It’s June and summer has snuck up on you again. This year you told yourself you were going to get that lean and sexy beach body and be ready to pop your shirt off at a moment’s notice.
But, as it often happens, life got in the way. Maybe you had to put some extra hours at work, or maybe your kids or significant other took up the time. You didn’t have as much time to hit the gym as you wanted.
The circumstances aren’t important. The fact is that summer is here, but it’s not too late to drop some pounds and get that lean body you always wanted.
You can’t do it in 1 week, but I’ll help you do it in 4. It’s definitely doable, but not easy.
In the wise words of the philosopher known as Drake, “All summer sixteen, playing dirty not clean”. Summer ’16 is here. It’s time to ditch those winter layers and get sexy.
28 Days to Your Summer Body
No matter how much you want it, there is no magic pill or workout that is going to make this work. Your best and fastest route to quickly losing weight is going to be spot-on nutrition.
You need to be laser focused on what you eat for these 4 weeks. Because time is short, there isn’t much room for error. As I mentioned earlier, it’s not going to be easy. But you don’t want easy. You want results. So let’s get started.
Get The Right Tools
First things first. For this diet to be effective, you are going to need to track what you eat and know what macros are.
If you don’t know what macros are, read this comprehensive post about it. If you want a step-by-step guide on how to track them, read this.
As far as tracking your food, I highly recommend a good food scale and a macro tracking app. I use Mike Vacanti’s OTR app (available on iOS and Android). If you don’t like that one, check out MyFitnessPal instead.
Calculate Your LBM
You got your tools, now it’s time to get down to business. To correctly set up your macros, you need to know your lean body mass, or LBM. The formula is easy:
LBM = Total Weight – (Total Weight * Body Fat Percentage)
You probably already know how much you weight. Use the chart below to estimate your body fat percentage (click the image for a larger version), then plug it in the formula above to get your LBM.
Here is an example:
Johnny Miami weighs 185 lb. He has a body fat percentage of 15%. So we multiply 185 by 0.15 to get 28 (rounded up). Then to get Johnny’s LBM, we do 185 minus 28 and get 157 lb.
Once you have your LBM, we’ll use it to calculate the macros for your diet next. Pro tip: there is a neat calculator at the end of the next section that will do all the math for you. If you want to follow along, go ahead, if not – skip right to it.
The Beach Body Diet
For your daily calorie intake, I want you to take your total bodyweight and multiply it by 10. For Johnny, who weighs 185 lb, that would be 1,850 calories.
You can either keep your calories the same every day (easy to remember), or you can eat slightly more (+ 100-200 calories) on your lifting days, and slightly less (- 100-200 calories) on your off days. Either way is fine, but pick one and stick with it.
Now for the macros. Eating enough protein is key since it will help you keep as much muscle as possible while losing fat. You need to eat around 1.1 – 1.3 grams of protein per pound of LBM. Our buddy Johnny will be taking in around 188g of protein per day.
Carbohydrates are up next. Although they are important for recovery and helping you keep the intensity high during your workouts, you won’t be eating many carbs to keep your daily calories low. For this diet, aim for 0.6 – 0.9 grams of carbs per pound of LBM. Johnny will be at around 118g per day.
Finally, there are fats. You need fats in your diet to regulate your hormones (like testosterone for men) and keep your metabolism high. We won’t be going for a specific number of grams here – fats will simply make up the rest of your daily calories.
For example, Johnny is going to be eating 188g of protein and 118g of carbs per day, which equals:
188 * 4 + 118 * 4 = 1,224 calories per day
He has 626 calories left. Take 626 and divide that by 9 and you get around 70g of fats per day. Remember, each gram of protein and carbs equals 4 calories and each gram of fats equals 9 calories.
To help you with all the math here is a calculator that will do it all for you. Just plug in your weight and body fat percentage and it will do the rest:
The Beach Body Workout
Your workout program will consist of 3 days of lifting and 2 days of cardio. Here’s what it looks like:
Monday (Strength + Metabolic Circuit)
Rest 2 minutes between each exercise:
A1) Deadlift – 6×6
A2) Dumbbell Bench Press – 6×6
Rest 1 minute between each exercise:
B1) Bulgarian Split Squat – 4×8/leg
B2) 1 Arm Dumbbell Row – 4×8/arm
No rest between each exercise. Rest 60 seconds after C6. Repeat the circuit a total of 4 times:
C1) Jump Squat – x10
C2) Plank – 45s
C3) Single Leg Glute Bridge – x10/leg
C4) Hand Walkout with Push-Up – x10
C5) Heiden (Side to Side Jump) – x10/leg
C6) Reverse Crunch – x15
Wednesday (Complexes)
Barbell Complex
Choose a weight that makes your hardest exercise challenging, but doable.
No rest between exercises. Not even to set the barbell down! Rest 60-90 seconds after A4. Repeat the circuit a total of 4 times:
A1) Deadlift – x10
A2) Bent Over Row – x10
A3) Hang Power Clean – x5
A4) Push Press – x5
A5) BB Curl – x5
Dumbbell Complex
Choose a weight that makes your hardest exercise challenging, but doable.
No rest between exercises. Not even to set the dumbbells down! Rest 60 seconds after B5. Repeat the circuit a total of 3 times:
B1) DB Swing – x16
B2) Floor Press – x8
B3) Alternating Reverse Lunge – x8/leg
B4) Alternating Bent Over Row – x8/arm
B5) Curl to Press – x8
Friday (Strength + Metabolic Circuit)
Rest 2 minutes between each exercise:
A1) Front Squat – 8×8
A2) Pull-Up – 8×8
Rest 1 minute between each exercise:
B1) Half Kneeling Single Arm Press – 6×6/arm
B2) Single Leg Dumbbell Hip Thrust – 6×6/leg
No rest between each exercise. Rest 60 seconds after C6. Repeat the circuit a total of 4 times:
C1) Broad Jump – x6
C2) Push Up Positing Plank – 60s
C3) Lateral Lunge – x10/leg
C4) Chin-Up – x10
C5) Burpees – 45s (do as many as you can)
C6) Farmers Carry – 50 ft
Cardio
This covers your 3 lifting days. For the cardio, choose 2 days out of the week (I like Thursday and Saturday) when you are not lifting. One day will be a sprint day and one day will be HIIT (high-intensity interval training) day.
For your sprint days, you will be doing the workout from Bro King John Romaniello. You’re going to need to find a good hill and sprint your ass off.
The HIIT days will look like this (they will change slightly as the weeks go by):
Week 1 – 30s of intense work followed by 90s of rest (keep moving, just slowly). Repeat for 15 minutes. After your intervals are done, perform 15 minutes of moderate cardio. Holding a conversation should be difficult at this pace.
Week 2 – 45s of intense work followed by 75s of rest (keep moving, just slowly). Repeat for 15 minutes. After your intervals are done, perform 15 minutes of moderate cardio. Holding a conversation should be difficult at this pace.
Week 3 – 60s of intense work followed by 60s of rest (keep moving, just slowly). Repeat for 15 minutes. After your intervals are done, perform 15 minutes of moderate cardio. Holding a conversation should be difficult at this pace.
Week 4 – 60s of intense work followed by 45s of rest (keep moving, just slowly). Repeat for 12 minutes. After your intervals are done, perform 20 minutes of moderate cardio. Holding a conversation should be difficult at this pace.
And that is it. To further accelerate your fat loss, try walking as much as possible throughout the day. This is going to help speed things up and it’s nice to get outside every once in a while.
Take The Plunge
Thus completes your 28-day mini-vacation to hell! It’s going to be tough, but if you follow through you will see tremendous progress.
There are going to be days when you are hungry and don’t think you can make it through this. These are the days when you need to be mentally strong. Take it one step and one rep at a time. Don’t think about your whole workout, just focus on the next set. Before you know it you’ll be done.
And finally – I’m here for you! If you have any questions, need something explained or want me to follow along with your progress, just hit me up. I respond to all emails and would love to personally help YOU.
