The Best Approach to Get Big & Lean

The Best Approach to Get Lean and Big

The capacity to get lean and big at the same time is notoriously believed to be unachievable. As a matter of fact, many assume that trying to pack on muscle mass precludes the capacity to burn fat, while trying to reduce body fat abolishes the potential to gain muscle mass. Now, don’t get me wrong— it takes hard work to simultaneously get big and lean, but it is not impossible. Yet, it does require the right combination of hardcore weight training with certain muscle-sparing approaches to dieting, nutritional supplementation and cardiovascular exercise that precisely burn fat while actually increasing the propensity to gain muscle mass.

Get Big and Ripped With HIIT

Although low-intensity cardiovascular exercise is the most common way to reduce body fat for that lean, muscular look, growing scientific evidence has shown that this form of cardiovascular training is actually counterproductive— as low-intensity cardio is not as effective at reducing body fat as high-intensity cardiovascular training. Moreover, low-intensity cardio has also been shown to inhibit muscle growth^1,2, making the use of this approach to gain lean body mass even more problematic. On the contrary, a particular form of high-intensity cardiovascular training known as high-intensity interval training (HIIT) has a much better capacity to reduce body fat without wreaking havoc on muscle mass, enabling the coordinated increase in muscle mass and fat loss.

HIIT Drives Fat Loss While Boosting Anabolic Hormones Testosterone and Insulin

High-intensity interval training entails working at 80 percent to 90 percent of your maximum capacity for roughly one minute, accompanied by less intense recovery periods at 40 percent to 50 percent of maximum capacity for approximately one minute. Studies have found that subjects performing HIIT increased cardiovascular capacity^3,4 and burned considerably more body fat than those who did low-intensity cardio programs⁵,while simultaneously promoting a more anabolic environment that supports muscle growth. In fact, one study by Boutcher et al.⁶ showed that HIIT increased testosterone levels while standard, low-intensity cardio actually lowered testosterone. What’s more, low-intensity cardiovascular exercise has also been shown to suppress circulating testosterone levels for several days.^2,6

Torch More Fat With HIIT

In addition to HIIT burning fat and supporting a more robust anabolic environment, HIIT also burns fat for longer periods of time, post-workout, relative to low-intensity cardio.⁷ Researchers believe this may be due to the ability of HIIT to uniquely increase production of PGC-1 alpha 1, which stimulates mitochondrial biosynthesis and function within muscle.^8,9,10 Because mitochondria are the power-producing organelles within the cell that oxidize fat, the ability of HIIT to enhance the amount and activity of mitochondria directly increases the ability to burn fat, both during exercise and after exercise. In fact, studies have shown that high exercise intensity is required to increase caloric burn after exercise, as only high-intensity workouts increased excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC), which is an indirect measurement of calories burned after exercise.¹¹

Intermittent Fasting Torches Fat While Boosting Muscle Growth

Intermittent fasting is another incredibly effective way to burn body fat and simultaneously improve the capacity for muscle growth. This is because intermittent fasting reduces caloric consumption for only a brief time, which drives fat loss while triggering an evolutionarily conserved response that triggers muscle anabolism. This muscle-enhancing response occurs because intermittent fasting, especially when combined with exercise, vigorously decreases intramuscular fat stores.¹² The decrease of fat within muscle tissue has been shown to enhance the muscle cell’s response to the extremely anabolic hormone insulin¹³, which drastically increases muscle protein synthesis, supporting greater muscle growth.¹⁴

Boost Anabolism While Torching Fat With Capsaicin

According to a flurry of scientific research, scientists have found two compounds, capsaicin and omega-3 fatty acids, that have a remarkable capacity to trigger fat loss while preventing the forfeiture of muscle mass— making both of them excellent choices when trying to add muscle and cut fat.

Capsaicin reduces fat by stimulating a process known as thermogenesis, which essentially increases the number of calories burned by the body, resulting in considerable fat loss. Capsaicin also spares the loss of muscle mass by impeding the reduction in testosterone production typically brought on by dieting¹⁵, which drives the unwanted loss of muscle mass associated with low-calorie diets. The reason for this effect has to do, in part, with the low energy levels that come with caloric restriction, which slows down many biochemical processes that are not absolutely essential for survival. Unfortunately, one of the non-essential processes is the production of testosterone, meaning testosterone levels typically decline after extensive caloric restriction. However, capsaicin can reverse the negative impact that hypocaloric diets have on testosterone production. According to a study done by Llhan et al.¹⁶, capsaicin accomplishes this by reducing production of the peptide hormone ghrelin, which is normally secreted by the stomach when the stomach is empty, thus signaling the brain to promote food intake. It turns out that ghrelin also inhibits the production of testosterone, meaning that low-caloric diets that naturally increase production of ghrelin because the stomach is increasingly empty also decrease testosterone production. In fact, this study clearly showed that a dose of capsaicin lowered ghrelin levels in the testosterone-producing cells within the testis, resulting in a large increase in testosterone.

Build Muscle and Burn Fat With Omega-3 Fatty Acids

The hormone cortisol is a steroid hormone normally released by the adrenal glands in response to stressful events, such as caloric restriction. A few of its primary functions include increasing blood sugar and assisting in the metabolism of fats, carbohydrates and proteins.^17,18 Most caloric-restrictive diets lower carbohydrate consumption. When carbohydrate consumption is decreased from dieting, cortisol acts to reestablish glucose levels by converting non-carbohydrate fuel sources such as fatty acids and amino acids into glucose, a process is known as gluconeogenesis. This cortisol-driven function consumes the immediately available stockpile of amino acids, causing the body to break down muscle tissue into amino acids for energy.

Although cortisol release cannot be completely prevented, it can be heavily controlled. In fact, regulating the release of cortisol, and subsequent muscle loss, can be achieved by a diet loaded with the omega-3 fatty acids eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), as a study by Noreen et al.¹⁹ showed that six weeks of supplementation with 1,600 milligrams of EPA and 800 milligrams of DHA per day while dieting significantly preserved lean mass. These changes correlated with a reduction in salivary cortisol levels, indicating that these fatty acids lowered cortisol— preventing the loss of muscle mass during low caloric intake.

In closing, despite the common perception that getting big and lean is nearly impossible, combining high-intensity cardiovascular training programs with intermittent fasting, while supplementing your diet with ample amounts of capsaicin and omega-3 fats, will trigger fat loss while priming the anabolic response in the body. Altogether, this will lead to the concurrent loss of unwanted body fat along with sizeable gains in muscle mass.

For most of Michael Rudolph’s career he has been engrossed in the exercise world as either an athlete (he played college football at Hofstra University), personal trainer or as a research scientist (he earned a B.Sc. in Exercise Science at Hofstra University and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Stony Brook University). After earning his Ph.D., Michael investigated the molecular biology of exercise as a fellow at Harvard Medical School and Columbia University for over eight years. That research contributed seminally to understanding the function of the incredibly important cellular energy sensor AMPK— leading to numerous publications in peer-reviewed journals including the journal Nature. Michael is currently a scientist working at the New York Structural Biology Center doing contract work for the Department of Defense on a project involving national security.

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