Bodyweight Foundations

The training does not create the deficit; what you eat does. There is no calorie target, no macro split and no supplement advice here, because a training plan is the wrong place for them.

For that side of it, see a registered dietitian or your GP — particularly if you take regular medication, have been told to watch your blood sugar, or have a history of disordered eating.

One case is worth naming rather than leaving to that conversation: if you take insulin or a sulfonylurea for diabetes, training while eating less can drop your blood sugar further and faster than either does on its own.

Speak to your GP or diabetes team before you start, keep something fast-acting to hand while you train, and treat shakiness, sweating, confusion or sudden hunger as a reason to stop the session and check rather than to push through it.

Strength is what this programme protects, so strength is the gauge.

Log the top set of the squat, the split squat, the push-up and the row, and write down which version you used, because on a bodyweight programme the load is the version and it is easy to lose track of.

The signal to act is a version you handled a fortnight ago that you cannot handle today, twice in a row on the same movement or on two different movements in the same week.

Take the next week at two thirds of the sets on the same versions, keep the walking, and eat more; if it is still going backwards the week after, stop cutting food further and talk to a registered dietitian or your GP. Losing strength week after week is how muscle goes, and muscle is what this is protecting.

If your sleep or your sessions fall off, or your appetite drops away, that is the programme telling you it is under-fed — any one of those on its own is enough to act on, and they do not have to arrive together.

Periods becoming lighter, irregular or stopping counts too. If you are on medication that suppresses appetite, use sleep and your sessions as the signal instead, because appetite will not tell you.

Eat more, do not train more. The two days a week you are not training are part of the plan rather than a gap in it.

Count the hard days rather than the sessions: two of these five are hard ones, the two lifting days, and everything else is a walk at a pace you can talk through.

Three hard days a week is the number to hold to while you are new, so if you want to add something, add walking.

Before you start, please read this part. Training is among the safest and most useful things most people can do, and there is a short list of exceptions worth checking yourself against first.

If you have a heart or lung condition, chest pain or pressure at rest or on effort, dizziness or blackouts, blood pressure or diabetes that is not currently controlled, low bone density or osteoporosis, a joint or back problem that is flaring, or you are pregnant or within a year of giving birth, speak to your GP or a physiotherapist before starting and follow their instruction over anything written here.

Stop the session and get medical advice for chest pain or tightness, breathlessness out of proportion to the effort, dizziness, or a sudden sharp pain in a joint.

Stop it as well for pain, numbness, pins and needles or weakness that travels down an arm or a leg, and get that seen before you load the pattern again.

This is a first programme, so take the first fortnight at the easiest version of every movement even if it feels too easy. Nothing here is medical advice.