Adopt a healthy lifestyle with these strategies that will teach you to lose weight and keep it off for good so you can be lean for life.

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One of the biggest reasons why you’ve struggled to lose weight and keep it off in the past is because you’ve likely viewed the fat loss journey as a one-off process to shed some unwanted weight.

“The hell does that mean, Pete?”

It means you never properly embraced one of the most important aspects of the entire fat loss game:

In order to lose weight and keep it off, you must have a plan for how you’ll continue life without that unwanted weight.

How often have you jumped head first into a fat loss phase by cutting out all of the carbs and excess sugars, by tossing in tons of cardio and by restricting social functions in the name of losing some pounds by summer?

And then how many times have you been forced to jump back into that miserable process to lose the weight again a few weeks or months later?

This nonstop cycle of yo-yo dieting and punishing exercise regimes is not effective. Obviously.

It’s also not necessary.

Today, I’m going to introduce you to the launch of my coaching programming called Lean4Life (or L4L in a fancy I’m too lazy to type it all out kind of way).

Just like the name implies, L4L is the ethos of building a healthy lifestyle. It envelopes the four major pillars of health that will carry you through:

• Nutrition
• Exercise
• Mental health
• Sleep 

If you manage these four things consistently, the results will come.

And if you manage these four things for life, the weight will stay off, stress will decrease, productivity will increase, and you’ll be primed to live your best life going forward.

Let’s take a deeper dive into L4L and how it applies to you.

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The Evolution of Fitness Training to Lifestyle Coaching

We’ve seen such an evolution of the personal training space of the last 20 years or so. No longer is it just “show up at the gym and do a bunch of workouts with your fancy coach.”

Training used to be treated as a luxury for rich folks.

But now that many of us have shifted to online coaching, it opens the door for much more:

• We can help even more people throughout the world, not just those local to our gym.
• Even more importantly, training has shifted to coaching.
• And fitness has expanded to include nutrition and mental health.

My approach to coaching is a holistic one.

If you are sound in mind, body and soul, you’ll fully develop the ability to get lean and stay there for life.

And it’s up to us to find the right habits to create that lean lifestyle.

Creating the Habits to be Lean for Life

One of the most important things I work on with all of my online coaching clients is the building of habits to create a lifestyle.

I tell every single person that trusts me to engineer their fat loss journey that this is a slow process. Especially in the beginning.

We take the time to break down their current daily routines. And then we find a handful of ways to add some small, meaningful changes into their day through simple-to-implement habit changes.

When you create positive habits, it not only solidifies the process towards eventually reaching that goal, but it provides the essential road map for how to maintain the progress after reaching that goal.

If you have no idea what a properly portioned meal should look like, then losing 10 to 20 pounds won’t matter much. You’ll likely put the weight back on sooner rather than later.

So simple habits like the following will help not only lose weight, but keep it off for good by establishing the baseline for a healthy lifestyle:

• Adding one serving of protein to every single meal
• Setting a consistent time of day to go sleep (even weekends)
• Going for one or two 20-minute walks
• Swapping one starchy snack for a piece of fruit with a little protein (apple + string cheese is one my go to favorites)

Start with those simple habits. They’re easy to implement and keep up and not terribly taxing.

Yet, through doing those few small things, you’ll start naturally creating a calorie deficit. You’ll start building momentum, which leads to results, which finally leads to the motivation to do even more.

If you have the tools in place that allow you to build a lifestyle based on healthy habits, despite taking a tad longer to lose the weight, you’ll actually keep it off. For good.

Introducing the Daily DOSE to building lean for life habits

I’m calling this my Daily DOSE. It’s a simple mnemonic device used to help you remember the four pillars.

• Diet
• One Mindful Thing
• Sleep
• Exercise

Remember, perfection is never the goal. There will be days when you miss one of the tenets––maybe you eat well, but skip a workout, or maybe you workout but sleep like an asshole.

It happens.

But, in order to be Lean for Life, you must embrace a consistency over perfection mindset and understand that getting right back on track is the path to victory.

Diet

This one is self explanatory. But we’re gonna talk about it some more anyway.

I’m not going to push forward some dogmatic rules about you must only eat these foods or adopt my specially-crafted nutritional marketing bullshit about how you should eat and when.

Do you enjoy Keto? I enjoy my carbs, but cool … do you.

How about Paleo? Sure, there are a lot of benefits to this way of eating, but it’s not for everyone.

Carnivore? Uh, yeah … that’s where I might draw the line because it’s just dumb and you should eat more than just meat because you’re not a fucking T-Rex.

Anywho.

Diet gets a bad rap because we immediately associate it with losing weight, restriction and punishment.

In reality, diet just means a way of eating. And in the broadest sense of the Daily DOSE, that’s what we’re talking about.

Handle your diet (or way of eating) consistently in a way that is rooted in the basic big rocks of healthy long-term eating:

• Prioritizing lean proteins
• Eating fruits and vegetables
• Making sure at least 80-percent of your meals are nutrient-dense foods
• Leaving room for about 10 to 20 percent of your calories for foods you enjoy to promote balance and sanity

If you do this and do it for life, you will see the results you’re chasing after and you’ll keep those results for good.

No more yo-yo dieting and struggling to lose weight.

These same rules apply no matter the goal: whether it’s weight loss, maintenance or even muscle gain. You’ve got to manage those four things above to be able to see it through.

Might as well adopt it now and embrace the concept.

One Mindful Thing

This is the most underrated aspect of my Lean4Life approach.

We spend most of our time beating up our brains and overstimulating it with nonstop screens and stress and anxiety.

It is imperative that you find some time to practice mental health solutions.

I’m not going to preach about meditation, but I will add that it is increasingly shown to provide numerous benefits long-term.

If you’re new to mindfulness (or if you’ve just not really been a fan of it) and would like a simple guide to getting started without all of the crazy interpretive dance bullshit, you should read my guide to mindfulness for people that hate mindfulness.

But the bare minimum here is to make sure that every single day, you are doing at least one thing that you enjoy and love.

Life is way too short to go days or even weeks without taking a few minutes for yourself.

Yes. You have the time to do this.

Even if you are slammed with your inbox and the kids and everything in between, I can guarantee that you can find at least five minutes per day to prioritize yourself.

Just like a five minute workout for your body when time is tight, a five minute workout for the brain is enough to move the needle at least a little bit.

Everyone has five minutes. Everyone.

Sleep

Did you know that the body burns most of its calories at rest?

Yup. Fun fact.

So if you’re over here preaching about burning the midnight oil or throwing up #NoSleep but wondering why you’re still carrying a little extra fluff around the midsection, it’s that lack of sleep culture that could be holding you back.

In fact, little sleep or poor quality sleep is directly associated with the following less than awesome symptoms:

• Higher levels of body fat
• Increased hunger throughout the day
• Lower levels of lean body mass
• Mood swings and irritability
• Higher stress and anxiety
• Lower life expectancy

Your goal is to aim for a consistent 7-9 hours of sleep per night.

If you’ve got young kids in the house, you’ll likely need to aim for the lower end of that spectrum for a while. I totally understand and feel ya … that struggle is real.

The key word in this sleep situation is consistency.

Just like it is imperative to be consistent with that calorie deficit in order for meaningful weight loss to happen, you can’t just be all over the place with your sleep patterns.

Your body and brain and hormonal functions get all kinds of happy when you provide regular routine and habits. It falls into a circadian rhythm that the body really wants to keep in check once it settles in.

You’ve got to be solid throughout your week. Weekends included.

Exercise

Notice this is the last piece of the Daily DOSE puzzle.

It’s not because it is not important. I want you to treat this whole pillared approach as a holistic journey. Every one thing compliments the other.

However, exercise will never be the sole driver of any healthy lifestyle. And despite what the fancy magazines would have you believe, you need far less of it than you’d probably imagined.

All I want from you is to commit to doing something active every single day.

Note: Active does not mean punishing your body with a grueling sweat-induced, soul-crushing workout. There are times when pushing yourself and challenging yourself with a tough workout makes sense.

However, daily movement should be mostly low-impact. I’m talking about lots of walking.

From there, you should be committed to some form of regular resistance training at least twice per week. If you’re new to training, allow me to explain in this article why strength training is so important.

But being active is more than just pumping out reps and sweating. It should be fun. Which is why I encourage you to find some active activities that get the entire family involved, as I laid out in my busy guide to fitness for parents.

At least once per week (or more if you’re so inclined), I want you to do something really fun that keeps your heart rate up and gets the entire family involved.

A few options:

• Hiking with the family
• Playing a round of football in the backyard
• Challenging each other to an old fashioned race (or laps in the pool)
• Running around the park for a game of tag
• Climbing up trees and walls at the playground
• Turning off the screens, cranking up the music and dancing with loved ones
• Have more sex 😉

Get creative and have some fun.

Putting it all together: 10 Rules to be Lean for Life

This is my approach to life distilled down into the most simplistic set of rules possible so you can apply them to your own journey.

Understand that this is not some overnight fix.

Remember, we are building a lifestyle. And if you can manage to embrace this concept and stop rushing the process, I promise you the results will actually come quicker.

You’ll build a better relationship with food and eating so you no longer worry about which foods to eat without that guilty feeling after meals.

It’ll lead to more energy and strength so you can chase your kids around the playground without getting winded.

Things will slow down for you and it’ll open up the chance to take back more control over your entire schedule, health, wellness and life in general.

It all starts with treating yourself with grace and dignity and being okay with not being perfect all of the time.

Here are the 10 rules to be lean for life:

1. Manage the diet

Make sure the majority of what you eat includes fruits and vegetables. No one in the history of … well, ever … got fat off of eating a diet mostly rooted in fruits and vegetables. Mix it up. Learn a few new ways to cook things with flavor. Get creative. But definitely get more natural foods in your daily routine.

2. Handle the protein

Aim to get a minimum of 90-120 grams of protein per day. More is okay. Diversifying your protein sources is helpful, too. Eat organic when you can afford it (and when available). Don’t overthink it too much.

3. Enjoy balance

About 10 to 20 percent of the time, feel free to enjoy foods you love. This includes pizza and pasta and cookies and burgers and fries or whatever it is. If a food is a trigger for you, then maybe you should exclude it for a while. Otherwise, enjoy these things in moderation without the guilt and then get back on track.

4. Move every single day

Most of your movement should be low impact walking. Try to get 8,000 to 10,000 steps per day whenever possible. One day per week, see if you can extend those steps up to 15,000 to 20,000.

5. Get stronger

At least two times per week, you should be performing some form of resistance training. The focus is on getting stronger, relative to your strength and experience and ability levels. This is not age specific, you are never too old to start some form of resistance training. And yes, ladies, you should be strength training, too; allow me to explain why right here.

6. Push yourself a few times per week

Once or twice per week, I want you to go all out on a workout. This is only if you are well-rested and not going through additional bouts of stressful stuff. Pushing yourself in this sense means cranking out a grueling Metabolic Conditioning session or just Sprinting as fast as possible for a few rounds. Make it intense. Make it short.

7. Recovery for your body

Stretch more often, or at least perform some mobility and flexibility work at least one day per week. You can add stuff throughout your week if you’d like. Or dedicate one day as your recovery day and just chill out to let the body heal and recharge.

8. Recovery for your mind

Every day you should spend five to 10 minutes practicing some kind of mindfulness routine. It can be meditation or deep breathing or journaling. This is the closest thing to a workout for the brain that we have and you should be doing this daily.

9. Grace and gratitude

You are human. And as a human, you will mess up. This is okay. It’s part of our lifelong journey of learning: we fall, we get back up, we try again. Understand that this is true of everything from nutrition to exercise to mindfulness. Embrace that and learn from it and be okay with it. In fact, be thankful for it and express that gratitude daily (maybe add a few lines in your journal if you’d like to do so).

10. Have fun every day

Take a few minutes every single day to do at least one thing that you love. Life is too short to be cranking through the daily grind and going each day as a prisoner to your inbox and the kids’ extracurricular activity schedules. Read a book, play a video game, listen to a song, just do something for a few minutes at least. Every. Single. Day. Do not wait for the weekend to come just to do something you enjoy.

Being lean for life is more than just getting into physical shape

In fact, in order to get lean and stay lean for life, you’ll need to adopt a mindset and perhaps embrace entire lifestyle change.

• Manage your diet and nutrition to ensure a focus on lean proteins and whole nutritious foods
• Spend time every single day for mindfulness and mental enrichment; do one thing you enjoy every single day
• Prioritize good sleep hygiene and consistency; aim for 7-9 hours every single night
• Be active and do something active every single day; walking a ton every single should be the majority of your physical movement

You will get lean when you embrace these pillars and stick to them. Consistently.

And in doing so, you’ll likely start to think less about that damn scale and what that daily number looks like and more about the natural habits leading to a successful lifestyle so you can finally be lean for life.

 

Need Help Designing an Effective Weight Loss Plan (one that you can actually stick to long-term)?

Introducing my Lean4Life Coaching Program. A holistic approach to health with one goal in mind:

Create a lifestyle plan to help you lose weight, look good and feel great through my 4 Pillar, Daily DOSE approach. A plan that is enjoyable and sustainable.

You’ll not only lose weight, but you’ll be able to finally keep that weight off for life.

Losing weight is not just about cranking out squats and presses or cutting out carbs. It’s about developing a lifestyle and embracing consistency and patience to see it through to what you’d like to achieve.

This is exactly what my Lean4Life Coaching Program sets out to develop.

When you’re ready to finally make that investment in yourself, we can get on the phone for a 100% free strategy call to go over your goals and see if you’re a fit.

All you need to do is click through, fill out a coaching application and then you’ll be prompted to set up a time to hop on the phone with me.

Don’t find yourself stuck in that continuous yo-yo dieting cycle anymore. Stop staring at that pair of skinny jeans in your closet, wondering if you’ll ever be able to fit in them again.

Let’s work together and crush this thing. Once and for all.

 

Let me help you learn how to be lean for life … 

I’m here to help you out. 

If you have any questions, reach out. I answer all of my emails at pete [at] petecataldo [.] com … Hit me up with the subject line “How to be lean for life” and I’ll answer any questions you have to make this work for you.

Or you can hit me up anytime on the socialz on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

If you enjoyed this post, maybe you’d like more knowledge bombs from me. I’d be honored if you join my mailing list to get regular updates every time I post something pretty dope.