The Lean Book

CHAPTER 1: THE 5 LAWS OF LEAN MUSCLE

It's time to learn the laws of muscle gain. It's time to stop wasting time and seeing lackluster results. It's time your effort was rewarded with results you can see in the mirror. It's time you understood that your results are based on your effort. So …it's time to put forth 100% effort and finally achieve fantastic results.

The Lean Book program will be a bit different than what you've been doing. And it's not so much about what you've been doing, but more about what you've been told. Magazines, books, blogs, pamphlets, your buddy who runs triathlons, your high school gym coach, and that personal-trainer-guy on your local news …all of them have some great tips and tricks, and sometimes their tips rhyme or form great acronyms (S.U.P.E.R. = Sleep, Unload, Power, Energy, Repeat) …and that doesn't even make any sense. And while it might be new and clever, most times "new" fails to focus on lean muscle. The Lean Book offers zero tricks. The Lean Book is about results …period.

Remember …our option involves honest to goodness, carved-in-stone laws! You're not going to break any laws, are you? The laws are simple to follow. And they must be followed.

LAW #1: FOCUS ON FAT LOSS NOT WEIGHT LOSS

We have trained far too many clients who mainly focus was weight loss. This makes sense if you're extremely obese, as pure weight loss is the ultimate goal and the key motivator. But even in extreme cases, the overall goal should be fat loss.

Think of it like this. Are you familiar with Michaelangelo's David? He carved it from a rock. He took a ten ton piece of rock and carved it into an ideal specimen of the human form weighing around 6 tons. If his goal had been simply to cut four tons off the rock, he could've just smashed it with a hammer for a while until it weighed what he wanted, and called it a day. But instead, he meticulously removed 4,000 pounds in a perfect way to reveal a masterpiece.

This should be your goal. Cut weight while at the same time sculpting and cutting fat …and eventually looking in the mirror and seeing a body that resembles David wouldn't be half bad, either.

Weight is simply a number, whereas losing fat helps you showcase your muscles. A client who doesn't adhere to our laws and decides weight loss is A-OK end up looking sickly rather than chiseled. If you only focus on weight loss, you won't see the big picture. You'll pick an arbitrary number that you consider an ideal weight, hit that number, and never look back. This will leave you ravaged by drastic measures and you'll feel frustrated (and possibly malnourished). The "number" becomes the end all, be all. The target weight doesn't take into account body fat percentage and caloric intake as it relates to exercise and fitness goals and milestones. "Weight loss" alone will leave you unfulfilled.

Instead, focus on fat loss, as fat is what you truly want to lose.

Everyone has heard that "muscle weighs more than fat." If you were to take 1-pound of muscle and set it next to 1-pound of fat, the hunk of fat would be larger and take up more space. This is because muscle is more dense than fat. Interestingly, muscle burns more calories than fat, which means the more lean muscle you have, the more calories you'll be burning with whatever activity you're doing.

Further, focusing on maximum fat loss allows your body to reveal the shape it should be. And when you decide not to focus on a single number (aka "ideal weight"), your progress will be easier. Monitoring fat loss will allow you to hold onto muscle mass and achieve an ideal weight. When you focus on fat loss, it's easier to stick to a routine and see results.

A focus on weight loss leads to poor decisions. Trust us. Losing weight can look like cabbage soup for 10 days and a gallon of water a day. Yuck. You can stop on the scale daily and think you're doing great. But, let's say you get a cold, or go on vacation, or just for one meal you'd like a non-cabbage based entrée …step on the scale and you'll see weight. Follow our "laws", focus on fat loss, and develop routines, and you'll see a gradual, sustainable decline in the right numbers.