Melt Away Excess Body Fat And Leave Your Muscles Rock-Solid, Shaped And Defined!

A very common question that I'm often asked is...

"How can I build muscle AND lose fat at the same time?"

Well, the unfortunate answer is that achieving both of these goals simultaneously is extremely difficult, if not impossible to accomplish. In order to build muscle, you must consume more calories than you burn, and in order to lose fat you must consume fewer calories than you burn.

Obviously you can't have both a caloric surplus and a caloric deficit going on at the same time within your body, so you can see the conflict here.

Don't be fooled by all of the marketing ploys about "building 30 pounds of muscle while dropping 25 pounds fat". This is nothing more than B.S. hype designed to mislead you and arouse your interest.

It's certainly possible to increase your lean muscle mass AND burn off excess body fat, but you simply cannot do them both at the exact same time. The best approach is to train in "cycles", by focusing on building overall size for a period of time, and then focusing on burning off excess fat for a period of time.

Everything we've covered up to this point has focused on the concepts of building overall muscle size, and that's why I wanted to create a special installment to give you some tips and tricks for implementing a proper "cutting phase" and burning off the inevitable excess fat that arises from a caloric surplus.

The good news is that this fat can easily be dropped with a few dietary manipulations and the utilization of cardiovascular workouts. Also, since you've now put on some solid muscle size, burning fat becomes even easier.

Your muscles are basically giant furnaces where fat metabolism takes place, and the more muscle that you build, the faster your metabolism will become.Once you've built your body to a size that you're happy with, here a few things you can do to strip off the excess body fat that you have gained while maintaining the majority of the muscle mass you've developed...

Perform 3-5 cardio workouts per week.

This would seem like common knowledge, however, it's very important that you perform the right type of cardio workouts. The traditional 45 minute, moderate intensity sessions really are not the best way to burn fat and maintain muscle mass. These sessions are highly catabolic to your muscle tissue and do not have a significant impact on your resting metabolism.

You should instead focus on performing shorter, more intense cardio sessions. These sessions will minimize muscle breakdown and will also stimulate your body to burn more fat while you are at rest.

The key thing for you to realize here is that the fat burning benefit of cardio is mainly due to the effect that it has on your resting metabolism and NOT due to the actual calories burned during the session.

Choose a basic piece of cardio equipment that doesn't require a lot of "skill" to perform, such as a stationary bike or stair stepper. This will keep the session as safe as possible.

Perform 15 minutes of high intensity cardio on the "interval" setting, and focus on increasing the intensity in each successive workout by either traveling a farther distance or increasing the resistance on the machine.

Lower your caloric intake.

If you want to burn fat then you need to consume fewer calories than you burn. This can be accomplished by creating a slight caloric deficit within the body. Your goal is not to drastically lower your calories and starve yourself, but to gradually burn fat over time.

Make sure to continue eating frequently with 5-7 small meals per day, but decrease the actual volume of each meal so that your total caloric intake is lower. A good general guideline is to consume 15-20% fewer calories than is needed to maintain your current weight.

You should also make sure to minimize your intake of simple sugars and saturated fats. Stay away from sugary, refined carbohydrates and stick to natural, high fiber, unrefined sources. Also make sure to have the majority of your fat intake coming from healthy, unsaturated foods.

Increase your water intake.

This will keep your muscle cells hydrated at all times and will keep your metabolism at peak rates. Increased water intake will also "fill you up" so that you won't be tempted to consume quite as many calories at each meal.

Here are a few other quick fat loss tips...

• Increase your vegetable intake. Vegetables (partcularly green fibrous vegetables) are very high in bulk yet low in calories. That means you can fill yourself up without exceeding your caloric limits.
• Increase your consumption of low-fat dairy foods.
• Always eat breakfast within 30 minutes of waking.
• Consume a large portion of your daily calories in the few hours following a workout.
• Increase your meal frequency.

These all seem like simple strategies, and they are. But the truth is that most trainees go about their "cutting phase" at a completely counterproductive angle. They're usually successful at burning body fat, but since they fail to properly structure their diet and cardio they also end up wasting away huge amounts of lean muscle tissue in the process.

This is not a good thing!

You may be primarily focused on building overall muscle size and strength right now...

But what good is a muscular physique without the proper cuts, lines and definition?

After you've gained a considerable amount of overall body weight it's almost certain that you'll want to implement a cutting phase so that you can strip off the excess body fat you've gained to reveal those rock-hard muscles you worked so hard to build.