For Mike Chang, the obsession started early. When he was 10 years old, he’d ask his mom to record women’s group aerobic workouts that would air early in the morning, then watch them in the afternoon when he got home from school, following along faithfully with a pair of three-pound dumbbells.
“That’s really how I got started,” says Chang, who now runs one of the Internet’s most popular training sites, sixpackshortcuts.com. “Then I started going to a gym and lifting when I was 14, and I’ve been in there ever since.”
Chang has now passed his enthusiasm for fitness onto a legion of online devotees, racking up millions of YouTube hits for his training videos. It’s not hard to figure out how Chang has been able to build such a loyal fan base.
His lean, muscular physique is the exact type of athletic look so many guys aspire to. On the next page, Chang shares three of his keys to dieting success, and a simple metabolic conditioning circuit that can be performed with no special equipment.
Three Keys to Dieting Success
1) Plan for Everything
“Almost everyone can agree that you need to eat about five times a day,” Chang says. “But over the course of a month, that’s 150 decisions you need to make. If you don’t plan it all in advance, you’re bound to fail. You have to take the day-to-day guesswork out of it.”
2) Remember: Chewing is Hard Work
“This sounds like a weird one, but if you’re eating chicken or steak at every meal, that’s a lot of chewing, and that becomes time consuming,” Chang says. “If you eat more fish like tilapia that just falls apart, that makes it a lot easier. I don’t always have time to sit down and savor a meal. Most of the time I need to eat quickly and get back to work.
3) Put “Bad” Sauce on “Good” Food
“I’d rather see someone put a little bit of unhealthy sauce on healthy food than see them do it the other way around,”
Chang says. “If you can’t make healthy food taste good, nobody’s going to eat it.” For example, blue cheese or Caesar dressing on grilled chicken breast is still a better choice than fried chicken with no dressing.
At-home Abs and Cardio Workout
Directions: Perform the following workout as a circuit four times through—doing 30 seconds of each exercise—without resting between circuits.
*With your hands on the floor, kick out to the top of a pushup position then jump your feet back to your hands. Don’t stand up; your hands never leave the ground. **You can hold a single dumbbell or weight plate in your hands to add resistance.
