30 Days to Shredded – Turbocharged
Training For Maximal Results
Felix Schmieder
Lift-Big.com
Disclaimer:
The information in this article is offered for educational purposes only; the reader should be cautioned
that there is an inherent risk assumed by the participant with any form of physical activity. With that in
mind, those participating in strength and conditioning programs should check with the physician prior to
initiating such activities. Anyone participating in these activities should understand that such training
initiatives may be dangerous if performed incorrectly. The author assumes no liability for injury; this is
purely an educational manual to guide those proficient with the demands of such programming.
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There are a few key ingredients to every, single successful fitness program that gives lasting results and
has you looking and feeling your best.
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Compound movements
High Intensity
Simple exercises
Form, movement and health above all else
Notice not a single one of these bullet points says anything about a treadmill, an elliptical or any
machine at all. Really, I think one of the worst things someone can do with their money is to pay $20$50 just so they can hop on an elliptical for 30-45 minutes. Weights and the weight room are
intimidating simply because they’re an unknown. Use them a few times and the fear quickly vanishes.
But beyond that, the biggest issue is that almost every, single person on those ellipticals, treadmills and
every other piece of cardio equipment is going to fail. It’s not a guarantee, but something like 89% of
people who try to lose weight are going to fail. 89%!
The reason why? People get all excited about New Years and their resolutions or get real focused 2
months before a big event like a wedding or vacation. What do they do? They blow the dust off their
check in keychain or they excitedly head to the nearest gym and get back into it.
And boy, how do they get into it! Everyone that has been into the gym in January knows it’s nearly
impossible to get onto a cardio machine. Unfortunately, the results are less than stellar. About 3 weeks
later, 2-3lbs might have been lost. But even worse, any motivation that person might have had is gone
as well. Results aren’t coming and they won’t come. So the person reasons away their failure, “I don’t
have good genetics” “I have big bones” “Largeness runs in my family.”
Sometimes you find people a little more in the know; they’ll do some cardio and then hop on the
exercise machines to build some muscle which will help burn some more fat. These people might see
some slightly better results, but they’re usually going to fail as well since machines simply cannot
provide the proper intensity for us.
First and foremost, we have to build muscle. If you’re not building muscle, you’re wasting your time and
your money. Muscle is how you fat proof your body and turn it into a fat burning machine. Yes, ladies,
you too!
Usually right about now is where I get people, both guys and girls, exclaiming that they don’t want to get
bulky or that they simply want to tone. Taking a look at these muscle laden freaks below and I can
understand where people are coming from.
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The left is a twenty-something personal trainer and student, the other is a thirty-something mother of 4
and wife. Both of these women lift weights regularly and I’m sure bulky isn’t something most people
would say when describing either. To put it another way, toning, simply put, is stripping the fat from the
body to reveal the muscle beneath. Women simply cannot build bulky muscles unless they specifically
train for it as well as start taking testosterone supplements. Even guys can’t get that big without extra
help!
For guys, it’s even harder to convince them that they won’t accidentally blow up to crazy proportions (or
easily gain them if that’s their goal) because steroid use is rampant throughout the fitness industry. The
best examples of bodies that are 100% natural are old time strongmen; the German’s (German ingenuity
strikes again) first discovered steroid use in the 1930’s. It’s fairly safe to say that use wasn’t very
widespread until about the 60’s, but let’s look at some old time strongmen from before the 30’s for
argument’s sake.
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Both Arthur Saxon on the left and Eugen Sandow on the right died before 1930. Both could lift a barbell
weighing over 300lbs over their heads with one hand. Compare their bodies to a typical bodybuilder:
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As you can see, neither one looks anything like modern bodybuilders do today. Steroid use really is that
rampant in the fitness industry. We’re building normal amounts of muscle that helps us look good and
makes our body fantastic at burning fat.
The best way I’ve heard this described is this: Think of cars; small cars are very fuel efficient and barely
sip any gas. They have small engines, small tires and it takes them about 3 minutes to get up to highway
speeds. If you’re going downhill. And there’s a tailwind.
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On the other hand, we have muscle cars. Big, ridiculously powerful engines that no one outside of
Nascar needs. They burn so much gas that you need to fill up at every other red light and they can get
to 60MPH in 4 seconds. Which is great for getting speeding tickets.
When it comes to our body, we need it to be inefficient at burning fuel just like the muscle car. If the
body is efficient, it’s complacent and is great at storing fat. If it’s inefficient, it has to burn a lot of fuel
just to stay alive. Muscle is how you make your body inefficient and muscle is how you achieve “the
look.”
This is why cardio always stops working. When the body does something, it adapts to it; this is what we
call the principle of specificity in the fitness industry. When you run more, you become better at
running. What also happens is you lose lots of “unneeded” muscle mass. Your body is doing its best to
become efficient and too much muscle makes running very inefficient; your body starts burning too
many calories and it burns muscle to keep your metabolism lower.
So, by its very nature, running becomes a terrible way to burn fat; couple that with the fact that we
naturally begin to lose muscle mass as we start hitting our 30’s and you see why cardio is a recipe for
disaster. Lack of muscle means we start collecting fat like it’s our job.
Even more sinister, all that low intensity cardio tends to increase cortisol, the same hormone caused by
stress. Cortisol is a catabolic hormone, meaning it is a hormone that destroys muscle and reduces
metabolism! So even though you are burning calories and a bit of fat, you are also producing cortisol,
which has a muscle burning and fat sparing effect.
Conversely, weight training is very inefficient. It promotes muscle building is great at burning fat when
done right. Beyond that, weight training simply cannot become inefficient; you simply add more weight,
lift the same weight more times, lift the same weight faster or lift the same weight with less rest. So,
while your cardio routine would have to extend out to two hours to burn the same amount of fat and
calories, your weight training session will always be 30-60 minutes.
But wait, there’s more!
Since lifting weights builds muscle, our metabolism naturally gets higher. A higher metabolism means
you burn more calories by just staying alive. If you’re burning more calories, you’re storing less fat.
What does this mean for you? It means normal social gatherings (happy hour, friends in town, holidays)
aren’t something to dread; any weight you do gain is shed once you go back to eating normally.
For example, obviously, everyone tends to gain some weight during holiday season. What separates
those with muscle and those that don’t is people with muscle will lose any weight they put on fairly
quickly without altering their normal schedule. No extra days in the gym to make up for it, no feeling
guilty, no super-strict diets, none of that crap.
Still not convinced? Well how would you like to burn calories even after you’ve finished working out?
Sounds pretty sweet, right? This is what’s known as the afterburn effect; weight training does this
naturally. When you lift weights, your body is forced to recover from because tiny, microscopic tears
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are formed in the muscles. Your body has to expend extra calories to recover from these micro-tears
and then it burns even more calories to make you stronger for the next time.
Want the icing on the cake? You can essentially combine weight training and cardio training into a very
intense workout session that will send your metabolism soaring, burn tons of calories and build a lot of
muscle all at once. Best of all, these sessions should only last about 45-60 minutes and 3 sessions a
week will do way more for you than 90 minutes 5 times a week on any cardio machine.
This method is simply called circuit training or going from one exercise to the next with little to no rest in
between them. This is so effective because you can work your whole body at once, build strength and
muscle all while getting your heart going like bananas. This causes a crap-ton (actual measurement) of
metabolic distress and really forces your body to change.
The easiest and simplest way to get started is work your legs twice, work your upper body twice and
work your core once or twice. If you’re just getting started, 5 exercises are plenty. We pair everything
for one purpose; balance. We want to work the back and front of our legs as well as the back and front
of our bodies. A simple beginner’s routine would look like this:
Day A
Goblet Squats 3x8-12
DB Rows 3x8-12
Stability Ball Leg Curls 3x8-12
Push-Ups 3x8-12
Plank 3x25 – 45 seconds
Day B
Walking Lunge 3x8-12 each
Lat Pulldown 3x8-12
Kettlebell/Dumbbell Deadlift 3x8-12
½ Kneeling Overhead Press 3x8-12 each
Side Plank 3x20-30 sec each
Do each exercise right in a row, one right after the other. Rest when needed and try to get through all
three rounds of exercise as quickly as possible.
Day C
Day C has my favorite cardio option: Bill Phillips Body For Life cardio routine. We have 20 minutes on
the clock. Again, choosing your favorite cardio option, for 2 minutes, we warm up at about a 5 out of 10
on a scale of intensity. So an easy jog. Then we move to a 6 for a minute so we’re moving but it’s still
kind of easy, then 7 for a minute and now things are picking up a bit, then 8 for a minute, then 9 for a
minute which is running but not sprinting, and then drop back down to 6 and build back up. For the
final round, we go at level 9 then go all out at 10 which we are absolutely sprinting as hard as we can,
then drop down to 5 for a cool down, and call it a day.
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I’m literally just going to copy and paste the chart from his website for a visual:
Get a hell of a workout in, burn a ton of calories and head home in 20 minutes. You really can’t beat
that.
Now, if some of that looks like gibberish to you, don’t worry! I’ll explain:
The numbers next to them denote “sets” and “number of repetitions” (reps). So, for every exercise, you
would do 2-3 sets of 8-12 reps. What that means is you would 8-12 goblet squats and while your legs
are resting, you would do 8-12 rows per arm, 8-12 curls, 8-12 push-ups and then hold the plank. Once
through, you would repeat the entire series 1 to 2 more times for a total of 2 to 3 sets. Get it?
Notice the upper range for reps is 12; again we want to build muscle and cause as much metabolic
distress as possible. If we lift weights for more than 12 reps, we’re not building muscle as effectively as
we can. The heavier the weight, the more the body is forced to adapt and overcome the stress placed
upon.
When you lift weights heavy enough that you can only do it for a maximum of 12 times, your muscles
are literally torn apart on a microscopic level. Your body has to burn a lot of calories to fix the damage
done to it. Also, being the incredibly adaptive machine that it is, your body doesn’t want those tears to
happen again. It knows if it builds the muscle stronger, that won’t happen again. So it burns even more
calories building more muscle mass since it’s adapting to the stress upon it. We simply get around this
by lifting more weight or doing more reps.
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But why the limit around 12 then? For the normal, healthy adult, the body simply isn’t forced to adapt
as much. If you can lift the weight more than 12 times, less stress is placed, fewer tears are made and
less muscle is built. Beyond this, if you can lift a weight more than 15-20 times, you’re not forcing your
body to adapt at all muscularly. The workout has essentially become a cardio workout and is much,
much less effective. There are always caveats to everything, but in general, you will see best results in
the 8-12 range when circuit training and looking to burn fat and build muscle at the same time.
A typical week of these workouts might look like this:
Monday
Day A
Tuesday
Off
Wednesday
Day B
Thursday
Off
Friday
Day C
Saturday
Off
Sunday
Off
This would be just fine if you’re just getting started out. You don’t want to jump right into a lot of
exercising and be sore all the time. If you’re more experienced and/or have more time to give to
exercise, I would do something like this
Monday
Day A
Tuesday
Day B
Wednesday
Off
Thursday
Day A
Friday
Day C
Saturday
Day B
Sunday
Off
Tuesday
Day C
Wednesday
Day B
Thursday
Day A
Friday
Day C
Saturday
Day B
Sunday
Off
Or even
Monday
Day A
If you really want to get after it.
Make your exercise schedule fit you, however, and don’t feel you have to do any sort of set schedule. It
may even change week to week, but ensure you’re doing something 3 times a week.
This brings me to my final piece about weight training: exercise selection. None of the above exercises
target one, specific area or muscle. They are compound exercises: multi-joint, multi-muscle exercises.
Goblet squats, for instance, primarily work the legs. They also work the butt, the abs, the upper back
and a little bit of arms. This ensures you’re, again, causing the most amount of distress to your body,
burning the most amounts of calories and building the most amount of muscle.
This is compared to isolation exercises such as bicep curls, tricep kickbacks, leg extensions, etc. While
these exercises are fine, they are primarily working only one muscle at a time. They don’t require lots of
different muscle groups to perform the movement and, as a result, don’t cause a whole lot of distress.
More distress means more fat burned.
In other words, if you want to tone your arms, you have to strip the fat from them. A set of squats will
do more for your arms than 3 arm specific exercises combined. If you want a nice chest, you have to
build some muscle there. If you want a six pack, you have to get rid of the fat that is there. All of these
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come as a result of exercising properly so your intensity levels are high and eating right so you burn
more calories than you take in.
This is not to say isolation exercises are bad. If you want to do a little extra arms or abs at the end of
your routine, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. However, our primary workout should consist
of compound movements that target multiple muscle groups.
Which is the final point: diet. Almost everyone I ever talk to says, “Well I eat pretty healthy.”
With all due respect, this is absolutely bullshit. If you ate pretty healthy, your weight would not be at a
number higher than you want it to be. Diet determines how much you weigh, exercise determines how
you look at that weight. If you’re eating too much, you’re going to have extra fat, plain and simple.
You’re not big boned, you don’t have bad genetics; the only thing holding you back is you.
This is freeing, if you look at it the right way. You, right now, have every single opportunity to build the
body you’ve always wanted. It’s never too late to get started as it can happen at any age.
Now there are a few tricks that I’ll discuss with you that can have some great effects on your body
composition and they work incredibly well if it fits your lifestyle, but there really are only a few rules of
thumb you should follow when eating food:
Eat Protein At Every Meal
Protein is anything that used to have a face: beef, steak, pork, chicken, and fish. Things like beans aren’t
bad, but the “best” kind of protein used to walk, swim or fly. Shoot for 1 gram of protein per pound of
bodyweight or more. This is true if you want to lose weight or gain weight.
To put it another way, if you’re a guy eating 4+ times a day, 2 palm sized serving of protein every time
you eat. If you’re a woman, 1 palm sized serving. Scale this if you eat more often or less often.
This step is crucial. High protein diets have been shown time and again to burn more fat, build more
muscle, increase satiety, increase energy and a ton of other benefits. A general rule of thumb is go for
at least 75-100 grams of protein for women and 150+ for males while striving to reach 1 gram per
pound. FYI roughly 1lb of meat or 4-5 scoops of protein powder is about 100 grams of protein
Eat Vegetables at Every Meal
Mom was right. Vegetables have tons of vitamins and nutrients that we need and want in our body.
You want to be eating about 5 cups of “normal” (broccoli, tomatoes, green beans) vegetables or 10 cups
of leafy (spinach, kale, arugla) veggies.
Eat about 40-100 grams of fat
Fat is necessary. It’s good for you. Eat fat – avocado, nuts, olive oil, coconut oil, cheese, etc
Don’t eat fat and carbs at the same time
When you eat fat, it slows your digestion down. This is good because high protein, high fat, high veggie
meals will keep you full and healthy. When you eat carbs and fat at the same time (bacon and pancakes,
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cheeseburger and fries, for example), the carbs aren’t digested and are stored as body fat instead. Easy
enough to avoid.
So if you had a cheeseburger, drop the bread and have vegetables or a salad instead of fries. Cheese
and beef are somewhat fatty, so adding carbs on top is bad. Or, if you had a big salad with chicken
breast, have olive oil and vinegar as your dressing. Since the meal is just greens and lean protein, the
olive oil will help keep you feeling full.
Eat Carbs Mostly After Your Workout
Eat starchy stuff like potatoes, oatmeal, rice, whole grain pasta, etc. after a workout. The reason is right
after a workout, your muscles are very hungry, so to speak. We store carbs in the form of glucose in our
muscles and we use up that glucose when we weight train. When the muscle become hungry for more
glucose after a weight training session, they take whatever you eat so they can rebuild themselves and
become stronger. Eating most of your carbs now is perfect because they won’t get stored as fat and will
be used right away to help repair your muscles.
One last thing: all of you, do yourself a favor and get rid of bullshit like bread, granola bars and any other
stupid shit that comes prepackaged and can be eaten for the next 200 years.
Eat when hungry, stop when not hungry.
Seriously, this stuff is simple and not rocket science, right? People are always looking for tricks or
gimmicks to get around putting in hard work, but there aren’t any shortcuts. It took you how many
years to look like you do now? It’s going to take more than some bullshit 10 day detox to get you
looking like you should.
Cheat Days/Meals
Generally, the more often you eat, the more wiggle room you have to cheat a bit. A general rule of
thumb is 10%. So, if you eat 6 times a day, 6*7 = 42 meals or about 4 meals you can relax the rules. This
does not mean eat a tub of ice cream until you get a stomachache. This means you can have a nice,
relatively healthy dinner and a slice of dessert. Or eat a burger and fries. Or some pizza. Just don’t go
overboard; you can’t eat like you have been your whole life and expect to make any changes.
Alright, I did say something about tricks, I know. I’m a hypocritical asshole. But there is a very powerful
way to change your eating style that can increase insulin sensitivity, increase growth hormone, increase
testosterone, let you eat “normally” and still see crazy increases in strength while losing fat.
It’s what’s known as intermittent fasting. Intermittent fasting is simply choosing to not eat for a period
of time and then eating normally after that. There are two main forms of this approach to dieting:
A daily window of restricted eating
A weekly 24 hour fast
An example of the first would be waking up around 6am and not eating until 12pm. From 12pm until
8pm, you would eat your normal meals and repeat daily. Essentially, you plan to skip breakfast. You
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would still be required to get your protein and vegetable intake in, you would just have less time to do
it. This would be called a 16/8 fast and is my preferred way to eat. The way I do it is a big lunch and a
bigger dinner. Or I’ll have 3-4 equal sized meals from 12-8. You’ll find what works best for you.
The second would be eating dinner at 6pm Sunday and then eating nothing all day Monday until 6pm
dinner time. You would eat “normally” the rest of the week.
Allow me to explain. The reason these approaches can work so well is because we all could stand to
lose a little bit of fat, right? When we have fat in our body, we become insulin resistant. When we’re
insulin resistant, the food we eat, and especially starchy carbs, are more likely to be stored as fat.
When we follow these fasting protocols, our body becomes better at handling insulin; less meals eaten
means our body has to secrete less insulin to help digest food. Since there’s less insulin floating around
our body, our cells become less resistant. Think of it like a rain storm: if it’s always raining, the ground
will always be soaked, wet and muddy. If it only rains once a week, the ground will absorb the rain fairly
quickly and the ground will dry soon after.
On top of this, our testosterone levels will skyrocket, our growth hormone levels will keep increasing
and, coupled with good eating habits and intense workouts, we are primed to take our fat and burn the
ever loving shit out of it. FYI, testosterone is good for you too, ladies. For you, higher testosterone just
means more fat burning.
A few notes. First, women handle food a little bit differently from men. You gals have slightly different
energy systems and your hormones respond in a manner that makes a typical 16/8 daily fast very
unpleasant. You would probably be better served with a 14/10 or 12/12 daily fast. To use my above
12pm-8pm example, ladies would be better with a 10am-8pm (14/10) or 8am-8pm (12/12) fast. The
weekly option is probably fine but the biggest secret about fitness is finding exactly what works for you
takes time.
Second, this is not the end all, be all answer to life. As I said before, if this fits your lifestyle, feel free to
give it a try. It works really well for me for the most part, but I have switched to a “normal” style of
eating from time to time. Don’t force it if it doesn’t work.
Last, if you make yourself absolutely sick stuffing cookies and ice cream into your face, the 24 hour fast
isn’t going to work. You’ll still be fat and feel like shit. Feel free to eat lots of food and even “bad” foods
the day before your fast, but don’t force it down your throat.
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As far as changing these diets as you need to lose weight or gain weight is fairly simple. If you want to
burn fat, start with about 12-14 times your weight in calories. A 100lb person would eat about 12001400 calories a day. To break it down a little more
There a 4 calories in 1 gram of both carbs and protein
There are 9 calories in 1 gram of fat
What that means for our 100b example is they are going to eat about 100 grams of protein, or 400
calories of protein (4 calories x 100 grams).
We’ll eat about 50 grams of fat is 50*9=450 calories
So now we just need another 350 calories from vegetables and carbs.
Let’s say we eat 5 cups of chopped broccoli; that comes in at a whopping 150 calories. So we now have
about 200 calories of starches to eat. Potatoes are each about 100 calories, 1 cup of rice is about 200
calories, so we have plenty of food to eat. And all of this food is for a 100lb person trying to lose weight.
Going the other way, we are a 150lb person trying to gain muscle. We want about 18-20 times our
bodyweight in calories, or 2700-3000 calories. 1.5lbs of meat, 70 grams of fat and 5 cups of broccoli still
leaves us with about 1300 calories of carbs to eat. Or about 6-7 cups of rice. But this person is more
than likely skinny already so they don’t have to worry about eating carbs only after a workout, so just
eat. Everything. All day.
Or, say you’re a 200lb person trying to stay about the same weight while losing fat and gaining muscle.
This is what’s called recomposition or recomping. If you’re smart, you guessed you’d need about 15-17
times your weight in calories, or 3000-3400.
Play around with MyFitnessPal and get familiar with about how much food you need. Eyeballing is fine
once you get the hang of it.
If you don’t want to sperg out on all this shit like I just did, I summed it up earlier:
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
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Eat protein all day
Eat vegetables all day
Carbs mostly after the workout if you’re fat, all day if you’re skinny
Eat shit that will go bad in 3 days instead of 3 years
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So what's next?
Well, I highly encourage you to check out my 6 Week Challenge where you can lose 12-29lbs in just six
weeks!
Click Here to Read More About the 6 Week Challenge
But if you ever have any fitness or nutrition related questions, feel free to text me at (610) 809-1593 or
email me at [email protected]
To Your Health,
Felix Schmieder
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