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Eat Your Way To More Muscle and Less Fat

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Eat your way to more muscle and less fat

Whether you’re just trying to make yourself healthier overall or focusing on a specific goal, like body building or endurance training, the goals of building muscle and burning fat seem to go hand in hand. However, the lion’s share of advice you find out there for burning fat while you build muscle concusses on specific exercises and workout plans. But what if we told you that by changing up your diet could allow you to spend more time fighting fat and promoting meatier muscles? Sounds too good to be true, but it isn’t. Today our team has gathered some excellent diet tips to help promote your body’s natural abilities to burn fat and build muscle as you go about your day.

Give Up Alcohol

Drinking takes its toll on even the most fit people. Negative side effects from alcohol consumption include: sleep disruption, reduced self-repair for your body, increased cortisol, less-effective nutrient absorption, hormone imbalance, and of course, empty calories. By taking even a month-long hiatus from booze, your body’s natural systems are more in tune with one another, and you can take your fat burning, muscle building campaign into hyper drive.

Go Raw

Plenty of research shows that consuming foods in their uncooked form helps your body burn more calories while you’re eating. Though building muscle is a calorie-intensive activity, burning calories while you eat them is a boost to your overall metabolism, which helps both fat reduction and muscle growth in the long term. What’s more, you get a broader spectrum of nutrients and fiber by consuming foods that haven’t been cooked – obviously, there are foods you have to cook for safety, but in other cases, taking the raw option can provide a definite boost to your other efforts.

Eat Whole Foods

One of the most frequently offered tidbits of advice for those looking to burn fat is reverting to a bygone era in the kitchen and make a point of consuming whole foods. Eliminate the processed food, the ready meals and junky snacks that lurk in your cupboards for convenience (let’s be honest, it’s for the kids most of the time but everyone loves a cheese puff) have got to go. Choose simple recipes, higher-quality ingredients, and you’ll pack in more nutrients with every mouthful. This will help your body convert useful calories into muscle, using the surplus fat as energy.

Eat More Often…Or Don’t

Another fairly common recommendation among dietary professionals is that you eat more small meals throughout the day – as often as every three hours. However, new research published by the International Society of Sports Nutrition suggests that might not be the case. The valuable correlation between all these recommendations is quite simply, get enough calories to feel satisfied and spread appropriate nutritional components across the meals you do eat during a day for best results. Increased meal frequency has a number of benefits associated with stable blood sugars, which can have a knock-on effect for whole-body wellbeing. The trick is finding your own personal balance in terms of both timing and meal composition.

Get Enough Protein

If there is a cardinal rule for burning fat and building muscle, it’s that you ought to consume at least a gram of protein for each pound you weigh daily. Protein is essential for supporting all your body’s various systems and the most vital nutrient for muscle repair and development. If you’re going to skip or miss any component of your daily intake, don’t let it be the protein.

As with all things in the world of health and nutrition, it is important to listen to your body when you make changes to your normal diet or routines. Adjust your strategy as you notice what works and what doesn’t, and listen of all accept advice from the friends and professionals who are helping you on your journey. Burning fat and building muscle can feel like a full-time job some days, so it’s also important you take the rest days that are built into your training schedule just as seriously as you take the double workout sessions.