Google around for advice on how to get in shape, and you’ll come across thousands of articles and videos, with much of them dishing out completely different advice.
One trainer says one thing. Someone else says something completely different. Then another trainer comes out and contradicts everything the last one said.
You could spend the next five years running around the Internet reading everything out there on the subject of nutrition and exercise, and end up even more confused than you are now.
Should you be doing HIIT?
Metabolic resistance training?
The 5×5 workout?
The paleo diet?
Carb back-loading?
You do a bit of research and think you know what you’re doing. Then you read something that says the exact opposite.
Page after page of information, with much of it saying conflicting things.
You feel confused. Overwhelmed. And you still don’t know for sure what to do.
So you end up dabbling in this and that, hopping from one thing to the next, never really taking consistent action on anything.
Most people become totally lost in this sea of information and end up with something called decision fatigue, where they simply put off making a decision because their “mental energy” tanks are running on empty.
If any of this sounds familiar, I’m going to recommend that you go on a diet. And I’m going to give you four to choose from.
However, none of these diets will involve restricting the amount of food you eat. Rather, they’re going to involve cutting back on the amount of stuff you allow to enter your brain.
1. The Input Diet
I know people who seem content to waste precious hours on forums and news sites collecting information about how to build muscle and burn fat, before proceeding to do precisely NOTHING with it.
They buy dozens of books and information products but never use them. They seem to prefer reading about ideas than taking action on them.
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They get started on a program but quit after a few weeks because they come across “the next big thing” and decide they want to do that instead.
Many will justify this monumental waste of time by telling themselves that “knowledge is power” or other such nonsense.
In the process, they become a walking encyclopedia of useless information.
“The need to diet, well accepted in relation to food, should be brought to bear on our relation to knowledge, people, and ideas,” says Alain de Botton. “Our minds, no less than our bodies, require periods of fasting.”
I’m sure you’ve heard of the term “information overload.”
Truth is, information overload is old news. What most people are suffering from is input overwhelm.
By input, I’m talking about all the stuff being thrown in your direction — e-mails, TV, radio, podcasts, forum posts, Blogs, magazines, Twitter updates, Facebook posts and whatever else — that’s pretending to be information and demanding your attention.
In order to qualify as information, an input must be informative. It must have a purpose. If it no longer serves that purpose, get rid of it.
Don’t fall into the trap of keeping something around just because it’s been informative in the past, or because you think something useful might show up in future.
Once you get rid of all the junk, be very selective about new inputs that you add by using the “one in, two out” rule. For every new input you allow, get rid of two. Don’t follow someone on Twitter without unfollowing two. Don’t subscribe to an e-mail list until you unsubscribe from two first.
Every piece of information over and above what you actually need to get the results you want is a cost.
You have to process it… evaluate it… decide whether to use it or throw it away.
The more of it you have, the more you run the risk of having your attention turned from what is important to what is unimportant. From the things that matter to the things that don’t.
2. The Opinion Diet
The combination of smart phones and social media means that you are now more aware than at any other time in human history of the opinions of other people.
Every morning, you pick up your phone and immediately start checking social media.
You browse the latest updates on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
Before you know it, 20 minutes of your life has been wasted.
You know what everyone else is doing… what they think about what they’re doing… what other people think about what they think.
Opinion bullets are being fired in your direction every minute of every day.
Eat this but don’t eat that.
Take this supplement but not that one.
Do this exercise but not that one.
The end result is not just information overload, but opinion overload.
It leaves you tired… distracted… confused.
The solution is simple – dodge the opinion bullets by taking yourself out of the firing line.
Restrict your use of social media to certain times of the day, delete your account completely, or just unfollow certain people.
Take nobody’s advice on any subject unless you have good reason to believe they know more about it than you do.
3. The Goal Diet
There are plenty of folks out there making very little progress simply because they can’t make up their mind what they want to do.
They watch a video on YouTube of some guy deadlifting 700 pounds, and decide they want to get big and strong. So they start doing full-body 5 x 5 workouts three times a week.
Then they see the latest Men’s Health cover model and decide they want to get ripped. So they add 10-20 minutes of HIIT to the end of each workout and go on The Bulletproof Diet.
Every week they hear about some new and amazing training method. And because they can’t wait to try it out, they make this New Best Way fit in with what they’re already doing.
After a period of tweaking, tinkering and fiddling, much of the original program they were following has been lost. In its place is a weird and not-so-wonderful combination of everything they’ve come across in the last few weeks.
And when they eventually realize that this “Frankenstein’s monster” of a training program isn’t going to give them the body of a superhero by the end of the month, they go off in search of another New Best Way. And so the cycle continues.
Don’t keep jumping around from one routine to the next because you can’t decide whether you want to “get big” or “get ripped,” or try to combine elements from half a dozen different routines and diets. It doesn’t work.
4. The Rule Diet
“An investor needs to do very few things right,” says billionaire investor Warren Buffett, “as long as he or she avoids big mistakes.”
And so it is with diet and exercise.
It’s easy to feel like you need to change direction every time you come across another “rule” about what to eat or how to exercise. Especially when that rule contradicts one that you’re already following.
But once the basics are in place, each rule that’s added has “declining marginal utility,” which is a fancy way of saying that a lot of rules are just minor details that don’t matter even half as much as some people think. They’re like extra snowballs to an Eskimo. They just don’t make any difference.
If you want to build a better body, you need to do a few simple things right, do them consistently and avoid big mistakes.
The people who are successful at transforming their bodies know this. They have one system or method that they believe in. And they give it their all without doubting or questioning what they’re doing.
They are, however, in the minority. Most will waste their precious time jumping around from one thing to the next. Few will make any real progress at all.
You may be the exception.
If so, here’s what I suggest you do:
1. Set a goal.
2. Pick a training and nutrition program.
3. Stick with it for the next 12 weeks.
4. Make a note of what worked and what didn’t.
5. Discard the stuff that didn’t work and keep the stuff that did.
6. Repeat until jacked.
You don’t have to use Muscle Evo, MX4 or any of the programs I’ve put together. There are plenty of others out there that work. What’s important is that you get into the habit of using what you know, keeping your “eyes on the prize” and finishing what you start.
Pick one system and do exactly what it says. You don’t need to become an expert on every single diet or training method known to man. Just choose one path and stay on it.
Only allow yourself access to the information you need to know in order to stay on that path, and be ruthless about blocking out all the other noise and distractions.
Don’t keep second-guessing what you’re doing or allow yourself to become paralyzed by too much information. And don’t give it anything less than your best. Stick with the plan for the next 12 weeks and give it time to work.
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See Also
- Muscle Evo – a training program for people who want to build muscle and get strong while minimizing fat gain.
- MX4 – a joint-friendly training program for gaining muscle as fast as humanly possible.
- Gutless – a simple, straightforward, science-backed nutrition system for getting rid of fat.