Meet Neil. Hes one of our online coaching clients who managed to lose 10 pounds of fat and gain 10 pounds of muscle. Along the way, he also decreased his chronic knee pain, improved his sleep, and started getting lots of compliments from friends, coworkers, and other jealous people about how he looks

                In this article, youll get an all-access, behind the scenes look into:

  • What hes tried before to lose fat and gain muscle
  • What we learned about him during his initial assessment (including an injury that would make gaining muscle difficult)
  • The exercise and nutrition programs that his trainer, Shaneh had put him on
  • The changes in his measurements body fat, circumferences, and strength
  • The challenges experienced along the way
  • What his life is like now, outside the gym. What he can do now that he couldnt do before.

If youd like to hear Neil tell everything in his own words, check out the video below. And if youd like to achieve similar or better results for yourself, we have a personalized program for you, called Online Body Transformation. If youre interested, just email me with the subject line Online Body Transformation.

What Hes Tried Before

                Neil was no slouch to begin with. He was already going to the gym 2-3 times per week, plus playing volleyball once a week. But, as you can guess, he wasnt seeing the results that he wanted. Sure, hed make small improvements in strength, but even though he could lift more weight, his muscles werent growing. And on the rare occasions that he did manage to gain even a tiny bit of muscle size, he would lose it very quickly. Plus, he wanted to lose fat (especially in his belly), and that wasnt happening either. Very frustrating to be spending so much time on your fitness, and not really seeing the fruits of your labour.

                In the past, hes attempted different programs. From picking random programs on bodybuilding.com, to Stronglifts (5 x 5), and others. But the conclusion was always the same different programs, same results zilch.

                At that point, he had enough, and wanted to do things right. He was tired of generic programs that were one-size-fits-all and didnt take his unique body into account. So, he contacted me. After all, paying a professional to handle it for you is certainly a more expensive option than doing it yourself. But to him, what he gained was worth it:

  • Time savings: not having to go through trial and error, figuring it out for himself, plus educating yourself on anatomy, physiology, biomechanics, etc.
  • Certainty: that weve done this with hundreds of clients before, and had the case studies to show for it
  • Safety: making sure that he wasnt hurting himself in the process

Neils Initial Assessment

As we do with all clients, we start off with an initial assessment, to learn about our clients, and see what they bring to the table what are their goals, injuries, medical conditions, medications, hormonal profiles, and more. This helps us personalize their exercise and nutrition programs.

Heres what we learned about Neil during his initial assessment:

  • Goal: lose fat and gain muscle
  • Injuries:
    • Had bursitis in his right elbow (so it hurt to full straighten his elbow)
    • Jumpers knees (both knees): from being a high-level volleyball player years earlier.
    • Had a herniated disc, but it wasnt affecting him much
  • Had mild anemia
  • Other than that, no real health conditions (diabetes, high blood pressure, etc.)
  • His 3 highest areas in body fat:
    • Supra-iliac (love handle): 25 mm
    • Umbilicus (belly): 19 mm
    • Chest: 14 mm
  • Weight: 157 lbs.

What did I make of all this? A couple of things:

  • I understood why he wasnt seeing results: he wanted to lose fat and gain muscle at the same time. Thats a recipe for stagnation, because you cant do both. Think about it to lose fat, you need fewer calories than maintenance. To gain muscle, you need more calories than maintenance. You cant have both more and less at the same time. Thats why he was spinning his wheels. So, I suggested breaking up the goals into phases. Phase 1 would be a fat loss phase, which would last 2-3 months. Phase 2 would be a muscle gain phase, which would last until he was satisfied with the amount of muscle he had.
  • Because of his injuries, we had to figure out a way to make things hard on the muscles, easy on the joints. Fortunately, we have a bunch of ways to do that, as I wrote about in my article on joint-friendly strength training.

After Neils initial assessment, we paired him up with one of our top coaches, Shaneh, and away they went.

Neils Exercise Program Fat Loss Phase

                What kind of program did Shaneh have Neil doing during the fat loss phase (the first 3 months)? Here are some highlights:

  • He did Shanehs program 4-5 times per week and played volleyball once a week.
  • The workouts consisted of working on 2 body parts per workout
  • Neils repetitions ranged from 6-15 per set. As I outline in my video on exercise for weight loss, the goal of strength training during a fat loss phase is not to grow muscle, but to maintain muscle. Trying to grow muscle when your calories are below maintenance is futile.
  • The exercises were organized in a superset format. Meaning, that Neil does a set of one exercise, then follows it up with a different one. Then, he goes back to the first exercise again, and repeats. What supersets allow you to do is to work more muscles in less time. So for example, if hes working his chest and back, if his first exercise is a chest exercise, and his second exercise is a back exercise, his chest is resting while hes working his back, and his back is resting while hes working his chest. Very efficient way to exercise, without sacrificing the intensity and focus of the workout. And efficiency is good
  • Because Neil had knee issues, Shaneh included plenty of exercises to improve Neils knees, like:
    • Wall bangers (sounds so hardcore until you see what it actually is), and other exercises for his gluteus medius
  • And because of the knee issues, for cardio, we needed to find ways to work the heart, without damaging the knees further. So Shaneh had Neil doing kettlebell swings.

The actual exercises that Shaneh used are much less important than the progression model, sets and reps, as I outline in my article on the most important factor in an exercise program.

Neils Exercise Program Muscle Gain Phase

                Because the goals of a muscle gain program are different than a fat loss program (obviously), different strategies were used. Here are the highlights of Neils muscle gain phase:

  • Sets were raised to 4-6 per exercises
  • Number of reps were lowered to the 6-10 range
  • Some isolation exercises (that used a single joint) were replaced with more compound exercises (that used multiple joints at the same time)

Neils Nutrition Program Fat Loss Phase

                Ive written about nutrition extensively, and how someones nutrition program must match not just someones goals and physiology, but also someones psychology. Numbers people like having something to track calories, protein, carbs, just something. They feel it helps them with accountability, and it also helps those who dont trust their own judgment.

                Then there are the non-numbers people. They dont like counting above 10. So with them, we dont give them calories, or grams of protein, or carbs, or anything big to count. Instead, we have these folks count servings.

                Neil is in the former category, so for him, Shaneh asked to count calories, and we dropped his calories about 300-500 below his maintenance (the amount of calories required to maintain your weight varies based on weight, activity levels, and other factors). Nothing really all that ground-breaking. But the magic is in figuring out by how much to drop calories. For someone trying to lose 50+ pounds, you can drop 600-800 calories per day without problems. Then, with someone whos naturally small, and trying to lose just a few small pounds, it might be as few as 200-300.

                Drop calories too much, and you risk seriously lowering the number of calories burned per day. Plus, the risk of hunger and rebound weight gain is too high. Drop calories too little, and you run the risk of losing fat too slowly and losing motivation.

                Shaneh started at a baseline calorie drop, and based on Neils measurements, Shaneh was able to further refine the calorie drop. This just reinforces the point that I always say if youre not assessing, you are guessing. Measurements allow us to personalize a clients routine. Hence the importance of body measurements.

                When calories drop below maintenance, hunger creeps in. To combat that, Shaneh had Neil raise his protein intake for 2 reasons:

  1. Of the 3 macronutrients (carbs, protein, fats), protein is the most filling, which keeps hunger at bay.
  2. Muscle maintenance. When calories drop, and weight is lost, some of the lost weight is muscle. To minimize muscle losses, protein requirements rise.

Neils Nutrition Program Muscle Gain Phase

                After Neil had reached a body fat level where he could finally see his abs, he was ready to transition to a muscle gain phase.

                Neil started off slowly, only raising his calories by 200 above maintenance (not 200 above the fat loss phase). Why so little? For a couple of reasons:

  1. Muscle gain is a slower process than fat loss.
  2. Whenever you gain muscle, some fat gain is inevitable. But you want to minimize the fat gain. So Neil started off at a 200-calorie surplus and measured his body fat. If body fat was not rising too much, too fast, Shaneh increased the calorie surplus, as high as 600 calories above maintenance.

Changes in His Measurements

                So theres the methods now what about the results the bottom line? Im glad you asked.

During the fat loss phase, he:

  • Lost 10 pounds
  • Dropped 3 cm off his waist
  • Lost 3 cm off his hips
  • Lost 6 mm off his love handles
  • Lost 4 mm off his belly
  • Lost 6 mm off his chest

During the muscle gain phase, he:

  • Gained 10 pounds (no, not of fat)
  • Increased his chest circumference by 3 cm (translation: he got more of a V-shape)
  • Increased his right arm by 2 cm (translation: he now has 2 tickets to the gun show)

As for his strength it skyrocketed! During his muscle gain phase, he:

  • Added 90 pounds to his sumo deadlift, and 40 pounds to his conventional deadlift
  • Added 20 pounds to his bent-over barbell rows
  • Added 20 pounds on his barbell overhead press
  • Went from doing assisted chin-ups to 10 unassisted chin-ups. Easily.

Challenges Experienced Along the Way

                Before you think that everything was hunky dory, without any stumbling blocks from beginning to now, thats not the case. There were certainly challenges along the way. Here are some challenges Neil experienced along the way, and how Shaneh helped him overcome them:

  • Hunger: the most obvious challenge on a fat loss diet. Shaneh added more protein (as mentioned in a previous section), encouraged Neil to drink more water (often thirst is confused for hunger), and including days of maintenance calories (as opposed to deficit).
  • Energy levels: about 2 months into his fat loss phase, his energy was dropping. So Shaneh recommended Neil take a small amount of caffeine 60-100 mg per day (the equivalent of about 0.75-1 cup of coffee). That worked.
  • Mindset: having failed at gaining muscle in the past, Neil had classified himself as a hardgainer. Usually, hardgainers are just undereaters. When Shaneh had Neil track his food intake, he realized that he simply wasnt eating enough to support muscle gain.
  • Knee pain: as mentioned a few times, due to being a former high-level volleyball player, he had bad knees, and they started to ache when doing back squats. The solution was simple: replace back squats with another exercise, while continuing to support knee health. The goal long term is to make back squats a pain-free exercise, but were not there yet.
  • Um the obvious challenge COVID-19! It doesnt need to be said that gyms closed down, so equipment availability became an issue, but Shaneh modified his program to make do with what Neil had theres more than one way to skin a cat.

Usually, people think success looks like this:

When realistically, success is more like this:

Ideally, when you hit a bump in the road, a good coach sees that, acts on it quickly, and gets you back on track. Because if you dont have a coach, success looks more like this:

Neils Life Now, Outside the Gym

                As we can see from Neils measurements, hes made great progress. But how does that translate to life outside the gym?

                The one that Neil is happy about the most is his sleep. He used to wake up in the morning grumpy and groggy even if he got 7-8 hours of sleep that night. Now, he sleeps better, more deeply and is more well-rested when he wakes up. It doesnt take him nearly as long to get going.

                Besides that, a bunch of new opportunities have opened up to him:

  • Neil quite enjoys jogging, but due to his knees he couldnt. He wouldnt even entertain the idea. Now hes actually looking forward to trying it out.
  • Biking. Neil likes to ride his bicycle. But again, he doesnt like his knees hurting. But now, hes biking more than ever.
  • Before, he was a bit embarrassed about his body, and felt like he was trying to hide. Now, he doesnt try to hide anymore.
  • Hes getting compliments on his physique from friends and coworkers, which wasnt happening before.
  • Hes the most toned hes ever been at age 40! And thats after being a former high-level volleyball player.

Overall, were very proud of Neil, and what hes accomplished on the Online Body Transformation program. If youd like to see whether this program is for you, just email me with the words online body transformation in the subject line, and well chat. If we find that this program is for you, awesome well get you on your way to being our next success story. If not, no big deal, no pressure, and Ill still make a few suggestions to get you going in the right direction.