The complete system for transforming your body before summer. Every year it's the same cycle. January motivation. New gym membership. Maybe a few weeks of eating clean. Then February hits, the routine cracks, life gets in the way, and suddenly it's May and you're googling "how to lose weight fast" in a quiet panic.
I've been that guy. More times than I'd like to admit. Sixteen years of training and I still managed to waste entire winters doing everything except the one thing that actually changes how you look.
Aggressive cuts that left me flat and miserable. Slow "recomp" phases that went absolutely nowhere. Bulking seasons that got wildly out of hand. Research rabbit holes that made me feel productive while my physique stayed exactly the same.
This is everything that actually works. Same stuff I run my clients through. Same stuff I've done myself, stripped back to what moves the needle. No complex periodisation. No supplement stacks. Just the system that'll have people asking what the hell happened to you.
And if you're reading this in February - you've got the perfect amount of time.
If you wait until April, you don't.
Skip around if you want. But if you apply even 20% of this, you genuinely won't recognise yourself by June.
I - Most men will look exactly the same this summer
Not because they're lazy. Not because they don't care. Because they're playing the wrong game.
There's nothing wrong with wanting to look good with your shirt off. Let's get that out of the way. The desire is natural. Every man has it. The problem isn't the goal, it's what you're doing about it.
I see it constantly. Guys spending more time researching the optimal programme than actually training. Debating creatine timing before they've been to the gym consistently for two months. Reading articles about the "best split for hypertrophy" when they haven't squatted heavy in weeks.
The consumption of fitness content has become a substitute for doing the work. And I get it, it feels productive. You're "learning." You're "optimising." But you're not transforming. You're procrastinating with better marketing.
90% of fitness content exists to keep you watching. Not to get you results. The algorithm rewards complexity because complexity means more videos, more watch time, more ad revenue. Simple doesn't sell courses. Nobody's making a 45-minute YouTube video called "eat less, train hard, sleep properly" because it doesn't get clicks.
But that's genuinely what works. And deep down, you already know that.
The micro-optimisation is a cope. Obsessing over meal timing while your diet is inconsistent. Researching supplements while you're sleeping 5 hours. Debating training frequency while you haven't trained this week.
I'm not having a go. I've been there. Spent years in that loop. Felt busy. Felt like I was making progress. Wasn't.
You don't need another video. Another programme. Another supplement stack.
You need to close this article and go do the boring stuff properly.
But first, let me tell you what the boring stuff actually is.
II - You're fatter than you think
Uncomfortable truth. Nobody wants to hear this one. But it's the single most important thing in this entire article.
In a society where the average man is overweight, our perception of "normal" body fat is completely broken. Guys who think they're sitting at 18% are usually closer to 25%. Lads who reckon they just need to "lose a bit" actually need to drop 25-30 pounds before anything starts showing.
I've seen it hundreds of times. Someone messages me saying they want to put on some size, maybe do a lean bulk. I ask for photos. They're 22% body fat minimum. They don't need to bulk. They need to see what they're actually working with first.
Here's the paradox nobody talks about. You need a LOT less muscle than you think to look good. What you need is a lot less body fat than you realise.
Think about the physiques most guys actually want. Brad Pitt in Fight Club - reportedly around 155 pounds at 5'11". Not massive by any standard. Christian Bale in American Psycho, about 180 at 6 foot. These aren't mass monsters. They're just lean with some muscle.
Ideally you want more muscle than that. But the point stands... you'd rather look like Pitt at 155 than a soft 200. Get lean first. The muscle you build after that actually shows. That's the physique. That's what 90% of men are actually chasing whether they admit it or not. And you don't need to be 200 pounds to get there. You need to be lean enough for the muscle you already have to show.
Lean is law. I say this constantly because nobody wants to hear it.
Drop to 12-15% body fat and everything changes. Jawline sharpens. Cheekbones emerge. Shoulders look wider because your waist actually tapers. V-taper appears not from gaining muscle but from losing the fat hiding it.
Had a client last year - fully convinced he had a weak jawline. Wanted filler. 24% body fat. I told him give me 60 days before you book anything. Eight weeks later he was at 15%. Same jaw. Completely different face. Didn't need filler. Needed to stop eating like he was still 12 years old.
Your face, your frame, your structure - it's probably fine. You just can't see it yet.
And here's the maths that should light a fire under you. If you're reading this in mid-February and summer starts in June, that's roughly 15 weeks. At a sensible rate of 1-1.5 pounds per week, you could lose 15-22 pounds of pure body fat. If you're 180 at 18%, that takes you to somewhere around 10-12%. That's a completely different human being.
But only if you start now. Not March. Not "after this holiday." Now.
The window is open. It won't be for long.
III - Why your body fights you
Your body doesn't want you to get lean. Full stop.
Not because something's wrong with you. Because your biology is doing exactly what it's designed to do - keep you alive. Your body doesn't know you want abs for Ibiza. It thinks you're in a famine. So it fights back.
Hunger exists specifically to stop you losing weight. It's not a bug. It's a feature. And the sooner you accept that, the sooner you can work with it instead of against it.
I used to view hunger as the enemy. Something to fight. Something that meant I was suffering. Then I reframed it completely.
Hunger during a cut isn't a sign something's wrong. It IS the process. It means you're in a deficit. It means fat is being mobilised. It means the thing is working. Lean into it.
The moment you stop seeing hunger as punishment and start seeing it as progress, the whole game shifts. I tell myself I love that feeling now. Sounds mental. But it works. Because the alternative is resenting every second of the process and eventually snapping and bingeing, which is exactly what I used to do for years.
The research on this is mental. Whole foods are dramatically more filling than processed alternatives. Boiled potatoes are literally the most satiating food per calorie ever tested. Fruits, oats, lean proteins - all massively more filling than their processed counterparts. You can eat 2,500 calories of whole food and feel stuffed. Or 2,500 of takeaways and McDonald's and still be hungry an hour later. Same calories. Completely different experience.
This is why the "just eat clean" advice your granddad would've given you actually works better than any complicated macro scheme. Not because clean eating is magic. Because whole foods fill you up, regulate your appetite, and make it genuinely difficult to overeat.
There's another thing most people miss. Bioavailability - how much of what you eat your body actually absorbs and uses. Two meals can look identical on paper. Same macros, same calories. But if one is whole food and the other is processed, your body extracts dramatically more nutrition from the whole food version. The protein from eggs and steak is absorbed far more efficiently than protein from some ultra-processed bar with 47 ingredients. The iron from red meat hits your bloodstream differently than the iron from a fortified cereal. This is why guys eating "clean" at the same calories as guys eating junk end up looking completely different. It's not just about what goes in. It's about what your body can actually do with it.
Our grandparents didn't count macros. They ate real food, walked everywhere, and most of them were lean. The modern food environment is the anomaly. Not you. Your body works perfectly fine, it's the inputs that are broken.
One more thing on this. Discipline isn't something you either have or don't have. It's a muscle. Every time you push through the discomfort - choosing not to eat the thing, getting to the gym when you don't feel like it, you literally strengthen the neural pathways associated with discipline.
But the reverse is also true. Every time you quit, you reinforce quitting. Every time you give in, giving in gets easier next time. It compounds both directions.
That's why the first two weeks of any cut are the hardest. You're fighting years of ingrained patterns. But by week four, it's just what you do. The identity starts to shift. And that's when things get interesting.
IV - The invisible variable destroying your results
Most people sabotage themselves without even knowing it. And it happens every single night.
Sleep.
Not a "nice to have." Not something to optimise after you've sorted your training and nutrition. The third pillar that determines whether you actually transform or just spin your wheels looking roughly the same.
The research on this is genuinely alarming. Sleep-deprived individuals lose significantly less body fat on the same diet. They lose MORE muscle. They have greater cravings for sugary, hyper-palatable foods. Higher injury risk. Reduced strength. Worse recovery. And overall a measurably worse body composition, same calories, same training, different sleep, completely different outcome.
I spoke to a natural bodybuilder recently who put it perfectly - the version of him getting 6 hours sleep versus 8 hours will look visibly different on stage. More muscular, more full, leaner. Just from sleep. Nothing else changed.
Think about that. You could be doing everything else right... nutrition dialled, training hard, steps done and still look average because you're staying up until midnight scrolling your phone.
The simplest change that improves sleep more than any supplement: go to bed at the same time and wake up at the same time every day for two weeks. Your circadian rhythm is driven by routine. The hormones that regulate sleep are massively influenced by consistency. If you do nothing else from this section, do that.
Here's what I do. Non-negotiable:
Morning sunlight within 30 minutes of waking. Even if it's overcast, get outside. 10-15 minutes. It's literally been raining for over 3 weeks straight here in the UK, it is what it is. This resets your circadian clock and makes you naturally sleepy at the right time in the evening.
No caffeine after midday. Find your personal cutoff. For me it's noon. Three servings max per day - upon waking, mid-morning, and that's it. Anything after that and my sleep suffers noticeably.
Finish eating 2-3 hours before bed. Your body can't repair and digest at the same time. Eating late is one of the most common sleep-killers I see with clients.
Cool, dark, quiet bedroom. 16-19°C. Blackout curtains. Phone in another room.
Screens off by 9pm. Blue light inhibits melatonin production. I use blue light blockers from about 8pm onwards and the difference is genuinely noticeable.
Magnesium glycinate before bed, non-negotiable. One of the very few supplements I'd recommend to everyone regardless of their goals. Calms the nervous system, improves sleep quality, and most people are deficient without knowing it.
Beyond that, my evening stack: inositol - brilliant for quieting an overactive mind. If you're the type who lies in bed with your brain running through tomorrow's to-do list, this helps massively. L-theanine - promotes relaxation without sedation. Takes the edge off. Glycine - supports deeper sleep and has a slight cooling effect on body temperature, which is exactly what you want at night. And valerian root on nights where I genuinely need to knock out. I don't take all of these every night - I rotate based on how I'm feeling. But magnesium is every single night without exception.
One more thing. The evening is where most diets die. 9pm. Last meal finished. Sat in front of the TV. The cravings hit. You go to the fridge. Nothing there. Go to the cupboards. Back to the sofa. Still thinking about food. Back to the fridge to see if anything new magically appeared.
I know this cycle because I've lived it. Solutions: go to bed earlier (seriously - the longer you're awake after your last meal, the harder it gets). Save more calories for your evening meal so you're actually satisfied. Sparkling water with a bit of cordial, kills the sweet craving without the calories. Or just brush your teeth. Sounds stupid. Works though. Minty mouth kills the desire to eat.
Same diet. Same training. 6 hours sleep versus 8. Completely different body.
V - The 90-day summer protocol
This is what I'd tell you if we were sitting down right now. Same stuff I run my clients through. Same stuff I've done myself more times than I can count.
Jack's story
Jack Parr came to me needing to get into shape for an acting role. Not "gym shape" - camera shape. The kind where every angle matters and there's nowhere to hide. He had a deadline. We had roughly 90 days.
We didn't do anything exotic. We got his nutrition locked in, trained smart, prioritised sleep and recovery, and let consistency do what consistency does. No magic supplements. No extreme protocols. Just the boring fundamentals executed properly every single day.
By the time he stepped on set, he looked like a completely different person. Same frame he'd always had. Just revealed.
That's what 90 days of doing the work looks like.
Here's the system.
Phase 1: Days 1-30 - Strip back and simplify
Before you track a single macro, start here.
Eat 3-4 meals a day of whole, unprocessed food. Every meal needs a solid protein source - at minimum 30 grams. A portion of carbohydrates - roughly a fist-sized amount. And a large serving of green vegetables. If a meal doesn't have all three, it doesn't count.
"I don't have time to cook."
I hear this constantly. And I'm not buying it. Because half my meals don't involve cooking at all.
A glass of raw milk with maple syrup and a banana. Greek yoghurt with raw honey and berries. A few boiled eggs I prepped on Sunday with some fruit and a handful of nuts. A tin of sardines on sourdough toast. None of that takes longer than two minutes. No pan. No prep. No excuse.
The idea that eating well means spending an hour in the kitchen three times a day is nonsense that keeps people ordering Deliveroo. You don't need to be a chef. You need a fridge with decent stuff in it and two minutes between meetings.
I batch cook when I can - mince, rice, roasted veg, all done in one go on a Sunday. That covers most of the week. The rest is raw, simple, grab-and-go. If you're telling yourself you don't have time to eat properly, what you're really saying is you haven't set it up to be easy. Make it easy. Then the discipline part takes care of itself. Level one. No calorie counting. No macro tracking. Just eat real food at regular intervals and stop snacking between meals. For most guys, this alone will cause noticeable fat loss because you're replacing hyper-palatable processed food with stuff that actually fills you up.
That's it. Level one. No calorie counting.
What a full day of eating actually looks like:
Before I changed anything about how much I eat, I changed what I eat. Here's the difference.
What most guys think is "eating healthy":
Breakfast- Cereal with semi-skimmed milk. Whey protein shake.
Lunch - Rice cakes (fish n a rice keek), tinned tuna, mayo. Protein bar.
Dinner - Plain chicken breast and white rice.
Before bed bowl of Coco Pops.
Technically hitting calories. Technically "high protein." But processed, low nutrient density, zero cholesterol, barely any micronutrients, and you're hungry again an hour after every meal. This is the diet that leaves guys looking flat and feeling awful while technically doing everything "right."
What I actually eat at ~2,800-3,000 calories:
Breakfast- 6 eggs scrambled in butter on sourdough toast. Pesto. Sliced tomatoes. Glass of unpasteurised orange juice. Raw honey, shilajit (trace minerals, fulvic acid), and collagen in coffee. 2-3 pieces of fruit, or as snack.
Lunch- 1L of raw milk with colostrum, maple syrup and a banana. Sometimes some raw cocoa (magnesium, theobromine)
Dinner - Beef mince cooked in bone broth with potatoes or rice. Raw carrot salad with olive oil and apple cider vinegar. Small serving of greens. Throughout the day, filtered water with electrolytes, coconut water around training. Liver weekly. Sauerkraut or kimchi to complement.
Same calories. Completely different body. Every single thing on that list is a whole food with one ingredient. High cholesterol, high fat, loaded with bioavailable nutrients your body actually knows what to do with. I'm fuller, I have more energy, my skin is better, my training is better, and I look leaner eating more food than I ever did on the "clean eating" version most guys default to.
The difference isn't discipline. It's ingredients.
Steps. 8,000-10,000 per day... Morning walk with dog, take calls while pacing, listen to a podcast, whatever works. This is where the real calorie deficit lives - extra expenditure without hammering your recovery or appetite.
Training. Get on a structured plan. I run my clients on a full-body programme three days a week. Simple. Effective. Allows you to train everything frequently without living in the gym. Push your sets close to failure, one to two reps shy. Log your weights and reps every session. You don't need 12 exercises per session. You need 4-5 done properly for years. Guys programme-hopping every six weeks wondering why nothing changes. Pick your movements. Get brutally strong at them. That's it.
Progressive overload. Most people get this completely wrong. It doesn't mean slapping more weight on the bar every week until your form falls apart and your joints are screaming. That's ego lifting dressed up as science. True progression means performing the same movement with better control, more tension, through a full range of motion - and only adding weight when you can hit the top of your rep range with perfect execution. If you're prescribed 8-12 reps and you're consistently hitting 12 with clean form, add 5% and build back up. That's it. Chasing heavier weights with awful form at 4-5 reps isn't building muscle. It's building an injury.
Your body doesn't know what number is on the dumbbell. It only knows tension. Time under tension. Quality of the contraction. How much stress the muscle actually experienced. The goal isn't to make heavy weight feel light. It's to make the lightest weight you can feel as heavy as possible. That's the shift most guys never make. I've seen guys quarter-repping 140kg on bench for years looking exactly the same, while the bloke next to them is pressing 80kg through a full range with 3-second negatives and growing like a weed. The logbook matters - but what you're logging is perfect reps getting stronger over time, not a number getting bigger while everything else gets worse.
Track your weight daily. Same time every morning, after the toilet, before eating. Use an app like Happy Scale that shows you the weekly average. Don't panic about daily fluctuations - water, food volume, stress all cause swings. Watch the trend line. You want to see roughly 1-2 pounds per week dropping on average.
Clear your kitchen of anything that'll tempt you at 10pm. If it's in the house, you'll eat it eventually. I know myself well enough to know nothing survives in my cupboards. Be honest with yourself here.
Water. 3-5 litres a day. But not just any water. I drink filtered water - not straight from the tap. Tap water in most cities is full of chlorine, fluoride, and trace amounts of stuff you genuinely don't want accumulating in your body over decades. A decent filter isn't expensive. Just get one.
Beyond plain water though. Coconut water is one of the most underrated drinks going - loaded with potassium and natural electrolytes. I'll have one daily, especially around training. Unpasteurised orange juice -proper stuff, not the concentrate rubbish from a carton, is packed with potassium, vitamin C, and natural sugars that actually support your metabolism rather than spiking and crashing it. I have a glass most mornings.
Electrolytes in general are massively overlooked. Most guys are walking around mildly dehydrated and don't even know it. Sodium, potassium, magnesium - these regulate everything from muscle contractions to sleep quality to how your brain actually functions. I add electrolytes to my water throughout the day, especially during a cut when you're losing more through sweat and reduced food volume.
Potassium specifically - most men are chronically deficient. Your RDA is about 3,500-4,700mg and the average bloke gets maybe half that. Low potassium means cramps, poor recovery, water retention, and that flat, soft look even when you're in a deficit. Coconut water, orange juice, bananas, potatoes, avocados, stack these daily. The difference in how you look and feel when your potassium is actually where it should be is genuinely noticeable. Fuller muscles. Less bloat. Better pumps. Better sleep.
If you eat a meal and you're still hungry... drink a pint of water before you reach for more food. Nine times out of ten, that'll handle it.
Same principle applies to your food quality. Go organic where you can, especially for the things you eat daily. Eggs, dairy, meat, and the fruits and vegetables that carry the heaviest pesticide loads - strawberries, spinach, apples, grapes. You don't need to be precious about it. But if you're eating the same foods every day, those trace amounts of pesticides, hormones, and antibiotics accumulate over time. Organic eggs from pasture-raised hens have measurably better nutrient profiles than cage-raised ones. Same with grass-fed beef versus grain-fed. I get my eggs from a farm 100 yards from the house including raw milk. It costs a bit more, but you're literally building your body out of this stuff. Might as well use decent materials. Buy local where possible. Farmers' markets are underrated. Find your nearest farm shop. You'll never go back to supermarket eggs.
Sleep. Lock in consistent bed and wake times from day one. This is the foundation everything else sits on.
Do all of this for 30 days. Just these basics. Don't add complexity. Don't overthink it. If the weight's dropping and you feel decent, stay at this level as long as possible before complicating anything.
Phase 2: Days 31-60 - Tighten the screws
Weight loss has slowed or stalled. Good. That means your body adapted to what you were doing, which means what you were doing was working. Time to adjust.
Here's where I differ from most coaches. I don't track calories. Never have consistently. Don't get my clients to obsess over MyFitnessPal either. Because the moment you turn eating into a maths equation, you lose the ability to actually listen to your body. And that's a skill you need for life - not just for a 90-day cut.
Instead, tighten the principles.
You already know what whole food looks like from Phase 1. Now we refine. Slightly smaller portions of carbs and fats at each meal - not measured, just visually less. One less handful of rice. Slightly less oil when cooking. You'd be amazed how much difference these micro-adjustments make when you're already eating clean. Your body tells you what it needs if you're actually paying attention. Hungrier than usual? You've probably cut too far. Still not losing? Trim a bit more. It's a conversation with your body, not a calculator.
What I DO pay attention to is protein. This is the one thing worth being precise about. 1 gram per pound of bodyweight. Minimum. This is what saves your muscle while the fat goes. Most guys think they're hitting this. They're not even close. Weigh your meat for a week if nothing else - just to calibrate your eye. Once you know what 200g of chicken actually looks like on a plate, you won't need to weigh it again. But I guarantee you're currently 50-60 grams short of where you need to be.
Fats: keep them adequate. Don't go low-fat. Your hormones need dietary fat to function - testosterone, thyroid, all of it. Go too low and your mood tanks, your energy craters, and everything gets ten times harder than it needs to be. Eggs, oily fish, nuts, olive oil, butter. Eat proper food with actual fat in it.
And while we're here - stop being scared of cholesterol. The cholesterol in the food you eat and the cholesterol in your blood are not the same thing. Your liver produces the majority of your body's cholesterol regardless of what you eat. Dietary cholesterol from whole food sources - eggs, red meat, dairy actually plays a crucial role in building cell membranes and producing hormones like testosterone. The evidence that eating eggs and steak raises your "bad cholesterol" to dangerous levels is nowhere near as clear-cut as the mainstream would have you believe. What IS clear is that guys who eat adequate animal fats tend to have better hormonal profiles, better energy, and better physiques than those avoiding fat like it's poison. I eat red meat daily. Multiple eggs. Have done for years. My bloodwork is excellent. This isn't a coincidence - it's what happens when you're active, training hard, and eating real food the way humans always have.
Carbs are your performance fuel. Potatoes, rice, oats, fruit, unpasteurised orange juice. Training will feel like absolute death without them. I'd rather someone eat slightly more carbs and train like an animal than eat too few and drag themselves through sessions with no intensity. The training stimulus matters more than shaving 200 calories.
Now add cardio. Not before. After the nutrition adjustments are locked in. 2-3 sessions per week, 30 minutes, walking on a treadmill at maximum incline. Control your speed based on heart rate - aim for about 130 BPM. Don't hold onto the handles. Please. The whole point of incline is to make it harder. Holding on defeats the purpose entirely.
And I mean this genuinely - always prioritise weights over cardio. Always. Your goal in the gym is to build or maintain muscle. Not burn calories. That's what the deficit and the steps are for. Guys who skip weights and just do cardio end up skinny-fat every single time. Less muscle means lower metabolism means you need to eat even less to keep losing weight. It's a death spiral.
Refeed meals - not cheat meals. When energy genuinely dips, when training feels flat, when you're dragging - have a structured higher carbohydrate meal. More rice, more potatoes, more honey, some fruit. Keeps you sane. Refills glycogen. Restores training performance. Prevents the binge-restrict cycle that destroys most people's diets. This isn't a reward. It's a tool. Use it when your body asks for it, not when your brain fancies a takeaway.
Let me be clear on this because most guys get it catastrophically wrong. A refeed is a planned increase in clean carbohydrates. Same food quality, just more volume. A "cheat meal" is usually code for eating 4,000 calories of pizza and ice cream in one sitting, undoing three days of deficit in two hours, then feeling guilty about it the next morning. I've seen guys do this every single weekend and wonder why they're not losing weight. The maths doesn't lie - if you're in a 500 calorie deficit Monday to Friday and then blow 3,000 extra calories across Saturday and Sunday, you've wiped out your entire week. Refeed strategically. Keep it clean. Your body needs the fuel, not the junk.
Phase 3: Days 61-90 - Build the ratio and reveal
You're visibly leaner now. The fat that was hiding everything has come off. Your face looks different. Clothes fit differently. People have started commenting.
Now we amplify it.
Lateral raises - 4-5 sets, lighter weight, proper control. Side delts build the width that creates the V-taper. They're small muscles, they recover fast, you can hammer them frequently. Most guys go too heavy and turn it into a trap exercise. Ego gets in the way. Drop the weight. Feel the muscle.
Rows and pull-ups for back thickness. Lats give you the V from behind. Upper back gives you that 3D look from the side. If you can do weighted pull-ups, do them. If you can't do bodyweight yet, that's goal number one.
Overhead pressing. Standing if possible. Feels more athletic, hits the core, builds genuine shoulder mass.
Neck training. 2-3 times a week. Curls, extensions, harness if you've got one. I'll die on this hill - neck is the single most underrated thing you can train. A thicker neck completely changes how your face sits on your body. More masculine. More presence. More "that guy looks like he handles himself." Most guys never train it. I'll never understand why.
Compounds underneath everything obviously. Squats, deadlifts, bench. The big stuff builds the foundation. The isolation work builds the illusion.
And if you're benching, prioritise incline. Flat bench is an ego lift for most guys. Upper chest is what fills out a t-shirt, what gives you that squared-off look from the front. Most lads have overdeveloped lower chest and nothing up top because they've been flat benching since they were 16. Switch to incline and watch the difference in six months.
Now the details that amplify the whole thing:
Skincare. Keep it dead simple. Beef tallow for my face, coconut oil for my body. That's it. No 10-step routine. Your face is what people see first. If your skin looks rough, you're undermining everything else.
Haircut. Find a proper barber. Pay more than feels comfortable. Ask their opinion on what suits your face shape. They do this all day - they know better than you. Stop getting the same cut you've had since sixth form.
Wardrobe. Your body's different now. Clothes that fit at higher body fat look baggy. Get stuff that actually fits the new frame. Plain black fitted tee - shows the shoulders, shows the taper, goes with everything. Doesn't have to be expensive. Just has to fit.
Posture. All that back work helps here. Shoulders back, chest open, chin tucked slightly. Good posture makes you look taller, more confident, more like you've got your life together. Bad posture undoes months of training in a single glance.
VI - What's actually BS
Time to call out what doesn't work. No hedging.
"Go light when you're cutting"
Every old guy in every gym will tell you this. Absolute nonsense. Reducing your training intensity during a cut is a fantastic way to signal to your body that it no longer needs the muscle. Your training should NOT change whether you're in a surplus or a deficit. Lift heavy. Aim for progression. If you can't progress, maintain. The weights are the signal that tells your body to keep the muscle while the fat goes.
"Cardio is the key to fat loss"
No. Nutrition is the key. Steps are the amplifier. Cardio is a tool you add when everything else is already locked in. I've seen so many guys hammering an hour on the stair master every day, eating whatever they want, and wondering why nothing changes. You cannot out-train a bad diet. Ever.
"Keto / carnivore / extended fasting / [insert extreme]"
Any extreme is stupid. These protocols "work" for exactly one reason - they make you eat less total food. That's it. The mechanism is always a calorie deficit. Keto doesn't have metabolic magic. Carnivore isn't ancestrally superior. Fasting isn't a hack. They're just restrictions that happen to reduce calories. You could achieve the exact same deficit eating a balanced diet of food you actually enjoy and you'd stick with it for longer than two weeks before cracking.
"Supplements before basics"
Guys taking 15 supplements who haven't trained consistently for 6 months. Tracking HRV before sleeping 7 hours. Optimising circadian biology before doing a single morning walk. The only supplements worth buying: whey protein and creatine. That's it. Everything else is a "nice to have" AFTER the foundations are built. And even creatine is just the cherry on top of a cake you haven't baked yet if your training and nutrition aren't sorted.
"I'll just do a quick crash diet in May"
This is the big one. The panic protocol. Massive deficit, loads of cardio, minimal food. You'll lose weight and a good chunk of it will be muscle. You'll end up lighter but not leaner. Flat. Depleted. Skinny-fat. And you'll rebound within weeks because you white-knuckled your way through something completely unsustainable. The guys who look genuinely good every summer are the ones who started in February, not May.
"I'll just take something to speed it up"
I'm not going to preach. But I will say this. A physique built on gear is rented. The moment you come off, it starts leaving. A physique built naturally is yours forever. It's slower, yes. It requires more patience, more discipline, more consistency. But that's precisely why it means something. Anyone can inject their way to a decent physique in 12 weeks. Not everyone can build one brick by brick over years with nothing but food, training, and sleep. The guys who do that carry themselves differently and everyone around them knows it, even if they can't put their finger on why. There are no shortcuts that don't cost you something down the line.
Can't believe I still have to say this, put down the fat burner, pick up a fork and a barbell, and just do the boring stuff properly.
VII - The hierarchy
Most people have this completely inverted. Here it is, in order. Do these for 90 days then tell me you need jaw filler.
Get lean. This is 90% of how you look. Everything else is noise until you're under 15%.
Eat enough protein. 1g per pound. Preserves muscle. Keeps you full. Non-negotiable.
Lift heavy and consistently. Structured programme. Progressive overload. Close to failure. 3-5 days a week.
Sleep 7-8 hours. Your body does the actual repair work while you're unconscious. Skimp on this and everything else falls apart.
Walk 8,000-10,000 steps daily. Where the real calorie deficit lives without destroying your recovery.
Hydrate properly. Filtered water, electrolytes, coconut water, potassium-rich foods. Most guys are chronically dehydrated and deficient in potassium. Fix this and you'll look and feel noticeably different within a week.
Remove processed junk and alcohol. You know what needs to go. Stop pretending you don't.
Most guys start at number 7. Buy a fat burner. Wonder why nothing changes. Work from the top down.
Do these for 90 days then tell me you still need supplements, surgery, and a 47-step morning routine.
VIII - The real shift
Right. This is the bit most fitness articles won't touch.
The body changes. Obviously. That's the visible bit. But something else happens underneath that matters far more. And it changes everything - not just how you look, but how the entire world responds to you.
Your physique speaks before you open your mouth.
Think about it. If you're wealthy but out of shape, nobody knows you've got money unless you flash it. You need the car, the watch, the clothes -external signals to communicate something internal. But a built physique? That's visible the second you walk into a room. Before you say a word. Before anyone knows your name, your job, your bank balance.
You walk into a meeting with your shoulders back, shirt fitting properly, looking like you take care of yourself - people assume things about you immediately. They assume you're disciplined. Reliable. Capable. That you don't cut corners. That you can commit to something hard and see it through.
Is that fair? Maybe not. But it's how the world works. And it works in your favour when you're in shape.
A gym membership costs less than a designer t-shirt. But a well-built physique commands more respect and attention than anything you could put on your body. You can't fake it. You can't buy it. Can't inherit it. Can't shortcut it. In a world where almost everything can be purchased, your physique is one of the last things that has to be genuinely earned.
And people can tell. Everyone can tell. When you see someone who's clearly in shape... lean, strong, carries themselves well, you can't help but respect it on some level. Even if you don't say anything. Because you know what that took. The early mornings. The boring meals. The sessions where they didn't feel like going. You know that person has something most people don't - the ability to do hard things consistently over a long period of time.
That's not vanity. That's character made visible.
There's something else going on too. Winning at anything significantly raises testosterone. And higher testosterone makes you want to compete more, take more action, put yourself out there. It reduces anxiety. Increases confidence. Makes effort feel good rather than draining.
Now flip it. When you're out of shape, eating poorly, not training, sleeping badly, your body reads that as losing. Testosterone drops. Motivation tanks. You withdraw. Comfort eat. Avoid challenges. The spiral goes downward and it compounds.
But the moment you start winning, even small win, the spiral reverses. First good week of training. Bit of weight drops off. Clothes fit slightly better. Someone makes a comment. You stand a bit taller. Train a bit harder next week. Eat a bit cleaner. Sleep a bit better. More weight comes off. More comments. More confidence. More action.
It's a flywheel. And once it starts spinning, it becomes self-sustaining. The confidence isn't forced anymore. It's just there. You carry yourself differently. You speak differently. People feel your energy shift before they can articulate what changed.
The identity starts shifting before the body fully catches up.
You aren't where you want to be because you aren't yet the person who would be there. That's not an insult, it's the mechanism. The fit guy doesn't force himself to train. He forces himself NOT to train on rest days. The identity came first. The habits followed. The body is just the receipt.
You can't wait until you feel like a different person to start acting like one. You have to act first. Feel it later.
And you don't need to do it perfectly. You don't need to nail every single meal and every single session. You just need to return to the right behaviours more often than you return to the old ones. Consistency over perfection. Showing up at 70% beats not showing up at all. Every single time.
One workout changes nothing. 300 workouts and you're a different person. One day of good nutrition is invisible. 90 consecutive days and people won't recognise you.
Never met a lean, jacked guy worried about his jawline. Never met a successful bloke spending hours debating morning routines. Never met someone living a great life still scrolling through other people's highlight reels.
When you're actually building, actually living, the noise stops mattering. You don't need to prove anything. The physique does the talking. And that changes how you move through every single room you walk into for the rest of your life.
The choice
Uncomfortable truth.
It's mid-February. Summer is roughly 15 weeks away. That's enough time to completely transform how you look, how you feel, and how people respond to you. But only if you start now. Not next week. Not after the holiday. Not Monday.
Now.
Every day you delay is a day stolen from the version of you that could've been standing on that beach in June looking like a different person.
There are two versions of you this summer. The one who read this and did something about it. And the one who bookmarked it, liked it, and scrolled to the next video.
No surgery gives you the confidence that comes from earning it yourself. That quiet certainty of someone who put in the work when nobody was watching.
Get lean. Lift heavy. Sleep properly. Walk. Eat real food. Stop overcomplicating it.
That's the whole secret.
Your call brother,
— Achilles
And if you want help with it - the training, nutrition, mindset, identity work, all of it done properly with someone who's been through it. I take on a handful of guys each month. DM me "ACHILLES"
