12 Week Lean Muscle Trainer - Day 21

At the end of each week, we do a reevaluation of the program, but I save the more significant re-adjustments for every other week. In addition, I will be instituting a calorie-reduction at the end of Week Four and Week Eight as your metabolism slows from cutting calories in general.

You should continue to follow each of my 7^th day-of-the-week reevaluation recommendations, which I’ll describe below. You may not notice much of difference between your Week Two and Week Three results, but each week’s comparison to your before photos should be more impressive.

YOUR WEEKLY CHECK-IN

Here’s your Week Three to-do list, and potential adjustments you should consider making based on your results:

* Weigh yourself upon rising. Remember that the goal is not to lose weight — although that will happen — but to use your current bodyweight as a metric for shifting your diet, adjusting your cardio, and/or changing up your supplements. At this point, you should be reducing body weight by shedding stored body fat. Use your current bodyweight to recalculate the amount of calories you should consume each day.

Here are additional tips on how to move forward with my 12-Week Lean Muscle Program based on your individual results:

* If you have not lost weight:

Evaluate whether or not you think you’re adding muscle mass faster than you’re losing body fat. If so, then that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Many people readily add muscle mass, but many people burn stored fat more slowly. If you’re happy with the way you look, then you may not need to make any shifts to your nutrition program.

However, I do want you to make sure that you are following my calorie and macronutrient recommendations as precisely as you can. I recommend that you:

Use a scale to weigh your foods
Rely more on the calculator I included in my Nutrition Overview, and make sure that all of your meals and foods adhere to my guidelines.
Reduce carbs consumption to 1.2-1.3g per pound on your weight-training days. It’s possible that you’re simply consuming too many calories to lose weight, and the best place to cut them now is from carbs such as yams, rice and potatoes.

* If you have lost more than about 8 pounds:

This may be a good result for you, especially if you’re overweight and weigh more than about 170 pounds. After all, you’ve been following a restricted-calorie program while expending far more energy than before you began my 12-week program.

Continue to follow my basic nutrition recommendations unless you think you look overly depleted. If you do look overly depleted then I recommend that you:

Use a scale to weigh your foods
Rely more on the calculator I included in my Nutrition Overview
Also consider that you’ve dropped water weight
Bump up your protein intake by about 50g per day, especially getting in Kasein before going to bed to help prevent catabolism (muscle breakdown)

* If you’ve lost a moderate amount of weight:

This is precisely the result you want to see at this point in my 12-week program. Just stay on track with your weight training, cardio, nutrition, and supplementation. We’re taking up the both the cardio and weight-training intensity next week so you’ll naturally be burning more calories, and you’ll potentially be adding muscle mass, which also helps burns calories to support fat loss.

* Take photos of yourself. I want you to take these photos in the exact same way that you did before you started this program and at the end of Week Two. Here are my bullet points about taking these photos:

Take them at the same time of day
Take them in the same place
Take them with the same lighting
Wear the same clothes
Use the same photographer (even if that’s you)
Pose in the same way

Workout

Cardio	25 minutes	Steady-state upon waking
Cardio	35 minutes	Steady-state later in the day or in the evening; Make sure to split your 2 cardio sessions.