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It’s like that, and it’s like this,
I went to the gym and I started to lift,
Now my pump got full, you know what I was thinkin’,
Took some pre-workout and my hands started shakin’…
– Eazy-E (probably)
If you wish, you can grab the N.W.A. Newsletter Playlist on Spotify here, all of the songs that have been featured in the newsletter are on the playlist.
Happy Friday, Coach J here from Anyman Fitness – and welcome to the latest edition of The N.W.A. Newsletter.
Each Friday’s N.W.A. Newsletter will have 3 parts:
- A Nutritional Tip to help make your diet healthier and easier to stick to.
- A Workout Tip to help make your training sessions more effective and fun.
- An Attitude/Mindset tip to help you strengthen your greatest asset – your mental toughness.
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I will also give you my single favorite piece of social media content from AF over the past week and link to it on either Instagram or Twitter.
Without any further ado… let’s get started, shall we?
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N.W.A. Nutrition Tip Of The Week
Every time I post this graphic on social media, everyone loses their shit:
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The reason everyone loses their shit is simple… it challenges what people “think” they know about getting enough protein.
This graph shows how many calories you would need to consume to get 100 grams of protein from various food sources.
It shows the “protein density” of the foods listed on the graph.
What sticks out to you?
Some foods that lots of people think are “excellent” protein sources are actually quite lousy.
I see eggs and nuts constantly being touted as great “protein sources” on the internet.
But from a per calorie basis, they both fall woefully short.
Now, do keep in mind, this graph says nothing about nutrients, or health benefits.
It ONLY highlights the % of calories of each food that comes from protein, and nothing more.
Eggs have tremendous health benefits (nuts not quite so much, but still, there are *some* benefits, sure).
If you’re trying to up your protein numbers, be sure you stick to the “best” and “good” sections for the most part.
Have a few servings of food from the “bad” section if you wish.
But be careful about the “horrible” section.
Notice “Kind Bars” – you would need to eat 2,850 calories’ worth of Kind Bars in order to get 100 grams of protein into your body!
That’s a TON of calories…
When it comes to protein bars, try to find a bar that has at least 40% of its total calories from protein.
My favorites are Quest Bars.
Quest Bars have around 180 calories and 20 grams of protein per bar.
20 grams of protein x 4 calories per gram of protein = 80 calories from protein.
That means a Quest Bar is 44% protein – not too bad.
There’s a lot of “protein bars” on the market that are just glorified candy bars.
Unless you’re careful, you’ll be eating way too many calories in general if you eat those bars regularly.
As you can see in the above graph, your best bet is lean animal sources, whey protein, and/or low fat dairy options.
Be smarter out there when it comes to your protein; your waistline will thank you for it.
N.W.A. Workout Tip Of The Week
The pendulum in fitness is always swinging back and forth, both in nutrition and in training.
When I first got into fitness, it was “vogue” to train in a minimalist fashion, meaning short workouts only a few times per week.
In fact, that sort of a workout regimen is the exact way I program training for No Cardio Fat Shredding, our 6 week rapid fat loss course (mark your calendars – the next round begins on 4/24).
While training in a minimalist style can build strength rapidly, personally, I’ve always found it to be suboptimal when trying to build muscle.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a fantastic way to train if you don’t have much time, or your main goal is fat loss.
But if you’re trying to build actual size, doing just 3-4 exercises 3-4 times per week usually doesn’t cut it.
Online these days, it’s trendy to call anything more than 3 sets that isn’t a heavy, compound movement “junk volume”.
Meaning, if you were to do 6 sets of cable crossovers, someone online would have an issue with that and tell you you’re “wasting your time”.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
As long as you’re pushing hard, taking your lifts close to failure, and using progressive overload, there is no such thing as “junk volume”.
I’ve personally tried bulking on minimalist routines before. There just wasn’t enough volume to make my body grow.
It wasn’t until I went “all in” on a high volume, 5 day per week routine that I FINALLY started making serious gains.
When I switched from 3 sessions of 40 minutes per week to 5 sessions of 75 minutes per week, I promptly gained 20+ pounds of muscle in the next year’s time.
It was absolutely wild.
Different things work for different people.
Sure, there are some people who can gain muscle training a few hours per week, max.
But unless you have elite genetics, that’s not likely to happen.
If you’d like to check out the training program that put 20+ pounds of muscle onto my frame in a year, tap here – the program is called No Squats, No Deadlifts, Huge Gains, and it was easily the best muscle building program I’ve ever done.
N.W.A. Mindset Tip Of The Week
You need to stop thinking about fitness like it’s a “problem to solve”.
You need to start thinking about fitness like it’s a “skill to acquire”…
Most people view fitness like it’s a math problem – they need to “solve” the math problem in order to “win” the game of fitness.
But that’s the wrong way to think about your fitness, for a very good reason.
When you think about fitness like a math problem, you will quickly bounce back and forth between various methods trying to arrive at the correct “solution”.
You’ll try silly things like eating zero carbs… and in a few months, it isn’t working like you thought, so back to the drawing board you go trying to find another “answer”.
Then, you try the “apple cider vinegar” diet… and in a few weeks, it isn’t working like you thought, so back to the drawing board to find another “answer” yet again.
And then… you get the idea…
Instead of viewing fitness this way, you need to think of fitness like a “skill”, just like any other skill you might develop.
Think back to when you took a foreign language in school.
Or you tried to learn to play an instrument.
Or the first time you tried to ride a bike.
You weren’t very good at it at first.
You stumbled over simple translations, or your fingers hit the wrong notes every time, or you fell down and scraped your knee, and went home crying.
This is how ANY skill works at first.
You are GOING to suck at it, no matter how much you wish it wasn’t so.
You have to be okay with not being very good at skills when you first begin – that’s simply how skills work.
And the same is true when it comes to your fitness.
When you start, you won’t be good at tracking your calories or macros.
You won’t be good at lifting weights.
You won’t be good at refraining from snacking, or setting up your meals properly.
But you can improve over time – and that’s the key to really making this work.
Plus, you won’t be “diet hopping” to every new fad that you hear about online.
We don’t have an “information” problem today, we have an “application” problem.
We are suckers for instantaneous gratification – if something isn’t making us happy RIGHT NOW, we quickly move on without giving it a real shot.
You need to change the way you mentally approach your fitness.
I’ve seen countless people join our coaching program, struggle for the first few weeks as they learn our system, and then BOOM, their results take off like a rocketship once they get “better” at the skill of fitness.
That will happen to you, too, if you start playing the long game, and you stop second guessing yourself at every opportunity.
It’s okay to not be amazing at fitness from Day 1, in fact, that’s likely to happen.
The people who fight through it and keep trying to improve their “skill” of fitness are the people who will lose the weight and keep it off forever.
With summer rapidly approaching, our coaching spots are filling up quickly.
If you’d like to check out our group coaching offer, Full Access: Anyman Fitness, you can lose up to 10 pounds and 3″ off your waist in the first month for just $20 (46% off).
You can check out our testimonials page here to see what kind of results you can expect from our program.
One Favorite Social Media Post Of The Week:
The French eat plenty of bread and aren’t fat.
The Japanese eat plenty of rice and aren’t fat.
The Italians eat plenty of pasta and aren’t fat.
The Okinawans eat plenty of fruit and aren’t fat.
Stop with the carb-phobia nonsense online, it’s absurd.
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I hope you enjoyed this edition of the Anyman Fitness N.W.A. Newsletter.
I’ll be back next week.
Hope you have a wonderful weekend.
Best,
Coach J
Anyman Fitness
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