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Step 1
The mirror is your gauge: Stop concentrating on the scale and your weight. The best gauge is a mirror. If you look great, the mirror will show no matter how much weight you lost/gained. If you don't look great...trust me, the mirror will show. If you are incorporating the proper nutritional regimen and exercise, you may be the same weight, but could gain muscle and lose fat. So use the mirror and look at it often Literally after every meal and after every workout...This isn't narcissism....This is so you can see what works and what doesn't. The more you look at yourself, the more you notice how your body responds to everything you do. If you look at yourself in the mirror throughout the day, you can properly gauge your progress and it will help you develop that mind-body connection that is necessary to have in order to develop the body of your dreams.
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Step 2
Eat 6-8 meals a day: Male or female, you need to eat close to every 2 hours. When you do this, your metabolism skyrockets and when your body knows food is coming, it can use the food you eat as readily available energy opposed to storing it as bodyfat for energy later. The 3 meal mantra is done and outdated. When you only eat 3 meals you overcompensate for what you really need (Your body says to you "I'm starving, I haven't eaten in forever, I need to eat a lot of food now.") This is a bad approach. When your body goes more than 4 hours of not eating, it catabolizes your muscle mass to use as energy. The more muscle you have, the more fat you burn.
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Step 3
Cut the junk-food out immediately:Any kind of junk food you eat, consider it empty calories with no nutritional value that goes straight to bodyfat stores. Cut out the chips, the fatty salad dressings, the soda, donuts, cakes, pastries, etc. If you can't do it all at once. Pick 1 thing and eliminate it from your diet. Then another. And then another. Trust me, in due time you won't miss these things.
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Step 4
Eat whole foods:Stuff you think is healthy, probably is...and stuff you don't, is probably not. Eat the healthy stuff and don't eat the unhealthy stuff. We here at Muscle Prodigy are firm believers that anything placed on Earth by God is here for a purpose and has a lot of nutritional value. Stuff processed in a lab is probably not going to be. That means eating things like meats, whole grains, beans, legumes, fruits, vegetables, etc. These things should constitute the basis of your meals. #11-Do not Over-eat and do not Under-eat
This may sound like a no-brainer but too many times does it occur. Eat until you are satisfied but not full and never go hungry. It is a balancing act but it is manageable. -
Step 5
You need to exercise: Simply put, your body treats calories differently when you exercise opposed to when you don't. The calories you eat immediately go towards repair and refueling. When you exercise your body needs to use the calories you intake to provide energy while in the gym, repair your muscle tissue outside of the gym, all while still being able to give you energy to do all the simple tasks throughout the day. Furthermore, the more muscle you have, the more fat your burn. Also, the more calories you expend in the gym, the more calories you can get away with eatingRule #2: Don't overtrain. Make sure your work outs are spread out enough so you don't hit the same muscle group more than once a week. It needs time to repair and then some. Shoot to work out around 5 days a week. You don't want to be living in the gym because then you are burning a lot of calories when you want to be gaining weight. Furthermore, every 6 weeks or so take a week off from the gym completely. That means don't do anything. Give your body a break so that it can come back bigger and stronger. Sleep a lot. Shoot for 8-9 hours a night. If you feel tired and cannot function off of that, sleep even more. Listen to your body and it will respond positively to your attentiveness.
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Step 6
Do 3-4 cardio sessions a week: Your heart is a muscle as well. The better trained your heart, the more efficient it works and can effectively do its job. The better trained the heart is, the better it is at carrying out its job of passing oxygen through blood to help you through those high-intensity workouts to bang out more sets and more reps (which equals more total work and total volume during each bout). These cardio sessions should consist of around 30 minute sessions of interval training. Sprint, jog, sprint, jog. Stairs are awesome for building ripped tree trunks of legs as well. You want to be able to see every striation throughout your body so Cardio bouts helps shred that bodyfat while maintaining lean muscle mass. If you perform cardio right, it actually facilitates muscle building. Performing cardio in terms of HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) where you combine high intensity sprints with lower intensity runs, you torch the bodyfat during and well beyond the workout is over while promoting lean muscle tissue gains. without it going towards bodyfat gain.
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Step 7
Consistency is key...don't forget it!
