Time for another Leangains success story. I have a whole bunch of these lying around. People keep sending me reports of exceptional results after having implemented my methods. That’s just awesome. Check out the free guide to the Leangains approach if you haven’t already.
This success story is actually from an old client of mine, but I didn’t know that until I decided to touch base a few weeks ago.
Marcus got in contact with me in early 2008 and did a month of consulting, but it wasn’t until a year later, as his 30th birthday drew close, he decided to get really serious and fully implement the things I taught him. Check out his results and story below.
How to solve the 30-year old crisis
“I’ve been training most of my life and when I was younger, staying in shape was easy. Since I stayed active and loved training, I never really had to think much about my diet. As I got older, staying reasonably lean was proving more and more difficult – especially in combination with a sedentary office job.
When I realized that simply lifting weights wasn’t enough to stay in shape, I tried moderating my diet through a traditional bodybuilding-diet. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to stay consistent. I never felt full or satisfied. I was used to eating what I wanted, when I wanted it. It really didn’t fit my personal preferences to eat every 2nd-3rd hour, which is what’s always preached in the fitness and health mainstream.
Besides the problem of such frequent interruptions, I really hated having to plan the next meal as soon as I was finished with the first. Having to spend so much mental energy thinking and planning my meals didn’t appeal to me. It ended in me not recognizing myself in the mirror any longer. I had become FAT.”
As a consequence of my physical degeneration, training started to become boring. Since training had been one of my biggest sources of joy, everything started to feel like crap. I seriously considered quitting training and accept that I was fat.
Fortunately, I started reading about intermittent fasting and Leangains, which piqued my interest. Since I wanted to take the guesswork out of the equation, I decided to contact Martin Berkhan. That turned out to be a very good move. Leangains is very easy to follow and much more time-efficient than a a “regular” diet.
The results came very quickly. I noticed early that that doing everything exactly as it was laid out for me was all I needed to do in order to get amazing results. It was perfect. Without much effort, it took me three months to get in much better shape than I had been in years.
Since I now knew how easy it was to actually get in shape I decided to use the same program before my 30th birthday. My goal was to get in the best shape ever. Once again I achieved my objective. Hardly ever felt that I was ‘dieting’.
In summary, Leangains turned my development from worse to better and best. Thank you Martin for showing how easy it really is! I never thought I could eat myself FULL on hamburgers several days a week and get these kind of results.
Marcus L
190 lbs and ~ 7% body fat (my estimate), 12 weeks after the first picture. Looking at his training log, his strength remained fully intact. He even gained strength in some movements, which is awesome considering the 20 lbs weight loss (and the issues with strength retention when dropping to single digit body fat percentage).
Great physique. In particular, awesome biceps and lat development. For some reason I keep thinking “’70s ripped.” There’s a classic look to this physique, reminiscent to the physiques of the golden era of the ’60s and ’70s.
Latest word from Marcus is that he’s currently working on getting in even better shape in 2010 (Leangains style, of course).
