Losing Fat and Gaining Muscle
The concept of lose fat gain muscle is always a hot topic for many people young and old. For most of the time, it is easy to lose fat through an extensive diet program but gaining muscle is just hard to do. When people start talking and asking about lose fat gain muscle ideas, the usual answer really is gym training with a combination of the right diet.
In order to build muscle, the most common thing to do is work it out in the gym. Doing this is easier said than done of course since most people falter. Establishing and identifying an effective routine is one of the first things you need to do. Muscle building training starts with basic stamina and strength build up. You need to first perform cardio exercises that will enhance your body’s ability to work itself to the limit. There’s no point really in directly lifting weights if you’re body cannot tolerate it. After some significant development in stamina and strength, you can now use weights and perform advanced lifting routines like bench press and squatting.
But of course, when you want to lose fat gain muscle at the same time, even the hardest of muscle building exercises is not enough. It should always be coupled with proper and balanced nutrition. A combination of vital nutrients and minerals is vital in determining whether you should succeed in your venture of losing fat and gaining muscle at the same time. The major building block for muscle is protein so consuming a significant amount of it is required. If you fail to do so, you won’t gain that much muscle since muscle tissues come from protein and amino acids. Moreover, although carbohydrates seem a bad ingredient in losing fat, it is somehow needed in gaining muscle. Too much carbohydrate and cholesterol intake is bad if you don’t break them down into energy. But as you work it out in the gym, say three times a week, then you need lots of carbs and fat for energy burning. So what happens is a two-way process of burning down fat and at the same time gaining additional muscle.
Essential Ways to Building Muscle Fast
In muscle building, do not underestimate your ability to do it fast and effective. Many muscle and body builders will tell you that muscle building cannot be done in an instant. But actually, if you just follow the basic routines and principles, you will have enough muscle buildup in no time. Building muscle fast is a concept that is popular to many body building enthusiasts. There are even people who offer secrets online. But most are of course tagged with a certain price. But if you just stick around, you will learn some basic stuff with regards to building muscle fast.
Eating right is the first key element in attaining muscle buildup. People often commit the mistake of working out on a consistent basis but lacking the right blend of nutrition. What happens is as you hope to build muscle, you didn’t realize that there’s actually no muscle to build. That’s why you have this misconception of having the wrong muscle building routine but the actual culprit really is lack of nutrition. Before going out on a muscle building exercise, make sure you consume enough protein and carbohydrates. Protein on one hand is the source of muscle mass and tissue and without it, there’s really no muscle to build. On the other hand, carbohydrates are the main sources of energy for the body. You need it in order to supply energy as you sweat it out in the gym.
Finally, building muscle fast is impossible without the help of lifting weights. It’s kind of funny for some people who think cardio exercises such as jogging, pushups and others are enough to build muscle. You know that’s incorrect. These kinds of routines are solely for enhancing stamina and strength and the only way to build additional muscle fast is through weight routines such as bench press and squats. Make sure you perform them constantly and guaranteed you’re on your way to building muscle fast.
How To Build Muscle Fast
There are a range of different techniques that that you can adopt to push you into the building muscle really fast. But my number one recommendation is this: Increase your weight every fortnight.
For years I was training week in and week out using the same set of weights. I was dedicated to the gym and went often but a year would go by and I was still benching the same and my muscle building was going no-where. So I did some research and found the program by Vince Delmonte. He took me through how to build muscle fast in five easy steps and I was transformed.
I started to put more focus into what I was doing and recording the stats regularly, and then started adding weight, or if not then just one more rep. These were only small changes but I really did start to build muscle fast.
For motivation I set myself a goal of 5% increase in strength each fortnight. This meant that in six months I would be lifting twice as much as when I started out. I actually had to up my goals because I did this in less so was pumped!
So there you go, simple but incredibly effective. For information on the program I used then check out the program program here.
Grow Muscle Fast
The second blog in this series is on how to grow muscle fast by limiting your workouts!
Yes this may sound counter-intuitive. It did for me. But then what did I have to lose? I had tried working out twice a day and extending my workouts to over an hour to no avail. So did it work? YES!!! Plus it meant less time in the gym for more gain.
So how do you do it? Simple, just reduce the amount of rest time that you take between sets and reps and increase your weights. The idea is to use your muscle strength to lift more in a short period of time rather than less in a longer period. Your muscles will get a similar workout, but with this method you will be pushing your muscles harder. This alone will grow muscle fast.
Another benefit of this approach is that you will also bring in a cardio effect on your muscles and lose fat as your heart rate will increase and your overall fitness level will improve.
This will be hard work but you will not be disappointed.
For more muscle building tips and the exact workouts I used check out this link.
Soy Protein Shake
The Soy Protein Shake has grown in popularity over the last couple of years due to its incredible properties for both weight loss and muscle building. Basically soy is low-fat, low-carbohydrate, low GI and high in protein. It is essentially a super food that is used by a wide array of people for different reasons:
As a healthy substitute - mainly used in a milk type form, soy is often used for those that are lactose intolerant and also for those wanting a meat alternative.
Weight loss – The low GI attributes have helped the consumer to avoid sugar spikes and to feel fuller for longer. More importantly, studies have also shown that soy increases metabolism and actually works to deplete your fat stores.
Muscle Building – a soy protein shake added to a body builders diet will provide a huge protein intake that will help to repair muscles after a workout, and the low fat and carbohydrates stops the muscle from being hidden by fat store.
Soy protein can be taken in numerous forms that are derived from the original soy bean. However my favourite is to add soy milk to a protein shake for a double punch, or alternatively to buy soy protein shake mix in of itself.
Give it a try and you won’t regret it.
Gain Muscle Lose Fat
If you want to gain muscle lose fat, and do it quickly then you are in good company as this is by far the number one objective of pretty much all of my clients. The problem is that you body naturally does one or the other at any one time so achieving both needs a bit of planning. But with the simple steps below you can and will do it.
So how do you achieve gain muscle and lose fat at the same time?
The first step is to introduce a high protein and low carbohydrate diet. This will provide your body with the slow burning fuel it needs to gain muscle lose fat. Your body will feed off the protein for muscle growth and the lack of carbohydrates will force the body to eat fat stores.
The second step to gain muscle lose fat is to follow a high intensity workout plan. In general I like to do this in two phases. The first is to include compound exercises using low repetitions and heavy weights. This will push your body to gain muscle quickly. As muscle burns more calories at rest than fat, your body will need more calories in a day just to stay the same so if your calorie intake remains constant then you will start to gain muscle lose fat naturally!
The second phase is to move into interval training for a high fat burning phase for definition. Still using weights but with higher repitions and lower weights, you will need to decrease your rest periods to approximately 30 seconds. This will create a cardio style workout that is still working your muscles hard. As such you will burn a higher level of fat and also define your muscles. Another win for the gain muscle lose fat team!
How To Make Your Muscle Grow
The first thing I need to approach here is that when we are talking about ‘how to make muscle grow’ I am not necessarily talking about a growth in strength. While these do often go hand in hand they are quite separate as a large guy with huge arms may lose an arm wrestle to a smaller guy with lean muscle. This is because the larger guy is pumped up by fat and not just muscle.
What might shock you though is that the number one requirement for muscle growth is NOT how much weight you can lift, but the amount of calories that you intake on a daily basis. You can have the best routine available, a personal trainer to push you and all the time in the world, but if you are not eating enough nutrients to feed your muscles then you will make very little gains, if any at all.
The second key element is to push your muscles fibres and never letting them get comfortable. Many guys that I have known go to the gym regularly and do the same routine with the same weight over and again but then complain about a lack of growth. But what they are missing is that the reason they fail is that their muscles are simply not challenged enough. To really start building real muscle you need to be increasing the weight you lift, the number of reps or the number of sets on a regular basis. Push them until your muscles are exhausted and ensure that your muscles need to work increasingly harder.
The third part of this is to work your muscle fibres in different ways so that different muscle joints and parts of the muscle are worked. By diversifying your workouts you will stop your muscles from stagnating and growth will be inevitable. I like to cycle my workouts so that I change my routine every 4-6 weeks. This might mean that I change from a barbell bench press to an incline dumbbell press. Similar exercises but slight changes that push my growth to the next level. If I can do it so can you.
Do all three steps and watch your muscle grow and grow.