Author: tom44

Today we are going to teach you everything you’ve ever wanted to know about body fat percentage but were too afraid to ask.

We’ve been helping thousands of people get their body fat percentage to their desired level through our 1-on-1 Online Coaching Program, and I’m pumped to share with you our strategies in this guide.

Plus, lots of cute animal videos as rewards for reading each section.

Fair warning: lots of half-naked people of all different shapes and sizes in this guide!

In this Body Fat Measurement Ultimate Guide, we’ll cover:

• What is body fat percentage?
• What are some examples of body fat percentage?
• What should my body fat percentage be?
• How do I calculate or measure my body fat percentage?
• What’s the best way to lower body fat percentage?
• Is BMI the same as body fat percentage?

If you have been struggling with your weight (and having too high of a body fat percentage) for a while, I know how frustrating that can be.

It’s why we built our popular 1-on-1 Online Coaching program, so this time things can be different. Your NF Coach will help you track the right metrics (like body fat percentage) and set the right goals.

Let us help you lose body fat safely WITHOUT being miserable! Learn how our Coaching App can help:

What is body fat percentage?

In its simplest form: body fat is the amount of fat in your body, compared to everything else:

• your organs
• muscles
• bones
• tendons
• water
• any demons currently possessing you
• and so on

Both men and women carry different amounts of body fat percentage due to…you know…being different.

A super ripped male bodybuilder who is minimizing body fat percentage could have a percentage down as low as 3-4%, while a super ripped female bodybuilder who is minimizing body fat percentage would only get as low as 8-9%.

A male athlete could be in fantastic shape and have 10% body fat, while a women at a comparable level of athleticism and appearance might be at 18-20% body fat.

To take the comparison to the other end of the spectrum, an overweight male at 30% will look vastly different than an overweight woman at 30%.

Feel free to take a break with this video of a lion cub hanging out with a puppy and a rabbit.

What are some examples of body fat percentage?

Below, you’ll see images of what people look like with different amounts of body fat.

Men:

Women:

A quick note: your body fat percentage is just the amount of body fat you have.

It has nothing to do with the amount of muscle mass you have, which means you can have two people with the same amount of body fat percentage that look WAY different from each other.

Are you surprised about what you thought and what the actual percentages look like?

If so, don’t worry about it – most people have no idea what their body fat percentage is, and will often over or underestimate it pretty dramatically.

We’ll get into what’s a good number to AIM for, and how to measure it next.

We work with both men and women in our Online Coaching Program, and help them reach a level of body fat that they’re happy with.

More importantly? We do it sustainably, and without making you only eat chicken and broccoli.

Lower your body fat percentage safely and keep it off! Learn more about our Coaching Program and App:

You have unlocked this video of a baby sea otter trying to sleep on mom:

What should my body fat percentage be?

Here is the “generally accepted” (yeah, I don’t like this term either) chart for women and men when it comes to body fat percentage:

	Women	Men
Essential fat	10-12%	2-4%
Athletes	14-20%	6-13%
Fitness	21-24%	14-17%
Acceptable	25-31%	18-25%
Obese	32% plus	26% plus

In what I’m sure is news to nobody, body fat is essential to survival – fat protects your internal organs, provides you with necessary energy stores in times of peril, and more.

“Essential fat” means the minimal amount of fat required for survival – Anything less than this amount would mostly likely result in organ failure, but even approaching this amount of body fat is dangerous.

It’s for this reason that bodybuilders, who can minimize their body fat to the “essential fat” level only do so when prepping for a show – during the rest of the year they maintain a higher body fat percentage so that they can stay healthy and function properly.

If you are looking to have that “ripped” or “toned” look, you’ll want your body fat percentage to hover in the “athletes” section.

(I cover the philosophy behind this extensively in our “How to build any physique” article.)

If you’re just looking to get healthy and look in the mirror with pride, aim for the Fitness range.

Once you get into the upper ends of “acceptable” and “obese,” a decrease in body fat percentage would benefit your health.

Now, I’m going to GUESS you’re reading this article because you’re interested in reducing your body fat percentage.

For starters, you need to determine what’s an optimal goal for you:

• If you are trying to look like Ryan Reynolds or Jessica Beil in Blade III, good luck! You’ll need to aim for a body fat percentage of 6-8% (men) or 13-15% (women). Note: your athletic/strength gaining performance will most likely suffer at this percentage, and can be really really challenging to maintain. Your call.
• If you are interested in getting that coveted six pack, drop your body fat down to the 8-11% range for men and 15-17% range for women.
• If you are an athlete and interested in optimal athletic performance, aim for a body fat percentage around 15% (men) or 20% (women). NF team member Staci trains much better at 20% body fat than at 15% body fat.
• If you are just interested in looking pretty good and feeling pretty good, anything less than 18% for men and anywhere in the 20-23% range for women should get you the “hey, lookin pretty good!” response from your friends.
• Ladies: if you are concerned about menstruation or fertility, it has been said not to drop below 15% body fat. Studies are conflicted on this, your results may vary, but I thought it was worth mentioning!

Want a step-by-step plan to follow that will help you lower your body fat percentage safely and permanently? Great!

That’s literally what our Online Coaching Program is for!

Get daily text support and custom workouts from our Online Coaching Program! Learn more:

Hey, you’re still awake!

You’ve unlocked the “cute baby pigmy goat jumping around” video:

How do I calculate or Measure my body fat percentage?

This question I get asked above ALLLLLL others.  

There are seven main methods that you can use, each with varying levels of accuracy and cost: 

1) Take a Look – This might be my favorite method, although it requires a trained eye and isn’t exact. By having an accurate progression of pictures from week to week and comparing a picture of yourself, you can determine somewhat closely what your body fat percentage is.

Make sure to note the difference in the two men, both at 10% body fat further down the page.

2) Body Fat Calipers – Pick up a set of calipers for $5. Pull the fat away from your muscles, pinch them with the caliper, take the measurements, and look at a chart to figure out your body fat percentage. Some recommend using one test site, some multiple.

In my experience, I have found that these calipers tend to slightly underestimate body fat percentage (mine tell me that i’m 9 or 10% when I’m really 12%, and Staci’s say she’s 17% when she’s more like 20%), but are surprisingly accurate considering how cheap they are.

However, the accuracy isn’t as important as the fact that you pinch and measure the same area, under the same conditions, from week to week. By doing so, you can track overall trends in how the measurement changes to make sure you’re on the right path.

3) The measurement method – By taking measurements (like the US Navy measurement or the YMCA measurement), you can calculate your body fat percentage. I have found, as have others, that this method isn’t incredibly accurate as it can very easily overestimate your body fat.

Considering it only takes a few points of data, this is not surprising.

4) Body fat scales and monitors – An electrical current is sent through your body and uses “biometrical impedance analysis.” I don’t really like this method, as I find the number that it spits out can be horribly inaccurate.

Because they send an electrical current through your body, the amount of water you are carrying can drastically adjust this number too.

5) The Bod Pod – The method calculates your body fat percentage by using air displacement to measure your body mass, volume, and density. This is also pretty darn accurate, but also pretty darn expensive at usually around $75 per session. Find a bod pod location by putting in your location in the right hand column.

6) Water displacement – Although very accurate (within 1-3% percent), it’s expensive, tedious, and a huge pain in the butt. If anybody has any experience with a water displacement test, please share your story in the comments.

7) DEXA Scanning– This is considered the most accurate method, as it actually takes a full dual X-ray of your body composition and gives you numbers. You can get this done at a health facility, and involves you lying on an X-Ray table for about 10 minutes. It’s typically expensive, anywhere from $50-150 per session depending on where you are located.

VERY IMPORTANT: If you are going to start testing your body fat percentage, do whatever you can to test yourself under the same conditions each and every time.

For example: every Monday morning, on an empty stomach, while drinking a single glass of water. This way, even if you’re not getting the correct body fat percentage (due to user error), you’ll at least get a consistent incorrect body fat percentage and can calculate how much you lost or if you are progressing in the right way.

“Steve, just tell me the best method!”

If you have the money, and you have a Bod Pod center close to you, then I’d say this would be the best combination of practicality and accuracy.

If you don’t have the money, then I would go with a simple body fat caliper, along with the “take a look” method of taking weekly photos. Take a photo of yourself each week and compare the photos week to week to see if you can notice more definition in your muscles (which happens when you start to reduce your body fat percentage!).

Here’s the thing with body fat percentage: although it’s fun to know and fun to see it getting lower as you get leaner, methods to track it can often be inaccurate.

Take multiple tests with your preferred methods and understand that even then it might be off by 1-3% in either direction. So, track overall TRENDS and go off how you look, and that will get you 95% of the way there.

It comes down to this: Look in the mirror, and compare your progress photos: do you like how you look and are you moving in the right direction? Awesome.

DON’T like what you see?

Let us help!

Our Online Coaching Program is changing people’s lives every day. We help folks like you make better food choices, follow the right workout program for your goals and keep you accountable!

Want expert accountability and guidance in your pocket? Wait that sounded weird. Let me tell you about our Coaching Program:

Another section, another reward.

You’ve unlocked the “baby otter attacks a stuffed animal walrus” video:

What’s the best way to lower body fat percentage?

Alrighty! Let’s say you’re interested in dropping your body fat percentage, like my childhood friend Saint above.

Staci (follow her full success story) also followed the principles of Nerd Fitness to get her results and significantly reduce her body fat percentage:

I’m sliiiiiightly biased, but both Saint and Staci, along with 35,000+ other students, reduced their body fat percentage by following the methods we teach all clients in our 1-on-1 Online Coaching Program.

Not only that, but Staci is now one of our Lead Coaches!

Want to get in shape like Saint or Staci? Learn more about our Coaching App!

As you’ll read below, the biggest piece of the puzzle to getting to a low body fat percentage is having the right nutritional strategy of consistent caloric restriction, the right mental attitude, a supportive network of people to help you, and a plan to follow.

We know how tough it can be to change your diet. If you’re not sure what to eat, or you’re sick of trying a diet only to give up a few weeks later, I got you covered.

It’s something I’m really proud of, and I know it’s helped a lot of people: our 10-level Nerd Fitness Diet Cheat Sheet. Pick the level you’re comfortable with, stick with it for at least 2 weeks, and then level up when ready and follow the next level! Simple.

Grab your cheat sheet free, along with 4 other free guides, when you sign up in the box below – I’m confident it can help you reduce your body fat percentage permanently.

I can’t teach you everything in a quick article, though I can absolutely give you some overall tips and tricks below to get you started.

Here are the Nerd Fitness methods we recommend to all coaching clients get down to a lower body fat percentage.  

Note: these are JUST suggestions, your results may vary!  

If you only want to drop a few percentage points (to a healthier weight), you can start with the advice at the top, and work your way down towards the bottom as you get lower and lower – the closer you get to single digits (dudes) or low double digits (ladies), the more strict you need to be with your diet and training.

1. Eat a caloric deficit – Although I believe there is more to it than just this, in order to lose weight, you need to be eating a caloric deficit – burning more calories than you consume consistently.

Don’t forget to calculate your daily caloric needs first! If you are not strength training while eating a caloric deficit, you will most likely be losing muscle along with fat, which is not optimal but will help you lose body fat.

Do this consistently and you’ll start to lose body fat.

2. Lift heavy things and move frequently – When you strength train with heavy objects (or with intense bodyweight training), you get stronger and keep the muscle mass that you already have.

And yes, you can build muscle and burn fat at the same time. On top of that, you also push your metabolism into an “afterburner” effect which burns extra calories even after you are done working out.

3. Incorporate sprints into your off days – When you run sprints, you create a similar afterburner effect with strength training, meaning extra calories burned after the completion of your workout.

4. Consume enough protein, experiment with lower carb or lower fat – Set your caloric intake to be low enough that your body must pull from fat stores to fuel itself, resulting in fat loss.

I’d recommend consuming enough protein to keep your muscles growing and rebuilding, while determining what’s best for your body to make up the rest of your calories each day: many people work better on a low carb diet.

Others (like myself) can lose weight faster on a low-fat diet. Your results may vary. Read up more on the Keto Diet, the Paleo Diet, the Carnivore Diet, and the Mediterranean Diet for popular strategies.

And no, don’t do the Military Diet.

5. Work out in a fasted state, consider intermittent fasting – Although advanced techniques to get to super low body fat percentages are beyond the scope of this article, here’s another tactic if you want to drop the last few percentage points:

Strength train in a fasted state, and don’t consume your first meal of the day until AFTER your workout.

Added bonus: by skipping a meal occasionally, you’re more likely than not to end up in a caloric deficit compared to when you were eating 6 meals per day.

I’ve been training in a fasted state for 5 years with zero issues on energy, but your results will vary.

6. Not losing weight? You’re eating too much! Get more accurate with your tracking. Consider a cheap food scale to make sure you’re actually eating the number of calories each day you think you’re eating.

Example: I eat 1 serving of oats each day. If you look at a container of oats, it says “1 serving = 1/2 cup, or 40 grams.” I then put half a cup of oats on a food scale, and it weighed 60 grams. This means that every day, I was eating 1.5 servings of oats, not 1 serving.

By weighing my food, I got my calories dialed in, and managed to lose about 15 pounds over the past 6 months, dropping my body fat down to 8%, while also hitting a deadlift PR.

7. Hire a Coach! Doing all of this stuff alone is absolutely manageable, it just requires a lot of trial and error. If you are somebody that wants to work with a trainer, here’s how to find a good trainer!

Oh what’s that? You want a coach you can take with you everywhere, that will check your form AND help you with food and essentially do everything except the actual heavy lifting of weights?) Sure!

Our Coaching Program and App will help you lower your body fat percentage safely and permanently!

Along with the above, keep reading Nerd Fitness articles, join our community, and start to implement the philosophies here and you’ll be on the right track.

The important thing to remember: this is NOT an overnight process. The best thing you can do is start treating yourself like a science experiment.

Implement the suggestions above, track your bodyfat and see how it changes, and then course-correct and adjust based on results!

And another big thing to remember:

TEMPORARY CHANGES GET TEMPORARY RESULTS.

If you starve yourself to get shredded but then rebound aggressively by eating buckets of ice cream when you’re “done,” say goodbye to those abs!

Instead, our advice would be to find a nutritional strategy that works for you, a workout you enjoy, that you can see yourself sticking with permanently, that gets you at a body fat percentage you can maintain without being miserable.

Also, here’s a video of a wombat. Because, wombats:

Is BMI the same as body fat percentage?

When you go to a doctor, they will most likely ONLY calculate your Body Mass Index (BMI).

Body Mass Index looks at your height and your weigh; based off this ratio, it tells you whether you are underweight, normal, overweight, or obese.

Seems pretty straightforward right? Obviously, as your weight increases disproportionately compared to your height, you are more likely to be overweight.

Notice I just said “more likely.”

Here’s why: Your BMI isn’t directly correlated to your body fat percentage – it only factors in your height and weight. It will give you the same reading if you’re made of 180 pounds of pure muscle, or 180 pounds of pure Cheetos.

For example, if I was six feet tall and 185 pounds with a body fat percentage of 10%, I would be put in the same “overweight” category as a guy who was six feet tall, 185 pounds, and a body fat percentage of 25%.

If two women have the same amount of body fat, and one tends to carry more water weight or have bigger bones than the other, one woman could be considered “overweight” while the other might be “average.”

For example: LeBron James is considered borderline obese when measured on the BMI scale, at a height of 6’8″ and 250 pounds.

Of course, unless you look like LeBron James, or you can see your abs, disregarding BMI is missing the point.

I do believe BMI can be helpful if you are above 20% body fat (men) or 25% (women). Both your BMI and your body fat percentage would tell you that fat loss can be a worthwhile goal.

HOWEVER, as soon as you start to get serious about your body weight and training and drop down to flat stomach levels of body fat percentage, then BMI becomes less of an accurate indicator of health.

If you like our style here with cute animal videos and fun content, let us help you reach your body fat and BMI goals with our 1-on-1 Online Coaching Program! 

Let’s get you in the best shape of your life. Sound good? Learn more about our Coaching App here:

You’ve unlocked the final reward: “the hedgehog boat”:

What other questions do you have on body fat percentage?

And that concludes today’s lesson on body fat percentage, friend!

I do most of my work in coffee shops these days, so I hope you understand the amount of work and the ridiculous number of awkward Google searches that had to happen in order to bring this post together.

Now, I know this is one of those super complicated topics, so I’d love to help any other way than I can. 

If you are somebody that wants to know they are following a program that is tailor-made for their life and situation and goals, check out our popular 1-on-1 Coaching program.

You’ll work with our certified NF instructors who will get to know you better than you know yourself, and program your nutrition and workouts for you.

Never wonder what to do next. Let our coaching program help you every step of the way!

If you are fired up and want to start reducing your body fat percentage in a healthy, sustainable way, consider trying our 10 Level Nerd Fitness Diet – we’ll send you a cheat sheet telling you exactly how to change your diet each week so you don’t get overwhelmed!

Grab your NF Diet sheet along with four guides to help you reduce your body fat percentage when you sign up in the box below:

We’ve helped tens of thousands of people transform into real life superheroes.

Either way, continue to poke around Nerd Fitness – all of our content is focused on helping you get results in a fun, non-condescending, supportive, and (most importantly) effective way.

Also, if you’re willing to put in the time, you WILL get the results you’re after.

Okay, time to watch more cute animal videos 🙂

-Steve

PS: Admittedly this article took 10 hours longer than it needed to, because I kept getting lost in YouTube watching cute animal videos!

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The post Blog first appeared on Nerd Fitness.

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If you’re looking to run your first 5K, you’ve come to the right place. 

In today’s guide, we’ll cover common questions – and 5 mistakes – about the Couch to 5K program:

• What is Couch to 5K? Why is the Couch to 5K plan so popular?
• Does Couch to 5K actually work? 
• “Will I lose weight with Couch to 5K?” (Mistake #1)
• “Do I even like running?” (Mistake #2)
• “Am I healthy enough to run a 5K?” (Mistake #3)
• How to start (Couch to 5K Schedule and PDF)
• “How do I not hurt myself running a 5K?” (Mistake #4) 
• 10 tips and tricks for running a 5K.
• “What do I do after Couch to 5K?” (Mistake #5)
• “What if I own a futon? Can I still do Couch to 5K?”

Before we jump in…

If you’re interested in running a 5k (which you are, ’cause you’re here) you may want to try our new app! It contains a fun adventure that will take you from sitting on your couch to running a full 5k – with plenty of benchmarks in between for you to find your groove. No guesswork needed, just tie your shoes and follow along with the app. 

You can sign-up for a free trial right here:

What is Couch to 5K? Why is the Couch to 5K Plan so popular?

“Couch to 5K” is a free program that takes people from their couch to running a 5K race in 9 weeks.

5K is short for 5 kilometers, or 5,000 meters or 3.1 miles.

This running program was invented by Josh Clark of CoolRunning WAY back in the day.

It has since been co-opted and copied by every running blog out there, so we’re going to be referring to a generic “Couch to 5K” program when we talk about it.

(When people ask the question “How long does it take to complete Couch to 5K,” it really depends on which program they pick. 

It might be 6 weeks, or 12 weeks, or 9 weeks. The original Couch to 5K plan created by Cooling Running took 9 weeks).

Here’s the Couch to 5K plan a nutshell:

The program utilizes an uber-popular concept called interval training – moving at different speeds throughout a running session – and lays out exactly what to do every day for 6-12 weeks after starting.

By varying your pacing, your body is forced to adapt to different speeds, your heart and lungs have to adapt to various levels of strenuous activity (and get stronger/healthier as a consequence).

As a result, you actually burn more calories and get better prepared for a race then compared to just training at a constant speed.

In other words, interval training rocks and should be used by anybody who wants to get better at running.

Over the weeks, Couch to 5K slowly ramps up the amount of time you spend running and cuts back the time you spend walking until you’re at the point where you can actually run a 5K without stopping.

“STEVE, I’M INTRIGUED. WHY IS COUCH TO 5K SO DANG POPULAR?”

#1) It’s simple and clear. Print out a PDF or download an iPhone app and for the next 9 weeks you simply do what it tells you:

Today, do this.

Tomorrow, do that.

Repeat.

We’re all busy. Most of us lead hectic lives. And programs that tell us EXACTLY what to do allow us to follow instructions without needing to figure it out ourselves.

Not that us nerds overanalyze things to the point of giving ourselves anxiety attacks…

#2) Most people think running = weight loss. If you’re brand new to health and fitness, and you’re trying to lose weight, you’re most likely overwhelmed at what you should start with and how you should train.

Are you gonna go sign up for a gym membership, hire a trainer, and start doing squats and deadlifts?

As much as I would WISH that was the answer (it’s probably the fastest path to changing one’s physique), it’s often a bridge too far for many folks.

So a majority of newbies equate running with weight loss (which MIGHT be true, but MIGHT not, I’ll explain here), and decide to start with a jog around the block.

#3) Couch to 5K is not overwhelming. It’s a free program (or inexpensive app), and it’s very approachable.

Programs like P90X and Insanity are designed to appeal to people that consider themselves hardcore (whatever the hell that means).

Couch to 5K appeals to people who are overwhelmed at the idea of doing P90X or Insanity or mustering up the courage to go to Crossfit.

Couch to 5K makes you think “maybe I can actually do this…” which is the most important part of any fitness journey: starting.

#4) Everybody wants to “have run a 5K.” If you’re new to health and fitness and working on setting a good obtainable goal, “run a 5K this year” is a great place to start.

• It’s a short enough distance that with some training you can pull it off, even if you have to walk some or all of it.
• There are 5Ks practically every weekend, many of which raise money for charity or are themed in a fun way,
• It’s an amazing activity to do as a group with friends.
• Humans are wired for achievements, progress, and gratification – 5Ks are perfectly designed for that.

So in completing Couch to 5K, you train and get to see yourself progress weekly, you get to finish a race and feel a  sense of accomplishment, and you go home with a medal you can hang on your wall reminding you of the proud moment.

Plus, it might get you in shape!

Maybe…we’ll explore in just a moment.

If you are trying to get in shape, I’ll mention our 1-on-1 Online Coaching Program. I know of no better way to transform yourself than through the help of an expert who knows exactly what to do. We’ve helped hundreds of people run their first 5K and helped others train for triathlons!

Have a Nerd Fitness Coach tell you how to train exactly for your goals! Learn more:

Does Couch to 5K actually work? Will I lose weight Doing Couch to 5K?

“Steve that’s all fine and good. But what do you REALLY think about running 5Ks and Couch to 5K?”

Okay, you got me. I got thoughts. I also got jokes (they’re bad).

RANT INCOMING!

Will the Couch to 5K program help you run a 5k? YES! If you actually stick with it for the entirety of the training program.

Will the Couch to 5K program help you lose weight? MAYBE.

Is Couch to 5K a program that will get you healthy permanently? MAYBE.

Will Couch to 5K make me sexy and look damn good in a bathing suit? MAYBE, but probably not.

Here’s the truth about Couch to 5K: It’s the same truth with popular programs like P90X or Insanity or any other structured workout program:

It totally works and will help you lose weight if you do two things:

1. You actually complete the program, AND
2. You fix your diet.

MISTAKE #1: Couch to 5K totally doesn’t work and won’t help you lose weight if you do two things:

1. You actually complete the program, BUT
2. You don’t fix your diet.

As sexy as it is to think that just going for a run will help you lose weight, the data doesn’t back it up. In fact, as Time Magazine rightly pointed out years ago and got yelled at for telling the truth, exercise alone won’t make you lose weight.

I believe that to be especially true when exercise is only steady-speed cardio.

In fact, many people gain weight after starting an exercise routine and get completely demoralized.

What gives?

As we say here at Nerd Fitness, you can’t outrun your fork, and nutrition is 90% of the battle.

If you go for a mile run and then stuff your face with extra calories “because you earned it,” you’re going to gain weight.

It’s not because you have a slow metabolism, I promise. It’s because you’re consuming too many calories.

This is Common Mistake #1: not fixing your nutrition if you’re running for weight loss!

If this were a movie, nutrition would be Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible and exercise is that funny sidekick who helps Tom. Let’s be real here, Tom is doing all of the heavy lifting to make that movie what it is.

Couch to 5K helps people run a 5K.

That’s it.

It’s not designed to help you lose weight or build a body you’re proud of. It’s also a temporary program that lasts a certain number of weeks until you run your 5K.

For Couch to 5K to be successful for you long term, and for it to help you lose weight, it needs to be the catalyst that causes you to build a consistent long term habit of exercise and changes how you think about food.

Remember: you never get to be “done”, so you need to enjoy the journey and look forward to exercising daily.

You also need to train the right way to build the type of body you want! And eat the right way.

That’s priority numero uno.

I know nutrition is a really challenging, complex, controversial topic (Keto? Paleo? Ah!), which is why we make it stupidly simple for smart, good looking, modest people like yourself.

In addition to our online coaching program that guides you on making healthier food choices, we also created a free 10-level NF Diet blueprint you can hang on your fridge next to your Couch to 5K PDF.

Print it out, hang it on your fridge, and follow the instructions to level up every 2 weeks! You can get yours free when you sign up in the box below:

Now that we have the “will I lose weight?” stuff out of the way, I have two BIG questions to ask you:

Do you like running?

Are you healthy enough to run?

Do I even like running?

Bodybuilder Ronnie Coleman said it best: “Everybody wanna be a bodybuilder, don’t nobody wanna lift no heavy ass weight.”

In other words: “Everybody wants to be in shape, and look great, but nobody wants to put the work in to actually GET in shape and look great.”

And yup, getting in shape is tough; if it were easy we’d all look like Captain America and Wonder Woman.

Instead, 70% of America is overweight and 30+% are obese. Crap.

Which brings me back to the most crucial question of this entire 5K process:

Do you even LIKE running?

The world is split into three groups:

• People that like running and want to run.
• People that don’t like running but eventually learn to love it.
• People that don’t like running and will never like running.

Here’s that Ronnie Coleman quote, slightly adapted: “Everybody wants to have run a 5K, but many people don’t actually enjoy running.”

Running a 5K is a great achievement and a worthwhile fun goal, but it’s only one way of thousands to “get in shape.”

Many people feel like Andy Dwyer in Parks and Rec when they go running.

Some people love that feeling of anguish or pushing beyond the limits, and that’s awesome!

But for everybody else, they make Mistake #2: they force themselves to run even though they don’t like it!

So before you start Couch to 5K, think of it as a science experiment:

“I hypothesize that following Couch to 5K will help me run a 5K. I also hypothesize I’ll enjoy the process, enjoy how I feel after a run, enjoy running a 5k, and/or enjoy the achievement of having run a 5k.”

And that’s all this is: an experiment to see if running is the type of exercise you want to continue doing consistently for the next few years.

If 2 weeks into Couch to 5K you’re miserable and hate it: fantastic!

You just discovered that you hate running and are now free to NEVER RUN EVER AGAIN FOREVER. It doesn’t make you a failure.

It means your science experiment produced a result that you can now use to inform future exercise decisions.

Again, it doesn’t make you a failure.

It just means you found a type of exercise that doesn’t work for you.

If you discover you LOVE running and how it makes you feel: fantastic! You can now make running part of your regular exercise routine. Combine this with a good nutritional strategy, and you will build yourself a runner’s physique. And you’ve found something you can do for the rest of your life.

If you are running to prove something to yourself, because a friend is doing it, because you’re raising money for charity, or anything else: fantastic! Do Couch to 5K and then decide after if this is the strategy that you enjoy and want to stick with permanently.

Don’t make Mistake #2: If you’re ONLY doing this to lose weight and it’s making you miserable, quit. Don’t run. Ever.

Instead, pick an exercise you actually enjoy. But not because the exercise is going to help you lose weight – because doing an exercise you love is a constant reminder of “I’m making healthier choices, and thus I should probably eat healthier!”

If weight loss above all else is your goal, I’d recommend our Beginner Bodyweight routine you can do at home and combine it with our “beginner’s guide to healthy eating.” I can promise that if you read those strategies and start to implement them in your life, you’ll see results without ever having to set foot on a treadmill.

Phew! Okay, that covers “do you actually LIKE running?”

There’s another massive question you should be asking yourself before you start…

Are you healthy enough to run a 5K?

Just because you WANT to run doesn’t mean you SHOULD necessarily start running just yet.

It could be a fast track to injury, disappointment, and misery!

Those are literally three of my least favorite things. The fourth being brunch.^[1]

Back to your health: are you physically ready to run?

If you’re at or close to your goal weight, then starting a running program is a good idea.

Read the section below on “How to not get injured doing Couch to 5K” and get started.

If you are obese or very overweight, I think (power) WALKING a 5K is a great goal for the immediate future.

However, I think Mistake #3 would be running a 5K before properly preparing your body for it! In fact, running prematurely without addressing your weight might cause damage to your joints and ligaments and cause you to backslide a whole bunch.

WHAT I WOULD DO INSTEAD: Focus on healthy eating, building the habit of daily walks, and follow a beginner strength building routine like the Beginner Bodyweight Circuit.

This will build you a solid foundation of strength, core strength, and endurance.

Download our free Bodyweight Workout Worksheet when you sign up in the box below:

Here’s why you should focus on strength and nutrition before pounding the pavement with hours of running:

• As you begin to drop weight, a lot of the stress on your joints, organs, bones, etc. will start to decrease.
• As you strength train, the ligaments that hold your body together will become stronger and more adequately prepared for the rigors of running.
• As you refine your running form to minimize resistance and jarring shocks throughout your body, your body will learn to become more efficient.
• When you start to approach your goal weight, you can start to introduce increase your speed from power walking to jogging – with correct running technique (see below) – and staying healthy.

“STEVE, I was all excited to run a 5k, and now you have me demoralized. I’m overweight but I still want to run!”

Okay okay okay, fine! I don’t want to keep you from exercising, I want to help you build momentum and make you antifragile.

Obviously, you’re going to do what you’re going to do, and if running before your physically ready is what you want to do, go for it!

Just do it safely, please! Read the section below on proper running technique!

I would still advise that you focus your efforts on strength training, hiking, long walks on the beach…low impact activities that strengthen rather than deteriorate your body.

But you do you, boo.

If you want any help getting in shape to run your 5K, we got you! We help men and women and self-aware robots with our 1-on-1 Online Coaching Program. We offer nutritional guidance, professional accountability, and custom workouts!

Have a Nerd Fitness Coach create a plan so you can run a 5K!

How to start the Couch to 5K Program

“Steve I’m in. I read all of that jazz above and I am ready to get started. Whether I’m walking or running, I want to start Couch to 5K!”

If you’re ready to do the Couch to 5K program, you can download the following which I believe is the Original Couch to 5K Program (they’ve made it quite tough to find!).

The reason it’s tough to find is they’re pushing people towards the official Couch to 5K App.

Here’s another which I found on Antrandado.com

For us Nerds, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the super fun Zombies Run! app, which uses interval training combined with fun audio cues and video game mechanics throughout your running sessions.

What I would do next after downloading the program? Do the first day of training!

I would also recommend finding a race that’s 2-3 months from now, and sign up for it even if you’re not ready.

Recruit a friend or two to join you in training and the race!

Doing these things create immediate motivation and accountability.

It’s the strategy that Jaime from Nerd Fitness used to get herself in shape: signing up for races in the future that she wasn’t quite ready for yet.

She also strength trained and dramatically overhauled her nutrition, but she used races as great motivational events to stay on target!

HOW TO FIND A 5K IN YOUR TOWN: Let me google that for you. Type “5K + [your town]”, and I bet there’s a 5k every weekend for the rest of the year coming up. The Couch to 5K app also lists local races for you.

To recap:

• Pick a race that looks fun that raises money for a good cause
• Recruit a friend or two
• Go for your first day of running!

It’s gonna suck, and you’re going to be fine. You’ll get better!

This is exactly what I did years ago when I dressed up like a Caveman with 20 of my friends and raised thousands of dollars for kids with cancer to go to summer camp!

How to Not Get Injured Training For a 5K

If you don’t learn how to run correctly, you’re doomed to develop an overuse injury and that’s going to negate the whole reason you started running in the first place!

This is Mistake #4: Crappy running form!

When you run, you’re putting hundreds of pounds of pressure on your joints and ligaments with each bounding step down the road.

This is then repeated thousands of times over the course of training and a race.

No wonder nearly every runner has tons of stories of injuries they’ve had to deal with. It can be a brutal activity that can wreak havoc even with good running mechanics.

With poor running mechanics, the results are compounded.

And not the GOOD kind of “compounded” like compound interest like you learned in 2nd grade with the story about starting with 1 penny a day and doubling it every day for 30 days.

The BAD kind of “compounded” like plantar fasciitis and stress fractures and sore IT bands and torn ligaments and crazy soreness all the time.

We don’t want that.

I’m going to get super granular into proper running technique in this section, so if you already have perfect running form, you can skip this section. But I’d still read it.

Yeah, you should probably read it.

Here are the “5 Steps to Not Sucking at Running a 5K,” thanks to my friend Jason Fitzgerald of Strength Running:

1) Lean from your ankles.

Lean from your ankles, and keep a straight line from your ankle, through your butt, and up to your head.

If you’re standing still with this slight forward lean, you should feel like you’re about to fall forward.

When you start running, gravity will help keep you progressing forward. A proper lean from the ankles keeps your body in alignment and loads your muscles properly and efficiently.

2) Increase your cadence. Cadence is your stride rate, or the number of steps you take per minute. It will probably seem weird at first, but you’re putting less stress on your legs with shorter foot strikes.

Your cadence should be at least 170-190 steps per minute when you’re running at an easy, conversational pace. It will probably increase once you start running faster—that’s normal.

“Steve, what the hell do I do with “170-190 steps per minute?”

Great question. Go to Spotify and look for 170-190BPM playlists, like these which I found here:

• 170-190 BPM: Hip Hop Playlist
• 170-190 Rock Playlist 

Not on Spotify? Cool. (But like, why?) To get a cadence, try running to Outkast’s “Hey Ya” and time your strides to match the beat. That’s the cadence you’re looking for:

Research has shown^[2] that increasing your cadence and taking more steps (around 180 per minute) provides many of the same benefits of barefoot running: less impact shock that goes up your legs, improved running economy (or your efficiency, which means you’ll run faster with less effort!), and a reduced chance of injury.

You’ll feel like you’re taking way more steps than normal – that means you probably had poor form before and now you’re fixing it!

If your legs get to the point where they’re going this fast, let me know:

3) Foot strike at the right time. When your foot comes down and makes contact with the ground, it should be underneath your body, not in front of it.

Combined with a quick cadence and a slight forward lean from your ankles, you’ll be distributing impact shock evenly—and efficiently.

This aspect of running form is often skipped over by beginning runners.

Instead of focusing on where the foot is landing in relation to the rest of the body, they focus too much on running on their forefoot. If you don’t first land in the right place, a midfoot or forefoot strike will only do more damage.

As you’re running, a good mental cue is to think that you’re just “putting your foot down” in a straight line underneath your body.

There’s no reaching or stretching your leg out in front of you. Practicing this mental cue will have your leg touching down almost exactly underneath your center of mass, distributing your weight evenly and safely.

4) Land on your mid-foot. While not as important as landing underneath your center of mass, becoming a mid-foot striker has a host of benefits.

It can help you avoid a lot of injuries by absorbing impact shock and preventing a severe heel striking running stride.

Heel-striking can’t be entirely blamed for injuries and labeled “bad.”

Even elite athletes heel strike when they run races! It’s not entirely bad— especially if you’re putting weight down on your foot just after you heel strike, instead of directly on the heel.^[3]

What you should focus on is having a higher cadence, landing underneath your body, and not aggressively heel striking.

Try to land with your foot flat on the ground, instead of with your toes angled upwards.^[4]

5) Symmetrical arm swing. Nobody wants to look at you running if you’re flailing your arms wildly all over the place like Elaine dancing from Seinfeld.

An ideal arm swing has your arm bent at about 90 degrees and a front to back swing (not side-to-side).

Imagine a pretend line that goes down your mid-line or center of your body. When you run, your hands should not cross over this imaginary line.

Cup your hands loosely together (no clenched fists!) and if you want to use your arms for momentum, pump your elbows, not your hands.

Once you incorporate these changes into your running form, you’ll feel a lot more comfortable and your injury risk is going to plummet.

For extra credit, learn to run softly and quietly. Foot stomping isn’t allowed and gets increasingly more difficult as you approach 180 steps per minute.

A few other things you want to keep in mind:

• Keep a tall back, chest up. No slouching.
• Look 30-50 meters in front of you – not head down looking at your toes.

Both are easy cues to keep an athletic posture and good running form.

Go back through and read this section a few more times. We know it’s a LOT to think about while running, but it is incredibly important. If you get a chance, have somebody film you running, and then watch your tape back to see how you’re doing.

I should note that we provide form checks to our coaching clients. Through our awesome app, you can record a video of your running form or exercise technique and send it right to your coach! That way you can know your running and training safely and correctly!

Have a Nerd Fitness Coach check your running form. Lean more by clicking here!

10 Tips and Tricks for Training for Your 5K

Although the Couch to 5K Program covers specifically how you should be training, it still leaves out quite a few important things (like technique, which I covered above!).

Once you’ve picked your 5K training program, here’s how to get yourself to ACTUALLY follow through on your training!

#1) Recruit an accountability partner. Have somebody that trains with you (or at least somebody you tell about your training), so that each day you can check in with each other.

Wanna be diabolical?

Give somebody else $100 of your money. And tell them you’ll check in with them after your training every day – if you don’t do your run, they’ll donate $50 of that money to a political cause you HATE.

While you’re building the habit of running, you need to make the pain of skipping your run greater than the pain of doing the run.

Do this enough times until you build up enough momentum and get hooked on that runners high so that you actually look forward to training.

#2) Warm-up before, stretch after. Don’t do static stretches before your runs. It’s not doing what you think it is^[5]. Instead, you’re going to warm up your muscles through active movement.

• Do a dynamic warm-up before you run. Continue this by going for a light jog, high knees, and warming up your muscles through movement.
• Do the following cool-down stretching routine after you run. Stretching after for the win!

#3) Make it the first thing you do each day. Build the habit of doing your run first thing in the morning when life hasn’t had a chance to get in the way.

Sleep in your running clothes.

Put your alarm clock/phone across the room. Put your running shoes by the door. By hacking your Batcave, you’ll minimize the steps between you and the new habit you’re trying to build.

#4) Strength training makes running easier. Doing 1-2 sessions of strength training per week (on days you’re not running) will help you burn fat, build muscle, and stay injury-free.

Follow our Beginner Bodyweight Routine, no equipment required. We’ll have you training with your furniture instead:

If you sign-up for our free weekly newsletter, I’ll send you a PDF of the workout so you can track your progress.

#5) Don’t worry about your shoes when you start. Wear whatever shoes you have so that you can just get started building the habit immediately. If you START to love running, read our article on proper footwear and get yourself some better kicks.

The same is true for “running clothes.” Do not let this be a barrier to entry.

Start running first and make sure you like it before you go spending any hard-earned cash on stuff you’re not gonna use.

Oh, and as Coach Jim mention in the video below, DON’T RUN IN BRAND NEW SHOES!

Trust us on this one.

#6) Sign up for your race as far in advance as possible. Use 20 seconds of courage if you need to, but commit to the race.

If you don’t sign up, you’re going to be much more likely to back out when life gets busy.

But if you pay for it ahead of time, and get other people to run with you, you’re going to be using positive peer pressure to follow through on your commitments.

#7) Your race time doesn’t matter! Who cares if you’re the last person to finish? Like the Rock taught us, it doesn’t matter.

What’s important is that you finish something that you started. That’s a huge accomplishment in itself.

#8) Start a running club or join one at work – the more people you surround yourself with that are doing the things you want to do, the better. Hang out with runners that are faster than you.

You’re the average of the 5 people you associate most with, so you might as well start associating with faster, healthy runners.

#9) Don’t have an in-person running community? That’s cool! Join the Scouts Guild in the Nerd Fitness Rebellion.

It’s the section of our community that does running, biking, swimming, and other distance-based activities!

#10) Hire a coach. Outside of having a group of friends or co-workers keeping you accountable, a coach who routinely checks in with you and your progress can be a godsend. We’ve helped tons of people build the habit of running!

Exercise can actually be fun! Partner with a Nerd Fitness Coach to help reach your goals:

What Do I do After the Couch to 5k?

You made it through the training, and you ran/walked your first 5K! I’m so proud of you.

Gold star.

A+.

So after successfully completing your first 5K, you may be wondering what you should do next. To run again or not…

Many new runners absolutely love the atmosphere at a race; the number pick- up, pre-race motivational speech, cheering crowds, and crossing that finish line.

Oh, and the post-race beer and meal is the best food and drink you’ve ever tasted.

So after the excitement settles down, you need to ask what you want to do next.

Your three options:

1. Run Faster: Sign up for another 5K, keep training, and try to beat your previous race time.
2. Run longer: Maybe you want to run a longer race like a 5 miler, a 10k, or go slay a bigger dragon, like half-marathons or marathons.
3. Pick a different activity: Going from Couch to 5K to Couch doesn’t help you at all. Temporary changes create temporary results.

Notice there wasn’t a 4th option, the option that usually everybody picks:

“Go back to sitting on the couch”

That’s Mistake #5: not having a plan to CONTINUE exercising after Couch to 5K!

As we say at Nerd Fitness: “Temporary changes create temporary results.”

So you have to do SOMETHING next, otherwise all that hard work and training will have been for naught! 

Want help figuring out exactly where you should go from here? I got you!

Pick the option below that best aligns with your goals and timeline:

#1) We have a bunch of NF Coaching clients that are training for 5Ks, 10Ks, half-marathons, and tough mudders. If you want step-by-step guidance on how to lose weight, eat better, and train for races, check out our killer 1-on-1 coaching program:

Have your Nerd Fitness Coach design you a workout to start crushing races!

2) If you want a fun way to start running 5ks, check out NF Journey. Our fun habit-building app helps you exercise more frequently, eat healthier, and level up your life (literally).

Try your free trial right here:

3) Join the Rebellion! We need good people like you in our community, the Nerd Fitness Rebellion.

Sign up in the box below to enlist and get the Nerd Fitness Starter Kit, including the 15 fitness mistakes you don’t want to make and our guide to the most effective diet and why it works

4) Check out these other sweet running resources:

• Beginner’s Guide to Running: Covering everything you need to start a running practice, including technique, proper footwear, and a training schedule.
• NF Guide to Footwear: What shoes you should be wearing while training!
• Run Faster from the 5K to the Marathon: How to Be Your Own Best Coach.
• Strength Running: A site by my friend Jason Fitzgerald.

To recap our guide on the Couch the 5K plan, these are the 5 Mistakes to avoid:

1. Running a 5K might be a good way to lose weight. It is entirely dependent on your nutrition. The same is true of literally ANY workout program. (Mistake #1: Not changing your nutrition)
2. Couch to 5K may or may not be a great program for you. It depends on how much you enjoy running, and what you are hoping to get out of the program. (Mistake #2: not actually enjoying running)
3. Make sure you are fit enough to endure the rigors of running! If you’re severely overweight, let’s get you in shape FIRST before we put stress on your knees and joints for thousands of running steps. (Mistake #3: Running before you’re ready)
4. Make sure your running technique is solid. It’ll save you years of pain and injury. (Mistake #4: Running with improper form)
5. Recruit a friend or find a way to stay accountable so you actually do the race!
6. Who cares about your race time! Just completing the race should be your goal.
7. Once you finish the race, decide if you want to keep running or if you are going to pick a different activity. (Mistake #5: Not having another goal after completing your 5K)

Okay, it’s your turn. I’d love to hear your experiences when it comes to training for a 5K, and if you enjoyed the process.

Have you DONE Couch to 5K? Did you stick with it?

What challenges did you run into along the way?

Share it in the comments below!

-Steve

PS: I’ll leave you with a final reminder of our 1-on-1 Coaching Program. If you’re blown away by the fact that you don’t have to run to get in shape, but don’t know where else to begin, we got you.

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photo credit: mripp Fun run, 632imagine © 123RF.com,Four Bricks Tall Morning run with the Fitbit and Laughing Buddha, clement127 Halloween is coming!!, Flash, and Banquet, Andreas Just a Lego Minifig, Reiterlied Wandering in the North,

The post Blog first appeared on Nerd Fitness.

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At some point in the past week (or five minutes ago after a Google search), you’ve made a resolution to change your life.

Maybe you decided to exercise every day. Perhaps it’s time to start eating better.

Or maybe you decided to stop wearing jorts.

Well my friend, I’m excited for you, and I want you to know you’ve arrived at the right place!

We help folks build healthy habits as part of our 1-on-1 Online Coaching Program, so you’ve come to the right place to fulfill your resolution.

We can teach you how to build habits the right way! Learn more about our Online Coaching Program:

Here’s what we’ll cover in our Guide to Build Healthy Habits in 2022:

• Why do we suck at building healthy habits?
• The first step of building healthy habits (Know your “Big Why”)
• How to build healthy habits (The three parts)
• The key to sustainable healthy habits (Use systems)
• 5 hacks for effortless healthy habit building
• The secret to fulfilling your resolution (Do less)
• Pick your habit and GO (Next steps)

Let’s get right to it so you can start rocking 2022!

Why Do We Suck At Building Healthy Habits?

“I know what I’m supposed to do, I just can’t get myself to do it!” 

Welcome to the club – we all know what we need to do, but we just can’t get ourselves to make the important changes.

We know how to get in shape: move more and eat less!

We know how to exercise: get your heart rate up, do some push-ups, get stronger.

We know how to eat healthy: more vegetables and less sugar.

And yet, we can’t get ourselves to stick with ANY of these things for longer than a few weeks.

Why?

Simple: Building new healthy habits is tough, our lizard brains crave instant gratification, we don’t fully understand how habits are built, life gets busy, and our default behavior is often as unhealthy as it is easy.

As a result, we don’t put the right systems in place in order to make changes stick.

We also rely wayyyyy too much on willpower and motivation.

We tend to bite off more than we can chew, go too fast too soon, and then get overwhelmed too quickly.

Does this sound familiar?

• I’m going to eat 100% Paleo/Keto AND
• I’m going to run 5 miles a day AND
• I’m going to work out in a gym five times a week.

If you’re somebody that eats a typically poor diet, never runs, and hasn’t set foot in a gym since grade-school dodgeball with Mr. Wazowski, changing alllll of these at once is almost a surefire way to succeed at precisely NONE of them.

We’re conditioned these days to expect and receive instant gratification. If we want food we can get it from a drive-through, stick a frozen meal in a microwave, or sit down at a restaurant that’s open 24 hours. If we want a game we can download it to our computers/phones/PS5s within a matter of seconds. If we want to watch a TV show, it’s a few clicks away.

Hell, Netflix even starts the next episode for you without any action required!

We expect getting in shape to go the same way.  

And this is why we suck at building healthy habits that stick.

We tell ourselves “Hey, I’ve been dedicated for a whole two weeks, why don’t I look like Ryan Reynolds yet?”, not remembering that it took us decades of unhealthy living to get where we are, which means it’s going to take more than a few weeks to reverse the trend.

And then we miss a workout because life was busy or our kid got sick. And we get disheartened that exercise or giving up candy is not nearly as fun as Netflix and video games and Peanut M&M’s.

This is where everybody gives up:

• They try to change too many habits too soon
• They get impatient the results don’t come more quickly
• They slip up when life gets busy
• And they go back to square one

It’s why we are doomed to stay overweight and suck at building habits. It’s the videogame equivalent of attacking too many bad guys at once, which always leads to:

We’ll cover the specific healthy habits and resolutions you SHOULD be picking later in this article, but I have a big damn question to ask you first:

“But why though?”

The First Step of Building Healthy Habits (Know Your “Big Why”)

Before we do ANYTHING with actually building habits, you need a damn good reason as to why you want to build them in the first place or the changes will never stick.

This whole “change who I am” stuff needs to be at the center of your decision making moving forward.

And if you don’t have a good reason, you’re dead in the water:

If you’re here because you decided you “should” get in shape, you’re going to fail the second life gets busy.

If you are dragging yourself to the gym because you think you “should” run on a treadmill five days a week even though you hate it, you’re screwed!

As you’re determining the habits or resolutions you’re trying to set, make the habit part of a bigger cause that’s worth the struggle.

You’re not just going to the gym, you’re building a new body that you’re not ashamed of so you can start dating again.

You’re not just learning to like vegetables, you’re losing weight so you can fit into your dream wedding dress.

You’re not just dragging yourself out of bed early, you’re getting up earlier so you can work on your side business before your kids get up so you can set money aside for their college education.

In our 1-on-1 Coaching Program and throughout Nerd Fitness Prime, we refer to this as your “Big Why.” Without it, you’re just forcing yourself to do things you don’t like to do – that’ll never last.

Tie it to a greater cause and you’re infinitely more likely to push through the muck and mire to get it done.

So dig 3 levels deep and ask “why” until you get to the root cause of WHY you want to build a new healthy habit or change a bad one. Write it down. And hang it up somewhere you can see it every day.

Got your reason? Great.

Now let’s get into the science of habits.

How to Build Healthy Habits (The Three Parts)

As Charles Duhigg points out in The Power of Habit (a must-read for anybody interested in behavior change), there are three parts to a habit:

#1) Cue (what triggers the action): It can be a feeling: I’m tired, I’m hungry, I’m bored, I’m sad. Or it can be a time of day: it’s Monday at 9am, work is done, etc.

#2) Routine (the action itself): This can either be a negative action you want to cut back: I drink soda, I eat cake, I snack, I drink alcohol, I smoke cigarettes, I watch TV – or a positive one: I go to the gym, I go for a run, I do push-ups, I read a book.

#3) Reward (the positive result because of the action): I’m now awake. I am temporarily happy. My hands/mind are occupied. I can forget the bad day I had. I feel energized. I feel good about myself.

Depending on your routine/action above, habits can either be empowering and amazing, or part of a negative downward spiral. Your body isn’t smart enough to KNOW what it needs to do: it just wants to fix the pain or chase the pleasure of the cue, and whichever way you choose to respond will become the habit when it’s done enough times.

Factor in genius marketing, behavioral psychology, and an environment set up for us to fail – and bad habits rule us.

It’s why we crave certain foods, why we can’t help but check our phone every time it vibrates, and why we can’t keep ourselves from watching one more episode or grinding one more level in World of Warcraft.

Duhigg lays things out very clearly:

“There is nothing programmed into our brains that makes us see a box of doughnuts and automatically want a sugary treat.

But once our brain learns that a doughnut box contains yummy sugar and other carbohydrates, it will start anticipating the sugar high. Our brains will push us toward the box. Then, if we don’t eat the doughnut, we’ll feel disappointed.”

Picture this:

• We have trained your brain to take a cue (you see a doughnut), anticipate a reward (a sugar high), and make the behavior automatic (nom nom that donut).
• Compare that to a cue (you see your running shoes), anticipate a reward (a runner’s high), and make the behavior automatic (go for a run!).

The Dark Knight himself said it best: “It’s not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me.”

Let’s take a look at each part of the habit-building process and start to hack the sh** out of it!

Learn Your Cues: Recognize the triggers.

Whether you are trying to change an old habit, stop an unhealthy habit, or begin a healthy habit, it starts with the first step in the process:

“The Cue.”

If you want to stop drinking soda, but feel like you need it every afternoon to get through work, your brain has been wired to think SODA after the cue:

• Cue: I’m tired, thirsty, and have no energy.
• Routine: I drink a soda around 3pm.
• Reward: Weeeeee caffeine! Sugar! Happy! My life has meaning!

When identifying bad habits to avoid, it starts by becoming aware of the cue that sets the habit in motion. Simply being aware of the cue is a great start to breaking the cycle:

• When I get bored (cue), I eat snacks (routine), and it fills the void with a happy stomach (reward).
• When I come home from work (cue), I plop down on the couch and play video games (routine), and it helps me forget about work (reward).
• When I get nervous (cue), I start to bite my nails (routine), to take my mind off the awkwardness (reward).

So if you are looking to break a bad habit, it begins by identifying what the cues are that make you take the action that you’re trying to stop.

At the same time, you can mentally train yourself, just like Pavlov’s dog, to build a new healthy habit by identifying the habit you want to build and the cue you want to use to proceed it:

• When I wake up (cue), I will go for a walk (routine), and reward myself with an audiobook on the walk (reward).
• When I get tired (cue), I will drink black coffee instead of soda (routine), and along with the caffeine boost. (reward), I’ll get new running shoes after 30 soda-free days (reward), and satisfaction from the weight loss thanks to fewer calories (reward).
• When I come home from work (cue), I will walk straight to my computer to work on my novel for 30 minutes (routine), and reward myself with Netflix after I have written 500 words (reward).

So, whether you’re breaking a bad habit or starting a new one, it begins by recognizing the cue that triggers the habit.

Once you recognize or pick the cue, you can start working on fixing the routine (action).

The Key to Sustainable Healthy Habits: Use Systems

“Steve, I get it, but I still struggle with the ‘building the routine’ part…for some reason I just can’t bring myself to do it.”

Yup – welcome to the toughest part of a habit:

The Routine (the action itself!).

This is where we’re going to start thinking and acting like nerds and scientists.

Whether we’re trying to stop a negative routine (stop drinking soda) or start doing a healthy routine (start running), both need to be addressed with a different plan of attack.

For starters, we’re going to stop relying on two things:

• Willpower: if you have to get yourself to exercise, you’ll give up when you get too busy or it’s too cold.
• Motivation: if you need to be motivated, you’re going to give up and then beat yourself up for not being more motivated!

Both motivation and willpower are finite and fickle resources that will abandon you when you need them most. Suckers and chumps hope and pray that they have enough motivation and willpower to build a habit. That’s clearly a:

Not us though!

We’re going to remove both from the equation and use systems and outside forces to make the routine even easier to build (or tougher to build if it’s a bad habit you’re trying to swap!).

This can be done in a few ways:

• Environmental hacks: making the routine easier by removing steps needed to complete it, or adding steps between you and a bad habit.
• Programming hacks: add your habit to your daily calendar, track your progress daily with a journal, and make it part of your day.

We are products of our environment. We can use this information to our advantage and make the process of building a new habit or changing a bad habit easier by modifying our environment. I dig into this more fully in our article: “Build your Batcave for Habit Change,” but I’ll cover the basics here.

Look at the places you spend your time. Reduce the steps between you and a good habit, and increase the steps between you and a bad habit. You’ll be less reliant on willpower and motivation and more likely to do the healthy habit or skip the bad habit.

Here are five examples of environmental hacks you can use: 

1. RUN EVERY MORNING: Go to sleep with your running shoes at the foot of your bed, with your running uniform laid out already. Hell, you can sleep in your running/workout clothes. Put your alarm clock on the other side of the room so you HAVE to get out of bed to turn it off.
2. GO TO THE GYM AFTER WORK: Pack your gym bag BEFORE going to sleep the night before. That way, every morning you already have a bag to throw in your car or bring with you. As soon as 5pm hits, you are in your car on your way to the gym. (Don’t want to head to the gym? Here’s how to build a gym in your home). 
3. EAT HEALTHIER: Don’t give yourself the option of not eating healthy – throw out the junk food in your house and start preparing meals the night before. Put a lock on your web browser from ordering pizza online (yes, you can do that now), and don’t drive down the street full of fast food places.
4. WATCH LESS TV/PLAY FEWER GAMES: Use your laziness in your favor. Unplug the TV/system. Increase the steps between you and watching the TV. Put parental controls on your own system and have your friend set the time limit and the password. I knew somebody who put his TV in his closet and cut his TV viewing by close to 100%. Don’t rely on willpower – make it more difficult!
5. CHECK YOUR PHONE LESS: Turn off your notifications and uninstall the apps that waste your time. Put your phone in Do Not Disturb mode when you are at work, and put it in your desk drawer. Don’t rely on willpower to get yourself to not check your phone when it buzzes – get rid of the buzz.

You can also use programming hacks to help build NEW healthy habits: 

• EXERCISE: If you want to exercise more, set calendar alerts at the beginning of your week so that every day at 8AM you receive a cue (ding! on your phone) and a reminder to do the activity. You’re much more likely to stay on target when the activity has been scheduled ahead of time.
• HEALTHY EATING: Consider batch cooking! If cooking healthy meals every night sounds like way too much work (I hear you on that), consider doing it all on ONE day – it’s a significant time-saver, and it also will reduce the steps between you and healthy eating because the meal is already cooked and in the fridge!
• WRITING: If you want to write a book, tell yourself you have to write 500 crappy words every day. This is how I wrote Level Up Your Life. Buy a calendar, and draw a big red X on every day you complete your task. Make your singular focus every day continuing the streak^[1].

Make the Reward Momentum-Building

And we are finally at the third part of the habit:

“The Reward.”

When looking to replace bad habits, do some reward analysis on your bad habits:

Soda gives you a caffeine kick and a burst of energy in the afternoon when you’re tired.

Can you replicate that energy boost for your body in a healthier way? Perhaps you can switch to black coffee and go for an afternoon walk.

Here’s another example:

You find you spend too much time watching TV because you love escaping into worlds, and it’s affecting your health.

Can you listen to your favorite audiobook only when you walk?

(This is called temptation bundling).

This step will require some analysis, by digging into the reward you’re trying to recreate, without the negative action. This can lead your brain to some tough places, but it’s healthy to dig into it.

For example, if you  want to start drinking less (or give up completely), you might discover that the reward you’re chasing is actually “escape from a job I hate” and “avoiding social anxiety.”

Dig into your reward and what your brain is craving, and then see if you can reverse engineer a healthier routine with the same reward.

And then use outright bribery to get yourself to actually do the new healthier and choose the better action/routine.

What works for science and physics also holds true to building habits: inertia and momentum will work against you when it comes to building habits…until it starts to work for you as the habit becomes automatic.

We can fix the third part of the habit-building loop, the reward, with momentum-building prizes or results to bribe ourselves to continue. With each healthy and positive reward, with each completed routine, we make the habit sliiiiightly more likely to become more automatic the next time.

In other words, create rewards that reward you back!

DON’T reward your routine (running!) with an unhealthy reward (cake!). That’s “one step forward, two steps back.” And nutrition is 90% of the equation when it comes to weight loss anyway!

DO reward your routine (running for 5 minutes every day for 30 days straight) with a reward that makes you want to keep running (a snazzy new pair of running shoes).

Our new app, Nerd Fitness Journey, specifically follows this “cue, routine, and reward” format to help build new habits. In the app, we “reward” you with cool loot and XP, so you can level up (literally) while you getting lean and strong.

If you’re interested, you can try it for free right here:

5 Hacks for Effortless Healthy Habit building

Your life will get busy. 

There will be days when you don’t want to do your new habit. Or you want to backslide and go back to old habits. Actually, that will pretty much be every day, especially early on.

So don’t leave it up to yourself!!!

Stop relying on yourself and start relying on outside forces. Here are the best tips you can use to get yourself to actually follow through with a habit:

1) RECRUIT ALLIES: find a friend or group of friends to build the habits with you. A recent study ^[2] showed that:

Among the weight loss patients recruited alone and given behavioral therapy, 24% maintained their weight loss in full from Months 4 to 10.

Among those recruited with friends and given therapy plus social support, 95% completed treatment and 66% maintained their weight loss in full.

You do not have to go on this habit-building journey alone. Building a guild or recruiting a group of people to support you and help you and make you better could be the difference-maker in building habits!

When your friend is already at the gym waiting for you, you HAVE to go. If it was up to you, skipping out and watching Netflix has no negative consequences. Recruit friends and allies!

Don’t have that support group at home? Consider joining ours 🙂

Remember, those first few weeks are the toughest, which means they’ll require the most effort to get started.

2) CULTIVATE DISCIPLINE WITH ACCOUNTABILITY: When you can’t get yourself to follow through on a new healthy habit you’re desperately trying to build, make the pain of skipping the habit more severe than the satisfaction you get from skipping it.

Allow me to introduce some BRUTAL consequences:

• Every time I skip ______________ this month, I will pay $50 to my wife/husband/friend who will donate my money to a cause I HATE.
• Every time I decide not to _______________ this month, I have to run around my house naked.
• Every time I do ____________ when I shouldn’t, I will let my three-year-old do my makeup before work.

Do any of these results sound like fun? If you can’t afford to pay your friend $50, if running naked around your house might get you arrested, and if you’ll get fired looking like a drunk clown thanks to your kid’s makeup skills…maybe you just do what you know you need to do. The more painful it is to skip something, the more likely you’ll be to actually suck it up and do it.

3) NEVER MISS TWO IN A ROW. What happens if you miss a day? Who cares! One day won’t ruin you – but two days will, because 2 becomes 30 in the blink of an eye.

It’s something I bring up in this video:

As pointed out in a research summary:

“Missing the occasional opportunity to perform the behavior did not seriously impair the habit formation process: automaticity gains soon resumed after one missed performance.^[3]

4) DON’T PICK HABITS YOU HATE: “Steve, I know I should run so I’m trying to build a running habit even though I hate running.” Stop.

Can you get the same results with a different habit, like rock climbing or hiking or swing dancing? Pick a habit that isn’t miserable and you’re more likely to follow through on it.

At the same time, we have tons of success stories of people who went from hating exercise to loving how it feels.

It’s because they made the habit part of a bigger picture: “I am working out because I am building a kickass body so I can start dating again!”

It’s because they had a BIG enough why to overcome their initial dislike of exercise until they learned to love how exercise made them feel.

5) TRY TEMPTATION BUNDLING: Consider combining a habit you dislike with something you LOVE, and you’ll be more likely to build the habit.

If you hate cleaning your apartment, only allow yourself to listen to your favorite podcast when you are cleaning or doing the dishes.

Want to go to the gym more? Allow yourself an hour of watching Netflix, but ONLY while you’re on the elliptical.

This is called temptation bundling, and it can be a powerful change.

The Secret to Fulfilling Your Resolution (Do Less)

Now that you’re educated like a boss on the different parts of a habit, it’s time to build one!

I’ll leave you with a final bit of advice: if you decide that you want to run a marathon or save the world or lose hundreds of pounds, you’re going to screw up unless you internalize the following information:

DO WAY LESS.

Or in the immortal words of Kunu from Forgetting Sarah Marshall: “The less you do, the more you do”:

Pick ONE habit, make it small, and make it binary. Something that at the end of every day you can say “yes I did it” or “no I didn’t.”

Habits that are nebulous like “I am going to exercise more” or “I’m going to start eating better” are more useless than a Soulcycle membership for Jabba the Hutt.

Here are big examples. Be specific. Be small. And track it:

• Want to start exercising more? Awesome. For that first week, ONLY go for a walk for just 5 minutes every morning. Literally 5 minutes.
• Want to start cooking your own healthy meals? Just aim for one meal per day or one meal per week. Whatever works for you and your schedule.
• Want to stop drinking a 2 liter of Mountain Dew every day? Scale it back to 1.9 liters a day for a week. Then 1.8 for a week. Then 1.7…
• Want to get out of debt and build the habit of frugality? Start by saving an extra five bucks a day, or finding a way to earn an extra 5 bucks a day.
• Want to learn a new language? Speak your new language out loud for 10 minutes per day. That’s it!

Keep your goals SMALL and simple. The smaller and simpler they are, the more likely you are to keep them. And the habit itself pales in comparison to the momentum you build from actually creating a new habit.

I don’t care how many calories you burn in a 5-minute walk, just that you can prove to the new YOU that you can build the habit of walking, and only then can you up the difficulty.

We’re thinking in terms of years and decades here! So think small.

My real-life example: I wanted to build the habit of learning the violin at age 31, but couldn’t get myself to do it because I told myself I was too busy, which is a lie (“I only have 25 minutes; I need 30 minutes to practice…might as well not practice at all”), and thus I never played!

Once I lowered the threshold to “I have to only play for 5 minutes per day,” it gave me permission to pick it up here and there – and I ended up practicing WAY more frequently, and got better much faster.

I still suck, mind you, but I’m lightyears ahead of where I was before!

And please: DON’T BUILD ALL THE HABITS AT THE SAME TIME. 

If you’re new to building habits, or you have never stuck with anything long enough to make it automatic, it’s because you did too much. Habits are compound interest.

As you build a new habit, it bleeds over to other parts of your life and makes future habits easier to build too – momentum!

As Mark Manson lays out in his guide on Habits: 

“Willpower is like a muscle. It can be exercised and practiced and built up. It can also be forgotten, weakened and atrophied.

Just like going to the gym and building up strength and endurance, you can build up your discipline and willpower over a long period of time by setting and accomplishing a series of tasks on a consistent basis.”

You’ve probably tried the whole “build all the habits at once” and it doesn’t work. So try building ONE habit for 30 days. And then pick a habit that stacks on top of that one and helps you build more and more progress and more and more momentum.

Start today: Pick Your Habit and Go

I’ll leave you with a final quote from Duhigg’s The Power of Habit:

“If you believe you can change – if you make it a habit – the change becomes real. This is the real power of habit: the insight that your habits are what you chose them to be. Once that choice occurs – and becomes automatic – it’s not only real, it starts to seem inevitable, the thing…that bears us irresistibly toward our destiny, whatever the latter may be.”

You’ll need more brainpower initially, until your default behavior becomes the automatic habit-building you’re chasing.

With each day of you building your new habit, you’re overcoming any self-limiting belief, building momentum, and becoming a habit-building badass! And then those habits become automatic. Then, we rejoice:

So today, I want you to look at just ONE habit you want to change:

• Identify the cue that spurs it on – Is it the time of day? Boredom? Hunger? After work? Stress?
• Identify the potential rewards – Happiness? Energy? Satisfaction?
• Identify a new routine you’d like to establish that results in the same “reward” from the negative behavior…but in a more productive and healthy way.

And I know this journey is tough – it’s the reason I’ve been working with a coach myself for the past 4 years. Having somebody else to help me pick the right habits and focus, somebody to keep me accountable, and somebody to learn from has been HUGE!

If want expert guidance on your healthy habit building in 2022, let’s make it happen! You can sign up for a free call with our coaching team in the box below to learn more about the program and see if it’s the right fit:

Our coaching program changes lives! Learn more here.

I want you to leave a comment below: pick ONE habit that you’re going to build this month and identify the three portions of the habit you’re looking to build.

Good luck – now go build some momentum.

And ONE habit.

-Steve

PS: Our new app, Nerd Fitness Journey, is all about creating new habits! It’s designed so when you wake up in the morning, you have a “cue” on exactly what “routine” to get started with. Plus, we “reward” you with cool loot and XP, so you can literally level up.

You can try it for free right here:

###

photo source: Syahrir Maulana © 123RF.com, KHOTCHARAK SIRIWONG © 123RF.com, alphaspirit © 123RF.com, Evolution – Alternative, Nattapol Sritongcom © 123RF.com, obradov © 123RF.com, Chayapon Bootboonneam © 123RF.com, Boris Rabtsevich © 123RF.com, #13/366 Placing the head, Mixed Messages

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So you want to lose weight and get in shape, but don’t want to leave your house?

Well, as your fitness Yoda, I will teach you a great bodyweight workout routine that you can do ANYWHERE: In your living room, at a park, or in a galaxy far, far away… 

These are the types of workouts we build for our busy Online Coaching Clients, and I’m pumped to share it with you today! 

Let us build a bodyweight training program for you!

Let’s dig into the different parts of this workout and get to the action:

• Can You Build Muscle Mass With Bodyweight Exercises?
• Beginner Bodyweight Workout Video (and Sheet).
• 12 Best Bodyweight Exercises for Beginners
• Is Bodyweight Training Effective for Weight Loss?
• What’s Next After the Beginner Bodyweight Workout?

Make sure you also download the Beginner Bodyweight Workout PDF so you can track your progress and level up at home.

I’ll send it on over when you join the Nerd Fitness Rebellion in the box below:

Note: If you’re here because your gym is shut down due to the outbreak of Covid-19, check out our guide “How to Stay In Shape (While Staying Inside).”

Can You Build Muscle Mass With Bodyweight Exercises?

You want to know:

Can you build muscle mass with bodyweight exercises?

Yep, bodyweight exercises can build muscle mass, as long as continuously challenge your muscles by:

• Increasing reps.
• Decreasing your rest periods.
• Performing more difficult variations.
• Increasing your time under tension (by going slower).

Just ask our friend Jimmy here, who got in great shape using bodyweight exercises in his apartment:

You just need to make sure you have the right program to follow.

Enter the Beginner Bodyweight Workout.

I’m going to take you through a basic home workout today that can be completed anywhere – in your house, apartment, out at a park, in your basement, on the moon, wherever.

Beginner Body Weight Workout Video & exercises

This is the Beginner Bodyweight Workout (3 Circuits): 

• 20 Bodyweight squats.
• 10 Push-ups.
• 10 Walking lunges (each leg).
• 10 Dumbbell rows (use a milk jug or other weight).
• 15 Second Plank.
• 30 Jumping jacks

We turned this bodyweight workout into a fun infographic, because that’s how we roll around here:

Jump to the “Best Bodyweight Exercises” section for a full breakdown of each movement.

In a circuit routine, you’ll do each exercise in succession without a break in between (if you’re able).

• Once you’ve finished all exercises in the circuit, do it again.
• If you’re still able after the 2nd run through, go for a third.

Because all of these exercises come one after another, you’re bound to get tired – and that’s okay!

It’s better to stop and take a break than to do an exercise incorrectly.

Before you start, don’t forget to do a Dynamic Warm-Up – Make sure to get your heart rate pumping and get your muscles warmed or you’re just asking for injury.

You can run in place, jump rope, do a few push-ups, pedal on a stationary bike, do some punches and kicks, jog up and down your stairs, and/or twist and swing your arms and legs to get them moving!

Here’s a beginner warm-up you can try:

After you’ve completed your workout at home, feel free to cool down and stretch. 

“HOW OFTEN SHOULD I DO THE BEGINNER BODYWEIGHT WORKOUT?”

Do this routine 2-3 times a week, but never on consecutive days.

You don’t build muscle when you’re exercising, you build muscle when you’re resting, so try not to do a strength training routine (of the same muscle groups) two days in a row.

I like to follow a training pattern of:

• Strength training on one day (like this workout).
• 20 minutes of interval training the next.
• Back to strength training.
• Back to interval training or rest!

Alternatively, pick one of these fun exercises to do on your off days instead!

In addition to checking out our Online Coaching Program, make sure you download the worksheet for this workout by joining the Rebellion (our free online community)!

I’ll send it to you right away when you sign up in the box below:

The 12 Best Bodyweight Exercises For Beginners

As laid out above in our Beginner Bodyweight Workout video, there are some key movements you can work on to help you get started strength training! 

Here’s how to do every bodyweight exercise covered today:

1) KNEE PUSH-UP

2) ELEVATED PUSH-UP

3) REGULAR PUSH-UP

We have a whole article on how to do a proper push-up, but we also cover it extensively in this 5-minute video:

4) ASSISTED BODYWEIGHT SQUAT (if you can’t do regular bodyweight squats):

 

5) PROPER BODYWEIGHT SQUAT:

If you want even more instruction, here’s how to do a proper bodyweight squat:

6) SUPPORTED LUNGES:

7) REGULAR LUNGES:

Here’s how to properly perform lunges. 

8) ONE ARM ROW (Use a milk jug, suitcase, or actual dumbbell):

9) PLANK

10) SIDE PLANK

11) WALKING JACKS (if you can’t do jumping jacks)

12) JUMPING JACKS

If you are looking for even MORE bodyweight exercises you can use in your workouts, make sure to check out our mega-resource:

 “The 42 Best Bodyweight Exercises You Can Do Anywhere.“

Note: We have helped hundreds of 1-on-1 Coaching clients get started with strength training and other awesomeness – but EVERYBODY starts with bodyweight training like these movements and this workout!

Our coaching program changes lives. Learn more here!

Is Bodyweight Training Effective for Weight Loss?

The question of the day is:

Is bodyweight training effective for weight loss?

Yep! Bodyweight training can be great for weight loss, as long as you have your nutrition dialed in.

If you don’t…then no, it won’t be your magic bullet.

That’s because a good workout and a crappy diet won’t help you lose weight.

After all, one of the Rules of the Nerd Fitness Rebellion is “you can’t outrun your fork” and you can’t out-train a bad diet!

This means if you don’t ALSO fix your relationship with food, then all the exercise you do won’t help you get in shape.

It’ll just make you frustrated…

So if you are trying to lose weight, then you need to fix your nutrition first and foremost.

Remember, when it comes to fitness, eating healthy is key!

You have two options here to dial in your nutrition:

• Track your food by counting calories – you can calculate your daily caloric needs here.
• Look into proper portion sizes, like with our healthy plate strategy:

We’ve actually developed our own 10-level nutrition system and mindset blueprint in Nerd Fitness Prime, but let me break this down into some basics:

• Eat natural, whole foods whenever possible.
• Cut back on sugar and liquid calories wherever you can. The stuff is in everything!
• Put vegetables and fruit on your plate!
• Know your fats and carbs – these are the foods we can overeat without realizing it.
• Make sure you get enough protein each day (meat, chicken, fish) – this helps with rebuilding muscles and things like that.

You can download a Free 10 Level Diet Guide too when you join the Rebellion and sign up in the box below:

The raw honest truth: how you eat will be responsible for at least 80% of your success or failure.

If you’re doing bodyweight workouts because you’re interested in losing weight, know that training is only 10-20% of the puzzle!

If you need help figuring this all out, or you just want your own Yoda to tell you what to do, you’re in the right place!

We’ve been helping busy people like you train at home and make better food decisions without hating life! It’s our 1-on-1 Online Coaching Program, and it might be a great fit for you.

Schedule a call with us to learn more by clicking on the image below:

After the Beginner Bodyweight Workout: Next Steps!

Do this Beginner Bodyweight Workout for the next 4-6 weeks and focus on getting better.

If doing just one circuit of the workout was really challenging, no big deal!

Write down how you did, and try to do just 1 more rep or exercise next time through.

The whole point is “do a bit more than last time.”

I also have MULTIPLE options for you to take for your next step too. Pick the option below that best aligns with your goals and timeline:

1) If you want step-by-step guidance on how to lose weight, eat better, and get stronger, check out our killer 1-on-1 coaching program:

Our coaching program changes lives. Learn how!

2) If you want a daily prompt for doing workouts at home, check out NF Journey. Our fun habit-building app helps you exercise more frequently, eat healthier, and level up your life (literally).

Try your free trial right here:

3) Join the Rebellion! We need good people like you in our community, the Nerd Fitness Rebellion.

Sign up in the box below to enlist and get the Beginner Bodyweight Workout sheet so you can print out the sheet and train at home!

I’d love to hear how this workout went for you, and how else we can help!

This is what we’ve dedicated our lives to, and you’re now part of a killer community.

Welcome to the Nerd Fitness Rebellion!

You can do this, we got your back!

-Steve

PS: If you’re looking for more workout routines to follow, I got you covered:

• Beginner Strength Training Workouts: start with bodyweight training and work up to barbell training!
• Advanced Bodyweight Workout Circuit: warning – this will kick your ass 🙂
• 6 Levels of Gym Workouts: Never wonder what to do in the gym again! Follow these 6 levels of workouts to go from Newbie to Gym Hero!
• 42 Bodyweight Exercises You Can Do Anywhere: Who needs a gym? Simply pick the exercises from each category and build your own workout!

PPS: As a reminder, today’s bodyweight workout looks like so:

Click on it to pull up your own PDF of the infographic!

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PHOTO SOURCES: Four Bricks Tall: “Follow or follow not. There is no follow for follow.” and “Morning run with the Fitbit“, Ekaterina Minaeva © 123RF.com, parilovv © 123RF.com.

INFOGRAPHIC SOURCES: superhero costume, male graphic, female graphic, various graphics, icon, milk jug, robot, comic background.

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So you want to start working out, but you don’t want to leave the house?

No problem! 

Our online coaches specialize in helping people get fit from home.

If you’re in a hurry, sign-up for our free weekly newsletter and we’ll send you PDFs of our “Work Out at Home” guides!

Download our Free Home Workout Guides!

Let’s go over the 8 Best At-Home Workouts so you can start training today: no gym or equipment required!

• A note on warming up and cooling down
• Home Workout #1: Beginner Bodyweight (Start Here)
• Home Workout #2: Advanced Bodyweight 
• Home Workout #3: The 20-Min Hotel Routine
• Home Workout #4: High-Intensity Interval Training 
• Home Workout #5: Attack of the Angry Birds
• Home Workout #6: Train like Batman
• Home Workout #7: The PLP Progression
• Home Workout #8: The Star Wars Workout!
• Bonus No-Equipment Workout: The Playground Circuit
• Can home workouts build muscle or help with weight loss?
• How to build your own at-home workout

Note: If you’re here because your gym is shut down due to the outbreak of Covid-19, check out our guide “How to Stay In Shape (While Staying Inside).”

At Home Warm-ups and stretching routines

No matter which at-home workout you pick, I want you to start with one important thing:

Warm-up!

I cover why you should always warm up in an article found right here. It doesn’t have to be much though, give it about five minutes to get your muscles active and your heart rate up.

This will help you do exercises properly and help prevent injury. You can run in place, do air punches and kicks, or some jumping jacks.

Here is NF Senior Coach Staci (you might know her incredible story) showing you many beginner options you can use to warm up as well:

If you’re curious, here’s my personal (advanced) warm-up:

• Jump rope: 2-3 minutes 
• Jumping jacks: 25 reps
• Bodyweight squats: 20 reps
• Lunges: 5 reps each leg.
• Hip extensions: 10 reps each side
• Hip rotations: 5 each leg
• Forward leg swings: 10 each leg
• Side leg swings: 10 each leg
• Push-ups: 10-20 reps
• Spider-man steps: 10 reps

Our goal isn’t to tire you out, instead we want to warm you up.

That’s step one.

Completing your chosen at-home workout would be step two.

Below, you’ll find 8 sequences you can follow along with!

Home Workout #1: Beginner Bodyweight

This at-home routine, as we lay out in our Beginner Bodyweight Workout article, is as follows:

• Bodyweight squats: 20 reps
• Push-ups: 10 reps
• Walking lunges: 10 each leg
• Dumbbell rows (using a gallon milk jug or another weight): 10 each arm.
• Plank: 15 seconds
• Jumping Jacks: 30 reps

We also turned it into a fun infographic with superheroes, because that’s how we roll:

 

The above is what we call “circuit training,” with the objective being to run through the workout sequence once, then again, then again.

Note: Not a milk drinker?

If you don’t have milk in the house for the rows, find something of roughly the same weight with a good handle.

Also, if you want to download this Beginner Bodyweight Workout as a worksheet, you can do so when you sign up in the box below:

It’ll help you track your progress as you begin your training.

Home Workout #2: Advanced Bodyweight 

If the beginner at-home workout above is too easy for you, move on to our Advanced Bodyweight Workout. The workout looks like this:

• One-legged squats – 10 each side [warning: super-difficult, only attempt if you’re in good enough shape]
• Bodyweight squats: 20 reps
• Walking lunges: 20 reps (10 each leg)
• Jump step-ups: 20 reps (10 each leg)
• Pull-ups: 10 reps [or inverted bodyweight rows]
• Dips (between bar stools): 10 reps
• Chin-ups: 10 reps [or inverted bodyweight rows with underhand grip]
• Push-ups: 10 reps
• Plank: 30 seconds

Not familiar with these moves? Check out the 21 Best Advanced Bodyweight Exercises for a full breakdown.

I warn you, the above sequence will hurt… in a good way. You should be proud if you can get through this three times.

Do you want to get as strong as possible so this workout ain’t no thang? 

Sign up in the box below to grab our guide, Strength Training 101: Everything You Need to Know. It’ll teach you all of these advanced bodyweight exercises!

Home Workout #3: The 20-Min Hotel Routine

Sometimes, you just plain find yourself stuck in a hotel room. Maybe you can find the hotel gym, but I bet it’s terrible! It probably has 2 machines, a broken treadmill, and no free weights. 

Ugh.

Instead, how about a 20-min workout you can do in the room itself! Utilize the furniture to its full potential.

Level 1

• Bodyweight squats: 20 reps
• Incline push-ups: 15 reps (feet on floor, hands on edge of bed or desk)
• One-arm luggage rows: 10 reps (each arm, use your suitcase as your weight)
• Reverse crunches: 10 reps

Level 2

• Overhead Squats: 25 reps
• Push-Ups: 20 reps
• Inverted Rows using the desk in your hotel room: 10 reps
• Reverse Crunches: 15 reps

Set the alarm clock to 15 minutes from now and see how many circuits you can do!

Check out our full post on hotel circuits if you want Level 3!

We have a LOT of business travelers throughout the Rebellion! Learn how they stay fit on the road with the Nerd Fitness Starter Kit!

Home Workout #4: High-Intensity Interval Training 

You don’t have to head to the gym to do High-Intensity Interval Training. You can do a complete routine right in your own home!

HIIT is just following a specific regimen where you vary your speeds and intensity throughout a shorter run, swim, bike, or row.

Unless you have a giant backyard, running at home might be tough.

But you know what doesn’t require a lot of room?

Burpees!

To complete a burpee:

• Start standing up, then squat down and kick your legs out.
• Do a push-up, bring your legs back in, and explode up into a jump.
• For a HIIT workout, try to do 20 repetitions, then rest for two minutes.
• Repeat until you hate yourself.

Check out our full guide on How to Start Interval Training for some more ideas on HIIT workouts.

You can also check out our post “The 20-Min HIIT Workout for Home” for another living-room-friendly interval routine!

Home Workout #5: Attack of the Angry Birds

The Angry Birds Workout is designed to be done when you have 5 or 10 minutes to kill.

Sort of like playing Angry Birds…

Here’s how The Angry Birds Workout Plan works: it’s deceptively simple – only four major movements.

• Bodyweight squats
• Push-ups
• Pull-ups (or inverted rows)
• Planks

If you don’t have time to run through the whole sequence, no problem!

Depending on how much time you have during the day, you can do your whole workout at once, or break up your training into four different sessions throughout the day (with each session being ONE of the exercises).

Here’s a sample day for your No-Equipment Workout:

• Wake up, do 40 jumping jacks to warm up, and then do bodyweight squats.
• At lunch, you grab your suitcase (if you’re at work, milk jug if you’re at home) and do inverted rows.
• After work, you do another 50 jumping jacks and then do your push-ups.
• After dinner, you do your planks while watching TV.

You could even split it up over two days if needed, but the goal would be to do it the whole sequence at once.

The main Angry Birds Workout article describes in detail Levels 1-6, but here’s Level 3 for you:

• Bodyweight squats: 50 reps
• Push-ups: 50 reps
• Pull-ups: 10 reps
• Planks: 3-minute hold

Once you’ve done the complete routine, you have my permission to whip out your phone and play the actual game!

Home Workout #6: Train like Batman

We love the Caped Crusader here at Nerd Fitness, so naturally we have The Batman Bodyweight Workout for you to try!

Bonus points if you somehow do this no-equipment workout in a cave, as that’s how Bruce Wayne would roll.^[1]

This workout is separated into two days for you:

Batman No-Equipment Workout Day 1:

• Rolling squat tuck-up jumps: 5 reps
• Side to side push-ups: 5 reps
• Modified headstand push-ups: 5 reps
• Jump pull-up with tuck / Pull-up with Tuck-up: 5 reps
• Handstands against wall: 8 seconds

Batman No-Equipment Workout Day 2:

• ‘180 Degree’ jump turns: 5 reps
• Tuck front lever hold: 8 seconds
• Tuck back lever hold: 8 seconds
• Low frog hold: 8 seconds

This is a relatively advanced workout already, but if you want to progress to the next level, check out the main Batman Bodyweight Workout for tips on how to do just that.

Join our free weekly newsletter! It would make Alfred Pennyworth proud.

Home Workout #7: The PLP Progression

The PLP is a progressive program in which you complete one additional rep of three exercises – Pull-Ups, Lunges, and Push-Ups – every day, for two months.

NOTE: This is NOT a beginner program, and should not be attempted unless you have been training consistently and can do multiple repetitions of pull-ups and push-ups with great form.

Like this perfect push-up:

And this perfect pull-up:

Here’s how the PLP Progression works:

Day 1:

• Pull-ups: 10 reps
• Push-ups: 10 reps
• Lunges: 10 reps (each leg)

Day 2:

• Pull-ups: 11 reps
• Push-ups: 11 reps
• Lunges: 11 reps (each leg)

Day 3:

• Pull-ups: 12 reps
• Push-ups: 12 reps
• Lunges: 12 reps (each leg)

How long do you keep doing this?

As originally envisioned by Chad Waterbury, the PLP Workout lasts 60 days.^[3]

Yeah…by the end of it you’ll be doing more than 50 pull-ups.

There are two versions:

• If you can do 10 straight pull-ups: Start day 1 with 10 reps of each.
• If you cannot do 10 straight pull-ups: Start day 1 with 1 rep of each.

Complete your required reps each day in as many sets as you need, whenever you need to. The goal is to do it in as few sets as possible, but enough so that you can complete each rep with proper form.

Want to learn more? Check out my results on the PLP Workout.

Home Workout #8: The Star Wars Workout!

Do you have access to a hallway that you can commandeer for a bit?

Then you can do our Star Wars Workout!

It’s designed to be done in a very small space, like your home’s hallway…or an escape pod.

The “Padawan” Level of this workout is:

• 30-second knee or feet front plank (3 Sets)
• 10 assisted squats or squats (3 Sets)
• 10 doorway rows (3 Sets)
• A 60-second Farmer-carry (Farmer’s Walk) dumbbells (or milk jugs) (2 sets)
• March in place for 3 minutes of intervals (6 sets of 20 seconds on, 10 seconds off)
• 8 elevated or knee push-ups (4 sets)
• 60-second Doorway Leans (2 sets)

If you want to advance to the Jedi Knight or Master Levels, check out The Star Wars Workout, which will also offer you a full description of each move.

Bonus No-Equipment Workout: The Playground Circuit

Do you have a nearby playground? Why not work out there! If you have kids, you can do it together. Or let them ignore you.

I’ll give you a Level One workout, and a Level Two. Check out The 20-Minute Playground Workout for some Level Three exercises.

Level One

• Alternating step-ups: 20 reps (10 each leg)
• Elevated push-ups: 10 reps
• Swing rows: 10 reps
• Assisted lunges: 8 reps each leg
• Bent leg reverse crunches: 10 reps

Level Two

• Bench jumps: 10 reps
• Lower incline push-ups: 10 reps
• Body rows: 10 reps
• Lunges: 8 reps each leg
• Straight leg reverse crunches: 10 reps

After you’ve gone through a complete set three times, go down the slide!

Working out doesn’t have to suck…we know how to make it fun! Join the Rebellion to become part of our community!

Can Home Workouts Build Muscle or Help With Weight Loss?

Throughout our Online Coaching Program, we get two common questions for those wanting to train at home:

1. Can working out at home help me build muscle?
2. Can working out at home help me lose weight?

The answer to both of these: yep!

Let’s tackle them one by one.

#1) Can working out at home help me build muscle?

You can 100% build muscle mass at home.

Just ask out friend Jimmy here:

Read more on how Jimmy turned into Spider-Man from home!

The trick is to follow a progressive overload strategy, as Coach Jim outlines in this video:

With progressive overload, we want to make our workouts more and more challenging, thus putting additional strain on our muscles.

So to build muscle with home workouts, focus on:

• Increasing your repetitions.
• Decreasing your rest periods between exercises.
• Performing more difficult variations (knee push-ups to push-ups).
• Increasing your time under tension (by going slower).

That will help you build strength and muscle from your casa.

Next up:

#2) Can working out at home help me lose weight?

You can totally train at home for a successful weight loss strategy.

Again, we have a great example with one of our Online Coaching Clients, Sarah the Supermom:

The trick here is to couple your home workouts with adjustments to your nutrition.

We’re big believers that you can’t outrun your fork, so any successful weight loss plan will include a focus on building a healthy plate.

That will look something like this:

If you want some help on adjusting your nutrition, I’ve got two great resources for you:

• The Nerd Fitness Guide to Healthy Eating. This massive resource will help you slowly adjust your nutrition, without forcing you to give up the food you love (yes, you can still eat pizza here and there). No more diets, instead we’ll work on building habits together.
• Nerd Fitness Coaching. If you want to take it to the next level, one of our trained professionals can help you adjust your way of eating to help you reach your goals. No shame. No judgment. Just a like-minded nerd who will show you the way.

You don’t need to do this alone. Learn how we can help.

How to Build Your Own At-Home Workout

We just went over 8 workouts you can do at home (plus a workout you can do in a park).

You don’t have to stick to these though! I have two resources to help you design your own no-equipment workout:

1. The 42 Best Bodyweight Exercises: This guide will teach you how to perform the best bodyweight exercises – no equipment required! Check it out if you are unfamiliar with any of the movements referenced in today’s guide.
2. How To Build Your Own Workout Routine: Once you’re comfortable with a handful of bodyweight exercises, use this guide to pull them all together into a full-body workout!

That should get you going on building a workout you can do in the comfort of your own home.

Want more? Alright, eager beaver, I got you.

We built THREE options for people just like you:

1) If you want step-by-step guidance, a custom workout program that levels up as you get stronger, and a coach to keep you accountable, check out our killer 1-on-1 coaching program:

2) If you want a daily prompt for doing workouts at home, check out NF Journey. Our fun habit-building app helps you exercise more frequently, eat healthier, and level up your life (literally).

Try your free trial right here:

3) Join the Rebellion! We need good people like you in our community, the Nerd Fitness Rebellion. 

Sign up in the box below to enlist and get our guide, Strength Training 101: Everything You Need to Know. It’ll help you start incorporating these bodyweight moves into your training.

Alright, your turn: I’d love to hear how your home training is going!

Which workout above did you try? Did you make one of your own?

Leave a comment below with your results or any questions you have on working out at home.

For the Rebellion!

-Steve

PS: If you were going to buy one piece of equipment to utilize in your home, a kettlebell would offer you a lot of versatility:

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Photo Sources: Tithi Luadthong © 123RF.com, Evgenii Naumov © 123RF.com; Ekaterina Minaeva © 123RF.com; Hotel Room, af8images © 123RF.com, Tithi Luadthong © 123RF.com, Vintage House Bicycle,

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So you want to learn all about Dry January?

Giving up alcohol for the first month of the year is a growing health trend and something we’ve seen many of our Online Coaching Clients partake in. Today, we’ll share with you the same tips and tricks we provide them when abstaining from alcohol.

Is drinking hindering your progress? Let a NF Coach help you decide!

Here’s what we’ll cover in today’s guide:

• What is Dry January?
• What happens when you do Dry January? (Why take a month off drinking?)
• What are the benefits of Dry January?
• Who SHOULDN’T do Dry January? (The risks of cold turkey)
• How to start Dry January
• Tools to help you with Dry January (Additional resources)
• What to do in February (Next steps)

Pour yourself a tall one (of water) and let’s do this.

What Is Dry January?

As I mention in the video above, Dry January is the tradition of abstaining from alcohol for the month of January. You might also hear it called “Drynuary.”

While it’s gotten a lot of buzz (pun intended) in recent years, it actually dates back to 1942. The Finnish government launched a campaign called “Raitis tammikuu” or “Sober January” as a post-war effort to drink less.

Undoubtedly though, it’s been practiced by people in other places and times before that – as a way to focus and reset after the holiday season.

January doesn’t have a monopoly on sobriety though. 

You’ll also come across:

• Dry Feb, which started as a fundraiser in Canada to support those affected by cancer.
• Sober September, to mark the end of summer festivities.
• Go Sober for October (or Sober October).
• Dry July, an Australian charity similar to Dry Feb.

No matter what you call it, it’s all more or less the same goal: don’t drink for the month. 

What Happens When You Do Dry January? (Why Take a Month off Drinking?)

Here at Nerd Fitness, we’re really, really big fans of your “BIG Why” – the reason you start anything. 

Digging into your BIG Why can be incredibly helpful for you when you start any sort of health or fitness habit, and especially when you come up against challenges along the way (which WILL happen).

“Those who have a ‘why’ can bear with almost any ‘how.’”

-Victor Frankl

So before you dive further into Dry January, ask yourself “Why do you want to do it?”

Then dig deeper into that. Try to go three levels down! 

For example:

“I want to do Dry January so that I drink less.”

Deeper…

“I want to drink less because alcohol is really affecting my ability to get up early and workout.”

Deeper……

“Since I haven’t been able to work out regularly, I move terribly, and have a hard time keeping up with my kids. Drinking less will help me be there for them.”

Now we’re getting somewhere.

Make. It. Personal. 

You may tell your friends and family about Dry January, but at the heart of it all, it’s your journey.

Naturally, the more you can personalize your BIG Why, the more it will uplift you during difficult times this month (and beyond).

What Are the Benefits of Dry January?

Here are some of the positives of abstaining from alcohol for a month:

#1) Better Sleep

The negative effects of alcohol on sleep have been well documented.^[1]

However, with even just one night of heavy drinking, it doesn’t take a pile of scientific papers to let you know your sleep is affected.

Good sleep is one of those “domino habits” that affects so many other things in our day.

A good night of sleep can help you get up and workout in the morning (or just start the day sooner and get more done!). 

You’ll likely be better focused at any tasks you have. There have even been studies correlating lower amounts of sleep to obesity.^[2]

#2) Improved Mood

No doubt, better (and longer) sleep will improve your frame of mind. Not only that, but there is some evidence to suggest that reducing alcohol consumption might improve your mood in general.^[3]

#3) Money Saved

Booze is expensive! Especially if you’re going out for it! 

Many people’s New Year’s resolutions include seeking financial improvement. An easy target to reduce spending could be to cut out alcohol.

#4) Losing Weight

As we discuss in The Nerd’s Guide to Alcohol, booze is pretty much void of any nutrients.

Sure, wine and some other beverages might have some antioxidants here and there.^[4] But other than that, it’s more or less just alcohol, water, and calories.

That’s why you’ll often hear booze referred to as “empty calories.” Cutting back on alcohol will reduce your “calories in,” essential for weight loss. 

Not only will you cut the calories from the booze itself, but there’s another insidious effect alcohol can have on our weight loss efforts: the choices we make after a few drinks.

After a few cocktails, we may find our cravings increasing and our willpower decreasing. Avoiding this situation, by avoiding alcohol, can help support healthy habits.

At this point, we should note that not everyone will benefit from taking a month off drinking.

Who Shouldn’t Do Dry January? (The Risks of Cold Turkey)

We’ve just spent some time going over the benefits of a Dry January – and there are a lot! 

But we also need to give the very real warning that this is NOT for everyone. 

We’ll go over a few possible scenarios, but if there is ANY apprehension to starting Dry January for any reason, then please consult your doctor first.

#1) Alcohol Dependency

If you currently have a strong alcohol dependency, then going cold turkey can be potentially life-threatening. There are numerous withdrawal symptoms such as rapid heartbeat, increase in potential for seizures, and even hallucinations.^[5]

Again – and it bears repeating – if you believe you have any sort of dependency, please talk to your doctor before making dramatic changes in your alcohol consumption.

 #2) Predisposition to Seizures

As mentioned above, alcohol withdrawal can cause an increase in potential for seizures (due to an increase in your central nervous activity). 

If you are already knowingly prone to seizures for any reason, then a rapid swing in your drinking habits may exacerbate the situation.

 #3) Depression and Anxiety Issues

If you have been diagnosed, or suspect depression or anxiety issues, then sudden removal of alcohol as a possible coping mechanism may have detrimental effects. 

We recommend, as always, to reach out for professional support in these cases! 

You can find tons of outside resources in our guide, A Nerd’s Introduction to Mental Health.

In addition, if you feel like you want to start Dry January to absolve yourself of dietary “sins” from December, (“I can’t believe I ate and drank so much”), we’d also recommend that you revisit your BIG Why for starting.

We want this experiment to be beneficial to your health, not something that triggers a big swing in the opposite direction.

How to Start Dry January

“Alright Jim, I’ve gotten this far and I’m ready to start! I just stop drinking…right?”

Sure, sure – that’s the core of Dry January. But there are a few things to consider, to really personalize it and get even more out of it.

#1) Dry or Semi-Dry?

While the more popularly discussed variation of Dry January involves cutting out alcohol completely, perhaps you just use the month to do an alcoholic audit. You might just decide to reduce your consumption a bit. 

This may end up looking like one or more of the following:

• Eliminating weekday drinks only.
• Having drinks only on special occasions.
• Reducing the amount of drinks you have in one sitting.

The point is that this “Dry” January may look different to everyone, and that’s ok. As far as we know, there’s no “Dry January” police that are going to bust in your doors for any dietary infractions.

This was a much better reference than The Untouchables.

#2) Are You Stuck in “All or Nothing” Thinking?

On a similar note, Dry January presents the challenge of having absolutely NO alcohol for the entire month. So maybe you start the month off with the best of intentions – no alcohol for me! – and then something happens and you have a drink.

Then it’s time to give up the rest of the month and return to old habits!

Also, whenever I get a flat – I make sure to slash the other three tires!

Jokes aside, if you start with one plan and things don’t quite go how you expected – that’s fine. 

Get right back to it. You are still making changes and focusing attention on improving your health.

And again, no Dry January police.

#3) What Are Your Triggers?

With any behavior you’re looking to change, it helps to identify what triggers that behavior in the first place.

Charles Duhigg, in his New York Times bestselling book The Power of Habit, talks about cues that lead to routines, that lead to rewards (note: the rewards may not always be healthy)

If you’re able to identify triggers, you have a better chance of avoiding or adjusting them to support your new behaviors. 

In regards to alcohol, look for triggers related to:

• Time: Are you always drinking during a certain time of day, or day of the week?
• Location: How about always drinking in a certain place?
• Preceding Event: Is there something that always seems to happen beforehand, that then leads to having a drink?
• Emotional State: How do you usually feel before having a drink? Or even just having a craving to drink?
• Other People: Are you interacting with certain individuals before drinking?

Asking yourself these questions will help get to the root cause of your drinking habits. 

The other thing to consider here is “friction.”

James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, talks about habit change and the importance of “friction” – or how easy or hard you make an action. 

Specifically, we should look for ways to change our environment to increase or decrease friction. If you change your environment to reduce friction, you won’t have as many decisions to make to take the action you want. Then things start becoming automatic. 

For example, let’s say you want to “work out more.” Reduction friction might include putting your gym bag where you’ll always run into it, or setting a phone alarm to train.

Around here, we call these strategies “Hacking Your Batcave,” because of course that’s what we’d call it.

On the flipside, increasing friction for a habit we want to reduce (e.g., drinking) would mean we want to make that habit invisible. 

We can increase the friction with drinking by:

#1) Getting rid of all the booze in your house.

Dr. Berardi of Precision Nutrition often says:

If a food is in your possession or located in your residence, either you, someone you love, or someone you marginally tolerate will eventually eat it. 

That means if you don’t want to drink it, don’t keep it at home! 

#2) Avoiding areas where you can buy alcohol. 

• If you have a beer and wine aisle at your regular supermarket, consider if you can shop without going near it.
• You could also opt for grocery delivery, so you don’t even have to set foot inside a store with a beer/wine aisle.
• Change your routes – if you walk or drive by a bar or liquor store regularly, look for new ways to go. Out of sight goes a long way for out of mind. 

Strategically increasing and decreasing friction will go a long way towards reducing the habit of drinking. 

If you want more tips and tricks for habit change, I’ve got two great resources for you:

1. How to Build Healthy Habits: read this guide for 5 hacks to build habits that will STICK.
2. The 3 Layers of Habit Change: most people go about habit change backwards – here’s exactly how to flip it.

Tools to Help You With Dry January (Additional Resources)

Let’s chat about some additional resources that may help as you begin your month-long journey.

#1) Community and Apps

Some find community and social accountability really helpful during Dry January. Others just like to see a visual streak of their success.

Nerd Fitness Prime provides social support through Facebook and Discord to hundreds of other Rebels. We’ve already used that community to tackle other challenges like running 5Ks: 

And rocking chin-ups!

For seeing a visual streak of progression, we have our NF Journey App (which is part of your NF Prime membership). 

We’re actually rolling out a 31-day habit challenge this January (boy, what excellent timing!). So jump on in and let it help your Dry January too! 

You can try a 7-day free trial of NF Journey right here:

#2) Non-Alcoholic Drinks

When reducing or eliminating alcohol in your routine, it can sometimes help to have a substitute that gives you a similar experience as alcohol, without the depressive effects. These options have come a LONG way from the days of watery, tasteless non-alcoholic beers.

For NA beers, I’ve personally tried the following:

• Athletic Brewing Company: they make a great NA stout!
• Brooklyn Special Effects: hoppy and very tasty!
• Hop Tea: not quite beer, but the hop flavor gives a similar taste. (Caveat – many of these have caffeine.)
• Partake Brewery: offers a wide variety of styles, plus a small “discovery pack” – where you can try one of each brew.
• Wellbeing Brewery: the Victory Wheat is amazing!

For NA spirits, there are a couple good options here too:

• Ritual Zero Proof: the “whiskey” won’t fool anyone, but having a glass of it still satisfied a lot of the “ritual” of sitting down for a drink.
• Seedlip: it’s less of a stand-in, like Ritual Zero Proof, and more of their own distinct tastes. The Garden 108 was my favorite and a decent gin substitute.

They even make some non-alcoholic wine now, although admittedly I haven’t tried any yet:

• Aerial
• Tero

#3) Outside Help

As previously mentioned, if you do suspect you have an alcohol dependency issue – please talk to your doctor, your therapist, and/or social resources like Alcoholics Anonymous.

What to Do in February (Next Steps)

As you go through Dry January, it can be easy to focus on the end date. 

You just need to hold out a little longer, then you can get “back to normal!”

Instead, I’d recommend using the month of “no alcohol” to think about what February 1st will look like. 

This should be about introspection, not just avoidance. Use it as a time to look into your relationship with alcohol.

Ask yourself:

• What adjustments have you made during January that feel sustainable?
• What adjustments don’t feel sustainable?
• What had you been using alcohol for in the past? (Boredom? Coping? Anxiety?)

Studies have shown that Dry January can become a foundation for continued and long-lasting changes to your health.^[6]

However, for you to really see the benefits, you need to do the extra work here.^[7]

Well, we hope to have provided enough information about Dry January that you can make the best decisions for yourself.

There is no shame if you’re not ready for this challenge (just as there’s no shame if your friend doesn’t participate while you do).

Whatever you’re going to embark on, we are here to support! 

If you want to continue your journey with Nerd Fitness, you can check out:

#1) Our Online Coaching Program: we work hand in hand with our clients for all sorts of nutritional changes, including drinking less. 

You can schedule a free call with our team so we can get to know you and see if our coaching program is right for you. Just click on the image below for more details:

Our coaching program changes lives. Learn how!

#2) If you like the idea of doing challenges with a group of others, check out NF Journey. Our fun habit-building app helps you exercise more frequently, eat healthier, and level up your life (literally).

Try your free trial right here:

#3) Join the Rebellion! We need good people like you in our community, the Nerd Fitness Rebellion. You’ll meet all sorts of individuals who are trying to better themselves, by drinking less, eating more vegetables, or lacing up to go for a run. 

Sign up in the box below to enlist and get our Diet Cheat Sheet, which will show you where certain alcoholic drinks fall on the “healthy or less-healthy” spectrum. 

Let’s go!

-Jim

PS: Make sure you check out A Nerd’s Guide to Drinking for more thoughts on how to drink while still being a healthy individual.

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Photo source: Talk like a pirate day, boule13 © 123RF.com, Brian Jackson © 123RF.com, Dmytro Sidelnikov  © 123RF.com, The Pirates are coming, Jaromir Chalabala © 123RF.com; Ready to plunder the Californian Beaches…, Let’s quench our thirst. 

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“Winter is coming”

– House Stark.

Like the White Walkers of the old stories our Gran used to tell us, winter is descending upon us mere mortals, and we must prepare! This endless onslaught of vicious attacks on our brains and our bellies will leave us ripe for slaughter if we’re not careful:

Cold weather that encourages us to sleep in, avoid the elements, and say “maybe tomorrow.”

A sun that rises too late and sets too soon means we often go days without seeing the damn thing.

Cookies and candies bombarded us from everywhere we look.

Oh, and a f’ing global pandemic that has left us isolated and alone. 

These and more challenges are just begging us to go off the rails. And a built-in excuse called January 1st where we promise to “start over” helps us rationalize us “pausing” until then. Black Friday has come and gone. Cyber Monday is now in the rearview. Thanksgiving is now a distant memory.

And yet…the challenges are just getting started.

Luckily, we have 7 “hacks”  to survive these trying times. If you want, you can try them too!

Here’s what we’ll cover:

• Winter Hack #1: Don’t Run in the Wrong Direction
• Winter Hack #2: Never Two in a Row
• Winter Hack #3: Consider Skipping a Meal
• Winter Hack #4: Strength Train Before Big Meals
• Winter Hack #5: Don’t Rely on Motivation
• Winter Hack #6: Have a Backup Plan
• Winter Hack #7: It All Counts

Alright, let’s equip you with some strategies to survive the storm.

Winter Hack #1: Don’t run in the wrong direction

We need you back in the fight, right now.

We all see January 1st as the “reset,” and there’s nothing wrong with a reset to start out the year. The problem is when you compound your issues by digging yourself deeper into a hole that you have to eventually climb out of!

Say “F it” long enough, and the hole will start to resemble Bruce Wayne’s prison in The Dark Knight Rises:

Think of it like you’re on the starting line of a race for a healthy life that starts on Jan 1st. You have two options:

• A) Hang around the starting line: Hang out and wait for the gun to fire. Then start running.
• B) Run in the opposite direction. Run farther away from the starting line, so when the gun goes off you have even FARTHER to run in the race.

So, Step 1 is not running in the opposite direction. This means you can’t skip all your workouts and eat like crap and give up til January. This is you going the wrong way, and will make the task of “starting over” on January 1st that much more brutal.

Instead, do what you can to “tread water” and hang out around the starting line. If you CAN, stay on target. One bad meal doesn’t ruin things. One missed workout isn’t the end of the world. If you have an awful day, respawn and get back in the fight. Immediately.

A four-week freefall is a hole you’d rather not be in. You also don’t want to be in THIS hole:

But that’s beside the point…

So forget B. Let’s aim for A.

Winter Hack #2: Never Two in a Row

In the video above, I explain the importance of “Never Two in a Row.”

You’re human. And life happens.

What SHOULD NOT HAPPEN is missing two days in a row. Or eating TWO bad meals in a row. Or having TWO bad days in a row.

Why?

One bad day can feel like a speed bump if you’re trying to get healthy. Get back on track right away and there’s no problem.

However, missing two days in a row is like turning that tiny speed bump into the Misty Mountains. If you miss one day in a row, no problem! Just act like it didn’t happen and get back on track.

But once you miss two days in a row, you are now 67.42% more likely to fall into a multiple-week hole. Okay, I made up that statistic, but two days very easily becomes three, which very easily becomes a week, which easily becomes “I’ll wait til January.”

That’s running in the wrong direction. 

AIM TO NEVER EVER EVER miss two workouts in a row. If you miss a workout on Monday, go on Tuesday and get right back on track. If you eat pie for lunch, because it ain’t gonna eat itself, make your dinner healthy AF. Do that, and you’ll be fine.

So whenever you have a bad day or do something against your plan, I need you to respawn right away (“start over” in video game lingo) and make the next day the best day you possibly can.

Winter Hack #3: Consider Skipping a Meal

Spoiler alert: you’re going to eat lots of decadent food this upcoming month. (Unlike Noel’s delicious Thai Zoodle recipe above)

I know it. You know it. So we can do one of two things.

• We can pretend like it’s not going to happen, and then be surprised and beat ourselves up when we put ourselves in a carb coma and go on a calorie-induced bender.
• Or we can be smart about it and negate the impact these days have on our waistlines. Better yet, we can make these additional calories work FOR us.

For starters, our metabolisms aren’t that smart. Our weight will fluctuate based on total calories consumed over many many days, not after ONE power-bomb of a meal.

So, if you know you are going to eat a monster lunch and dinner (I see you, Christmas), eat a stupidly light breakfast, and a light breakfast tomorrow – the calories will average out in the long run.

Or, if you’re willing to dig in and do the research, SKIP breakfast (and maybe lunch) before your monster meal. It’s called “intermittent fasting,” and it’s what I do to stay on track during weeks when I know I’m going to eat poorly.

• First, I skip breakfast every day (I haven’t eaten breakfast for years now).
• Second, I might choose to skip lunch as well the day after a monster meal. Again, dig in and do the research (or just read this), and you’ll find that missing a meal isn’t the end of the world. In fact, it can lead to a healthier lifestyle for the right person.

If you’re interested in skipping a meal here or there, our snazzy new app has an intermittent fasting adventure in it that you can try RIGHT NOW.

Sign-up for a free trial right here:

Winter Hack #4: Strength Train Before Big Meals

Whether or not you take advantage of intermittent fasting, you can time your workouts to coincide with your unhealthy meals.

As I mentioned in our article on The 5 Rules of Weight Loss, think of all the calories you eat as first-year wizards at Hogwarts.

They need to be sorted into one of three houses (“Burn as Energy,” Store as Fat,” or “Rebuild Muscle.”)

The extra calories you eat over the holidays always go towards “store as fat” unless you give them a really good reason to head to the “build muscle” common room. Politely asking them won’t help.

You need to give them a reason. And that wonderful reason is STRENGTH TRAINING.

When you strength train before a big meal, the muscles you trained are broken down and need to be rebuilt. So, over the next 48+ hours many of those extra calories will be diverted to rebuilding (stronger) muscles instead of becoming fat.

Yeah, gyms have been hit or miss during the pandemic. But that doesn’t mean we can’t do bodyweight training from our living room.

Try a heavy strength training workout just a few hours before a holiday mean, then proceed to eat with everybody else. While they all lament “I’m so full, I ate too much, wahhhh,” you’ll know your calories are being used to rebuild muscle. So internally, you can start doing an evil villain laugh… Muahahahah, you know the one.

Work smarter (like a nerd).

Winter Hack #5: Don’t rely on motivation

Here’s another spoiler for you: you are NOT going to want to work out this month. It’s going to be dark and cold, and your nose is going to run (better catch it!), Zoom meetings are going to go on unending, you’re going to be hungover, and so on.

The amount of motivation you’ll need to get over these obstacles is gargantuan. So don’t force yourself to try and “dig deep” and just “work harder” and feel guilty when you’re “not motivated.”

Instead, do whatever you can to never, ever rely on motivation. Your body won’t say, “oh that’s okay, I’ll stay in shape because I feel bad for you.” There are 31 days in December just like there are 31 days in August.

This means you need to stay on track even though it’s much easier to do in the summer. So instead of motivation, build fail-safes to make sure you are staying healthy. Schedule your workouts in your calendar and set up alerts so you are reminded. Recruit a buddy so you can check in on each other.

Or go with one of these more diabolical examples:

Take a really really embarrassing photo of yourself, or type up a tweet with an embarrassing secret. Schedule it to post at 6:15 (or whatever time is early for you) every morning before you go to bed. Put your phone in the other room. If you don’t wake up on time, and run in the other room and cancel that tweet, it goes out! Better just get out of bed and train before work.

Give your co-worker $250. Tell him/her that you will work out 3 days per week, and text him a photo of your workout. If he/she does not receive that photo, they’ll donate $50 of your money to a political cause you can’t stand.

Set your credit card alerts to email you and your wife/husband every time it’s used. Agree ahead of time you’ll never use that card to buy fast food or else you’ll have to be on diaper duty for the next 3 months straight (or something that fits your situation).  

In each of the instances above, you’re going to do exactly two things:

1. Get really mad at yourself. Probably curse a lot. Swear vengeance on your past self.
2. Do the damn thing you know you need to do while also being mad at yourself.

Never ever ever rely on motivation. Now, motivation doesn’t hurt. It’s just not reliable. So if you are in need of some motivation to get started, try this watching this video to remind you that training in the winter makes you a badass:

Just don’t rely on it, or feel guilty when you don’t have it! Whenever you DO feel a burst of motivation, use that extra energy to build systems.

Here’s how to use motivation properly.

Winter Hack #6: Have a BACKup Plan

“Too cold today! Can’t go to the gym and do my workout, DAMN! Looks like I’ll just have to sit here and eat ice cream.”

“Ran out of groceries, and it’s snowing. I guess I’ll just have to order pizza.”

The problem with winter is that it makes the unhealthy option always the easiest. We’re lazy, and I have to imagine we’re a bit like bears in that we want to hibernate and store fat when it gets cold out.

We have this tiny voice in our head subtly nudging us to pick the path of least resistance: aka pizza and skipped workouts.

And we can’t let that voice win. Then, the White Walkers win. And we’re all screwed. So, instead, we’re going to MacGuyver the sh** outta our winter by having a backup plan prepared.

For example:

A Workout Backup PLan: Have a place in your house or apartment that you can go to and do the Beginner Bodyweight Workout, a workout from Nerd Fitness Prime, or some yoga.  It might not be as great as the gym (which may or may not be open), but it’s still a workout. It might mean investing in a door frame pull-up bar or a yoga mat, but a small investment for maintaining momentum through the winter is worth any amount of money. Here’s How to Build a Home Gym if you’re interested. 

A Nutritional Backup Plan: Have a healthy meal in your freezer that has already been prepared and ready to be heated up. We make horrible decisions when the fridge is empty and we’re hungry. The Sirens of Dominos and Pizza Hut beckon us to call them for a 30-minute delivery.

So use your own laziness to help!

Here are some things to consider:

• Have a meal in your freezer that’s all ready to go.
• Store SteamFresh veggies for emergencies.
• If you use delivery apps for crap food, delete them from your phone.

Do what you need to do to make it more difficult to make the wrong choice.  

Winter Hack #7: It All Counts

So you can only train for 15 minutes today instead of 20.

So you have time to do a few yoga poses instead of working out for an hour.

So your ONLY option at the holiday party is pizza and you didn’t have a great breakfast.

THIS DOES NOT MEAN YOUR WINTER IS RUINED.  80% IS STILL 80% BETTER THAN ZERO PERCENT.

Every little bit counts. It REALLY, REALLY does. Every small change, or even living off pie HALF of the time is FAR better than living off pie all the time. Swap ONE beer for ONE glass of water, and it’s a victory that will translate to your waistline. Do 5 push-ups as soon as you get out of bed, and it’s a victory.

Winter is a problem not because people make one bad mistake, but because one bad mistake quickly sets off a chain reaction of disasters justified by the fact that folks can’t do something 100%. So they opt for 0%.

If you don’t have time for a full workout, do half a workout! If you have to eat from a drive-through, no problem. Drinking water or a Diet Coke and grab some fruit as your side. 

So instead of our Fitness Switch being flipped “off” for winter, maybe our Fitness Dial just comes down to a “5.”

Here’s something else to try:

Every morning when you wake up, do 20 bodyweight squats, 10 push-ups, and if you have access to a pull-up bar (or gymnastic rings), hang from them for 30 seconds. No bar? No problem, here are 5 pull-up alternatives.

Make this the FIRST thing you do every day (using systems built back in point #6). That way, at least every day during the winter you’ve done something.

Together we can Brave the Winter

There you have it. 

While you don’t have to follow all 7 hacks this winter, even just adopting one or two might help you build some momentum between now and the new year.

And as always, if you need any additional help, we’re here for you.

What kind of help?

Well, you could consider:

#1) Our Online Coaching Program: a coaching program for busy people to help them make better food choices, stay accountable, and get healthier, permanently.

You can schedule a free call with our team so we can get to know you and see if our coaching program is right for you. Just click on the button below for more details:

Our coaching program changes lives. Learn how!

#2) Exercising at home and need a plan to follow? Check out Nerd Fitness Journey!

Our fun habit-building app helps you exercise more frequently, eat healthier, and level up your life (literally).

Try your free trial right here:

#3) Join the Rebellion! We need good people like you in our community, the Nerd Fitness Rebellion.

Sign up in the box below to enlist and get our Rebel Starter Kit, which includes all of our “work out at home” guides, the Nerd Fitness Diet Cheat Sheet, and much more!

Alright, that about does it.

But real quick, before somebody yells at me in the comments, yes I know a lot of Aussies and Kiwis are NF Rebels, and I know it’s nearly summer down there. You can laugh at us all you want, your winter will come soon enough. Oh, it will.  

Now, let’s hear from you:

What do you do when the going gets tough, when the temperature drops, and life gets busy as hell?

How do you fight back?

What are your favorite specific tricks or systems you use to stay on track?

Leave your comment below and share it with your fellow Rebels.

-Steve

P.S. If the cold weather is bringing you down, this guide on overcoming the winter blues may help.

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Photo source: Joerg Huettenhoelscher © 123RF.com, qwartm © 123RF.com, Ivanko Brnjakovic © 123RF.com

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