In this solo coaching video, Eric Roberts outlines an aggressive 8‑week (60‑day) fat‑loss “kick‑start” system that he has used with over 25,000 clients and on himself. He argues that slow, steady weight loss fails to motivate because results aren’t visible quickly, so the first weeks must be intense—like a rocket launch—to break through the “gravity” of excess body fat. The core protocol consists of: 1. Creating a daily 500‑750 kcal deficit using both diet and low‑intensity steady‑state (LISS) cardio (2‑4 sessions of 15‑30 min per week). He rejects high‑intensity cardio, explaining that it spikes appetite, impairs recovery, and can cause muscle loss. 2. Structuring eating windows (e.g., 7‑8 am, 11 am‑1 pm, 3‑5 pm, 6‑8 pm) to train the hunger hormone ghrelin to signal only at set times, reducing random cravings. 3. Limiting “hidden” calories from eating out and alcohol (max 1‑2 restaurant visits and 2 drinks per week) because they are hard to track and sabotage the deficit. 4. Prioritizing heavy resistance training 3‑4 times per week in the 5‑12 rep range to preserve muscle, maintain metabolic rate, and avoid the “skinny‑fat” outcome that occurs when weight‑lifting is omitted or only light‑weight/high‑rep work is done. 5. Reframing scale expectations: fat loss combined with muscle gain means the scale may not reflect the full body‑composition change, so visual cues (leaner face, tighter clothes, muscle definition) are more reliable indicators. Roberts supports each point with client anecdotes (e.g., James losing 20 lb while lifting heavy, Holly losing 8 lb in 4 weeks with visible changes) and uses analogies (rocket launch, dog walk vs sprint, backpack bricks vs water). He concludes by promoting his 8‑week fat‑loss challenge, offering a free calorie calculator, daily accountability, and weekly plan adjustments, and directs viewers to a follow‑up video that explains how to recognize when the program is working.
Chapters
If I had to lose 20 pounds in the next 60 days, here's what I would do. After coaching over 25,000 clients through this system, myself included, I can confidently say what I'm about to show you works. And the best part, you don't have to eat 1,200 calories, do hours of cardio, or drink some detox diarrhea tea. So here's the system. The problem most people face is they try to do the responsible thing with their diet. They cut their They're counting their calories a little bit. They're losing a half pound per week, maybe. And the first month goes by, they look in the mirror and they see no difference. So they quit. Not because the plan was wrong, but because they couldn't see it working. And you can't stay motivated by something you can't see. Here's what nobody tells you: motivation doesn't create results. Results Create motivation. You don't push hard because you're motivated. You stay motivated because you see it working. And the problem can be that slow and steady weight loss gives you nothing to see for weeks. And that's the trap. Think of losing weight like launching a rocket. A rocket burns most of its fuel in the first few minutes. It has to, because if it lifts off slow, gravity would win and it would fall right back down. So it has to go hard off that launch pad, hard enough to escape gravity, and then once it's in the sky, it barely has to use any fuel. It just coasts. Your fat loss works the same way. The first few weeks, you have to push hard to escape the gravity, to break free of that stuck version of you, and then you get to coast. 8 weeks before a vacation, I decided I wanted to get lean. So I used this system and I dropped 23 pounds in 8 weeks. And every single week I saw it, the scale was trending down, my face was looking different, my abs were showing more, and those results kept me motivated to keep going. And so taking a short, aggressive approach to your fat loss isn't reckless or unhealthy if you know going into it, it's going to be temporary, and you know after you're gonna do something sustainable to keep going. That's the difference between a kickstart and a crash diet. But here's the thing— most people do the kickstart completely wrong. So here's the kickstart system I use to help our clients drop 10 to 20 pounds in their first 8 weeks, starting with the calorie deficit number. And I would look at creating your calorie deficit through not just your food, but with your food and cardio combined. And before I tell you the exact amount of calories you should be eating, the cardio part is where most people screw this up. Because every video that you see is fitness influencers telling you you need to do high-intensity cardio— sprints, burpees, boot camp— to burn the most amount of calories, keep your heart rate up, and that's what burns fat. Except that is the complete wrong advice. Because when you're trying to lose weight aggressively and drop it faster, you're already going to be eating in a bigger calorie deficit, which means you'll already be a bit hungry, already be a bit low on energy. And if you pile on top of that a bunch of high-intensity cardio, this is going to spike your appetite, hunger, and cravings more. And trying to stick to your calorie deficit will become harder, and it takes away from your recovery. So if you are lifting weights, you won't be able to lift as heavy, you'll lose muscle and slow down your metabolism, which is the opposite of what you want to do. Think of your appetite like a dog. If you take your dog on a long, easy walk, you both come back home calm, tired. You feel like you worked a bit, but you're not exhausted. Versus if you go take your dog outside and make it sprint, you're throwing it the frisbee, just going back and forth nonstop, that dog is going to come home and completely crash. That's what high intensity does to your appetite. So when you're creating your calorie deficit, you should be creating a 500 to 750 calorie deficit per day. And by the way, if you need to know what that number is for you, I have a free calorie calculator you can use in the description of the video. It's the same one that we use with our online coaching clients. And in combination with that, you're going to do low-intensity steady-state cardio 2 to 4 days a week for 15 to 30 minutes, either after you lift weights or on rest days. from lifting weights. And this could be incline walking, walking with a weighted vest, the bike, the stair stepper, whichever form of cardio you hate the least. But that's only the beginning of the system because next we need to set up how you're actually going to eat throughout the day so you're not starving and you stay on track. When you're in a calorie deficit, hunger is one of the main things that breaks you. It's having those snacky urges throughout the day or getting to the end of the day and feeling like You're not satisfied, so you need to eat something. Here's what almost nobody knows: your hunger isn't random. Your body has a hunger hormone called ghrelin, which just is the chemical that tells your brain, "I'm hungry." And here's the wild part: that ghrelin can run on a schedule. It learns when you eat, and it sets alarms for those times. So if you eat at random times every day, your body. Sets a dozen alarms and it's hungry all day. But if you eat at the same times every day, your body will only set alarms for those times and you'll stop being hungry the rest of the day without trying. It's just like if you went to bed and woke up at the same time every day. Your body will start to get tired around the time you go to bed, and when you wake up, you'll just naturally wake up around that time and you'll be ready to go. So part 2 of this system is going to be Pick your eating windows and stick to them. For example, let's say you eat at 7 to 8 AM, 11 AM to 1 PM, 3 PM to 5 PM, and 6 to 8 PM. Stick to those times. In the first 1 or 2 weeks, your body will learn those alarm clocks and you'll only be hungry at those times. But that covers feeling hungry. But there's a second kind of hunger that you may not even see or feel, and it's quietly going to ruin your progress unless you get this right. Besides hunger, there's 2 things that can blow up your calorie deficit. And it's not because these things are bad, but it's because it's so hard to measure them and know exactly what you're intaking. Think of it like subscriptions draining your bank account. You have $14 here, $9 subscription there, $20 here, and they don't seem like a lot. But at the end of the month, you just feel like you have less money than you should have. And you can't quite figure out why. That's exactly what eating out and drinking alcohol do to your calorie deficit. When you go out to eat, you don't really know how much the chef at the restaurant is cooking in olive oil, which is hundreds of extra calories. And when you're drinking alcohol, not only does the alcohol have calories, but you typically aren't snacking on celery and carrots when you're drinking alcohol. So there's extra calories you eat when you drink. And it may not seem like a big deal, But if you're really trying to drop weight and see a difference, for this part of the system, you are going to limit going out to eat to 1 to 2 times per week max, and you're gonna limit alcoholic drinks to 2 drinks per week max. You're not cutting it out, you're not banning it altogether, but you are going to have to practice some restraint and pulling back a bit So you can see the long-term progress that you want. And trust me, when you actually start to see progress going out to eat and not drinking, you won't even care because you'll love the progress that you're seeing. But here's the issue. Even when you do that, if you only fix the food and you don't fix your exercise, you might lose weight, but you will end up as that skinny fat with no muscle definition. And you'll be like, why did I even lose the weight? I don't look the way I want to look. And when most people lose weight, they do one of two things. Number 1, they drop weightlifting completely because they think they can lose weight faster if they cut it out. Or number 2, they do lightweight for high reps to tone and burn the muscle. And both of those are mistakes because what you have to remember is if you cut out weightlifting or only lift light weights and you're in an aggressive calorie deficit, your body needs energy from somewhere, and it's going to get energy from burning muscle tissue because muscle tissue is metabolically expensive. And all that means is it burns more calories to stay on your body. So your body will try to get conservative. It'll get rid of the muscle, and that's how you slow down your metabolism and end up as skinny fat. If you don't give your body a reason to keep the muscle, it will lose it. And that's what lifting heavier weights does. Think of your body like a backpack you're trying to lighten for a long hike. Inside the backpack, there are bricks—that is your body fat—and then there's food and water—that's the stuff keeping you alive and moving. Crash dieting with no lifting is like dumping the entire backpack out on the trail. Sure, it's a lighter backpack, but you got rid of everything. Lifting heavy is what tells your body we're gonna get rid of the bricks, but we're gonna keep the food and the water. And now you. End up lighter and stronger. And one of our clients, James, did this and lost a little over 20 pounds in 8 weeks. And the entire time he was lifting 3 days a week, not 5 or 6, and he was doing heavy weight lifting in the 5 to 12 rep range. And so all of those 20 pounds that came off were all fat. So for you, lifting weights 3 to 4 days a week in the 5 to 12 rep range, trying to push yourself and lift heavier, it's what's going to get the scale move and your body to look different. And that brings me to the next part of this system, because it decides whether you keep all of this going after the 60 days or you revert back to old habits. Because here's what happens to a lot of people after 60 days: they step on the scale and they only lost 12 pounds, not 20. And in that moment, your brain calls the whole thing a failure, and you ignore the fact your face is leaner, your clothes fit better, you have more energy, you're noticing more muscle definition, all because you didn't hit a certain number on the scale, and then you quit. But here's the truth: the scale is only going to tell part of the story. Because while you were burning fat and lifting heavier, you were losing fat and building muscle at the same time. And you can think of a pound of fat is like a big beach ball. It's big, it's puffy, it takes up a lot of room. And a pound of muscle is like a lacrosse ball. It's tight, it's dense, it's packed. So imagine you take beach balls from your body and you put in lacrosse balls. You may not lose as much weight on the scale as you thought or wanted, but you're now taking up less space on your body. And that's why someone can only lose 6 pounds but look completely different. One of our clients, Holly, lost 8 pounds in 4 weeks, which is actually pretty fast. But not only did she lose that weight, but her body looks different. Could she have lost more weight? If she cut out weightlifting and cut her calories lower, sure, but why the hell would she want to do that? She wouldn't look as good and she would hate her life more. So don't anchor yourself to a number on the scale. Whether you lose 20 pounds, 8 pounds, 11 pounds in 60 days, the only goal you should have is to be better off than where you are right now, because isn't that all that matters? And if you want to make sure you do not waste any time over your next 8 weeks? That's exactly why I built my 8-week fat loss challenge. We will build you a personalized plan, give you daily support and accountability, and make adjustments on a weekly basis to ensure no matter what, your body is forced to see progress week over week. You can click the link in the description of this video to learn more. And if you're thinking, okay Eric, I got the system, but what are some signs to know that it's actually working? Well, there's actually a few things your body will do to let you know you're on track. I made a video covering those exact things. You can click this link here to watch that next.
