Getting your dream body and feeling good about the way you look is not super easy, it requires dedication and consistency.
By forming weekly, monthly and long term goals, changing some bad habits, and getting in the right mindset, you can set yourself up to achieve your ideal body and confidence even faster. Today, we’re going to look at the 5 steps you need to achieve your ideal body as quick as possible.
Nutrition/Diet
The most important step to getting your ideal body has to do with what you are eating on a day to day basis. First, it is extremely important to always be hydrated and continually drink water throughout the day. Being dehydrated sometimes causes your body to give a bloated look and won’t let your body perform at optimal levels. You should try to drink at least 8 glasses of water per day for the best results. Try to drink 2 glasses of water 30 minutes before your workout, it will help with blood flow and you’ll have an insane pump.
Next, figure out what your goal is. If you want to lose weight, you should increase your fat and protein uptake and lower your carbs. Most people believe if you want lose weight, you need to cut all carbs, but that’s false. If you cut all of your carbs, your body won’t be able to properly repair its muscles, so you’ll end up losing a lot more muscle mass, have low energy and possibly slow down fat metabolization.
For Men
For guys, we recommend shooting for 50-150 carbs a day while cutting, but to only ingest those carbs around your workout. If you were having 100g of carbs per day, have 40 grams of mixed fast and slow digesting carbs 1-2 hours before your workout. That way your body can have enough carbs to give you that instant strength boost you need in the gym, while giving you a full feeling without the insulin drop. Once you finish your workout, have 60g of carbs within the first 30 minutes of your workout. This is the most important part when cutting. All of those 60g of carbohydrates will be shuttled into your muscles since they are extremely low on glycogen, thus building more muscle while not turning any of the carbs into fat.
If you are bulking, you should increase your carbohydrate intake dramatically and leave your protein and fats around the same. You want more carbohydrates when bulking because when you ingest carbs, you’ll increase the amount of glycogen and insulin in your body. Insulin has been shown to be on the most anabolic compounds for muscle growth.
Focus on having around 100g of carbs pre workout, and 60g of carbs within 30 minutes post workout, and then another 80g of carbs an hour later. By doing this, you’ll have optimal strength before your workout, but will have the quick absorbing carbs instantly after your workout and then slower digesting carbs an hour later to keep your glycogen levels high without it dramatically dropping form the quick carbs.
For Women
If you're a women, we recommend taking the about recommendations and halving each carbohydrate by 50-60%. Women are smaller and simply do not need as many carbs as a male does. If you're trying to lose weight, stick to around 50-100 carbs per day, and if you're trying to build muscle, shoot for 200-250g of carbs per day.
Training/Mind-To-Muscle
The second most important step is how you workout. You should always make a workout plan and stick to it consistently for a few months. Most people “fall off” or have cheat binges, which is only hurting themselves. If you can stay consistent with your workout plan, diet and goals, you’re already a step ahead of everyone else.
You should be training at least a couple times a week. Ideally, you want to be training 4-6 times per week, depending on your fitness level. If you’re just getting started, aim for 4 days a week. If you’ve been training for years, aim for 6 days.
To build the most muscle, it’s not how much you are lifting, but more so the time under tension. You see so many powerlifters that can lift 10x what a bodybuilder can, yet the bodybuilder looks better than the powerlifter, why is that?
It’s because the powerlifter focuses on short bursts of strength, which increases your overall strength, but doesn’t necessarily increase muscle mass.
What I recommend is to focus on heavy lifts for your first few compound exercises, and then the rest of your workout is focused on time under tension. For example, if you’re training chest, go heavy on bench press, incline press and decline press, but for the rest of the exercise, use lower weight and higher volume and really focus on the mind-to-muscle connection. This type of training will help break down your muscles significantly at the beginning, and you’ll put your muscles in overload state with the hyper-trophy training, breaking down your muscles even further.
Rest/Repair
The third important step is to properly recover and repair your muscles. Stretching is obviously very important for overall heath, but if you want to increase the amount of muscle you put on, stretching/rolling out is a must. When you train legs, all the blood rushes to your legs to give you more oxygen so you can lift heavier and longer. When you become depleted, your legs will begin to feel a burning sensation, which is called lactic acid. Lactic acid comes when your legs can’t supply enough oxygen to keep going.
When you finish your workout, your legs are usually burning of lactic acid. The problem is, since your muscle and fascia become tight after training, that lactic acid is stuck in your muscles. Lactic acid will break down your muscle tissues, which is good during your workout, but not a day later. So, if you don’t properly stretch and roll out your muscle groups post-training, that lactic acid will be stuck in your muscle groups, breaking down even more muscles and not allowing your body to fully recover.
We recommend to spend 15-20 minutes post-workout rolling out the muscle group you just trained, so you can break down the fascia and muscle groups, allowing more blood and nutrients to flow to your muscles and begin repairing.
Becoming Confident
The fourth way of getting your body to the level you want it is to be confident in yourself. Now this doesn’t directly correlate to increased muscle mass, but confidence can be the difference between someone achieving what they want and not. If you don’t believe you’ll ever look the way you want, how do you except to ever get there?
The first step in building confidence is discipline and visualization. If you stick to your word and do what you say you’re going to do everyday, you’re body will become aligned with your goals and you’ll naturally begin believing in your self.
By adding daily visualization sessions into your daily routine, you’ll being experiencing yourself at the level you want to be at. The more times you can visualize yourself where you want to be, the more true it will become to yourself, which will increase your confidence.
Be yourself and be happy for what you are. Believing in yourself will allow you to complete any goals that you have. If people see that you are very confident with yourself, they will treat you with the mindset that you are showing them. Your mental status can go a long way in changing how you get what you want and how others see you. Remember, what you believe ends up coming true.
Enjoy The Process
The final step of getting your ideal body is to enjoy what you are doing. If you start a diet and you hate all the foods that are in your diet, eating will seem more like a chore than what it is supposed to be. If you hate the foods you eat, you will be more inclined to break the diet and go back to your old habits.
That is why it is important to find the foods that you like and that are still healthy. This is the same with working out. If you hate your gym routine, it is easy for you to just give it all up. That is why you need to find what you love and pursue that. For example, if you hate lifting weights then maybe zumba or yoga is a better thing for you. If you enjoy what you do, sticking to your plans is fun and easy.
If you’re having a hard time finding meals you enjoy, check out bodybuilding.com’s nutrition guides, they have hundreds of recipes based on your goals.
Getting The Perfect Beach Body
With hard work and perseverance, your dream body is just around the corner. Formulating a well planned diet, working out consistently, taking care of your body, believing in yourself, and doing what you love are simple and effective ways of getting the body you always wanted. It does not come easy but it is worth it.
