A Guide to Improving Your Physical Health
Welcome to Day 9 of the 16-Day Titanium Challenge. How amazing is it that you’ve not gotten to Day 9? There’s only 16 days in this thing; we only have seven days left. That’s just one week.
Today, we’re going to talk about physical health, fitness, nutrition, and that stuff that makes your body absolutely feel incredible. So today when I came in to record this episode, I decided I was going to do it in my gym clothes.
I left the gym and I came here in my gym clothes to record this episode because I really want to be connected with you guys as I talk about this.
I believe that my health and fitness regimen that I put out there has changed thousands of lives.
Why the Titanium Health & Fitness Regimen Works
When I say I believe that, it’s because I get these messages coming in. We get emails and calls and text messages and Facebook messages and all kinds of stuff coming in.
People telling me how I’ve completely changed their lives, and the reason is that they used to go through life thinking that in order to be healthy, they had to give up all the food they love, and they had to live in a gym.
They went and got a gym membership and signed up for some sort of personal training or something, and somebody told them, “Well, you have to come to the gym for an hour. You have to come to the gym for two hours,” and these are busy people.
If you’re an entrepreneur out there, if you’re a business owner, if you’re a stay-at-home mom, you don’t have time to spend an hour or two at the gym.
Or if you have that kind of time to spend at the gym, please let me know, because I’d like to give you some tasks that you could do for me, if you’ve got that kind of time to waste.
Now if you’re in fitness and you do it for fun, that’s a completely different story. But most people who have a real job that does not involve fitness, they don’t have that kind of time to spend in the gym, right?
And the thing with food is many people – my own sister is a vegan. She loves being vegan, but the thing is hey, look. As you all know, I love ice cream. I love lasagna. I love pizza.
I’m not giving that stuff up! I love meat. I’m not going to give up the foods that I love, at least in this stage of my life I’m not. Maybe 10 years from now I’ll be a vegetarian or vegan. I don’t know, but today I’m not, and I think I keep in pretty good health.
And when I say ‘health’ I’m not just talking about muscles and being thin. I’m also talking about being healthy. When I’ve done my bloodwork, I’m a very healthy individual at this stage in my life at 40 years old. I’d like to think that I look pretty good.
I’m at about 4 or 5% body fat. I’m at 3 or 3.5% if you see those photos of me that I post. I get up to about 7 or 8% when I sort of get to my heaviest and then I’ll just work my way back if I want to do a photoshoot or something like that.
You Can Have the Body You Want Without Giving up the Foods You Love
But what I want you to understand is why you should be impressed with that is the fact that I don’t work out that much, I really don’t work out that hard, and I don’t give up the foods that I love.
Last night, I went to a football game and I enjoyed popcorn there, right? If I wanted to eat a hot dog, I would’ve had a hot dog. I didn’t feel like having one yesterday, so I didn’t. But I had Oreo cookies yesterday.
The day before, I went and had ice cream with my girls, okay? I’m not telling you this stuff because I want you to go out and go do this stuff. But I want you to understand that it is possible to be very, very fit and still enjoy food and still be able to get out there and not live inside of a gym.
So that’s what today is all about. But what I have to start with is you’ve got to understand it’s 80% nutrition and 20% fitness. The reason for that is this. See, in reality, you size your body in the kitchen and you shape your body in the gym.
What that means is the size of your body, how big you are, how much you weigh, is actually determined by what you eat and not by going to the gym. The gym is where you go to shape that beautiful body of yours into whatever shape you want now that the weight has been set.
So whenever I hear people say, “I’m trying to lose weight,” and they go to the gym, I stand there confused. I’m like, “How the heck are you ever going to lose weight at the gym?”
It just doesn’t happen. In fact, if you look at the studies and you look at the numbers, you’ll see it is impossible to actually lose weight at the gym unless you literally live at the gym and you’re going for hours and hours at a time. Even then, your metabolism will adjust and you won’t lose weight at the gym.
So then if you remember the entire point of this 16-day challenge is to get us to create balance around these different parts of the wheel, right?
There are 10 parts, including your relationship, your family, your friends, fun, excitement – all this stuff – along with being physically fit. So if you live at the gym and because of that you’re not spending enough time with your family or you’re not working enough and things like that, that doesn’t work for this challenge.
The point of this challenge is for me to teach you how to create that balance. And if I tell you to give up all the foods you love and I tell you to go live at the gym, I’m not teaching you balance; I’m teaching you quite the opposite of that.
So how do we create balance?
See, the Titanium Nutrition & Fitness system, there’s way too much to them for me to share with you here in this short 15-minute episode. But the beauty of it is I make all that available to you for free.
As part of this, I’m going to go ahead and make posts so that you have access to the nutrition guide and the fitness guide if you’ve never seen it before. But the way that it works is it’s very simple.
You Cannot Outrun a Bad Diet
Number one, it’s all based around this concept that you cannot outrun a bad diet. I love that saying. The first time I heard it, I actually heard it from my sister who is a doctor. She said, “You can’t outrun a bad diet,” and I thought wow, how cool!
This is what I’ve been teaching people for years and here’s someone who’s telling me this little saying for it. There’s no way you can do enough cardio to make up for the bad food that you’ve eaten.
Trust me, it’s impossible.
If you look at how much cardio you would have to do to make up for one glass of orange juice, one bowl of ice cream, or a couple of slices of pizza, what I’m telling you is it’s just too damn much. It’s impossible! Because the thing is you don’t have just one glass of orange juice once a month.
If you did that, yes, you could make up for that by getting on the treadmill. But the thing is these are habits, right? So people will drink a glass of orange juice every morning or you’ll drink a glass of milk (and yes, I’m purposely using orange juice and milk).
Some of you who’ve not heard my stuff probably think that when I talk about a bad diet, I’m talking about soda and candy. No! Orange juice and milk are just as bad for you in terms of weight gain as all those other things.
Now yes, they’re slightly worse – if you have a Coke, it’s slightly worse than orange juice. But the thing is orange juice is just pure sugar water. Now, soda is pure sugar water with some nasty chemicals added to it and it has a little bit more sugar.
But orange juice is not something we’re supposed to drink as human beings. Some of you think, oh, it’s natural. Orange juice is natural. Milk is natural. No, it’s not! Human beings have never drunk orange juice.
Why would a caveman from thousands of years ago take perfectly good oranges and then squeeze the water and sugar out of it and just have that? See, a caveman would’ve eaten the entire orange; that’s what we’re designed for.
Or milk – what kind of a caveman would go around – at my events, I literally get down on the stage and I pretend like I’m drinking milk from a cow, which is funny just for that reason. You guys should come and join me one of these times. But what kind of a human would do that?
We are not supposed to drink cow’s milk. I mean, it’s just insane. Cow’s milk is sugar water with a bunch of other stuff that’s supposed to help a baby grow and get fat as quickly as possible, yet people drink this stuff and then they wonder, “Hmm… I wonder why I’m gaining weight?”
I Challenge You to Make Better Food Choices
I could tell you why you’re gaining weight, and the thing is we’re doing those and trying to be healthy. So my nutrition system is all about choices. It’s all about understanding that there are four categories of foods and I want you to read this thing today and understand these four categories.
In fact, my challenge to you today is I want you to review the Titanium Nutrition Guide so that you can familiarize yourself with these four categories. Some of you have seen this before, but I want you to refamiliarize yourself with it, but understand how it works.
Category 1 Foods
See, Category One foods are the foods you have to give up unless you want to gain weight. These are the foods that will instantly make you gain weight. Now, do I ever eat these foods? Of course I do, but when I have Category One foods, what I understand is that the only way to make up for a bad diet is by not eating food later.
Meaning, you cannot make up for a bad diet by going to the gym. However, if you eat ice cream and you skip a meal, those two will actually cancel each other out and you won’t gain weight. Now, is it healthy to eat ice cream and skip a meal? No – God, no.
That is a terrible idea. But you know what? Sometimes I crave ice cream and I have ice cream. But then guess what? I punish myself by skipping my next meal.
It’s not the healthiest thing in the world, but it’s a heck of a lot healthier. Listen to this – it is much healthier to skip that meal than to eat ice cream and have a meal after it or have the next meal.
So the bottom line is you’ve got to eliminate those Category One foods other than when you’re cheating, and when you cheat, you make up for it by skipping a meal – simple as that.
Category 2 Foods
Category Two foods are the foods that you only eat if you absolutely love them. So things like cheese – certain things like that, you should only have if you absolutely love them. If you love cheese, have cheese.
If you don’t, why waste your calories? Alcohol is another one of those. If you love alcohol, okay, go have your drink. But the thing is I don’t want you to go have alcohol just because everyone else is doing it.
It’s crazy to sit there, sip on a glass of wine, not get any joy out of it, just because everyone else is doing it. Those are wasted calories. Now again, I’m not talking about the health effects of alcohol here.
Then when it comes to the gym, there’s Category Three and Four foods which I can’t get into here, but you can just review the nutrition guide and get all that information.
A Brief Overview of the Titanium Fitness Routine
But then when it comes to the gym, people go to the gym and they want to live at the gym. You don’t need to live at the gym. All you’ve got to do is go take my fitness routine (which is a simple 25-minute a day routine). It’s got four different routines: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, and Day 4.
Today, I was working out and I was doing Day 1 of the routine. Somebody came up to me at the gym who’s never met me before and said, “Oh my gosh, I’ve been watching you, Arman. Um, hi, my name is so-and-so, and I follow your stuff and I’ve read your stuff. Thank you so much.
You know, I’ve been watching you, Arman and it’s so cool. You’re actually doing your own routine.” I’m like, “Yeah, what did you think I do at the gym? I do my own routine. I’ve been doing my routine for years.” Now, every once in a while, I’ll change a little thing up just for fun, but it’s funny because people will do my routine and it’s like the most common question I get like after three or four weeks.
People call me up or email me or something and say, “Arman, I’ve been doing your routine for three or four weeks and it’s working incredibly well. What’s next? How do I change it?” I’m like, “Why would you change it?” They’re like, “Well, when I have a personal trainer, they’re always changing up my routine.”
The reason your personal trainer, for the most part, is constantly changing up your routine is that for one, if they didn’t constantly change up your routine, there would be no reason for you to pay them to continue to train you, right? Now, I love personal trainers.
I have a lot of friends who are personal trainers, and the key is the best personal trainers in the world are there to push you and to motivate you. They should not be there to constantly teach you these weird, wacky fitness routines that you cannot do on your own.
So a good fitness coach will teach you the movements, teach you how to do them properly, will push you, and will motivate you so that you do them properly, but then is not one who needs to be with you every minute of every day that you’re at the gym.
Those people are just trying to get your money, trust me. A good fitness instructor can teach you the movements and yes, if you have a personal trainer, they can slightly change up your routine every once in a while, but it’s one that needs to be consistently changing.
They’re there really to push you, to motivate you, to watch you on your form.
I do this myself. If I’m preparing for a photoshoot or I’m trying to do something with my body, I’ll go get one of my friends who is an awesome fitness coach and I’ll have them help me make sure I’ve got my form right, make sure all those things are in place.
Sometimes, I’ll have them push me because if they’re not there, I might do eight reps. But with them there, I might do 12, and those extra four make a massive difference.
That’s what you want to do. Get in the gym with my fitness routine (which you are all getting available to you for free). You can go ahead and do these four days and each day takes no more than 25 minutes. I’ve seen people do it in 18 minutes.
You get in the gym and the secret to it is these supersets with opposing muscle groups. As opposed to what they used to teach many years ago, which is to work out complimentary muscle groups.
Meaning, for example, it used to be they used to teach you work out your chest and your triceps. Why? Because most exercises that work out your chest also work out your triceps. So the common thing to do was to do chest and triceps on the same day. Well, there’s a problem with that.
The inherent problem is when you work out your chest, you’re tiring out your triceps, meaning you have to rest for about a minute or two in between your sets.
Well, with my routine and what is called a superset, you can go directly from one exercise to the next without any rest whatsoever. By the way, that’s why you don’t need cardio when you do my routine. Let’s say you’re doing bench press, the simplest chest workout you could do.
You can immediately then go and do some curls to work out your biceps. Why? Because those are not complimentary muscle groups; they’re opposing muscle groups. So while you’re working out your chest, your bicep is almost completely at rest, and then when you go to do your bicep, your chest is almost completely at rest.
What that means is although your heart starts going, you’ll start to fatigue just like you’re doing cardio, you’ll actually physically be able to lift those weights because they’re opposing muscle groups.
That’s the key, my friends. The whole point of this thing, having balance and creating this incredible body while you still have a life, that’s who I’m talking to right now.
If you want to be a fitness competitor and you want to win at a fitness competition, my routine might not get you there. In fact, I’ve never been in a fitness competition.
If you’ve ever looked at my photos online, look at my photos and know that what you see there is me doing the 25-minute workout and following my own nutrition guide – nothing more. I’ve never done steroids, I’ve never done anything extra to build my muscles.
The simplest things I do is I like to sometimes have a pre-workout which gives me a little bit of energy before my workout and I’ve taken some Creatine. Other than that, I’ve never taken anything else. I don’t take protein power. Are you kidding me? Why would I take a power that tastes like crap and has calories in it? It’s insane.
I’d rather just eat food, so I don’t do protein powder. I don’t do any of that stuff. The only time I’ve ever done that stuff is let’s say I was preparing for a photoshoot and I wanted to put on a couple of extra pounds of muscle and I didn’t care that I was going to give up the food I love and trade for a couple of extra pounds of muscle. In those cases, I did some protein powder but for the most part you don’t need that stuff. You don’t need to be drinking your calories; that’s just insane.
Don’t Drink Your Calories
Do not drink your calories. Don’t have shakes. I see people go work out at my gym and then they all line up to get their juice shake. I’m like, “Are you guys crazy? You’re drinking 500 calories after having burned 300.”
You would be better off not coming to the gym. Now, is juicing good? Yes – juicing vegetables – pure vegetables. All of this is in my nutrition guide, so go review that stuff today.
Today is all about you understanding that it’s about taking your physical health to the next level, because my friends, it doesn’t matter how much money you have.
It doesn’t matter the relationship you’re in, the family and all that stuff. If you lose your health and God forbid, you’re sick, God forbid you are on your deathbed, none of that stuff is going to matter, my friends.
Let’s have you be healthy, let’s let you have energy. And by the way, many people ask me, “Arman, how did you get into all this fitness stuff when you’re a business coach?”
The reason is because I saw that most of my business/entrepreneurial coaching clients and the people I was trying to help, their biggest problem was that they didn’t have the energy they needed to do the things they wanted to in business.
I could teach them all the business tactics I wanted to, but because they didn’t have the energy, they couldn’t go through with this stuff, so I started teaching people fitness and that’s why we’re here today.
So my friends, we are nine days into this challenge now, we have seven days to go. I’m so incredibly proud of each and every one of you for joining me, and here is my challenge for you today, my friends.
Make Use of a Smart Scale
One of the keys to being in great shape is a little secret, and that is weighing yourself every single day and recording that weight.
Now, if you’ve listened to my stuff previously and you have a Withings scale, this is a scale that connects to the Wi-fi in your home and actually beams your weight to the internet. If you have one of these things, awesome. Go on Amazon and order one. They don’t sponsor me or anything – they should – but it’s a great scale.
I’ve been using it for many, many years and it’s been lifechanging for me. But if you don’t want to get one of those, all you need is a piece of paper and a scale. Get on the scale every day starting today, weigh yourself, and record that weight.
What I want you to notice is how your weight fluctuates depending on the food you eat, and you’ll start to see what habits in your life are serving you and which ones are not serving you, and that will be one of the most impactful things.
That’s what we’re adding to the list of the things for the challenge today. You’ve got a long list of stuff that you’re starting to do. You’re starting to build all kinds of momentum and I’m excited to see the results that people are getting.
I’m telling you, people are contacting me and telling me how some of this stuff is just life changing for them.
Here’s what you’re doing as a quick little review.
You’re waking up at a specific time every day. You’re working out for 25 minutes. And as of today, you are going to review my fitness routine and try to follow my routine if you can.
Unless you’ve got something better, try mine please. It’s a really good one.
Number three, you are entering the career zone at a specific time of the day and now while you’re in the career zone, you are not doing your personal stuff. You’re focused on your career and when you need to take a break or a time out from work, you take it, you go do your personal stuff, and you come back.
Then you are spending 30 minutes each day focused on the intimate relationship part of your wheel. Number five, you have turned your car into a mobile university, so no phone calls, no radio, no music. You are learning every time you’re in your car.
That is awesome! Number six, you are giving up one thing that you used to blow your money on and you’re giving that up for the rest of this challenge, and if you’ve been doing it, I think you’re starting to see what a big difference one little thing makes.
Some people are coming back and telling me that they’re giving up more than one or two things. Whenever I do this, people start to get used to this and they’re like, “Oh my gosh! I can give up this, I can give up that,” and they start giving up more.
Then we added in yesterday that you were going to do your morning smile and do gratitude at night or something that allows you to connect to your spirit. Today what we’re adding to it is very simple: weigh yourself every day. It’s that simple; it probably takes a minute to do and record that weight.
Hey, I love you guys. I am so excited that you’re on this journey with me. Nine days of this challenge are over. We have just seven days of this left, so stick with me. Let’s do this and always get out there every day and lead with your heart.
