How to Get Shredded: 6 “Insider” Secrets to Shred Fat Fast

Gentlemen, today we’re going to talk about how to get shredded.

I’m not going to sugar coat this with mainstream training and stupid workout tips that don’t work—I’m going to give you the real, no-BS truth.

See, my name is Jon Anthony, and I’ve been in the fitness industry for the past five years or so—and I’ve uncovered a LOT of dirt.

So, let me explain how to get ripped as hell, once and for all, without paying for some stupid gym program that doesn’t work. Let’s go.

Getting Shredded: The Basics

See those pictures? Those are of me. I want to start off with proof I know what I’m talking about, and that I’m not just talking out of my asshole.

To get shredded, you NEED to listen to someone who’s actually done it himself, otherwise it’s just a bunch of talk talk talk, and no action.

Okay, now that I’ve got the proof out of the way, let’s get down to business and explore how to get ripped and build muscle as fast as possible.

Here’s how you can get shredded:

1. The Right Workout Program
2. Eating The Right Diet
3. Recovering Properly

I’m going to give you some tips you can apply to your training in the gym, your diet, nutrition, exercise, and more—but first, let me make this clear.

No Shortcuts to Get Shredded!

There is NO SHORTCUT to getting ripped and building muscle. You have to put in a lot of hard work in the gym, with your diet, and more.

Don’t buy the bullshit that marketers tell you, about how you can shred body fat with some magic pill or something. That doesn’t exist.

Of course, there’s things like steroids and SARMs that you can use to speed up your progress, but without hitting the gym, training hard, counting your calories, and putting in the WORK, you will not get shredded.

Best Workout Program to Shred Fat

In my opinion, the best workout program on the market is the one I created and have used in the gym for years now: Body of an Alpha.

It’s literally the definitive guide for anyone who wants to build a chiseled, attractive physique—particularly one that women go crazy for.

Working out is important if you want to get jacked as hell, because if you’re just skinny without muscles, you’ll just look like a wimp.

That being said, if you’re really muscular, but have a high body fat percentage, you’ll just look like a bloated cow.

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The real magic is when you’re muscular AND have low body fat. This is when your abs start to pop, and you look super shredded.

I’ve written about some of the best workout routines for men before, so I recommend you look through that list and find a workout program you like.

Once you’ve done that, we can move onto the next step to getting shredded, which is watching your diet like a hawk.

Best Diet Programs to Get Shredded

Like I said, it’s not enough to just be muscular—you also need to be at a really low body fat percentage to look like you’re really shredded.

…and most of your bodyweight is going to be dictated by what you eat. In other words, getting jacked depends a lot on the foods you eat.

There’s a few diets that are good for shredding:

• Paleo Diet
• Clean Bulking Diet
• Steak and Eggs Diet

There’s many ways to skin a cat, but depending on if you’re either skinny or overweight, the best diet for getting shredded might change.

If you’re skinny, it’s best to eat a lot of bulking foods. Take a look at this clean bulking diet program I’ve put together, and follow it to a T.

If you’re overweight, I’d recommend some sort of ketosis-based diet, which I will talk about more below. Also consider trying intermittent fasting.

How to Recover & Lose Body Fat

I know that recovery doesn’t seem that related to losing fat and building those muscles that you so desperately want, but trust me, it is!

Most guys don’t recover like they should, because even with tons of cardio and perfect training, if you only sleep 2 hours a night, you’ll get fat.

I recommend that, if you want to get ripped, you sleep nine hours a night. This is absolutely, 100% mandatory if you want to get jacked.

You break down your muscles in the gym, you give them the nutrients they need in the kitchen, and you repair them while you sleep.

How far do you think you’ll get if you don’t sleep enough? Not very far, obviously. Sleep is the critical component to getting shredded, because it repairs your muscles and boosts fat burning hormones like Testosterone.

Alright. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s talk about some of the tips you can use to get shredded faster than you can say “six pack abs.

Tip #1: Count Your Calories

There are three primary “macronutrients” as they’re called, and each one is critical to understand if you want to lose fat: protein, carbs, and fats.

To build muscle and gain strength, you need to have enough protein. Even if you’re training every day, without enough protein, it doesn’t matter.

The general rule of thumb if you want to get shredded, is to have one gram of protein per pound of your lean body weight goal… per day.

So, if you want to weigh 185 pounds of lean muscle (not high body fat), then you should aim to eat 185 grams of protein per day. This is WAY fucking more than most people eat, and they wonder why they’re not jacked.

Whey protein helps a lot with this, but again, that’s just one part of the equation—another very important part is your carbohydrate intake.

For losing fat, less carbs is better. See, when you eat carbohydrates, that spikes insulin in the bloodstream. Insulin is a storage hormone.

In other words, more carbs usually means putting on more mass—whether it’s muscle or body fat. So, aim to only have carbs after your training.

Tip #2: Do Intermittent Fasting

Intermittent fasting, sometimes abbreviated as IF, is the idea that you only eat your daily macros and calories during a certain time window.

So, for example, some people might choose to only eat from 2pm-10pm. Some might choose to eat from 6pm-10pm. And some, more extreme people, might choose to only have ONE GIANT FEAST at the end of the day.

Most people find that restricting their meals from 2pm-10pm is sufficient to lose fat, however. This is what I would recommend doing.

Intermittent fasting is perhaps one of the best and easiest ways to start getting a jacked, shredded physique with almost no effort at all.

First off, losing fat is a breeze—you hit the gym on an empty stomach, get your training over with for the day, and then have some protein after.

Second, you’ll be able to focus for 6-8 hours after waking up, so very little self control is required (you won’t be having any calories for lunch).

Third, you can eat out at restaurants more for dinner, because the higher calorie content of restaurant food will actually help you hit your macros (since you aren’t eating earlier in the day you have to eat a lot later!).

Fourth, it’s good for your hormonal health. Intermittent fasting has been shown to have a ton of benefits, and I’ve been doing it for years.

In fact, I wrote a whole article on the benefits of intermittent fasting, so consider reading that one if you’re into health and bodybuilding.

Be sure that you have a strong cup of coffee, though—preferably a couple hours after you wake up. This will suppress hunger levels.

That way, you can ride your body’s natural cortisol spike when you first wake up, and once you start to get hungry, the coffee will help suppress your appetite and keep you laser focused.

Tip #3: Up The Water Intake

GOWAD stands for gallon of water a day. This is perhaps one of the most efficient ways to shed pounds of weight. Drinking tons of water not only hydrates you, which makes your body run more efficiently, but it also speeds up your metabolism.

When you intake a large amount of water, your body will naturally have to up its metabolism to deal with the water, bring it to cells, and excrete it.

Personally, I prefer to use a plastic jug like this one. It’s super easy, because I just fill it up each morning and make sure to drink the whole thing before the day ends. I tried using a milk jug for a while, but it was too flimsy for my taste—and the blue BPA-free bottles break extremely easily.

“But Jon, won’t I piss every 30 minutes?” I can hear you say. Well, you will at first. But after your body adjusts, you’ll only pee a few times a day.

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…and even if you do have to pee a lot more, isn’t it worth it to torch off pounds of fat? Just do GOWAD until you’re thin, and down the water intake if it makes you pee that much. Don’t be a bitch and make excuses.

Tip #4: Take Cold Showers

Cold showers are perhaps one of the best things a man could add to his morning. They speed up your fat loss progress, and much, much more.

If I’m feeling tired or run-down, sometimes I’ll skip them to give my body a rest, but if I’m running at peak capacity, I’ll always take a cold shower… especially after the gym.

There’s a massive amount of benefits to taking cold showers every day, including:

• More Testosterone
• Build Self Control
• Improve Recovery
• Grow Inner Strength
• Increase Fat Loss Rate
• …and more

Cold showers will also help you with losing fat, for two reasons.

First off, cold showers cause your body to release a series of hormones that are known for their ability to decrease fat, even with the exact same diet.

These hormones are known as testosterone and leptin, and they’re great for building muscle and burning fat, in too many damn ways to count.

Second, cold showers decrease your core body temperature.

This means your body will have to burn some extra calories to increase it back up to homeostasis, and where do you think those calories come from?

Yup, that’s right—those calories come from your waistline. If you aren’t comfortable taking a cold shower, because you’re a massive bitch, try putting an ice pack under your neck for 20 minutes like Tim Ferris recommends in The 4 Hour Body.

Tip #5: Drink Apple Cider Vinegar

Apple Cider Vinegar, sometimes abbreviated as ACV, has been shown to help weight loss when consumed with meals. I use it every single day.

I can’t remember where I read it, but I saw a study once that said just consuming 2tbsp of ACV per day,and doing nothing else, led to an extra 2 pounds of fat being burnt a month.

That’s a fucking ton for just one little trick.

Basically just put a couple tablespoons of this stuff in a glass, mix it around with 8 ounces of water, and drink half of it before your meal, and half during.

It’s important that you get it raw—this means that it isn’t pasteurized.

Pasteurization, although it increases the shelf life of certain foods, also kills off the enzymes and probiotics that dwell within certain foods, and ACV is no exception.

ACV has a ton of probiotics, which help digestion, improve your immunity, and make you feel really good.

Even when I’m not trying to lose weight, I still have a couple tablespoons of Apple Cider Vinegar with every meal for the other health benefits that it provides.

Tip #6: High Intensity Interval Training

For years, it was thought that steady state cardio was the best way to burn fat and get in good aerobic shape, but now science is starting to disprove this oh-so-common myth.

High Intensity Interval Training, which is also abbreviated as HIIT, is a form of cardio where you go all out for a short period of time, and then rest for a while, repeating this cycle multiple times.

Numerous studies have shown that high intensity interval training is actually far better for fat loss, and overall health, than steady state cardio. And, you can save time doing it.

I can’t remember where, but I saw a study once claiming that a mere 20 minutes of HIIT twice a week was more effective for losing fat and cardio-vascular health than a whopping 45 minutes, done five days a week.

In other words, you’ll get shredded—and you’ll do it in a fraction of the time by using high intensity interval training for your cardio workouts.

An example of HIIT, which I like to do, because it’s low impact, would be getting on the elliptical and doing the following:

• Warm up for 3 minutes
• Go all out for 30 seconds
• Go slowly for a minute and a half
• Repeat this process of going all out for 30 seconds and resting for a minute and a half between 6-8 times.

If you’re new, you’ll probably have to start off with just 4-5 times, or even 2-3 times. The first time I did high intensity interval training was after I just recovered from surgery on my left hand (I cut it open real bad, severed two tendons and a nerve).

I hadn’t worked out in literally 4 months (the doctors forbade it), but me, being a dumbass, decided “FUCK IT!” and went all out doing HIIT for like 8 cycles. I puked afterwards.

But do you know what? I literally felt AMAZING for the next two hours—loads of endorphins were rushing through my veins.

I even noticed a massive change in how others treated me. I guess I was just so happy and relaxed that others could sense it.

Regardless, HIIT is one of the most effective ways to burn fat in less time, while also giving your mood a huge boost. There’s a reason why I talk about it so much in Body of an Alpha.

Summary

Losing fat and building muscle will take time, lots of training, and effort, but it doesn’t have to take nearly as long as you might think it would.

If you’re using the strategies that I recommend here, in combination with working out, you will easily drop 3-4 pounds off a month, maybe even more if you factor in inflammation.

Either way, if you don’t change anything, nothing is going to change. If you keep on eating the same crappy diet, you’re going to stay fat.

If, however, you just decide to make a change, you will lose weight, and your life will become far better in general.

I’ve used every single one of these tips to get shredded for my upcoming photo shoot, and they’ve worked wonders. And if they’ve worked wonders for me, they can for you, too.

You just have to take action and employ them into your life. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, be sure to leave them down below—and, as always, I’ll see you guys next time.