To get everybody started, and in special consideration of my good buddy @Jonathan Mendoza, I'd like to give you guys a very dependable, effective, and proven fat loss paradigm before we get into anything more complicated or goal-specific. Up until the very last few years, the "Slo-Carb" diet, created by Tim Ferriss, and based on very sound physiological principles, was the most effective 'fad diet' in the world. By 'effective' I mean both producing fat loss dependably AND being easy to stay committed to, because the most important consideration when designing a fat-loss nutrition plan is preventing non-compliance. It's very simple, for every meal, and for whatever quantity you like, you can eat any meat, any green, leafy vegetable or pepper, any cheese, and any bean, seasoned any way you like. You MUST have some source of meat at every meal, and once you had had a fair serving of protein (eight ounces approximately) you may then fill yourself up on vegetables and beans. You may NOT eat any grains, breads, tortillas, sugars, fruits, starchy vegetables like potatoes or carrots, sauces, or anything breaded, fried, or sweetened. You can have as much coffee, tea, diet sodas, or any other non-nutritive drink you like. No liquid calories. Once a week, pick a day, and eat whatever you want all day. Don't go crazy with the amounts of food, obviously, but satisfy all your cravings. You will be amazed at what you look like in a few months eating this way. You will never be hungry while doing this, and there are essentially thousands of recipes that you can make with meat, cheese, vegetables, and beans, so you will never be bored. (I have attached a link with 5 pages of recipes that fit into this diet perfectly) This diet WILL encourage fullness and fat loss over time. This diet WILL NOT alleviate most health issues, or necessarily encourage performance in the gym or development of strength and muscle without tight macronutrient control, but we will get into that more later.

One of our new members @Marah Werner, a dear friend of my wife and I, has asked some wonderful questions that probably a lot of people who are considering biting the bullet of making health/fitness changes are also thinking about. This seems like a good opportunity to start answering and defining these issues and get the ball rolling for a lot of you! Q: What am I supposed to be doing in the gym? The equipment is confusing because I don't know what parts of my body I should be working on. A: This can be very scary. Most of the machines ARE designed to isolate one part of the body from another, but the good news is, even though these exercises are effective for certain goals, none of them are necessary for ANYBODY regardless of their fitness goal. For newbies, you shouldn't be concerned about any part of your body at all, actually. You should be concerned about your whole body! And a better way to think about picking exercises for your whole body is to think about MOVEMENTS. There's honestly only a few movement patterns that your body does on a daily basis: push, pull, squat, bend over, jump, walk, and twist. And it just so happens there is a piece of equipment that is perfectly designed to ergonomically and incrementally load all of these normal human movement patterns... the barbell! Honestly, if the only piece of equipment in the gym that you touch is the barbell, it will be more than enough. So to get comfortable in the gym, and it may take some time, its just going to be familiarizing yourself with the barbell lifts. And Ashley and I are more than happy to do this for you! MUCH more info to come on this. Q: Should I do cardio, strength-training or both? A: It depends on your goal and why you'd do any of it. If you were to put a gun to my head and ask me 'what is the single most important physical trait to improve for general fitness,' I would say 'strength.' It affects and improves every other aspect of your fitness, balance, endurance, bone health, EVEN CARDIO.

Hey everyone! I've asked us all to do an intro post, so here's mine! I'm Jarrod Schaefer, husband, father, coach, etc. My fitness goals now are a 600lb deadlift, 500lb squat, 405lb bench and 315lb press with visible abs! (one day lol) The one food I would punch a stranger for is pan-fried beef short ribs....

This will be the most controversial topic we discuss. I don't mean to be incendiary about this topic, but the science is full of trash, conflicts of interest, and ideology. Our goals in this field will be: 1. Common sense evaluation of nutritional principles and research 2. General recommendations 3. In-depth examinations of nutritional concepts 4. An extraordinary amount of experimentation and research 5. Discussion on the state of nutritional science and all of its shortcomings We absolutely will provide courses and coaching in nutrition, and we will also, absolutely entertain dissenting opinions and research so that we can all learn together.