How to Get Shredded: Lose Fat and Gain Muscle (without strict dieting)

For the first time in my life, I truly understand how to get shredded. At the time of writing this I’m weighing in at 179.5 pounds, the lightest I've been since high school. I’m also the strongest I've been in my life: dead lifting 315 for 10 reps, busting out sets of weighted pull-ups with 45 pounds strapped to my waist, etc.

Here are 9 tips that can help you do the same.

I’ve always been "healthy" at least since I surpassed my awkward chubby pre-teen years.

I’ve always worked out, but I’ve never been able to put on serious mass or transform my body significantly because it’s always been challenging for me to get lean. Basically I always stayed lean because I was afraid that if I were to bulk up I would not be able to lose the necessary fat. Why is that?

A few reasons:

One is that food has almost always been my stress outlet and coping mechanism for when life is challenging or when I don’t feel fully present in my body. Especially since I gave up my crazy party years from my 20s food has been an emotional crutch. For several years, 23-26 I even dealt with cyclical bulimia that would come and go.

There’s a whole deep story they’re rooted in deep insecurity from childhood but that’s for another time. Moral of the story, I am someone who loves food genuinely, has had a challenging relationship with it, and never found a safe fun sustainable way to shed fat consistently… Until now.

I’m going to share with you several tips that have helped me lose over 10 pounds in the last month and a half and drop me to my lowest weight since high school meanwhile I’ve sustained all of my heavy lifts, and have even gain strength across-the-board while losing weight.

People say it can’t be done however I found real success with the following plan for myself.

Hacks for getting lean Without losing strength:

1. Don’t focus on cardio

Yes cardio is a great tool and one that I apply very frequently in my training. However, it should not be your go-to form of exercise. Why? Muscle mass is one of the most important aspects of weight loss. The more muscle you have on your body, the more calories your body needs as a baseline to sustain energy expenditure. If you have very low muscle mass your body needs less calories to sustain it, meaning that as you lean down it will be challenging for you to shed fat.

For anecdotal evidence, look at the difference between a marathon runner and a sprinter in their body types. Marathon runners often have a little bit of a gut. Even when they’re running so much their bodies do not look necessarily that athletic. Now contrast that with a sprinter. They’re always very lean, have six packs and large muscles.

Why is that? Sprinting cardio is high intensity over intervals which focuses on building strength even while moving. Regardless of your approach you want to make strength training a regular practice that you implement at least four days per week. Personally, I strength train 5 to 6 times per week.

2. Training style

I adopted the following training style from Ben Greenfield in his book Boundless, in which he shares that you can seriously ramp up your metabolic rate by conducting sprints on the assault bike between sets of strength training.

My training style throughout this cut has been to apply a very traditional "gym bro" split of back and biceps, chest and triceps, shoulders and arms, and legs. However, instead of the traditional 90 second rest between sets, I’m sprinting on the assault bike for at least one minute. My goal is to keep my heart rate up around 140 bpm which is optimal for fat burning. On the bike this will look like at least 10 to 15 cals. Yes these workouts are intense, they often take about 90 minutes, but after just one week my body was highly adapted to the intensity of this workout style. Beyond how my body looks I’ve never felt better. I think there’s something to with David Goggins is it up to, where choosing intentional suffering for a short period of time leads to way more chill vibes on the regular.

3. Food

The most important factor for someone wanting to know how to get shredded without it having to suck is diet.

Here’s how I eat, I use a tracker such as MyFitnessPal or Noom to understand my calories. I eat basically the same thing every day. For me that works and I love the simplicity. I do an adapted intermittent fast when consuming to half calf bullet proof coffee is before noon which is essentially 200 calories total.

For lunch I’m having three eggs, a half cup of garbanzo beans, a big spinach salad together with salsa. I’ll follow that up with two bananas. Throughout the rest of the afternoon I may have another piece of fruit and or a protein shake.

For dinner I like to go hard. I eat after my workout which usually takes place from 5 to 7. I’ll cook about 300-400 calories of either chicken breast or turkey, stir fry that with a ton of great vegetables including broccoli, peppers, zucchini, onion and mushrooms. I will bake an almost entire Butternut squash until it’s crispy dark. I will consume about 20 ounces of the squash which is usually about 3/4 of the vegetable. Squash is epic because it is so satiating and massive in volume yet it only has about 250 calories for the amount described above.

I’m not even done, following those first two courses I will have two, not one, but TWO blueberry chocolate peanut butter protein smoothies. How do I do this? It’s simple I add 1 cup of frozen blueberries, 1/2 cup of unsweetened organic almond milk, And one scoop of organic vegan protein. I blend this up in the Vita mix and it ends up being a sugar-free ice cream that is so delicious. So delicious that I eat two servings of this each night after my already massive dinner.

The best part is, I lose weight in total everything I describe has about 2000 calories. It’s important to design for volume, that’s why includes how much vegetables and what I eat and use minimum butter/oils in my pans.

Sauces are also critical. I don’t track salsa because it only has about 10 calories per serving, additionally I love to have a rotation of balsamic fig dressing from Trader Joe’s, and other zero added sugar sauces such as Primal Kitchen barbecue sauce. These can be rotated in a way that keeps the exact same meal feeling fresh. Sometimes I also sprinkle an ounce of feta cheese on my dinners for an extra treat.

Here's an example meal!

4. Recovery

Recovery is essential for cutting effectively and maintaining muscle mass. This is something that I’ve only just now unlocked for myself and it has truly transform my life and especially my mental health in the last six months.

What is recovery? It starts with amazing amazing amazing sleep. Protecting sleep at all costs. Buy yourself an Oura Ring so you can understand you were sleep cycles in patterns and how to optimize them. Once I started to feel how good it feels to recover at my best I have by choice changed a lot of things about my life. I often set boundaries that I am never out past 9 PM always in bed by 10 PM even when it’s date night. You can create an amazing adventurous life full of fun while still protecting your sleep you just sometimes need to be creative.

Beyond that, I’m also taking a good amount of supplements.

5. Supplements

I’m not a doctor. Before you go and buy these check with your physician to make sure they make sense for you. That being said, since I’m training really hard it’s easy for me to get burnt out. I take these daily as a way to protect my mitochondrial health and energy production. Regardless, if you want to get shredded sustainably, some form of supplementation will likely be supportive.

Here's what I'm taking currently:

Thorne AM/PM multivitamin

L carnitine

Glutathione

Magnesium Breakthrough by BioOptimizers

Glycine

Beet Root Extract

CoQ10

Essential Aminos

Fish oil

Probably the most controversial thing I Consume Is about 80 mg of melatonin every evening. A lot of people say you should never take more than 3 mg, but there’s some interesting research from the book melatonin miracle that shows Life enhancing benefits of taking massive doses, as melatonin leads to deep recovery in the body. Honestly I just feel so amazing taking it, and my recovery is so so good that it works well for me.

6. Activate recovery

Recover used to be really hard for me. I’ve always push my body to it’s absolutely limits and then be stuck to the couch for a few days.

However, when decided to commit to truly learn how to get shredded, I realized I needed to take my recovery to the next level. I found awesome energy recovery and benefits from adopting a three days on one day off cycle to training. Three days of hard-core interval training that I mentioned above followed by an active recovery day. So what does that active recovery day look like? It looks like three rounds of sauna ice bath 20 minutes in the sauna, 2 to 3 minutes in the ice bath. This is phenomenal for healing muscles and relaxing the nervous system. Additionally I will spend 20 minutes in the red light, which also has great benefits on our mitochondrial function leading to more access to daily energy.

On my recovery days I will sometimes also spend about an hour on an elliptical bike at a very low intensity while I consume YouTube or other interesting content. For me this hour flies by, and puts very low stress on my body. I’m able to burn an additional 500 calories while watching TV. That’s pretty cool.

7. Daily walks

Another one of the amazing things that I’ve adopted into my routine has been a minimum of three short walks of break up my workday. This is phenomenal for my mental health but also for total calories burned as well. Every 20 minute walk is about 100 calories burned. My nonnegotiable is that I do not look at my phone, I spend those 20 minutes focusing on slowing my breathing and paying attention to what I’m grateful for. This leads to way more overall energy as I’m not maxing out my brain with stress chemicals all day long. The short breaks really sustain my mental and emotional well-being of the day, and the best part is after three of these walks you’ve burned an additional 300 calories for the day.

8. Daily yoga practice

This is probably excessive for most people. However, I’ve been committing to a daily yoga practice in which I do at least 10 to 15 minutes in the morning after 10 to 15 minutes of foam rolling. I also go to a 45 Minute yoga class at 12 PM every day. For me this just works. In class I never push myself into physical challenge. If it's hard, I just do my own thing. That often looks like slow deep stretching that is very very restorative. This counteracts all the intensity that I place upon my body and keeps me feeling grounded throughout the day.

9. Refeed days (For your tummy & soul)

Allowing myself to be human on the weekends is the #1 tool for staying sane during this cut. At the time of writing this I am seeing a lady friend who is super fun. On the weekends we go out to dinner have fun and relax. I’m not tracking my food, and I usually I eat a ton.

I am still working out on these days so my metabolic rate is often high so I’m still burning what I put in my body. However, by not being restrictive I am not putting excessive stress on myself which helps me stay consistent. One of the biggest issues that people face is they go so hard with their training and restriction that their body stays in fight or flight constantly. In this state the body love to hold onto weight. If you want to cut effectively you need to make sure you’re managing your stress levels.

Re-feed days will keep your metabolism high, along with your spirits. Althought it can add a bit of time to your overall cut as you’re not losing weight on those days.

These are the practices that have helped me learn how to get shredded without strict dieting, helped me lose over 10 pounds of fat in the last month and a half, while continuing to get stronger. Have you tried them? What works for you? Let us know down below!

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