How to Lose Fat Build Muscle

That is quite the noble quest. You only need to pay a quick visit to your local gym to see that of even all those who aspire to become a bodybuilder, few look the part. There are a few key ingredients necessary to build the powerful pecs, the rippling abs and tree-trunk legs of professional bodybuilders such as the legendary Arnold Schwarzenegger, Lee Labrada, Jay Cutler, Cade Orvin. One thing all these men had in common was perseverance, along with a determination to be the best.

You Must Eat Like a Bodybuilder

In bodybuilding, and fitness in general, your diet is the largest part of your success. A bodybuilder will eat many, smaller sized meals throughout the day (and often throughout the night). You will often see it suggested for a person to eat 5-6 meals per day, but it is not uncommon for one training to be a bodybuilder to eat 8 or 9 meals in a day, if not more. The almost counter-intuitive reason for this is because your body acts like a furnace. Every time you ingest food your metabolism rises to deal with the newly acquired calories. By eating small, protein-packed yet fat burning meals you will increase your furnace (metabolism) more times throughout the day.

To become a bodybuilder and make sure you burn fat faster while building muscle mass, you will want to focus on those high-protein foods. Make sure to get ample protein in every meal, and to eat often so as if to avoid the muscle destroying catabolic phase that accompanies long periods without food.

You Must Workout Like a Bodybuilder

The muscle building and free weight lifting routines of a bodybuilder will differ from those of a power lifter or an endurance athlete. While the latter two will focus on high weight with low repetitions and lower weight with higher repetitions respectively, the bodybuilder is strictly training for hypertrophy. His main goal is to put on size to his muscle mass, while keeping the fat off as much as possible. I have found the perfect repetition range for this to be between 8 and 12 repetitions. You might find that you need to adjust that for your body type.

You will have to focus on those core movements such as squats, bench press, military press; but will also want to fine-tune any muscles that seem to be lagging behind by using the smaller auxiliary movements as well. Often times a bodybuilder will go through cycles of adding mass then cutting fat, simply because doing both at the same time is a difficult thing to do. Adding calories and cutting down on any cardio is typically the way to start adding more muscle mass while cutting your calories and adding cardio (ever so slightly, and only as needed) is the way to cut fat.

You Must Live Like a Bodybuilder

For the professionals, it’s a job, but for anyone aspiring to have the bodybuilder-like physique, it’s a lifestyle. It is going to the gym instead of watching your favorite show, it’s skipping the popcorn and soda at the movie theater, it’s remembering to eat some prtein every few hours, whether you’re hungry or not, it’s making sure you are getting enough muscle recuperating sleep every night. It is living the kind of life the body you want requires, day after day, month after month. If you go to the gym and wonder why so many seemingly dedicated gym rats don’t have the bodybuilder body, that is exactly why. By living and dieting and working out right you will build muscle and lose fat like you have never before imagined possible.

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