Gain muscle while burning Fat

To me the ultimate definition of a sexy body is a well toned physique, noticeable muscle definition and shape, but not bulk. That’s probably the reason I like tigers so much – they are agile, strong and powerful.

The challenge of gaining lean muscle mass while cutting down on fat, is of primary importance to many athletes and most people who are into aesthetics and fitness. But it’s not easy to maintain or even build up new muscles while getting rid off that fat layer because our body tends to either add mass or break it down, depending on whether you consume more or less calories than you burn.

But from my own experience I know that it is possible. This is what you need to do to get lean:

1. Resistance Training: Lift weights that are challenging and work your muscle to fatigue where you literally cannot lift the weight for another repetition. In doing so, you actually create micro-tears in the muscle fibres which is where soreness comes from. These tears are then repaired by the body and in that process the muscle becomes stronger and a little bit bigger. However, because muscle tissue is more dense than fat, adding a little bit more muscle to your body and decreasing your fat actually makes you look leaner—not bigger.
2. Cardiovascular Exercise: There is absolutely no way around this if you want to get lean. The most effective method is interval running. Half an hour a day is all it takes.
3. Leucine consumption all throughout the day: I assume that you are on a healthy diet already. Now what you may not know is that leucine really is the key element for people who want to gain muscle mass while losing weight. Researchers at the University of Illinois conducted studies that examined weight loss diets containing 10 grams of leucine per day and 125 grams total of protein per day with a minimum of 2.5 grams of leucine at each meal. In two separate studies, the groups consuming high leucine diets had greater weight loss, greater fat loss and better preservation of lean body mass. In these studies, the high leucine diets also resulted in better glucose control.

The best food sources of leucine include: egg white, isolated whey protein, seaweed, game meat, chicken, tuna fish and low fat cottage cheese. Most people tend to consume 15% of their daily protein consumption at breakfast, 30% at lunch, 5% at pre-dinner and 50% at dinner. Since our body cannot store protein, we need to distribute the protein/leucine throughout the day in order to use the amino acid effectively. Try to consume about 30 grams of protein with every main meal.To give you an example: If you drink a whey protein shake that has 25 grams of protein, you get about 2.5 grams of naturally occurring leucine.