Shredded For Summer

Summer is almost here and you have to get in shape, quickly.

Is it too late?

The best way to get in shape for summer is to not be out of shape for winter. Too many people tend to let things go too far for too long over the winter months and it’s usually a last minute holiday or the summer sun coming out that makes them do something about it.

So how do you approach it?

Like any good fitness advice, the approach depends. If I were to give you one workout plan and one diet plan then I’d be doing you a disservice. I know nothing about you, your life, or your training history. What I will do is give you some guidelines to get you started.

Firstly, I want to explain some of the differences between men and women. Men have more testosterone than women, that’s a fact, and this is one of the reasons they generally carry more muscle mass and less body fat. This means it’s easier for them to lose fat if they have it to lose. Muscle has the ability to burn a lot more calories than anything else, so if a man has more muscle than a woman and uses it correctly then he is a calorie burning machine. Does this mean all females are destined to not be lean? Of course not, you just have to take a different approach. What follows are guidelines for both males and females, the only difference is that females are smaller and burn less calories, so they would have to eat less and/or do more cardio/weights.

Diet

Before anything else, you have to sort out your diet.

I’m going to assume you want to lose fat, so you have to be in a calorie deficit. You can’t cheat science. You must burn more calories than you eat, there’s no other way around it. To do this, you should focus on high quality food sources as often as possible.

Protein is of high importance for muscle mass as you want to keep as much as possible to allow you to keep burning calories. Stick to lean meats, eggs, fish, dairy, and protein shakes. Add to this lots of green vegetables with other colours thrown in, some fruit too.

You have to find out what calories you need, and the simplest way to do this is to download MyFitnessPal as a starting point. It’s a fitness and calorie tracker that will allow you to figure out your calories.

Training

You want to be weight training.

When you are dieting, your body doesn’t want to keep muscle. Muscle costs energy to have and if you’re eating less than you’re burning, your body will want to get rid of anything that takes energy to maintain.

By weight training and eating enough protein, you’re giving yourself the best chance to keep as much muscle as possible and burn more calories. General guidelines would be to get stronger through a number of rep ranges from 5-20 reps.

Lifestyle

If you want to get lean, you have to make a commitment. You wont get lean by just working out. You have to find ways of eating that you can stick to long term, as well as the training aspect. Move more, hang about with fit friends so you aren’t tempted by bad food. Make it part of your life so it doesn’t feel like a chore. Exercise can be very rewarding, so you have to see it as a gift.

Cardio

Cardio burns calories and gets you fitter, which can help with weight training performance as well as reducing the risk of heart conditions. It isn’t essential unless you are on so low calories that you have to use it to burn more.

There’s 3 main types. Steady state (long jog or crosstrainer at a moderate pace), interval training (sprints, followed by rest, repeated numerous times), and metabolic conditioning (doing weights in a circuit style to keep heart rate up and maintain muscle mass).

You can choose 1 or all 3, pick something you enjoy and stick to that. p>

That’s it really. Summer is here and if you take action now, you will speed up the summer body process. Don’t wait any longer, as waiting is what got you here in the first place.