Quick Food and Fitness Solutions Just For You

Jonny Parr
Jan 24, 2019
5 min read

Hi guys.

How has your day been today?

Given my last two emails, I revealed the primary answers you gave from my survey. This has proved hugely invaluable when trying to clearly understand your food and fitness challenges.

To quickly recap, the 5 major issues you identified were…

Food

“I don’t have the time to cook and I’m just too tired”
“I don’t like counting calories and don’t understand food plans”

Fitness

“I don’t have enough time to workout”
“I don’t like the gym”
"There's too much confusing information"

Given the above, here are two quick solutions that you can start to implement immediately.

SOLUTION 1 - HAND CALORIE CONTROL GUIDE With regards to food, it seems that time issues, a dislike for counting calories and following meal plans were your major problems. Firstly, I can promise you that you’re in no way alone with these challenges. I would like to propose a more realistic, quick, and far easier solution which simply involves controlling your portion sizes via the use of your hands. I’ve mentioned this technique before in previous emails and blog posts. I also have many of my clients adopt this process. Why? It works. No more counting calories (which is inaccurate in any case). No more obsessing over food plans. No more major food restriction. Using this technique is far more sustainable for most people and can be administered anywhere whether at home, while you’re traveling, while you’re fine dining, or even when you’re living it up at brunch. How it works…

Aim to get 3-4 meals in per day. Whether that be breakfast, lunch, and dinner or whatever suits your particular circumstances and schedule
See the diagrams for males and females below
Men eating 3-4 meals as outlined can expect around 2,300 - 3,000 cals each day
Women eating 3-4 meals as outlined can expect around 1,200 - 1,500 cals each day

Where possible, you want to eat as much natural food as possible (i.e. fresh veg). Of course, if like me, you live in the middle east, this can be tricky. Do not fret if that’s the case. If it’s frozen vegetables or frozen chicken then go for it. It’ll still provide you with some of the goodness and calories you need.

If you stay consistent with this approach to food, you’ll get excellent results in terms of energy, overall wellness, fat loss, and building/sustaining lean muscle.

As with anything, be patient. This approach may be completely new to you and like any new “habit”, it’ll take time to rid of bad ones and replace them with good ones. If you can, try to stick to this food approach around 70% of the time and you’ll get great results.

SOLUTION 2 - TRAIN AT HOME

As highlighted by you guys, a lack of time and dislike for gyms heavily play a role whether you exercise or not. I get it. The typical schedule I witness with most of my clients is a 07:30-08:00 start and a 17:00-17:30 finish. If you factor in your long working hours, commute time, and other variables such as shopping for food, you’re likely to be spending anywhere between 8-12+ hours per day on the go. This doesn’t even equate for the hours you commit to other activities such as spending time with your family, friends, kids and/or simply having downtime. This doesn’t leave a lot of time for exercise and the notion of trudging to a gym isn’t exactly appealing. My solution? Train quickly and effectively while at home. For many, it’s far more practical, as there’s no need to leave your apartment or villa. You don’t need a gym to get great results. Far from it. Training with your bodyweight provides a wide variety of exercise options whether you want to lose fat or build lean muscle. What’s more, you don’t have to train 1+ hours per day. For example, 20-30 minutes per day, 3-4 times per week is more than enough for your body to adapt and get great results. So what type of workouts should you do?

Each individual varies, however for most people, I recommend full body, intense and short routines that are challenging but incredibly effective. Specific types of training you can adopt include Circuits, Tabata’s or HITT. These are ideal for fat loss and building lean muscle. Here’s a typical routine that you can do to get you started. I made this while at home and as you can see, I needed literally no space. Apologies for Billy the cat's appearance! You can adapt where necessary and add in other exercises or conditions (i.e. more reps) as you see fit. Try to get creative and make it fun.

Home Bodyweight Only Circuit (For Time) 1 - Bodyweight Squats x 10 2 - Knee Push-Ups x 10 3 - Sit-Ups x 10 4 - Reverse Lunges x 10 5 - Toe Taps x 10 6 - Couch Hip Thrusts x 10 7 - Rest 45-90secs Repeat the circuit for a total of 3-5 rounds Record how long it takes you to complete the full circuit

Do the above as a circuit with little to no rest between exercises
Complete exercise 1 for 10 reps before doing the same for exercises 2-6
Once you’ve completed the first round, rest for anywhere between 30-90 seconds or anything you feel you need
After your rest, repeat the circuit again for a total of 3-5 rounds. Choose the number of total rounds you see fitting
An option here is to record how long it takes you to complete the workout. This is known as ‘For Time’. Once recorded, you can aim to beat this time when/if you attempt the routine again
If you deem one or more of the exercises as too challenging, aim to regress the exercise or add an alternative. A good example I provided is knee push-ups as opposed to full push-ups.

I hope these two quick food and fitness solutions have proved useful for you.

If you have any questions about the hand calorie control guide, the workout I provided, or anything and everything, just drop me a message and I’ll get back to you promptly.

KEEP THOSE EYES PEELED! I'VE SOMETHING SPECIAL JUST FOR YOU!

Before you finish this email, I have some exciting news to share with you. Given all the views, feedback, and responses I've received from my survey, I've been tirelessly working on an online food and fitness coaching program, named #FitExpat, that caters entirely to you. I intend to launch this very soon. What's more, I'll also be offering it to you at a significantly reduced price. Please check back on Sunday where I'll reveal all.

Until then, have a great day and we’ll speak soon!

Jonny