Choucri - Elementary Fitness: A Practical Guide for Achieving Your Ideal Body and Keeping It

Take care of your body. Its the only place you have to live.

Jim Rohn

Thank you for picking up this book. I wrote Elementary Fitness as a beginners guide to the simple science of body transformation. Before diving into the material, Id like to tell you a little about who I am and why I wrote these pages.

First, Ill tell you who Im not. Im not a fitness influencer. Im not a fitness model. I dont own a supplement company. Im not a professional athlete or nutritionist. Im also not a doctor, and nothing in this guide should be considered medical advice.

I no longer train clients personally, but I do have a personal training certification and have professionally trained hundreds of clients in the past. However, more importantly, in my opinion, Im a guy who loves to work out, eat healthy, and stay in shape. I practice what I preach. For me, fitness is a passion. I believe that our bodies are one of the greatest gifts of life. Think about it; our bodies are complex beautiful machines, impossible to replicate. More sophisticated than the fastest Italian sports car, and more valuable than a custom-built mansion in Malibu, our bodies are priceless assets which we possess for only a limited time.

Irrespective of age or physical ability, I believe the human body, in all its forms, is miraculous. Therefore, taking good care of the body is an obligation. It takes self-respect and discipline to really live by these words. I have not always acted in accordance with these words, but Ive always felt their importance, perhaps more so not living up to them if Im being honest.

My qualification for writing this book is simply passion. Ive always liked pushing myself to run faster, jump higher, be stronger, and look better. However, even though Ive always liked being in shape, I havent always stayed in shape. Ive spent periods of my life overweight and underweight. At times, I was sedentary, unmotivated and didnt work out at all. I mention this because being in shape is something I must work for, just like anyone else.

My fitness journey started as a kid when I saw the Rocky movies with my dad. We watched those classic boxing movies, and Id get amped up. The training and fight scenes were epic. Sylvester Stallone looked superhuman (especially in Rocky 4 ) and I wanted to be like that. Maybe its childish, but 80s action movies are a big reason why I found fitness and exercise so appealing early on.

I played sports and lifted weights religiously in high school and college, but I let myself slide after I graduated and started working. I gained weight, then lost weight too quickly, and generally didnt have a healthy lifestyle for a good number of years. Then in 2012, at 31 years of age, I committed to getting strong again. Ive been active ever since. As part of my fitness revival, I spent a lot of time reading about diet and exercise. I learned about human anatomy, different exercise methodologies, and the science of nutrition. I applied what I learned and experimented on myself.

A few years later, while in graduate school for business, I obtained my personal training license. I trained clients during the day and went to school at night. Those were good years and I enjoyed helping people get in shape. I created workouts for clients, shared simple nutrition recommendations with them, and celebrated their wins.

When I began working with clients, it became apparent to me that most people dont know what theyre doing when it comes to diet and exercise. Its not their fault. Theres lots of conflicting advice out there. A lot of people know some of the basics, but they have difficulty bringing it all together in a system that works over the long term.

Over the years, Ive tried lots of things to get the results I wanthundreds of different workout routines, various sports, fad diets, working with personal trainers, working with coaches, supplements, you name it. Through all the studies and experiments, Ive identified some basic truths about what really works, and whats just a waste of time. The goal of this book is to give you a program that makes sense and really works, without hype or hyperbole. I hope, in doing so, Im able to help you progress towards your fitness goals.

As mentioned, I no longer work in the fitness industry. I work in real estate full time. In my spare time, I like to exercise, write, and play guitar. I live in Boston, Massachusetts with my wife and daughter, whom I love to spend as much time with as possible. Like many people, I dont have enough hours in the day to do all the things I wish I could. Thats why the advice in this book is, above all, practical. Its a quick and potent dose of what works and why.

If you look at some fitness influencers and athletes, their lives revolve around keeping their bodies in peak physical shape. All their days are segmented into specific time blocks for training, eating and recovery. Most of us cant live that way. So, I believe a good fitness plan must be simple enough that anyone can follow it.

Now, here I am today. I no longer train people, but I still push myself. I just finished competing in a charity boxing match, which I trained for, for several months. My opponent and I fundraised, sold tickets to the fight, and donated the proceeds to cancer research. It was an amazing experience which required a lot of self-discipline and training. Fight night, I stepped into the ring in great shape and boxed in front of hundreds of people. I wouldnt have been able to do that had I not started my fitness journey almost 10 years ago.

The desire to create this simple guide came to me because friends and family often ask me for fitness advice, and I always like to share what I know. What a person needs to know to get the body they want is easy to understand. The process is not complicated and does not need to be expensive. Sure, coaches, trainers, nutritionists, accountability partnersall that helps. It can help a great deal, but it isnt necessary. All the information you need to build a solid foundation is in the pages that follow. I hope youre able to use it to become the version of yourself you deserve to be.

If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time.

Zig Ziglar

When it comes to diet and exercise, clearly understanding your goal is the best starting point for creating a sound plan. Just like with any meaningful endeavor, planning and execution are vital elements. If you build a house, youll use different materials and tools than when assembling a car. The same logic applies here. You need to know where youre going in order to figure out how to get there.