Episode: #38 BJ Gaddour on how to go from fat to fit no matter your starting point
Who: BJ Gaddour (@BJGaddour) is the host of the Weekly BJ podcast, a former fat guy who turned cover model and fitness director for the entire Men’s Health brand. He now runs TheDailyBj.com where he delivers world-class workouts and deep dives on a wide variety of fitness topics.
In this interview, we discuss his story, how you can build fitness into your life by making your body your own barbell, the key principles and philosophies you need to follow to become fit and what BJ stands for and how it wasn’t always the most helpful nickname!
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Listen here
What we cover
- Who he is
- The turning point that started his transformation from ‘fat kid’ into a fitness idol – How he used his own physical trauma to help others
- Who he looked up to as role models when he was a child
- Where modern day fitness is going wrong and the common problems he sees with people trying to improve their physicality
- The essential principles you need to follow to actually see results
- The motivations behind the workouts he builds for his followers and why his workouts are so popular – “the brilliance is in the simplicity“
- How can someone start making fitness part of their life and how to make it a consistent habit – you can’t be consistent with something if it is not sustainable
- What he considers is a ‘fit person’ – how can we distinguish whether someone is actually fit or not
- How you should workout during holidays and events – ‘don’t turn off the light, just dim the switch a little‘
- BJ’s awesome book ‘Your Body is Your Barbell‘
- A great workout ideal that anyone listening can use today to start getting fitter
- How we can stop comparing ourselves and focus on our own transformations instead – how to focus on the man in the mirror
- Becoming a presenter vs being a coach
- How he developed the Men’s Health brand to appeal to all regardless of their current fitness level and one of the biggest mistakes you can make in any industry
- Where his creativity comes from – how does he build his brand, make products etc
- How does he juggle with so many demands for his time and multi-task a relationship, business, training etc
- What he would like all men listening to take from this interview
- An unusual fact about himself that few know
- How you can keep in touch with him
- What BJ stands for and how he loses money on his website to make a sex joke!
- And so much more
Some things to reflect on
- “Food was something that became a comfort thing” – are you using food to emotionally comfort yourself? What can you change this to?
- You need to approach fitness like a lifestyle – it doesn’t matter what you choose to do activity wise (obviously there are better activities than others) but you need to be consistent and enjoy it
- People have no appreciation for how long it can take to build muscle – it can take 3-5 years to build muscle
- You can change everything about yourself on the exterior level to help show them what is on the interior
- It is important to define the ‘why‘ you want to change to actually change yourself – but this is something that you need to discover on your own
- The more you spend in one position, the more your body will adapt to this shape and tighten up
- Daily walking is one of the best habits and can help improve you straight away and give key indicators of your current fitness level
- To improve your diet, aim for “mostly protein and produce” on your plate, don’t worry about cutting things out at first
- You need to master your bodyweight first before you should try weights
- For him, workouts should have ‘movements that you can do for life‘ and are low impact but high return
- Just because someone does a particular or range of movements, doesn’t mean that you need to do to succeed and get fit – what is right for you?
- Successfully fit people, have created a lifestyle that makes it easy for them to become fit – you can always add time but it is hard to take away time
- Fitness should be accessible to all and fun – “we want to stimulate, not annihilate” – 2 or 3, 30-45min workouts a week is the sweet spot for fitness success
- “All the stuff that has humbled us along the way become huge assests down the road if you let them … all the failures we have become amazing teaching tools“
Connect with the Guest
- Like BJ on Facebook here
- Follow BJ on Twitter here
- Like BJ on Instagram here
- Subscribe to BJ’s Youtube here
- Visit his website here
- Subscribe to BJ’s podcast here
- View articles by BJ on Mens Health UK
- View articles by BJ on Mens Health US
- Buy BJ’s awesome book ‘Your Body is Your Barbell’ UK
https://youtu.be/O2Y63JPDAR4
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