Get in Shape, Discover my Six-Pack at Sixty Plan - John Assaraf

In the best shape of your life? I'm going to share with you what I am doing to have a six pack at 60. I set a goal for myself. Many of you know I've been on my own personal challenge of getting into the best shape of my life. And so are you in the best shape of your life? First of all, tell me how old are you and are you in shape? Are you out of shape? I'm going to share with you my plan for what I'm doing to have a physique like this at 60. So I'm getting close. I'm getting close. Are you in great shape? Are you out of shape? Let me put on my glasses. My body may be in its 30s. My eyes are in their 50s and 60s right now. So are you in great shape? I'm going to share with you exactly what I'm doing right now to get in shape. Some of you have followed my work for a while and you may remember some photos when I was 243 pounds and 33% body fat. I am going to be 60 in September of this year. And so I have been on a. Just on a challenge for myself. Just for me. Something happened the other night and it caused me to want to do this today. I was at a restaurant having dinner with a friend of mine on Thursday night and I'm sitting having dinner with my friend Dan and this guy taps me on the shoulder and he's got his Covid mask on and some glasses on so I really couldn't see his face, long hair. And he looks at me and says, I want to thank you. And I go, okay, what for? And he said, I saw one of your posts on Instagram and you inspired my wife. And he pointed over his right shoulder, he said, you inspired my wife and I to get in shape because I saw your, I guess the beginning of your transformation. Some of you have seen this. I'm going to show you this. But this is a little picture of what I looked like before I decided to get into shape. I think in this picture I was around 220 pounds. But there's another picture, I couldn't find it. That was £243 when I started this journey. And so I posted some pictures on Instagram. About a week or two ago I posted this one. And the only reason I'm showing it is just to show you the transformation. But I'm going to show you what I did. Will it help you if I show you exactly what I've been doing so you can Maybe inspire you to get into great shape. If you want me to show you what I'm doing, I start off with a picture of what I want my body to look like, and I'll take you through some of my plans of what I did. Now, I have never, ever had a six pack in my life. Ever. Never had a six pack. I didn't have a six pack at 16. I didn't have a six Pack at 26. I didn't have a sixpack at 36, 46, or 56. And the reason I chose it is because, as you know, my brain and your brain controls everything that we do, everything we think we can accomplish, and everything that we don't think we can accomplish. So I just gave myself a challenge. And the challenge was, initially, it wasn't to have a six pack at 60. It was to get into the best shape of my adult life. That was the initial challenge. And so let me share something with you that I think is important. This, by the way, my journey, okay, started when I was 243 pounds, 33% body fat, borderline diabetic, hypertensive, fatty liver, because I was drinking too much wine and alcohol. It started 12 years ago. Oh, okay. So this isn't an overnight transformation. This started 12 years ago. But I've done certain things. In the first two years, I lost all the weight that I wanted to get off, but I've kept it off. See, the whole idea is not to lose weight. It's to lose weight and keep it off. So I started doing a lot of research as to why do people gain weight, lose weight, gain weight, lose weight, gain weight, lose weight. The first reason is most people make a decision to go on a diet to lose a bit of weight. Whether it's 10 pounds, 20 pounds, 30 pounds, 40 pounds, it doesn't matter. But what do most people do once they lose the weight? They go back to the old diet that had them get all the weight on to begin with. They go back to all the behaviors. So the first thing that I can share with you that I did in my journey was I said, I'm not going on a diet anymore. I'm going to change my lifestyle. And then I'm going to also retrain my brain to have a new identity that has a lean, healthy, vibrant body. That was decision number one. Does that make sense? So instead of thinking about going on a diet, ask yourself, how do I want to look? How do I want to feel? What do I want to weigh? And then what's the lifestyle that I Need to create in order to release the weight and keep it off. Right, Release the weight and keep it off. And so again, for those of you that just joined, I'm going to show you, I've got my iPad here. This was me when I decided to take on the challenge for myself. And this was about two weeks ago. And again, I'm just showing you this not to impress upon you, but to impress you that it doesn't matter how old you are. I'll be 60 in September of this year. I've got better shape now than I had in my 30s, 40s, and 50s. But the first part is to make a decision on what is it that you want to look like and feel like. And then you create the identity of that person, the character of that person, then the behaviors. Does that make sense? So you don't go on a diet and you don't exercise to lose weight. You don't control your sleep patterns to lose weight as a result of the lifestyle you want and how healthy and how you want to look and feel for yourself. Then you create the plan. So does that make sense fundamentally? I'm going to give you a whole bunch of tips of what I am doing. So the first part for me, I hired somebody to help me understand, you know, calories in, calories out, how many calories do I need? What are the good calories from the bad calories? You know, what's the good fat versus the bad fat? Should I stay away from fat? Complex carbohydrates versus simple carbohydrates? How much protein do I need? Is plant based protein as good as, you know, animal based protein? So there was a lot of learning first and I knew a lot of stuff, but I didn't have the level of expertise that I needed. So some things were working, some things weren't working. And so I hired somebody initially to help me understand how many calories did I need to eat every day order to release weight in a healthy way. Now, you notice that I use the term release weight. Why do I use the term release weight? Well, one pound, okay, one pound is 3,500 calories. So if I wanted to release 3,500 calories or one pound of fat, not weight, I didn't want to lose one pound of water or one pound of muscle or one pound of tissue. I want to lose fat. I also discovered there's a big difference between fat loss and weight loss. Do you agree with that? You cannot eat today and you can lose weight by tomorrow. Right. You can also exercise more than the calories that you need today. And you would lose that amount of fat if you were using your fat burning machinery in your body. So there is some stuff to learn. Okay? So I'm not going to say this was easy, but it was a hell of a lot easier than yo, yo dieting and losing weight and gaining weight and losing weight and gaining weight. So here is something that I want to share with you. I set up everything that I was doing around phases, okay? So phase one was my learning phase and my just getting started phase. And that lasted about 60 days. And I didn't expect great results in 60 days. What I expected for myself is to upgrade my knowledge and skills on what I needed to do, why I needed to do it, how to do it right so that my efforts in phase two and three and four would be really, really great. So phase one was upgrade knowledge and skills and to set up my plan so that I could change my lifestyle to accommodate the energy, the physique, and everything else that I wanted for my life. Now, I did this for me, nobody else. I didn't do it for my wife. My children did have an influence in this. And so here is my first question for you. And actually, this is based on what I teach every one of my students. The first thing to understand about your brain is you and I don't consistently do the things we want to do. We don't consistently do the things we need to do. We consistently will do the things that we are committed to doing. And the definition of commitment is you'll do whatever it takes to upgrade your knowledge, your skills, retrain your brain. You'll pick up, you know, the pieces when you fall off the wagon. I have fallen off the wagon so many times, but I'm committed to the outcome. So the first thing you have to consider and ask other questions if you want to get into really good shape, the best shape of your adult life. I decided that I want to be in the best shape of my life at 50. Then I wanted to be. Then later on, like about a year or so ago, I said, I'm going to have a six pack at 60, and I'll show you my plan for my six pack at 60, because I just started the last phase of it. So I'm in phase four. But phase one, all right, was making the decision, changing my identity, retraining my brain. Many of you know I have some brain training programs on winning the game of weight loss. So I retrained my brain every day to create the image of the body and Health that I wanted to release the weight to manage the triggers. I was a sugar addict and I drank too much wine. I stopped drinking wine. I haven't had a glass of wine or cocktail in 12 years. I've stopped my sugar addiction. I've started to exercise about five to six days a week. First, it started off with five minutes a day. Five minutes a day. Somebody type this into the chat. Initially, the habit is more important than the intensity or duration. When we are building habits in the brain, we want to build habits that then build us. So somebody type it in. The habit is more important than the intensity at first. Then you could add time and intensity and duration afterwards. Does that make sense? So the first phase was to make a commitment, upgrade my knowledge and skills, and start on phase one, which was five minutes a day. It was also to get my eating patterns right. My eating patterns right. What should I eat for breakfast? What should I eat for lunch? What should I eat for dinner? What should I do about snacks? Then once I got that down, I worked on my sleep. Why did I work on my sleep? Well, I discovered that there's a hormone called leptin. L, E, P, T, I, N. Leptin. And if you don't sleep well, your leptin levels, okay, are out of whack. And leptin is one of the hormones that controls fat loss. So I started getting on a proper sleeping regimen. And then I also discovered that stress releases cortisol. Okay? Cortisol is one of your stress hormones. And when there is an elevated cortisol levels, then it does not allow you to release weight also. So I started to meditate and to be mindful. So there's a bunch of different things that I did, but this wasn't something that I said I have to do in 30 days. I made a commitment to the health that I wanted in my 50s and 60s. I made a commitment, all right, to release the weight and keep it off. All right? For those who just joined, I've showed everybody this picture before. This was me at about 220 pounds. And again, I'm going to just keep showing this a couple times just for the people who are joining. And this here, you know, is a picture of me just last two weeks ago or so where I've been working on a six pack at 60 for my birthday in September. Now, why am I sharing this with you? We are on the cusp of our species of extending our lifespan by 10, 15, maybe even 20 years. So the average male lives, I think, 76 or 78 years old. But many people are just unhealthy. And we're living in a time where there's more stress than ever. There's more junk, crappy foods, even the good food, the soil is so depleted of nutrients, we're not getting the nutrients that we need. But we are also advancing in technologies to know what to do and how to do it better. Right? So, Jackie, the first phase was knowledge and upgrading my skills. The second phase was to develop the habits of exercise, sleep and nutrition and. And strength building and balance. The third phase was more power and endurance. And then the fourth phase is really mastery. So that's where I'm at right now, is I'm really mastering my diet, mastering my sleep, mastering my meditations, my mindfulness. I'm going to show you what I did. I created this. Okay? Now just. I just need some assurance that you're not going to laugh at how simple this is. I'm just going to make sure. Are you okay? Will you promise not to laugh once I show you this? So the goal was by September of this year, six pack at 60. So I looked in magazines, and I found this picture of this guy who's 62 years old. This is not me. There's a guy who's 62 years old. So I put that up here as my vision. This is what I want my body to look like around this fat, which is about 10% body fat, etc. And then you'll see. This says you can see there. May 23rd to September 14th. So you can see I just did this, okay? And it's at six pack at 60. Plan, not six pack at 60. Hope, prayer, I want, I desire. This is my plan. And I wrote down, I am committed. You see? I am committed. And so my vision, all right, is 190 to 192 pounds with less than 10% body fat. So I start everything off with a vision and precision of what I want on a freaking, you know, book that there's nothing else in it, right? Except for this is for this particular goal, right? Then I want you to see what I wrote down here. I will read it to you. It says, okay, I create the image first. It says, I now see myself having the best physique of my life. I'm spiritually, emotionally, mentally, and physically in the best shape ever. I am in perfect harmony. So I start every morning by looking at this and reading this. And then it says, I've busted the myth that you have to decline in how you look and feel at 60, 70, and into my 80s I am getting better and better daily. I am perfectly healthy and feel amazing. I am super active and I have an abundance of energy, perfect memory. I'm in the sharp and I'm the sharpest I have ever been. So do you see how I create the image? I create the identity and the affirmations for it, even though it may not be true at the time. And then is this helpful? Is this helpful? And then I write down and look, look how simple this is. Like, this is like, you know, simple. You can all do this, right? And then I say see it, feel it, do it, plan it, right? So then I created my plan. This is my May 24th to June 20th 30th plan. Just remember I'm in phase four now, so I'm doing okay, the final phase between May 23rd and September 14th, I'm in my final one hundred and twenty day sprint to get into the goals. But just imagine you can start with where you are for phase one, then from phase one to phase two, phase two to phase three and so forth so you don't have to see the whole goal. I didn't see, you know, this, you know, when I started, I started, I saw just letting go of 5 or 10 pounds of fat, then another 5 or 10 pounds, another 10 pounds. So then I create a plan for Monday. I'm going to work on chest, I'm going to work on these chest exercises. I'm going to work on abs and triceps. So Mondays I wrote, I'm going to work on my chest and my triceps and my abs. That's Monday's workout. And you can see on Monday I write down, effort was seven to eight. My intensity was a nine. And then I stretch, right? And then I sign it, I sign it for. I completed that. Then Tuesday, and this is last week, okay? So Tuesday was back biceps and abs, right? And here's what I did, okay? And then my intensity was eight and a half. My. I'm sorry, my effort was eight and a half, my intensity was nine. And then I sign it, that I completed. Now why do I do this? Well, first I create the plan, then I go and do the work. And then I sign the work that I do to reinforce my self image, to reinforce my confidence, to reinforce the habit, to release the dopamine, the serotonin. I share it even with you. And I'm releasing oxytocin because that's the love hormone, right? So I did that for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. And then this is my first week Recap. I did this, okay? Just this past weekend, I did a recap of last week. So Now I did 52 sets of chest, four exercises, back, 40 sets, biceps, 11 triceps, abs, 72 sets, stretch seven times, effort, eight and a half intensity, nine. Right? And then I said, way to do it, way to do it. And then I signed it. So what happens is when you create a vision and goals and you track and measure, it doesn't matter if you do it perfectly every day. What matters is that you're paying attention. You're being mindful of the commitment, the promise you've made yourself, the declaration you've given yourself. You've given yourself a plan to follow, which means that the vision part of your brain, the how part of your brain, the what part of your brain, the dopamine reward center in your brain is all activated to keep you focused on what you're committed to doing. Now, guess what? You will not do this if you're not committed. Right? So the first thing you want to do is say, are you interested in doing this or are you committed? If you want to really get in great shape, you're going to get in great shape for one of three reasons. Ready? It's going to be either for a reason like, you know, it's a wedding, it's a birthday, it's something that's a reason there might be a season, like summertime, or there might be a lifetime. So it's a reason, a season or a lifetime. So I made this goal and this vision so that I can get and stay in the best shape of my life. So that in my 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s, I can ski, I can hike, I can bike, I can do the things that I love to do, not only for myself, with my wife, my children, my friends, but my children's children one day, if they have children. So I am willing to invest today in the discipline so that I can enjoy not only today the rewards, but in the future, the rewards. So this was, you know, a very, very simple thing to do. I'm just tracking and measuring, okay. Including. Okay, here is today. Look, look at the date, right? Thursday, June 1st, or Tuesday, June the first. Right. Today was a test day on legs because I had a little bit of an injury. So this is how you build self trust. This is how you build self worth. This is how you build self esteem. This is how you build self confidence. This is how you build your muscle, okay. Of giving yourself a goal and following through to completion. See, are you a starter or are you A finisher. And by the way, for any of you that want any help, there's a training that I did that goes into a lot more detail on the neuroscience of weight release and how to lose weight and keep it off and how to manage the triggers that you don't want to keep you eating too much of the wrong foods. And I'll have my team put a link up in the chat on the different social media platforms we're streaming on right now, or in my bio on Instagram. Sign up for the free training, learn some more of what to do, how to do it, why to do it, and start to retrain your brain. Now, how do you retrain your brain? Listen, if right now you just said to yourself, I'm going to start exercising, and you just did this, 1, 2, 3, 4. You just exercised. You know what you just did? You just said, I'm going to exercise, and then you did something, do you know what that does that causes you to start believing that you do what you say and it doesn't matter how small you start. The important part is that you start and you finish. So here is something I teach all of my clients. When you are first starting out, reduce what you commit to doing. Reduce what you commit to doing to something that's impossible for you to talk yourself out of doing it. You hear what I just said? When you start, reduce what you're starting so low that it's impossible for you to talk yourself out of doing it. So if you said, I'm going to start exercising and you just moved your legs and hands for one minute a day, every day, One minute a day, every day. If you're just a beginner and you're sedentary and you haven't done anything, if you do one minute a day every day for one week, two weeks, three weeks, I guarantee you that in the next, let's say seven or eight days, you'll do a minute and a half. You might even just do a little bicep curl or something like that while you're moving. When you're developing a habit, what you have to remember is you're already 100% disciplined. Everybody says, I need more discipline. No, you don't. You already have discipline, but you have discipline to your current habits. So when you say, I'm going to do something, do it, even if it's a minute a day. If you want to read more, do one paragraph a day. If you want to exercise more, just do one little bit each day. You want to manage your food intake and what you do manage one meal a day. You see how you can start. The key is to start, and then you build momentum afterwards. And so a lot of people that look to get into really good shape first, they don't know, you know, what does it look like that's a perfect day. Like, what should you eat? How much should you exercise to release more calories than you're consuming? How much should you sleep? So your leptin levels and, and your hormones are intact for the day. How do you reduce your stress so that your cortisol levels aren't too high? These are just three or four things you can do to get started. But in the absence of knowledge, you're going to hope and pray. You're going to, you know, think you know what to do. Listen, I've been fairly well versed in health and nutrition, and I had to get help to make sure that what I did was precise. All right, so how many of you are in, do you want to get into great shape? It doesn't matter what month it is, it doesn't matter what season you are in. It doesn't matter, you know, how overweight you are. For those of you just joined and I'm going to show you, this is where I started at 220 some odd pounds, right. And two weeks ago, this is where, you know, I was at two weeks ago. And this is on my way to a six pack at 60. And I started off with that's what I want it to look like. And I got. I just made a commitment. I made a commitment to do it no matter what. And I didn't make a commitment to do it in three weeks. Nope. I did something very, very different. I took the slow and consistent path instead of the fast and inconsistent path. Slow and consistent versus fast and inconsistent at. Here's something I want to share with you. Coming into my 60th birthday, I want to be as efficient as possible. I want to be as smart as possible. I want to make sure that the effort that I put in doesn't just pay dividends and rewards now, but it'll pay dividends and rewards at 60, 70, 80, 90. So I want to develop the habits that then develop me into my 60s, 70s, and 80s. That makes sense. No stories, no excuses. I don't care how many times I've failed in the past. Some of you know this. I've lost and gained £250. 10, 15, £20 at a time. Lose it, gain it, lose it, gain it, lose it, gain it, lose it, gain it, lose it, gain It, I don't want to do that anymore. I want my efforts to last and work. Does that make sense? So I'm on a, on a, I guess a little bit of a mission to help as many people as I can as I get into the best shape of my life. If you want to join me, I've just shared with you everything that I am doing right. If those of you didn't see this, all right, I shared with you exactly how I keep track. I just put this together for myself just so I can track and measure. If you like this, would you mind sharing it? Let's meet, let's help together. Let's help you. You help me keep me, you know, on my game and I make a commitment publicly so that people keep me accountable because people ask me, how are you doing with that 6 packet 60 goal. Well, I'm right on point. So if you like this, please share this and you may want to watch this again and then sign up for the free training on, you know, how to really get everything started but how to win the inner game of weight loss because that's where it's won or losses. Developing the new habits, creating the new disciplines, making sure you let go of the self image issues that may be holding you back or the limiting beliefs that you may have holding you back or the fears of, you know, losing weight and gaining it back again, or the triggers like I had sugar and wine, you know, I used to eat cookies and cakes all the time. So if you want some additional help and more training, then sign up for the free training. All right? And every Tuesday I do a session here on these social media channels. I just started TikTok. There's a lot more videos that I have on YouTube as well. And if you haven't read any of my New York Times best selling books, there's the Answer There is Inner Size. There's my New York Times bestseller, There's the Answer, There's Having It All Inner Size. Lots of information on how to do it. All right, so thank you, Gene. Was this helpful for you? Was this helpful? Was this instructional enough on what to do, how to do it, why to do it and when? Give me a little comment if you can. Thank you, Laura, appreciate you as well. Listen, I want to have an extraordinary life and I'm willing to do whatever it takes ethically and professionally to have an extraordinary life. I don't want to live an ordinary life. I don't want to get to my deathbed saying, I wish I would have, I wish I could have that to me would be a nightmare. So hopefully this inspired you a little bit to get healthier, have more energy, feel the best you've ever felt. And thank you for sharing this. Thank you, Sharon. And thank you all my friends. Have a great, great day. Thanks, Arif. All right, bye. Bye, everyone. See you next week. And sign up for the free training. It'll help you a ton.