Transcription
In today's video, the truth about getting shredded.
Hey guys, what's going on? This is Paul Bella from ProPhysique.com, and today's video is going to be about the truth behind what it takes to get shredded. How to get that chiseled sub ten percent body fat look if you're a guy, and probably sub 15 to 18 percent body fat look if you're a girl.
I come from the experience of a couple different directions. First of all, I myself diet down and do this on a regular basis. Second of all, I coach many people who do this not only as a lifestyle, but some of them actually compete. So I want to talk to you about what I see, four expectations out there from a lot of people, some of the questions I get, and address just really what it takes because it's not that complicated.
I feel like there's a lot of misinterpretation, and that can make it like a hesitation for people that can prevent people from actually getting started with the process.
So let's talk about just what it takes to get really, really lean. The first and most important part of getting really, really lean, no matter where you're coming from, I don't care if you're a hundred pounds overweight or if you're five pounds overweight, you need to give yourself enough time. I think most people associate getting really lean with this magic six-week, eight-week, 12-week, or 90-day challenge. Those can be great starting points; they can get you going, but they're not going in most cases to get you truly shredded because the body fat that needs to come off requires time.
You can push as hard as you want, as much as you want, but if you don't push for as long as you need to, you will not get there. Body fat is basically an organ. It responds and reacts in our body in many ways; it's very dynamic. It's not simply something that we do some cardio or eat a few calories and it just goes away.
The changes in our fat cells within our body cause some dynamic processes including hormones and all these things to change, meaning that the process of losing body fat is going to get a little bit more difficult as we go. We're going to need to adjust things—adjust things like our caloric deficit, adjust things like our training, adjust things like our diet, our sleep—depending on what it takes for you to get that lean.
It might just take a little bit longer. Sometimes we lose a lot of body fat right away and we think, "Man, this is gonna be easy. I'm gonna breeze right through," and then you hit a sticking point. That's when you've got to ask yourself, "Are you willing to do what it takes to get to that point?"
Now that's why competitions are so associated with that shredded look. Because when you don't have a competition staring you right in the face, it can be hard to push through that. You're going to be hungry, you're going to be tired, you're going to question what you're doing. You're gonna start hearing how great you look from a lot of other people, but you're probably not gonna be to that elite level of shredded that you want to be.
So I want to address just how we do that. The first thing that we need to do in paying attention is our nutrition. Now, there's a lot of trendy fad diets out there that promise a lot of results, whether it comes to a ketogenic diet or whether it comes to fasting. Whatever method you want to use is fine; I don't pretend like there's not a lot of ways to get there.
But you need to find a way that allows you to comfortably track and be consistent with what you're eating. This, and only this, is going to allow you to adjust when it comes time to adjust.
Now, a lot has been made over the last few years about flexible dieting, and for a good reason. It allows us to kind of avoid this thinking of "we can only eat these foods, and if we don't, we're off our plan." I'm all for good plans based on clean whole foods, but understanding that if you just switch to a clean diet and you see a lot of progress, it wasn't the diet of switching to clean foods that made the progress happen; it's that you swapped out your food sources for food sources that were lower in calorie, thus creating a caloric deficit.
Now, once you've switched to a clean diet and you stall, what are you going to do? If you don't understand how many calories and macronutrients are taking in on a daily basis, you don't have the option to eat cleaner, right? So what we want to do is understand, even if we're going to approach things with fasting, with ketogenic, with flexible dieting, clean eating, whatever approach you want to take, there needs to be some accountability. You need to understand what's going into your body; that's going to allow us to adjust.
The next thing I want to talk about is the big elephant in the room: cardio. We all hear stories of people that are able to get shredded on no cardio. That's the goal. Our goal when we're dieting down is to diet on the most amount of calories, the most carbohydrates, and the least amount of cardio that we can.
Are there people that are able to take this approach? Absolutely. I've had clients use virtually no cardio through prep, and it's always my goal. But then we have to face reality. If we're not losing weight, if calories are getting low, and we're not making progress, how do we create a caloric deficit? Well, cardiovascular exercise is going to burn a lot of calories. It's going to burn more calories than you burn while you're working out.
Yes, I love working out, but it just doesn't burn that many calories. So it's going to be very tough to get truly shredded just on weight training alone. The sheer volume of your workouts would have to be such a level for most people that they would risk probably getting injured.
So then we can start doing things like different styles of cardio; that is going to be the biggest factor in our progress—our diet and our cardio creating a caloric deficit. Is there a magic type of cardio? No, there are preferentials; there are some that are more specific to our needs and our demands.
If you're a CrossFit athlete, you want to train in a manner specific to your sport. You want to do metabolic conditioning, you want to do the Mecca, you want to do the circuits so that you get better at them for when you have to complete them. If you're a bodybuilder, what is the best type of cardio? Some argue steady-state; why? It's easier to recover from. It doesn't leave you run down; you can do your training sessions, and you recover quickly. Low likelihood of injury.
HIIT cardio is very popular. High-intensity intervals can be very good depending on what your goals are and what the specifics of your needs are. Powerlifting: how can powerlifters lose weight? Well, in most cases, I don't really recommend the powerlifting diet because you lose a lot of weight. We want to focus on training at your optimal body composition for you to compete, because in powerlifting, the goal is to lift the most amount of weight and weigh the least amount of weight that you can and successfully compete.
So we're probably going to do things specific to power that allow us to train effectively. I recommend training closer to your competition body weight so you're not having to worry about your weight so much in your training at the weight that you're going to compete at, so on meet day, you feel comfortable.
So when it comes down to getting to that elite ten percent body fat, we need to focus on three major things. Make sure you give yourself enough time. If you're trying to lose more than 1 to 2 percent of your body fat per week, understand that that is very aggressive. And by one or two percent, I mean of your total body weight.
So let's say you're a 200-pound person, and you know that shredded is 160. That is 40 pounds. You are not going to do that in 3, 6, or 12 weeks. Okay, you can possibly do it, but it's going to be grueling. Right? We want to try to lose 1 to 2 percent of our body weight—roughly 2 to 4 pounds—right at the beginning of the diet per week.
Now, as you get leaner, just remember it's going to get harder. So that's why we need to have enough time, because we have to plan for stalls. We have to plan for potentially taking some diet breaks. We have to potentially plan for life to happen. Someone gets sick, you lose your job, you have to move—all these things happen. We don't get to just get lean in a vacuum where nothing else happens in our lives; it has to be a part of our lifestyle.
Taking time to get lean really allows for us to fit those things in—some family events, whatever it might be—without having the stress of feeling like we're failing. Then we need just some accountability. I don't really want to tell you that you have to use this diet or that diet. I have the diet that I prefer, which we can discuss in other videos, but just be accountable.
Understand what you're taking in on a daily basis; that's the start. Then, using cardio and exercise as your means of augmenting your caloric deficit based on what your needs are to get that done.
All right, guys, that's gonna be it for me today. Hopefully, this was helpful. If you have any questions, I have a free ebook on flexible dieting. You can go to ProPhysiqueFree.com and download it; it's yours.
As always, guys, this is Paul from ProPhysique, and I hope you have an awesome day. [Music]