Top 10 Muscle Building Foods

When it comes to building muscle & gaining strength your main goal should be to get bigger. Yes you may put on some fat with it, but all that can be eliminated when you’re done with some HIIT circuit training.
!!!!The key to building Muscle is to consume more calories than you burn!!!!!!!!

Here are my top 10 favorite muscle building foods (and drinks)…

1. Milk – If your stomach can handle milk, I’m all for it if you’re trying to build muscle. Normally I don’t recommend people drink milk, but if gaining muscle or strength is your goal, there’s no denying that milk works incredibly well.
I have seen people drink 1/2 gallon of milk per day in addition to regular diet and they have put on as much as 15+ lbs (& got much stronger) over the course of 2 months… If you’re really skinny you can even try a gallon of milk per day.

2. Meat – Some of the best protein sources you’ll find come from good cuts of meat. I recommend steaks, ground beef and pork for trying to put on some muscle. As much as I’m not a fan of Wal Mart you can usually find some cheap stakes that taste pretty good for $4-$5.
Granted the meat isn’t organic grass fed or any of the uppie bullshit, but if you’re trying to build muscle on a budget, you may have to sacrifice some quality in exchange for quantity.

3. Whole Wheat Pasta – Pasta is incredibly high in calories and carbs, so it makes a great muscle building meal. I like to stick with the whole wheat pasta as it’s a bit healthier for you than the white starch kind
If you mix your pasta with a cream sauce with butter and some parmesean cheese, you’ll easily have a 1000 calorie meal.

4. Peanut Butter – Peanut butter (or almond butter) is a great way to get a bunch of calories in your mouth without eating a ton of food. Most guys who need to put on size have a hard time eating a lot of food, so finding foods that pack a bunch of calories in small servings is a good idea.
A peanut butter sandwich on wheat bread will give you about 500 calories or so. If you eat two with a glass of milk, then you’ll be on your way to a great muscle building meal.

5. Nuts – Almonds & walnuts are my two personal favorites. Both of these have lots of healthy fats in them and pack a bunch of calories. A 1/4 cup of nuts usually has 200 calories in it. You can easily add 800 calories to your day by making a big handful of almonds your snack in between each meal.

6. Olive Oil – Just like nuts, olive oil has a lot of healthy fats in it – And it has 120 calories per TBSP. Olive oil can be used to cook pretty much everything from meat to veggies to eggs. You can also add a few tablespoons to a smoothie. It’s a great way to get more fruit in your diet & also consume a bunch of calories (trust me you actually wont taste it).

7. Eggs – Your morning breakfast should look something like this… 4 egg omelette with red pepper, onion & cheese, 2 pieces of wheat toast with peanut butter, hashbrowns and a glass of milk. Eggs are easy to make & not to mention incredibly cheap to buy. They pack a lot of protein & are a perfect meal for breakfast.

8. Fish – Fish is actually great for both building muscle & losing fat. It pretty much boils down to how much of it you eat. A 4 oz piece of salmon is good for fat loss, while a 10 oz piece would work for muscle building. Fish like salmon pack a ton of protein & omega 3′s.
The only draw back to fish is it can be a bit pricey, and a lot people just don’t like it.

9. Brown Rice – Rice is always a great post workout meal along with some beans and a chicken breast. Brown rice can be used in a lot of dishes such as stir fry with veggies, chicken and teryaki sauce.

10. Potatoes – The potato is very versatile as a muscle building food. You can make mashed potatoes or baked potatoes ahead of time and store them in the fridge. You can also use them to make homefries or hashbrowns in the morning.
Add some butter and cheese and you’ll add a bunch more calories to your potato.

RELATED POST: How And What To Eat Too Lose Weight and Gain Muscle

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For best results, make sure you follow a good total body routine and diet (you get both in my FULL workout plan). It may also help to try a good fat burner like TEA REXX, it is what I use to help me stay ripped.


!!!LET NOTHING STOP YOU!!!

sincerely,

Brandon Carter
p.s.

My friend a Tenna Torres Just made it to the top 60 on this season of American Idol!!!  Check out This video of us doing an Acoustic cover

Click HERE To Download This Track for FREE 

February 23, 2012
Categories: Motivation, NURITION . . Author: BRANDON CARTER . Comments: 10 Comments

How To Burn More Fat By Doing Less Cardio

What if I told you that you could burn more fat by doing less cardio? Well, with High Intensity Interval Training (also known as HIIT) you can do just that, burn more fat while spending less time in the gym. In this article I will explain how to get the best results from this new and cutting-edge type of cardiovascular training.

You have probably been told, just like the rest of us, that in order to burn the greatest amount of fat you need to do cardio for 20 to 60 minutes at a moderate intensity. This will indeed melt the fat away, but HIIT is a more efficient and athlete-friendly way to train and burn fat at the same time.

How HIIT Works

With HIIT, you will be working harder than you normally work but for about a quarter to a half of the time that you would normally spend on the cardio machine of your choice. HIIT is so intense and effective that you only need 15 to 20 minutes, tops!

Here’s What You Do:

Pick the cardio machine of your choice (treadmill, elliptical, rower, bike, swimming) and perform a 5 minute warm-up.

Then take time to stretch properly and you are ready to begin.

Start at a moderate pace for 1 minute, then crank up the pace to 90 or 95% of your Maximum Heart Rate (MHR).

Continue at this effort for 15 to 20 seconds, then slow down to your starting pace for another minute followed by another all-out sprint for 15 to 20 seconds.

Or do like me and jump as high as you can, as fast as you can for 30 sec and rest for 30 sec

Do this for no more than 15 minutes.

After that finish your workout by cooling down for 5 minutes and thoroughly stretch afterwards.

If you perform this right I guarantee that you will be totally exhausted after 20 minutes of this.

Benefits Of HIIT

A study at Laval University in Quebec, Canada found that HIIT cardio helped trainees loose nine (yes, 9!) times more fat than those who trained the traditional way (moderate speed for 20-60 minutes). Combine HIIT with your weight program and you boost your metabolism through the roof!

The Reason HIIT Is So Successful Is This:

When you work at a high intensity, you burn more total calories per pound of body weight.
High Intensity workouts such as weight training and HIIT boost growth hormone levels.
Elevates the body’s metabolism throughout the entire day!
What does this mean for you? The more calories that you burn in a day, the more weight you are able to lose. Even if weight loss is not your goal, HIIT is for you. Athletes will see better gains from doing HIIT cardio as opposed to traditional cardio.

Unless you are training for a marathon, you do not keep a constant pace during your sport. All sports whether it be soccer or football, even baseball or basketball have a point where you need to change gears and hit a full sprint.

HIIT will not only help your cardiovascular system, but will train the anaerobic ATP/CP system as well. Not only will you increase your cardiovascular endurance, but improve your raw speed and explosiveness as well!

What Is ATP?
Otherwise known as Adenosine TriPhosphate, ATP is critical to the release of energy. ATP is an adenosine-derived nucleotide that supplies large amounts of energy to cells for various biochemical processes, including muscle contraction and sugar metabolism, through its hydrolysis to ADP.

Conclusion

I will let the study speak for itself. HIIT provides a more effective workout in much less time! Everyone can benefit from HIIT cardio, whether it be the person who is trying to lose weight or the professional football player training for the upcoming NFL season! Give HIIT a try and I am sure that you will not go back to the traditional way of performing cardio again!

Related Post: How And What To Eat Too Lose Weight and Gain Muscle

It will also help  to try a good fat burner like TEA REXX, it is what I use to help me stay ripped

!!!CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD MY FULL WORKOUT PLAN!!!

Brandon Carter

February 22, 2012
Categories: ABS, Cardio, Fat loss . . Author: BRANDON CARTER . Comments: 27 Comments

Get a 6 Pack By Spring Break: Top 5 abs workouts!

Spring is just around the corner and you should start getting ready for it now!!! You don’t want to be on of the people that wait till the first warm day to realize that you have to start working on your 6 pack! Here are my top 5 abs workouts for you to start NOW! You never want to do the same workout over and over because your body will adapt to if and your progress will stop. switch up you abs workouts every 2-3 weeks to keep your body guess and keep the results coming!!!

#5 This is the first one I ever posted on youtube. It has 1,449,021  views!

#4 This is more of a cardio workout to burn the fat off your abs so theywill show!!! no matter how much you workout your abs, if you have fat on them, nobody will see you 6 pack!!!!

#3 A lot of great moves in this one!

#2 This one focuses on adding weights to your your abs workouts. it’s something thats underrated!!!

#1 I think this is my best abs workout!!! warning!!! it is NOT easy… but nothing worth doing is! you can download this workout for FREE from my Facebook page! 

In addtion to the workouts, your also going to want to make sure your EATING RIGHT to burn fat off your stomach, make sure your getting enough rest, and Drinking enough WATER!!! You have to do ALL of these things right to get the results you want!! If you punk out on ANY of them, you will slow your progress!!!

Previous Post: 5 Keys To Getting A 6 Pack Fast

For best results, make sure you follow a good total body routine and diet (you get both in my FULL workout plan). It may also help to try a good fat burner like TEA REXX, it is what I use to help me stay ripped.


!!!LET NOTHING STOP YOU!!!

sincerely,

Brandon Carter

February 20, 2012
Categories: ABS . . Author: BRANDON CARTER . Comments: 17 Comments

How Many Reps Should You Do?

Brandon_Carter_Workout

“How many reps should you do???” I get that question all the time and the answer is always the same… DON’T COUNT YOUR REPS!!! JUST DO AS MANY AS YOU CAN UNTIL YOUR CAN NOT DO ANY MORE, AND DO THAT FOR EVERY SET. This is called doing a set to failure.

A lot of people think that they are doing a set to failure because they stop a set as soon as their muscles start to hurt really bad… BUT THAT IS NOT FAILURE!!! Failure comes when your body WON’T LET YOU DO ANY MORE REPS, and that comes WAY after the point where it hurts really bad.

Muscle growth is nothing but your bodies way of adapting to the increased physical strain you are putting on it. When you take a set to Failure, your muscles say to themselves “God Damn! We’re better get bigger and stronger FAST because this dude is putting way more strain on us than we can handle!”. When you stop a set at the point where it just hurts a lot your muscle say to themselves “We might have to get a little bigger and stronger, but there is really no rush to do so because this person lifts weights like a punk!”

I tell people to WORKOUT WITH THEIR MINDS because the MIND IS STRONGER THAN THE BODY! Your mind can push beyond your bodies physical limitations. If you want to get bigger and stronger as fast as you can, you must go beyond the point were it hurts a lot and to the point were one more rep would not even be possible if someone put a gun to your head!!!!

That’s how you know if you’re done with your set or not. When the workout starts to hurt, you dig down deep and you are able to do a few more reps. You start to understand what it means to lift with your MIND and not your body. Your Mind can push your body WAY farther than your body thinks it can go. Instead of JUST QUITTING the way you would’ve tried to do in previous two times, you KEEP PUSHING!!! Doing a set until failure means that when it looks like you’re doing this rep in slow motion, and might include some of the worst pain you have ever felt in your life, you keep going. Doing a set until failure means that, you start to do another rep, but you physically CAN’T make it more than half way through this rep and you just kind of hang in the half way point of this rep for a few seconds. This is how intensely you should be doing ALL of your sets!!! Now, rest 30 seconds and do another set JUST LIKE THAT!

The ONLY exseption I ever make to this rule is my “15 Minute Abs Challenge” click HERE to check it out

You Might also want to check out this post. “How much time should I rest between sets”

For best results, make sure you follow a good total body routine and diet (you get both in my workout plan). It may also help to try a good fat burner like TEA REXX, it is what I use to help me stay ripped.

February 19, 2012
Categories: Circuit Training, equipment, Fat loss, Motivation, Uncategorized . . Author: BRANDON CARTER . Comments: 25 Comments

Advanced Workout Techniques”TRI-SETS” (New Video)

A Great Way to take your workout to the next level Is to start doing “TRI-SETS”

A Tri Set is one large set, composed of three sets of different exercises, all targeting the same muscle group.

Pick exercises, perform each exercise to failure (don’t count reps! counting reps is for suckas! your better that that!) , no rest between the exercises.
You will have to use lighter weights in for each exercise, which makes it kind of like a “drop set”, but it’s different because you hit the muscle from an different angle each time you switch exercises

Example of a Tri Set for Biceps

Barbell Curl

“Carter Curls”
(or “alternating dumbbell curls”)
Reverse Curls
Examples of Tri Sets for muscle groups

The above exercises completed back to back to compose one Tri Set. Perform between two and three of these Tri Sets for your biceps session. The exercises implemented in this Tri Set should offer a variety of stress to the elbow flexor muscles.

Example of a Tri Set for Back

Seated Cable Row
Underhand Pull Down
Wide Grip Pull Down

The above exercises completed back to back to compose one Tri Set. Perform between two and three of these Tri Sets for your back session. Note the high use of cables due to ease of changing resistance in case the weight has to be reduced due to fatigue.

Example of a Tri Set for Chest

Dumbbell Flys
Dumbbell Press
Chest Dips

The above exercises completed back to back to compose one Tri Set. Perform between two and three of these Tri Sets for your chest session. Dumbbell Flys are performed at the start of the Tri Set to pre-exhaust the chest fibres before the pressing exercises.

Example of a Tri Set for Triceps

Cable Press Down
Close Grip Bench Press
Triceps Dips

The above exercises completed back to back to compose one Tri Set. Perform between two and three of these Tri Sets for your triceps session. The press down is performed at the beginning of the Tri Set to tire the triceps directly in an isolated manner before the pressing. Add resistance to the dips if required.

Example of a Tri Set for Shoulders

Dumbbell Lateral Raises
Military Press
Upright Row

The above exercises completed back to back to compose one Tri Set. Perform between two and three of these Tri Sets for your shoulders session. This Tri Set will successfully stress the front and side head of the deltoids, it however offers little stress to the rear deltoid head. An additional exercise which targets the rear head may be wisely performed at the end of your shoulders session for balance.

Example of a Tri Set for Calfs

Standing Calf Raise
Seated Calf Raise
Donkey Calf Raise

The above exercises completed back to back to compose one Tri Set. Perform between two and three of these Tri Sets for your calf session. This Tri Set will target the gastrocnemius and the soleus muscles of the calf effectively. The donkey calf raise offers a great stretch to the calfs during the latter phrase of the Tri Set when the muscles are highly pumped.

When your adding Tri-Sets to you workout, make sure you
Never Do More that 3 sets of Tri-Sets per workout per body part

For best results, make sure you follow a good total body routine and diet (you get both in my workout plan). It may also help to try a good fat burner like TEA REXX, it is what I use to help me stay ripped.

!!! LET NOTHING STOP YOU!!!

Brandon Carter A.K.A. “Metta World WAR”

P.S.

Here is video of me and my little Sister “”La’Rayne” doing a cover of Buno Mars’s  ”It Will Rain” With me on acoustic guitar. If you like it, you can download it for FREE HERE enjoy!

February 16, 2012
Categories: ABS, back, Bicep, Cardio, home workout, Motivation, shoulders, Tricep, Weight Lifting . . Author: BRANDON CARTER . Comments: 20 Comments

Bench Press Substitutes For Home Chest Workout (New Video)

Bench Presses are on of the best exercises for working out your chest. But most of us (including myself) do not have an bench press at home. So if your working out at home what can you do instead?

Push Ups are similar to bench press. the only problem with push ups is that you can’t get the same amount of resistance from a standard push up as you can with heavy weights on a bench press .  Here are a few ways to get more resistance from your push up and make them more like a bench press.

1. Raise one leg in the air (no included in the video… because I forgot to film it.. lol sorry)

Putting on leg in the air (wile the other leg remains on the floor)  makes the push up harder because now, when you do the push up, the wight of your elevated  leg is being lifted by your chest, shoulders, and triceps.

2. Put BOTH legs On A Chair! 

When you put both legs on a chair (or anything) your chest, shoulders, and triceps have to work harder because your body weight is being redistributed forward. Depending on how much you wieght, this can make your push ups “significantly harder” (a.k.a More Effective!!!)

3. Put One Leg On A Chair AND One Leg In The AIR!!!

This is a combination of #1 and #2 and its one of the most difficult push ups you can do at home. The hardest part is keeping balanced! when your trying to stay balanced, your body will use the little stabilizer muscles that dont get used a lot. You ever see guys that do the “Rings” in the Olympics and notice how there arms are more ripped and defined than all the other athletes? Its because working out on the rings really focuses on the stabilizer muscles. Doing push ups like this will help with that too!

4. Put BOTH legs in the air!!!

Just kidding lol.

All jokes aside, you can also try Plyometic Push ups! Check out the video below!

CLICK HERE to learn more about Plyometric Push UPS

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For best results, make sure you follow a good total body routine and diet (you get both in my workout plan). It may also help to try a good fat burner like TEA REXX, it is what I use to help me stay ripped.
!!!Let Nothing Stop You!!!

Brandon Carter

P.S.

I almost never post any of my music stuff in this site, but I want you to check out my little sister singing. She is finaly old enuff that I feel comfortable with her being on the internet (lol). this is her singing a cover of Frank Ocean’s “Thinking About You” wile I play accustic guitar.

If you like it, you can download the track for FREE HERE

Enjoy!

February 13, 2012
Categories: Chest, home workout . . Author: BRANDON CARTER . Comments: 34 Comments

How Much Time Should You Rest Between Sets?

Brandon_Carter_Sets

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 Go to any gym in America and you’ll see too many people wasting time between sets. Resting too long between sets is one of the main reasons people don’t accomplish there fitness goals. Guys will say “I was in the gym for 2 hours….!”. Really???  It doesn’t take anyone 2 hours to get a good workout in. I find it hard to believe that anybody who is not a professional athlete even wants to work out that long. Personally, I’ve got too much to do to spend that much time working out!!!  My average workout takes 30-45 mins a day. My 30 minute workout is more effective than someone else’s 2 hour workout because I rest only 30 seconds between each set!!!

Taking shorter rests between sets is not only more time efficient, but it also works out your muscles much harder!!!! You will see results very quickly if you commit to resting for only 30 or 60 seconds between each set!!!

If you ever see someone who is not timing their rests in between sets, accept it as clear & irrefutable evidence that they don’t have any idea what the hell they are doing! Timing your rest is wildly important. ALWAYS have a watch, stop watch, or cell phone to time your sets.

One of the best things about working out from home is that you can control the environment and eliminate all distractions. I like to wake up at 5 am and workout right away. At that time my girl is still sleep, nobody is calling, texting, or emailing me, and I get the workout out of the way, so I don’t have to think about it for the rest of the day.

If you’re not able to workout first thing in the morning and you have to workout at night,  you can still do a few things to eliminate distractions:

- Put your cell phone on airplane mode so you are not distracted by texts, calls, emails, facebook, twitter, etc.
- Turn off the TV and Computer
- Don’t answer your home phone… (you still have a home phone? Is this 1996?)
- Listen to your ipod with head phones so you can’t be distracted by other noises
Here is a video of me doing an ab workout. People on Youtube left a bunch of coments about how I should “stop texting during my workout” but thats not what I was doing…. I WAS TIMING MY REST BETWEEN SETS!!!! you should be doing the same
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For best results, make sure you follow a good total body routine and diet (you get both in my workout plan). It may also help to try a good fat burner like TEA REXX, it is what I use to help me stay ripped.

February 2, 2012
Categories: Motivation, Weight Lifting . . Author: BRANDON CARTER . Comments: 40 Comments

How to build more muscle in less time: Multi Joint Exsercizes

Exercises can be classified either as compound, which are exercises that involve more than one muscle group, or isolation exercises, which are exercises that isolate a muscle group by concentrating on that one group of muscles.For the most time-efficient workouts, compound exercises are recommended because compound exercises can stimulate all the major muscles in the body and create the greatest change in body composition in the shortest time. As an added bonus, compound exercises help develop the body proportionately.

Compound exercises are movements that use multiple joints at one time. When you perform compound exercises, more muscle groups are recruited and used per exercise. For example, POWER CLEAN AND PRESS is a multi-joint exercise because the shoulder and elbow, nee, and hip joints are working to execute the movement. In turn, the POWER CLEAN AND PRESS works several muscle groups, including the muscles in the, legs, cavs, glutes, chest, shoulders, and triceps.

On the other hand, the biceps curl is a single-joint exercise since only the elbow joint is moving. The biceps curl only works the biceps muscle and is more of an isolated exercise.

So, when you are looking for a quality workout that hits lots of muscles, compound exercises help you do more in less time. By working several muscle groups at the same time, you can perform fewer exercises and reduce the total amount of time you spend in the gym.

Compound exercises also increase strength and size far more effectively than single-joint, isolation exercises. This doesn’t mean that single-joint exercises are ineffective. Exercises that isolate certain muscles and muscle groups do have an important role in fitness, especially for advanced lifters. However, if your schedule calls for reduced exercise time, compound exercises are the way to go. As an added bonus, they are more functional since virtually every movement in everyday activities, such as sitting or kneeling, and in sports like basketball or baseball, involve moving multiple joints.

Multi-Joint Exercises

Squats: Recognized mostly for building powerful thighs and hips, squats also add size to the upper body — including the back, shoulders, chest, and arms — due to their anabolic effect.

Deadlifts: The deadlift is another anabolic king because it not only increases lower body growth, but that of the upper body as well.

Leg Presses: These enable you to use heavier resistance than do leg extensions or curls, thus promoting more muscle growth. While three or more sets each of leg extensions and leg curls mainly work the quadriceps and hamstrings respectively, three or more heavy sets of leg presses or squats will strengthen and add more mass to the quadriceps, hamstrings and gluteals — in a shorter time frame!

Lunges and Stepups: These are also excellent time-saving multi-joint lower body exercises, and they are particularly more functional for sports and daily activities than leg extensions or leg curls.

Bench Presses, Dips and Pushups: When it comes to the upper body, bench presses, dips and pushups not only add mass to the chest, shoulders and back, but the triceps as well. In fact, they do it much more effectively than single-joint tricep pressdowns or kickbacks. Also, eliminate those single-joint dumbbell flyes for the chest for several weeks; these exercises will build up your chest muscles to a greater degree in less time.

Overhead Presses: Excellent for shoulders and triceps.

Pulldowns, Pullups, Barbell Rows, and Dumbbell Rows: You’ll see your biceps grow without doing one curl; not to mention the added size of your back muscles from doing these exercises.

Upright Rows: They’re also a bicep and forearm-building movement, as well as a wonderful shoulder and upper back exercise.

When Trying to build mass, it is wildly important that your getting enough sleep and eating right!!!

I have brokend down how to do ALL of thies workouts and more in my workout plan (It includes a video for each)

For best results, make sure you follow a good total body routine and diet (you get both in my workout plan). It may also help to try a good fat burner like TEA REXX, it is what I use to help me stay ripped.


!!!LET NOTHING STOP YOU!!!

sincerely,

Brandon Carter

Follow me on Twitter

and add me on Facebook 

January 26, 2012
Categories: home workout, Motivation, Uncategorized . . Author: BRANDON CARTER . Comments: 22 Comments

Build Bigger BICEPS With This Move (New Video)

Alternating dumbbell curls are commonly used exercise to build biceps. This a good exercise, but I want to show you a way to do them that is WAY more effective! If you do them the way I am showing you in this video, you will notice that they are A LOT harder that normal curls, but the extra effort will yeald faster results that traditional curls!

You also want to make SURE you are using correct form when working your biceps!  If your not doing Bicep curls with the proper form, then your NOT WORKING YOUR BICEPS! In the video below I demonstrate exactly how to do a proper biceps curls so you will get results faster.


For best results, make sure you follow a good total body routine and diet (you get both in my FULL workout plan). It may also help to try a good fat burner like TEA REXX, it is what I use to help me stay ripped.


!!!LET NOTHING STOP YOU!!!

sincerely,

Brandon Carter

Follow me on Twitter

and add me on Facebook 

January 25, 2012
Categories: Bicep, home workout . . Author: BRANDON CARTER . Comments: 25 Comments

How Sleep Helps You Burn Fat and Build Muscle Faster!

Every day people ask me what supplements I take or what foods do I eat to stay in shape. But I am surprised that nobody ever ask me “How much do you sleep” because one of the easiest ways to burn fat and build muscle  is simply to get more sleep.
How Sleep Helps You Burn Fat
Research published this month in the Annals of Internal Medicine (one of the the big kahunas of peer reviewed medical journals) establishes that sleep–and sleep alone–is one of the most powerful diet tools ever identified.
There’s not a diet pill on the planet that could accomplish what sleep did in this study, which compared two groups of overweight non-smokers on calorie restricted diets for 14 days. One group clocked 8.5 hours of sleep per night, and the other logged 5.5 hours of sleep per night (which the authors point out is a “norm” for people in this day and age.) Both groups ate roughly 1,450 calories a day. After two weeks, the people who slept more lost more fat than the group who slept less. More than half of the weight loss during the 8.5 hours of sleep was fat versus only one quarter of the weight loss during the 5.5 hours of sleep. People literally burned fat while they slept.

Even more startling, the folks who slept less lost more muscle (60% more muscle was lost by the sleep-deprived group.)  Those three hours of lost sleep caused a shift in metabolism that made the body want to preserve fat at the expense of muscle. And that’s not all that happened: When the researchers compared circulating blood levels of appetite-regulating  hormones in the two groups they found those who slept for three fewer hours had produced more of the appetite stimulating hormone ghrelin. They woke up hungrier!

Most of us assume our bodies burn more calories when we are awake longer, but that’s not true. The metabolic rate is down-regulated with less sleep. Translation: When you sleep less, your body starts to burn calories at a slower rate to preserve energy. In the study, people burned on average 400 more calories by sleeping for 3 more hours–that’s an additional 2,800 calories burned in just one week. With less sleep, the body seeks to meet the increased metabolic needs of longer waking hours by shifting into a lower gear, so to speak, that burns fewer calories and less fat.

How Sleep Helps you Build Muscle
First, when you lift weights, what you’re doing is actually tearing the muscle tissue in a healthy way. After you eat your body uses certain nutrients to repair your muscle tissue. What you need to remember though, is that the protein and your body won’t start repairing your muscle tissue until you are at rest for a extended period of time, such as sleep. What this means is that if you are lacking sleep, your body isn’t getting sufficient time to repair and recover your muscles one hundred percent.
In addition to this, since sleep is the primary time the body recovers from exercise, it’s also when you will be rebuilding your torn muscle tissues. Without this recovery time, you’re going to go into your next exercise session at a disadvantage.

Finally, you must not overlook the connection between the amount of sleep you get and your overall exercise performance. When you are short on sleep, it’s quite typical to find yourself struggling to maintain the usual level of exercise that you normally would tolerate quite well.

One of the key recommendations for combating over training syndrome, which will quickly take you away from your workouts and limit further fat loss, is getting quality sleep. Failing to do so could mean you having to take time away from your program, which will without question of a doubt, slow you down.

So make sure you’re getting your 7-8 hours of sleep each night. Not only are you going to feel better, think clearer, and be much stronger when it comes to battling those food cravings that are so common with fat loss diets, but you’ll also really be helping promote better long-term health as well.

Bottom Line: If you want to burn fat, preserve muscle and wake up less hungry when you are dieting, sleep more…8.5 hours a night to be exact.

For best results, make sure you follow a good total body routine and diet (you get both in my FULL workout plan). It may also help to try a good fat burner like TEA REXX, it is what I use to help me stay ripped.


!!!LET NOTHING STOP YOU!!!

sincerely,

Brandon Carter

January 23, 2012
Categories: DIET, Fat loss, Motivation, NURITION, Women Fitness . . Author: BRANDON CARTER . Comments: 19 Comments

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