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Investment Banking Fitness. If you're new here, please click here to get my FREE 5. Thanks for visiting! It’s midway through your first year as a banker. You just got back from the holiday party, and after taking a day off to recover from your hangover, you’re ready to rock and roll. You pull out your favorite pair of slacks from the closet, fumbling to put them on. Bill Clinton, former leader of the free world, earned over $1. USD since he left office and that didn’t save him from quadruple bypass surgery. How to Vanquish the Demons and Lose Fat. You need to combine diet and exercise and modify habits like drinking and how long you sit in your chair. That seems simple, and if you’re not an investment banker, it is – but as a banker, you have a lot of problems that the average dieter never faces. Most fitness advice online assumes that you can work out whenever you want for as long as you want, and that you have infinite time to cook food for yourself. Rather than repeating those unrealistic suggestions, we’re going to focus on specifically what you must do to stay in shape as a banker. The most common problem is fat gain, so that will be the main goal – but the advice here goes beyond that and will address issues like lower back pain, high blood pressure, diabetes, and your overall energy level. Assumptions and Sources & Uses. I’m assuming that you: Have very little free time (< 4 hours per week) and no flexibility in your schedule. Cannot cook because of this lack of free time. Are often in social situations where you’re pressured to eat junk food and drink alcohol. Care more about losing fat or not gaining fat in the first place than you do about gaining muscle or building endurance (there’s nothing wrong with those, but they’re much harder to pull off as a banker). Have an inkling of common sense. If you think that donuts are better for you than vegetables, please press Alt + F4 right now. We’re not going to get into a debate over different diet plans, like Atkins vs. Slow- Carb – the specific details matter far less than following the high- level ideas, which are similar in different plans. I’m also not going to turn this into science class and get into a technical explanation of everything, because that’s off- topic and you can read all about the science elsewhere. The focus here will be how to avoid getting fat as a banker – through diet, reduction of social pressure, exercise, Starbucks (the lifeblood of any banker), the right kind of bottles, and some secret ingredients. Diet. As a banker, the usual habit is to skip breakfast altogether, get takeout for lunch, and then eat a huge dinner with 2 desserts from Seamless. Web. When you first start, this seems great: you’ve gone from being a starving student to eating steak and tiramisu every day. The only problem is that you’re also getting fatter every day. Modify this routine by: Eating smaller meals at least 4 times per day – and more if possible. It helps your metabolism. Avoiding Seamless. Web and similar takeout and going for healthier options. Always eating immediately after you wake up. What do you eat, and how can you possibly have time for 4 meals per day? First, each meal should have protein, fat, carbohydrates (optional – keep reading), and vegetables, with about half as much fat as the others (since it has twice the calories). Examples that you can easily get at restaurants or from stores like Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods, with minimal prep time: Sashimi with salad. Chicken salad with olive oil and vinegar. Tofu, beans, and vegetables (the vegetarian option)Egg whites with avocado, cheese, whole wheat bread, and spinach. Low- fat cottage cheese with nuts and fruit. Sardines and whole wheat crackers. The last 2 are missing vegetables, so you can just add in a mixed salad there. In keeping with the “no science class” rule above, I’m not going to spell out the mix of protein/fat/carbohydrates in each of these but feel free to look up the facts yourself if you’re curious. Use your $2. 0- 3. To take care of breakfast and your snack in between lunch and dinner, you can order extra the night before and save it for the next day, you can run to a store close to your building during a break, or you can use one of my ninja tricks below. If you do it properly, eating 4x per day takes no more time than eating just 2x because you’re at your desk anyway, and you’re eating food you already have. Wait, Aren’t Carbs Bad? But as a banker, it’s probably not viable to completely cut out carbs because you need the energy for all those all- nighters. So if you can do so, reduce carbs, especially when it’s late at night. But rather than obsessing over that, make sure you avoid anything with sugar – that’s the absolute worst thing you can eat if you want to stay slim. You’ll be pressured into ordering dessert all the time, going to Starbucks constantly, and harvesting as much junk food as possible from your office’s kitchen, so avoiding sugar is easier said than done. The easiest solution is to use artificial sweeteners, such as stevia, if you need your fix of sweets. These are not great to have in huge quantities either, but in small doses they are much better than real sugar. Social Pressure. As a banker, your co- workers will pressure you into ordering more food than you can possibly eat just to use up your entire dinner allowance. There are 2 ways to deal with this: avoidance and limited acceptance. Avoidance. You could tell them you’re slammed and have no time to take a break and eat – but you don’t want to do that all the time or you’ll end up with no friends. Maybe try this one 2- 3x per week, but don’t rely on it every day or you’ll be excluded from group outings. Limited Acceptance. For the times when you do have to go eat together, just follow the guidelines above: make sure your meal has a mix of protein, fat, carbs (optional), and vegetables. So if you go out and they say you have to order a steak or they’ll laugh at you, go ahead and do it – just make sure it’s not massive (because you’re eating 3 other times throughout the day) and that it has vegetables on the side. When it comes time for dessert and drinks, say you need to finish a few more things at work so you can’t drink much, and that you’re too full for dessert because you ate a few hours ago. Exercise. Just like the controversy over carbs and whether or not they’ll turn you into the Pillsbury Dough Boy, another debate rages between cardio (running, swimming, etc.) and strength- training exercises. We’re going to ignore that completely for one simple reason: you do not have time for extended cardio workouts as an investment banker. You might be called back to the office at any time, on any day of the week, for any reason, so you need to think in 1. So the only option is strength training, for 3 reasons: As mentioned above, you need to get intense exercise in a very short amount of time. Unlike the equivalent amount of cardio, even a short and intense weight lifting workout will help you burn more calories for over a day if you do it properly. Doing resistance training will help your body absorb more calories and carbs immediately afterward, so you can loosen your dietary restrictions a bit. If you have extra time, sure, go for a run, a bike ride, or go swimming whenever you can. But if you’re a banker with an unpredictable schedule and almost no free time, you need to do quick but high- intensity strength- training workouts each week for the highest ROI. What to Do At the Gym. Ideally, you will go to the gym 3 times per week for very quick workouts: I suggest Friday night, early in the day Sunday, and then once more whenever you have time during the week. You are more likely to have free time on Friday night because senior bankers leave earlier – and you’re less likely to be called into the office early on Sunday. A simple plan would be chest and triceps on one day, back and biceps on the next day, and then lower body on your final workout day. Before the powerlifters reading pick apart this plan, remember that I’m assuming no knowledge or previous experience and extremely limited time – so please resist the temptation to argue for something more complicated. If you’re pressed for time, you can condense this to 2 workouts instead and do upper body all on one day and lower body all on the other day – but if you do that, you should leave at least a few rest days in between workouts. Finding Time to Go to the Gym. This can be tricky, and it depends on how your group operates: you’re best off asking if it’s OK to leave for 3. Don’t ask for permission when you first start working – you should use the first month or two to prove yourself as reliable, and then “make the ask” once the senior bankers know you’re good. If your group is not open enough to discuss non- work issues, then you’ll have to follow my suggestion above and go on Friday and Sunday, and then whenever else you have time in between. That might be 2 AM on a Tuesday – not an ideal time to work out, but far better than doing nothing at all. Oh, and if you’re a female banker you still need to do everything above and focus on strength training: you’re not going to turn into the Incredible Hulk, since male and female bodies react much differently to working out. In fact, arguably females need strength- training. That means you have only 2 options at Starbucks: americano or espresso. But you could turn this restriction into your advantage by ordering triple espressos all the time to make yourself look hardcore and then say that you need the caffeine for yet another all- nighter. Critics will say that this results in too much caffeine, but that’s far better than having too much sugar: as a banker you must pick the lesser of two evils. Outside of coffee, you should only drink water (ideally liters per day), tea, and yerba mate (the loose- leaf variety, anything else is too weak).
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