When I worked as an investment analyst in New York City, I maintained a healthy routine during the week. My daily eating routine looked something like this:

• At 6:30am as I skimmed the Wall Street Journal and checked emails on my Blackberry in a cab, I would call in my egg white omelet breakfast to the deli across the street from my office.

• I ate lunch at my desk because I had to keep an eye on my stock screens. While I had several restaurants and meals to choose from, I would always get a lean meat, some veggies, and a starch. Pretty simple.

• As long as I didn’t have a dinner with clients, or coworkers, I ordered in from the same few restaurants at night, keeping the food wholesome and my portions under control.

Continue Reading Avoiding the Weekend Spiral: Eat Healthy on Weekends

While I’ve talked about the importance of measuring body fat percentage, I think tracking your body weight over time is also very important. Unfortunately, most people track their weight incorrectly and don’t understand the most important reason WHY they should even bother.

Daily Body Weight Tracking Can Make You Crazy

When most people try to lose, or even gain weight, they try to weigh themselves every day, or even multiple times per day, which is at best a waste of time, and at worst, compulsive, and even counterproductive (I admit I’ve done this). Day to day, it’s almost impossible to track meaningful changes in your body. It’s like trying to measure how fast grass grows on a daily basis. Pretty silly, right?

Daily weight-ins can make you go crazy because of changes in water weight. Your body is comprised of 60-75% water, which depends on the amount of muscle you have (muscle contains more water than fat). Small fluctuations in your hydration level can change your body weight by a few pounds. If you are weighing yourself multiple times per day, any changes in body weight will be a results of changes in hydration level.

Continue Reading Track Body Weight With Monday Morning Weigh-Ins

Squats are the KING of all exercises because they are a “functional” exercise that affect your ability to live a full, healthy life. Anything from getting out of a chair, to squatting down to pick something off the floor requires squat strength. Especially as we get older, proper squat technique is absolutely critical to maintain health and longevity.

The squat requires core stabilization, leg, and hip strength. If you are using a barbell on your back, or holding dumbbells, then the squat involves every muscle group in your body. This video gives you 7 tips to squat with perfect form every time:

Continue Reading How to Use Proper Squat Technique | 7 Tips

I believe body transformation requires developing healthy habits to replace unhealthy habits. You may feel overwhelmed with all the suggestions I make on this website to improve your health and achieve a leaner body. My advice: Divide and Conquer. Let me explain…

As I’ve followed the entrepreneurial path the last couple years, at times I feel completely overwhelmed by all the various tasks and projects I need to complete. But when I break apart the tasks by prioritizing (divide), then complete them over time (conquer), managing a business becomes a lot more well, manageable. If you apply this same “divide and conquer” approach to improving your health, then changing your habits and striving for optimal health is far more achievable.

Here are three examples of people I know who (1) focused on their unhealthiest habits (prioritized), (2) then made small changes over time that added up to impressive results:

Continue Reading Divide & Conquer: Small Changes Add Up

If you’ve been following BuiltLean.com, you know losing fat WITHOUT losing muscle is the only way to get lean. So how do you track if you are losing fat, or muscle, or both? The first place to start is by measuring your body fat percentage.

I have an overview of the 5 most common methods of measuring body fat percentage below, along with the ONLY method to perfectly measure body fat percentage (I’ll bet you don’t want to use this method). While these 5 methods vary in accuracy, the key to assessing body fat levels is consistent measurements over time (repeatability) so that you can effectively track your progress.

1) Skin Fold Caliper

The “skin fold” method measures your body fat percentage by pinching your fat with your fingers then measuring the thickness with a body fat caliper. The reading is given in millimeters, which you compare to a chart with age and gender to arrive at your body fat percentage. There are many different types of caliper tests, which range from only one site like with the Accumeasure Body Fat Caliper to a 7 site Jackson Pollack Method (some are as high as 12 sites).

Continue Reading 5 Ways to Measure Body Fat Percentage

How do you structure the order of exercises for your workouts? I want to offer you 3 compelling reasons why you should complete the most challenging, intense exercises in the beginning of your workout, then move on to less strenuous exercises.

When I say “challenging” exercises, I mean you are focusing on the most challenging compound exercises that require multiple joints and a lot of effort, such as Squats, Lunges, Bench Press, or Pullups for example. These exercises give you the most bang for your buck, as I described in Part 3 of my Efficient Strength Training 101 article series: How to Choose Effective Exercises.

So here are 3 reasons to complete the most challenging exercises in the beginning of your workout:

1) You have the most energy

At the beginning of the workout after a light warm up, your muscles are likely filled with sufficient glycogen (energy for your body), your muscles are fresh, and your cardiovascular capacity is the highest. You are ready to hit the weights hard and you might as well use this energy on the most important exercises that you get the best results. Starting out with shoulder raises or a biceps curl is not a great use of your energy.

Continue Reading 3 Reasons to Complete Challenging Exercises First

There are so many abs exercises to choose from, that it can seem impossible to figure out the right exercises to strengthen your abs. In my opinion, the best way to strengthen your abs is to choose harder and harder exercises to complete, not just complete more and more sets and reps.

I’ve used this progression of abs exercises too many times to count with many people very successfully. It works like a charm and before you know it, you’ll be doing some really advanced abs exercises and have a very strong midsection. In addition to the video instruction, find below more detailed explanations of each exercise with photos for you:

Continue Reading Strengthen Your Abs: 5 Great Abs Exercises

I created a list of 15 key strength training terms below to help you become a smart exerciser. I have tons of strength training workouts I plan on adding to BuiltLean.com that use many of these terms, so this page can serve as a reference for you.

Repetition
A repetition, or “rep” is a complete motion of a particular exercise. For example, a rep of a pushup starts with your arms straight holding yourself off the floor, lowering your body down, then pushing back up. Repeating 10 pushups means you completed 10 reps.

Set
A set is the specific number of reps you perform before you rest. Two sets of bench press performing 12 reps, means you completed 12 reps of bench press, two separate times.

Weight (aka Resistance)
The weight is the amount of resistance that you are lifting, such as a 30lbs dumbbell. Lower reps generally require that you lift heavier weight and higher reps implies you lift lighter weight.

Continue Reading 15 Strength Training Terms You Should Know

Because I’m interested in how people seek fitness information online, I regularly check Google’s keyword tool, which shows how many times per month people search Google for words, or phrases. By searching for fitness related phrases, we can peek into the American psyche that reveals interesting insights into how Americans approach their health.

I was searching for the keyword phrase “lose weight” and came up with the top 15 results ranked by the average number of searches per month for the trailing 12 months (U.S. search volume):

Continue Reading The State of Fitness in America: Just Analyze Google

A lot of people have been asking me about my fitness philosophy to help get a leaner, healthier body. So I created a video to answer that question. I also wanted to create some context for all the exercise and nutrition videos that I will be adding in the future.

If you blend these 3 elements I discuss into your life, I really do believe you can reach your potential!

The one thing I would like to add to this video is that being lean is really a lifestyle. Not every lean person has the same exact lifestyle, but the vast majority of people who are lean in my opinion infuse these 3 elements into their lives.

I hope you enjoyed this video and I encourage you to share it with friends! Also, am I missing anything? What would you add?