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THE LEAN MUSCULAR
PHYSIQUE DIET BLUEPRINT

A Complete Guide On How To Set Up Your
Diet For Fat Loss And Lean Muscle Gain
While Eating Your Favorite Foods
- 2nd Edition -
FAVORITE DROP FAT, GAIN NO HARD WORK

FOODS LEAN MUSCLE WASTED
Stop restricting yourself NO-BS guide on fat loss Your hard work at the
and start enjoying more and lean muscle gain gym is wasted no more
Marcus C. J.
Strengthery.com
Notice
The information presented in this pdf is not intended for the treatment or prevention
of disease, nor a substitute for any medical treatment, nor as an alternative to medi-
cal advice. Use of the information provided is at the sole choice and risk of the read-
er. Consult with a professional expert if you are experiencing problems or doubts.
Disclaimer
I do not make any guarantees with this free pdf. Please note that all your results are
based on your effort and dedication to what is taught within this pdf. All information
provided is based on best practices from top experts in the field and is for education-
al purposes only.
Legal Stuff
Copyright © 2017 & beyond by Marcus C. J.
All rights reserved. Redistribution for noncommercial use is permitted and encour-
aged as long as the pdf stays intact and no changes are made in any shape or form.
This pdf is completely free of charge. Reselling is prohibited.
Spreadsheet
This pdf is accompanied by a spreadsheet that makes any calculation and estima-
tion that is needed very easy to do.
If you haven’t got this spreadsheet you can download it here.

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FOREWORD
About Marcus (The Author)
My name is Marcus and I have been doing all kinds of
strength and cardiovascular training since I was a young
teenager and I am now 27.
In fact, I have done long distance running,

sprinting, yoga, flexibility training, CrossFit, bodybuilding,
Olympic lifting, circuit training, strength training and a little
bit of calisthenics.
I have a Master’s Degree in law (LL.M.) but no formal edu-

cation in the science of exercise or nutrition. Still, I consid-
er myself to have a thorough understanding of nutrition and
a wide variety of physical exercise and especially strength training.
This is mostly because I always have been very eager to learn and understand whatever
I am doing. I have spent 100s of hours studying best practices from the top experts and
learned from how they interpret research. Also, through more than 10 years of experience
and learning from my own mistakes (which were many), my knowledge of all the pitfalls
has grown big.
After trying out many different types of physical exercise, I have become convinced that
strength training is one of the best types any person could do. Because if it is done correct-
ly, strength training is extremely rewarding in terms of the results in strength and muscle
gain, physical appearance and bodily and mental health compared to the time and effort
you put in.
Working out 3 times a week approximately one hour each time is enough to get amazing
results for men and women in all ages!
My Journey And Failures In Nutrition

All though I have been very physically active for more than 10 years, it is only in the recent
years I have come to “understand” nutrition. Earlier I did not fully realize how important it is.
I felt like I could eat anything since I was making up for it by working out a lot.
Other than just getting a lot of protein I never cared enough about macros or calories and
I definitely did not give enough attention to the link between my total calorie intake and my
unwanted body fat. Instead of decreasing my calorie intake I just focused on exercising
more.
By my own standards and the standards of most people interested in having a lean mus-
cular physique, I was fat. I had like 8 - 9 kg / 20 pounds of more fat than what I have now,
and I am a short guy - 1.71 m / 5.6 foot.
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I tried different weight loss diets that all were more or less low-carb, but nothing really
seemed to work for me. I would drop a bit of fat, but soon after I would binge eat and then
either try to bounce back again or quit the diet altogether.
I lived like that for 3 - 4 years with my weight going a bit up and down, but never any real
results.
Things began to work better for me after I completely changed my approach to training
and committed myself to focus on strength training. I cut the time I spend on working out in
more than half. I went from going to the gym 4-5 times spending up to 10 hours a week to
training 3 times a week spending about an hour each time.
The method that finally worked for me to lose my unwanted body fat was a combination
of intermittent fasting, eating at a “moderate” calorie deficit and only doing a moderate
amount of exercise (strength training + low intense cardio). With my old mindset and ap-
proach to training, I would never have tried it out.
In a period of about 3 months, I shed off all my unwanted body fat and life was great! But
then I did the huge mistake of not paying enough attention to my calorie intake and I re-
gained most of my fat in about 6+ months.
I had to go through all the hard work of losing that fat again, and it was after that I finally
realized the importance of always keeping on track with the food you are eating and how it
is affecting your body. Another major realization that I guess I was lucky to stumble upon is
what I have chosen to call the “diet secret”.
After I understood this and implemented it everything has worked great for me. I am now
able to maintain a lean physique while continuing to build up my strength and muscle.
Essentially, the point of writing this pdf was to help you get the body you want and
deserve and cut through all the misinformation out there.
The Importance Of Nutrition
As you most likely have heard many times and can understand from my story, nutrition is a
very important part of getting the results you want.
If you are looking to get that lean muscular physique, lifting heavy things in the gym is truly
only one part of the equation. Nutrition and rest (both sleep and recovery) are just as im-
portant. You will never get great results without mastering all of them. Not fully realizing this
was one of the greatest mistakes in my fitness journey.
I truly hope you will find the information in this pdf useful, and that it will help you on your
journey to finally getting that lean muscular physique :) Happy reading!
Marcus, Founder of Strengthery.com
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Contents
FOREWORD��1
About Marcus (The Author)��1
My Journey And Failures In Nutrition ��1
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION��4
What Is The Lean Muscular Physique Diet Blueprint?��4
The Most Important Thing For A Great Diet��6
CHAPTER 2: THE NEED TO KNOW��8

Understanding Calories And Nutrients Etc.��8
The Other Less Important Stuff��10
Maintenance Calories��12
The Power Of Tracking And Logging��14
Eating Your Favorite Foods��17
Why I Don’t Like “Labeling”��18
CHAPTER 3: FAT LOSS�� 19

Fat Loss Vs Weight Loss��19
The Calorie Deficit��20
Macros For Fat Loss And Muscle Retention��22
How Much Fat You Can Expect��24
Strategies For Making Fat Loss Easier��27
Working Out In A Calorie Deficit��29
Building Or Retaining Strength And Muscle Is Not Easy��30
CHAPTER 4: LEAN BULK�� 31

What Is Lean Bulking?��31
The Calorie Surplus��31
How Much Muscle You Can Expect��34
How Much Fat You Can Expect��36
Macros For Strength And Muscle Gain��37
Recommended Muscle Buidling Programs��39
CHAPTER 5: DIET SECRET�� 40

What Is The Secret?��40
How Habits Are Formed And How To Change Them��41
Your Self-Image��44
Managing Your Willpower As The Important Resource It Is��49
Conclusion��49
Resources��50
FINAL WORDS�� 52
Want To Be Coached By Me?��53
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CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
What Is The Lean Muscular Physique Diet Blueprint?
It is the blueprint or step-by-step solution to setting up your diet in order to get a lean
muscular physique and being able to stick with it!
To give you a clear and easily relatable example of what I mean with a lean muscular
physique: it is the kind of body most Hollywood actors have in movies and which by many
people is regarded as very desirable.
This is the look of Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible, Christian Bale in Batman or Daniel
Craig in James Bond. For women, it is, for example, Scarlett Johansson in Avengers or my
favorite Ghost In The Shell or Gal Gadot in Wonder Woman.
It is not about being as big and ripped as possible and look like a bodybuilder.
It is characterized by having an aesthetically pleasing combination of decent amount of

muscle in right proportions and having a body fat percentage in the lower end. That is
somewhere around 8 - 14 % for men and 18 - 23 % for women. Because the focus is
on strength and muscle while having a low body fat percentage, relative strength (your
strength compared to your body weight) becomes an excellent metric for measuring your
physique progress.
Your idea of what a lean muscular physique looks like might be different, but understand
that this diet will pretty much support any kind of muscular development.
Getting the lean muscular physique definitely requires effort and dedication, but I am being
perfectly honest here when I say that I think it requires less effort than you think.
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In order to get this body what you need to do in terms of diet can be summed up to one of
these two things.
You need to:
1. set up your diet to lose fat while maintaining strength and muscle and even build
some if possible, and then start doing number 2 after the fat loss is achieved.
or
2. set up your diet to promote strength and muscle gains while keeping fat gain to a
minimum (lean bulk).
When you have achieved this physique really depends on your starting point, that is body
fat percentage and muscular development.
Achieving this physique might even require you to go through more than one fat loss diet
because it is unlikely that you can build strength and muscle without gaining some fat.
Even if you are able to pull this off, you should know that your strength and muscle gains
are probably going to be at a slower rate. I don’t recommend this for beginners and inter-
mediates.
For some people, it might be hard to decide which to start with and I think this is a question
of personal preference.
But you should at least consider that having a higher body fat percentage in the range of
15 - 20+ (men) / 24 - 29+ (women) is not going to look that great whether you have muscle
or not. So it might be a good idea to avoid setting yourself up to reaching those body fat
percentages at all.
This would be the case if you start out lean bulking at 13-14 % body fat (men) / 22-23 %
(women).
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If you are a beginner to working out you are likely going to look very skinny at a low body
fat percentage, however there is some research that indicates that your body is able to
utilize calories and nutrients better to build lean muscle at a lower body fat percentage. Be-
cause a body fat percentage in the range of 8 - 14 (men) / 18 - 23 (women) is associated
with having higher insulin sensitivity and for men having higher testosterone.
If you are an intermediate it is likely that you will look better at a lower body fat percentage
than with more muscle. This depends on your current body fat percentage.
What You Will Learn
This pdf and the spreadsheet included in your download is solely focused on getting your
nutrition right. However, in order to both maintain and build strength and muscle, you also
need proper workouts and have sufficient rest. I have plenty of more awesome information
on mastering all things related to working out and achieving your goals on my website.
In this pdf, you will learn how to set up your macros and calories to fuel fat loss or
lean muscle gains in simple steps, and how to keep on track with the right tools and
metrics.
You will understand that eating your favorite food while maintaining a lean and mus-
cular physique is actually easy when it is done with the right strategy.
Finally, you will discover the “diet secret” that once mastered will make everything
related to sticking with your diet much easier.
I am going to be perfectly honest with you, understanding all this does require effort, but I
promise you that it is worth it and that it will be easy to do once mastered.
I have purposely left out an in-depth discussion or review of any particular diet like the
ketogenic diet or a low-carb diet or “diet structure” like intermittent fasting and its different
variations. But they will be mentioned briefly when relevant.
In addition, I have not included any food or meal plans. While these can be useful, it is very
likely that you don’t have the same food preferences as me (I have also been told by many
that I have a very boring taste).
The Most Important Thing For A Great Diet

I am a strong advocate of eating all macronutrients in a balanced amount, and that is what
I am going to assume you want to do.
Not only because I believe the majority of people are better off eating this way, but also
because it allows for the greatest flexibility and food enjoyment.
This is, in my opinion, the most important success criteria of a diet. Because flexibil-
ity and enjoyment are going to enable you to stick with!
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At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how good or how healthy a diet is if you can’t stick
with it long-term or feel miserable all the time.
Because of this, it is less important whether you are eating or refraining from eating certain
kind of foods or macronutrients. Also less important is if you are fasting or not fasting.
What is important is that you can feel great about your diet and that you are able to eat the
foods you want. In other words, it is most important that you are restricting yourself as little
as possible or not at all.
General Food Recommendation
Putting all these awesome arguments aside, I would recommend that your diet consists
of a good amount of healthy whole foods: meats, vegetables, legumes, grains, fruits, ber-
ries, and nuts etc. By a good amount, I mean that on average the majority of your calories
should come from these kinds of foods.
This also means I don’t recommend you eat candy and chocolate all day, but there is defi-
nitely room (even daily) in a healthy diet for some treats enjoyed in moderation. However,
this does not mean you can’t gain strength and muscle if you chose not to follow this.
There are more and more crazy examples out there on the internet of strong guys with low
body fat that are eating a lot of fast food and ice cream. Some of them are even promoting
or selling the idea that you can eat copious amounts of fast food with no significant down-
side as long as you stick to your calories.
My opinion on this approach is while it does sound quite appealing, this kind of over-in-
dulging in “unhealthy” foods jeopardizes long-term success. Most importantly getting the
majority of your calories from candy and fast food will over time lead to severe deficiencies
in vital micronutrients. Furthermore, I think it is safe to assume that it also leads to higher
bodily inflammation which is related to a very long list of health risks.
In other words flexible eating and thinking in macros (like IIFYM) is great, but don’t abuse
it and make it an excuse to shovel down large amounts of McDonald’s, Burger King and
Domino’s Pizza all the time.
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CHAPTER 2: THE NEED TO KNOW

Understanding Calories And Nutrients Etc.
Since calories, macronutrients and micronutrients are the most important things in any
good diet, having a general understanding of those is critical for anyone who wants to be
able to take control of their nutrition and eat for optimal performance whether it is strength
and muscle gain or fat loss.
You definitely do not need to become a professional nutritionist, but having a general un-
derstanding is, in my opinion, a good time investment for anyone and it is necessary for
getting a lean muscular physique as fast, predictable and easy as possible.
Calories
Calories are pretty straight forward to understand. It is simply a metric for measuring the
energy contents of the foods you are eating (some places in the world use kilojoule).
Gaining or losing weight is really a question of energy balance. There are of course other
factors that determine muscle gain and fat loss, but that should not distract you from how
important energy balance is. It is like what you were taught in physics class in elementa-
ry school about the law of energy conservation. Energy is transformed from one state to
another but cannot be destroyed.
So, in order to gain muscle you need a calorie surplus and in order to lose fat, you need a
calorie deficit. Fat loss and muscle gain can occur at the same time. But, as you progress
in your muscular development this is going to become progressively harder and at some
point not possible at any meaningful rate.
Macros
Macronutrients (macros) are as the name perhaps reveals the largest group of nutrients in
your diet. They are what provides energy for your body to function.
There are three categories of macros: protein, carbohydrate, and fat. Alcohol is arguably
also a macronutrient, but I won’t be covering that in this pdf. 1 gram of protein and 1 gram
of carbs both have 4 calories, and 1 gram of fat has 9 calories. Actually, it is kilo calories
(kcal) and not calories, but most of the time it is simply referred to as calories and I will do
the same.
Macros are consumed in large quantities as opposed to micronutrients which your body
only needs in very small quantities in order to function.
To make things relatable, when talking macros the amount is measured in grams, when
talking micronutrients the amount is milligram (1/1000 gram) or microgram (1/1000000
gram). Vitamin D is measured in nanogram which is even smaller.
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In general terms, a healthy diet that supports optimal strength and muscle gain or fat loss
consists of a well-balanced amount of everything: protein, carbs, and fat. You will read
more on macro distribution in chapter 3 and 4.
Including all the macros in your diet will help ensure your body is getting everything it
needs and that it is functioning well. But also very important which I have stressed earlier
is that it will make your life easier. What I mean by that is that you can be flexible with your
food choices and eat what you want.
If you read this and think what about the ketogenic diet or just a low carb diet, then my
answer is of course that these can work. Your body can actually function without getting
carbs. But if you are a normal healthy person and like to eat carbs, then I see absolutely no
reason for doing a ketogenic diet or a low carb diet for that matter. In addition, there is a lot
of evidence indicating that including a good amount of carbs in your diet is superior to the
ketogenic diet or a low carb diet when it comes to building strength and muscle
Remember, you want a simple and flexible diet that allows you to enjoy your favorite
foods.
Not being able to eat carbs will make your life unnecessarily complicated and inconvenient.
It will lead to inconveniences in many social situations, and eating out will become a chal-
lenge.
When that has been said, some people are getting great fat loss results on the ketogen-
ic diet. This is awesome, but I think using the ketogenic diet for fat loss have a number
of flaws that should at least make you think twice about going for it (read more on this in
chapter 3).
A Short Note On Fiber
Fiber is really a kind of carbohydrate, which helps you feel fuller and aids digestion. Fiber
is great since it makes you feel fuller while adding little or no calories. Fiber has 0 - 2 cal-
ories per gram. Include vegetables, legumes, rice, and grains in your diet and you should
not need to worry about getting enough fiber.
If you feel constantly constipated and have flatulence it could be because you are getting
too much fiber. If this is the case you might want to familiarize yourself with the fiber con-
tents of the food you are eating and then change things up to reduce your fiber intake.
Micronutrients
Micronutrients are vitamins and minerals. This stuff is super important for your body, and
you should not let the small amounts needed fool you!
I am sure you have heard of this stuff before like vitamin A, B, C, and D etc. and calcium,
magnesium, phosphorus, sodium, potassium, iron, copper, iodine, zinc, and fluoride.
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You need to think about getting your micronutrients from whole foods rather than relying on
a multivitamin.
This doesn’t mean that a multivitamin is a bad idea, but it is not a substitution.
Multivitamins and your body’s absorption ability is not my specialty at all, actually, I don’t
know much about it. But I understand that there can be some concerns. Also, whole foods
are loaded with good stuff like phytonutrients and zoonutrients. These things do not only
have cool names but are also helpful to your body in many ways.
Ensure you are getting sufficient micronutrients by including a variety of fruits and vegeta-
bles in your diet. And if you feel like being on the safe side eat a multitvitamin.
Naturally, when you are eating in order to lose fat (calorie deficit) you consume less food.
This increases the risk of not getting sufficient micronutrients, and this is something you
should be aware of.
I do not track micronutrients myself because I think it would add unnecessary complication
to my diet. What I simply do is eat plenty of different fruits and vegetables all year around.
The Other Less Important Stuff

Meal Frequency
Long gone are the days where people thought it necessary to have meals every 3 hours
for “ramping up the metabolism”. I think this is great because eating 5-6 meals a day can
be a nightmare if you have a busy life focusing on other things than the gym.
However, going to the other extreme and only eating one meal a day is something that I
would not recommend unless you feel this fits your lifestyle and schedule. I think this only
applies to very few people. I believe the biggest concern of only eating once a day is that it
can be hard to fit all that food in your stomach. It will likely result in a “food coma” and the
food choices tend to be more calorie dense and “unhealthier”.
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Personally, I do some times only eat dinner. It is quite rare but it does happen. However, I
do that to be in a calorie deficit and because I don’t feel hungry.
The better option for most people will be to simply eat a minimum of meals without un-
necessary restraint. That is probably going to be 2-3 meals and perhaps a snack. This
will greatly simplify things in terms of meal preparation and food tracking, and the simpler
things are the easier they are to stick with.
If you are in a calorie deficit eating 2 big meals instead of 3-4 smaller meals can have a big
positive psychological impact. This can easily be implemented with intermittent fasting and
skipping breakfast. On the other hand, eating the required calories for a lean bulk can be
difficult for some with only 2 meals.
Exception: if you are very active in sports and/or job you need a lot more calories than all
us “sedentary people”. Simply eat as many meals as necessary to get your calories and
macros balancing what is comfortable and convenient.
Meal And Nutrient Timing
Research indicates that eating some protein and carbs 2-3 hours after weight training is
ideal - but the benefit is very small. You are not going to lose your muscle growth potential
(gains) just because you miss this time window.
Additionally, research also indicates that there is a slight benefit to having some carbs be-
fore working out, and also that there is a slight benefit to not working out completely fasted.
If you are working out fasted and you fear not having this very small edge, supplementing
with BCAA just before working out could be helpful.
In an effort to not overcomplicate things, I am just going to very shortly cover calorie and
macro partitioning or cycling under the three circumstances that I think they are worth men-
tioning.
Calorie and macro partitioning are where you eat specific calories or macros with a strate-
gic purpose.
Eating more calories on training days (calorie partitioning) can be a good tool for some
people and is popular to do. Read more on this in chapter 4.
Eating more carbs (refeed) for example once a week when you dieting to lose fat can feel
great. Read more on this in chapter 3.
If eating a lot of carbs makes you feel sleepy, it can be wise to eat most of your carbs in
the evening.
When this has been said, I am not aware of any solid evidence of its benefits to muscle
growth or fat loss. If reseach will be able to actually show some benefits some day the ex-
perts agree that they are going to be small.
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Supplements
Supplements are great and can make a difference. But you have to understand that they
are far less important than getting your calories and nutrients from eating food.
Because supplements only make a very small difference, much less than any supplement
company wants to tell you, I am not going to cover it in the pdf.
Personally, I like protein powder and creatine because they work for me. I also take fish
oil and in the winter d-vitamin. If you want to know about my recommendations on supple-
ments, I have made a post on my website.
Check out my post on the best supplements (Click here).
Maintenance Calories
Understanding your calorie requirements is essential for figuring out how to put yourself in
a surplus or in a deficit.
There are many cool equations/calculators on how to estimate what is popularly referred to
as “maintenance calories” which is the number of calories you need to eat to neither gain
nor lose weight.
All these calculation methods share the same thing, which is that they are just a good
guess.
If you want the most precise estimate of how many calories you are burning every day, you
would first have to estimate your basal metabolic rate (BMR) which is how many calories
your body needs to function. Think about it as the baseline or the amount of energy your
body needs if you were inactive the whole day. Then you would need to keep track of your
activities daily and add whatever amount of calories that equaled to, to your BMR.
I am a big fan of simplicity, and keeping track of my daily activities is not something that I
want to do or recommend. Especially when it is not really necessary.
The calculation I have found most useful is this one:
Maintenance Calories = Bodyweight (lbs) x 15
Or
Maintenance Calories = Bodyweight (kg) x 33
This calculation assumes you have about 60 minutes of physical activity. This is fair to
say for most people when you take into consideration that you are also going to the gym 3
times per week (this is what I recommend).
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Obviously, if you completely disagree that you are not physically active on average 60
minutes each day, you might want to lower it a bit, perhaps subtract 100 calories. However,
I would then recommend that you consider trying to be more active. You could for example
take the stairs or walk / use a bicycle as means of transportation when it is convenient.
This calculation has like any other a number of flaws. A major one is that is not taking into
consideration if you are highly active in your daily life, e.g. you are doing a lot of sports or
very active in your job.
To address this issue I recommend using the following as an alternative. The equation is
based on the Katch-McArdle formula.
Maintenance calories = Modifier x ((370 + (9.8 x lean body mass in lbs))
Or
Maintenance calories = Modifier x ((370 + (21.6 x lean body mass in kg))
Lean body mass is simply your scale weight - body fat. Use the spreadsheet that came
with this pdf to estimate your body fat.
Use the following modifiers based on your activity level:
• Sedentary (little or no exercise): 1.2

• Lightly active (training/sports 2-3 days/week): 1.375
• Moderately active (training/sports 4-5 days/week): 1.55
• Very active (training/sports 6-7 days a week): 1.725
• Extremely active (training/sports and physical job): 1.9
Please note that these activity modifiers are also nothing but good guesses.
Example simple formula:
Ben weighs 75 kg, and although his modern lifestyle has made him sedentary like most
people he is physically active on average 60 minutes each day.
Ben’s maintenance calories can be estimated to:
75 x 33 = 2475 calories
This is Ben. His

name will come up
in all the examples.
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Example of the Katch-McArdle based formula:
As mentioned Ben’s weight is 75 kg and his body fat percentage is 15.

His lean body mass is 75 x (1-0.15) = 63.75
He has a sedentary life but goes to the gym 3 times a week and then falls under the cate-
gory “lightly active”.
Ben’s maintenance calories:
1.375 x ((370 + (21.6 x 63.75)) = 2402 calories
The Power Of Tracking And Logging

Calories And Macros
To make sure you get the right amount of food you have to start tracking calories. To make
sure you get the optimal macro distribution you have to track macros. I recommend using a
calorie and macro tracking app on your smartphone like MyFitnessPal together with a food
scale. Obviously, you can only use a food scale while cooking at home. If you are eating
out you have to do estimates of the weight.
Tracking macros in conjunction with calories is

a relatively easy and very powerful tool to keep
track of your daily intake and make sure you are
getting the right amount. Only tracking macros
and calories are of course a simplification, but
it is still a great and powerful estimate and most
importantly it works.
This might sound like a lot of trouble and maybe

even put some people off. But what this allows
you to do is be able to understand the food you
are eating and enable to you to eat your favorite
foods in a strategic way that fits your calories
and macros.
Also, you can look at it this way, you should care and know about the things you are put-
ting inside your body and at least put some effort most of the time into eating the right
amount of food.
Your body is constantly renewing and rebuilding itself and it can only become as good as
the food you put into it. If nothing else, you simply need to care about macros and calories
if you want to lose fat or gain maximum strength and muscle while at the same time gain-
ing little or no fat.
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Thankfully, in the process of weighing your food and tracking the calories and macros your
ability to do the estimates in your head slowly becomes better and better. After some time
your ability becomes so good that you can get away with estimating most of the food or all
in your head. I don’t recommend estimating all the food in your head while dieting to lose
fat. You will be surprised how powerful your mind can be to cheat you into eating more
when there is no data to keep you accountable.
Finally, I think going through this process is a great way to educate yourself on the nutri-
tional value of the foods you are eating. It is worth the time and effort. An interesting effect
is that when calories and macros become a factor in your food choices, you will find out
what your “real” favorite foods and treats are. Because you don’t want to waste a lot of
calories and bad macro profiles on foods you don’t like that much.
Weight, Waist Circumference And Gym Progress
Tracking your weight and waist circumference daily is a relatively easy process but yields
a great insight about your body composition. Waist measurement is especially powerful for
men since most fat is stored around this part of the body.
Having the numbers enable you to look at the

things more objectively and to make sure you
are on the right track. It enables you to detect
any problems and to perform course correc-
tions accordingly. I would say that it simply
allows you to do much better and informed
decisions.
For example in terms of getting your diet right,

having the numbers enable you to discover
much faster if you are getting unwanted and
unnecessary fat gain by either 1) having added
too many surplus calories, or 2) the mainte-
nance calorie estimation is too high.
Clearly, you want to lower your calories a bit if your waist circumference has increased
and your weight is increasing too fast. Beginner men should never expect more than 1 kg
muscle per month. Beginner women should not expect more han 0.5 kg muscle per month
(more on this in chapter 4). So if you gain that weight in 1-2 weeks, depending on the cir-
cumstances, that could be an indication that your calories are set too high.
I recommend putting all the data in an excel spreadsheet and you should have got one
with this pdf. Rather than focusing on the daily numbers you want to do weekly averages
and look at the trends. This will eliminate wrong decisions based on natural fluctuations.
If you want to add more data points to lower the inaccuracy you can get a body fat caliper.
These are not too accurate in measuring your fat percentage, but they are good for track-
ing changes.
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Another thing is to take photos of yourself weekly. If you make sure the lighting stays the
same and you do same poses, this will also work very well to keep track of changes and to
discover unwanted fat gain.
Finally, you should also be keeping track of your gym progress. Workouts are not a part of
this pdf, but the progress you are making in the gym is important data that is a big factor
when you are considering changes to your diet. I recommend keeping a workout log either
a physical notebook or on your phone and have it with you every time you go to the gym.
Feeling Overwhelmed?
I completely understand that all this tracking can feel overwhelming to beginners. If this
is the case for you start by tracking a few things like your scale weight, calories and gym
progress.
Take comfort in the fact that tracking calories and macros do not have to be super strict,
and you don’t have to do it all the time. Just try to be consistent and cover the majority of
your food. After some time it will become a habit and you don’t have to give it conscious
thought (read more on this in chapter 5).
A Necessary Tool
I have heard some people calling out this approach obsessive and giving it the name
“quantitative syndrome” referring to that all we care about are the numbers. And while I
think these arguments have some merit, it is just much more effective to make data-driven
decisions.
Of course, it would be great if you could just listen to the body and get everything right. But
the truth is that it is extremely difficult to do and for most people probably impossible. The
food industry has been engineering foods for many decades into high-jacking our senses
and making us want to eat more.
From a business perspective, this is great for the big food companies because they make
more money. But it is not so great if you want to control your calorie intake. You need to
have the right tools to combat this.
However, at the same time being obsessive and caring too much is also not a way to live.
So, what I am saying is you should find the “golden middle way” that has the benefits from
both sides. That is having relatively accurate nutritional information on the foods you are
eating while being flexible and for example having no problems eating out.
If you have any questions regarding tracking, you are welcome to ask me in
the comments section to my post on tracking workouts, macros and body
measurements (click here).
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Eating Your Favorite Foods

I have mentioned how you should restrict yourself as little as possible when it comes to
food choices, and that you should be able to eat your favorite foods.
Because I believe a great diet is inclusive and NOT restrictive.
By that I mean it should allow you to include any food you want and not restrict yourself. I
think I have made this point pretty clear by now.
But how then do you eat your favorite foods you might be thinking now. It is quite simple
and there really is no big secret to how you do it. All it takes is a carefully calibrated and
fine tuned approach to macros and calories. You will read more about how to determine
those in chapter 3 and 4.
When your calorie and macro requirements are determined, then you need to find room
within those numbers to eat your favorite food. In a nutshell, it becomes similar to a budget
that you need to spend. In the beginning, it can seem like a daunting task, but as you get
more used to it and fine tune your macros to personal preferences it will become easier
until one day it will become effortless.
Something interesting happens when calories and macros become a factor in your deci-
sion making, e.g. how much of a specific favorite food you can eat or if you should choose
food A or B. You hone in on what your “real” favorite foods are, because you would rarely
want to use your “limited budget” on eating foods that make you less satisfied than eating
something else.
In order for you to balance eating your favorite foods and getting the right calories and
macros these are the things that I would recommend you become familiar with:
• General calorie and macronutrient content of the foods you are eating
• The quantities of the food you are eating
• What macronutrient distribution you feel best with
• Your calorie intake
• A calorie tracking app for your phone (I like MyFitnessPal)
This will allow you to understand the foods you are eating and make informed decisions
about your choices.
I got an article on my website that goes more in-depth on this topic and if you
have any questions you are welcome to ask me in the comments section to
the article (click here).
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Why I Don’t Like “Labeling”

You can call the diet in this pdf flexible eating or IIFYM (if it fits your macros) if you want.
Why I did not call it IIFYM is because I feel it has become associated with eating large
amounts of fast food and candy. Basing your diet on unhealthy fast food even though it fits
your macros is just never going to be a good idea.
The reason why I personally would like to avoid calling it anything altogether is that I don’t
think about it as something particular. It is just a smart and healthy approach to eating the
foods you want in the right quantities that ensures getting the nutrients which research
confirms is optimal for achieving a lean muscular physique.
Basically, it is about having a simple understanding of food and nutrition and using science
and research to guide your decisions.
This, by the way, is not the same as reading a random PubMed abstract that confirms your
belief, and then think you have found irrefutable evidence. Conflicting research results
are published all the time, which is why research needs to be interpreted and analyzed by
experts and professionals.
Finally, I would recommend that you generally avoid trying to fit your diet in any specific
category or give it a certain label. What might happen is that you more or less identify your-
self with it which is always going to limit yourself in some way. It is an understandable part
of human nature to seek identity and to want to belong to a specific group, but in this case,
I believe it is going to do more harm than good.
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CHAPTER 3: FAT LOSS

Fat Loss Vs Weight Loss
There is something important you need to understand about why I am using the word fat
loss and not just weight loss.
Obviously, fat loss and weight loss are not created equal, and what you should always be
interested in is losing fat and retaining your strength and muscle.
This should be the main objective of how you structure your fat loss diet and training.
Many weight loss diets instruct a combination of eating very few calories and doing a lot
of intense cardio. This creates an extreme calorie deficit that if you are able to stick with it
results in a huge weight loss but consisting of both losses of fat and muscle. There is also
a significant weight loss due to less water retention, but that will always be the case. The
body simply holds less water when muscle glycogen storages are emptied, you have less
food in your stomach, and fat and muscle mass is reduced.
Such weight loss diets are very bad for a number of reasons. 1) they are very hard to stick
with if you want to keep your sanity and avoid getting an eating disorder, 2) they basically
make you feel like shit, 3) you lose muscle which is of course very bad and 4) they can
“damage” your metabolism.
Losing fat is never going to be a walk in the

park and you will feel hungry. But it should nev-
er make you feel like your hunger is driving you
mad.
Additionally, maintaining your muscle mass

should always have very high priority since with
the loss of muscle mass your metabolic rate
drops. Just maintaining the muscle requires
energy, if the muscle mass is reduced it is less
energy that is required.
So not only do you end up weaker, but you also

burn fewer calories.
Also, you should not forget that your strength and muscle is a requirement for getting a
lean muscular physique, so you should take great effort to not lose it.
What I mean by such diets can damage your metabolism is that your body will counter-
act the extreme calorie deficit by going into what some people call “starvation mode”. The
body is trying to compensate by “turning down the knob” on everything that uses energy.
This will affect energy levels a lot and make you feel very lazy resulting in fewer calories
burned.
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Although the “starvation mode” has probably been exaggerated by some people, the effect
is not insignificant and persists for some time after depending on the time duration and
severity of the diet. Of course, this also increases the likelihood of regaining of fat.
What you should understand from all this, is that you need to be smart about how you ap-
proach fat loss and chose a “sustainable” diet. That is one where you don’t feel miserable
and risk binge eating, and also one where you don’t risk losing muscle mass.
If you are looking to lose a significant amount of fat, you can’t just go crazy for a few weeks
and then expect great results. Losing fat takes time!
This important lesson can be summed up to this:
Unless you want your muscle mass to be part of your weight loss you have to be
smart about both your diet and training/exercising.
The Calorie Deficit

In order to lose fat you need a calorie deficit. That is eating fewer calories than you burn.
As mentioned earlier losing weight is essentially a question of energy balance. But when
we are talking about losing fat and retaining muscle, then you need to be smart about both
how you structure your deficit and how you do your training.
You basically need to create a moderate calorie deficit (not extreme) by eating fewer calo-
ries. I would recommend this moderate calorie deficit to be in the range of 20 - 25 % calo-
ries below your maintenance. Because going a lot lower than that will risk not only loss of
strength and muscle but also that you won’t get enough vital nutrients for your body.
An important thing to note is as you are getting leaner you need to adjust the deficit if you
want to keep the same fat loss rate. As your weight is getting lower your maintenance cal-
ories are decreasing. At some point you most likely have to accept a smaller deficit than 20
% and thus a slower speed. (more on this below). On the other hand, if you have a high fat
percentage you can go higher with the deficit.
Depending on your situation you can add low-intense cardio like walking to increase the
deficit a bit or use low-intense cardio to be able to eat a little more. I prefer low-intense
cardio because it doesn’t affect my appetite. Additionally, I experience lower energy levels
if I do something like high-intensity interval training (HIIT) while in a calorie deficit. This is a
bad combination when restricting calories.
In the recent years, it has come to my attention that many people feel the same way, so I
would normally recommend doing low-intense cardio when you want to lose fat. But if you
feel like doing some intense cardio don’t let my recommendation stop you. Just don’t over-
do it and pay attention to whether you are seing any difference in your appetite, energy or
strength levels. Some people even feel it can disrupt their sleep a bit.
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When calculating how many calories you need to eat in order to lose fat you can use the
equations introduced above in chapter 2 under the section maintenance calories. You can
then calculate the calories you should eat like this:
Calorie intake = maintenance calories x (in the range of 0.8 to 0.75)
Example:
Ben has decided he wants to lose some fat and he decided he wants his calorie intake to
be 25 % under maintenance. His maintenance calories have been estimated to 2475.
His calorie intake to lose fat should then be set to:
2475 x 0.75 = 1856,25 calories
Adjusting As You Go
As mentioned above, you will eventually have to make changes to how you structure your
calorie deficit. Most likely you will have to reduce calorie intake even more or add more
cardio. This is simply because your initial calculation will no longer be true since your
weight has been reduced.
When you make changes it is important to “listen to your body” and reflect upon how the
changes make you feel in several areas.
A good thing is to pay attention to your mood, energy levels, strength levels /gym perfor-
mance, hunger levels and stress levels.
You can rate them from 1 to 5 before making the changes and then again after some time.
Just being aware of these things and if the changes are having a big negative effect can be
helpful. But it can also reveal if the changes you have made are too severe.
Are the changes too severe, you have to eat more calories and simply accept a slower
progress. From what I can understand from professional coaches, the sweet spot for most
people seem to be around eating 1600 - 1800 calories for men and 1200 - 1400 for wom-
en.
If you are a big guy it could be even higher. I am myself not a big guy, but I have never
been eating less than 1700 calories on a regular basis. This seems to be my sweet spot.
So, I want you to seriously consider whether you are eating too few calories if you are go-
ing below what I just mentioned above.
Andy Morgan has made some cool guidelines on safe fat loss, which you can see below in
the section below on how much fat you can expect.
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Doing Carb refeeds, Cheat Days Etc.
Scheduling a “cheat day” or a so-called refeed can be beneficial when dieting. The most
important thing about is, in my opinion, the psychological effect. It can help ease your mind
by having a day a week for example where you eat a moderate amount of more carbohy-
drates than usual.
Using this strategy could enable you to go out on a Friday or Saturday and eat at a restau-
rant and perhaps drink 1-2 beers or drinks.
It is very important to keep the extra calories under control so you don’t end up offsetting
your hard efforts. You should not abuse it or make it an excuse to binge eat!
Macros For Fat Loss And Muscle Retention

When you are eating fewer calories every day it is even more important to get your macros
right. There is just not much room for error. Because of this I strongly recommend that you
are tracking all your food or at least a big majority of it to make sure that you are on point
with both calories and macros.
I guess you can say that most people need a higher level of strictness in their tracking
when dieting to lose fat than when they are lean bulking.
I have made this awesome graphic to illustrate the macros guideline:
The ranges are not set in stone and you can deviate some, but I would strongly rec-
ommend not going too low on anything.
If you compare this with its counterpart for strength and muscle gain in chapter 4, you will
see that the protein and fat have gone up while carbs have gone down.
One reason for this is that a certain level of protein and fat is necessary for the body to
function optimally. As calorie intake is reduced the percentage ranges go up to meet this
demand.
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The most important reasons are that protein is required for maintaining your muscle mass
and fat is for ensuring optimal hormonal function. In addition, both protein and fat are im-
portant to feel satiated and full. They are more satiating than carbs and especially protein
makes you feel full longer.
Another very important reason is that research indicates that increased protein intake while
in a calorie deficit aids muscle retention. 30 - 35 % protein can for many people seem like
a lot (myself included), however, it is extremely important to retain your muscle mass so
getting enough protein is crucial.
As a result of the higher protein and fat intake carbs have to go down. But going too low in
carbs will also be associated with a number of disadvantages. It is likely to make you feel
moody, give you a harder time falling asleep and could impact your training performance
negatively.
Basically, it is a tough balancing act where carbs are reduced because they for most peo-
ple are less important than protein and fat. This does not mean that carbs are unimportant.
Exception: You have a high body fat percentage around 20+ % for men or 30+ % for
women. Using this simple guideline will set you up with unnecessary high protein amounts
which affects your wallet and limits your food choices without having any benefits.
In that case, you should use a more advanced method and calculate your protein require-
ments based on your lean body mass. You can use the following: 2.3 - 3.1 gram protein
per kg of lean body mass or 1.1 - 1.4 g protein per lbs of lean body mass. You can still use
this guideline even if you have a low body fat percentage.
Lean body mass is simply your scale weight - body fat. Use the spreadsheet to estimate
your body fat percentage.
Example:
Below you see an example of the number of calories and grams of each macro, when put-
ting the macro guidelines into action. Using the spreadsheet will give you a similar visual
output.
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Special Concerns For Women
A study has shown that women generally burn more fat, less carbohydrate and less protein
compared to men. There is also a study that indicates that high-fat diets are more benefi-
cial to women than men. Finally, there is some research indicating that women do better
overall in their training when consuming more fat.
Because of this, I would recommend that women go high on their fat intake and lower on
protein. Another reason why women don’t need as much protein as men is that women
genetically have higher body fat percentage and thus lower lean body mass.
How Much Fat You Can Expect

Losing 1 pound of body fat should equate to a calorie deficit of approximately 3500 calo-
ries which is 7700 calories for a kg of body fat. This is an established and old rule that you
perhaps have heard about before.
If you have paid attention and read that 1 gram of fat is 9 calories you might be wondering
how come 1 kg of body fat is not 9000 calories. The answer is that human fat cells are esti-
mated to be around 87 % fat. So in reality, our fat is not even 100 % fat :)
However, you are regretfully not able to directly control how your body responds to the cal-
orie deficit. This means that following the rule that 3500 calories should equal one pound
of body fat (7700 for 1 kg) is never going to be an exact science. But it is still a good guide-
line.
With this guideline, you can easily estimate what should be expected of your fat loss diet.
E.g. having a deficit of around 500 calories every day should make you lose 1 pound a
week.
Example Of Fat Loss:
Ben’s maintenance calories are 75 x 33 = 2475. He has decided he wants to eat 25 % few-
er calories, so his calorie intake should be 2475 x 75 % = 1856.25
This is a daily deficit of 2475 - 1856.25 = 618.75 calories and a weekly of 4331.25.
Ben also adds in low-intense cardio. 4 times a week he walks 60 minutes while listening
to interesting audio books. For convenience let us say that he burns 200 calories in one
session, so it is an additional 800 calories (with his body weight it should be more than 200
calories).
Ben’s weekly calorie deficit is now 4331.25 + 800 = 5131.25.
His weekly fat loss can then be estimated to 5131.25 / 3500 = 1.46 pounds, or 5131.25
/ 7700 = 0.66 kg.
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There is something very important to understand about this calculation, which I have men-
tioned above.
As your weight decreases this calculation is going to be more and more inaccurate. You
would have to continuously adjust in order the maintain this rate.
Example Of Change In Maintenance:
Ben started his fat loss diet with a weight of 75 kg. He did a very good job with tracking
calories and macros and did good workouts. In the first 6 weeks, he managed to lose 4,5
kg which was mostly fat. But, as should be expected some of his weight loss came from
muscle glycogen burned off and a lot of water. If Ben chose to stop his diet at this point he
would regain most of the water weight.
Starting out Ben’s maintenance calories were 75 x 33 = 2475
After 6 weeks his maintenance calories are 70.5 x 33 = 2326
His maintenance calories dropped 149.
In other words, he has to make up for that if he wants to continue having the same prog-
ress.
Essentially, the higher the amount of body fat you have the faster you are going to be able
to lose it while maintaining your strength and muscle. Put in another way, the leaner you
get the slower the rate of fat loss.
The main reason is having a higher body weight makes you burn more calories.
When you are burning more calories creating a large deficit is easier. Also, there is a limit
to how little food you can eat and exercise you can perform without adding considerable
risk to losing muscle and in general make your life miserable.
Additionally, as your calorie deficit becomes smaller the errors you make in tracking food
can have a relatively higher effect.
It should also be noted that being in a calorie deficit for an extended period is likely going
to affect your energy levels. This can negatively affect and reduce the number of calories
you burn (consciously or unconsciously).
Andy Morgan from rippedbody.com has made some great guidelines based on his many
years of experience. These can give you a good idea of what to expect of the speed. He
uses body fat percentage as the reference point of how much fat you can “safely” lose
without risking losing strength and muscle.
Please note that they are based on his experience of coaching men (see next page).
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Water Weight And The Dangers Of Relying On The Scale
As mentioned before, water will be responsible for some of your weight loss. Water is
bound in the body by stuff like food and muscle glycogen. These things are no longer pres-
ent in the body in the same amount as prior to the diet so water is flushed out.
In the beginning, the scale will show a much higher weight loss than the 1.46 pounds or
0.66 kg calculated in the example above. This can be expected in the first 1 - 2 weeks.
However, you should also expect to gain some water weight when you stop your fat loss
diet.
Water Weight Fluctuations
Water weight fluctuations due to stress and hormonal changes, big increases in salt or
sugar intake can all make significant changes to your scale weight. The danger lies in if
you rely on the scale weight to make your decision about changes in your diet or do add
more exercise.
To combat this you should always look at weekly averages and trends to guide you in your
decisions and NOT day-to-day scale weight.
During your fat loss diet it is not uncommon to experience a complete halt in your weight
loss even though you are in a calorie deficit. While the fat loss is definitely happening, the
body is for a number of reasons holding on to excess water masking any progress. After
some time all the water is finally flushed out and a large shift in scale weight is seen.
Muscle Gained
If you are new to working out, you can potentially gain muscle so fast that it can confuse
your progress. Therefore is it very important to pay attention to progress in your lifts. If you
have had significant progress increase in muscle mass should be expected.
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If you have any questions to the above or would like to learn more, I got two
relevant articles on my website you can check out. Post questions in the com-
ments section, and I will answer as soon as possible:
How Fast Can I Lose Fat? (click here)
How To Keep Track Of Weight Loss? (click here)
Strategies For Making Fat Loss Easier

If you want to lose fat at any meaningful rate it is going to be a challenge. There will be
days where you feel less energetic and very hungry, and you will have to use your willpow-
er to consciously restrict yourself in terms of the food you are eating.
Luckily, there are many smart strategies to make your life easier when you are dieting to
lose fat.
Suppressing Hunger
If you want to lose fat hunger is inevitable. But,

you should view hunger as a good thing and not
fear it. It is an indication that your diet is working!
I don’t mean you should welcome severe hunger

and adopt some kind of masochistic approach,
but that you simply accept a level of hunger.
There are a number of cool strategies that can

help suppress your hunger. This will make your
diet much more enjoyable and thus also make
failure less likely.
One strategy I can recommend is drinking a lot of fluid so you do not feel as empty in your
stomach. Hunger and thirst can easily be mistaken, and keeping hydrated will prevent this.
Coffee and tea can help blunt appetite mostly because of how caffeine stimulates the
brain. If you are doing intermittent fasting drinking black coffee or tea without sugar and
milk can work even better while fasted.
Drinking zero calorie carbonated drinks can also help. If you are drinking carbonated drinks
while fasting, it is better to choose the non-artificial sweetened drinks to avoid a rise in
blood sugar.
You can also eat more voluminous food. That is food that has lower calorie density. Eating
fibrous food is also a great strategy. Just avoid eating too much as it can get you in trouble.
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Intermittent Fasting
Intermittent fasting is a very popular way to make fat loss easier. Surprisingly, not eating or
thinking about eating at all can make your life easier. Some people even experience that it
helps suppress their hunger.
The main benefits of intermittent fasting in terms of fat loss is that it makes it easier for
your body to burn fat as fuel, it slightly increases your metabolic rate and it just makes it
mentally easier and more enjoyable to be in a calorie deficit.
There is even some research that proves intermittent fasting can aid in burning “stubborn”
belly fat.
However, intermittent fasting is not a magic pill that will burn away all your fat effortlessly. A
calorie deficit is the thing that drives fat loss.
Fasting also has a number of general health benefits, that could make it worthwhile to at
least try it out for yourself.
As a brief summary of the benefits, intermittent fasting has been shown to result in a num-
ber of changes to hormone levels, cell functions and gene expressing that are proven to
have benefits to overall health.
As mentioned, it makes it easier for your body to burn fat, and actually slightly increases
your metabolic rate. Additionally, depending on your current health these changes give rise
to potential benefits to heart, brain and cellular health and is possibly anti-aging.
If you want to know more about intermittent fasting or have any questions you
can ask them in the comment section to either of my two posts:
Does Intermittent Fasting Work For Weight Loss (click here)
Intermittent Fasting And Weight Loss (click here)
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Ketogenic Diet
Some people chose the ketogenic diet for fat loss and have great results. If you consider a
ketogenic diet to lose fat, please consider this first.
The reason the ketogenic diet works is because of a calorie deficit. Not because it some-
how “upregulate” metabolism or fat burning hormones or whatever you might have heard
or read. You essentially cut out a whole macronutrient category - carbs - which is the one
people usually eat the most of. In addition, both fat and protein is highly satiating and
makes you feel very full. This has the effect that people simply feel incredibly full but still
have a big deficit.
The reasons why I think the ketogenic diet is definitely not for me is because it is very in-
convenient and restricts food choices. Sure eating eggs and bacon sounds nice, but not all
the time.
Also, when you are dieting to lose fat you should be thinking ahead. Are you going to stick
with the ketogenic diet? If not, how will you manage to do the transition? Are you perhaps
going to overeat when you eat your “normal” diet again.
Furthermore, both transitioning to and from the ketogenic diet is going to make you feel un-
comfortable. This varies from individual, but some can feel pretty bad for at least 14 days.
This is because your body is adjusting to using fat or more precisely ketones as the prima-
ry energy source.
With all that being said, the ketogenic diet does work really great for some. It should work
better for people who have low insulin sensitivity, which is something most obese people
have.
If you want to know more about the ketogenic diet and weight loss you can
check out this post (click here).
Also, if you have any questions feel free to post them in the comments sec-
tion.
Working Out In A Calorie Deficit

In this chapter, I have covered in detail how you should set up your diet to lose fat and all
the things you should be concerned about. But, as mentioned in the beginning of this chap-
ter you need to be smart about both your diet and training.
In order to successfully build some strength and muscle or just retain it, you also need a
proper workout or you at least need to know the concerns of working out in a calorie deficit.
This is beyond the scope of this pdf, but I have made a post on my website that covers all
this. I have also made an example of a workout.
Check out my post on how to use weight training to lose weight (click here).
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Building Or Retaining Strength And Muscle Is Not Easy

Losing fat while building strength and muscle or just retaining it (applies to you if you are
experienced) is not easy. There are many pitfalls and individual differences for what strate-
gies will work. This is the hard truth.
The idea of both building strength and muscle while losing fat sounds very appealing. In
fact, people ask questions about how to do it all the time. On the other hand, losing your
hard earned strength and muscle can be very frustrating. It can be confusing to understand
the feedback from the scale and training.
I have done my best effort in this pdf to give you the most important information while
being brief. But there is still much more to this subject. That is why I would recommend
you pick up a course if you want to learn more.
For Women:
Greg O’Gallagher from Kinobody has made a fantastic course for women that is designed
to burn fat and build muscle the right places. By doing so, you get the body most women
are dreaming of as fast and easy as possible.
Thousands of women have had success with the program. I have seen how my sister
changed her body using the Goddess Toning Program and now my wife is also following it!
For Men:
Shredsmart by Radu Antoniu is one of the best courses on burning fat and building
strength and muscle. Radu has specifically designed the program for people who put their
lifestyle first and don’t want to spend many hours in the gym every week.
What Radu has done exceptionally well with the program, is that he has simplified all the
advanced stuff of losing body fat while maintaining or building muscle so it can fit your
lifestyle. It is truly an awesome course that works really well. It has countless of success
stories. It covers everything you need to know and more! It also comes with meal plans
that fits different calories.
Click the pictures above to check out the programs!
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CHAPTER 4: LEAN BULK

What Is Lean Bulking?
“Bulking” is a popular term describing the process of eating more than your maintenance
calories in order to gain muscle mass.
“Bulking” goes together with the term “cutting” expressing the two opposing conditions of
either being in a calorie surplus to build muscle or in a calorie deficit to burn fat. Both can
be detrimental if taken to the extreme either by eating too much resulting in large fat gain
or eating too little resulting in strength and muscle loss.
A lean bulk is simply a controlled version of bulking where the objective is to gain strength
and muscle with minimum fat. By having a relatively small calorie surplus fat gain will be
kept to a minimum. Because your body can’t use that many surplus calories to build mus-
cle and if you eat more than that it will get stored as fat.
Lean bulking is the best approach to building strength and muscle while keeping unwanted
and unnecessary fat gain to a minimum. In other words, lean bulking will help ensure you
stay lean!
The Calorie Surplus

As mentioned earlier gaining or losing weight is essentially a question of energy balance.
This is true even though it is possible to actually build muscle and lose weight at the same
time. This occurs especially for beginners, but once you reach a certain point it won’t be
possible at any meaningful rate.
For optimal strength and muscle growth you need a calorie surplus, meaning that
your calorie intake is higher than your maintenance calories.
Most experts agree that it takes approximately 2500 calories to build a pound of
muscle / 5500 calories for 1 kg of muscle.
Keeping that in mind, your body can only use a limited amount of surplus calories with a
correlation to the speed of which you are able to build muscle. Any more calories than that
will get stored as fast. How fast you are able to build muscle strictly depends on your train-
ing experience (see section below on how much muscle you can expect).
Because of this, your surplus calories should be determined on the basis of your training
experience. Doing this will give you a much better result and will reduce the risk of setting
calories too low and slow down muscle growth or setting calories too high and gain un-
wanted fat.
I recommend your calorie surplus should to be around 5 - 15 % of your maintenance cal-

ories being higest as a beginner and slowly decreasing as you become more and more
advanced (I am talking about years of experience).
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Here are some concrete examples of what that would look like:
Men: Beginner lifters should aim for 250 - 350 surplus calories per day. Intermediates
around 200 - 300 calories and advanced lifters only 100 - 150 calories per day.
Women: Beginners should set their daily surplus calories around 125 - 150. Intermediates
around 75 - 100 calories and advanced lifters only 50 - 75 calories per day.
When all that has been said, everyone is different and you need to find out for yourself how
your body responds to the calorie surplus. You need to consider if you are gaining weight
too fast or if you are progressing in your lifts very slow or not at all.
If you are gaining a lot of weight and your waist is also expanding then consider lowering
your daily calories by 50-150 and see what happens. If you are not progressing and not
gaining weight add 50-150 calories daily and go from there. Remember to always look at
trends and weekly averages rather than from day-to-day measurements. (Read more in
section on tracking in chapter 2).
If you have experience or strongly suspect that you gain fat easily you can start out in the
lower end. Also, if you are determined to keep fat gain to a minimum and accept that it may
reduce strength and muscle gain by just a bit, then you can start with a smaller number.
However, in both cases make sure to keep track of progress and reevaluate your surplus
calories after some time.
Once the surplus calories have been determined, you simply add that to your maintenance
calories and you have established your calorie intake.
Example:
Ben’s weight is 70 kg. He is a beginner lifter and excited about his muscle growth potential,
but at the same time, he is worried that he will gain a lot of fat because he always thought
he gained weight easily.
In an effort to balance these two factors he decides to go with 300 surplus calories and see
where it leaves him. His calorie intake can then simply be calculated by:
(70 kg x 33) + 300 = 2610

And here I illustrate the idea of how to determine calorie intake with a cool graphic:
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Calorie Paritioning
You don’t have to place the calorie surplus the same on every single day. There might be a
slight benefit to partitioning higher surplus calories on the training days due to how protein
synthesis and glycogen replenishment works in the body.
Simply put eating more calories on training days could increase utilization efficiency since
more surplus calories are available when recovery and growth are at its peak, and fewer
surplus calories available when the likelihood of converting those surplus calories into fat is
higher.
However, the far most important thing is being in a calorie surplus. I like to partition my
calories because it also adds variety to my diet. Additionally, partitioning can be helpful for
advanced lifters that only work with a very small surplus.
Ben’s partitioning could look like this:
Adjusting Based On Feedback
Since estimating your calorie intake (maintenance + surplus) is nothing but a good guess
and because there can be big individual differences, you can’t know how accurate this esti-
mation is before you have kept track of everything for a while.
As I have pointed out, keeping track of calories and macros, your scale weight and waist
circumference and also progress in the gym are the best ways to ensure you are doing
things right.
After you have obtained one month of data it is a good point in time to review it. When you
have a month’s worth of data you have a good foundation to determine whether your calo-
rie intake should be kept, or regulated up or down.
You should also pay attention to how the macro distribution you have chosen makes you
feel. Most people will actually be able to get a good feeling of what macros they feel best
with once they start paying attention to macros and become aware of the general nutrition-
al value of the foods they are eating.
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NEAT
It happens that some people need more calories than what I have stated in the above sec-
tion. This is usually because of increased spontaneous physical activity that is also known
as “Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis” or “NEAT” for short.
NEAT is simply increased movement that is often unconscious. It is a response of the body
to being overfed and you can think about as a way your body is trying to burn off the ex-
cess calories.
NEAT is usually different movements associated with not being able to sit still, like playing
around/fidgetting with objects, bumping the legs, changing position, walking in circles or
just standing up in general. Although this sounds fairly harmless it can account for a large
number of calories burned.
A study has revealed that individual differences in NEAT can be huge! This difference can
explain why some people seem to be naturally skinny while others gain weight easily. Per-
sonally, I fall into the latter category. I tend to become lazy from overeating.
The people that have a high NEAT are also the people that are referred to as “hard-gain-
ers”, and they have to consume a lot more calories to build muscle.
However, before you use this fact to justify stuffing your face with a ton of calories, consid-
er the dangers of wrongfully assuming that you have a high NEAT. Unless you are abso-
lutely sure, the safer method is to start out with the calorie surplus I recommended above,
and then once the data you track can tell you that your calories must be too low you can
add 100-200 calories. If that after some time proves to be not enough you can add another
100-200 calories.
If even that is not enough, I think you have made some mistake in your calculations, or it
is because of the very unlikely fact that you have an exceptionally high neat. In the study I
mentioned, the person with the highest NEAT burned off an additional 692 calories and the
person with the lowest burned 98 calories as an effect of eating 1000 surplus calories daily.
Got questions? Ask them in comments section to this article :) (click here)
How Much Muscle You Can Expect

The rate of which your body is able to build muscle strictly depends on your training experi-
ence and muscular development. The more strength and muscle you have the slower your
progress will get.
Beginners have huge muscle growth potential, and because of this everyone who starts
lifting weights will see great and fast results even if their training, nutrition, and recovery
is not that well. If you are a beginner this does not mean you should not care about these
things!
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This initial muscle building phase is popularly referred to as “newbie gains”, and most peo-
ple who are not fully aware of this, think that they are doing something wrong when they
experience their progress slowing down significantly after 6-12 months of training.
Two of the top experts in building strength and muscle have made guidelines that provide a
good insight into what should be expected of your muscle growth.
Above numbers are on growth potential for men. For women it is about the half.
As you can clearly see in these tables beginners and people in their first year of training
have potential to gain so much more muscle than people that have been training for years.
According to Lyle Mcdonald starting age and weight plays a role. Additionally, women can
approximately cut his numbers in half.
Technically, women do have a lower absolute muscle growth potential. Women simply
have smaller muscles than men. However, studies have shown that women and men gain
the same relative muscle mass i.e. growth relative to the existing muscle.
On top of that women weigh less and have genetically higher fat percentage. Because of
this, Alan Aragon’s guidelines could serve a better point of reference for women.
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How Much Fat You Can Expect

In this pdf, I have made great effort to stress how important it is to keep fat gain to a mini-
mum.
But, if you are a beginner or an intermediate some fat gain is actually optimal for your prog-
ress. This is because you can’t maximize strength and muscle growth while preventing fat
gain completely. Your body is not perfect in that way that it can funnel all surplus calories
into strictly muscle gains (regretfully).
Even for advanced lifters completely eliminating fat gain is going to be difficult and perhaps
make your life unnecessarily strict. So it could be a better option to accept a small amount
of fat gain (e.g. around holidays and vacations), but then balance it out with a period in a
calorie deficit before the accumulated fat becomes too much.
The problem with not maximizing muscle growth as a beginner and intermediate is that a
lot of potential muscle is left on the table. As you see in the stats above the growth poten-
tial is very high as a beginner and intermediate.
Here is an example (completely hypothetical but should prove the point):
Ben and his identical twin brother Bob started their fitness journey at the same time and
they are now in their second year of training.
While Ben is excited about having no fat gain at all, Bob feels fine about gaining a bit of fat.
Also, this means Bob can eat more of his favorite chocolate and he is pretty excited about
that.
In the second year of training, Ben gains 6.6 pounds / 3 kg of muscle and no fat, while Bob
gains 11 pounds / 5 kg of muscle and 11 pounds / 5 kg of fat.
Bob is now not only much stronger than his twin brother Ben, but Bob also knows that
he should be able to burn those 11 pounds / 5 kg of excess fat while retaining strength
and muscle in about 2.5 months (read chapter 3). After successfully doing that Bob is still
ahead compared to Ben.
Experienced fitness coaches usually recommend beginners and intermediates to go for a

muscle to fat gaining ratio in the range of 1:3/4 - 1:1.
Got questions about muscle

and fat gain?? Ask them in
comments section (click here)
Ben Bob
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Macros For Strength And Muscle Gain

In general, eating for optimized strength and muscle gain is simple. You pretty much just
have to eat a lot of everything: protein, carbs, and fat.
Described very briefly feeding your body enough protein will ensure you can gain strength
and muscle. Carbs are great for providing the fuel for your body and especially performing
your heavy lifting. Fats are crucial for optimal hormonal function.
Simply put including all the macros in your diet will ensure your body is running optimally
and also very important it will make your life easier. It will ensure you can be flexible about
eating the foods you want. For me, the meals that have a good amount of all three macros
are the most tastiest and satisfying ones!
With that being said, I recommend you distribute your calories in the following ranges:
The macro ranges are not set in stone and you can deviate some. But you should know
that you can get problems and less than optimal results if you go too low in either of the
categories and if you go too high in one category it leaves you with fewer calories for the
other categories.
Special Concerns For Women
As I also mentioned in chapter 3, there are a number of reasons why women should aim
for high fat and low protein. Women don’t need as much protein as men because they
have genetically higher body fat percentage and consequently lower lean body mass.
Additionally, a study has shown that women generally burn more fat, less carbohydrate
and less protein compared to men. There is also a study that indicates that high-fat diets
are more beneficial to women than men. Finally, there is some evidence that women do
better overall in their training when consuming more fat.
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Putting It Into Action
Putting these numbers into action and distributing them in the calories calculated above
you will get the result as seen in the table below. Obviously, the total sum should equal to
100 %.
Personally, I like to be in the lower end in terms of protein and in the higher end in terms of
fat and carbs. This is just my preference and it should not dictate how you set up your diet.
I would recommend that you try out some different numbers in the ranges I have given you
so you can find out what macro distribution fits you the best.
Perhaps you have heard or read that you should be eating a lot of protein in order to get
muscle. It is, of course, true that you need to eat protein, but you also need to eat plenty of
carbs and fat.
I think that protein intake is often overstated. Most research has shown that there is no
extra benefit for muscle growth when eating more than 1.8 grams per kg of body weight. If
your weight is 75 kg like Ben that equals to 135 grams.
I have written a post on how much protein you really need. Check it out here.
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Recommended Muscle Buidling Programs

There are many workout programs for free. Some of them can be good, but most of them
have design flaws that will inevitably lead to progression challenges or a complete halt/pla-
teau. I have experienced this several times in the past, and it can be very frustrating!
If you want a complete muscle building program that is designed with a laser focus on
giving you a lean muscular physique as fast and easy as possible, then I can highly recom-
mend that you check out the programs by Greg O’Gallagher and his brand Kinobody.
Don’t get me wrong, his programs are not “easy”. They are quite intense in terms of heavy
lifting, but you will only be working out about an hour each session 3 days per week.
His programs have rock solid progression plans and focuses on a small selection of exer-
cises that make you incredibly strong and look awesome. I have to say that his programs
put emphasize on intermittent fasting, but you can still do them without.
For Women:
The KinoBooty Program is the most recent course by Greg. He worked together with fe-
male fitness models and the program was designed to build a slim waist and strong glutes.
It has emphasize on building lower body strength and muscle which will give you those
highly desirable feminine curves sometimes referred to as the hourglass figure.
For Men:
The Kinobody program that I feel is the best for men is Greek God Muscle Building Pro-
gram. I believe it is his most popular program. It has actually been used by more than
30.000 people.
I have followed it myself for a long time, and I can honestly say that it has worked great for
me. Many thousands of other people are saying the same as well!
Click the pictures above to check out the programs.
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CHAPTER 5: DIET SECRET

What Is The Secret?
The “diet secret” is essentially the mental and behavioral change - you could say person-
al development - that many people need to go through before they can accomplish their
fitness goals and keep them.
I didn’t call it the diet secret to be a “click-bait”, but because even though it is essential to
getting your diet right and achieving your fitness goals not that many fitness professionals
are talking about it. If they do it is often vague and indirectly.
Additionally, it has been called “the secret” by other professionals in this field before.
Whether you need to set up your diet to promote fat loss or strength and lean muscle, the
“secret” is the same.
When talking about having success with anything in life it is super important to understand
that your habits and habitual actions or thoughts and how those make you perceive your-
self are going to determine whether you can be successful or not.
Succeeding in fitness and getting the body you want is no different. To get a lean muscu-
lar physique you need in terms of diet to adhere to certain rules. Of course, you also have
to be consistent with your training and recovery. In other words, you need to make it your
habit or change existing obstructive habits and internalize a lean muscular physique as a
part of your self-image.
One major sticking point for achieving the goal of many people (that included me) is simply
that they need to go through a mental and behavioral change.
Examples:
If you have an ingrained habit of eating too many calories every day, then you need to
change that habit. A fat loss diet is not necessarily going to help you do that. Even if are
able to stick with it and get the success you want, then it is very likely that your success will
just be temporary. All the fat you have lost will be regained once you fall back to your old
habits.
If you have limiting beliefs about yourself and are not able to see yourself as being “the
kind of person” who can have a lean muscular physique, then you are also very likely not
going to be able to achieve your dream body or keep it for very long.
One mental exercise that I think is great for exposing limiting beliefs is the following:
Close your eyes (read the whole paragraph first though) and imagine yourself at the beach
on a warm summer day. What does your body look like in that mental image, does it re-
semble how you want to look? Do you have a muscular physique or not? Do you perhaps
have even more body fat than what you currently have?
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I think this exercise speaks for itself, and I will let analyzing of whatever image you hold
of yourself up to you. I am not saying you are doomed if you have a bad mental image of
yourself on that beach. What I am trying to make you understand is that you control that
image and that you should make sure that the image resembles what you want.
This mental exercise is inspired by Radu Antoniu who has a popular youtube channel on
fitness and personal development.
How Habits Are Formed And How To Change Them

After reading that introduction, I am sure you are wondering how you in more practical
terms get the right habits. To better understand this, you first have to understand the pro-
cess of how habits are formed in the first place.
Without any doubt the best explanation I have ever seen is the following model and de-
scription. Your mind and all its mental activities can be divided into two parts, which I am
sure you already have heard before. That is 1) the conscious mind and 2) the subcon-
scious mind.
The conscious mind is the part that thinks, reasons, imagines etc. This is where the free
will resides.
The subconscious mind is the part which operates without you consciously knowing. I
bet that you in this moment are not consciously aware of your bodily functions keeping you
alive like breathing, heartbeat and blood circulation, digestion etc.
Repeated
Actions/thoughts
Habits
This model was originat-

ed by Dr. Thurman Fleet
and arguably popularized
by the self-development
legend Bob Proctor.
Both the conscious mind and the subconscious mind affect your physical actions
(body). But they do that in a very different way.
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While it makes no sense to discuss the difficulty of controlling the actions performed by
your conscious mind (your will), it absolutely does when we talk about the actions per-
formed by your subconscious mind.
As you can probably guess the habits are created in the subconscious mind, but they are
created from the repeated actions of or impressions on the conscious mind. This includes
internal thoughts and external influences.
When you think about it, habits are what we do all the time without really “thinking about
it”. It could be simple things like what you eat, how you dress or even how you answer the
phone. But it could also be more serious things like how much money you are spending in
relation to your income.
Simply put habits are created by repetition.
The creation of habits is a very powerful and necessary function of your mind since it
leaves your conscious mind free to deal with everything that does not fall within the scope
of “normal and easy tasks that you have repeated many times”. You can think of actions
like driving a car or riding a bike.
It has been estimated that 95 % of all our actions are habitual. Now that is a lot of actions
and thoughts you don’t have direct control of.
It actually goes much deeper than just habits. Our entire belief system and self-image are
created from the 1000s of actions, ideas, and impressions upon our conscious mind that
are either accepted or rejected and is governed by the subconscious mind. More on this
below.
I am 100 % serious when I say that truly understanding this knowledge can lead to
life-changing realizations.
Changing Habits
In order to change a habit rather than putting all your willpower and focus into consciously
fighting the habit you want to change, you should instead replace the old habit with a new
one. In practical terms, you want to put your focus and use your imagination on the habit
you want to develop and try to forget the habit you want to change.
You want to take advantage of your imagination and visualization since they are both very
powerful for impressing upon your subconscious mind.
By consciously repeating the actions you want to become your habit and resisting the
old habit, you slowly “overwrite” the old habit and form the new one in your subconscious
mind.
The key to changing a habit is repetition. That is also how your old habit was formed
in the first place.
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What you should know and do is:
1. Be fully aware of what you want to change and understand when you are likely to per-
form the unwanted habit
2. Detect whenever you are about to perform the bad habit and use willpower to resist it!
3. Imagine what you want to do instead (the new habit)
4. Perform just that
Practical Application For You Diet
You have to use the knowledge that you have learned and form the habit of complying with
the calories and macros you have calculated and keep track of those and your body com-
position.
So what you have to do is:
1. Detect whenever your actions are leading you astray from your calories and macros.
E.g. eating too much food, or that your actions lead to unacceptable inaccuracies in the
number of calories and macros you are getting (not tracking enough or at all, or eating
too much food that is very difficult to track or give good estimation of)
2. Resist that behavior
3. Imagine yourself doing the right action
4. Do that action
This can seem quite simple, but that is because it is simple. Yet, this is how you train your
subconscious mind to guide your actions and maintain a lean muscular physique!
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Your Ideal Eating Habit
The ideal eating habit is one that fits your lifestyle and the calories and macros for strength
and lean muscle gain. Eating for fat loss is in most cases only needed in shorter time
spans, and talking about a habit becomes less relevant.
It is also one that allows flexibility and where you can enjoy your favorite foods and thereby
avoid developing binge eating tendencies or other negative disorders.
As you should be able to understand now, your habits can be changed and engineered,
but that shouldn’t mean you have to change your habits into only eating chicken breast,
tuna, and broccoli.
This would be completely against the whole idea of having a free and flexible approach
and eating your favorite food.
Your Self-Image
“We act, behave and feel according to what we consider our self-image to be and we
do not deviate from this pattern.” - Dr. Maxwell Maltz.
I think most people have heard of the concept self-image. Maybe you agree that you have
one, but are you able to describe clearly what it means?
A simple way to describe the self-image is that it is how you in your mind define yourself
and believe to be true about yourself and the world around you. It includes all beliefs about
yourself.
The self-image determines what we believe to be our “normal” behavior. Modern psycholo-
gy has been able to show that your self-image literally guides all your behavior consciously
or unconsciously with the goal of staying consistent and not deviating from that self-image.
Even though your self-image has such an immense power over your life, it is often only
when something happens that goes against your self-image that you become aware of it.
This is perfectly illustrated with the saying or thinking: “I am not the kind of person who
would [insert action that contradicts self-image]”, “I am too [insert whatever quality you
identify yourself with] to be able to accept this”, or “I do not have enough [insert] to be able
to achieve or deserve that thing”.
All these different qualities that you believe you have can in varying degree seem justified
in the feedback from your interaction with the world.
It can be anything from a strong emotional and awkward feeling when talking to someone
you are attracted to, that makes you believe that you are awkward around attractive look-
ing women/men, or it can be your math teacher telling you that you will never be good at
math that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
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They are all nothing but your ideas that either promote/enhance or demote/diminishes
certain kind of behavior. In truth, you can become like anything you want or become high-
ly skilled at just about anything, if you are able to accept the idea and put in the time and
effort. Of course, differences in genetics will have an effect, but these things rarely make a
difference when we are not comparing the extreme highly-skilled people.
How Did I Get My Self-Image?
How did you get your self-image? This can be an incredibly hard question to give a specific
answer to, and will likely take many and expensive consultations at a psychologist or thera-
pist to answer.
However, in general terms the answer is going to be that your self-image was created by
your repetitive actions, thoughts or outside influences that you have accepted and internal-
ized.
Especially strong emotional events in childhood can have a powerful and lasting effect on
your self-image.
To name a few examples of the actions and thoughts you could have made a part of your
self-image:
Perhaps you often procrastinated when you were a teenager (which is probably the norm),
and the result is that you now perceive yourself as an inefficient and procrastinating person
that “works best under pressure”.
While growing up overeating was the norm in your family, and this has made you believe
that you are just one of those persons that have a “big appetite”.
You had one extremely awkward experience being overly nervous speaking to a crowd of
people, and since then you have always been scared of public speaking and see yourself
as an introvert.
Or in simpler terms perhaps you just view yourself as a person that watches television or
play computer games every chance they get, because that is just what you always have
been doing.
All these things become stronger and more rigid parts of your self-image every time you
repeat them by action or thought. Just thinking the thought is enough, like playing the one
experience of being overly nervous on repeat in your mind.
It is actually quite silly and irrational to have one experience determine what kind of person
you are. Also, why would you want to waste “mental power” on thinking about a negative
experience confirming a behavioral trait you don’t want? The fact is, that many people do
just that and I am myself no different. But bringing awareness to this is a step in the right
direction.
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A Cybernetic Mechanism
Cybernetics is the study of control in closed systems that allows changes to the system
itself based on feedback loops from its own actions.
A cybernetic mechanism is one that is orientated towards achieving a goal and which is
able to perform corrections to itself every time it deviates from the path of achieving that
goal (no, it is not about computers taking over the world).
The autopilot in an airplane or self-steering cars, a thermostat and a guided missile work
because they have a cybernetic mechanism.
When a guided missile is launched and has its coordinates for impact transmitted, it arrives
by performing corrections every time it gets off course.
The way your self-image controls and guides your behavior can be also be described as
a cybernetic mechanism, or in other words a goal-oriented steering mechanism. This idea
was first introduced by Dr. Maxwell Maltz in his very influential book “Psyho-Cybernetics”.
In order to be consistent with the idea of how you perceive yourself, which in this case can
be viewed as your end goal, you will have to make course-corrections every time you devi-
ate from your self-image.
If you within your self-image perceive yourself at a certain weight or at a certain look or
maybe even at a certain performance level, you can be completely sure that this will guide
you and correct you every time you are deviating from that self-image.
Example:
Let us say you think of yourself as an 83 kg man, just because that is what you are used to
weigh. This means that whenever there is deviation from that it is going to be easily detect-
ed (Yes, this time we are leaving Ben and Bob out)
First scenario:
You have been busy throughout whole December month and didn’t pay attention to your
weight, also you had a great Christmas with your family and friends eating a lot of tasty
food and treats.
On 2 January you are very surprised to see that your weight is now 87 kg.
This is no good because you think yourself as an 83 kg man and you immediately start
planning your fat loss diet. After some time you have successfully lost those extra kgs.
However, you stop losing weight as soon as you get just below the 83 kg because you
don’t want to look skinny and weak.
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Second scenario:
In the same year, you have the busiest May month at work ever. Your boss gave you a
huge task to complete and every single day you have to put in a significant number of extra
hours. You are so incredibly stressed that you on many days have very little appetite, but
you don’t give it much thought.
On 1 June you have finally completed the huge task and you are able to do your full morn-
ing routine in a relaxed manner and you weigh yourself.
You are shocked to see that your weight is 78 kg. It is as if you immediately realize that you
look skinny and weak, and you decide something has to be done about it.
After some time and many extra portions of food at your office canteen, you are finally
back to 83 kg and think to yourself you better slow down on the extra portions because you
don’t want to become fat.
I have also made this cool chart to illustrate the point:
As you perhaps can understand from my example, your desire to perform course-correc-
tions will often come through your “inner voice” and will always seem rational at first.
You could be thinking to yourself that you have become too skinny or too weak, or that
something is wrong with the diet or workout plan you are following. You could be rationaliz-
ing that you deserve to take a few days off etc.
If you are experiencing this while being aware of what is actually going on, that is your
subconscious correcting your deviating behavior, you will be surprised at how subtle these
thoughts can be yet powerful in achieving their goal.
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How To Change Your Self-image
You should realize by now that your self-image is a powerful thing. The next thing that
should be on your mind is how you can change or ensure that your self-image supports a
lean muscular physique (also anything else you desire).
It is commonly accepted by top experts that there are two ways to change your self-image.
1) A very strong emotional life event. This could be traumatic or extremely positive.
What is characterized by such an event is that it creates such a powerful motivation to
change or affirmation of a change the person wants, that he or she literally can change
overnight.
2) Autosuggestion. That is repeated internal suggestions and affirmations about your

thoughts, feelings, and behavior. Also the use of visualization to imagine yourself already
being the kind of person you want to be or be in possession of the thing you want.
You need to continuously repeat these things to yourself and at some point, you will have
“convinced” your subconscious mind, and at that is when you will start seeing changes in
your behavior.
You could put it like this, you have to act, visualize and think as if the desired self-image is
true until it becomes true.
I don’t suggest you sit around and wait for a strong emotional event to occur, but that you
instead use autosuggestion.
A simple yet very powerful way to implement autosuggestion to change your self-image
is to make a goal card. It is a small piece of paper or card where you write your goals and
you carry it around with you all the time. You then read it to yourself at least twice a day,
e.g. once in the morning and then once in the evening. When reading the goal card visual-
ize yourself already in possession of the desired outcome.
The goal card should be written in present tense and clearly state what your goals are. E.g
your goals in terms of your physique, but it can be about anything including relationships
and income for that matter.
The goal card should also state what you are doing to achieve the goal(s). You need a
reasonable plan and you need to put in good effort to achieve your goals (no such thing as
a free lunch). It should also state a deadline for achieving your goals.
Overall the goal card should be very clear and concise with definite goals and a defi-
nite plan to achieve them.
Using a goal card and reading it out daily is a technique mentioned in the book “Think and
Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill. The book was first published in 1937, and the technique has
been used ever since with countless of success stories.
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Managing Your Willpower As The Important Resource It Is

Willpower is essentially the control you exert to either do something or refrain from doing.
By its nature willpower is intangible and hard to quantify and can because of this be a bit
strange to talk about.
You can actually train your willpower like it was a muscle, but ev-
eryone is limited in their amount even if it is highly developed. The
fact that willpower is a limited resource has been shown in many
studies.
Another useful way to think about your willpower is that it is like

your smartphone or laptop battery. When you wake up in the morn-
ing it is fully charged, but is slowly drained throughout the day.
Since changing habits require willpower (probably a lot) every time

you have to resist an old habit and perform the new one instead, it can make a lot of sense
to think about how to ensure having enough willpower at your disposal to change your
habit.
It can be very helpful to reflect upon other things that are draining your willpower and re-
strict or eliminate those things that are less important to you or maybe even stupid.
Basically, every action performed and decision that is not what you can describe as habitu-
al requires a bit of willpower.
E.g. worry about what you should have for lunch or dinner or what clothes to wear. Another
big thing is using time on social media browsing 10s or 100s of pictures of everything from
your best friend to cat videos, or worrying about your own status updates. All this drains
willpower!
Another smart way to free up your precious willpower would be to see what minor tasks
you have that could easily be automated or semi-automated through proper planning, tech-
nology or use of services provided by other people.
Conclusion
In this chapter, I have given you several cool concepts and ideas to help you understand
how you can take charge of habits and self-image in order to help you achieve your goals
namely getting a lean and muscular physique. But I want to emphasize that the concepts
and ideas are universal for achieving any goal.
If you are new to these ideas then you maybe thought they were far-fetched, hard to grasp
or perhaps even stupid. If this is the case rather than just immediately rejecting these
ideas, consider giving them the benefit of the doubt. Spend some time thinking it over, per-
haps reread it or check out some of the resources recommend below.
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Strengthery.com
I believe that if you are able to accept and understand the ideas in this chapter you will
see positive change. Because by just becoming aware of what your habitual actions and
thoughts are and what your self-image is, you will stop identifying yourself with them and
realize that you can simply change them.
There is no need to let your present habits or self-image determine what you are or what
you can be!
I want to end with a quote that I have always felt was very powerful since hearing it the first
time in the audio book “The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle.
“What a liberation to realize that the ‘voice in my head’ is not who I am. Who am I
then? The one who sees that.”
Resources
If you found this chapter resonated with you and you found the ideas and concepts inter-
esting, then I have a few resources for you that I can highly recommend.
Six Minutes To Success
Six Minutes To Success is an amazing product created by Bob Proctor who has close to 50
years of experience in his industry and is a living legend in helping others perform to their
fullest potential.
With this product you will every day receive a six-minute video designed to bring you ideas
and actionable steps to perform better and achieve your goals.
You can sign up for a two-week trial for just 1$ and see for yourself if it is something for
you. If you found the contents of this chapter interesting, then I can almost guaran-
tee that this product is for you.
Check It Out Here!
50
Strengthery.com
Bob Proctor also has one of his more older courses titled “you were born rich” uploaded to
youtube to watch for free. The recordings are a little bit old and the intro can feel corny, but
the contents have not lost any relevance at all. Don’t worry about the title which actually
refers to riches of all kind and not just material.
Check Out The Free Video Course “You Were Born Rich” (click here)
Unstoppable Discipline
A famous YouTuber named Radu Antoniu that I can also highly recommend recently re-
leased a course called “Unstoppable Discipline”. The course is based on the work of Bob
Proctor. When writing this I haven’t seen the whole course yet myself, but I know much of
his other work and it has always been superb.
Check It Out Here!
Books
If you want to read books on this subject I recommend you start reading “Psycho Cyber-
netics” by Maxwell Maltz and “Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill. You can get them
cheap on Amazon.
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Strengthery.com
FINAL WORDS
Thank you for your interest and taking your time to read my pdf. I have put a lot of work
and effort into writing out all this information as clear and easy to understand as possible. I
would love to hear any feedback from you, both good and bad so I can improve!
You can post any comments to the pdf by following this link or you can email me at
marcus@strengthery.com.
If you like what you read consider checking out my website regularly, I have written a lot of
cool content and I am writing new all the time. People usually comment on my blog posts
and you are welcome to as well.
I know that in the fitness industry people often tend to pay more attention to what the guy
with the largest muscles has to say. This, of course, makes sense, but is also the reason
why there is so much misinformation. Just because someone is huge does not mean what
they are saying is right.
This is the reason why I am solely basing my information on the people who are viewed
as top experts in the industry and their interpretations of scientific research and the experi-
ence from leading strength and fitness coaches that have trained 100s of clients.
I did actually read some research papers and a lot of research paper abstracts myself, but
I am not a researcher, professor or hold a Ph.D. in a relevant academic field so I cannot
with confidence interpret any research myself or confidently advice anyone based on my
interpretation of research.
A Few Points On Implementation
All the knowledge in this pdf is not going to help you get a great body unless you imple-
ment it. You want to get started calculating your macros using the excel file that came with
this pdf. If you haven’t got the spreadsheet download it here.
Then you need to get a calorie tracking app for your phone and a food scale. As mentioned
earlier I recommend myfitnesspal. This is because the app has an enormous amount of
nutritional information on food products. Normally you can just scan the barcode of whatev-
er food product you are about to consume.
While you track your food I want you to pay attention and get familiar with the macros in
the kind of food you eat the most. You can test yourself by guessing before you read the
nutrition labels and use a calorie tracker to get a good feeling.
When starting out getting familiar with nutrition information can be overwhelming, but just
take it slow. It will take some time, however, it is worth it. It will make it much easier for you
to eat exactly what you want while still gaining strength and muscle and keeping fat to a
minimum.
52
Strengthery.com
Want To Be Coached By Me?

I have done my best to simplify top knowledge and best practices in the industry to be as
easy as possible to understand for you. I have done this with the clear purpose of providing
you with everything you need in terms of diet and nutrition to achieve your goals.
But I know it can be hard to implement and that a good personal coach can make a huge
difference. This is why I would be happy to coach you if you think a coach would be some-
thing that could help you achieve your goals.
As I am starting out as an online coach I will be taking a limited number of clients at a mas-
sive discount.
To apply for coaching send me an email to marcus@strengthery.com with a short de-

scription of where you currently are and your goals and I will get back to you as soon as
possible.
Follow Me On Social Media
If you liked this pdf and would be interested in more similar information consider following
me on your preferred social media platform. That way you will know whenever I have pub-
lished some new cool stuff.
At the time I am writing this I have not been present on social media for that long. You can
be one of my early followers :)
Click on the cool squared images to follow me!
53
Strengthery.com
Attributions
I have learned so much about physical exercise and diet and nutrition from so many dif-
ferent people, and for that I am truly grateful. I can’t possibly remember all those names,
but in effort to show my appreciation and respect I would like to list some of the top people
who had influence on me and taught me a great number of things. Of course I also want to
give credit to the sources of where I have most of my information.
The information in this pdf is based on the teachings and knowlegde of some of the top
experts and reserachers in the industry including: Eric Helms, Lyle McDonald, Alan Aragon,
Brad Schoenefeld. Also, I have learned a lot from the author and fitness Coach Andy Mor-
gan.
A special thanks to the coaches and community of CrossFit 2400, the fitness YouTubers
Radu Antoniu (Think Eat Lift), Mario Tomic (Shocking Fit), Greg O’Gallagher (Kinobody)
and Elliot Hulse (Strength Camp).
The awesome graphics used in this free pdf was made using different vector art from the
website Vecteezy.com.
54

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THE LEAN MUSCULAR

PHYSIQUE DIET BLUEPRINT

FAVORITE DROP FAT, GAIN NO HARD WORK

Copyright © 2017 & beyond by Marcus C. J.

This pdf is completely free of charge. Reselling is prohibited.

If you haven’t got this spreadsheet you can download it here.

In fact, I have done long distance running,

I have a Master’s Degree in law (LL.M.) but no formal edu-

My Journey And Failures In Nutrition

The Importance Of Nutrition

Marcus, Founder of Strengthery.com

CHAPTER 2: THE NEED TO KNOW��������������������������������������������������������8

CHAPTER 3: FAT LOSS���������������������������������������������������������������������� 19

CHAPTER 4: LEAN BULK������������������������������������������������������������������� 31

CHAPTER 5: DIET SECRET���������������������������������������������������������������� 40

It is characterized by having an aesthetically pleasing combination of decent amount of

You need to:

What You Will Learn

The Most Important Thing For A Great Diet

General Food Recommendation

CHAPTER 2: THE NEED TO KNOW

A Short Note On Fiber

The Other Less Important Stuff

Meal And Nutrient Timing

Check out my post on the best supplements (Click here).

The calculation I have found most useful is this one:

Maintenance Calories = Bodyweight (lbs) x 15

Maintenance Calories = Bodyweight (kg) x 33

Maintenance calories = Modifier x ((370 + (9.8 x lean body mass in lbs))

Maintenance calories = Modifier x ((370 + (21.6 x lean body mass in kg))

Use the following modifiers based on your activity level:

• Sedentary (little or no exercise): 1.2

Example simple formula:

Ben’s maintenance calories can be estimated to:

This is Ben. His

Example of the Katch-McArdle based formula:

As mentioned Ben’s weight is 75 kg and his body fat percentage is 15.

Ben’s maintenance calories:

1.375 x ((370 + (21.6 x 63.75)) = 2402 calories

The Power Of Tracking And Logging

Tracking macros in conjunction with calories is

This might sound like a lot of trouble and maybe

Weight, Waist Circumference And Gym Progress

Having the numbers enable you to look at the

For example in terms of getting your diet right,

Eating Your Favorite Foods

Because I believe a great diet is inclusive and NOT restrictive.

• The quantities of the food you are eating

• What macronutrient distribution you feel best with

• Your calorie intake

• A calorie tracking app for your phone (I like MyFitnessPal)

Why I Don’t Like “Labeling”

CHAPTER 3: FAT LOSS

Losing fat is never going to be a walk in the

Additionally, maintaining your muscle mass

So not only do you end up weaker, but you also

This important lesson can be summed up to this:

The Calorie Deficit

Calorie intake = maintenance calories x (in the range of 0.8 to 0.75)

His calorie intake to lose fat should then be set to:

2475 x 0.75 = 1856,25 calories

Macros For Fat Loss And Muscle Retention

I have made this awesome graphic to illustrate the macros guideline:

CHAPTER 2: THE NEED TO KNOW��8

CHAPTER 3: FAT LOSS�� 19

CHAPTER 4: LEAN BULK�� 31

CHAPTER 5: DIET SECRET�� 40