When lawyer Andrew Steinberg, 41, moved from walk-everywhere New York City to the Washington, DC, area, he noticed himself feeling lethargic and heavier. When he started working out smarter, not harder, everything changed in just 16 weeks. He went from 190 pounds [86kg] to 165 pounds [75kg] and dropped his body fat from 16% to 9%. Here, in his own words, is how it happened.
I used to live in New York City, but at the beginning of last year, my family moved down to the Washington, DC area. I soon realised that the move had made me a lot less mobile and active than I previously was. I was walking everywhere in New York, whereas in DC I was in the car a lot and spent my days sitting around in an office or at home. I started to feel more lethargic and heavier all over.
One day, I was driving to the gym, and I saw photos in the window of a fitness transformation. While the 'before' guy looked a lot like I felt I looked at that time, the 'after' made me think, 'Wow, what I would give to possibly look like that!'. I was like: 'If these guys can take somebody like that and turn them into what he looks like, maybe they can do the same for me.'
For about 15 or 20 years, I had been working out on my own with varying levels of success, but I was never able to get the physique that I wanted. I’d hit one of those plateaus where I just felt like I wasn't making any progress. The gym was something that I did every once in a while, but not with any regularity or on any kind of programme. I needed to tighten everything up and get some guidance. I began a 16-week transformation journey with my trainer, Dan May, that completely changed my life.
In the beginning, I felt like I was doing things I’d done before. I knew how much I could lift, and that it was pretty heavy. Ego-lifting, basically. But once Dan and I started working together and focusing on tempo and form, I quickly realised that weightlifting and just moving heavy weights are not the same thing. Dan and I really started to focus on hypertrophy workouts. Dan had me slow down my movements and be more thoughtful and specific with my lifting.
My training programme was a four-day split. I trained full body on Monday and Friday, and upper body on Wednesday. On Saturdays, I would train arms and rear/side deltoids on my own at home. For the goal physique I had in mind, Dan gave lots of emphasis to my chest, shoulders, and arms. To maximise the intensity and time efficiency of my workouts, nearly everything I did was supersetted, with roughly 60 to 90 seconds of rest (sometimes taking more rest as needed for sets taken to deep failure).
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This process made me realise that you can't out-work a bad diet. It doesn't matter how hard you work in the gym if your nutrition isn't dialled in as well. You're kind of rolling a ball up a hill and you never quite get to the top. Before I started my transformation, I was eating what I thought was healthy, but as part of the transformation my diet changed. In the beginning, I cut back on carbs significantly. We were a lot more specific in the macros I was eating and I weighed my food for every meal. All that accountability really kept me on track because I knew that Dan was watching me and seeing everything that I was eating.
Outside of the gym, I kept to a strict target for daily steps. Additionally, I completed zone 2 cardio sessions of my choice – jogging, cycling, or elliptical – on the days I wasn't in the gym. This increase in activity, combined with detailed calorie and macronutrient tracking, created the calorie deficit I needed to completely transform my physique.
The process worked because I was willing to do whatever Dan told me to do and do it with maximum effort. I told myself this was going to be a job for me for the next three or four months, and I was going to put my whole self into it. I decided to do every exercise, every rep, every extra rep and every drop set that Dan put in front of me and give it maximum effort because I wanted to get the results that I saw other people get.
In 16 weeks, I lost 35 pounds [16kg], and my body fat dropped from 16% to 9%.
Before I did this, I was tired of working hard but not getting any results to show for it. If you’re working out in the gym and you're not seeing the results that you want, it might not be because you're not working hard – maybe you're just not working as smartly as you could.
Going through this process has changed the way I approach everything – not just for me, but for my family as well. The overall changes to all our lives are like the receipt at the end of the journey and the real payoff. I honestly couldn't have done any of this without Dan and the programme. It's true that if you put in the work and you're really willing to devote yourself to it, you can get amazing results.
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