Listen to this articleI’ve been thinking about writing a sort of a trick guide like this for a while now. I started wondering what fitness hacks I use, consciously or unconsciously, to make my diet and workouts more enjoyable. I mean, they’re not exactly a burden for me, but if there are ways to make life easier, why not take advantage of them? With that said, I encourage you to read this post, which I hope will help you optimize your own process of improving your physique.
It’s worth noting that fitness hacks are theoretically a rather extensive topic and can encompass many issues. In reality, nutrition and physical activity are so fundamental to life that everything you do has an impact on them and vice versa.
Writing this post…
I want to change your way of thinking about certain aspects of the body improvement process so that you can generate the best possible results for yourself without suffering.
I want to open your eyes to certain things. Perhaps show a slightly less standard approach to certain basic but very important issues.
Below you will find loosely related fitness hacks in two groups that will apply regardless of your level of advancement and which you can experiment with freely in your body improvement process.
I also feel the need to emphasize that this post is based on my own experiences, which means that doing the same things as me does not guarantee the same results.
Nevertheless, I have been doing what I do for quite some time, I don’t feel exceptional, and I always try to simplify things and focus on the basics instead of looking for convoluted techniques. That’s why I believe that what I’m writing about simply makes sense.
With that being said, here are the fitness hacks that I use myself and encourage you to try as well.
DIET
In diet, as in training, discipline and consistency matter the most. The type of diet is irrelevant if you cannot maintain it over months or even years. Before you start using any dietary fitness hacks, make sure you understand the overarching idea of conscious eating.
Something that many people seem to be afraid to talk about is that if you have fitness and health goals, you can’t do without certain dietary restrictions. In reality, it’s not that scary, but it’s worth remembering that a certain level of sacrifice is part of the game.
In other words, you simply can’t eat whatever and whenever you want if you plan to feel and look better.
Or maybe you can?
- “A bad diet can’t be out-trained.”
This is a fairly popular and actually imprecise opinion that I decided to dissect a bit for the purposes of this post.
We have two components here.
The first is the “bad diet”. Okay, something like that exists, but how do we define it? Does eating McDonald’s once a week make it a bad diet, or maybe even once a month? Or is it only considered a bad diet when consumed regularly, 5+ days a week?
Of course, this is a big simplification, but try to answer this question for yourself.
My point is, on the contrary, you can overtrain something that could be called a bad diet.
I experimented on myself and discovered that with sufficiently high activity, you can afford to eat a lot in terms of junk food. I mean regular fast food and daily sweets.
When it comes to health, calories and weight gain are not all that matters, but they are important for people working on their physique. I would like to emphasize that I do not recommend this approach for the long term because health is not just about macros. However, in the context of body composition, being sufficiently active allows you to eat “badly” without gaining weight if that is your main goal.
At the same time, this is not an optimal way to build a physique. It is more of an experiment that you can try on yourself. For example, in my case, it allowed me to get bored with sweets and stop craving them, which I think is a useful achievement in the long run.
- More muscles = more leeway
Another related fitness hack is that having more muscle allows you to indulge more in your diet.
This means that it’s worth building and maintaining muscle mass in order to have more flexibility in the kitchen and eventually not have to rely on restriction to prevent weight gain, especially if your goal is not an incredibly low body fat level throughout the year.
Muscles have a high resting metabolic rate (much higher than fat), which means that even when they’re idle, they require more energy to maintain. A person with a lot of muscle mass can eat more because they need more calories just to maintain their current body composition.
- Routine in the kitchen = results outside
One of my favorite fitness hacks is having a routine in the kitchen.
Perhaps for many people, it may sound dramatic and scary, but when starting a diet to improve your physique, abandon the thought that every meal will be exciting and every day you will eat something different and incredibly delicious.
Dieting for a physique is routine. The key is identifying valuable products that you will be able to eat every day for a long, unspecified period of time. That’s it.
Depending on your current dietary habits, this approach may be difficult at first. However, over time, as your physique and well-being improve, it will become second nature to you. This fitness hack also saves a lot of time!
- Making up for losses
This fitness hack is somewhat related to the section on overtraining a bad diet and is particularly applicable to people who want to lose weight or are in the cutting phase after a bulking period.
The rule is simple – under no circumstances should you skip physical activity after consuming excess calories.
If you eat more than planned, oh well. However, do not allow this fuel to accumulate in the form of fat. Getting in steps is the minimum you can do.
- Safety valve
Cheat meals are a fairly common way to take a break from a demanding physique-improving diet. Maintaining it 100% of the time is achieved by very few people.
The idea makes sense in theory, but these meals provide an opportunity to overeat and / or binge. Ultimately, they can also lead to feelings of guilt or failure. That’s why, in my experience, it’s better to give up cheat meals, maintain an awareness of the importance of a stable, clean diet, and include a regular safety valve in it to avoid going crazy.
Incorporating a small treat like a waffle or a small bag of chips into your diet every 2-3 days while staying within your calorie limit may prove to be a better strategy than having a big extra meal plus dessert and who knows what else once a week.
- End-of-day treat
Diet is something that requires particularly individual experimentation in order to become sustainable. What I mean here is that it is difficult to say in advance how much you will be able to afford to stray before going crazy on one hand and maintaining a high-quality figure on the other.
What is beyond doubt is the need for long-term discipline. Whatever you do, there will be sacrifices and the need to stick to the plan.
A small daily reward at the end of the day can help you achieve this goal. Knowing that a small pleasure awaits you in the evening can help you stick to your diet throughout the day.
TRAINING
Training fitness hacks are slightly different from dietary ones because here you cannot cheat. Any attempt to “outsmart” the workout is counterproductive.
Therefore, my advice here focuses more on the mindset, on how you think about training in a broader context, rather than on how to make it easier.
- Breaking the routine
This fitness hack can be somewhat paradoxical, because on one hand, I emphasize that success in fitness is strongly based on routine and consistency, but on the other, you cannot and should not avoid certain deviations from them.
More about this here ➡️ Individualism in fitness
Breaking routine behaviors is a kind of mental deload. You take a step to the side or even backward, in order to later take two steps forward.
- Change gyms
I realize that unfortunately, not everyone will be able to do this. However, if it is within your reach (through a Multisport membership or a one-time entry fee), visit different gyms.
The advantage of this is changing your environment, the opportunity to try out different equipment, and comparing different places – all of which will contribute to your training experience.
- Nice workout clothes
Look good to train good is a simplification, but wearing clothes in which you feel comfortable and attractive definitely adds motivation and puts your mind in the right place.
If you know you’ll be wearing something that makes you look good, your motivation to go to the gym will increase, and you’ll work more effectively towards becoming even better.
- Create positive associations
One of the best strategies for consistently working out is to create positive associations with the process of building your physique. If you link going to the gym with something that has positive value for you, it will be much easier for you to come back to it.
It’s hard for me to suggest something specific for you, as it’s a pretty individual matter. For me, at this stage of my fitness journey, the whole process has an incredibly positive association because I know and understand what this lifestyle and getting in shape have given me. There are countless smaller things that have happened between now and when I started that have value for me, and I’m almost certain that they wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for fitness.
Therefore, I don’t have to constantly search for motivation because one, training is my habit and lifestyle, and two, I always have in the back of my mind everything that fitness has given me, and these are the positive associations that keep me going.
- Consume fitness content
I have said it before that I cannot imagine long-term success in fitness without a solid immersion in the niche. Diet and exercise are not things you do for a while, generate results, and then rest on your laurels. On the contrary, you have to keep blowing on that flame all the time, even if you’re already passionate about it.
One way to delve deeper into all of this is to consume fitness content. This can be blog posts like this one, articles, interviews, or various types of videos on YouTube.
If you have a mentally weak day, it’s a bad weather day in the middle of winter, turn on a video where guys or girls are working out hard and ask yourself if you’ll be in a better position by skipping today’s workout or going to the gym and doing a good job?
While I mainly see Instagram as a platform for sharing my results (although of course you can find more on the platform), YouTube is a very cool source of knowledge. It is worth distinguishing valuable and educational videos from more lifestyle vlogs. There is of course nothing wrong with the latter, but personally, after years, I have shifted my focus more towards educational content to learn more about how to improve my workouts, rather than watching someone’s day.
Summary
The fitness hacks discussed in this article are meant to supplement a solid diet and strong training program. Maintaining a high level of discipline can be exhausting on many levels, so sometimes it’s worth considering small deviations to reset or gain a fresh perspective.
The process of improving your physique is a marathon. It’s worth having a few fitness hacks in your arsenal that will make your life easier and may ultimately contribute to improving your results.
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