When fitness vlogger ApemodeDre first began his journey toward a healthier lifestyle, he admits he was completely lost. Years later, after dropping from 210 to 183 pounds and learning through trial and error, he’s sharing the five crucial lessons he wishes someone had told him on day one.
In a recent YouTube video titled “5 tips nobody told me at the beginning of my fitness journey,” ApemodeDre breaks down practical, no-nonsense advice for anyone trying to lose weight, build muscle, or simply become a healthier version of themselves. His message? Forget perfection. Focus on consistency, simplicity, and patience.
Tip 1: Count Your Calories
“Forget what everybody else be saying,” ApemodeDre states in the video. “Count your calories. That’s the most effective way to know how much you’re eating throughout the day.”
He recommends using a free online calorie calculator to determine how many calories you burn daily based on your weight, height, and activity level. Then, he says, use a simple tracking app—he personally uses Stupid Simple Macro Tracker—to log your food intake and ensure you’re eating under that estimated number.
The results, he notes, speak for themselves: “I’ve lost about 23 pounds so far. When I first started back dieting, I was 210. I’m now 183.”
Tip 2: Keep Diet and Workouts Simple
According to ApemodeDre, one of the biggest mistakes beginners make is overcomplicating everything. His advice is to find a simple workout split and stick to it.
He shares his own routine as an example: legs on Monday, chest on Tuesday, back on Wednesday, with Thursday and Sunday as rest days. For diet, he recommends anchoring meals around one lean protein you enjoy—ground turkey is his go-to—and building different meals around it.
“People overcomplicate it,” he says. “Find out what’s simple for you.”
Tip 3: Be Patient
In an era of social media transformations and viral fitness content, ApemodeDre warns against expecting overnight results.
“The internet trick you, man,” he says. “You see all these people with these lean physiques, and your first instinct is thinking they popped up like that. They didn’t though. They paid a price for it. They put in the pain.”
He advises viewers to make fitness a part of daily life rather than obsessing over the destination:
“Just focus on the journey. Make it a lifestyle. One day you’re going to look up and say, ‘Dang, I lost this much.'”
Tip 4: Stay Consistent
For ApemodeDre, consistency is the most important tip of all.
“Do not stop,” he emphasizes. “I stopped and started so many times throughout my journey. But don’t stop. Consistency is the key to everything. That’s how you become the master sensei of this.”
He urges viewers to keep going day by day, even when others fall off:
“When everybody else falling off and they don’t see results, they stopping. That ain’t you. You focused. You locked in every day.”
Tip 5: Eat What You Want – But Not How Much You Want
Perhaps his most practical tip involves indulging without derailing progress. ApemodeDre suggests picking one day a week—Saturday for him—to eat whatever you want: cheeseburger, pizza, cake, fries. But there’s a catch.
“Stay within your calorie budget,” he insists. “If your diet is 2,000 calories a day and Saturday rolls around, go ahead and treat yourself. But you better not go over them 2,000 calories. Stick to the script.”
He explains that once you get closer to your goal, you can introduce a slightly more flexible “refeed day,” noting that gaining a pound of fat requires eating about 3,500 calories over maintenance—a difficult feat for most people. But for beginners, he says, staying within the limit is the real cheat code.
The Bottom Line
ApemodeDre’s message resonates with a growing consensus among fitness professionals: sustainable progress comes from simple, consistent habits, not extreme measures or fleeting motivation.
As he sums it up in the video: “Make it a lifestyle. Make it an everyday thing. Get into the routine, and you won’t even be thinking about it. You’ll just be doing it.”
For those just starting out—or starting over—his five tips offer a grounded, achievable roadmap forward.