So we established yesterday that you must focus on building lean muscle if you ever want to burn body fat, get leaner or get a six pack. Without muscle, your metabolism has no reason to process calories. So what is the best approach to follow?

Read the full story

On this week’s edition of the Jimmy Smith Training podcast, we set the record straight on carbohydrates and there place when one wants to lose fat. They aren’t as bad as people make them out to be (as exposed in our bodybuilding truthes article) and can actually aid in burning body fat at a higher rate.

Read the full story

Is there more to weight loss than diet and training

This is an interesting topic, one that has garnered my attention in recent years. Is there more to losing fat and building muscle than just eating right, getting proper rest and training the correct way?  While the hardcore skeptics will argue that “it’s made up”, they fail to realize that they are too short sided to see that there’s mounting scientific literature that support the theory of other “influences” on our body.

Read the full story

Sure, I could write this long, in-depth article about the numerous reasons why your diet may be failing you. It could be a hormonal issue or the fact that your overtraining your body (most do) or, for the most part, your just undereating. I’m going to choose the road less traveled. I’m going to present a few of the predominate issues that one faces when they are attempting to lose fat and maintain muscle mass and what the “quick” change is. Note that there is no such thing as a quick change with your diet, just a daily change.

Read the full story

You know one of the biggest things that irks me in the physique and bodybuilding field is that everyone thinks we need to improve carbohydrate tolerance for fat loss and fat loss alone. Sure it’s important and we’re not going to lose fat if we can’t handle our carbs but most people lose focus on the muscle building benefits of improved carbohydrate tolerance.

Read the full story

About once a week I get approached by someone looking for beginner muscle building information. They’ve read the magazines and watched the videos online then they get into the gym to start building muscle. The problem is, they end up doing pro bodybuilding routines and overtraining quickly. After seeing this time and time again, I’ve  decided to come up with this beginner muscle building faq.

Read the full story

I want a ketogenic diet for weight loss or I want a ketogenic diet for bodybuilding. Those are usually two of the phrases that I hear when someone comes to me and is looking to start a ketogenic diet.  They have read about them online and really want to try it since people claim they are the fastest ways to lose fat but are they?

Read the full story

It’s time, you’ve trained hard for months and now you’re ready to start your figure competition diet
to lose the last bit of fat and prime your body for your contest. You look everywhere online for figure diet tips and all you’re left with is a bunch of ideas and zero action plans. You could start out and just go with a standard low carb diet or you could look up your favorite figure competitor and get your figure competition diet from them. It’s better then just reading the internet for days right?

Read the full story

Do you ever get tired of current trends in the dieting world? It seems from the second that one successful method comes out everyone jumps on it. The most over-rated term or method must be “raise metabolism”. I mean how many times can we see this?

Instead of offering short term solutions in the forms of various diets or weight loss pills, why not provide the exact reason why your metabolism is slow? I mean doesn’t that make more sense? When you break it down and get away from all the complex science you see that there’s three ways to speed up your metabolism.

You need to become more active

We age, it happens. Most people get a typical 9-5 and don’t have time to workout as much or as often. You have new responisbilities that pull you away from the gym or living a active lifestyle. The result? Your metabolism takes a nose dive. So everyone wants to ask “why did my metabolism slow down” but no on looks at their life stile. The simplest way to speed up your metabolism to just do more active.

Eat more calories at the right time

As a species, we stink when it comes to perating with lower calories. The second that our body senses less incoming calories it shuts down and we don’t lose anymore fat. Now look at the modern individual that eats three meals per day. This metabolic slowdown happens at acute levels every single day when we wait too long to eat and eat too few calories (yes, even overweight people eat too few calories). Your body responds by using more carbohydrates and protein for energy which preserves your body fat and makes your muscles smaller.

So what’s the common answer? Well to reduce calories. Wrong. When you reduce calories you cause your body to take in less calories then it puts out. Common in the dieting world, this only works for short periods of time. Less calories in means you can’t burn off as many calories which leads to a overal metabolic slowdown.

Build Some Darn Muscle

Seriously, the best way to speed up your metabolism is to just build some lean muscle mass. Your body hates muscle mass, it costs too much in terms of calories. Research has shown that as much as 60 to 75 percent of all calories you burn is dependent on your muscle mass. The more muscle that you have the better your chances are for burning calories.

So now let’s look at this picture. Work out less, eat less, eat worse and lose muscle mass. Can you see why you need to speed up your metabolism now or else?

I think we tend to think too much about burning fat. We’re always looking for new or different ways to burn bodyfat and new supplements that rev up our metabolism so hard that we lose focus. In reality, there’s only 5 times during the day that we burn calories.

Read the full story