a picture of what happens (or can happen) when you don’t track what you eat**

Let’s total those calories up, shall we?

At the low end of the calorie range, I ate around 2,690 calories. On the high end, I would have topped out at over 3,100 calories.

Remember, most of this is from memory. I have no idea how many calories the Chef Salad I had from the local pizza joint had in it.

I couldn’t tell you with 100% accuracy what I had as a snack most days, either. And that’s the problem.

You (and I in the past tense) assume that we’re eating “right.” I’ve had clients claim at the beginning of working with me that they “don’t have a bad diet.”

How do you know you don’t have a bad diet? You’re only assuming that you’re doing it all “right” — and we all know what assuming does.

If you’re not tracking what you eat by either using an app like MyFitnessPal or keeping a food journal, you have no clue how much you’re consuming.

Put another way, I lived paycheck to paycheck in college and had no idea where my money was going. Why?

Because I tried to remember how much money was in my account before I spent anything (how I never overdrafted is a miracle if you ask me).

I looked at my bank account once and noticed all the stupid shit I spent my money on and decided: “Nope, I’m never opening that page again because, if it’s out of sight, it’s out of mind.”

You can’t get out of debt if you don’t know where your money is going. And you can’t succeed at fat loss if you have no idea what you’re eating.

I’ll bet anyone $100 that if you tracked everything you ate for two weeks, within in a few days you’d be amazed at how OFF you are from your calorie goals.

During 2010, I had no clue how much I was eating. But it didn’t matter as long as I hit the gym and had a salad, right? I thought exercise was the answer. The end-all-be-all to my overweight woes. I’ll cover more on the exercise part below, but here’s my point: calories matter — period.

Not understanding the impact of the food I was eating was a huge fat loss mistake that kept me from achieving my goals for a long time.

But there was one more mistake that only made this even worse.

And if you were paying attention (you’re paying attention, right?), then you noticed in the infographic that I said I didn’t count beer.

In 2010, I was two years out of college. But I was pretty much living as if I were still in college.

And every night that I came home from work, I drank (at a minimum) four or five Yeunglings. Sometimes I had more, but usually never less.

Of all the fat loss mistakes, there’s ONE that if 99% of the world corrected, they’d see results.

Fat Loss Mistake #3 – Liquid Calories

I topped out at my heaviest (212 pounds) during my time working for the government.

At the time, I assumed that since I was doing all the right things — aka eating salad at lunch and drinking protein shakes — that my weight gain was muscle. Because you know, muscle weighs more than fat.

*side note: it doesn’t. 5 pounds is 5 pounds. Fat just takes up A LOT more room. But hey, I didn’t know any better, and I too believed this common fitness myth.*

Of course, it’s possible that I added a bit of lean muscle. As you could see from my calorie intake above, I was in a surplus. So my body could have used some of that for muscle growth.

But considering I was 204 pounds when I started, had a high body fat percentage — and can only assume, at that point, my insulin sensitivity was pretty low — I doubt I gained 8 pounds of pure muscle.

So what was making me gain weight?

Well, for one, eating more calories than I burned. And, two, I didn’t further any progress by consuming four to five Yeunglings a night.

Let’s look at the numbers again.

One 12 ounce bottle of Yeungling is about 128 calories, so four beers would equal 512 calories.

Now, on the weekends, that could be more. Since my liver was still operating on college levels, it wasn’t impossible for me to down an entire 12 pack over a 5-6 hour gaming session. (1,536 calories if I downed a whole 12 pack)

I’ve covered alcohol before in a couple of podcast episodes (here and here) and a blog post as well. So real quick: alcohol doesn’t necessarily make you fat.

What it does do, is force your body to store all the food you eat while drinking, so that it can burn off the alcohol you drink first.

Plus, getting super wasted makes it far more likely that you’ll say “fuck it” and eat half a pizza or $17 worth of Taco Bell.

And it’s in the excess calories you consume while drunk that make you gain weight.

But, it wasn’t only booze I was drinking as liquids. Most days, I also had sweet tea and OJ.

Oh, and this will probably gross some people out, but don’t knock it till you try it.

My post workout wasn’t made with milk or water. I used Grape Gatorade. Mixed with strawberry protein, it’s freaking amazing. But Gatorade is liquid calories.

You know what’s coming next, right?

MORE MATH

Hey, I’m not a huge fan of math either, but it provides context and, maybe, while looking at these numbers, they slap you upside the head like a 2×4.

Let’s assume that this was an ordinary day back in 2010, not a 12 pack Saturday.

A typical day might mean:

• OJ in the morning (220 calories)
• Post-workout shake with Gatorade (150 calories in the Gatorade)
• 32 ounce $1 Sweet Tea from McDonald’s with lunch (280 calories)
• Four beers while gaming that night (512 calories).

That gives us a total of = 1,162 calories

As of right now, my daily maintenance calories are around 2,650.

So if I consumed 1,162 liquid calories today, I’d be drinking 42% of my daily energy intake.

Now, let’s assume you’re an overweight male, haven’t exercised intensely in years (if ever), and you decide to start with the Daily Recommended Allowance of 2000 calories as your goal.

BUT, you decide that you’re going to drink 42% of your calories.

That means you’d be drinking 840 calories. That’s an entire meal.

You could order a Chipotle bowl with Chicken, Steak, Fajita Veggies, Brown Rice, Black Beans, Cheese, Tomato Salsa, and Green Chili Salsa as your dressing (skip the vinaigrette it’s 270 calories of nothing).

All of that comes out to 825 calories.

That delicious Chipotle meal, alone, would give 70+ grams of protein.

And how much protein are you getting from liquids like beer, Gatorade, or OJ? You’re getting nothing. All your doing is fucking yourself—and not in a good way.

When it comes to weight loss, the biggest change you can make to start losing weight—immediately—is cutting back on the number of calories you drink.

John Romaniello said it best: “the best way to lose weight and save money is to stop drinking.”

Fat Loss Mistake #4 – Following the Scale

It’s easy to see how you’re progressing while playing video games. You have a progress bar that displays how far you are from reaching your next level.

When it comes to losing body fat, or weight in general, your progress bar becomes the scale. And for a long time, I put all my faith behind an instrument that’s a worse liar than attorney Fletcher Reede. (bonus points if you get that reference)

Like most people, I assumed that the number a hunk of electronic sensors and plastic spat out at me every morning determined my success.

Instant weight loss is a scam. Well, except for the one way you can lose 2-3 pounds in less than 5 minutes.

Wanna know how to do that?

It’s simple, really.

All you have to do is poop.

Boom. Instant weight loss. You’re welcome.

Pooping for weight loss sounds like a no-brainer, I know. But think about how many times you’ve weighed yourself after you’ve eaten all day or before your morning coffee has worked its magic.

The number you see on the scale can be influenced by a whole host of different factors:

• Water
• Food in your bowels
• The time of day
• Where you are on your menstrual cycle
• Dehydration
• Eating a meal that has a ton of salt
• And increased or replenished Muscle glycogen

I can’t tell you how many times in the past I hopped on the scale, saw that it hadn’t budged, and freaked out and cursed the heavens. Damn genetics.

Again, I’ll bet money that you’ve done the same thing. But the scale is a dirty dirty liar. And yet, millions of people enslave themselves to it.

The scale also makes us do the wackiest shit, too. For some reason, human beings get a wee bit silly after seeing the number on the scale go up.

How many people do you know that have done crazy things like drink only lemonade for five days, eat less than 1,000 calories, push their body to extremes, or cut out their favorite foods and then pile on pounds of shame and guilt when they “cheat?”

The scale sucks.

As I tell all my clients: fuck the scale. It’s worse than Jar Jar Binks. And I hate Jar Jar.

Fat Loss Mistake #5 – Sky High Levels of Stress

There’s a serpent-like feeling to the word stress. And like Indiana Jones, I hate snakes. Poisonous, non-poisonous, doesn’t matter, I consider them evil little fucks who have the potential to kill me, and I want them dead — all of them.

I almost had a heart attack after running across a snake during a hiking trip with my family when I was five. According to the rhyme — Red touch black, safe for Jack. Red touches yellow, kills a fellow — we had crossed a King Snake (non-venomous), and my grandfather said the snake was harmless because it wasn’t like its cousin the Coral Snake (venomous).

I understand that my grandfather was trying to impart some of his ancient wisdom on me, but at that point, snakes equaled sneaky slithering killing machines to young Robbie Farlow, and the mere sight of one sent my stress levels through the roof.

The roof is where millions of people’s stress levels stay today.

We hear all the time that stress is harmful because it elevates cortisol levels. And cortisol, as often presented, is a fat-storing hormone.

For years, cortisol’s been demonized as an evil agent of destruction. But it’s not, at least not when it’s released with the right kind of stress.

There are two types of stress: eustress and distress. And both types of stress release cortisol in our bodies.

Eustress motivates you and is often tied towards achieving a goal. And once you’ve completed your task or the danger is gone (or defeated), your body returns cortisol to its normal levels.

During eustress, your body sends out cortisol as a messenger demanding that the body send out energy in response to the stress. Meaning that cortisol, in the case of good stress, is like Paul Revere.

It rides out on its horse and tells the countryside that the “redcoats” are coming, preparing the body to mobilize its stored energy, aka fat and carbs.

Distress is the “bad stress.” When you’re in distress, cortisol floats around in your body like it’s on a giant lazy river. And it’s this stress that can lead to a vast array of health problems.

When you have a constant supply of cortisol floating around willy-nilly in your body, that’s when it becomes dangerous to fat storage. And when it mixes with a high level of insulin, things get wacky.

If you want to understand more about cortisol, check out this article by Dr. Jade Teta. He goes into a ton of detail about why cortisol is and isn’t bad, and what can happen when it’s elevated in your body due to both types of stress.

Stress has always been a huge problem for me. Besides the distress that came (and sometimes still does) from taking things too personally, one of my biggest stressors for years was that I didn’t get enough sleep. And sleep is one of the most crucial and often overlooked areas when it comes to fat loss.

Here’re a few ways you can reduce stress:

• Spend less time on social media or in useless social media debates
• Meditate. Try apps like Headspace or Calm.
• Make the first 30 minutes of the day the time you do what you love most
• Walk more
• Have more sex
• Create a consistent sleep schedule
• Drink less alcohol
• Practice gratitude
• Lose the negative people in your life

Fat Loss Mistake #6 – Thinking Exercise is Enough

Let’s take another look at my fat loss blueprint from 2010 again.

20 minutes of cardio —–> followed by 30 minutes of lifting —> Salad at lunch plus a protein shake = Shredsville, USA.

(checks Google Map. Nope, there is no Shredsville, USA. Damn.)

The biggest mistake I made and thousands — no, let’s be honest, millions — of people make is they think they can out train a bad diet.

You can’t.

Sure, you can try, but unless you’re a genetic freak or an athlete who plays half a dozen sports, out training a bad diet isn’t happening — not in today’s modern sedentary world.

I won’t lie, in 2010 my hope was that if I worked out, after a few months I’d be ripped, muscular, and sexy as fuck.

But that’s kind of like hoping that you’ll send a Tweet to Scarlett Johansson and when she reads it, realizes that you, some dude (or girl) on the internet she’s never met, is her soulmate. And then she books the first flight to where you live so she can confess her undying love to you.

You have a better chance of out training a bad diet than the above happening, but since the likelihood of either is astrofuckingnomical, let’s stick to the real world.

Here in the real world, there’s a ton of misinformation.

Every day it seems that there is some new superfood that blasts belly fat, or you read an article that tells you to avoid “this one food if you want abs,” or some company has released the newest and most kick ass fitness tracker on the market.

Interesting fact about fitness trackers.

According to the International Data Corporation, shipment of wearable fitness trackers increased 67.2% from the first quarter of 2015 to first quarter of 2016.

That means millions of more people are wearing these trackers and assuming that this magical band is the cure to their health woes.

But that’s the same assumption that I made in 2010: “If I workout, I’ll get ripped, and abs will appear.”

First, that assumption is wrong. And second, I have two problems with fitness trackers like FitBits, iWatches, and MyFitnessPal.

NUMBER ONE: The calories that these tools claim you burned are only a guesstimation.

These instruments don’t factor in your intensity. And, even if they allow you to choose between slow, moderate, and intense, what does that really mean?

What these tools also don’t factor in is your lean body mass — how much muscle you have.

I weigh around 180 pounds right now at about 12% body fat, which means I have around 158 pounds of lean mass. But someone who is 180 pounds with 25% body fat (135 pounds of lean mass) won’t burn as many calories as I would.

Our overall weight may be the same, but muscle is living tissue that consumes energy. And the more muscle you have, the more energy you need, AND the more calories you burn when you use said muscle.

The number of calories your fitness tracker or the treadmill tells you that you’ve burned is a lie. It’s only a guess.

NUMBER TWO: You eat back the calories you burn.

So MyFitnessPal tells you that you’ve burned 400 calories while running on the treadmill for 40 minutes at a pace of 5 miles per hour.

Or, maybe you did 60 minutes of “general” circuit training (600 calories).

Nah, today you went heavy and lifted weights for 45 minutes (Ouch. According to MFP, that’s only 186 calories).

Wait, you were on a business trip, and all you could manage was 30 minutes of calisthenics (300 calories).

Here’s where we all fuck ourselves over. You see this number in MyFitnessPal, RunKeeper, or believe your FitBit when its says that by taking 15,000 steps you burned 800 calories, and what do you do?

“Oh, hell yea, I burned (insert number of calories). That’s a Snickers bar (or two).”

If Snickers aren’t your thing, maybe it’s an extra helping at dinner or half a pint of Ben and Jerry’s Cookie Dough.

The point is: those numbers aren’t accurate, and you put your trust and faith in a machine, thinking that it’s guiding you with facts — when it’s not. It’s guessing at best.

When you eat back the calories that your fitness tracker says you’ve burned, you erase any (or all) of a deficit you would have been in. And if losing weight or body fat is your goal, you can’t do that unless you’re in a calorie deficit.

(Side note: I’ve been guilty of it as well, but when you log “some” meals like baked spaghetti in MyFitnessPal, you’re also fucking yourself over when you scroll down and find the recipe with the “lowest” calorie count. Don’t act like you haven’t done that before either. Log each piece of your meal and don’t trust some random recipe.)

No matter what some machine says you “burned,” don’t listen to it. Because if you start giving machines that kind of power, we’re doomed. Like Terminator doomed.

Fat Loss Mistake #7 – The #1 Fat Loss Mistake I Made and You Make

My #1 mistake has been hiding under the surface the entire time.

Everything I’ve listed, you’re either currently doing or have done in the past. So while you’ve been nodding your head in agreement with some of this, you haven’t noticed the root cause of all of my — and your — fat loss mistakes.
So one more time, raise your hand if you’ve done any the following:

• Thought healthy food implied weight loss
• Consumed 30% or more of your total calories from liquids
• Told yourself that if you’re vegan, Paleo, Gluten-free, Keto, etc. that calories don’t matter
• Used the scale to determine success
• Snuggled with stress all day and night
• Assumed exercise was enough

I’ve committed all of those mistakes, and probably a few more. But underneath all of them, there was one that was the biggest fat loss mistake of all. And it’s the number one reason why most people quit.

Drumroll…….

……..I didn’t give a fuck.

Yea. I said it.

I didn’t (and you don’t) give a fuck.

You might claim that you care — I did — and you can proclaim to everyone you know that you’re on a diet, taking charge of your health, turning over a new leaf, or whatever else you tell yourself to feel better.

But it doesn’t matter how much you say you want to change or how hard you work in the gym. What is important are the daily actions you take.

So, what do your actions say?

Are you tracking what you eat and drink?

Do you assume that because some food is labeled “healthy” that it’s better for you?

Are you eating like a caveman and proclaiming that calories don’t matter?

Do you justify drinking your carbs?

The truth is, a few years ago, I didn’t honestly give a fuck about my health.

I justified drinking my carbs; convinced myself that as long as I ate a salad at lunch, it was okay; didn’t keep track of anything I put in my mouth; stayed up too late and slept too little. And a few years later, blamed one macronutrient for all of my problems; instead, I should have blamed the common denominator of it all: me.
It wasn’t the government’s fault, carbs, processed sugar, beer, or the program I was following. The overall contributing factor that kept me fat and out of shape was me.

Hearing that sucks, I know. But in the long run, you’re the reason why you fail or succeed with your goals. And that means that you’re going to have to take a long hard look at some of the actions you’re taking now.

Right now, though, I need you to pay attention to what I’m about to say.

These may be the most important words you ever read. (And these don’t have to apply only to fat loss, they work for any journey in life.)

You don’t have to be perfect the first time.

Truth bomb: At first, you’re going to suck—a lot. And that’s okay.

Were you amazing the first time you ever had sex? (insert awkward laugh) No.

Did you jump into your first Call of Duty or Halo match and have a huge KDR? Nope. You probably sucked donkey dick and got your ass handed to you.

The first time you jumped on a bike as a kid, did you ride 14 miles? Or did you get (maybe) 5 feet before you fell off and skinned up your knee?

IT’S OKAY NOT TO BE PERFECT.

What is important is that you continuously work to get better.

There isn’t one magic answer, one exercise, one superfood, one weird trick (except for being in a calorie deficit), or an end-all-be-all solution to your fat loss goals.

Fat loss, and I would argue long term success, is achieved from multiple actions:

• Tracking what you eat
• Increasing lean protein and green veggies
• Drinking water (or replacing soda with diet or 0 calorie beverages)
• Understanding that healthy doesn’t mean better.
• Reducing stress and improving sleep

And we can’t forget the MOST important action of all. The one that most people glaze over when it comes to weight loss success — or success in anything, really — it all comes down to accepting personal responsibility for your actions.

The multitude of times that I spent a few weeks, or a summer, trying to lose weight never worked. Because I didn’t want to accept that I was the one responsible for cleaning up my diet, reducing liquid calories, and frankly, actually giving a fuck about changing my lifestyle.

I thought I could have my cake and eat it too. Well, in the words of Half-Life: the cake is a lie. And in this case, the cake is the desire to change your body without changing your actions.

Fat loss, mathematically, is pretty simple: eat less food and move your body more to increase energy expenditure. What isn’t so easy is the rest of the stuff you have to change. And of all my fat loss mistakes, that’s the biggest one I made, and you make as well.

You assume that it’s all exercise and eating “healthy.” But it’s more than that. The blueprint you have, or the one you think is correct but isn’t working, is wrong. And to achieve your goals, you need a new blueprint.

Thinking back to my sophomore year of college, you could make the claim that I have every right to blame my professor for handing me the wrong blueprint. It was HIS responsibility, after all, to design the set and give out the plans.

My inexperience and excitement to prove my skills to him blinded me a bit. But that same excitement and inexperience kept me from achieving my fat loss goals for years. (Well, that and the fact I didn’t really give a fuck.)

With an incorrect blueprint in hand, I spent three days cutting wood, screwing pieces together, and finishing up the detail work on a tower that was built 100% backward.

And then, for an entire weekend, I spent three days pissed off and mumbling about having to fix my professor’s mistake(s). I could have finished the tower a lot faster, but instead, I stomped around and complained like a six-year-old.

My fat loss mistakes happened over a span of five years. And I don’t want anyone to grind their gears for years trying to achieve their goals like I did.

Don’t make the same fat loss mistakes I did. Don’t spin your wheels for years trying to achieve your goals.

• Spend two weeks tracking everything you eat and drink. Then look at your patterns and make changes to your diet.
• Then, keep tracking for six months or a year and see what patterns develop long term.
• Consume less liquid calories by switching to diet/zero calorie soda, or, better yet, drink more water.
• Know that it takes more than exercise to accomplish your goals. Diet is 70-80% of your success.
• Fuck the scale. Use a tailor’s tape to track progress and keep track of the strength gains you make.
• Calories matter. Period. Especially, if your goal is shred away belly fat and uncover abs.

Spend 6 months following the above blueprint, and I swear, if you give it 100%, you’ll see massive changes in your fat loss goals.