 Alright guys, how are we? What is going on? Welcome back to another video. Today's video, we are beginning or I am beginning a bit of a question and answer series on my six month bodybuilding prep that I finished on October 23rd or 4th. Today's day is November 10th. It's taken me over two weeks since finishing my show to actually well feel good enough and feel content enough with my physique and how things have gone post show to actually be able to sit down happily and with a positive attitude and start to answer some of these questions because post show I went and binged hard. Not ideal, something I told myself I wouldn't do but I did and I've spent the last five or six days trying to bring that back and I'm happy to say that I haven't got back to where I was but I've brought it back considerably so the damage that I did post show physically and mentally has been cleaned up and that's only happened through a whole heap of discipline by myself and I'm pretty proud of myself for doing that so anyway we're here and I'm going to answer my first question of the day and the first question is how did I get to 5% body fat without tracking a single calorie? You know I'd mentioned to a few people throughout my cut and throughout last few months that I was you know they asked me how did you get that lean or how do you get to 5% body fat? I was putting up my body fat percentage readings each week and you know people were intrigued and I couldn't tell them originally because I literally was not tracking a single thing not a single calorie I mean if I yeah certainly not a single calorie maybe the only macronutrient I was tracking was protein basing my meals around a protein source which is you know something if you're looking to drop weight and if you don't have a huge amount of you know knowledge on nutrition all I'd say is create your meals around a protein source nothing too big and look get away with the least amount of carbohydrates and fats surrounding that that you can what that's gonna make you start to think about is is is foods that are higher in volume you know in general for lesser calories you know foods well not foods condiments and sources that are lower in calories that you can add to foods add to your protein sources to make them really tasty without you know a huge amount of extra calories so there's plenty of things I did and I've got a bit of a list here so I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna run through my journey which started on April the 13th two weeks into New Zealand's coronavirus lockdown and I had absolutely smashed myself with food for the first two weeks and alcohol so we had a house full of four people and we're all just loving life really you know you could still go to the supermarket you could still go to a bottle store you know most things was well most things as far as consumables were still open so yeah eating just got ramped up so for those first two weeks everything was good then one morning I looked in the mirror and I thought fuck man I've let this go I'm out of shape I don't know what's gonna happen I certainly didn't have any any inkling of competing at that point but I did want to clean things up and so I began doing that with the exact same strategies that I used throughout the entire prep just like I said using more volume foods with lesser calories basing my meals around a protein source such as chicken or salmon or eggs you know what I mean and just reducing the shit in my diet so that's how it started that was April the 13th on that day I began a six week fat loss transformation which you can see on this channel and that actually continued from six weeks to 12 weeks and that continued from a 12 week diet into a competition prep so for the first few months first two or three months it was literally just overall reducing the amount of food reducing the amount of shit and increasing slowly but surely my expenditure my calories burnt so I began weight training after having a fair few months off it was only at home it was with very light weights but at least it was something I went for walks in the morning I began going for walks in the morning my passion for actually getting up early in the morning getting outside when it's still dark you know for a walk came probably about two or three months in it didn't happen overnight and now I can safely say sitting here in November that my attitude changed my attitude towards being in shape you know living a lifestyle that's going to allow me to be in shape which includes regular exercise that includes you know sticking to these diet principles and that's how I got through the first few months in fact that's how I got through the whole the whole entire diet was was using my intuition looking at a meal and thinking no that's too much I shouldn't be having that I probably shouldn't be having that and being disciplined bro that's what it's about it's about knowing what you've got to do but also following through with it and being disciplined and putting down that cookie at times now I'm a big sweet tooth and I can safely say that I cheated on my diet a lot but would you call that cheating or would you call that just staying sane or would you call that just having a wee treat or would you call that just having a cookie I mean is it really cheating on your diet if you're not actually dieting I'm not sure but I certainly did have a lot of cheats it kept me sane I wake up the next morning I go for my walk or my jog I sort of reset and move on and that's how it happened basically I figured okay how am I gonna track this well I've got my fit bit okay so I'm gonna be able to track my calorie expenditure I'm not tracking my calories in but I can use the mirror okay the mirror is a fantastic tool it's a tool that's always gonna be there it's not gonna go away it's gonna be consistent well whether I've got my glasses on or not is a bit of a factor but so I looked in the mirror in the morning if I was soft if I knew that I'd smashed some food the night before well you know I'd fast for most of the day intermittent fasting was certainly have to be one of my tools that I used and that is just to control the overall amount of calories throughout the day also the fact that I can get up in the morning and easily go six to eight hours working mentally on things such as YouTube videos and and writing and and and planning and conversing without the need for food you know it's just the way that my brain works in fact I'm very productive on a hungry type of feeling which is something that Foo Art RBI art has actually touched on in the past and a lot of bodybuilders touch on when they are when when we're dieting and we're getting leaner and we can feel hungry and we know in our head that that's only gonna mean we're gonna be we're gonna be getting closer to our end goal that's actually a good feeling and you know it can it can push you to to be motivate motivated to do certain things such as a whole heap of work in a pretty condensed period of time you know what I mean you can really just hammer it out that's that's how I feel if I start eating if I start taking a break from that work to sit down and have a meal that's when who knows what's gonna happen after but if I can fast I know that I'm not gonna I'm not gonna stop my my workflow through you know having to have a meal it's a fucking good feeling man and I make the most of it pretty much every morning and I certainly did throughout my my competition diet so you know I figured if I was hungry if I was feeling hungry I'm losing fat and I'm just gonna push that feeling as long as I can a danger with that is obviously over eating at the end of the day pushing a fast for too long too often and when you're not tracking exactly what you're having in that extreme feeling of hunger can mean that at the end of the day you'll get through a couple of thousand worth of calories you won't really know exactly how many have taken in but you'll still feel hungry you know I mean you'll still feel empty so you be like well well I can keep eating so I'm not feeling full yet and I guess it's I guess it's just a matter of me having tracked on my fitness power for so many years in the past I just know I just know at this point how many calories protein carbs fats so yeah intuition was big so in July at about 10% body fat and managed to bring my body down to about 10% body fat stayed there pretty consistently for a good couple of weeks and I decided this was the point that I needed to connect up with a bodybuilding coach not so much for the nutrition but just for you know some help definitely for help with my posing and just to have someone with experience locally that I can I can rely on and I can meet with and discuss things so that's what I did I ended up meeting up with Steve Orton he is a local Christchurch coach and a professional bodybuilder and if you don't know who he is and you're into bodybuilding what rock have you been living under that's what I want to ask so originally I just went for posing he did give me a diet but what I realized pretty early on is that in July I was I was playing rugby I was going for for my walks but cardio man cardio with rugby was very taxing actually it was 90-minute training twice a week and a 90-minute game or 80-minute game also I began my course at the NZIS to become a personal trainer which I'm still doing now which included cardio which included weights training you know my my expenditure was huge at that point and so any diet that Steve was gonna give me if I was gonna stick to it 100% you know with the ups and downs of of my calorie expenditure it just wasn't gonna work so I continued to go on intuition I continued to if I haven't if I had a massive day of cardio training I would eat carbohydrates that night to fuel me for the next day because I knew that if I woke up the next day and I had to continue if I woke up the next day and I had to go to NZIS and smash a big workout you know after being very depleted it just wasn't sustainable and I still had a fair few weeks to the show so that's how I continued for the next four or five weeks leading up to my first show of the year because we did do two with Steve in my corner I was able to drop my body fat from 10% down to 5% we did that over about an eight-week period slowly but surely I remember the the first the first reading I had with him was I think 10.9% and then it's slowly but surely went down from there I actually gained a huge amount of confidence with the fact that I was able to bring my body fat down to 10% without tracking anything you know and it hadn't actually felt that hard so I was really pleased with that and that motivated me to continue the cut and that's what we did so we got to 5% body fat over the next eight weeks or I did I didn't actually listen to his diet one bit but I did listen to him in peak week because you know we got to the point where there's a week to go I didn't know exactly what he thought I should do and in fact I didn't know what I should do so I did listen to him and we had a bit of a peak week protocol which I will discuss in future videos but basically it's just a full depletion of carbohydrates which I hadn't done ever throughout this whole entire thing because carbohydrates were my fuel source and I was still getting lean on it on a quite a big amount of carbs and calories but that was only because my expenditure was so high so got to the show got to the show it was a great day I've discussed that day in a previous video so if you want to see how things went please look at that but basically from that point I didn't plan on competing again so that was at the end of August and it took me about a week to decide not you know what I want to I want to continue this I actually want to compete again I wasn't happy with with my look completely even though it was just for fun I still wasn't happy I thought you know I can do a bit better and this next show that was coming up was a natural show so this the first show that I did was untested was with the IFBB but it was completely untested and this next show was with the IFBB still but it was drug tested so I thought you know what I'm gonna I'm gonna finish 2020 off right with two shows and the final show being a drug tested show which is something I'd always wanted to do so now the hard part starts all right so it was hard enough getting to 5% body fat but the fact that I had to maintain that if not improve it over the next eight weeks from the end of August to the end of October when I competed again was not easy man it wasn't easy I'm gonna say it was pretty much like torture torture at times you know what I mean mentally if things are going well in life if you're looking in the mirror each morning you're seeing progress you can stick to it pretty easily but if things in your personal life or whatever come in and and start to affect your moods then sticking to a fucking diet for eight for eight weeks when you're only maintaining you're not actually trying to lose lose a huge amount of weight or gain a huge amount of weight fuck it was hard but we made it we made it and that's the main thing I followed through so I'm proud of myself anybody's guys this video has gone on for far too long it's about how I got to 5% body fat which I clearly was for a lengthy period of time without tracking a single calorie and I think we've gone through you know most of of what I did I guess I did use a few tools at my disposal to help with the fat loss without having to track things and they were things such as intermittent fasting like I've said you know more volume foods meals based around a protein source I backloaded my carbohydrates usually so I go through the first part of the day obviously fasting I would have one meal of carbohydrates then train and then most of my carbs for the day would come post training now that would see me up until basically an hour before I went to bed I'd wake up the next morning knowing that I'd adjusted those carbs knowing that I had you know probably a fair few of those still in the system so I'd get up do my fasted cardio that would effectively burn those off in my head and then throughout the rest of the day until I began eating would be a fat loss phase honestly I don't know if that if that makes sense but it made sense to me and it worked I did you know at least 15,000 steps per day that was something I was able to track and that was something I kept consistent which meant that my daily calorie burn was at least three to three and a half thousand per day you know I did make mistakes I certainly did I drunk alcohol multiple times in copious amounts like I said I cheated on my diet if I if I wanted something I'd have it but I knew that the next day I had to wake up in and forget about it and move on and use it as the tool that it was to keep me sane so the last thing I've got here is consistency is key and that's what I just said you know consistency is key as long as you wake up that next day and crack back into it you'll be fine and basically at the end of the day I could have got to for even 3% body fat and looked so much better on stage you know it's amazing how different a body can look with 1% body fat less once you get down to 7, 6, 5% body fat you know I could have looked so much better on stage but and I've written this right here I simply wasn't I simply wasn't prepared to suffer as much as I needed to and I don't know if that's because I didn't think I could physically I thought maybe that's dangerous or what but you know I've since realized especially in the last five or six days having brought my physique back down after binging post-show I know that I can suffer and I know that I can train while suffering I know I can train with zero calories it's possible it's all in the fucking head it's all in the mind and that's what half half of bodybuilding and half of getting down to 5% body fat is about it's all about your mindset so guys that was how I got to 5% body fat without tracking a single calorie I've probably included a whole heap more shit in there but I do have more videos to shoot today about the same subject so I hope you've enjoyed guys and if you do want to know more about you know my bodybuilding journey definitely head over to my Instagram page if you are into bodybuilding or into the gym or know someone that is and you're looking for new gear you're looking to support a business that's from New Zealand definitely head to my business major key physics com we've been in operation for almost two years now and I'm extremely proud of our products major key physics is a bodybuilding and fitness brand it's my brand and I'm proud of it so I welcome you to check out the website I welcome you to hit the like button I welcome you to subscribe and I'll see you in the next video thanks for watching peace