Transformation Playbook
If you are looking to transform your body and become leaner than this playbook will give you all you need to know to help you reach your goals. There is no one size fits all approach to weight loss and transformations but this playbook will help push you in the right direction to a healthier version of yourself.
I want show you the outline we use with our clients to help you get lean in a healthy sustainable way. How lean you get depends heavily on your habits, nutrition, exercise, sleep and stress.
Whether you’re an advanced athlete or have never been in the gym before, this playbook will provide you with the right tools you need to reach the transformation you are looking for!
These tactics have worked for a wide variety of our clients over the last 10+ years, including high-level athletes, police officers, firefighters, fitness enthusiasts, and overweight population. I’m confident that if you stay consistent and adhere to these steps, they will work for you too.
Step 1: Assessment
To begin your transformation we will use this assessment to determine your starting point and areas you might need to work on. It is very important to be honest with yourself with this assessment.
For the next week track the following everyday:
How many hours of sleep did you get last night?
On a scale of 1-5 how did you feel when you woke up?(1 being terrible and 5 being amazing and ready to go)
Create a food log and write down everything you eat and drink. Make sure to include any additives you may put in your beverages and any alcohol you may consume.
On a scale of 1-5 how are your hunger levels throughout the day? Morning? Afternoon? Night?(1 being starving and 5 being not hungry at all)
How many steps did you take today? (Track on smartphone)
On a scale of 1-5 how are your energy levels thought out the day? Morning? Afternoon? Night?(1 being exhausted and 5 being amazing)
Did you resistance train or any cardio? If so how long?
On a scale of 1-5 how is your recovery from exercise?(1 being sore AF and 5 being feeling amazing)
On a scale of 1-5 how is your digestion?(1 being constipation/diarrhea and 5 being solid)
On a scale of 1-5 what is your stress level for today?(1 being stressed AF and 5 being relaxed)
Do this assessment every day for 7 days. Then we can make adjustments to your plan. Retake this assessment once every 8-12 weeks to track progress
Step 2: Adjust Sleep and Stress Management
Sleep and stress are a very overlooked aspect of fat loss, performance and health. Sleep and stress management are part of your foundation for health and performance.
Can you lose fat without quality sleep and handling your stress? Sure. But I’m guessing you want to be lean and healthy.
Experts recommend 7-9 hours of quality sleep is optimal. Sleep is the key to recovery. When you sleep your body releases hormones like testosterone, human growth hormone, and others to begin the repairing damaged cells and tissues from training and life. Sleep also helps with regulating blood glucose, enhancing cardiovascular health/ blood pressure, and combating disease. So how can we improve sleep?
We can enhance your sleep in two ways:
Sleep Quantity
Sleep Quality
To enhance your quantity of sleep, an easy night time routine you can implement is a reverse alarm on your phone. Start by choosing an ideal time for bed and set your alarm 30 mins before that time. For instance, let’s say you want to be in bed by 9p set your alarm for 8:30p. When your alarm goes off begin by shutting off all electronics and start your bedtime routine which can include reading (from a paper book), journaling, meditation and/or some light stretching. If you are only getting 4-5 hours of sleep, start by just getting to bed an extra 20-30 minutes earlier and eventually work your way up 7 or more hours a night. Every small win along this journey will stack up and build great momentum.
If you are getting a recommended 7-9 hours of sleep and you would like to improve your quality of sleep then we need to make sure we have a solid bedtime routine locked down. You can still use a reverse alarm to alert yourself to begin your routine. Eliminate electronics 30 minutes before bed, get your room to a cool 67 degrees, keep your room dark with some blackout curtains, consider a cold shower to help bring down your core temperature, keep a journal by your bed to input your thoughts that keep you awake at night. Keep it simple and start with a few changes, remember we are building momentum.
Other things to consider is caffeine intake and alcohol.
Caffeine has been shown to improve performance but the amount and time ingested can have negative effects on sleep quality and quantity. Studies have shown to avoid reduction in sleep coffee (106 mg) should be consumed 9 hours prior to bedtime and average pre-workout (250 mg) should be consumed 13 hours prior to bedtime.
Alcohol acts as a sedative and interferes with neurotransmitters that are important to the regulation of sleep. This causes brain activity to slow down. One serving of alcohol can decrease sleep quality by almost 10% and having 3 or more servings of alcohol can decrease sleep quality by 40%. Studies have shown that a long term effect of alcohol consumption can lead to chronic sleep problems such as insomnia and sleep apnea. Alcohol contains 7 calories per gram and drinking your calories that have no nutritional value to you will only put you further away from your goals. Try to minimize your alcohol consumption or better yet eliminate it during your period of deficit.
Stress plays a major role in our transformation. Stress produces cortisol and chronically elevated cortisol levels will make it difficult to burn fat and build muscle. This can also lead to other detrimental health concerns. (Check out our blog on stress in training)
Stress is apart of our daily lives and to reach an optimal healthy lifestyle, we must learn to manage it. To help manage stress try implementing time outside, meditation, journaling, breathing exercises, cold/heat exposure, and communicating your thoughts and feelings with some you trust. To truly optimize your health we must manage stress.
Step 3: Eat to Get Lean
We all have been told to eat less and you will lose weight. But it isn’t always that simple.
We know we must be in a calorie deficit to lose fat but being in an extremely low deficit or for too long of a duration can be detrimental to your metabolism.
This can lead to muscle loss and cause our body to go into starvation mode. During this time our body will hold on and store excess body fat as an emergency energy source. Neither would be ideal for your goals.
So we must take a more calculated approach. Just like how we periodize our training we need to do the same for our nutrition. I recommend a 8-12 week period of a deficit. Before me move into a deficit we should be spending most of our time in maintenance calories for proper, healthy bodily function.
Before we begin using calculations to figure out how many calories we need to reach a deficit, we will first discuss the foundational principles we must follow to achieve a true sustainable healthy lifestyle.
Principle 1: Eat real, minimally processed and unprocessed foods 85-90 percent of the time
This should be applied year round. By doing this will help keep your health a priority. Ensuring you are consuming mostly nutrient dense foods will optimize your health, performance, and body composition.
I am not going to tell you which diet is superior but what is important is to eat real single ingredient foods consistently. Just by doing this you will see body fat begin to drop.
Principle 2: Eat until satisfied, not stuffed
Portion sizes play a big role in your body composition but let’s really focus on Principle 1 eating real food and listening to your natural hunger cues. Avoid rushing through your meals or eating while distracted. Make sure to chew your food thoroughly and drink about 64oz of water a day. This will help you hone in on your hunger cues and help you focus on feeling satisfied not stuffed after every meal.
Principle 3: Eat lean sources of protein for every meal
Gaining and maintaining muscle mass accelerates your metabolism. So just by having more muscle leads to higher rate at which you burn calories.
We also begin to lose muscle mass as we age at an alarming rate. Best way to combat this would be to eat an adequate supply of protein and to resistance train.
Before worrying about how much protein you need, focus on adding high quality lean protein source at each meal.
Try to have about 4 meals a day. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a snack. If that seems too much, don’t stress about it and make sure you are following Principle 1. It will be difficult to over-consume on real unprocessed foods.
These principles should be followed year round. For most people, these principles will get them to their goals. But for those who need to take it a step further, we will need to dial in on specific macros for a specified time frame of about 8-12 weeks.
After consistently following these principles, we can take it a step further for more specific body composition goals.
These numbers are estimates but will start you on the right track. First we should understand that most of our diet should be kept in maintenance calories to maintain healthy bodily functions. To find out how many calories you need to be in maintenance we can use a simple calculation for an estimation. Your bodyweight x 15 (More or less depending on activity level). This is important because as we transition to a deficit phase, which is an added stressor on the body, we need to be able to have an exit plan and get back to maintenance. Remember staying in a deficit for too long drastically impairs your metabolism and leads to many other health concerns.
Now to reach a deficit active males take your bodyweight x 12 and active females bodyweight x 10 for total calories (Check out our blogs on Protein, Carbs, and Fat). Protein contains 4 calories per gram, Carbs contain 4 calories per gram and Fat contains 9 calories per gram. For Protein I recommend 1g per pound of bodyweight per day. For Fat I recommend .5g per pound of bodyweight. For carbs you would take your total calorie deficit minus your protein calories and fat calories to equal your total carb calories. Then just divide by 4 to equal your total grams of carbs (I would consider this low carb, so add more carbs when having higher training days).
Step 4: Move and Conditioning
A great daily goal is trying get 10,000 steps a day and can be tracked on your phone. If you are pretty sedentary you might have to work your way up to it. If you are an active individual 10k steps shouldn’t be a problem.
Additional making sure you have 1-3 conditioning sessions planned a week. I recommend zone 2 work (60-70% of max HR) about 30-60 min sessions.
This isn’t just about burning calories everyday, but these are a great way to improve cardiovascular health, recovery, and overall wellness.
Step 5: Train for Strength And Muscle Growth
As mentioned before, lean muscle mass elevates your metabolic rate. So one of the biggest mistakes people make when trying to get lean is avoiding weight training and doing more cardio. Adding in a calorie deficit to all this and you could end up losing muscle.
This will lead you to be weaker, less muscle mass, and slower metabolic rate. The exact blueprint that sets you up for rebound weight gain in the future.
Let’s avoid this mistake and focus on creating a lean, strong physique. (Women you will not get bulky lifting weights. You get bulking by eating a surplus of calories and having excess body fat. To learn more check out this blog).
Your weight training should be focused on getting stronger, staying explosive, improving movement quality, and mobility. Here at BMF Training we pride ourselves in providing all our clients with a program that does all that.
So let’s make sure we are getting in 3-4 weight training days and 2-3 conditioning days. Both should be complementing each other not the other way around.
To learn more check out our other articles on our training methods or reach out if you need help organizing your training.
Step 6: Recovery
You can only perform as well as you can recover. All the hard training in the gym, adding in extra sprints, and cutting calories are all high stressors on the body. This can lead to overtraining and create hormonal issues that will take you further away from fat loss and a healthy lifestyle.
The biggest influence to recovery is sleep. All the other recovery methods will never be enough to make up for lack of sleep or quality of sleep. Check out Whoop strap, Fitbit, or other sleep trackers to help track your sleep.
Once sleep is optimal, then you can consider additional recovery methods like sauna, cryotherapy, cold plunges, massage, breath work, and even taking deload week of training.
Remember the ability to recover starts with sleep! Make it a top priority.
This was a ton of info, lets review:
Step 1: Assess
Step 2: Adjust your sleep and stress management
Step 3: Eat to get lean (focus on the 3 Principles)
Step 4: Increase your daily movement and conditioning
Step 5: Train to get strong
Step 6: Recovery
This is your playbook for creating a lean, strong, powerful, and healthy physique. If you have any questions or if you need extra help with training or nutrition please reach out to us!
-Coach Mike
BMF-Training.com