Building muscle and losing fat is nowhere near as complicated as it seems, and simply involves following a few very basic rules.
One thing is for sure, you’re probably half way there when it comes to the way you’re currently training and the weights you’re already lifting; you’ll now need to finish off the rest of the puzzle by following the simple steps below if you want to replace that stubborn fat with lean muscle and enhance your appearance.
In no particular order, here’s how to do it…
Count your calories
Boring or what? Still, you need to do it. If you don’t know how many calories you’re currently consuming, or how many you need to consume in order to grow muscle and lose fat, then sadly you’re going to be stuck in a rut for a while to come.
You need to start by eating 500 calories under your required maintenance levels in order to retain muscle and lose fat. See how you go with 500, if you’re seeing results, stay there until it slows down, then subtract another 100, and progressively keep losing body fat. This is the best way to ensure your gains are lean, with extra body fat coming off. You can check out our recommended meal plans that help burn body fat and build muscle.
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Protein sources
Ensure you are consuming smaller meals frequently throughout the day. Your protein sources should come from lean sources and should provide the main focus and bulk of your meals.
Protein keeps you fuller for longer meaning you wont want to snack as much on carbohydrates and other foods which make it harder to shift stubborn body fat.
The big five
Deadlifts, squats, rows, weighted chest press and military press. If these exercises aren’t included in your workouts every week, then boy oh boy are you selling yourself short when it comes to developing muscle mass and burning body fat.
Due to the amount of growth hormone these exercises release, not to mention how effectively they target each individual area (and the sheer number of stabilizer muscles they incorporate in the process) they are the absolute cornerstones of any well-developed and muscular body. The good news is all you need are a set of heavy weights at home to perform these awesome compound movements.
Prioritize exercises
Don’t waste your energy on isolation exercises at the beginning of your workouts. Your primary focus should be large compound movements (like the ones mentioned in our last points) as they lead to accelerated growth and cover the largest area at once.
Isolation exercises are great for further developing an area, but they aren’t going to lead to the fastest or biggest surges in growth and fat loss, so they really need saving for the latter part of your sessions once your ground work has been laid.
Cardio & resistance
You should be doing a mixture of both cardio and resistance sessions. Resistance will build and tone your muscle and cardio will help you to shed more body fat so it’s crucial you enjoy a mixture of the two.
Get your sleep
Sleep! You need 8 hours sleep per night. After you’ve been sleeping for 4 hours you’ll enter REM (rapid eye movement) sleep mode, and as a result you’ll begin to release maximal amounts of growth hormone which in turn will lead to repair and growth of the muscle cells. This is hands down one of the best ways to ensure growth, and should never be neglected.
These simple processes will honestly lead to enormous changes in your body composition provided your nutrition is on point and you’re truly training to the maximum limits your body is capable of.
You should never fail to put anything other than your best effort into your sessions; by combining a tough mentality with the above points, you’ll soon master the art of true muscle tone and fat loss and be the envy of your friends.
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