Podcast Transcription: How To Get Lean For Summer? A 5-Step Simple Plan To Transform Your Body - Ask Ted

Ted Ryce: Summer's around the corner, and I want to ask you, how are you feeling about how you look right now? Have you made good on your promises at the beginning of the year to get in better shape, to lose excess weight, to build some muscle, to get fitter, leaner stronger? Or did you run into a few obstacles? Did life throw you a few curveballs? And now you're feeling a little bit of pressure to look great for all the summer activities after we're coming out of this cold winter. 

So today is going to be about how to get your fitness in gear, how to get your body in gear. In fact, I'm going to give you a five-step simple plan to transform your body so that you're lean in time for all those summer activities.  

If that's something you're interested in hearing, then you're in the right place.  

So what is up, my friend, and welcome to the legendary Life podcast. My name is Ted Ryce, I'm your host, health expert, and coach to founders, entrepreneurs, and other high performing professionals.  

And the reason I do this podcast is twofold: 

Number one, I've been in this business for 24 years, professionally, and I've made a lot of mistakes, not just with myself, but also with my clients. I pushed them too hard with exercise, I focused on food quality without focusing on calories. And what I want to do for you with this podcast is get you super clear on what to focus on so that you get the best results. 

And the second reason is if you're an entrepreneur, a founder, a high performing professional, and you understand the benefit of hiring experts to help you, for example, you probably pay your accountant a lot of money because they save you a lot of money. Well, if you're interested in saving yourself a ton of time and a ton of frustration and you want an expert like me to guide you through the path, I want you to set up a call with me. So those are the two reasons.  

Now, let's dive in to this podcast today. 

I'll tell you, looking good in your bathing suit is not a bad thing. Why do I say that? Because when clients first join my program and we have that initial breakthrough call, so many of them have told me: I want to fit into the clothes that are in my closet that I haven't been able to wear for a while. I want to feel confident in my skin. Some of them even admit to not going out and being as social because they don't feel good about the way their body looks. 

I've had clients who didn't do speaking gigs because they didn't feel good about the way their body looks. I have had clients who've told me that they have issues with negotiations and getting new clients because of their insecurity about the way their body looks.  

And I want to tell you something. I don't believe in body shaming, because body shaming, to me, it just adds stress. And most of us, if we are high performers, we are already putting a lot of pressure on ourselves. On the other side, though, I want to tell you: looking better will make a big difference, not just for you, but for the way that you're perceived in society. We say it's different. We say "never judge a book by its cover". But we'll never buy the book unless we like what the cover shows us.  So, what I want to tell you is: it is a big confidence boost. 

No, it won't fix all your problems, but it's a big confidence boost. And I want to tell you I was 24% body fat when I was 38 years old. Many of you know probably that I'm 46 now. I recently turned 46, but when I was 38, I was almost obese. I've got way more confidence now because I look better. 

At least it's one of the factors that have given me more confidence. And what I want to also emphasize is seize the moment. The best time to get in shape for the summer was at the beginning of the year. But we don't have that option anymore. It's April right now.
So. the second-best time is to start now. So, let's dive in.  

Number one is supercharge your diet. What I want you to do is this if fat loss is part of your goal, which for most of us it is, including myself right now, the number one thing that we need to focus on is calories.  

Now, if you've listened to this podcast, you know that I am a big proponent of tracking your macros, tracking your calories. 

And I also want to tell you that you don't have to do that. But what needs to happen is you need to find some way to lower the calories. The second most important thing that needs to happen with your diet to make results easy is to eat more protein.  

So I want to give you a couple of ideas here and they're not going to involve tracking on My Fitness Pal, even though if you are interested in that, I highly suggest you do it. But I want to talk about not tracking for a moment because you don't need to track. 

It's just a helpful tool. But it's the knowledge and application of that knowledge that gets you results. There are clients who track and they struggle even though they're tracking.  

So what I want to tell you is this. Number one, shoot for 50 grams of protein in every single meal. 50 grams of protein in every single meal. So, you don't necessarily have to track this, but you've got to look at what you're eating. Is this 50 grams of protein? If you're out to dinner or out at lunch, now is time to step your game up. You don't have to track your food, but look it up.
“I'm having an eight-ounce sirloin or twelve-ounce fillet or 16-ounce ribeye”. Look it up and make sure that you're getting your protein in.  

So, yes, it's about the calories, but if I tell you to eat 50 grams of protein, you're going to feel satiated, and the chances are that you're just going to eat less. The second thing I want you to do, besides have 50 grams of protein for every meal, is make sure you're having some vegetables for every meal. 

So, I don't care if it's a salad, it's a sauté or a soup. Just make sure you're getting those veggies in. So, sautés, soups and salads. For example, I had 200 grams of a vegetable soup. It's prepackaged from the supermarket here in Lisbon. 50 calories. 

Now, you don't need to understand the calorie part per se, but just understand that's super low. And so, I had that. I had 125 grams of shredded chicken, and that was my lunch, along with 400 grams of Greek yogurt and one scoop of protein powder with some artificial sweetener to make me feel like I'm having dessert. 

So, make sure you're getting those 50 grams of protein with the veggies.  

The third thing I want you to do is eat three to four meals per day, but no snacking. Three or four meals per day, no snacking. Oh, but what can I do to have a snack? Eat a meal.  

And one thing that we know is that people who have smaller meals, it's the exact opposite of what we were taught 15, 20 years ago, have more frequent meals. Generally speaking, more frequent meals will lead to higher hunger levels. 

So, what I recommend that you do is have these satiating, big meals so that you're not hungry, because fat loss is ultimately, yes, it's a calorie game, get the right amount of protein. But it really is about making sure that you're just not hungry. I'm full right now. If I were to eat more, even if I have cravings, I'm going to be stuffed. Now, I don't know what you think about that. 

Maybe it sounds a bit extreme, but guess what? We're living an extreme lifestyle with this digital, crazy, sedentary life that we live, modern life that we live. I'm not hating on modern life, I'm just saying what it is. We've got too much food available and too little motivation to move.
So those are the three things. 50 grams of protein. Make sure you also have veggies in every meal and eat three to four meals per day.  

I'll give you one more sample meal, egg whites, plus veggies for a egg white omelet and a cup of coffee in the morning. If you need to have something, throw in half of a thin bagel, a slice of bread, or maybe 30 grams of oatmeal. 

That's an example of what you can do. So, let's move on.  

Number two is: ignite muscle growth with resistance training. But what I want to tell you is this. Sometimes I tell people, lift weights. It's the thing that we know helps the most with fat loss. And sometimes people listen and sometimes people don't. And I want to ask you, are you listening?  

Because this is key if you're thinking to yourself that you're going to do: “Yeah. Okay, well, follow that diet information. Hit the 50 grams of protein with veggies and have three to four meals per day and avoid the snacking. But I really like cardio better. I feel like it helps me get leaner and the weight goes down faster.” 

And what I want to tell you is this. We know from research that cardio tends to cause muscle loss in people who have been training. So, in other words, if you're a complete couch potato right now and you start doing some cardio, you might actually get some muscle growth.  

But if you're kind of active or if you're already doing cardio as your workouts, you're going to want to shift to lifting weights and you want to do two. But I really suggest that you commit to three weekly full body workouts. 

What do I mean by full body? You're doing, let's say six exercises, at least six exercises. You're doing two pushing exercises. You're doing two pushing exercises. I'm sorry, two pushing to pulling and two leg exercises. So, two pushing to pulling, two leg exercises. 

An example of that might be bench press, seated row, and goblet squat. The second round of pushing, pulling and legs would be, let's say, overhead press with dumbbells shoulder press. Dumbbell shoulder press. Let's say a lap pull down and then seated hamstring curls. That's an example. 

But commit to those three weekly full body workouts. What I just said, those six exercises, you can repeat them for all three workouts. So do two pushing, two pulling, and two leg exercises. And of course, focus on the most important thing for muscle growth, which is taking each set close to failure. What does that mean? 

Let's say you're doing a goblet squat, and a goblet squat means that you're holding a dumbbell to your chest in front of you, then squatting down and repeating that.  

You want to get to the point where you feel like you can only do maybe two reps left in the set before you would come down, but you wouldn't be able to come back up. That's what you want to achieve. And if you're not doing that, the weight that you're using doesn't matter. The number of reps also don't matter. 

No, Ted, I read somewhere I don't care what you read. It is about muscle stimulation to the point where you're getting close to that failure point. That is what stimulates muscle growth. Now, yeah, you got to use good form, but it's bringing every set close to that failure point. Not exactly to that failure point, but staying around two reps in reserve is what we call it. 

Reps in reserve. So having like two reps in reserve, you don't need to go to failure. In fact, that's what causes you to be super sore and it can cause issues with progress week to week. And those full body workout sessions. If you're going to do six exercises and you're going to rest maybe 90 seconds to two minutes in between sets and do maybe two to three sets for each exercise, that's going to take you 45 minutes or less. 

That's how you reap the rewards of a shorter gym session and still get powerful results.  

Number three, transform fat into fuel by staying active. If you have a phone or a wearable, I want you to go check your step count. What is your step count? Pause this. 

Go check your step count. And when you come back, I want you to answer this question. Is it 5000 or below? Because if it is, you are sedentary. Oh, but I still go to the gym three or four times a week and you're still sedentary. 

This is a mistake that I made earlier on in my career and also with my clients. Don't make the same mistake. Understand that being more active, shooting for, let's say, seven to 10,000 steps per day, it's going to get you leaner. Seven to 10,000 steps might sound like a lot, but I want to share something a client told me recently. They said that they were walking their dogs. 

They said that they were playing with their son. They said that they were oh, I forget the other thing that they were doing, but oh yeah, working in the yard, they got their steps in by being active. So if you've got kids, start playing with your kids. Chase them a little bit or at least walk with them. Find ways to get more active without thinking about it or without not thinking, but putting the mental effort forward. 

For example, for me, I go walking every morning to get my coffee, and I'm actually only at 5000 steps. So I need to get moving and do something a little bit later today. Maybe go for another walk.  

Another one of my clients, Dan, who's made some incredible progress, he's lost about 50 pounds. And one of the things that we talked about is start parking further away from the grocery store or from anywhere where you're parking. 

Don't be one of those people who drives around ten minutes for the closest parking spot so you can walk less. That's exactly the type of behavior that is causing the obesity epidemic. So, look for ways to walk more. Be that person. The good news is you'll get a parking spot very easily because nobody wants to park further away and walk. 

That tells you everything you need to know about why there's an obesity epidemic, or at least, let's say 50% of why we're in an obesity epidemic. Part of it's this tendency towards sedentary behavior like we're talking about now, the other part is the food. But this is a big part of it.  

Also taking the stairs is a killer way to not just get steps in, but to get even more intense exercise in. Now it's a little bit more intense. 

In fact, you can just walk up the stairs in your office building, in your apartment building. Try it. This stuff works, folks. This isn't just something that I read on the internet and thought I would parrot back to you on this podcast. This is how I live my life and this is how I coach my clients to do it as well. 

And what I coach them to do though is find ways that work for them.  

So, let's move to number four, turbocharge your energy with sleep optimization. One of the big issues that we're also facing here is our appetites are out of control. And a big part of that has to do with sleep. When we sleep less than 7 hours per night, we know that there's an increase in our hunger hormone ghrelin, and a decrease in our satiety hormone, leptin. 

And so what ends up happening is you have a bigger appetite when you don't sleep well, you feel hungry. You just ate, but you still feel hungry. Has that ever happened to you? It's happened to me a lot.  

And the kicker with this is you're not thinking to yourself, I'm hungry. Let me have a chicken salad with a light dressing, dressing on the side, hold the cheese, keep it low calorie.  

No, you want a pizza, you want pasta, you want a hamburger and some fries. At least that's what I want. And so when we start to focus on our sleep and sleep better, our appetite just naturally controls itself. At least it gets better. 

It's not going to maybe fix all the problems, but sleeping more, at least 7 hours per night, at least, let's say six and a half hours per night, is going to make a huge difference in your energy levels, in your appetite, in your motivation to go to the gym.  

I use an Oura ring. The first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is I check my Oura ring stats. I want to make sure that my total sleep time is at least 7 hours. Now I want to be honest with you, I don't always get to 7 hours. 

I'm one of those people who used to wake up. I'd wake up after four and a half hours or five and a half hours, I'd be like, no, I think I'm ready to go now.  

And it's taken me a long time to figure out what I needed to do to dial in my sleep to where I could sleep for 7 hours. Now I'm not going to go into that today, but I will put together a cutting-edge sleep system guide soon. And I'll be sharing that with you here because I've made some new strides with sleep, and I want to share them with you. 

In the meantime, do the basics: Number one, make your bedroom dark. Number two, make it cool. Number three, make it quiet. Dark, cool and quiet. 

This is cliche. You probably heard it a million times, but do you actually do it? I'm in Lisbon right now, in Lisbon, Portugal, and I have shutters on all my windows. It is pitch black at night. I can barely see to go to the bathroom because I do wake up to use a bathroom. 

And it's cold right now, so I don't have to mess with anything. I don't have to turn on the AC, in other words. And it's quiet in this particular area that I'm in at the moment.  

But just in case I ever end up in a noisy place, I carry around earplugs with me. And again, I use the Oura to track my sleep quality and I make sure that I'm getting a total sleep time of at least 7 hours. 

Sometimes it's hard to do that and I get six and a half, but I wake up after five and a half hours and I get myself to go back to bed. That's what I do these days.  

Not all of us can have being in that position. But if you're one of those people who you wake up and you feel like, you know what, I still have a few more hours, I don't need to be up right now. Try to get yourself to go back to bed. 

So, let's move on to section five, which is track your triumphs. If you want to dominate your goals, you got to track your triumphs. So what I want you to do is this. Do the same thing that we do in our coaching program. We have our clients weigh in, we have them measure their waist. We have them take pictures of themselves.  

Now, with the weight, you can do it once a day or at least once a week, but you have to use something else other than your weight, because weight is a metric that describes the gravitational pull of gravity. I just said that. The gravitational pull on your body. What do I mean? 

There's no difference between 10 pounds of muscle and 10 pounds of fat according to the scale. But how you look, that's a totally different thing. So measure your waist, measure your weight and take photos.  

What we do is we have our clients measure their waist and take photos every two weeks and weigh in at least once a week, although I would recommend every day. The other thing I want to tell you is if something isn't working for you, that means you're missing a piece of the puzzle. 

This stuff works, and it works for everyone. I don't care if you're 90 years old, you can build muscle. You can also lose fat. I haven't had any clients in their 90s, not yet. But I've had clients in their sixty s and seventy s.
 

I got a client who's 66 right now. She's lost, I think, close to 10 pounds, and she's built muscle at the same time. And I've had clients who are in their 70s when I was a personal trainer. The same thing happened with them. Don't use your age, your metabolism, your hormones, your genetics as an excuse. 

There's a way to make this work. You just might not be doing it right. But the great thing is, if you are trying hard, you're probably doing most of the things right, but you're missing one little piece. So if you are a high performer, if you're in a good place in your life, if you have kind of set aside your health to work on your business, to raise your family, and now you really want to focus on you, it's like the final frontier. You're in a good place and you want what you see in the mirror to match the success that you have with your relationships in your life and also your business success. 

Then let's have a conversation. Go to legendarylifeprogram.com/apply  . That's legendarylifeprogram.com/apply . 

So let's do a brief recap here. Number one is supercharger diet. Get those 50 grams of protein in every meal along with the veggies, sautees, salads or soups, and only have three to four meals per day, no snacking.  

Number two is ignite muscle growth with resistance training. Commit to two to three weekly full body workouts and make sure the two to three sets that you do, you're taking every set close to failure. You don't have to hit failure, but you got to get close. 

Number three is track your steps and shoot for at least 7000. Really 10,000. You want to get lean, look great, hit 10,000 steps. 

Number four is dial in your sleep. Make your bedroom dark, quiet and cool. 

And if you want bonus points, track your sleep with something like an Oura, Whoop a lot of people like as well, I've never used it before. But track your sleep.  

And number five is track your triumphs to dominate your goals. In other words, weigh yourself at least once a week. Take photos of yourself every two weeks, and measure your waist every two weeks. 

For those of you who carry more weight in your hips, you can use your hips instead of your waist, but the recommendation is the same. Take the measurements every two weeks.  

Let's wrap things up. And what I want to tell you is this fitness is a process, not a one time event. 

And why I tell you that is this once you get things started, which is the easier thing to do, I don't want to say it's easy, but it's the easier thing to do. Find a way to keep it up. And what I want you to do is focus on how to change things when you get the curveballs, change your program. Sorry. Focus on how to change your program when life throws you to curveballs. 

So I said get 7000 steps. But guess what? Getting 5000 is better than getting 2000. I said work out for three times a week, but getting in one workout is better than getting zero workouts a week. Learn how to be flexible. 

But again, that's a story for another time. What I want you to focus on now is getting in motion. Because once you're in motion, it's so much easier to overcome the obstacles that you have. So what I also want to challenge you to do here is take swift action. If you feel motivated right now.  

So many people mess this up. Please don't be one of these people. Once you have the activation energy, once you have the motivation, which is described as, or defined as the activation energy, once you have the motivation, act on it.  

If you get really excited after listening to this, and perhaps you already had a little bit of motivation already, and that's why you listen to this podcast, because you're excited about the idea of getting lean for summer, take action on it. Because what happens? The motivation goes away. 

And what do you do after that? You say, you know what? It's not the right time. But what you're really saying is, I don't have that spark of motivation. I don't have that spark to take action. 

So, what I want to tell you is, when you have that spark, take action on it. Be bold. Take swift action. And so, what I want to leave you with on this episode is, what can you take action on right away? Maybe you're doing some of the things that I shared, but maybe there's something you're not doing. 

Maybe you're not tracking your progress. Maybe you're working out, but you're not really dialing in your nutrition. Maybe you feel like you have your diet dialed in, but you've kind of been skipping the gym. What is it that you need to do? Take action on that and take action right away. 

That's all I've got. Hope you enjoyed this episode. And remember, getting started. Now is the time to get started. And remember and remember, the best time to get in shape for summer was in January. 

The second-best time is right now. So go take massive action. That's all I've got. Have a great rest of your week and I'll speak to you soon.