1. Set a goal for yourself and get real about achieving it.

Until you set a goal of how much body fat you want to lose and muscle you want to gain, you’re just dreaming. I

It needs to be specific and written down. If building muscle and losing fat is what you want to do, you must be willing to achieve it at all costs. If you do not want to, you’ll continue to give yourself reasons not to workout.

Get real and tell yourself that you are going to do this, no matter what. Before any other step, this is the most important one. If you are not real and serious about building muscle and losing fat, all of the steps in the world will not help you. YOU MUST SET A GOAL FOR YOURSELF.

You need a reason to keep going, to do cardio first thing in the morning, to skip that extra slice of pizza. You need a reason or you will not follow through. So, step 1, and the most important one at that, is to stop dreaming and start doing.

Tell yourself you are going to achieve your goal no matter what. Write down what you want to achieve and then go after it!

2. Drink your life away! (well, not really)

If you have ever doubted the importance of water, try going a few days without it. You can live weeks without food, but only days without water.

It is used in EVERY single physiological process your body undergoes. Its importance cannot be stated enough, especially when it comes to building muscle and losing fat. Shoot for at least a gallon a day, preferably more.

The inconvenience of constantly using the bathroom is a minor drawback compared to the benefits you will receive. Keep a bottle wherever you spend most of your day, at your desk at work, in your car, heck, wear a water bottle around your neck, but just get enough water.

3. Eat 5-6 small meals a day consisting of high protein, moderate carbs, and low-fat.

This is important in keeping your metabolism efficiently burning calories. Constantly grazing on meals every 3 hours will allow your body to burn off what it has consumed quicker and more efficiently.

Not only that, it ensures your body has enough protein needed for building muscle. Protein is the nutrient responsible for muscle growth.

Eating 2-3 larger meals will actually cause your body to store fat as a defense mechanism. Your body is not sure when its going to get its next meal so it tends to store more in case of perceived famine.

Make each meal consist of higher protein (builds muscle), moderate carbohydrates (fuel for the body) and low fat (energy and protection).

Make sure that every single time you consume something (besides water), it contains some protein and carbs, TOGETHER. So a slice of wheat bread w/ peanut butter is an example of protein w/ carbs. But remember to eat a protein/carb snack or meal every 3-4 hours to keep that metabolism running smooth.

4. Do INTENSE cardiovascular workouts 3-4 times a week.

This is where the majority of the fat-burning takes place. Nutrition is the other key. Treat your cardio days like you do your workouts. That means, put all of your energy and intensity into your cardio.

Do 30 minutes of cardio 3-4 days a week. During a session of cardio, warm-up for 5 minutes, then do 20 minutes at a high intensity pace. Then cool down for the last 5 minutes.

By intense I mean going at a fast enough pace where you are sweating, panting, huffing, puffing, turning red. Get your body out of homeostasis (everythings normal and in balance). Doing cardio for the sakes of doing it will not burn fat.

Going for a leisurely walk will not sufficiently burn fat, unless you walk ten miles. Riding a stationary bike while relaxingly reading the paper will not burn much fat. Hey, its only 30 minutes. Bust your butt for this time and the return on your investment will be great.

Choose cardio machines that get more of your body moving. The more you move, the more you burn. Stairmaster and running on the Treadmill are good examples. The stationary bike is o.k., but only your lower body is moving. The more your whole body moves, the more energy you expend.

5. Do INTENSE Weight training 3-4 times a week.

Do not mistake weight training w/ trying to burn fat. Weight training will not burn a sufficient amount of body fat. It’s more for building muscle.

What weight training will do is help you burn fat in the future. When you add muscle to your frame, your body has to expend more energy (burn more calories) to maintain that muscle tissue.

So when you’re at rest, even sleeping, the more lean muscle mass you have, the more calories you will expend. Weight training will not only strengthen existing muscle, but will add additional lean muscle tissue to handle any future demands placed on the muscle. The more lean muscle tissue you have, the more calories you will expend at rest.

6. Figure out your daily energy expenditure and reduce it.

Most people do not like to calorie count, me included. But in order to properly lose body fat, you need to determine your daily energy expenditure or caloric maintenance level.

You then need to reduce your energy consumption to be below your energy output. It’s difficult to place a number on how much below your consumption you should go, because everyone is different.

A good place to start would be 150-200 calories below your maintenance levels. Then continue to observe the effects in the mirror to determine if this number needs to be changed. If you continue to see no results, try reducing your energy consumption to 300 calories below your energy output.

7. Instead of a 30 minute cardio session, do 2, 15 minute sessions.

This is definitely a tough thing to do because of busy schedules, but if it is possible, do a 15 minute cardio session first thing in the morning and another session later in the afternoon or early evening.

Research has shown that compared with subjects that did a 30 minute cardio session, those that did 2 15 minute sessions burned twice as many calories. Make each 15 minute session still very intense, which is easier to do if you are going 15 minutes.

Warm-up for 2-3 minutes and then go all out for 13-15 minutes, then cool down for 2-3 minutes. Once again, if you can fit 2 15 minute cardio sessions into your day (never on weight-training days), you will burn twice the amount of calories than doing a 30 minutes session.

8. Continue to up your weight (overload) when doing resistance training.

Remember that building muscle will assist you in the fat-burning process later on. The more muscle you have, the more energy your body expends to maintain that muscle, even at rest. In order to make constant and significant gains, remember to train intensely and for short durations. I like to call them bursts of exercise! Work no more than 2 muscle groups a workout, 3 workouts a week. Keep reps between 4-6.

This will cause you to maintain high enough resistance to add overload to the muscle, causing more muscle growth. Do only 2 heavy sets per exercise and keep workouts no longer than 45 minutes. Keep your workouts intense and to the point. Do it and get out of the gym. DO NOT DO YOUR CARDIO BEFORE OR AFTER WEIGHT TRAINING!

It’s hard to focus intensely on both weight training and cardio in the same session! Do not rob one to pay the other.

There you have my 8 proven steps for building muscle and losing fat in less time.

Unfortunately, that’s not how I looked. When I glance at old pictures, it appears that I was fooling myself into believing I looked less like the Pillsbury Doughboy than I really did.

What was wrong? I pumped iron, downed high quantities of protein, ingested carbs during the so-called “two-hour window” after my workout. And most importantly in my mind; I kept my calorie intake high because all the available information said I needed to “bulk up” – to eat many more calories than I was burning so I could gain that desired muscle mass.

Now in my forties, I’m easily gaining natural muscle that I longed for twenty years ago. Not only that, I’m doing it while staying lean. Just recently, I decided to lean down even further – getting my body fat down in the mid-single digits. I was actually gaining strength and muscle while doing it.

How can that be? We’re told over and over that in order to gain muscle size, we need to eat a lot. Oh… and if you have a “fast metabolism” (i.e. blessed with really low body fat), they’ll tell you to turn yourself into a gorging pig because that’s the magic bullet for “getting big”… right? Well, that will get you “big”, but not with the kind of size that helps you land dates on Saturday night.

The fast metabolism people are being told to eat a lot more calories than they burn so they can gain muscle. They are assured by their muscle building gurus that they’ll go to a different phase after they’ve gained the muscle; a phase in which they’ll burn the fat.

Those with unwanted body fat are being told they’ll need to focus on losing the fat before they can gain any appreciable muscle. It’s said that the restrictive diet they’ll need to adhere to will prevent them from gaining muscle size.

So here’s a quiz question: If the skinny person can’t gain muscle without eating a lot of excess calories and the fat person got fat by eating excess calories, how is the former fat person ever going to gain muscle without gaining back fat and how is the skinny person going to lose fat once he’s “bulked up” without ending up skinny again? Maybe someone’s feeding us something other than food.

The answer: Fat and muscle are completely different tissues sitting side-by-side on the body. Don’t confuse the method by which one is gained or lost with how the other one is. If you’re slender and you shovel down truckloads of extra calories while inadvertently missing the ideal muscle breakdown/recuperation ratio, you’ll just end up fat.

Here’s a question for the “fast metabolism group”. Have you ever followed the advice of bodybuilding experts and didn’t gain the muscle you expected? You know the advice I’m talking about; eat A LOT of food, train “HEAVY” (relative term – how about “make heavy weights into light ones”?), use big compound exercises, try to sit on your ass as much as possible, and uh… set your alarm to go off in the middle of your sleep so you can chug some 2AM whey protein. Ugh… I don’t know about you, but you’ll never pull me out of a good night’s sleep just to force down some chalky powder.

Would you like to know what doing tons of compound exercises, forced reps, three, four and five-day splits and eating a lot of calories did for me? It turned me from a slim guy into a fat guy. When it was time to lose the fat, the muscle gains were disappointing. Anyone who’s been to my website can attest; whatever muscle was lying dormant under my body fat – it didn’t amount to much.

So the big question: How did I recently gain strength and muscle size while getting super lean?

I did it by eating slightly more protein than usual. I used 45 minutes of low-intensity cardio work to burn fat as soon as I got up in the morning.

Above all, I made sure my muscles continued to be trained and recuperated at the ideal ratio and in my unorthodox manner. That’s what’s more important than adhering to some precise caloric regimen.

I’ll never again listen to anyone who claims you can only do one or the other; you CAN gain muscle and lose fat (or remain lean) simultaneously.