Rapid Fat Loss Diets

Monday, October 19, 2009

Bodybuilding: Muscle Gain and Body Fat

By Ricardo d Argence

If you're anything at all like most bodybuilders, your ultimate desire is a simple one: To have an impressive, muscular physique with razor-sharp definition and the envy of everyone around you. You want to be huge, and you want to be shredded.

This desire for the perfect body makes many people dive headlong into an exercise regimen. Everyone wants to bulk up, and bulk up fast, but at the same time they're also worried about gaining the extra bulk of body fat.

If you want to add a significant amount of muscle to your frame over as short a period of time as you can, you will always end up gaining some extra body fat along with it.

This is just one of the realities of the bodybuilding process. If you're truly committed to bulking up, there's no other way around it: It's a fact you'll have to accept.

In order to gain muscle size, you must consume a surplus of calories in order to support protein synthesis. However, there is no way to divert 100% of this caloric surplus towards muscle growth. A certain amount of it will always end up as stored body fat.

As all bodybuilders know, in order to make dramatically change your appearance in the quickest amount of time, the most effective way to do so is to focus on gaining size. For a set period of time, gaining size will be your goal. Only then can your priority shift to focus on losing body fat.

You never want to lose body fat during the bulking phase. You simply want to gain as little as possible.

There are three main tips to accomplish this:

1) Use your caloric surplus wisely. A caloric surplus is when you gain more calories than you burn. This is required for muscle growth, but simply gorging on food without a plan or exercise will simply earn you more body fat.

The generally accepted caloric surplus for supporting muscle growth is 15-20% more calories than is needed to maintain your weight. If you are consuming a caloric amount within this range, there is no need to go any higher.

2) Watch what you eat. You should be concentrating your diet on lean, high quality proteins, high fiber carbohydrates, and unsaturated, healthy fats.

Rather than aimlessly chowing down on every food item in sight, make sure that you're sticking to lean protein sources, keeping blood sugar levels stable through proper carbohydrate choices, and avoiding high amounts of saturated fats.

3) Don't forget the cardio. You don't have to go wild, but a good, solid 2 to 3 sessions of cardio workouts during the week will help keep your body on track, and cut back on the body fat.

Stick to exercises of 10-20 minutes of high intensity, as they have less likelihood of muscle loss compared to the longer forms.

Once you've achieved the amount of muscle size that you want, a goal which is completely up to you as an individual, it's time to move into a fat loss cycle. In this way, you can focus on stripping off the excess body fat gained during the bulking cycle, while still maintaining muscle size.

Simply remember that while bulking up, gaining at least some body fat is unavoidable. With this in mind, the key to keeping body fat down is to minimize the gain rather than trying to avoid it altogether, which is impossible. Focusing first on bulking up and only then on fat loss is the way to gain muscle quickly and effectively. - 17273

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