You know that old show “kids say the most darnest things” or whatever the name was… Well, it should not have been ‘the kids’, it should be the adults! When you focus on your fitness and it starts to pay off visibly, suddenly the people around you get very concerned:

“oh don’t lose more weight now, you are starting to look sickly”

“I think you might have gotten anorexia, eat a little pie, honey”

“Don’t get too skinny on me now, you’re all skin and bone” said when you have atleast 10 more lbs you want OFF.

“Protein powder huh? That’s like steroids!”

“I knew one lady who worked out a lot and she started to look like a man”

“Dieting does not work sweetie, when you go off the weight will climb up right back’ya!”

“What’s that smell…yuck! Broccoli?????? Go eat somewhere else! Not here in the office building!”

“Women should train with light weights and high reps to tone, not to build”

“Men don’t need cardio. Your testosterone gets suppressed by it”

I was told a lot of stupid things when I was younger:

“You cannot grow muscles without steroids”

“Everyone uses steroids”

“Cardio should be done only off season”

“You can never be lean 365 days a year”

“You need grains, starches, bread and fruit to build muscle”

“You need to ingest fast carbs after training if you want to build muscle”

“You cannot diet and gain muscle at the same time”

“girls with six pack are on steroids”

“If you do cardio after leg day your legs will get skinny”

“You break down all muscle if you train on an empty stomach”

“You need to have a cheat day a week because your body NEEDS it”

“You don’t get fatter from cheat days”

“You cannot eat too much protein. Those calories don’t count”

“vegetables don’t give you energy”

“You need to eat meat every day”

“You will get tired of working out”

“What are you gonna do when you stop working out?”

“Women are not supposed to have a lot of muscle”

“Women should not deadlift, it makes their waists thick”

bla bla bla bla blaaaaa.

If only people knew when to talk and when to shut up. I was taught don’t comment on things you don’t know anything about. Apparently very few people are taught that!;-)

The other day I was talking to a friend of mine. He was feeling low and lethargic. “Are you bored with your life?” I asked him. “Pauline, I’ve been bored for 20 years!”

His answer made me think about happiness and what it means to me. I’m not bored at all and when I’ve been bored I’ve had a panic attack, changed my situation and moved on. I’m scared of boredom because it’s a disease of the soul, a disease of the mind and a creativity killer.

Boredom makes you passive, makes you become a passenger and not the car driver in your life….

Happiness is a skill that needs to be worked on to be perfected. It’s nothing you can inherit, borrow or steal. But what is it? What is happiness? I assume it’s different from one person to another, but to me its…;

Knowing my mission. Knowing what to do to reach my goals. Having the energy to create reality out of dreams. Having confidence in myself and what I’m capable of. Feeling empowered by my actions. Being able to focus on what I feel is worth while doing.  Having a goal in life. Feeling what I do is the right thing to do. Seeing stepping stones to my ultimate goals and daring to take the steps. having faith in the process it is to reach my goals. Understanding that only I can stop myself from creating what I want to create. Happiness to me is feeling I don’t regret anything and that every day is worth it. Happiness is being excited about life. Being motivated and feeling enthusiastic. Feeling I have a reason to be here. Knowing I was born for a reason. Having faith in my life not being lived for nothing. Feeling I’m living life to the fullest of my capacities, desires and needs. Knowing I can change my life if I wanted to. Not feeling trapped in what I do. Feeling I’m in charge of my life. Believing it’s all serving a purpose. And if it does not, if it turns out it was all done for nothing, well, then I rather never wanna know! That’s happiness to me.

Everyone wants to be lean all the time, but very few succeed. The reasons for failure are several but it’s a mix between laziness, inconsistency, lack of insight and lack of true desire for it.

There is a huge difference between dreaming about something and actually doing it.

Getting shredded takes a lot of work, discipline and dedication, but since the getting shredded-project usually ends with a wedding, a show or a photo shoot, your pride is at stake and you need to follow through or everyone including yourself will call you a pussy.

If getting ready for a show took the soul out of you and turned you into a worn out dish cloth, then don’t even think about chronically maintaining peak condition. It’s a lot more demanding because you don’t have a deadline. Well, you do, the deadline is when you are no longer walking on earth!

Staying contest ready or super lean without turning to stupid performance enhancing drugs means:

you need to do cardio even though you cannot stand it

you need to stop feeling deprived because you “are not allowed” to eat this or that

you need to work on your mental toughness daily

you need to train more than you want some times to burn calories

you need to stay consistent with your food intake

you need to get enough rest in order to recover

you cannot afford getting duink because it sets you back too far

you cannot rely on caffeine because your body will get used to it and you need more and more, thus you will whip your adrenal glands to failure

you cannot rely on motivation to take you through workouts because you won’t always be motivated.

you will feel lethargic and tired occasionally because you are burning more calories than your body gets from food

You will feel awesome when you try on clothes in stores but you might drag the stairs at the shopping mall because your leg workouts are killing your energy.

your six pack won’t always feel like a treat to own daily

You will need to dig deeper for motivation and inspiration more often than others

Is it really worth it? yeah if you are that kind of person who loves and thrives off discipline and living on the edge energy wise. I do. It makes me creative. It makes me feel alive. It makes me alert, hungry for life. And that’s why I love it. I hope you do too. If not, don’t try this at home;-).

There is no end to what I do. My lifestyle is a project and the deadline is when I’m dead. That’s when I’m done with it.

When I work out and push myself beyond my self-decided limits, I ask myself how much do I want it. And it’s not about how much I want those reps or poundage to follow my will, no, these are just symbols for my goals in life.  When I was in the process of earning a permanent residency in America, I asked myself  “prove to me you want it because if you fail here Pauline you are just fake, your desire to live in America is pure fake”. I put forth hard against hard.

When my body is tired I tell myself “you consider yourself a sissy Pauline? Is that it? You believe this is your best? And you can go home and sleep well at night and be ok? Don’t think  so, prove it to me, prove to me you are sincere. Are you a slacker or a winner? You are a loser? Show me. Show me you are not”.

All this is NEVER about the training per se. My workouts are pep talk for me to accomplish my goals in life. I use my training to strengthen my mind and to improve my productivity. Every goal I have has been preceded by a mental mantra where the message is clear: I fail, it means I don’t want it badly enough.

I pep talk myself daily. My whole life I’ve run away from having to take boring jobs, settling for less than I want, be content with less than I want by instead going for those BIG goals that most people believe are “impossible”. The scary truth is that the impossibility is within ME and yeah, it’s so much easier to blame destiny or “it was not meant to be” but you know what truly scares the crap out of me? Being lazy. Not working hard enough for what I want. Being passive, not going for opportunities, not meeting leads.

I live in the city of dreams. I chose to live here. It was my goal to come here and pursue all I do now. I often scare myself with what will eventually happen if I slack or stay comfortable. I do not, I do NOT want to look back and say I did not do all I could to obtain my goals. It would be embarrassing. Here I am where everything is possible if I work for it so if I fail I can only blame myself. Oh, I would hate to live with that!

So, when I train I work on my toughness, it’s usually this soundrack spinning non stop in my mind:

“Pauline, come on, you act like you haven’t eaten for days! It’s stupid, you got plenty of energy! Don’t pretend you are so tired because I know that if you got a million dollars RIGHT NOW you’d run fast on that treadmill and squatted with way more energy. You say you want this and that, you seem to be one big talker. Everyone wants what you want, you think you are special??? You think it’s gonna be given to you??? Hey, wake up dumb ass, don’t you see that everyone else is in this town wanting to go the same route? Yeah, you don’t think they work harder for it? You think YOU will get away with not having to fight for it? You seem so lazy! You are one lazy bastard! Prove the point. Come on, it’s show time. How much do you want it? How much do you want this and that and all those projects and accomplishments you say you want? Maybe it’s all talk? How the heck am I gonna be able to believe you if you cannot even get yourself to push beyond limits? It’s just for a few minutes! And you PACE yourself????? What the heck did you miss??? You think it’s not a marathon with lots of short sprints? You cannot act like you are walking in time, it’s HERE AND NOW. DO IT or you will fail. PROVE IT NOW or you will fail. Pauline, you want to write “failure” in your book? Guess not, huh? Just show me you are stronger than everyone else. Just prove it to me so I can believe you. If you do this I promise you you will succeed! If you do this just one more time all those things you dream of will come! It’s NOW Pauline. The test is NOW. Do it.”

Just found out about Fighter Diet? Welcome on board to the realm of the ripped and buff!:-) I got plenty of ebooks about my philosophy for you to check out. Here is a quickie rundown…:

To learn the concept and my philosophy about Fighter Diet. The whole ramble, my theories on it, what it’s like and FAQ:

ORIGINAL FIGHTER DIET EBOOK

You can check out a SAMPLE week which serves as a guideline. It’s not set in stone, it’s JUST an example of how a FD menu can be like!

FIGHTER DIET WEEK

Then, if you are not into designing your own fat loss plan but want to follow Fighter Diet, here is your Ultimate cookie cutter which you can use to get in shape fast without starving and when you’ve gotten into it I recommend increasing the refeeds, the daily calories or implementing plan C if you wish. You see, this is a START to the Fighter Diet lifestyle but there is absolutely no reason to go on a low calorie diet forever, quite the opposite. So sooner or later you should transfer over to a little more calories every day:

FIGHTER DIET EXTREME

Cardio is a big part in the getting lean process. What should you do? How much? When? There are many different ways to perform cardio. This ebook reflects my own cardio regimen which is not for the weak hearted people!

CARDIO FIGHTER DIET STYLE

Some ebooks about full body training or ideas on how to break out of a stale routine are these:

LEAN MEAN FIGHT MACHINE

TOTAL BODY WORKOUT

You can train, train and build muscle for good but if you don’t stay flexible you will sooner or later get injured or too tight so you cannot use full range of motion. Full range of motion is extremely important for excellent muscle improvement! A flexible boy is a beautiful body. just think about dancers’ bodies…

FD STRETCHING

I get a lot of questions on how to build some solid guns. Well, it’s basics, basics and basics! Here is the perfect training program to get those pencil arms or jiggle wiggle sticks into solid cut arms:

LOOK GOOD IN A TANK TOP

WHAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT BODY PART FOR BOTH MEN AND WOMEN? Something that needs to be firm and round? Not flat, dried prune style or cottage cheesy?:-) the BUTT! Here is my butt bible, a best seller!!!

THE BUTT BIBLE

Then here come the recipe collections. The key to a shredded body is consistency and knowing when to eat what! Carbs are not the enemy! Sugar does not make you fat all the time!

FD GOURMET COLLECTION

I also offer the hardcore recipe collection that is my own personal one. These recipes are NOT for the picky eaters out there, it’s for those who feel they connect with ME, my reasoning and my standards. Don’t blame me for it being bland, it is! But to me it’s DELICIOUS because it gives me results and let’s me maintain shredded 365 days of the year!

PAULINE’s RECIPE COLLECTION

Wondering about what supplement I use? I am a BCAA-aholic and I am loyal to AST sports science and their products. I sell these in my webs shop and I guarantee the quality is top standard. I’ve been with them for years and as you can see I’m just getting more and more shredded and defined each year….

Here is my personal regimen:

SUPPLEMENTS THAT WORK

Want to learn a bit more basics about nutrition? It’s like Picasso: he had to learn how to draw a real old school drawing before he could charge a lot lot LOT of money for one dot on  a paper style paintings. You need to know the basics before you can go specific and break the rules. this ebook has been run for years but it’s a good starter for more knowledge you can use daily!

THE GUIDE TO NUTRITION

Interested in fitness modeling? Want to know what to do to succeed? Here is the ultimate guide to fitness modeling, the tricks, the steps to take, how to work the industry…. A must for those who inspire to model in the fitness world:

THE FITNESS MODEL EBOOK

Finally, the REFEED REPORT. It’s my own documentation of a typical Fighter Diet Refeed taken to the extreme. A must read for all those who are scared to death about carbs and believe they will make you fat if you increase them occasionally. This will make you feel comfortable with adding some calories to your diet consistently! And it will make you leaner! Seriously!

THE REFEED REPORT

Just like training for results has in inborn need for consistency, so does nutrition. Tell people “stick to a diet” and what they believe is that diet is something which needs to be changed/altered almost constantly. What happened to “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it”?

Some times people approach me in the gym with the question -which comes across more like a statement by the way- “your diet is really strict, right?” and when I say “uhm YEAH” the next question pops up: “no sugar at all, right?”. And then, I’m suddenly CAUGHT in a “I need to explain this stupid NO SUGAR idea” even though I am so fed up with all confusion I don’t want to go through it once again. So I don’t.

Here are MY questions to YOU:

What makes you think you need to CHANGE your diet weekly?

Why don’t you EVER stop believing you need to “fool or trick” your body?

Why don’t you GET that CONSISTENCY is the key here? changing your diet for the sake of changing it is ridiculous!

One big part of getting that “perfect body” -or let’s say “FD BODY” because you who read here know what that is-  is doing the same thing day in and day out. Doing things day in and day out conditions your body AND mind to CHANGE provided you give it the signals to do so by adhering to the right combo of training/diet/recovery.

I hate creating menus. why? I am no chef, I don’t CARE about how “amazing and fabulous” every meal is for you. I don’t require it myself, I eat what gives me results and keeps me healthy, I don’t need to spice things up or have a new menu for every day. If YOU do, you know what? learn the basics and the idea about how dieting is done successfully and you might understand pretty fast how you can vary your food items and still not break the golden concept for fat loss and muscle gain.

I’ve had it with those who cannot adhere to regular nutritious meals so they do VEGAN style one week, then NO WHEAT the other week, then the blood type diet, then NO carbs, then only fish, then juicing or living off smoothies. And then they credit a little weight loss to the diet style.  But hey, how come they stop following it then? If it was soooo great? Well, because you get BORED with the diet. So little to choose from, right? And here comes the time off period, when suddenly all the junk food is eaten daily, a donut here, lattes, pizza slices until you feel fat enough and go on another diet.

Here is the situation I meet many who are attracted to Fighter Diet. And since Fighter Diet is an extreme lifestyle -which is perceived by the big masses as a plain and boring diet style- has many strict rules and regulations for the A , B and C plans, of course it is initially very appealing to many. But I try to tell those lost souls who jump from one thing to another like flees from one dog to another until the blood is not tasting sweet anymore, that Fighter Diet is not for YOU. It’s NOT for YOU.

Why? because those who are suited for Fighter Diet are this kind of people:

Very little need for variety

Have a big appetite

Need to feel full atleast once a day

Love vegetables or can learn to love them

Understand that protein bars are not nutritious and have no place in Fighter Diet

Need to stay low on calories to stay or get lean

Want to build muscle but don’t want to get chubby

Understand that extreme results take extreme actions and adherence to those actions

Understand that Fighter Diet is a long term solution, not a rapid weightloss plan

Understand that refeeds are not CHEAT DAYS but a necessary element.

Understand that the amount, frequency and what kind of refeed foods are different from one  individual to another

Understand that there are no “forbidden foods” but less optimal, more hindering foods for the results you WANT

Understand that an extreme results do not take moderate dieting and moderate training

Understand that it is not natural for the body to be ultra ripped but if you want to do it you should do Fighter Diet

People forget the concept. They forget why it’s tough to train and train on restricted calories. YOU ARE WORKING AGAINST MOTHER NATURE, get it? It won’t be easy, NO WAY. And if you still are excited and wanting and desiring to do it, then voila, FIGHTER DIET.