How You Can Finally Get in Shape Without Going Broke

Is your beach body ready? Are you wearing a shirt to the beach?

I love to train. I also enjoy saving money and writing about it (hence the personal finance blog). When I wrote about saving money on gym membership fees, I forgot to mention a few things. I want to show you how you can finally get in shape without going broke.

Working out is simple. Eating right is simple.

Those are both two simple things that we all suck at.

Why do we all generally suck at eating well and training? The same reason that most of us can’t save money or get out of debt. It’s easier said than done and we’re emotional beings, not rational ones. Rationally speaking, nobody wants to be fat or in debt (or both). We all mess up and make honest mistakes even when we have the best intentions.

We all know that eating a bag of chips before bed isn’t a good idea.

We all know that putting a new pair of shoes on your credit card when you have no money is a bad idea.

We all make mistakes. The good news is that you can make changes to your life.

Let’s look at the best way to get in shape without going broke…

What’s the best food out there? How can you eat like a stud?

When I was in high school around 2005, I heard that diet was 60% of training. This made no sense to me at the time. Who cares what you eat if you can bench two plates?

Now I hear that diet is 80% of your fitness lifestyle. This means that you can save yourself money and time, by training less often and focusing more on eating better food.

The best diet that works for me is the one I found in the 4-Hour Body. Tim Ferriss simply recommends different food that you should eat in variation throughout the day.

What food does Ferriss advise you to eat when trying to get in shape fast?

1. Protein (egg whites, chicken, grass-fed beef, and tuna).
2. Vegetables (broccoli and other similar food).
3. Legumes (different kinds of beans, apparently good for energy).

Any combination of this food is said to be good.

The rules are similar to most dieting tips: consume lots of protein in the morning, space out your meals by 3-4 hours, eat lots of vegetables and don’t eat before bed.

I’m also not strict with my eating by any means. This is also the good news about most new dieting tip these days. The days of forcing yourself to drink eggs or count calories are DEAD!

I’m not a diet expert, so I highly suggest that you bookmark a few of the following sites and check them out in your spare time.

1. Lean Gains. This is a rather revolutionary dieting system that’s starting to gain some traction.
2. Nerd Fitness. Steve makes everything easy to read and apply to your own life.

You can also just keep it simple with your eating. If you have to ask if the food is bad for you, well, you already know the answer.

The best part of all of this is that you’ll be saving yourself tons of money in the process since this food isn’t expensive and you won’t be going through the drive-thru a few times a day.

What tools do you really need to get in shape?

While there are certainly many gym membership offers that I would recommend checking out, the truth is that you can get in shape without spending as much money as I do on my membership.

The tools that you need for working out are very minimal. You don’t really have to buy any expensive Bowflex machine or “all-in-one” workout device. I do recommend a few products in this post, but I’ll expand on this soon. For now, I want you to consider investing in one of the following fitness products to help you look better than ever and get in shape fast:

1. Kettlebell (a few different weights).
2. A barbell (with some weights)
3. A pull-up bar

If you’re a beginner or just haven’t worked out in years, I recommend that you start off by doing the basics at home.

If you want to get in shape faster than ever before, I recommend doing the following exercises:

• Squat.
• Walking lunges.
• Pushups.
• Pullups.

You don’t have to do any “skull crushers” or other fancy routines to get in shape. You just need to start off by doing the basics. For example, you can set aside 20 minutes to try the following work out: 100 squats spaced out, 50 pushups spaced out, 10 lunges on each side, and pullups until failure.

What if you want to join a gym?

As much as I love taking advantage of opportunities to train from home, I totally love my gym membership. I’m a member of an MMA-style gym that has all sorts of classes, from kettlebell sessions to wrestling classes.

If you want to see results and you want to actually stick to a fitness program, you need to attend group classes. Most gyms offer an unlimited option where you can check out as many classes as you want.

At home it’s easy to stop after a few pushups. This isn’t so easy in a class with 10 other people and an instructor that’s rooting you on. Plus, once you start to meet people in the class they’ll start to ask about you when you miss a class.

If you want to join a gym, I recommend that you look around your area to see what’s available and what would work within your budget.

What’s my favorite work out when traveling or totally strapped?

What if you’re super busy? Find a floor, bust out as many pushups as you can. Then bust out as many squats as you can. There’s nothing to it. This will take you anywhere form 2-10 minutes depending on how far you want to push yourself.

The secret is that you can workout anywhere at any time.

Do you want help getting in shape?

I love coaching others how to freelance. My secret passion is training. I got my license as a personal trainer many years ago. If you want more information on this, just shoot me an email to md at studenomics dot com.

That’s how you can get in shape without going broke.