Bodybuilding Tips: Muscle Gain and Body Fat

If you're anything at all like most bodybuilders, your ultimate desire is a simple one:  To have an impressive, muscular physique with razor-sharp definition and the envy of everyone around you.  You want to be huge, and you want to be shredded.

This desire for the perfect body makes many people dive headlong into an exercise regimen.  Everyone wants to bulk up, and bulk up fast, but at the same time they're also worried about gaining the extra bulk of body fat.

If you're going for a significant muscle gain as quickly as possible, you're always going to end up gaining body fat to go along with it.  Unfortunately, that is just the way the body works, and if you want to get bigger, you're going to have to accept the fact that body fat will come along with the muscle gain.

In order to increase the amount of muscle gain, you have to consume a large amount of calories in order to support the protein synthesis your body is going through.  There is simply no way that every single calorie will go to muscle gain.  Some if it will always end up as body fat.

You first goal is for the most dramatic gain in the shortest time.  To that end it's always better to focus first on muscle gain over a set period of time, followed by another period of time concentrating on losing the unwanted body fat.  You never want to lose body fat during the bulking phase.  You simply want to gain as little as possible.

There are three main tips to accomplish this:

1)     Use your caloric surplus wisely.  A caloric surplus is when you gain more calories than you burn.  This is required for muscle growth, but simply gorging on food without a plan or exercise will simply earn you more body fat.  The general rule of thumb for muscle gain is to take 15-20% more calories than you need to keep your weight.  If you are already within this range, there's no need for you to add more.

2)     Watch what you eat.  You should be concentrating your diet on lean, high quality proteins, high fiber carbohydrates, and unsaturated, healthy fats.  Don't just eat anything and everything; make sure you're concentrating on proteins, especially lean proteins, and keep an eye on your blood sugar.  Also, avoid all those saturated fats.

3)     Don't forget the cardio.  You don't have to go wild, but a good, solid 2 to 3 sessions of cardio workouts during the week will help keep your body on track, and cut back on the body fat.  Stick to exercises of 10-20 minutes of high intensity, as they have less likelihood of muscle loss compared to the longer forms.

Once you're at a size you're happy with and the muscle gain you want, you can focus your attention on losing that body fat.  However, you want to keep working to avoid losing the muscle you've just gained.  And remember that while bulking up, you're going to gain body fat.  There's simply no way around it.

The trick is to minimize it rather than try to totally avoid it, and you can do this with a reasonable diet and sensible exercise.