Aladdin Nabulsi Case Study

How Aladdin lost 25 lbs., cut 8% body fat, dropped 15-total inches, and went from an overweight Middle-Aged zero to a youthful, confident, athletic-looking hero

Attention: If you’re a middle-aged man that’s let yourself go, that’s unhappy when you look in the mirror, that feels like a shell of your former self, and that’s struggling with the idea that you’re in your 40s and it’s too late to change…

Meet your new inspiration, Aladdin — who transformed himself from an overweight weakling that looked every bit of his age into the youthful, confident, and athletic-looking man that you see today.

That’s right, move over George Clooney… there’s a new dapper dude in town and he looks every bit as good in a tuxedo (scroll down to see photo below).

Aladdin is now the man he always wanted to be, a man that controls his own destiny, and a man that sees age as merely a number and not a limiting belief. He became the hero of his own life, he’s inspired me with his tenacious zest for life, and this is his story…

When I first met Aladdin, he was a typical overweight middle-aged man in his 40s. He looked and felt every bit of his age, and he was a shell of the man he is today. Tell me if this sounds familiar:

• Working long hours at a stressful job, Aladdin didn’t prioritize working out and he felt like he simply didn’t have time. As he got older, his health and fitness began to suffer — his posture was terrible, he lost all the muscle mass he gained in his 20’s and 30’s, and he became an overweight weakling.

• Eating “whatever was in the way”, Aladdin’s body got bigger and softer. He now had a pot belly that stuck out further than his chest. Embarrassed, he resorted to wearing baggy clothing to hide his now growing gut.

• Like many middle-aged men, Aladdin tried many times to eat healthy and workout on his own. After many failed attempts and an upsetting situation at the gym that left him shaken and void of confidence, he hit a new low. It was his breaking point and he couldn’t live like this any longer.

• Confused by the mass amounts of conflicting information out there, Aladdin looked to hire someone to make sense of all of it, to tell him exactly what to do, and to hold him accountable in order to ensure results.

Over the next 9-months, Aladdin went on to drop 25 lbs., cut his body fat by 8%, reduce his waist size from a 35 to a 31, and lose 15-total inches off his body. His confidence has exploded, he looks 10 years younger, and he’s finally the youthful, fun, energetic 40-year old man he always wanted to be.

And he did it without counting calories and only working out for 3-hours per week.

 

The Turning Point

Sadly, Aladdin struggled with weight as a child. In his own words,

“I just remember in 8th grade seeing all these cool kids going to pool parties and me not being invited… and it hurt. I wished I was one of the cool kids that got invited to parties.”

Luckily, Aladdin grew out of this phase and as he got older and taller his weight balanced out. In fact, he went through his 20s and most of his 30s in pretty good shape. He was active and worked out. He didn’t eat exceptionally healthily, but he was working out and he had age on his side.

Eventually, life and age caught up with him. At first, it was a slow decline. As work demands increased he began skipping workouts. As he skipped more and more workouts and his stress levels increased he began turning to food for comfort. Eating and drinking anything he wanted with co-workers on a regular basis took its toll on his body and on his health.

“My doctor said I was overweight and really needed to lose some weight.”

 

Letting himself go

Working with 1,000’s of people both in-person and online, this isn’t the first time I heard a story like Aladdin’s. Unfortunately, it’s far more common than you think and as men age into their 40’s — it’s kind of expected. Simply put, most men in their 40’s — like Aladdin — let themselves go.

For Aladdin, even looking in the mirror was a difficult experience:

“I became that 8th grader again as an adult and I just let go of myself. I remember the moment I looked in the mirror and I saw myself with a belly and no muscle mass. I thought to myself, ‘Who have I become?’ This is not who I see myself as. When I think of who I am and I look in the mirror, I don’t see the same person.”

Although many men struggle with their health and fitness as they get older, most do nothing about it and resort to numbing the pain with food and alcohol. Luckily, Aladdin had more self-awareness than most and he was willing to take ownership of the fact that it was his decisions and his actions that got him to this unhappy place in his life,

“I was at a job that kept me long hours, I ate whatever was in the way, and I was just wasn’t focused on me. I lost me.”

Working with so many people that have similarly struggled with age and letting themselves go, the worst part is the change I see in their personality. The worst part is the resulting depression and anxiety that seems to accompany the deterioration of their physical health and appearance.

The lucky ones reach a breaking point and typically after hitting a new low — make a decision to take action and change.

I call my high-level inner circle of online coaching clients Action Takers. I call them this for good reason, no change can occur without action. Action can be painful, but it’s often better and less painful than the pain of staying the same.

“Change happens when the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change.” – Tony Robbins

Unfortunately, Aladdin hadn’t reached his breaking point. He wasn’t ready to commit and he wasn’t ready to change… yet.

 

“Trying” In Not A Strategy

Many people try to get in shape or hope to lose weight — these people fail. Trying is not a strategy for getting in shape and neither is hope.

“Do. Or do not. There is no try.” — Yoda

Not only must you commit fully to your goal, but you must also have a clear, precise, and detailed strategy to reach your goal — including coaches, mentors, accountability partners, or other necessary support systems.

In his own words, Aladdin tried many times to get back into shape:

“I tried many times to workout on my own. I tried eating healthy, but I lacked the education and knowledge of what actually works and what doesn’t. There is so much information out there and I didn’t know what was right and what was wrong.”

Lacking the education and knowledge is a problem, but with the right coach — that problem can be easily overcome. The other option is to learn, study, and educate yourself…

But that can often take far more time than most people are willing to invest in order to get the result they are after. Finding the right coach or mentor can save you years of time and dramatically increase your results in a short amount of time.

Luke Skywalker had Obi-Wan Kenobi. Michael Jordan had Phil Jackson. Tom Brady has Bill Belichick. I have John Romaniello and Aladdin has me.

“Great coaches are like cheat codes for success.” – Jackson Bloore

After finally reaching a point that the pain of staying the same was far greater than the pain of changing, Aladdin made a decision to change and took the first and often most difficult step, to hire a coach:

“After many failed attempts on my own, I remember seeing myself in the mirror and seeing this pot belly and this body on somebody I didn’t know. I thought to myself, I cannot live like this. I’m not going to live like this. Doing it on my own is not working so I need to find somebody that’s going to help me and support me on this journey.”

 

Meeting the Mentor

After doing a Google search for “Best personal trainer” Aladdin found my website and began reading…

“I remember finding this trainer online by the name of Action Jackson. Here’s a guy that has a lot of great information that I related to so I reached out to him. I had nothing to lose.”

Aladdin and I instantly connected. He was open, honest, vulnerable, sick of his current existence, and ready to do anything in order to change. He wasn’t guarded and he didn’t give me fluff answers to my questions.

For example, when I asked him why he wanted to change instead of saying the typical, “to be healthy” or “to get fit” he said:

“I have lost 3 siblings due to cancer and want to make sure I am doing everything possible to live a long and healthy life.”

Whoa. Now that’s a guy that knows exactly why he is doing this and is also highly motivated to change.

This might seem insignificant but I can tell you with absolute certainty that after working with thousands of clients… the difference between those that succeed and shatter their fitness goals in record time and those that fail is a clearly defined why.

“He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” — Friedrich Nietzsche

People that want to drop 50 lbs. or get six-pack abs “to be healthy” or in order to “get fit” never succeed. They will quit the moment things get difficult. They don’t have a strong enough reason why they are on their journey.

However, a guy that lost 3 siblings due to cancer will do almost anything to avoid the same fate. And it doesn’t always have to be something that extreme, but it absolutely must hold a lot of value for you personally.

For me, I was a complete nerd during middle school and high school. In fact, my older sister had to set me up with her boss’ daughter just to have a date to my senior prom.

When I started to get into better shape in college, I noticed how much attention I got for having six-pack abs. All of a sudden girls wanted to talk to me and even date me while guys wanted to know how I did it. At that point, six-pack abs became my key to social status, attention, and sex — everything I wanted in high school but could never get.

Additionally, when I asked him how he’d feel if he had the body of his dreams… instead of saying a generic and typical, “Good” or “Awesome” Aladdin said:

“My heart and soul would smile to see something I have only envisioned and didn’t think possible in my younger years. I would finally see on the outside what I have always felt on the inside.”

The more detail you provide, the more you can envision success, and more emotion you can attach to your goal… the more likely you are to succeed. Trust me, I’ve seen it a thousand times.

 

Age Is Not An Excuse

A lot of people find a way to talk themselves out of their dreams… whether it’s starting a business, changing careers, or getting back into shape. Age is a primary driver for this type of self-sabotage.

Put simply, most people use age as an excuse to give up, throw in the towel, and stop challenging themselves. They relegate themselves to a comfortable, mediocre, and relatively easy existence. Instead of going after the things they want and living the life of their dreams they shrug and say, “I’m too old, maybe if I was younger.” As Aladdin said:

“I used to tell myself that I don’t have the right genetics, I don’t have the right body type, and that I’m in my 40’s and simply too old. You hear everybody say, ‘That’s just what happens with age.'”

Luckily, I had some inspiration in my back pocket. You see, a year before meeting Aladdin I trained a fantastic guy by the name of Andres Wydler. And at 49-years of age, I was able to help him drop down to 5% body fat and finally get the body he’s always dreamed of:

I leveraged my work with Andres as much as possible to inspire Aladdin, but I didn’t need to work too hard. Aladdin had already made up his mind that he wasn’t going to let age define and limit his life:

“I didn’t want to believe that. No way, that’s not going to be me. It’s never too late and I didn’t listen to people. I wasn’t going to use age as an excuse.”

 

The Goal: Who do you want to be?

Before beginning any journey, the most important thing to do is set a goal. You must have a destination, vision, or end goal in mind before beginning a workout program.

Hell, you need a destination or goal every single time you leave the house for that matter… why would changing your body be any different?

So many people skip this critical step. And yes, it is critical. It’s one of the reasons so many people fail when attempting a new weight loss or workout program. It’s the absolute first thing I do with my clients… after they pay me and sign the waiver of course 😉

It was the first thing I did with my other case study, Christoph, who lost 18 lbs., cut his body fat from 17% to 7%, added nearly 10lbs of muscle and transformed himself from an overweight weakling into Wolverine.

It’s also the first thing I did with my client Michael who lost 25 lbs., cut his body fat in half, and went from a no-pack to six-pack in only 10-weeks.

A goal will guide your action and ensure you are doing the right things in order to get the results you want. But you need a goal that excites you. Something that’s going to get your ass up in the morning to hit the gym before work. Something that’s worth the pain and sacrifice of changing. Aladdin initially came to me with the following goal:

“The guy I want to be is the guy I see in magazines with six-pack abs and defined arms.”

Although that’s a good start, it’s not exactly clear, detailed, or precise — it’s sort of vague and nebulous. So we worked together to quantify his goal, add some detail, and identify a time frame to accomplish it.

When setting health and fitness goals, the first step is to gain complete clarity on your current starting point. See things exactly as they are — no better and no worse. To do that we calculated Aladdins weight, body fat, and current measurements.

At over 190 lbs. and 22% body fat… we knew we had a lot of work to do, but knowing exactly where Aladdin’s starting point was allowed us to set some quantifiable and achievable goals:

1. Reduce body fat from 22% down to 15%.
2. Reduce weight from 191 lbs. down to 175 lbs.
3. Reduce waist size from 35 down to 32.

Given Aladdin’s hectic work schedule, the fact that we were essentially starting from ground-zero, and his ability to only commit 3-hours per week to exercise… we set a conservative time frame of 6-months to accomplish all three of these goals. To summarize, when setting your own goals… be sure to follow this plan:

1. Define starting point with progress photos and measurables including weight, body fat, and body measurements.
2. Define quantifiable 3-6 month goals that are challenging but achievable. A good coach can help with this.
3. Create a detailed action plan to achieve your goals. It doesn’t have to be the perfect plan and it will most likely change over time, but the most important step is to get started. You can course correct and pivot later.

 

A Man With A Plan

After defining your starting point and your quantifiable 3-6 month goals… the next step is to create your detailed action plan. Since Aladdin didn’t have the knowledge or experience to do it himself, he did the next best thing and hired a qualified coach to do it for him.

The best part about hiring an expert to create an action plan for you is that it frees you from learning and strategizing and instead allows you to focus your valuable and limited time and attention on executing, which is often challenging enough.

Can you imagine how much more difficult this process would be if Aladdin was trying to learn the most effective exercise and diet strategies, figure out what works best for him, create his own workout and diet plan, AND ON TOP OF ALL THAT… execute the plan?

That’s a recipe for failure. Even I’ve had trainers and coaches over the years…

“After my initial conversation with Jackson, he came up with a customized workout plan and meal plan and I didn’t realize just how easy it was… all I had to do now was follow the plan that was specifically tailored to me and my goals.”

Initially, I had Aladdin on a beginner version of metabolic resistance training and eventually, he progressed to full-blown MRT. If you haven’t heard of metabolic resistance training…

Metabolic Resistance Training is kind of like igniting the fat burning furnace that’s been lying dormant inside your body – except, instead of lighting it with a puny little lighter you’re going to light it with a gigantic flame thrower.

I also had Aladdin performing one HIIT Cardio workout per week. In case you aren’t down with the fitness lingo…

HIIT Cardio is kind of like installing flame throwing nitrous oxide boosters on your metabolism.

Since Aladdin had never counted calories or tracked macros before, we decided it would be best to use an approved foods list and portion control diet guide to manage his diet.

 

Only One Pound Per Week

We live in a fast-paced world where we can get our groceries delivered in an hour, call car service on-demand with an app, and get our questions answered by Siri in seconds… nobody wants to wait for things anymore.

Hell, even I get pissed if a web page takes more than few seconds to load. People want results today, not tomorrow. And Aladdin is no different:

“When I started the plan Jackson had created for me… after the first week I was so excited to step on the scale thinking I must have lost at least 3-5 pounds. Getting on the scale, I had only lost one pound and I was very unhappy. I busted my ass this entire week to only lose one pound. At that point I began to think, this is not working.”

The reality is… results don’t happen overnight. And I had to work hard to support Aladdin in the beginning of the program. It was a combination of positive emotional support, mindset coaching, and tough love. After the first week, there was some tough love. Here’s the deal:

It took years of neglect, missed workouts, and unhealthy eating to get to this point… you cannot expect to change years of downward momentum with one week of discipline, tough workouts, and healthy eating.

That would be like accepting an entry-level job today and expecting a promotion in a week… life doesn’t work like that. Sorry millennials. You cannot reverse years of treating your body like shit in just one week. It takes some time to build up momentum in a positive direction.

You cannot reverse years of treating your body like shit in just one week. It takes time to build up momentum in a positive direction.

If it was easy, everybody would be a millionaire with six-pack abs… as it stands less than 10% of the population has millionaire status and less than 1% of the population has six-pack abs. Life will always test your convictions to see just how bad you want it.

The key is having a support system in place to hold you accountable and provide support so you can stay the course and keep pushing forward toward your goal:

“As the weeks past one by one… 7 pounds was the moment I realized my pants fit better. I feel better, I look better, and I didn’t feel bloated anymore. At that point, I started to realize my hard work is now finally paying off.”

Some examples of support systems and accountability tools include:

1. Hire a coach
2. Workout partner
3. Make a bet with friends to provide social pressure and support
4. Use a third-party commitment device like StickK

Once you begin to get results and momentum builds, you’ll be unstoppable. At that point, success becomes easy. It’s breaking through the wall, gaining momentum, and getting over the initial hump that’s challenging.

 

The Results

I was very proud of the progress Aladdin made while working with me. He was dedicated, persistent, hard-working, and coachable.

I couldn’t ask for more from a client and within 6-months he had accomplished all 3 of his initial goals which included getting down to 175 lbs., 15% body fat, and a 32-inch waist. And since Aladdin was loving the results so much he decided to keep going…

At the 9-month mark before moving into more of a muscle-building hypertrophy program, we decided to capture his progress:

“So at the end of Jackson’s program I lost 25 pounds, 8% body fat, and my waist size went from a size 35 to a 31.”

Reaping The Rewards

To the victor goes the spoils. Aladdin worked really hard over the course of many months and he deserved every single perk he got along the way. One of the perks my clients enjoy when they reach their initial 3-6 months goals is going shopping for new “skinny” clothes:

“One of the most fun things I got to do was buy brand new pants and brand new shirts that were actually form fitting compared to the baggy stuff I used to wear just to cover my body up.”

But that’s not the only benefit… there were some actual health benefits as well. Most of us, including myself, tend to focus more on the aesthetic or visual benefits of an exercise program but the health benefits can be just as profound… if not more so:

“A year prior my doctor said I was way overweight and really needed to lose some weight. Coming back a year later they said, ‘You’ve lost a lot of weight, you look great.’ That was one of the moments that I felt really good.”

And who among us doesn’t love a good compliment:

“My co-workers saw me in my new skinny clothes and they said, ‘Look at you, you look great. You lost a lot of weight.'”

Lastly, this quote is my favorite and if you watch the interview you’ll see Aladdin light up like a Christmas tree when telling the story of his co-worker calling him out for having abs:

“I remember one of the gals touching my abdomen through my shirt with her fingers and saying, ‘Wow! You got some abs.’ Of course, I was feeling embarrassed and shy but I was also feeling like yeah… why not. I’m going to relish this. I worked hard. I deserve this. It’s okay… and that made me feel really good.”

The New Aladdin

“Prior to Jackson’s program I was this guy that looked in the mirror and did not feel good about myself. My posture was terrible. I had this pot belly and I wasn’t the person I wanted to be.”

At the end of the program Aladdin looked a lot better, he felt awesome, and he was much healthier BUT the real change was who he became in the process. The guy I first met was merely a shell of the guy Aladdin is today:

“Today, I’m that person that I visualized. When I look in the mirror I actually see myself because I actually became the person I wanted to be. It feels great because my posture has gotten better and I get stares… not just from women but from men too and that feels freaking great. I love it.”

And if improving your health, feeling like a superhero, getting stares from both men and women, and getting compliments from co-workers doesn’t sound exciting or fun to you… how about a little bit of old fashioned pride:

“All the hard work I did paid off. When I get stares or people make comments about my arms, or someone tries to feel on my abs says that I did good. I’m proud that I did it and I’m so glad I found Action Jackson’s website.”

 

Action Items for Your Success

• Make a decision to change. Mel Robbins says, “Your one decision away from a completely different life.” You must reach a breaking point or you must simply reach a point when the pain of staying the same becomes far greater than the pain of changing.

• Stop making excuses. Whether it’s having enough time, genetics, or age… I’ve heard them all and they’re all bullshit. Take ownership of your life and accept responsibility for where you are. Only then will you be ready for the next step…

• Take action. Nothing will happen without action. I call my online coaching clients Action Takers for a reason — you must follow your decision to change with fast and massive action toward your goal. Write down your goals, identify where you currently are, and create a plan for success. Do it on your own, ask a friend, join a group, or hire a coach… whatever it takes.

• Never give up. Pivots or course corrections along the way will be necessary, but the key to success is not giving up when you hit resistance along the way. Life will always test your convictions. Nothing is easy, but if you stay persistent, course correct, and continue working toward your goal eventually you’ll get there.

• Celebrate your success. When you’ve reached a milestone it’s okay to stop, take a breath, and enjoy the moment. You worked hard and deserve to relish in all the glory. Then, get up and start working toward a new goal or try to push yourself even further. The key is to never stop progressing and never stop working on improvement. Jim Rohn said, “Don’t linger too long at the table of success.”