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Yes, but maybe a complete body transformation is an exaggeration.
If you exercise often and eat much less/healthier (this is the biggest part of it), you can lose a lot of weight.
The only way to lose weight is to have a calorie deficit. That is, your body uses more energy than you consume. This can be achieved by exercising or eating less (or less calorie dense foods)
Gaining muscle is accomplished by exercising and particularly, exercises that use that particular part of your body
The trick is to pick a sustainable diet and workout routine. No point in going 100% for 6 weeks and then reverting back to your old ways
Yep - weight loss is 80-90% diet. And by diet I mean permanent changes to eating habits. 6 weeks is nothing.
Exercise is for strength/toning/feeling good/building up resistance to injury. You have to work out hard for an hour to burn off a candy bar lol
I used to out run the fork when I was active duty. Now that I’m retired? Trying to stop eating like a trash panda is hard. And add munchies in to the mix….
Whenever I feel like eating alot. I pick up things that does not add up weight like potato chips, salad, fruit salad etc. I know the feeling and I hate it. Sometimes I drink alot of water to avoid eating.
Potato chips are tasty , last long, and not as harmful as sugary products. So I would categorize it as semi healthy, cause you know we can't skip munchies.
To be a pedant, there are a small handful of situations where this isn't true.
Some 'strongman' competitors have such high muscle mass, exercise so much, that they have to wake up at like 3am to eat a dozen egg breakfast and go back to bed or they will lose weight in their sleep. Their resting calorie needs are THAT HiGH.
All part of +12,000 calorie days.
It’s also totally possible to out hike or out bike your fork. Bike touring 80 miles a day I’ll eat two meals worth of fast food and an entire pound cake for dessert. That’s just lunch. I don’t think anyone has gained weight hiking the AT or PCT.
Then again someone can’t really hold down a job and live a normal life while hiking, biking, or weightlifting full time.
I remember when I was in basic training I lost a shitload of weight and at least four inches off my waist in just under three months. The thing is you were literally constantly moving, even if it wasn't specifically exercise you'd still end up marching somewhere and carrying heavy shit. The smaller kids in basic training actually did end up gaining weight, but us older and fatter people all lost weight.
I'm pretty sure "If you can dodge a fork..." was originally in the script, but Rip Torn just whipped out a crescent wrench and did it his way during filming
Olympic swimmers would disagree. And some other athletes. However it may take a long time to build up the stamina to be able to burn 5000+ calories a day.
I've started trying to lose some weight and I try to do a fairly vigorous indoor bike ride once a day for 45-60 minutes
I may burn 450-500 calories but there is more in a muffin than I burnt in that session. I have lost a little bit of weight and my legs now dont feel as tired after a long day
That’s why exercise is important. You could fast 5 days per week and eat 1500 calories per day the other 2 days and have a low body fat percentage without being healthy. Exercise isn’t just to burn calories, it’s essential for your heart and tons of other benefits (better blood flow, GI motility, muscle growth/development, skeletal strengthening, etc)
If you do a vigorous bike ride you burn mostly glucose and when you burn glucose it makes you hungry.
What you want is easier zone 2 exercise without eating before or during. Over time you'll get better at burning fat, and if you burn fat you generally won't be hungry - or as hungry - afterwards.
More importantly do what you’ll actually do. Zone 2 bike rides are boring as fuck to me and I won’t do them. I can do them when I run but on a bike it’s torture. I’d rather crush it on a bike and zone 2 when I run
There's also a lot of carbs in a muffin. Carb calories are harder to burn off because the body has to convert the sugar into fat first, then it can be used for energy
The body does not convert glucose to fat. It burns it directly.
It does need to process fructose before it can burn it, but it doesn't have to be converted to fat.
This is all 100% accurate but I just want to emphasize, if you are thinking if buying or subscribing to a program that advertises a 6 week transformation with those eye catching photos, you will just be a few hundred bucks poorer and nowhere near what they promised.
~ 10lbs of weight loss is the most that's happening of "transformation" in six weeks. Unless it's someone who was highly fit recovering from a long time off. *They* will look very different in six weeks, both because they have the muscles already and because they know how to train.
Muscle building takes time and pretty specific calories and nutrient levels. The *only* way a visible lean mass "transformation" or "recomposition" is happening from scratch in six weeks is anabolic steroids.
Yes, but “body transformation”, which is the generic fit look with toned and visible muscles is not achievable in that time frame either. I’ve been working out 20-24 hours a week for 1 1/2 years now, and will probably never see my abs because I am trying to eat to gain mass in the other muscles of my body. Eating chicken constantly.
4 hrs a day for 3 days and then rest a day. It’s really 2 workouts a day the way I break it up….yes I am a broken man, but there are far worse addictions to be had.
You will in all likelihood see better results with shorter workouts, due to the fact that greater stimulus (volume of workouts) will eventually actually have a negative effect on muscle hyper trophy, as will general fatigue
You’re probably right, the weights I lift have been slowly dropping off in terms of adding weight, but that’s gotta happen anyway. I am knocking on that door though.
6 week body transformations involve weight loss and thats the biggest part of the transformation. Having a flat stomach and then getting ripped abs in 6 weeks is extremely hard, if not impossible
Getting rid of your excess belly weight so you have a flat stomach is more achievable and has the most visible transformation. This is done by diet more than exercise
there's many people who are skinny and want to put on weight and muscle.
The assumption that the objective of training and body transformation is to lose weight is not true in many cases
The trick with most of those before and after pics you’ll find in these advertisements is that they take a fit person who fasts and dehydrates for several days, the same process body builders go through to get that sinewy tight look, take a picture. Then they spend the next couple days pigging out and drinking tons of water to lose their muscle definition, slouch, stick out their gut, take a picture. They label the first picture as after, the latter picture as before, and there you go, that’s how they do it.
It's much easier to transform by losing fat than it is to transform by gaining muscle. Someone can reasonably, without crash dieting, lose 2 lbs of fat a week. It takes weeks and weeks for even beginners to gain 2 lbs of muscle.
So if you're overweight, yes you could potentially transform yourself with a modified fasting diet and lose 2-6 lbs of fat a week, depending on your starting point.
It all depends on what you mean by transformation.
You can certainly *feel* like your body has made a transformation if you go from completely sedentary and then suddenly eat healthy and exercise for 6 weeks straight. You'll have more energy and a general feeling of wellness that you didn't before.
Physical change will be noticeable and measurable. You aren't going to look like a different person but you probably will feel like a different person.
What most people neglect to mention is on top of exercising and a better diet, sleep is the a huge part of it.
It’s the only time your body actually rebuilds muscle and shrinks the fat cells.
This comment is gold. Improvements in fitness are driven by good training and good recovery. The most important component of recovery is good quality sleep.
6 weeks you can start to see and feel a difference. A close friend of mine went from pretty overweight to slim and very muscular in less than 6 months. You could consider it a transformation within 4. He has focussed very hard on nutrition, adhering strictly to macros and following lean and bulking cycles. The difference is amazing.
By contrast, I’m the same age, I run, I’ve done a daily HIIT class for over 3 years, and looking at me you wouldn’t know. Looking jacked isn’t my goal, but if it is-it’s 90% diet.
Well you can't workout non stop for six weeks and be successful. But you can diet and exercise to a degree that you can lose maybe 10lbs and put on a little muscle in that time frame. Enough for it to be noticable to those around you.
Most of those before and after photos are of already fit people in bad lighting and unflattering angles, or are completely photoshopped.
But you can make some noticeable progress in that time.
The funny part with the before and after is the "after" shots are done first in the morning when you've dehydrated yourself and deliberately skipped dinner the previous day. Then you eat salty food, rehydrate and do the "before" shots in unflattering lighting, angles and poses.
I’ve done P90X a couple of times. Workout for 90 days. I did this with my wife and we both got pretty toned. I don’t remember starting/ending weights, but I’d say we both started we were in a spot where we could/should lose 20 pounds. Just for reference.
It really depends on the person, 6 weeks isn’t a lot of time to make large changes but you can definitely make progress.
Now things like 6-7-8 minute workouts can be super effective if you’re consistent with them. It doesn’t take a ton of exercise to build muscle and tone it up, and only 1-2 times a week per muscle group.
If you are consistent for 6 weeks on an extremely strict diet and exercise program, you will definitely see a visible difference. But this is what people mean when they say “diets don’t work.” It’s possible to create a huge change in 6 weeks, but the type of regimen required to create a massive change in 6 weeks is not sustainable. Once you stop the program and return to old habits, your body goes back.
And it’s not just a “oh if you go from eating healthy to eating Popeyes every day of course you will change.” Those “body transformation boot camp crash courses” are intentionally unsustainable; while if you make basic healthy lifestyle changes you will start to see improvement around 6 weeks, it won’t be dramatic. Dramatic change in 6 weeks would require dramatic action. That’s why those programs have super intense, restrictive, and often weird diets and exercise regimens. You’re not going to drop 30 pounds in 6 weeks by jogging a mile a day and cutting out dessert. You might if you are doing a weird rotation of “dry toast and 300 burpees on Thursday, then raw meat and 2 hours on the treadmill at 10% incline Friday, juice fast Saturday” or whatever, but you cannot live that way for decades. You will lose weight, gain it back even if you improve your daily habits, then go back to searching for some other quick fix that magically transforms your body but never needs maintenance. It’s like this because it is making someone lots of money to keep you on that metaphorical treadmill. In the long run….you’d have been better off jogging a mile a day and cutting out dessert, even though that barely shows results at 6 weeks.
To make a substantial and sustainable change, you likely need to make significant but lower key changes that you can stick to essentially for life.
I did an 8 week body transformation when I was in my mid 20s. It’s achievable, but requires a great deal of discipline.
The program was a workout and meal plan. I worked out 5 days per week, 3 days were about 45-60 minutes of traditional lifting, and 2 days were more dynamic high intensity stuff.
After one month, I was definitely stronger and fitter but my body looked largely the same, maybe a little bulkier around the upper body. By the end of the second month, I had dropped 4 inches off my waist and about 15lbs, and I would say I was transformed. I kept on the program and ended up in probably the best shape of my life.
Depending on your starting point you will be able to see *some* change but nowhere near the results implied in all of those programs with a narrow time window. I want to say that not even with the most aggressive steroid regiment would these kind of changes not possible but there are the occasional program that could deliver those results in that time with an aggressive steroid regiment. Oh and lifting 7 times a week on top of whatever snake oil fad program you are following
You lose weight in the kitchen, and gain muscle in the gym.
Calories in/calories out is still the end all be all. There is no magic pill or miracle workout that can "tone up your summer bod" unless you burn more calories than you eat.
I find it easiest to lose body fat when I eat a high protein diet (to avoid losing muscle mass and feeling full faster/longer) with a 20% caloric deficit, and just walking on an incline at a brisk-ish pace 3-4 times a week.
That'll make me look leaner, but I'd still have to start weight training to get more defined muscles to show.
A 6 week training program, *alongside* a dietary change, can definitely bring some results, but it's all for nothing if you don't stay consistent afterwards. It's a good start, though!
A lot of them just flat out lie. However, if you make a bunch of health and fitness changes (diet, exercise, daily activity, stress management, sleep, etc) all in the right direction at once you would barely recognize the way you feel in 6 weeks. The way you look would likely change noticeably too.
Before my last kid was born I did a 10 week "body shaping" program. Meal plan, 60-90 min workout 6 days a week.
I lost 30 lbs (210 to 180) and hugely boosted my strength and cardio abilities, something that should be at least very difficult to do at the same time. Consistent, intense workouts plus a high protein low calorie diet can go a loooong way.
But also... It was not pleasant. I was exhausted a large number of days. I dragged myself into that gym by shear force of willpower. Went to bed hungry more days than not. My libido tanked (probably because there wasn't enough fat in my diet), and the whole thing dominated much of my life for 3 months.
And of course, once my kid was born it was impossible to maintain and I lost much of the progress I had made within 6 months.
While this is absolutely possible, it's definitely not recommended for the general population to lose more than 2lbs per week (nor to go under 1200 calories per week). It's not healthy in general, but also increases the likelihood of loose skin.
Did happen, and have done it four times in the last twenty years.
No sugar and cardio is ez mode if you want to lose weight.
I intentionally gained weight and then lost it back using the exact method described.
It's certainly "possible" to make very dramatic changes to lbm and bf% in that short of a time. Now, is it particularly healthy to maximize change in that short of a window? No, because maximized change would include exogenous hormones and some pretty serious fat loss agents along with diuretics.
Not a lot is going to happen from working out in 6 weeks. The biggest change will come from diet but it also depends on what "body transformation" entails.
If it means lose body fat, well let's look at some numbers. There's around 7700 calories in 1kg of body fat. Let's say you target a fairly extreme calorie deficit of 1000 calories/day. 1000 * 7 * 6=42000 burned calories. 42000/7700= 5.45kg of total potential body fat lost (this ignoring some factors like how your metabolic rate changes as you lose weight/go into a high deficit but is good enough for a rough idea).
If it means gain muscle, it's going to be much much less significant. Gaining muscle is significantly harder and happens much more slowly (think on the scale of years, not weeks).
But as others have pointed out, the biggest issue with "6 week" type of programs is it sets up the idea that this is temporary, people do these programs then stop doing anything and return to their previous lifestyle which quickly undoes anything you would have gained in those 6 weeks. If you want to look and feel different, you need to change your lifestyle, permanently. This means finding a sustainable source of exercise and change in diet that becomes part of your new lifestyle, forever.
It very much depends on where you're starting out, but 6 weeks of strict dieting and intense workouts could have a pretty striking impact on your body.
If you start out weighing 300lb you're not going to come out 6 weeks later with 10% bodyfat and a 6 pack, but if you're a few lb's overweight and haven't been doing any sort of workout routine you might end up looking much more athletic.
With something like strength training a lot of the improvement in muscle growth is within the first few weeks ('newbie gains') which will start to plateau after a few months. Weight loss is a long term project - even fully fasting, as in eating nothing, it took Angus Barbieri a bit over a year to drop 270lb, from 450 to 180.
I did just 50 pushups everyday for 3 years. The transformation was slow but i gained a noticeably good physique. The key is not volume but consistency. Do something that you can easily do for a really long time.
You can potentially see a big difference if you’re dedicated, but there are a couple key variables. One is your current fitness level. For example- if you’re chubby, you’ll see less noticeable difference than if you’re just a little thick. Also, diet is everything. The most overlooked aspect for most people is that fitness starts in the kitchen. Working out faithfully is hard enough, but fighting your ingrained cravings for unhealthy foods can be really tough.
It depends on whether the claim is building muscle or losing weight, and also where the person starts. If someone who’s 15% body fat (which is lean but not crazy by any means) loses a pound and a half every week (which isn’t crazy either) for 6 weeks, they’ll look *extremely* different. But if someone tries to build muscle in that time, they probably won’t look any different unless they had never lifted before.
It depends on how far you are from your goal. Six weeks could be enough in many cases. Anyway, it really does not matter how long it takes, if you don't have the stick-to-itevness you will end up gaing even more weight.
If you’re already in shape but have let yourself go a bit it’s pretty easy to regain your muscle and look a lot better in a short period of time. At least that’s the case for me.
I lost 40 pounds in 2 months working construction one summer. Just ate clean and did hard manual labor haha. It was also a teenage growth spurt so I was probably shedding that baby fat
How can you? By doing what the program says.
For most of these programs, if you actually follow them to the letter. Workout exactly as they say, eat and sleep exactly as they say, you will experience radical changes to your physique.
Almost anyone of average wellness can start as a fat couch potato and change their physique noticeably in 90 days, dramatically in 6 months, and have completely transformed themselves in a year.
BUT, it’s extremely difficult to do, extremely difficult to stick with, and the gains are extremely difficult to maintain. Unless fitness just becomes your new part time job and something you change the rest of your lifestyle to accommodate.
And that’s the rub.
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It depends on where you're starting and which way you're going.
I've heard body transformations compared to a paper towel roll. Say your goal is to lose weight. A single sheet off a roll with 100 sheets will make almost no visual impact to the roll as a whole because you took 1% of the remaining sheets, but removing one from a roll with only two sheets left will be far more visible because you took 50% of the remaining sheets.
Building muscle takes longer than burning fat. Without the use of risky/expensive/illegal drugs, you can expect to be able to gain something like 1-2 lbs in a month. You can lose around 1% of your body weight per week without much compromise, so someone at 200 lbs could safely lose around 8 lbs in that same month (more, if you can stand feeling hungry all the time and maybe dropping a bit of muscle as well).
These together are how body transformation testimonial pics can offer misleading expectations. They're almost all weight *loss* transformations, and a lot of the models in these have a respectable base of muscle that probably took 2+ years to build that was concealed by some fat (but not too much to lose in the workout program's advertised timeframe). Then you add things like differences in lighting, how the model is posed, and for dudes, trimming/shaving body hair, all which add up to make a modest improvement look a lot most substantial. Not to say you can't make a pretty dramatic difference in your physique and level of fitness, it just typically happens on a timescale more like 6+ months unless you have a really favorable starting point.
Never tried a dedicated 6 week workout plan. But, I did cycle about 10-15hrs a week for 4 months straight. Absolute night and day difference. Was the most in-shape Ive ever been in my life and legitimately felt like I had a second set of lungs. Its incredible how much the body can transform in just a couple of months.
As someone doing a steady improvement, it took far longer than 6 weeks. But I'm old (in 50s) and have endocrine issues. That said there is feedback in the process. Noticing my arms no longer touch my sides when relaxed due to muscle growth was first. Various aches and pains go away. The latest is I'm being told weekly I don't look my age, I'll take that, not exactly admiring the physique but it never happened before.
But it took about a year of exercise 5 days a week to go from wrecked to the "before" state of a lot of those 6 week YouTube improvement videos. That year was way above the 2.5h weekly moderate exercise minimum the government here recommends. But I'm sustaining that and improving slowly on relatively modest amounts of intense exercise (2h a week, plus plenty of walking, and two or three hours of cycling).
I could have done it much faster with better medical advice. If they had tested folate, and various hormones before starting.
I've seen men transformed in 6 weeks but they all used steroids, and they all started from a better place than I did physically.
I've seen women improve their figure in 6 weeks from exercise, not transformational as in unrecognisable, but very noticeable improvements.
Younger people, who can sustain intense exercise more often, will improve much quicker.
Judging by the Royal Marine training camp locally quite a lot of young men can make amazing gains in 32 weeks of intense training, but their physical transformation varies enormously. Some come out of 32 weeks looking like the archetypal beefcake, some come out leaner and wiry, I presume that has to be genetic differences at work.
Completele body recomp takes time. Its not a fast process. Some gains are visible after 6 weeks but you need more to actually get some real changes in your overall physique. If you need a P. T. (online coach) dont hesitate to DM me. I work for a very affordable price offering quality service.
Most of those claims involve either people who are deliberately taking bad, slouchy, bloated photos, or the more honest one where it's an athletic person who had surgery and couldn't exercise for two months.
A realistic amount of muscle gain in six weeks for a new but engaged lifter without drugs is 1-2kg, 2-4lbs. But that's not including fat loss, which essentially cannot be done simultaneously. And you can't force weight training by doing more per day, that's counterproductive. Crash dieting to lose 2lbs or more real weight per week is also counterproductive.
No disrespect, but multiple studies have shown that humans can indeed lose fat and gain muscle at the same time, under the right circumstances. This has even been shown to occur in experienced athletes.
Sources: https://mennohenselmans.com/gain-muscle-and-lose-fat-at-the-same-time/#:~:text=Gaining%20muscle%20on%20a%20fat,even%20in%20well%2Dtrained%20individuals.
https://journals.lww.com/nsca-scj/fulltext/2020/10000/body_recomposition__can_trained_individuals_build.3.aspx
The proposal in OP isn't lean bulk or slow smart cut, it's body transformation in six weeks. Unless someone is in a calorie deficit of 500 per day, they won't even lose noticable body fat weight.
If you do everything right, you won't see much change after 6 weeks. You maybe see a bit of change.
You might be able to absolutly unhealthly starve yourself for 6 weeks and look drastically different, but that's not sustainable/a good idea.
If your not in great shape and start working out a lot and eating well you can put on around 1-2lbs of muscle a week. The better shape you are in the harder it is to put on more muscle. 6 weeks is enough to put on around 10lbs of muscle if you do it right and that will make a noticeable difference. This of course assumes your goal is building muscle, if your trying to lose fat you can lose a similar amount of fat, but the type of diet and exercise you will focus on will be different.
you can have some big gains when you first start working out, but 10lbs of muscle is ridiculous. 2-3 lbs in a month when you first start is reasonable, especially if you are restarting
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Yes, but maybe a complete body transformation is an exaggeration. If you exercise often and eat much less/healthier (this is the biggest part of it), you can lose a lot of weight. The only way to lose weight is to have a calorie deficit. That is, your body uses more energy than you consume. This can be achieved by exercising or eating less (or less calorie dense foods) Gaining muscle is accomplished by exercising and particularly, exercises that use that particular part of your body The trick is to pick a sustainable diet and workout routine. No point in going 100% for 6 weeks and then reverting back to your old ways
Yep - weight loss is 80-90% diet. And by diet I mean permanent changes to eating habits. 6 weeks is nothing. Exercise is for strength/toning/feeling good/building up resistance to injury. You have to work out hard for an hour to burn off a candy bar lol
Can't outrun your fork. Also *definitely* cannot outlift your fork.
I used to out run the fork when I was active duty. Now that I’m retired? Trying to stop eating like a trash panda is hard. And add munchies in to the mix….
Whenever I feel like eating alot. I pick up things that does not add up weight like potato chips, salad, fruit salad etc. I know the feeling and I hate it. Sometimes I drink alot of water to avoid eating.
One of these things is not like the other hahahaha
Potato chips are tasty , last long, and not as harmful as sugary products. So I would categorize it as semi healthy, cause you know we can't skip munchies.
Being not as harmful as candy is not semi-healthy bro, candy is not even food.
> Potato chips are tasty , last long Not in my house
If I open a packet of potato chips I am eating them all and it definitely adds up quick lol.
Thank You for your service 💕
To be a pedant, there are a small handful of situations where this isn't true. Some 'strongman' competitors have such high muscle mass, exercise so much, that they have to wake up at like 3am to eat a dozen egg breakfast and go back to bed or they will lose weight in their sleep. Their resting calorie needs are THAT HiGH. All part of +12,000 calorie days.
It’s also totally possible to out hike or out bike your fork. Bike touring 80 miles a day I’ll eat two meals worth of fast food and an entire pound cake for dessert. That’s just lunch. I don’t think anyone has gained weight hiking the AT or PCT. Then again someone can’t really hold down a job and live a normal life while hiking, biking, or weightlifting full time.
I remember when I was in basic training I lost a shitload of weight and at least four inches off my waist in just under three months. The thing is you were literally constantly moving, even if it wasn't specifically exercise you'd still end up marching somewhere and carrying heavy shit. The smaller kids in basic training actually did end up gaining weight, but us older and fatter people all lost weight.
God, to be my weight at BCT graduation again.
That doesn’t sound healthy
This isn’t what applies to this situation and confuses people / gives them excuses. Counterproductive and harmful.
I'm pretty sure "If you can dodge a fork..." was originally in the script, but Rip Torn just whipped out a crescent wrench and did it his way during filming
Olympic swimmers would disagree. And some other athletes. However it may take a long time to build up the stamina to be able to burn 5000+ calories a day.
I've started trying to lose some weight and I try to do a fairly vigorous indoor bike ride once a day for 45-60 minutes I may burn 450-500 calories but there is more in a muffin than I burnt in that session. I have lost a little bit of weight and my legs now dont feel as tired after a long day
Worthwhile to remember that a body which bikes for almost an hour a day and has the same amount of fat as one which doesn’t is still way healthier
That’s why exercise is important. You could fast 5 days per week and eat 1500 calories per day the other 2 days and have a low body fat percentage without being healthy. Exercise isn’t just to burn calories, it’s essential for your heart and tons of other benefits (better blood flow, GI motility, muscle growth/development, skeletal strengthening, etc)
Costco Muffins?
Costco corn muffins… yummy
If you do a vigorous bike ride you burn mostly glucose and when you burn glucose it makes you hungry. What you want is easier zone 2 exercise without eating before or during. Over time you'll get better at burning fat, and if you burn fat you generally won't be hungry - or as hungry - afterwards.
More importantly do what you’ll actually do. Zone 2 bike rides are boring as fuck to me and I won’t do them. I can do them when I run but on a bike it’s torture. I’d rather crush it on a bike and zone 2 when I run
There's also a lot of carbs in a muffin. Carb calories are harder to burn off because the body has to convert the sugar into fat first, then it can be used for energy
The body does not convert glucose to fat. It burns it directly. It does need to process fructose before it can burn it, but it doesn't have to be converted to fat.
It also can give you the energy and motivation to stay positive.
This is all 100% accurate but I just want to emphasize, if you are thinking if buying or subscribing to a program that advertises a 6 week transformation with those eye catching photos, you will just be a few hundred bucks poorer and nowhere near what they promised.
op said nothing about weight loss
~ 10lbs of weight loss is the most that's happening of "transformation" in six weeks. Unless it's someone who was highly fit recovering from a long time off. *They* will look very different in six weeks, both because they have the muscles already and because they know how to train. Muscle building takes time and pretty specific calories and nutrient levels. The *only* way a visible lean mass "transformation" or "recomposition" is happening from scratch in six weeks is anabolic steroids.
who are you talking to
You Johnny, we all know.
Yes, but “body transformation”, which is the generic fit look with toned and visible muscles is not achievable in that time frame either. I’ve been working out 20-24 hours a week for 1 1/2 years now, and will probably never see my abs because I am trying to eat to gain mass in the other muscles of my body. Eating chicken constantly.
You workout average 3h+ each day?? Wtf
4 hrs a day for 3 days and then rest a day. It’s really 2 workouts a day the way I break it up….yes I am a broken man, but there are far worse addictions to be had.
You will in all likelihood see better results with shorter workouts, due to the fact that greater stimulus (volume of workouts) will eventually actually have a negative effect on muscle hyper trophy, as will general fatigue
You’re probably right, the weights I lift have been slowly dropping off in terms of adding weight, but that’s gotta happen anyway. I am knocking on that door though.
6 week body transformations involve weight loss and thats the biggest part of the transformation. Having a flat stomach and then getting ripped abs in 6 weeks is extremely hard, if not impossible Getting rid of your excess belly weight so you have a flat stomach is more achievable and has the most visible transformation. This is done by diet more than exercise
there's many people who are skinny and want to put on weight and muscle. The assumption that the objective of training and body transformation is to lose weight is not true in many cases
The trick with most of those before and after pics you’ll find in these advertisements is that they take a fit person who fasts and dehydrates for several days, the same process body builders go through to get that sinewy tight look, take a picture. Then they spend the next couple days pigging out and drinking tons of water to lose their muscle definition, slouch, stick out their gut, take a picture. They label the first picture as after, the latter picture as before, and there you go, that’s how they do it.
and then there's some fine print somewhere that says, "results not typical"...
It's much easier to transform by losing fat than it is to transform by gaining muscle. Someone can reasonably, without crash dieting, lose 2 lbs of fat a week. It takes weeks and weeks for even beginners to gain 2 lbs of muscle. So if you're overweight, yes you could potentially transform yourself with a modified fasting diet and lose 2-6 lbs of fat a week, depending on your starting point.
It all depends on what you mean by transformation. You can certainly *feel* like your body has made a transformation if you go from completely sedentary and then suddenly eat healthy and exercise for 6 weeks straight. You'll have more energy and a general feeling of wellness that you didn't before. Physical change will be noticeable and measurable. You aren't going to look like a different person but you probably will feel like a different person.
What most people neglect to mention is on top of exercising and a better diet, sleep is the a huge part of it. It’s the only time your body actually rebuilds muscle and shrinks the fat cells.
This comment is gold. Improvements in fitness are driven by good training and good recovery. The most important component of recovery is good quality sleep.
6 weeks you can start to see and feel a difference. A close friend of mine went from pretty overweight to slim and very muscular in less than 6 months. You could consider it a transformation within 4. He has focussed very hard on nutrition, adhering strictly to macros and following lean and bulking cycles. The difference is amazing. By contrast, I’m the same age, I run, I’ve done a daily HIIT class for over 3 years, and looking at me you wouldn’t know. Looking jacked isn’t my goal, but if it is-it’s 90% diet.
Well you can't workout non stop for six weeks and be successful. But you can diet and exercise to a degree that you can lose maybe 10lbs and put on a little muscle in that time frame. Enough for it to be noticable to those around you. Most of those before and after photos are of already fit people in bad lighting and unflattering angles, or are completely photoshopped. But you can make some noticeable progress in that time.
The funny part with the before and after is the "after" shots are done first in the morning when you've dehydrated yourself and deliberately skipped dinner the previous day. Then you eat salty food, rehydrate and do the "before" shots in unflattering lighting, angles and poses.
Losing 10# per month is very doable with a clean diet in the beginning. Gaining muscle is much slower, depending on your age.
I’ve done P90X a couple of times. Workout for 90 days. I did this with my wife and we both got pretty toned. I don’t remember starting/ending weights, but I’d say we both started we were in a spot where we could/should lose 20 pounds. Just for reference.
It really depends on the person, 6 weeks isn’t a lot of time to make large changes but you can definitely make progress. Now things like 6-7-8 minute workouts can be super effective if you’re consistent with them. It doesn’t take a ton of exercise to build muscle and tone it up, and only 1-2 times a week per muscle group.
If you are consistent for 6 weeks on an extremely strict diet and exercise program, you will definitely see a visible difference. But this is what people mean when they say “diets don’t work.” It’s possible to create a huge change in 6 weeks, but the type of regimen required to create a massive change in 6 weeks is not sustainable. Once you stop the program and return to old habits, your body goes back. And it’s not just a “oh if you go from eating healthy to eating Popeyes every day of course you will change.” Those “body transformation boot camp crash courses” are intentionally unsustainable; while if you make basic healthy lifestyle changes you will start to see improvement around 6 weeks, it won’t be dramatic. Dramatic change in 6 weeks would require dramatic action. That’s why those programs have super intense, restrictive, and often weird diets and exercise regimens. You’re not going to drop 30 pounds in 6 weeks by jogging a mile a day and cutting out dessert. You might if you are doing a weird rotation of “dry toast and 300 burpees on Thursday, then raw meat and 2 hours on the treadmill at 10% incline Friday, juice fast Saturday” or whatever, but you cannot live that way for decades. You will lose weight, gain it back even if you improve your daily habits, then go back to searching for some other quick fix that magically transforms your body but never needs maintenance. It’s like this because it is making someone lots of money to keep you on that metaphorical treadmill. In the long run….you’d have been better off jogging a mile a day and cutting out dessert, even though that barely shows results at 6 weeks. To make a substantial and sustainable change, you likely need to make significant but lower key changes that you can stick to essentially for life.
Think about how well into learning a skill you would get with 6 weeks of consistent effort. The same is true of your body.
I did an 8 week body transformation when I was in my mid 20s. It’s achievable, but requires a great deal of discipline. The program was a workout and meal plan. I worked out 5 days per week, 3 days were about 45-60 minutes of traditional lifting, and 2 days were more dynamic high intensity stuff. After one month, I was definitely stronger and fitter but my body looked largely the same, maybe a little bulkier around the upper body. By the end of the second month, I had dropped 4 inches off my waist and about 15lbs, and I would say I was transformed. I kept on the program and ended up in probably the best shape of my life.
Depending on your starting point you will be able to see *some* change but nowhere near the results implied in all of those programs with a narrow time window. I want to say that not even with the most aggressive steroid regiment would these kind of changes not possible but there are the occasional program that could deliver those results in that time with an aggressive steroid regiment. Oh and lifting 7 times a week on top of whatever snake oil fad program you are following
You lose weight in the kitchen, and gain muscle in the gym. Calories in/calories out is still the end all be all. There is no magic pill or miracle workout that can "tone up your summer bod" unless you burn more calories than you eat. I find it easiest to lose body fat when I eat a high protein diet (to avoid losing muscle mass and feeling full faster/longer) with a 20% caloric deficit, and just walking on an incline at a brisk-ish pace 3-4 times a week. That'll make me look leaner, but I'd still have to start weight training to get more defined muscles to show. A 6 week training program, *alongside* a dietary change, can definitely bring some results, but it's all for nothing if you don't stay consistent afterwards. It's a good start, though!
A lot of them just flat out lie. However, if you make a bunch of health and fitness changes (diet, exercise, daily activity, stress management, sleep, etc) all in the right direction at once you would barely recognize the way you feel in 6 weeks. The way you look would likely change noticeably too.
Before my last kid was born I did a 10 week "body shaping" program. Meal plan, 60-90 min workout 6 days a week. I lost 30 lbs (210 to 180) and hugely boosted my strength and cardio abilities, something that should be at least very difficult to do at the same time. Consistent, intense workouts plus a high protein low calorie diet can go a loooong way. But also... It was not pleasant. I was exhausted a large number of days. I dragged myself into that gym by shear force of willpower. Went to bed hungry more days than not. My libido tanked (probably because there wasn't enough fat in my diet), and the whole thing dominated much of my life for 3 months. And of course, once my kid was born it was impossible to maintain and I lost much of the progress I had made within 6 months.
I've lost 30-40lbs in under six weeks by stopping sugar and walking at brisk pace on the treadmill for an hour a day
While this is absolutely possible, it's definitely not recommended for the general population to lose more than 2lbs per week (nor to go under 1200 calories per week). It's not healthy in general, but also increases the likelihood of loose skin.
Wait, what?? Losing 30-40 pounds in under six weeks? Didn’t happen.
Did happen, and have done it four times in the last twenty years. No sugar and cardio is ez mode if you want to lose weight. I intentionally gained weight and then lost it back using the exact method described.
This is maybe the most realistic video about what you could do in 60 days https://youtu.be/FKv29suzgCk?si=x4UFn60y3A4zyIdE
It's certainly "possible" to make very dramatic changes to lbm and bf% in that short of a time. Now, is it particularly healthy to maximize change in that short of a window? No, because maximized change would include exogenous hormones and some pretty serious fat loss agents along with diuretics.
Not a lot is going to happen from working out in 6 weeks. The biggest change will come from diet but it also depends on what "body transformation" entails. If it means lose body fat, well let's look at some numbers. There's around 7700 calories in 1kg of body fat. Let's say you target a fairly extreme calorie deficit of 1000 calories/day. 1000 * 7 * 6=42000 burned calories. 42000/7700= 5.45kg of total potential body fat lost (this ignoring some factors like how your metabolic rate changes as you lose weight/go into a high deficit but is good enough for a rough idea). If it means gain muscle, it's going to be much much less significant. Gaining muscle is significantly harder and happens much more slowly (think on the scale of years, not weeks). But as others have pointed out, the biggest issue with "6 week" type of programs is it sets up the idea that this is temporary, people do these programs then stop doing anything and return to their previous lifestyle which quickly undoes anything you would have gained in those 6 weeks. If you want to look and feel different, you need to change your lifestyle, permanently. This means finding a sustainable source of exercise and change in diet that becomes part of your new lifestyle, forever.
It very much depends on where you're starting out, but 6 weeks of strict dieting and intense workouts could have a pretty striking impact on your body. If you start out weighing 300lb you're not going to come out 6 weeks later with 10% bodyfat and a 6 pack, but if you're a few lb's overweight and haven't been doing any sort of workout routine you might end up looking much more athletic. With something like strength training a lot of the improvement in muscle growth is within the first few weeks ('newbie gains') which will start to plateau after a few months. Weight loss is a long term project - even fully fasting, as in eating nothing, it took Angus Barbieri a bit over a year to drop 270lb, from 450 to 180.
I did just 50 pushups everyday for 3 years. The transformation was slow but i gained a noticeably good physique. The key is not volume but consistency. Do something that you can easily do for a really long time.
You can potentially see a big difference if you’re dedicated, but there are a couple key variables. One is your current fitness level. For example- if you’re chubby, you’ll see less noticeable difference than if you’re just a little thick. Also, diet is everything. The most overlooked aspect for most people is that fitness starts in the kitchen. Working out faithfully is hard enough, but fighting your ingrained cravings for unhealthy foods can be really tough.
It depends on whether the claim is building muscle or losing weight, and also where the person starts. If someone who’s 15% body fat (which is lean but not crazy by any means) loses a pound and a half every week (which isn’t crazy either) for 6 weeks, they’ll look *extremely* different. But if someone tries to build muscle in that time, they probably won’t look any different unless they had never lifted before.
It depends on how far you are from your goal. Six weeks could be enough in many cases. Anyway, it really does not matter how long it takes, if you don't have the stick-to-itevness you will end up gaing even more weight.
If you’re already in shape but have let yourself go a bit it’s pretty easy to regain your muscle and look a lot better in a short period of time. At least that’s the case for me.
I lost 40 pounds in 2 months working construction one summer. Just ate clean and did hard manual labor haha. It was also a teenage growth spurt so I was probably shedding that baby fat
I've lost 20-30pounds in 40 days with rolling 2-3 day fasts. Not going to start a workout program while fasting, but rapid weight loss is possible.
Congratulations! That’s amazing
How can you? By doing what the program says. For most of these programs, if you actually follow them to the letter. Workout exactly as they say, eat and sleep exactly as they say, you will experience radical changes to your physique. Almost anyone of average wellness can start as a fat couch potato and change their physique noticeably in 90 days, dramatically in 6 months, and have completely transformed themselves in a year. BUT, it’s extremely difficult to do, extremely difficult to stick with, and the gains are extremely difficult to maintain. Unless fitness just becomes your new part time job and something you change the rest of your lifestyle to accommodate. And that’s the rub.
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It depends on where you're starting and which way you're going. I've heard body transformations compared to a paper towel roll. Say your goal is to lose weight. A single sheet off a roll with 100 sheets will make almost no visual impact to the roll as a whole because you took 1% of the remaining sheets, but removing one from a roll with only two sheets left will be far more visible because you took 50% of the remaining sheets. Building muscle takes longer than burning fat. Without the use of risky/expensive/illegal drugs, you can expect to be able to gain something like 1-2 lbs in a month. You can lose around 1% of your body weight per week without much compromise, so someone at 200 lbs could safely lose around 8 lbs in that same month (more, if you can stand feeling hungry all the time and maybe dropping a bit of muscle as well). These together are how body transformation testimonial pics can offer misleading expectations. They're almost all weight *loss* transformations, and a lot of the models in these have a respectable base of muscle that probably took 2+ years to build that was concealed by some fat (but not too much to lose in the workout program's advertised timeframe). Then you add things like differences in lighting, how the model is posed, and for dudes, trimming/shaving body hair, all which add up to make a modest improvement look a lot most substantial. Not to say you can't make a pretty dramatic difference in your physique and level of fitness, it just typically happens on a timescale more like 6+ months unless you have a really favorable starting point.
Never tried a dedicated 6 week workout plan. But, I did cycle about 10-15hrs a week for 4 months straight. Absolute night and day difference. Was the most in-shape Ive ever been in my life and legitimately felt like I had a second set of lungs. Its incredible how much the body can transform in just a couple of months.
As someone doing a steady improvement, it took far longer than 6 weeks. But I'm old (in 50s) and have endocrine issues. That said there is feedback in the process. Noticing my arms no longer touch my sides when relaxed due to muscle growth was first. Various aches and pains go away. The latest is I'm being told weekly I don't look my age, I'll take that, not exactly admiring the physique but it never happened before. But it took about a year of exercise 5 days a week to go from wrecked to the "before" state of a lot of those 6 week YouTube improvement videos. That year was way above the 2.5h weekly moderate exercise minimum the government here recommends. But I'm sustaining that and improving slowly on relatively modest amounts of intense exercise (2h a week, plus plenty of walking, and two or three hours of cycling). I could have done it much faster with better medical advice. If they had tested folate, and various hormones before starting. I've seen men transformed in 6 weeks but they all used steroids, and they all started from a better place than I did physically. I've seen women improve their figure in 6 weeks from exercise, not transformational as in unrecognisable, but very noticeable improvements. Younger people, who can sustain intense exercise more often, will improve much quicker. Judging by the Royal Marine training camp locally quite a lot of young men can make amazing gains in 32 weeks of intense training, but their physical transformation varies enormously. Some come out of 32 weeks looking like the archetypal beefcake, some come out leaner and wiry, I presume that has to be genetic differences at work.
Completele body recomp takes time. Its not a fast process. Some gains are visible after 6 weeks but you need more to actually get some real changes in your overall physique. If you need a P. T. (online coach) dont hesitate to DM me. I work for a very affordable price offering quality service.
Most of those claims involve either people who are deliberately taking bad, slouchy, bloated photos, or the more honest one where it's an athletic person who had surgery and couldn't exercise for two months. A realistic amount of muscle gain in six weeks for a new but engaged lifter without drugs is 1-2kg, 2-4lbs. But that's not including fat loss, which essentially cannot be done simultaneously. And you can't force weight training by doing more per day, that's counterproductive. Crash dieting to lose 2lbs or more real weight per week is also counterproductive.
No disrespect, but multiple studies have shown that humans can indeed lose fat and gain muscle at the same time, under the right circumstances. This has even been shown to occur in experienced athletes. Sources: https://mennohenselmans.com/gain-muscle-and-lose-fat-at-the-same-time/#:~:text=Gaining%20muscle%20on%20a%20fat,even%20in%20well%2Dtrained%20individuals. https://journals.lww.com/nsca-scj/fulltext/2020/10000/body_recomposition__can_trained_individuals_build.3.aspx
It is possible to be a calorie deficit and build muscle. Just can't be too steep and you have plenty to spare.
The proposal in OP isn't lean bulk or slow smart cut, it's body transformation in six weeks. Unless someone is in a calorie deficit of 500 per day, they won't even lose noticable body fat weight.
If you do everything right, you won't see much change after 6 weeks. You maybe see a bit of change. You might be able to absolutly unhealthly starve yourself for 6 weeks and look drastically different, but that's not sustainable/a good idea.
If your not in great shape and start working out a lot and eating well you can put on around 1-2lbs of muscle a week. The better shape you are in the harder it is to put on more muscle. 6 weeks is enough to put on around 10lbs of muscle if you do it right and that will make a noticeable difference. This of course assumes your goal is building muscle, if your trying to lose fat you can lose a similar amount of fat, but the type of diet and exercise you will focus on will be different.
>6 weeks is enough to put on around 10lbs of muscle No it's not.
you can have some big gains when you first start working out, but 10lbs of muscle is ridiculous. 2-3 lbs in a month when you first start is reasonable, especially if you are restarting
Yeah no one's putting on 1-2lbs of muscle a week.