From Fat to Phat: How Fat Geeks Can Lose Weight in 8 Weeks

The Fat Geek Bootcamp – From Fat to Phat

How to Change Your Lifestyle

OK, so you’re a fat guy (or girl) and you sit in front of a computer all day. In case you didn’t realize it, you are a fat geek. Or perhaps a fat nerd? Either way, those two terms can be used interchangeably for the purpose of this article. I have been one or the other, and perhaps both, at various points in my lifetime. Looking back, it was never any fun.

If you keep up your current lifestyle, only one result could be possible: you will get fatter and then you will die. This solution is neither fun nor ideal. To combat this, you should start an 8 week fitness boot camp.

Start slowly, learn some initial lessons over the course of the 8 weeks, and be prepared to embark on a lifetime fitness plan after the boot camp is over. You will need to learn something about these important health topics:

• Lifestyle – sleeping, social interaction, work hours
• Diet – what to eat, when to eat, why to eat
• Exercise – which exercises to use, how to exercise, when to exercise

Motivational Wisdom

Let me tell you what you will not have if you are a fat geek:

• Sexy girls trying to date you
• Sexy girls even looking at you (unless they are pointing and laughing)
• The strength to pick up anything over 20 pounds without straining your back
• Visible abs
• Comfortable seating in pretty much any public place except those airplanes that offer double wides for fat folks
• Low cholesterol
• The speed to out run bullies, criminals, or anything that might be trying to mug you or eat you. If a rabid skunk comes at you, you’re toast buddy.
• A life expectancy higher than mid-50s, but then if I were you I probably wouldn’t be looking forward to that whole ‘staying alive’ thing anyway.

Yes indeed, being a fat geek is probably the worst thing you can do for your social life and for your general health.

What if You Got in Shape?

Now picture your body weight at a level where you can actually see some muscle definition. Go ahead and imagine it. Now add about a year’s worth of dedicated weight training to that image. Starting to look good, isn’t it?

Combine this image with the intelligence of a geek, and what do you have? Let me tell you about the wonders and pleasures you will have as a healthy, hardbody geek:

• Now you will be accessible to acceptable looking females.
• You will have the strength and agility to perform in emergency situations.
• Your blood pressure and cholesterol levels will be within the limits of a healthy male.
• You will have the confidence to excel in business or on the job. Feel free to get a promotion or ask for that raise!
• Whoa! You can fit in molded plastic seats now without flab overflowing the edges.
• With any luck you can look forward to an extended life with your beautiful wife, enjoying the wealth you’ve accumulated throughout the years, playing sports or engaging in fun physical activities in the Bahamas.

You fat boys see where I am going with this?

If you are real smart, you have a chance to do well in life. If you are real good looking you still have a chance of doing well in life. If you are healthy, you will most likely live a long and prosperous lift. Combine the three and you will be a force to be reckoned with!

How to Turn that Fat into Phat: Lifestyle Eating

It is insanity to continue on your current path hoping for a change. It won’t happen. You must take it upon yourself to start a lifestyle change that includes both diet and exercise. That is not to say that you should start a fad diet; instead, you should change your daily lifestyle eating habits.

Changes you can make today:

1. Stop drinking soda and start drinking any of the following (listed in order of preference):
   • Water
   • Crystal Lite or some other sugar-free juice or drink mix
   • Tea
   • Coffee, decaf
   • Coffee, caffeinated
   • Diet soda
2. Chew sugar free gum instead of eating or sucking on candy. This cuts down on empty sugar calories and cavities.
3. Limit yourself to one vending machine visit a day, for one food item only. Try to choose something healthier than a candy bar or potato chips. Some great vending machine snacks inlude:
   • pretzels
   • Sun Chips
   • Chex Mix
   • sunflower seeds
   • peanuts
   • trail mix
   • Nature’s Valley granola bar
4. Remove all or most starchy, fatty snacks from your lunchbox and replace them with fruit, nuts, and foods high in protein. This means no chips, cake, cookies, pizza, or anything slathered in mayo, dressing, or butter.
5. Eat breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner, and at least one more snack throughout the day. These should all be small meals that follow the previous rule about fruits, nuts, and high-protein foods
6. If you don’t like to eat breakfast, consider trying an intermittent fasting diet, where you don’t eat until noon, eat healthy for 7-8 hours, then don’t eat after 8pm.

How to Turn that Fat into Phat: Exercise

While following a healthy diet is good for you, you will still need to make your body stronger and more agile. You will accomplish this through some sort of exercise or resistance training.

I recommend a combination of weight lifting and interval sprints, but you might want to start with something a little easier. Remember, all you need to start is 30 minutes of exercise a day, 3 days a week.

In time, you will want to add minutes and days eventually so that you are doing 45 minutes a day, 4 days a week, plus stretching and warm-ups, but once again, start off with a simple exercise routine to test the waters.

Changes you can make today:

1. Walk more. Stand up and walk around for 5 minutes every hour. Seriously.
2. Improve your posture. Sit up straight, suck in your gut, and keep your shoulders back. This will keep your posture healthy and your ab muscles tight. You want to keep your core strong and functional rather than weak and tire-like.
3. Start exercising regularly. You don’t have to jump right into a weight training routine. Choose a form of exercise that you want to try, sign up at a facility that offers that form of exercise, and/or go buy the equipment necessary to participate in that sport.

   Here are some exercise options:

   • Weightlifting
   • Circuit training (machines or free weights)
   • Cardio machines (elliptical, treadmill)
   • Walking/Jogging/Running
   • Mountain biking or road riding
   • Martial arts or boxing
   • Hiking, rowing, or a group sport of your choice.
   • A combination of any of the above.
4. Get a workout partner. Find someone similar to yourself and ask if they want to be your workout partner. Having a workout partner usually increases motivation. You will feel more accountable for showing up at the gym if someone is there waiting for you.

How to Turn that Fat into Phat: General Lifestyle

Last, but not least, you should be concerned with your general lifestyle.

Sleeping

Make sure to get at least 7 hours of sleep every night, 8 is even better. Sitting in front of the computer for 18 hours a day, exercising for an hour, and sleeping for 5 hours just isn’t going to cut it.

Higene and Appearance

To feel strong and confident about yourself, you need to eat well, exercise, sleep well, shower, shave, brush your teeth, comb or brush your hair if you have any, and dress confidently. If you make an effort to improve all these areas of your life, a little bit at a time, you will morph into the person that you really want to be: a healthy, successful, guy, who also looks good naked.

So What EXACTLY Should I Do?

Good question!

Fat to Phat Option #1

My recommendation is to keep your training to 3-4 workouts per week, for a 45 minute duration not counting warm ups, cool downs, stretching, talking, ogling treadmill girls, or any other time wasters. Stick 90% to free weights.

Focus on the largest muscles in the following order of importance:

1. Legs
2. Back
3. Chest
4. Abdominals
5. Lower Back
6. Shoulders
7. Triceps
8. Everything Else

Week 1: Walk at a moderate pace for 30 minutes on Mon/Weds/Fri. Try to hit some hills. Practice ALL the new lifestyle eating tips. Decide what additional exercise you wish to participate in and get that membership to the gym or dojo, and/or go out and buy your new equipment.

Week 2: Reduce the walking to 20 minutes, and combine it with 30 minutes of whatever exercise or sport you chose. I recommend 5 minutes on the elliptical, 30 minutes of circuit training, and 15 more minutes on the elliptical. Or perhaps you have a 60 minutes kickboxing class. Either way, pick up the pace. Don’t forget to stretch after working out.

Week 3: You should be at a combined 60 minutes of exercise 3 days a week. This week you should practice targeting your carbs and calories. The bulk of carbs and calories should make up breakfast. Also consume some carbs before and after training, but never at night. Try to eat a low carb, low calorie dinner. Avoid anything more than a small fruit or high-protein snack before bed.

Week 4: You are approaching your half-way point in the 8 week fat geek boot camp. By now you should be familiar with the general exercise plan. This is a good time for me to recommend trying some free weights. Take one day off from circuit training and try some bench presses or some dumbbell shoulder presses instead of machines.

Week 5: You are half way there. During this week I recommend making 50% of each workout based around free weights. If you don’t know what to do based on articles from this site and other Internet fitness sites, just go ask one of the trainers at the gym to give you one exercise for each muscle group. A full body weight training routine is what you will eventually strive for.

Week 6: If possible, add in one extra workout on the weekend. Since you are in the initial stages of this lifestyle change, your body has not adapted to exercise yet; you are not actually putting forth maximal intensity and effort because your body has not yet been trained to do so. Therefore you can add a fourth day without worrying about overtraining. All you should be doing on this forth day, is some additional cardio. Bring back the 30 minute walk or bike ride if you so choose.

Week 7: You should have a good idea about how to eat on a daily basis at this point. You should have a good idea about how much exercise your body can tolerate and what you really want to do for exercise. You should know generally how to perform most simple exercises like bench presses, deadlifts, squats, shoulder presses, curls, sit ups, etc…

You should be exercising intensely 3 times per week with some form of weight lifting or martial arts, warming up, stretching, and cooling down. Hopefully you are also implementing a fourth 30 minute workout. If you are not doing some of these things, or don’t know how to do some of these things, it is your responsibility to ask around or research it online.

Week 8: You have nearly graduated the fat geek boot camp. It is now time to set future goals. Plan out your exercise routines 2 months at a time. Get goals for fat loss, strength gain, endurance, or whatever else you have decided to focus on training. Start keeping a training log if you are weight training.

Let me know how your progress goes. Leave a comment below, send me an email, or post your results in the forum, which I hope to have live sometime in early 2011.

Fat to Phat Option #2

Some you might be comfortable with jumping right into a routine that you can maintain on a weekly basis. You want a routine that leaves very little guessing, tells you exactly how to train, which exercises, sets, reps, etc… and even outlines a couple cardio routines to follow each week.

In this case you should follow these popular Project Swole workout routines:

For men: follow this full body fat loss routine for men.

For women: follow this full body fat loss routine for women.

Use the diet and nutrition advice in each article and consider picking up some of the supplements to give you that extra edge. Follow each routine for 8 weeks without missing a workout.

Again, let me know how your progress goes. Leave a comment below, send me an email, or post your results in the forum, which I hope to have live sometime in early 2011.

In Conclusion

If you stick to this diet and exercise plan and integrate it as part of your lifestyle, you will feel so much better each and every day. You will once again, or maybe for the first time ever, have a chance with the opposite sex.

You will be stronger and healthier, making you less prone to disease, illness, or injury. Best of all, you will feel much more confident about yourself, thereby allowing you a chance for greater success in business, with client relationships, and with personal relations.

You will also look much sharper in a suit and tie when you turn that spare tire girth into broad shoulder girth. For women, you will change your shape from a pair to an hourglass, and it will make all the different in your appearance and self-confidence.

Nothing will ever happen if you don’t try, so stop being a slob and just give one of those 8 week programs a try. You won’t regret it.

Tags: Diet, exercise, geeks

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