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Over the last few weeks, I’ve been running my new 3-Phase Diet Plan and documenting it for you all. At the same time, I’ve been detailing every aspect of the diet so you can run it for yourself!
- In the overview of my new 3-phase diet plan, I described some of the nutritional strategies I’m using during this diet.
- Last week, we dove into how to set up your nutrition for each phase.
This week, it’s all about your fitness routine.
- How should you work out?
- When should you work out?
- How often should you work out?
- What should you do if you’re a beginner, intermediate, or advanced?
We’re going into a ton of detail to answer each of those questions, and more, to help you put together a fitness routine that is sustainable, enjoyable, and effective!
With that, let’s dive in!
For Starters, How Experienced Are You?
A good place to start is to identify your experience level when it comes to fitness. Any good program will start here so that you can tailor it towards what’s reasonable and feasible for YOU.
Because let’s be real, if you are a beginner and you try to hit the ground running with 10+ workouts a week, you’re going to burn out almost immediately, call me a crazy person, and then never give this diet a try.
You don’t want that. I don’t want that. So let’s take an honest look at your training history and make some decisions on where to start.
Starting small and building over time is perfectly fine, so if anything I’d encourage you to err on the side of caution. If you feel you’re somewhere between being a beginner and intermediate, start with beginner and see how it works. If after a week you’re not seeing the progress you want, you can bump things up to the intermediate plan!
The reverse almost never works well. If you choose a track that’s too aggressive and not sustainable, you’ll probably be so sore and burnt out that scaling things back and lightening the workload will only delay the inevitable, which will be abandoning the plan altogether.
So take that train of mind into deciding where to start. Here is a breakdown of each track to help you figure out where to start. Later in the article we’ll dive into exactly what your fitness routine will require based on the track you select.
| Track: | Description: |
| Beginner | You occasionally exercise, or rarely exercise. This could involve cardio, resistance training, or both. The general gist of this track is that incorporating regular exercise on most days of the week would be a step up in regards to your physical activity. By participating as a beginner, you’ll exercise around 5 times per week. |
| Intermediate | You are a regular when it comes to exercising. On most days of the week, you’re in the gym, going out for a run, etc. The intermediate track assumes you can handle a moderate amount of both cardio-based training along with resistance training each week. By participating as an intermediate, you’ll exercise around 7 times per week. |
| Advanced | The advanced track assumes you’re a fitness nut. You regularly lift weights and incorporate cardio into your daily routine. Two workouts a day isn’t uncommon for you. For this track, you’ll exercise around 10 times per week. |
Within each of these tracks is a lot of flexibility to allow for you to choose your own path in terms of your fitness routine. The structure provides recommendations — not mandates — so that you can incorporate forms of physical activity that you enjoy. It’s all about creating a plan that’s sustainable.
Beginner Track:
If you select the beginner track, you’re signing up for exercising on most days of the week. What does that entail?
For starters, you should identify some type of consistent cardio that you can do on three days of the week. This could be getting up early and going for a walk around the neighborhood, or hopping on the spin bike for a half hour, or maybe even a workout routine that you’ve done in the past and enjoyed.
We’re looking for lower intensity, lower impact training here — something that’s easy to do but will work up a sweat and encourage you to do it on a regular basis.
In addition to cardio, I also recommend that you do some resistance training at least twice a week. While cardio is where you really burn off calories, resistance training will also cause you to put forth energy and it’s extremely beneficial for overall long-term health. As a beginner, it’s quite possible that you can burn off fat and build muscle during this program.
By resistance training, I mean some form of lifting weights. This can include barbells, dumbbells, machines, resistance bands… anything that forces you to move around some weight.
Here’s an example of what your week could look like with the beginner track:
| Monday: | Walking |
| Tuesday: | Resistance Training |
| Wednesday: | Walking |
| Thursday: | Resistance Training |
| Friday: | Walking |
| Saturday: | Rest |
| Sunday: | Rest |
Once again, it’s important that this form of exercise be enjoyable and feasible on a consistent basis. You can structure it in any way you’d like. I’d recommend doing an upper-body day followed by a lower-body day for your resistance training. Identify the main muscle groups (shoulders, chest, biceps, triceps, back, abs for upper body | quads, hamstrings, glutes, calves for lower body) and work each one.
Intermediate Track:
If you select the intermediate track, you’re signing up for exercising once a day, every day during this program. There aren’t necessarily “off days” but the training program can come together so you’re providing your body with adequate rest and not overloading any one part of your body.
To build off what we went over in the beginner track section, you’ll want to identify some consistent cardio that you can do on a regular basis. We want some of that lower intensity, lower impact cardio like walking/spin bike/etc., but we’ll also want to add in some higher intensity work as well.
High-intensity cardio could include doing a circuit workout, or going for a run, or even doing some type of HIIT routine that you’ve done in the past and enjoy. Whatever gets the heart rate up and makes your cardio more challenging (A good rule of thumb is… can you hold a conversation while doing cardio? If you can, it’s considered low intensity. We want this cardio to be challenging enough that you can only focus on one thing: your workout.)
In addition to cardio, we’ll want to build in resistance training on 3-4 days of the week. Once again, we’re building on what was discussed in the beginner section (so if you skipped right to “intermediate track” be sure to scroll back up and read through the “beginner track”). Since you’re an intermediate, you’re used to lifting. We can get a little more specific in how we target each muscle group.
For instance, you could structure lifting in any number of ways:
- Push Day, Pull Day, Lower Body Day, Total Body Day
- Upper Body Day, Lower Body Day (and repeat)
- Shoulders & Arms Day, Chest & Back Day, Leg Day, Core Day
Those are just a few examples of how to separate your resistance training sessions. Here’s an overview of what a typical week might look like on the intermediate track:
| Monday: | Push Day (Chest, Shoulders, Triceps) |
| Tuesday: | Low-Intensity Cardio |
| Wednesday: | Pull Day (Back, Biceps) |
| Thursday: | Low-Intensity Cardio |
| Friday: | Lower Body Day (Quads, Hams, Glutes, Calves) |
| Saturday: | High-Intensity Cardio |
| Sunday: | Rest |
Advanced Track:
Quite simply, if you’re in the advanced track you probably don’t need a ton of direction in regards to piecing together a fitness routine. You’ve been at this for years and have many different workout splits in your back pocket that you can choose from.
This track requires a very high level of commitment because your goals are high-level. By participating in this 3-Phase Diet Plan, you want to lose weight but also maintain the muscle and other gains you’ve accrued through years of hard training.
The advanced track involves resistance training 5-6 days a week along with low-intensity cardio on 3+ days a week and high-intensity cardio on 2+ days per week.
You’ll likely need to add cardio to your routine as you progress through this plan, so start small and plan to build over time in order to lose the amount of body fat you’re after. I participated in the advanced track, myself, and here’s what my program looked like.
| Monday: | AM: Low-Intensity Cardio (Walking) PM: Push (Chest, Shoulders, Triceps, Abs) |
| Tuesday: | AM: Rest PM: Lower-Body (Quads, Hams, Glutes, Calves, Abs) |
| Wednesday: | AM: Low-Intensity Cardio (Walking) PM: Pull Day (Back, Biceps) |
| Thursday: | AM: Push 2 (Chest Shoulders, Triceps, Abs) PM: High-Intensity Cardio (Circuit Training Session) |
| Friday: | AM: Low-Intensity Cardio (Walking) PM: Pull/Lower Combo (Back, Biceps, Quads, Hams, Glutes, Calves) |
| Saturday: | Rest Day |
| Sunday: | High-Intensity Cardio (Circuit Training Session) |
You need to be at a certain level of fitness to handle this much training volume, so like we discussed at the beginning of this article — choose a track that is feasible and sustainable for YOU!
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Thanks for reading! I hope you found this article helpful. If you’re interested in coaching to help guide you through a diet program and come out on the other end successful, check out my coaching services page and feel free to contact me! I’d love to talk with you about your goals and how I might be able to help.
CGF