Baron's Journey to Single-Digit Bodyfat

Ten Reasons to get Shredded

1. You’ll Look Bigger. Anyone who’s ever dieted has experienced this. Your weight is plummeting, your clothes sagging, and your cheeks sinking in like Derek Zoolander doing his best Blue Steel. And then some random stranger comments how big you’re getting.

An aesthetic physique is 90% illusion. As fat melts away, hard earned muscle is exposed, along with increased vascularity. No wonder you look bigger at a lean 180 then you did at a sloppy 215.

2. You’ll Look Better. This is more subjective but a younger guy can get away with being bulky or downright chubby and still look like he has his shit together. Worst-case scenario, Joe Public will assume you’re a big eating o-lineman.

However, with older bodies, extra fat is a lot less appealing. Thirty extra pounds on a more mature guy just looks, well, sloppy. Especially in corporate circles where sweatshirts and clown pants aren’t acceptable attire.

3. You’ll Look Like a Bodybuilder. We all make fun of bodybuilders – even fellow bodybuilders do. But at the end of the day, bodybuilders are masters of physique development. Building muscle and losing fat IS their entire sport, their identity.

When you start to get lean, people will invariably start referring to you as a bodybuilder. While you could take it as a hint you’re spending too much time in front of the mirror, it likely means you’re starting to look like someone who knows how to build muscle.

4. You’ll Feel More in Control. The greatest thing about learning what “works” for your body is the quiet confidence you gain.

Suddenly, lame bits of internet advice that used to drive you nuts like “it’s all just calories in versus calories out” or “it doesn’t matter what you eat as long as you ‘nail’ your intra workout nutrition” no longer bother you. Because you’re self-assured, confident that what you do works – cause obviously, it does.

5. You’ll See Progress. Once you get past the newbie stage, muscle building is a painfully slow process. Show me a guy whose been training for a while that claims to have put on 10 pounds of muscle in a year and I’ll show you either a liar, a supplement huckster, or a walking pincushion. Likely all three.

However, you can still make improvements. But they’re impossible to see if you don’t drop your bodyfat to less than average levels. Staying chubby all year means you’ll never “see” if anything is really working.

6. You’ll Stay Leaner, Longer. Look at pictures of your friends in high school. Now look at pics of them at 25. Then at 35. And at 40-plus and beyond. You’ll probably notice that most are getting progressively fatter. (If any of my friends are reading this, I’m sorry, you fat bastards.)

Fat sneaks up on us. For the average person it’s often 5 or so pounds gained between Halloween and New Years. Some of it gets “dieted” off, but most (if not all) sets up shop on the ass, thighs, and lower back.

But if you diet to decent condition once a year you can prevent this weight creep, or at least slow it to a manageable crawl. It also keeps you mentally “tuned” to seeing yourself as a lean person — and only accepting being in lean condition. So you don’t become that guy who says he “woke up one morning” to see 30 extra pounds of chub on his waistline.

7. You’ll Build More Muscle. This is a big one. Leaner bodies are more adept at building muscle. Some say it’s enhanced insulin or leptin sensitivity.

Or a form of super compensation; perhaps the body’s post-diet survival mechanism. I just know the 8 weeks following a diet is when I make my best hypertrophy improvements.

To be perfectly honest, much of the reason I diet every year is to set up this anabolic rebound. It’s that effective.

8. You’ll Move Better. Some fat people are surprisingly nimble. They’re also usually young and athletic. Very few chunky, older bros are wowing the world with jaw dropping mobility. Extra fat just takes up space and slows you down.

9. You’ll Enjoy Better Health. You can be competition lean and have utterly abysmal health numbers. However, for the most part, the diet and exercise interventions required to get from average to lean will also improve health markers like blood lipids.

Sure, androgen and thyroid numbers may take a temporary beating, but typically that’s with the more extreme end of competition dieting. To sum up, leaner = healthier.

10. You’ll Get More Sex. The fact remains that leaner, muscular bodies are more appealing both in and out of clothes. Your wife or girlfriend might say she loves you just the way you are but let’s be honest; she’d probably like you more if you swapped those moobs for pecs and abs.