The title of this book started out as a joke, but after some field testing it received positive feedback so I decided, what the hell? From a personal perspective, there is a certain amount of truth in the title because although I am health conscious, I am also vain. I want to look good, for me and for my wife. She certainly likes… Uh, maybe I’ll just stop there.

If you aren’t married you can follow this plan with a different set of motivations if you like, such as:

• Body for Girlfriend
• Body for Hot Chick at the Bar
• Body for Woman You have a Crush on but She Won't Date You Because You're Fat
• Body for Life Partner

Vanity can be a powerful motivator, and I designed my program around achieving certain esthetic goals, but looking good is only part of the equation.

Here is the total picture for my long-term goals:

• One-third vanity focused
• One-third health focused
• One-third performance focused

It might have been more accurate to call the book “Body for Wife, Living Longer, and Kicking Ass,” but that was starting to get wordy. Besides, if I gave the impression that this book was mostly about making you feel healthier you might not have bought it. I understand that men are visual creatures. It’s why we’d rather watch porn than talk about our feelings.

The importance of looks is why all those “get in shape” products have muscularly chiseled, shirtless models to hock them. You look at the magazine or TV image and think, Man, I wish I looked like that. You want to know something? I wish the same thing, but that guy is about fifteen years younger than me and he works as a fitness model. It’s his job to look like that. He is about as far from a typical family guy as you can get, but look at the bright side: you’ve got your loving family and he has to settle for having threesomes with bikini models.

You and I live in the real world, so we need to temper our fitness objectives with pragmatism. I can’t tell you what your long-term goals should be, but I strongly suggest you follow a similar model to the one I live by. The reason I make such a blatant statement is that getting in shape can go sideways if you focus intently on vanity as a driving goal. Bodybuilding is an extreme example of this. Non-natural professional bodybuilders are juiced to the gills on anabolic steroids, consume bizarre and potentially toxic cocktails of various supplements (all of which make dubious claims of efficacy), and go through dramatic body weight changes on a regular basis. They are focused on achieving what the sport deems is the perfect visual ideal, and this is not healthy. Many bodybuilders would be the first ones to tell you they aren’t healthy. They also don’t focus on developing their ability to perform real-life activities. The performance they care about is getting better at what they do in the gym so it can contribute to the way they look.

This is not a lifestyle that I advocate.

I am not a bodybuilder and I have no intention of ever being one. I’m just a guy who works hard to stay in shape. My three long-term goals are mutually inclusive to a large degree. I feel that all of my health goals are being achieved because they are realistic. Could I be even healthier? Absolutely. I could never drink another drop of alcohol, cut out all prepared and red meats, increase the amount and variety of vegetables I eat, start meditating to lower my stress, and if I was willing to start alienating my family I could find even more time to exercise.

But that isn’t going to happen.

First off, I like drinking. Beer tastes good and so does red meat, there are only about five or six different types of vegetables that I like, I don’t get the whole meditation thing (I like swearing at other drivers), and I think I’m doing about as much exercise as I can manage to fit into my life without switching my job to part-time work or farming out my family duties. All that taken into consideration, I’m still healthier than about 98% of the other guys in my age group. I’ve made sacrifices and worked hard to get where I am, and I’ve reached a level I consider “good enough.”

As for visual look, I could be more ripped if I never ate any junk food and didn’t drink beer. Still, I’m kind of ripped, so good enough. I could add more muscle if I took anabolic steroids, but that would sacrifice health in a major way, so the amount I’ve got is good enough. I could also add more muscle and definition if I spent more time on isolation exercises and restricted my running to compensate, but this would sacrifice both health and performance, so good enough.

Regarding performance, I could run faster if I trained harder, but it would make it less enjoyable for me, it might lead to injury, and I can still do 10km (6.21 miles) in just over 42 minutes when I really push it, so good enough. There are a number of other sports that I could try to achieve my maximum potential at, but I’ll settle for being good enough at those too because dramatically improving my performance might mean sacrificing other goals, or it may just take too much damn time and effort. It’s important to note that I don’t consider performance to apply just to sport, it applies to just about any activity, including rough-housing with the kids, moving furniture, hauling sheets of drywall, or even sex. Yeah, I wrote that. I’ve improved my performance in the sack by getting in shape. Nyah!

Now to my original question: what brings you here? You’re about to learn a whole lot about long and short-term motivation, as well as long and short-term goal setting. So start thinking about why you are reading this book? What do your really want to achieve?

This is what you’re in for
If you know anything about getting in shape, then you have an idea of what to expect:

• You will be resistance training (i.e lifting weights) with increasing intensity and time

• You will be doing aerobic activity (but you get to choose the type), also with increasing intensity and time
• You will be focusing on eating healthy foods and cutting out unhealthy ones
• In order to lose fat, you MUST take in fewer Calories than you burn. This is all about creating a consistent caloric deficit week after week

I advise you to read through the first three phases before you start any dieting or exercise. I am giving you permission to stall working out and keep eating crap while you get your shit together. This is a major undertaking, and you need to do some preparatory work first.

To quote some dude who died a long time ago, "The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." If you're curious, it was Lao-tzu, a Chinese philosopher who lived in the sixth century BC. Google kicks ass.