“Big is out, thin is in.” – Mike Sorrentino (aka “The Situation”)

How are the Jersey Shore guys so ripped?

Is there a secret Jersey Shore workout that will get you a six pack?  With the highly anticipated second season fast approaching, I thought I’d put up a short post to offer up my two cents.  My theory is that it goes far beyond what they do in the gym.  Anyone who has seen Jersey Shore knows how ripped the dudes are.  But how?  After all, these guys are constantly gorging themselves on high-carb Italian feasts, funnel cakes, 2am pizza, and a seemingly endless supply of booze.  They aren’t exactly beacons of good health.  So how do you explain their top notch physical condition?  The answer is very simple.  Two words: calorie deficit.

With eating habits as obscene as their behavior, you would think these guys would all weigh 300 pounds.  However, consumption is only half of the equation.  Sure, they work out for a couple of hours a day, but that’s not it.  They also walk almost everywhere they go and spend countless nights dancing, fist-pumping, and partaking in “other calorie burning activities”.  In short, their caloric expenditure is even more impressive than their caloric intake.

What can we learn from this?

The truth is the dudes on Jersey Shore do have a fitness routine and a very effective one at that.  They pack on plenty of muscle with frequent weightlifting sessions, shed fat like crazy with plenty of low intensity walking, and crank their calorie burning all the way into the following day with high intensity dance parties at night.  This routine is so effective at obliterating stored body fat that it makes what they eat irrelevant.

At the end of the day, the most important thing when it comes to obtaining a lean physique is maintaining a caloric deficit.

The guys on Jersey Shore are living proof.  Unfortunately, most of us don’t have the luxury of being able to wake up at the crack of noon and spend all afternoon working out before hitting the dance floor every night.  As a result, we also don’t have the luxury of stuffing our faces with pasta, burgers, and beer 24-7.  If we did this, we’d be much more likely to end up on a different reality show: The Biggest Loser.  The Jersey Shore guys live in a calorie burning fantasy world that the rest of us have either never experienced or left behind on the elementary school playground.

So what can we do?

There are many ways to generate a calorie deficit, but for a normal person, the easiest way is to simply eat less. I will include more posts on several techniques I use to accomplish this, but there is one that is so simple that anyone can start implementing it right away.  You don’t even need a shopping list.  It’s called intermittent fasting.  Brad Pilon is an authority on this subject.  He details everything you need to know about intermittent fasting and how it works in his brilliant e-book.

Intermittent fasting has helped me and many others obtain the lean and toned physique that is so coveted in today’s society.  The funny thing is that I’m sure “the Situation” and company unintentionally used this technique as well.  They didn’t perform a secret Jersey Shore workout.  They created a calorie deficit and anyone can do this.  However, normal people will need to go about it a little differently.  And you thought Jersey Shore couldn’t teach us anything.  Shame on you.