You probably read the title and thought ‘wow this guy is a right kiss-ass’.
Well… for Brandon Carter I really am, and I will do so unapologetically because he has helped transform my life and so many others.
This article will explain to you simply why Brandon Carter should be your role model – I’m not getting any money or endorsements out of this by the way.
The beauty about Brandon Carter is that he leads by example. He’s not just your typical motivational speaker who tells you one thing and lives by another – if you follow his Snapchat at KillerCarter187 you will know what I mean. This guy hustles, hard.
His motivational speeches are so inspiring because they come from the heart; Brandon Carter’s journey was not easy. He started right from the bottom and hustled his way up. If your excuses are based around not having money or having a tough upbringing then he will put most of you to shame.
Essentially, his speeches are just so effective because they make you realize how much of a little bitch you are being.
Fitness
As I’ve mentioned previously, fitness has helped snowball my life. Brandon Carter was my role model in this respect too, he was one of my go-to YouTubers for fitness and advice – it is how I first got to know about him.
Brandon Carter started off as a fitness instructor, and most of his YouTube videos are fitness based, with sound advice on workouts and nutrition which are effective.
At first I thought he was just a douchey bro-science guy, but this guy really knows his stuff; he works a lot off an experience-based science approach, where he will not just show you a random study about some method and tell you to do it, but will only preach methods which he has tried and tested for himself first, such as intermittent fastingand HIIT.
Knowledge
When I first saw Brandon Carter I thought he was a bit cocky and big headed, but after I while I started to realise that Brandon Carter is a smart motherfucker. Brandon believes that knowledge is power, and once again he preaches this by constantly reading and learning. He is an entrepreneur who has a successful supplement business, so once again he leads by example.
In his videos and on his Snapchat he always passes down the knowledge and information that he learns, which can really help you soak in amazing advice which can help transform your life.
Clothing Thoughts
Brandon Carter is my role model (if you haven’t figured that out already), simply because he is down to earth, real, and is the true definition of a leader.
If you want someone who will not sell you dreams, will inspire and motivate you, and will help guide you down the path you truly want to live, then Brandon Carter is your guy.
The other day I got an email from a reader named Phil who used to train really hard and made great progress, but then for some reason stopped and lost all of the gains that he previously made. Here is the email:
“Seen your post about tagging someone, although i need the motivation myself. I used to train at a high intensity maybe about 6 times per week. I put on good mass and was progressing strength wise steadily. However i have stopped training for the past year and have lost any gains i had previously made. I was training using HIIT and overload and deloading but i feel like i have lost all knowlodge of my workouts now because i am back to basic level of strength. Any advice is appreciated !Cheers, phil”
I chose to talk about this email because I feel it happens a lot amongst us; we train really hard for a while then we end up stopping and lose all progress – it used to happen to me too.
So how do we stop this?
The cause
In most cases, and probably for Phil’s, he stopped training as he was trying to hard – funnily the things you commit to the most are often the things that you end up giving up at – I remember back in the days when I used to try and go on super strict diets, sure I’d lose a stone, but I could never keep it up and just rebounded hard.
The root of this problem is due to over-sacrifice: you may not realise it, but if you are sacrificing too much, whether it is motivation, time, or other things (e.g. pizza etc) it makes it easier to quit due to it feeling like more of a burden instead of something that you look forward to do each day.
So how can we stop over-sacrificing and get back in shape?
Next time around I’d suggest two things:
1) Keep your workouts simple, short, and interesting
I’m a big fan of having a strength component in my training routine; it’s fun and exciting because you’re always becoming a better version of yourself. It’s also always a challenge which excites me to want to go and work out. I always focus on low rep compound lifts first, then follow up with a few sets of higher rep hypertrophy movements, such as in my free training program.
For me, this is perfect as I even though I run a fitness website I have no motivation to go to the gym if I don’t have a purpose or goal. Having my short and long term strength goals keeps me excited to go out and strive to become a better version of myself.
2) Do not sacrifice anything
This probably sounds incredibly counterintuitive, but hear me out: as mentioned above, when you decide to give up certain foods or sacrifice huge amounts of time or willpower you start to resent fitness; when I tried to cut out carbs I just hated it (pizza = my life).
Instead, simply make small and gradual commitments which slowly become a habit. For example, I’ve decided to finally be able to touch my toes so I literally do 3 10-second stretches each day – that’s it. It requires no motivation and willpower, and it takes so little of my time that I am more than happy to do it, especially as I know that this will gradually lead to me seeinggreat exponential results. I mean, who can’t spend 30 seconds to stretch? Already I’ve made great improvements, and it is now something I just do without thinking.
For Phil I suggested he start off with something easy like a set or two of pushups each day – it will require little to no sacrifice for him and it will be easy to develop into a habit. Once he appreciates the gradual improvements that he is making to himself fitness will start to no longer be a burden, but instead turn into something he will actually want to do. From there on he will naturally start to desire to further improve upon yourself, and will effortlessly dedicate more time to become a stronger, bigger and better version of himself.
Using these methods will help you ignite a fire which will burn and grow on its own, instead of having to use up all your willpower and determination to keep it going.
Hope this helps! If you have any questions email me at mike@unigains.com
Note: This post is NOT sponsored by Kinobody in any way; this is just my opinion and experiences.
Greg O’Gallagher (A.K.A Kinobody) is slowly dominating the YouTube fitness industry with a rapidly growing subscriber base (currently at 217,000).
His approach to fitness is controversial; unlike all the others who promote high volume and strict diets, Greg has a seemingly ‘too good to be true’ approach – he promotes fewer sets, heavier weight, and a diet where you can still eat chips and burgers and everything else which would typical be on the ‘banned’ list when it comes to weight loss.
Some people hate him, others love him. Some say his programs will not work, whilst his testimonials beg to differ.
I like to try things out for myself, so I used his general approach to weight loss to see if it worked.
The Kinobody Fat Loss Approach
Here is a breakdown of Greg’s general approach to fat loss:
Ensure you maintain a calorie deficit, primarily using calorie counting.
Intermittent fasting: Essentially postpone when you first eat to later on in the day, normally in the early afternoon.
This approach appealed to me: although I love fitness, I do not like the idea of spending hours in the gym. Intermittent fasting also makes a lot of sense to me as the idea that I could be losing weight whilst still having large and satisfying meals would make losing fat so much easier.
What did I do?
At the time I liked the idea of benching, squatting, and deadlifting every day… yeah you read that right – I went through a rebellious fitness phase where I just decided to go against the norm and do what I thought was logically right (I got great results btw).
As I was essentially doing a full body workout each day I kept the volume low and did heavy weights, which coincided with Greg’s approach nicely. I would essentially work up to a heavy set of bench (between 3-7 reps), and then to a 1-3 rep max on squats and deadlifts. After I would hit one or two accessories, such as a set or two of pull-ups, bicep curls, and close grip bench press.
Now Greg works out a lot less frequently than this (2-3 times a week instead of my 4-6) so I did not follow his approach 100%. However, when it comes to losing weight lifting is not the main aspect – the food is.
My strategy was simple: wait as long in the day as possible before eating anything calorific. This meant I could still consume calorie-free liquids – Greg highly advocates black coffee and sparkling water as they are good for suppressing appetite. I also chewed gum quite a bit as I found that it helps keep my mouth occupied and helps me last longer (*cough*).
At the start my first meal would be around 11am as I struggled to hold on until the afternoon, however within a few weeks it was getting pushed back more and more to about 12.30-1pm. I found that if I just keep myself busy time absolutely flies and before you know it it’s lunchtime.
I tried to keep the first meal relatively small at around 600 calories – this is because I cannot stand being hungry at dinner and love the feeling of being extremely full – I was a borderline obese kid… I LOVE food. I tried to maximize protein intake in this meal as foods which are high in protein are pretty filling, and it will help me get my daily protein requirements in.
My workouts were at around 5pm. I would workout for about 45-60 minutes and have dinner straight after. Most of the time I would have a little snack such as a biscuit or a piece or toast just before the workout to give me a little boost of energy.
After my workouts I was hungry as hell so I went absolutely ham at dinner. As I ate fairly few calories at lunch I had enough space to eat delicious calorific carbs such as pasta, pizza and rice. Of course my main priority was protein; I consumed as much as I could in that sitting.
The meal would normally clock in at about 1200 calories, resulting in my total calorie intake for the day being around 1900 cals; this was around a 600 calorie deficit – a fairly aggressive fat loss approach.
Despite the low calories, I felt good. This is likely due to the amazing satiety I had in the evenings resulting in me never having to go to bed hungry, and mentally being okay with dieting as I did not feel like I was sacrificing anything for it.
After the adjustment period I started to prefer not eating breakfast as I was performing better; I felt lighter, had more energy, and my mind was clearer. This was a big turning point for me as I realised that our bodies are capable of a lot more than we give credit for. Resisting my bellies urge to eat was a lot easier when I realised that I felt a lot better not eating breakfast, and soon my belly started to get the message and just shut itself up.
Okay. That’s out of the way. Now to the…
Results
On January 19th 2015 I started using Greg’s methods – I weighed 73kg. This is a picture I took on the day:
A month later, on February 22nd 2015, I weighed 69.3kg, and looked like this (picture took on day):
This is is a 3.7kg drop in the space of a month. You know what, let’s be conservative and say that around 1kg of that was water weight – so a 2.7kg drop in true weight over 34 days, the equivalent of 0.55kg (1.2lbs) a week.
Verdict
Admittedly the lighting in the second picture is absolutely majestic, but you can definitely see the difference; especially the popping of the abs and chest.
It is fair to say that the Kinobody fat loss approach definitely worked. I was already fairly lean and was still able to shed a few extra kg’s whilst still eating pizza and the foods I love, meaning that if you are not sub 12% bodyfat then you should be able to see similar results.
After seeing just how well intermittent fasting worked for me I now do it all the time, for bulking and for cutting; I just feel better and more energised, and can control my diet easier.
For me the best part is the ability to not let dieting take control over your life; on a typical diet you are restricted to lean protein, salad, and low GI carbs as otherwise you will likely go over your calorie limit. However, not eating breakfast essentially gives you a whole other meal which you can fit in later in the day, which is perfect when you and your mates want to go out for a big ass dinner and have a couple of drinks.
For most of us, every decision we make is based on fear. Now I don’t mean the fear of getting stabbed randomly at 2 o’clock in the afternoon, but the sort of kind which makes you not want to eat that new food because you’re scared you will not like it, or not starting a conversation with a person because you’re scared that they do not want to talk to you.
“Stop living in fear and more in a world of opportunity”
Recently I have truly realised just how much fear plays a role in our lives, even for me, however slowly over the past few months I have slowly started to stop living in fear and more in a world of opportunity.
2 major things happened to me:
1. UNIGAINS
I have tried and failed with making blogs since last year. There were reasons why they failed, and I will talk about that in another article.
UNIGAINS was my third attempt at making a successful blog. For those who don’t know, this is how it started:
OG UNIGAINS
Yeah, I know, it’s fucking awful.
After getting some opinions from friends and Reddit, I came to the conclusion that it was absolute dog-shit – the website needed to be completely redesigned.
I knew that if I really wanted to have a change at UNIGAINS becoming successful I needed to invest some money into a site – this is where the fear kicked in.
‘What if I invest money into this and it becomes unsuccessful?’
‘What if I try really hard and people tell me it sucks?’
‘What if I spend money on hiring a designer and he makes everything terrible?’
These were some of the thoughts that I just could not get out of my head, and it stopped me from redeveloping the site for a few weeks until I tackled my thought process from a different angle:
‘What if this guy makes an amazing website which will help build a really solid foundation from which UNIGAINS can grow!?’
‘What if people really like my content and value it!?’
‘Sure it costs some money, but this could help generate a career which could make that money back!
‘What is the worst that could happen? I lose some money which I could have spent on clothes. Big deal.’
and most importantly…
‘What if I could make a true difference to the world. What if I can help young people realise their full potential and transform their lives!?’
It was this slight change in thought process which made me look at the positive ‘what ifs’ instead of the negative ones. I also thought about the worst case scenario and it was not that bad… at all.
This helped me make the plunge in helping myself invest in a developer to make UNIGAINS the awesome site which it is today. Sure I haven’t made my money back (made £2.70 for those who are interested), but it is by far the best decision I have ever made in my life, and I do not regret it for one second.
I have realised the potential of what I could do. Sure the odds may not be in my favour, but I’m no longer scared of that; the fact that I can potentially help transform the life of one person out there is all I need to keep on being persistent with UNIGAINS.
2. Breakup
About a month or so my long-term girlfriend of 3.5 years (at the time) broke up with me *cue sobbing and weeping*.
Now, you’re probably thinking, ‘wtf has this got to do with living in fear?’… well, everything.
I’ll keep it 100 with you, I didn’t want her to leave me. The relationship was kind of fizzling out a little bit, and to be honest we were getting bored of each other, but I didn’t want to end it… because I was scared.
I was scared because for the past 3.5 years this is all I knew. In fact, as soon I was ever interested in girls this is all I have ever known – I was in my comfort zone.
Going out drinking and partying with mates was way out of my comfort zone (I was strange I know), so I always copped out and chilled with my gf instead – I never really needed to go out of my comfort-zone.
When I moved up to London for work and my then-gf went to uni in South England, I always still had that one constant in my life which made things that little easier. Again, sure I made some new friends, but I always had that security of someone who was with me along my journey.
The accumulation of the above reasons resulted in me being comfortable and secure. Sure, deep inside I had doubts about the relationship, but the fear paired with the fact that we still quite liked each other still (it wasn’t an angry breakup) made me want to stay in it.
Again, not going to lie to you, the night of the break up I was a mess. I had a solid 3-hour weeping session. However, afterwards I really started to think about it all and how I was feeling; I was just so scared:
‘What if I can never find someone as good as her again?’
‘What if no other girls like me?’
‘How on earth do I hit on girls? I’ve never had to do that before?’
‘How do I go out and make new non-work friends in a new city?’
‘What if I get all lonely because I don’t have someone in my life?’
Yes, this is the sort of shit that was going through my head. Luckily, I have worked on really being rational and in-tune with my thoughts and emotions, enabling me to identify that I was scared, logically think about why the breakup happened, why it was the right choice, and how I can positively move on from it.
The whole experience was great for me; it helped me identified my flaws and insecurities, allowing me to slowly take steps to helping myself become more confident and secure of myself.
I identified that whilst I was quite sure of myself when it came to my career and life choices, I was quite insecure when it came to myself in terms of girls – this is expected after 3.5 years with one person.
So what did I do? I read some books about it all and realised that the core fundamental issue was not even to do with girls, but more with always trying to impress, living in fear, and not naturally expressing myself; this led to me overthinking things and becoming insecure in some aspects of my life.
This realisation allowed me to put steps in place to slowly work on this, such as being aware when I was actively trying to impress, such as hitting heavier weights when I know people are watching.
It also enabled me to take steps to understand when I was fearful of making a decision. For example, last week on Tuesday I was on the train heading to a client for work when a mid-20’s women sat across from me. She asked me a question about the next stop, and I kindly answered. Normally that would be it; I wouldn’t even bother to think about trying to have a conversation – ‘who would want to talk to a random person on a train?’.
However, I thought to myself, ‘what if I could have an amazing conversation right now? And what’s the worst that could happen, she ignores me or the conversation fizzles out? I can handle that’.
So I went fuck it and asked her a question about her nationality (she was foreign) and then she went on to say how she was from Holland. We ended up having a really interesting conversation and I learnt a lot about photography (she was a photographer) and about Holland – fuck fear.
This was a huge moment for me, as I felt like I’m slowly allowing myself to not fear the fear, but embrace and understand it instead.
“Do not fear the fear, but embrace, understand, and accept it”
This happened again on Saturday, where my cousin and I went to a business convention. I arrived about half an hour earlier than him, signed up, and was just standing there. I picked up my phone to pretend I was busy or whatever, went to the toilet to waste some time, then thought to myself:
‘Yo, go and talk to someone! Look around, everyone is on their phone copping out of interacting just like you are because they’re scared. They probably want to socialise and meet new people, so just approach someone and ask them a question about the event – what’s the worst that could happen? They ignore you or don’t want to talk. You’re not getting rejected because you’re just inviting people to a conversation. If they don’t want to talk then so be it’
This helped convince me to walk up to a woman and ask her about why she was at the event. Again, we ended up having a nice conversation about graphic design and broadcasting.
At the event, I had a few more conversations with people, by just starting conversations with the people I was sitting next to. Some lasted longer than others, some fizzled out whilst others were really interesting. The point is that I have no regrets, whilst I would have if I let fear take control and not trying at all.
I’m not saying that I’m now some sociable god, but allowing myself to rationally realise when I was thinking irrationally in fear has led to me really being able to take steps to embrace and accept it.
Woah I’ve written a lot…
Closing thoughts
Fear is a prick. Fear is stopping us from looking at all the positive aspects which a decision can bring, and amplifies all the negative ones which could potentially happen. The thing is, most of the time the negative things that could happen are not even that bad.
When you start to take steps to stop living in fear and live in a world or opportunity you will truly allow yourself to develop as a person and be able to do and accomplish things which you may have never thought you could.
-Mike
P.S. MYPROTEIN OFFERS
Offer: 50% off our BESTSELLING Weight Loss Bundle! Code: no code required How: add product to basket Valid: until midnight 30th May 2016 URL: CLICK HERE
