The WelcomePack.

The fundamentals book Pete gives every new client.

Before anyone joins one of Pete's training programmes — in the gym in Leeds or online — they get this book. Twenty-nine pages, twenty-three short chapters, and zero filler. It's the foundation everything else is built on, and it's been refined over more than 15 years of coaching real clients with real lives.

Whether you're brand new to fitness or you've been training for years, the chapters on energy balance, food labels, the Traffic Light System and the Helms training pyramid will sharpen your thinking and tighten your results.

• Why energy balance sits at the heart of every transformation — and the four parts of TEE most people miss.
• How to read a food label properly (and the names added sugars hide under).
• The Traffic Light System for grading any product at a glance.
• How to navigate the high street when you're eating out — without blowing your goals.
• The Helms training pyramid — the most evidence-based ordering of priorities for any training plan.
• Why your scale weight fluctuates 2–3kg daily and what's actually changing.
• Written by Pete — a 7× UK award-winning Leeds PT, not an influencer.

What's inside

Twenty-three chapters grouped into eight themes. Read it cover-to-cover in an hour, or dip into the chapter you need.

The book opens by helping you audit your time and energy honestly. Most plans fail because they ignore the realities of work, family and social life — Pete's framework starts where you actually live, then layers in the changes that move the needle.

The goal of your nutrition is to create a sustainable pattern of eating that culminates in the body composition you're after. The chapter walks through why most short-term diets fail (they force unpalatable foods in pursuit of a temporary result) and lays out the principles for a way of eating that maintains the results once you've got them — convenient, efficient, and enjoyable.

Four pages on how the body actually burns energy — the bit almost every diet book skips. You'll learn the difference between BMR, NEAT (non-exercise activity), EAT (exercise activity) and TEF (thermic effect of food), why NEAT typically dwarfs EAT, and exactly what a calorie is. Then Pete tackles the controversial question — are all calories created equal? — and explains the laws of thermodynamics in a way you'll actually remember.

• BMR — over 60% of your daily burn, even when you're sat still.
• NEAT — the energy expenditure of just living your life. Usually larger than your gym time.
• EAT — formal exercise. Smaller share than people assume.
• TEF — the cost of digestion. Protein costs 20–35% of its calories just to process.

Why a 2000-calorie diet of whole foods is dramatically easier to maintain than the same calories from processed variants. The chapter covers nutritional considerations (taste, satiety), the characteristics of filling foods (high protein, high fibre, high volume, low energy density), and the trap of "empty calories" — processed foods stripped of the nutrients that signal fullness, made hyper-palatable so you eat more of them.

Three pages decoding the back of every UK packet: what 'Energy' actually means, why per-100g beats per-portion, the difference between sugars and 'of which sugars', saturated vs unsaturated fats, the salt-vs-sodium trick, and the ingredient list rule (largest by weight comes first). Plus the Traffic Light System — the voluntary government scheme that lets you grade any product at a glance.

The everyday levers most fitness books ignore. Caffeine management (and the 8-hour rule), the geographical audit (your food environment shapes your choices more than your willpower), hydration (six bullet points on fluid balance, what to drink, and what alcohol actually does), and the visual Pee Chart — the no-app, no-tracker way to know if you're hydrated.

• Caffeine — reserve it for the early hours; a 2:1 caffeine-to-theanine ratio sharpens focus without the spike.
• Hydration — six glasses a day is a rule of thumb, not science. The pee chart tells the truth.
• Geographical audit — what's within 5 minutes of your house and your office shapes 80% of what you eat.

Eating out and ordering in is the path of least resistance for most modern lifestyles — and it's where most plans wobble. The chapter lays out the four golden rules (drinks, salt & sauces, starters & desserts, knowing your triggers) that apply to any cuisine in any country.

If you want the full chain-by-chain breakdown with calories and macros for Nando's, Pizza Express, Wagamama, Greggs, Pret, the burger joints and the coffee shops, that's covered in much more detail in The Eating Out Guide — the dedicated 12-page companion.

Six pages on training fundamentals — built around the Helms Muscle & Strength Pyramid, the most comprehensive evidence-based ordering of training priorities. You'll learn how to read a programme (sets, reps, weight, tempo, abbreviations like MF/TF/DS/FR/RP/AMRAP), how supersets and tempo-controlled lifting work, and the six-tier priority order any plan should respect:

• 01 · Adherence — if you don't do it, nothing else matters.
• 02 · Volume, Intensity, Frequency — the real drivers of adaptation.
• 03 · Progression — beat last week.
• 04 · Exercise Selection — picks the levers you'll actually pull.
• 05 · Rest Period — affects intensity and recovery.
• 06 · Tempo — the finishing touch.

The book closes with two essential pages on tracking progress — and specifically, why your scale weight fluctuates 2–3kg in a single day. Sodium, carbs, alcohol, training, medication, menstruation — none of them are fat gain or loss, but all of them move the number. If you can't read the wobble, you'll lose your motivation chasing noise. Pete shows you exactly how to read it.

Common questions

© Pete Gawtry Fitness. The Welcome Pack PDF is free to download and share with friends, but the writing and design remain ours. Helms training pyramid adapted from The Muscle & Strength Pyramids by Eric Helms, Andy Morgan & Andrea Valdez.