Eat Flexibly

When you get the urge to want to follow a strict diet be it vegetarian, low carbs, kept, south beach, paleo because it's easier to just "eat this and avoid that", you should always ask yourself this first, "is this something I can do long term?" "can i never have donuts, alcohol, soda, meat, or eat after 6pm?"  

If the answer is no, don't even start because you're just setting yourself up for failure.

Eat flexibly.  

Find out what your calorie requirement is for weight loss (everyone's different but not that different). Once you've tracked your calorie intake for a couple days, you'll get better at eyeballing food portions, esp with the type of food you really enjoy but always feel guilty eating (caloric dense, processed or fatty foods).

The bigger you are, the longer this will take but once you get there, you will no longer need to "eat less" and your diet become even more flexible than before.

If you have to have "eat days" or "cheat meals", it just means whatever diet you're on is probably not going to work long term.  So avoid diets that comes with "cheats" because it's built around restriction and sacrifice instead of creativity and habit building.

As long as it's not rat poison, you can eat it. It's a matter of quantity of food. As long as you can get yourself to love eating more satiating foods (low to zero calorie liquid, fiber, lean meat), you'll have an easier time eating less and staying in shape.

You will get hungry from time to time but the more distracted you are from eating, like working, playing, exercising, and sleeping, you'll have an easier time not thinking about eating.

No food is "clean", no food is "super", all foods are made up of chemicals and if they are indeed "food", your body will find a way to use it, esp when you're in a caloric deficit.  In fact, you'll use them even more efficiently.   If you're overweight, you should focus on "eating less" than "eating healthy" because eating heathy won't always help you get to a healthy weight but eating less always do.  For some people eating healthy (or "clean") might have helped them lose weight but it wasn't intentional.  They accidentally ate less calories by following the latest fad diet or eating advice without budgeting their intake and output.  You don't want your weight loss to be an accident, especially if you've tried many other diets in the past with no success.   If you are going to put in the time and energy for it, you might as will guarantee that you will lose weight.

How do you track calories while eat flexibility?  First, find out how many calories you need to lose weight at the rate of fat loss you're willing to shoot for, take your maintenance minus the deficit you get your target caloric intake.  Then, fit the essential stuff first (protein and fat) and fill the rest with whatever foods you actually enjoy to make this a sustainable process.  You can all the details by googling "flexible dieting" by Lyle McDonald and use apps like "Myfitnesspal" or "LoseIt" to start tracking today.

Your Excuses Are Invalid.

Stupid stuff always happens, minor injuries, vacations, divorces, or getting fired, it's all psychological. If you're really wanting to get fit and stay fit, learn to work around your obstacles because getting and staying fit can be a completely unrelated to your life problems if you want it to be. 

Like you're not going to stop brushing your teeth just because you're busy buying a new house or stop feeding your kids just because you got a second job. Why? because it's a habit, this is why fit models stay fit, they actually ENJOY working out and not just working out to get in shape. Learn how to fall in love with training and cooking and they will never feel like a chore no matter what problems comes up, you gonna keep doing what you love. 

Too busy with work? i'm sure you can fit a set of push up by your desk that takes 10secs a few times a day. Too busy to cook? I better not see you on Facebook raving about some new show you're watching! Strained your wrist so you stopped going to the gym? You know the rest of your body is still healthy and functional right?

Quit your excuses.

It's smarter if you just tell yourself, it's not a priority. So that when it does becomes a priority, you'll be resourceful enough to take action instead of being chronically depressed about how your life sux, you're not in control, and you'll never be fit.

If you really want it, get down on the floor right this moment and give me 10 push up or modified push up. Or lunges if your wrist hurts. Then you'll know exactly that it's an motivation problem and not a time/energy/money/injury issue.

When you're ready to learn how to fall in love with training and cooking, ask me how

Frontload Your Fitness Journey Starting With Education

In order to create the incredible benefits that my clients enjoy today, they front­load their fitness workload right from the beginning.  They work hard right from the get-go, do the meticulous planning, acquire new and sound nutrition and training principles, and they reap rewards for years.

First, establish the goal.  And the goal isn’t “I want to lose 20lbs” or “see my abs”. Those goals are too subjective and not quantifiable enough to be productively instructional. If it's behavioral base, than it will have a better and more consistent outcome.  When people say "it's a lifestyle change" or "create habits and results will follow", that's what they meant, behavior modification.

A better goal would be “I will only go out to eat once a week in order to avoid unnessary calories that are typically more dense than cooking at home” or “I will read a book on how to squat and deadlift so I can learn how to safely lift heavy things, in which will burn the most calories compare to other form of workouts and build the most muscle for the least amount of time invested.”

You want to narrow your focus and get rid of distractions. Anything that doesn’t have to do with cultivating the habit of eating less and moving more is a bad investment of your time, money, and energy.

When you have the willpower (which never last very long before life stressors take them away), use it on meaningful actions like cooking more satiating foods, tracking your calories, and lifting heavier things progressively with good form.   Don’t drain your physical resources on meaningless repetitive movements like jogging or circuit training that has little to do with reshaping your body (bodybuilding) or creating the energy deficit you need for fat loss.  Don’t drain your mental resources on meaningless dietary rules like “cut out sodium” or “drinking 2 gallon of water a day” in which has little to do with the principle calories in and calories out.

If you cut out fluff crap, you’ll be able to focus on more scientifically sound methods that will actually give you the instant and quanitifiable positive feedback that you need to continue making progress while doing things you don't really like.

You’ll have to be willing to read and learn things for yourself and not ask your trainer or nutritionist to “just tell me what to eat and tell me how to move!”.  Your coach can’t be with you 24/7.  The most sustainable way to approach your fitness goal is to actually learn it for yourself.

Learn how to modify your program when you’re on vacation or is injured, how to count macronutrients when you meal prep, and be resourceful enough to find your own recipes, shop, and manage your time wisely to cook for yourself.  If you frontload the hard work of education and practice, then the knowledge that you've gained will reward you for years of eating flexibly while maintaining an awesome physique.

Do the work NOW.  Stop messing with fluff. That's how you get results.

Track Calories But Still Can't Lose Weight?

read this first

#1 mistake for dieters are their fat intake, it's the one macro that get miscounted the easiest. then it's your liquid calories

#2 is days or meals that weren’t tracked accurately cuz you “guesstimated”, your intake on these days are typically higher than usual/maintenance.

#3 Could be that you estimated your maintenance too high or shooting too low for your deficit.

all of the articles below will help you with the above 3 mistakes on why you aren't losing weight. Hope this help.

No BS guide to calorie counting

http://jcdfitness.com/2011/09/counting-calories-a-no-bs-guide/

You are not that different

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/you-are-not-different.html/

How to eat less

http://jyfitness.blogspot.com/2014/01/how-to-eat-less.html

and if those makes sense to you and you want something even more advance to learn about metabolism and troubleshoot why you’re not losing

water retention messing with your head

http://jyfitness.blogspot.com/2011/11/water-retention-messin-with-your-head.html

Whoosh Effect

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/of-whooshes-and-squishy-fat.html 

Metabolic damange bullshit

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/permanent-metabolic-damage-qa.html/

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/another-look-at-metabolic-damage.html/

Ideal Metabolism

http://bradpilon.com/weight-loss/ideal-metabolism/

Why are stubborn fats so stubborn

http://www.jyfitness.blogspot.com/2012/05/why-are-stubborn-fat-so-stubborn.html

What You Should Know About Fitness "Shortcuts" and "Hacks".

My advice on fitness “shortcuts”

Make making progress easy to do every single day.  If your mindset is “give me your secrets” or “What's your 3 easy steps to…”, you’ve already failed because you are afraid of work.

What do i mean when i said make making progress easy?

This means thoroughly learn about the topic and understand the system in which to obtain your goal. This is probably the hardest part for most people, education.   Knowing the how’s and why’s for yourself rather than trying to do (or be told to do) more and more of the same meaningless stuff you've done a thousand times without success.  This is the #1 reason why you give up on your fitness routines so quickly, repeatedly.

Instead of keep blaming yourself for your failure, you should try to be more self-compassionate of your mistakes, reflect what you did wrong (know the triggers) and aim to correct the system/methods you’re on to make it work better for you. After you have a good grasp of what it takes to get what you want, plan ahead to make executing these steps easier.

The less painful (or more rewarding) those steps are, the more likely you’ll be able to be consistent
with doing more work. You don't have to ask for more work but you should aim to learn how to do the same amount of work more efficiently.  Whatever you put in is what you’ll get out of, nothing more. If you have a skewed expectation on your return of investment, you’ll never even come close to getting what you want because you'll always quit right before you get to that next level stuff.

What does all this mean to real life for those trying to lose weight and look good naked?

Drinking shakes that promise increased metabolism which can be accomplished through simply walking more or having an outdoor hobby means you’re not willing to prioritize your time to make this happen. When you say you don’t have time, it really means, you don’t care enough. and if you don’t care enough, you don’t deserve the body you want.


Working out is for life, you have to bench and squat for years to get the type of size that other ppl be envious of. No muscle confusion, functional training, and superset training-mask HIIT routines on your favorite youtube channel are going to fast track this for you. There are better systems out there then what you’ve done and those systems typically involve more total workload as well. You have to love the process and worship the iron.

Taking fiber pills in hope to lose weight but can be accomplished through cooking and eating more vegetables. A skill your ancestors have practiced for hundreds of generations. If your reasoning is that they don’t taste good, you’re just making an excuse for not trying to be creative with your meal prep. There are tons of great recipes out there but you chose to be lazy. You chose to blame your work and your family for “I don’t have the time” and that's not right.  Your 24hrs is the same 24hrs as mine, it's how you CHOOSE to use it. Fiber pills don't work for satiation btw.

Buying into body contouring wraps (which doesn’t work) while you already know the way to “reshape” the body is through resistance training and eating less says a lot about your character.  The character of a loser. You lose money, you lose time, and you lose self-respect. And i can't believe how you can wear them so proudly on social media. and even worst, selling them supporting this industry of laziness.

If you’re the type that loves to read about “hacks” and how to “automate” fitness success and weight loss, my advice is to you is this. Make making progress easy to do, every. single. day. Get educated, cut out the fluff, plan ahead, no, seriously, plan ahead and get obsess like your life depends on it, and make doing these things easy do manage every. single. day.

Buy a recipe book if you have to. Go try out a new sport or an old one you used to love. Get a dog to walk with. Cut out Facebook time or hire a coach to give you a structured program to follow.

Whatever you have to do, remember, there are no shortcuts. There are better systems than the crappy ones you’re on but never be made to believe (from savvy online/radio marketers) that you don’t have to do WORK to reach your goal. Your body keeps a pretty good journal of the work that you put in, so start putting something meaningful in it today and many days to follow.

Train to build, don't train to burn (calories), it's silly.

More muscle will always means better physique.

It will allow you to eat more without getting fat, lose fat faster if you're eating less, and gain confidence because you are in control of your body under heavy loads.

Train to build, don't train to burn (calories), it's silly. so stop it

Don't Leave It Up To Chance With Your Fitness Goals

Dieting is hard, I get it. This is why planning ahead helps. A LOT!

Making good choices to eat less and move more requires a lot of willpower because instinctually, we prefer to sit at home and eat brownies.

So to ensure that moving more and eating less happens, you have to automate the shit out of your nutrition and training plans. Don't leave it up to "how you feel" at the moment because in any given moment, pizza will always be more appealing than broccoli.

It's easier to execute when things are set up ahead of time because less decisions need to be made from your dwindling willpower needed for other demanding, appropriate decisions like doing your taxes, help your kids with school work, and learning a new language.

This is why ppl meal prep for a whole week, hire trainers, and have ready-to-go workout clothes in a gym bag the night before gym visits. The less decision you have to make, the less you're leaving it up to chance (to fail).

Read what you need to read, have a manageable guidelines/program in place that will progress you slowly towards your end goal, and keep planning ahead, one small step at a time until you succeed.

If you don't plan ahead, you plan to fail.

JYFitness Training Books

Insecure Areas

If you lose overall fat then you'll lose your arm fat.

If you lose overall fat then you'll lose your belly fat.
If you lose overall fat then you'll lose your thigh fat.
If you lose overall fat then you'll lose your chin fat.

Fat does not distribute itself on your body base on how you sit, how you walk, how you sleep, and DEFINITELY not how you train. It distribute itself all around your body base on your genetics and how fat you are now. 

These are predetermined characteristics you're born with (except the how fat you are now, part). They aren't always favorable for your ideal look (if you believe there's an ideal look for you) and if you want to lose fat on some areas, other areas will have to go as well.

So knowing this, please do not ask your nutritionist how to lose any specific spots of fat on your body with special shakes and pills or text your trainer to switch up your workout program to hit certain areas of your body that you think has a lot of fat on it. There is no such thing as spot fat reduction! 

If you're not below 20% body fat (or 12% for males), don't worry about targeting specific muscle parts for your ideal look. Get leaner first. If you're working with a coach, ask them to teach you how to eat less while not hate it. Do that for a while until you can actually see your undeveloped areas. For now, just lift heavy and lift often.

rant over.

Motivation is Irrelevant

Motivation is irrelevant if you enjoy the activity. The goal is to make bodybuilding, weight loss, cooking healthy, or really, any projects or skills enjoyable to do/learn so doesn't feel like a chore. As long as the reward/pleasure is greater than the pain (time/money/energy invested), people will keep doing something towards a goal consistently or for the time doing it.

It's call the act of "play". Like you never need "willpower" or "motivation" to learn how to play the guitar or tennis when you were young, nor do you call it "exercising". You simply love it, so you do it, even on a cold day with sore ankles.

If you keep struggling with falling off diets and training routines, it's probably because you're investing too much of your resources (pain) on the wrong stuff (I call them fluff), therefore, making pain greater than the reward. This is when you need to re-evaluate your approach.

Why do you think you have to run 2hr/day everyday when someone else can do it without? Why do you think your skinny friend can eat pizza and margaritas every weekend and not get fat while you feel every cupcake you ingest seems to go straight to your butt? Why do you think you have to spend 60$ gym memberships and 100$ on supplements every month when others can do it while actually save money on grocery? How do others do it so effectively and painlessly and you can't? and please, your excuses aren't good enough because others have done it in much worse conditions. 

It's sad most people who go to the gym, looking for diets online, and youtube/momblogging/meathead bro trainers will never learn this. Invest your resources on real-world, result-driven, practical instructions so achieving your fitness goals would feel like a spontaneous effort.  When what you need to do to reach your goal is fun/rewarding (or with less pain) every step of the way, than you'll actually enjoy the process.  When you enjoy the process, motivation is not required.

 

The Importance of Writing Things Down

Progress rewards patience and patience make ways for more progress that leads to results. When you keep making and seeing progress, you'll keep doing what needs done even if it's inconvenient sometimes.  Stop focusing on the end result. Pay attention to your progress and forgive yourself when you have setbacks (or be more flexible with your approach so you fall less easily).

How is this done?

Training: focus on performance goals instead of physique goals. If you put in the work and track your sessions/lifts, you will clearly see that your body is adapting to new physical stressors that allow you to see quantifiable progress which will push/reward you to WANT TO train more. If you don't document, you won't get this feedback that makes you feel rewarded for the work/time you put in. This is how most people fall off training programs.

If you focus solely on physique goals that may take months or years to achieve to feel complete or accomplished, you are more likely to fall off sooner than those who actually love training. Those who enjoy the process of hardwork also get back on track sooner than those who hates it when life gets in the way. If your focus is on performance, you will have an easier time waking up early to go to the gym, brace the cold weather and soreness, and prioritize your time better because you love what you do. Feedback from physique goals (pants size, weight scale) are too slow and confusing (water retention) to give you this instant positive feedback to continue doing something you don't like.

Nutrition: focus on caloric intake/output so you can set objective goals that comes with quantifiable variables you actually have control over. Instead of completely swear off cookies and margaritas for a month (not practical and totally unnecessary), look up your favorite foods' caloric content and work that into your budget so you'll never actually "ruin" your diet. You'll have days that you eat at target and days you go over but at least you know to reflect and tweak your meal prep why you go over consistently. Is it because you're bored, stressed, or eating due to social influences? If you can make the process of dieting less restrictive, then you'll more likely have the patience to follow through. Stop focusing on what to eat or not and focus more on how much. At the end of the day, the law of physics is what matters. Not some gurus telling you what foods are "super" and "clean".

Fall in love with a performance focused program so you'll actually follow through for the long haul instead of buying into every new fluff program that requires "willpower", "discipline" and "28 day challenges". If you love it, it'll feel like you're "playing" and not "exercising". Your transformation would be a lot quicker and spontaneous this way. Make your diet as flexible and quantifiable as possible by ignoring most of the myths out there that disregard the importance of caloric budgeting. When you do fall off, you'll actually know why and get back up sooner instead of beating yourself up for weeks and months why you can't give up sugar or alcohol or whatever that's supposedly off-limit for the rest of your life.

How Most Stupid Diets Work.

They'll tell you that it's not your fault. It's the food industry, the government, or the pharmaceutical companies. "Follow the money", "join the rebels", and "take control of your body"! Again, it's not that you're lazy or misinformed, so come to the other side and do something different.

But are you really doing something different?  Something that will make an impact for your fat loss struggles?    

Gurus will argue that going on a "diet" or counting calories don't work. Then they'll persuade you with 3 easy tricks to quick and painless (and permanent) weight loss. Usually done with pseudoscience and marketing terms to sound credible or use a celebrity athlete or M.D. to sponsor their product/services.

They'll use industry buzzwords like "Toxins", "Functional Training", "#1 Fat Blocking Hormones", "Muscle Confusion", "Long Lean Muscle", "Holistic/Alternative Approach", "Clean Eating" or something generic like "Everything in moderation" or "don't diet, it's a lifestyle change" bullshit.

They'll convince you that surplus caloric intake is not the reason why you gained weight and that eating less is not the solution. Instead, they want you to eat by their rules, swallow their pills, use their blenders, buy their books, drink their shakes, and join their 21 days challenge with 3 easy payments.

Basically, they'll have you believe that tracking food intake is too complicated and it only works for bodybuilders and models who are body obsessed. You're a regular Joe that needs practical solutions because your'e too busy to cook, to track, or to train consistently.

Then with whatever trick they propose, whether it be eating 1x/day or 12x/day, wear this patch or chew that gum, eat more 'super foods' or buy all organic 'health' foods, and eat like jesus, these tricks will still somehow trick you into eating less (calories).

The problem with this is not only that you're dumber than before and already wasted a massive amount of resources (money, time, and energy) but the result is not sustainable because you're always having to give up something (or buy more of something). When you fall, and you will, (everybody fall off diets, it's only a matter of time) you'll blame yourself for lack of discipline/willpower even though the diet is set up to fail YOU.

This is not the case for those who budget their food intakes (at least initially to learn about food content for a couple weeks). In the process of preparing their food to meet their goal, they'll learn better methods of eyeballing food portions, actually COOK for themselves (instead of packaged meals), and make choices like a adult, what foods are worth the pleasure to consume for the calories it contain and at what quantity or frequency to consume at.

The only "diet" that works is the one you can follow long term.  This means it has to be enjoyable, flexible, and actually meet the goal.  A diet that is quantifiable in energy input and output so you can actually reflect against your progress and downfalls and learn from it instead of believing XYZ foods are off limit and feel defeated when you eat them.

If you're fat, understand that you'll have to go through a phase of caloric restriction and sometimes that involves feeling hungry, saying no to happy hours, or just generally not able to eat at the quantity/frequency of the caloric dense foods you wish to have all the time.

However, once you reach your ideal weight, you can slowly transition to eating at or near maintenance. By that time you'll know how it feels to be eating less, you'll have learned the skills/mindset on how to consistently not over indulge and exactly what needs to be done when you do feel chunky again. You know how to MAINTAIN which no commercial diets ever address.

A diet that works long term is a diet that doesn't make you feel like a failure when you fall every time.  Remove the negative emotional attachment to foods that make you feel guilty after consuming them. This can only be achieved if you see food as fuel and make adjustments as you go. That's the way to have good relationship with your diet while still meet the goal of 'eating less'.

By seeing food as fuels and knowing exactly why you are doing the things you're doing, then it wouldn't take another new year resolution or bikini season to get you back on the wagon again when you did end up overeating.

If you can start to see foods from a scientists point of view that they are quantifiable things, like calories (energy from your belly fat), and levels of satiation you feel from eating them, then you'd be able to more objectively make plans to eat for fullness, eat while not feel guilty, and eat to lose fat for the last time.