Tag: Muscle Talk
Muscle-Building Mishaps: The Top 5 Mistakes Holding You Back!
Building muscle and strength are time-consuming and energy-sapping processes. Simply put, your body is very resistant to change, and it needs to be cajoled and even bullied into getting bigger and stronger. However, all your hard work and dedication WILL pay off, and as the months turn into years, you’ll gradually transform your physique into […]
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The Story Behind Jay Cutler’s Iconic Quad Stomp
Four-time Mr. Olympia champion Jay Cutler is one of the most decorated bodybuilders of all time. His quad stomp pose at the 2009 Olympia is among the most iconic in the sport’s history. Gyms around the world have murals dedicated to the quad stomp.
Competitive bodybuilding is all about physique aesthetics. Judges reward athletes with the best shape, size, conditioning, symmetry, and balance. However, a critical aspect is often overlooked — posing. You could have the best size, separation, and lines, but the chances of winning the gold medal are bleak if you lack the skills to present your physique.
Arnold Schwarzenegger’s three-quartern turn and double straight arm pose, Sergio Oliva’s victory pose, Bob Pari’s kneeling pose, Flex Wheeler’s full splits, and Frank Zane’s vacuum pose are some of the most iconic poses. However, none of these poses are as dominating as the quad stomp.
Cutler’s quad stomp at the 2009 Olympia was much more than a bodybuilding pose; it was a statement from the two-time O champ that he had returned to reclaim what was rightfully his. His message was heard — loud and clear.
Interestingly, the quad stomp was not a planned pose. Plus, it was not as innovative as the other iconic poses mentioned above. Technically, the quad stomp is a variation of the abs and thigh pose. But it isn’t the pose itself that made it so special. The moment, the context, the intensity, and Cutler himself made it one of the most special poses ever.
Jay Cutler’s Success Story
Jay Cutler / Facebook
The quad stomp is not just another pose — it is an emotion and a declaration. To understand the quad stomp, you must know Cutler’s story.
Cutler earned his IFBB Pro card by winning the Heavyweight Division at the National Physique Committee (NPC) Nationals in 1996 at the age of 23. The Massachusetts native entered his first pro show in 1997 — Night of Champions. Cutler had placed 12th at his debut pro show, while his future arch-rival Ronnie Coleman claimed the gold medal.
Coleman would place ninth at the 1997 Olympia, a three-place drop from his 1996 performance. However, the upper echelons of pro bodybuilding were up for a major rejig that year as Dorian Yates retired after winning his sixth-consecutive Sandow trophy.
Although most bodybuilding stakeholders expected Flex Wheeler to take the reigns at the 1998 Olympia, Coleman pulled off one of the biggest upsets in bodybuilding history to claim his maiden Sandow trophy. “The King” had placed ninth at the 1997 Olympia.
Cutler qualified for his first Olympia in 1999 and placed 14th out of the 16 contestants, whereas Coleman successfully defended his Olympia throne.
The lackluster performance at the 1999 Olympia didn’t dissuade Cutler. He claimed his maiden pro show win in 2000 — the Night of Champions. Many thought life had come full circle for Cutler, who won the Night of Champions four years after making his pro debut at the same show. However, no one could have imagined it was just the beginning and that the blonde-haired bodybuilder would win the coveted Sandow trophy four times. With the momentum behind him, Cutler entered the 2000 Olympia and jumped to the eighth spot.
First of Many
Cutler’s career took an upward trajectory after 2000. His physique had improved leaps and bounds after the Olympia, and bodybuilding fans expected him to break into the top five at the 2001 Olympia. However, Cutler almost pulled a Coleman on Coleman himself and took home a silver medal, beating bodybuilding veterans like Kevin Levrone and Shawn Ray. Ray would retire after the 2001 O.
Jay Cutler and Ronnie Coleman at Mr. Olympia 2001
Cutler holds an undesirable record. He has the most second-place finishes in Olympia history — six. Levrone comes in second with his four silver medals.
Although Cutler secured a second-place finish in his third Olympia outing, everything didn’t go in his favor. He was disqualified because of a failed diuretics test. The IFBB later dropped the charges after Cutler threatened to sue the organization for tampered results.
Cutler skipped the 2002 Olympia to add size to his frame and upend Coleman’s reign. Most bodybuilding pundits believe sitting out the 2002 O was a mistake on Cutler’s end, as this was the year Coleman was at his most vulnerable and had left the door open for Cutler to walk away with his maiden Sandow trophy.
As promised, Cutler showed up bigger and better at the 2003 Olympia looking to unseat the five-time O champ, Coleman. However, “Big Ron” had done his homework and had fixed all his weaknesses.
Coleman weighed a monstrous 287 pounds at the 2003 Olympia. He didn’t let his size ruin his conditioning and had striated glutes and feathered quads when he stepped on stage. Coleman’s competitors lived in his shadow at the 2003 O while he hoisted his sixth O title. Cutler reclaimed his second-place spot at the show.
Read also: History of Mr. Olympia
Turn of the Tide — Cutler’s First Olympia Victory
Jay Cutler / Instagram
Cutler finished second for two more years — 2004 and 2005. However, The King’s quest for size had thrown his proportions and symmetry for a toss, and many bodybuilding gurus had started critiquing his extended gut.
Things weren’t looking great for Cutler either. He was getting older, and it was assumed that he would go down the Levrone, Wheeler, and Ray route and join the ranks of the greatest bodybuilders to never win the Olympia title.
However, Cutler was hell-bent on dethroning Coleman, who was eyeing his ninth Olympia win at the 2006 Olympia. A win at the 2006 O would make him the winningest Olympia champ, beating Lee Haney’s record of eight O victories.
Known for his extravagant hairstyles, Cutler announced he would shave his head if he didn’t dethrone Coleman at the 2006 Olympia. The Massachusetts native turned heads the moment he stepped on stage at the 2006 O and comfortably beat Coleman to claim his first Sandow trophy.
Cutler did a repeat at the 2007 Olympia. However, it is one of the most controversial Olympias of all time. Many bodybuilding fans believe that the runner-up at the show, Victor Martinez, was robbed of the Sandow trophy, as he had a much better shape and conditioning than Cutler.
Veteran bodybuilding journalist Peter McGough later cleared the air about the contest. He opined that although Martinez was tied with Cutler on the first day, the reigning champ beat the challenger with his fuller and more crisp physique on the second day.
That said, Cutler’s physique had started showing the battle scars he endured while catching up to Coleman. His midsection had ballooned considerably, earning him the moniker “The Refridgerator.”
Must Read: 13 Best Bodybuilders Who Didn’t Win the Mr. Olympia Title
Losing the Olympia Title
The 2008 competitive season caught the bodybuilding community off guard. Coleman retired after placing fourth at the 2007 Olympia. Plus, the 2007 runner-up, Martinez, sat out the Olympia due to an injury.
With the main challenger out of the equation, Cutler was expected to win his third-consecutive Sandow trophy. However, Dexter “The Blade” Jackson had plans of his own. Although most pro bodybuilders were playing the mass game, Jackson stuck to his guns and capitalized on his conditioning. He had finished fourth at the 2006 Olympia and third in 2007.
Jackson’s razor-sharp conditioning on the 2008 Olympia stage made Cutler look like he was two weeks out of the show and needed more time to get in shape. Although Jackson was much smaller than the reigning O champ, the judges ruled in his favor, ending Cutler’s two-year reign.
Making History with the Quad Stomp
Jay Cutlers / Instagram
After the 2008 Olympia, most bodybuilding fans believed Cutler should hang his posing trunks while still at the top. The reason for this? No bodybuilder in the 44-year history of the competition had reclaimed the Sandow trophy after losing it. Legends like Oliva, Zane, and Coleman failed to do it; there was no chance that Cutler would become the first bodybuilder to achieve this feat.
Furthermore, no one believed that one year was enough time to fix all the issues that cost Cutler the title. No one except Cutler that is.
With the odds stacked against him, Cutler knew that sitting out for a year would make reclaiming his Olympia title impossible. He began his Olympia campaign right after finishing second at the 2008 Olympia. A young bodybuilder, Phil Heath, had placed third in his freshman year at the Super Bowl of Bodybuilding.
Cutler surprised everyone with the package he brought to the 2009 Olympia. He had improved his conditioning and midline and somehow managed to maintain his overall size. Furthermore, Cutler knew he was in total control of the competition from the moment he set foot on stage.
Besides his leaner, meaner, and bigger physique, Cutler had done his homework on his presentation and was keen on showing off his improvements. The two-time Olympia champ’s legs were one of his biggest assets, and Jackson’s size was no match for Cutler’s.
Moment of the Iconic Quad Stomp
The judges put Cutler and Jackson center stage in the final callout, making them the favorites to win the show. Cutler’s chiseled physique and 40-pound advantage over Jackson puts him in the driver’s seat during the confirmation round.
Cutler had the crowd cheering for him with each pose, and he was visibly more confident during the later half of the final comparison round. The second-to-last mandatory pose is the abdominal and thighs, which was Jackson’s strong suit. However, Cutler knew he had to do something extraordinary to draw attention toward him. What happened next went down in history as the most iconic bodybuilding pose of all time.
Cutler drew everyone’s attention to Jackson’s quads by gently patting them. He immediately started rattling his quads to reveal his insane quad striations. But Cutler didn’t leave it at that. He lifted his left leg off the floor and stomped it down while tensing all his muscles. Cutler finished the pose by pointing toward his quad with both hands while contracting his upper body, almost as if hitting a most-muscular pose.
Muscular Development magazine’s on-site photographer, Per Bernal, took the iconic photo of Cutler’s quad stomp. MD used the photo for its January 2010 cover.
“It wasn’t a planned pose, and now, of course, we kind of have this ‘quad stomp,’ and it sits as probably one of the greatest bodybuilding poses ever,” said Cutler reminiscing the iconic moment at the 2009 Olympia.
Must Read: 8 Bodybuilding Poses Every Pro Bodybuilder Needs To Master
2011 Olympia and Beyond
Not only did Cutler reclaim the Olympia title in 2010, but he also defended it in 2011, taking up his Sandow trophy tally to four, making him the fourth-winningest Mr. Olympia champion of all time. Cutler surrendered his O throne to Health in 2011, who would hold the title for another six-consecutive years, matching Schwarzenegger’s record.
Cutler couldn’t compete at the 2012 Olympia due to a biceps injury and drew the curtains on his glorious bodybuilding career after placing sixth at the 2013 O.
Wrapping Up
Jay Cutler’s quad stomp is much more than a pose — it’s an emotion, a war cry, a kick in the butt of the naysayers. The quad stomp announced Cutler’s return to the top of the roster and helped him reclaim his Olympia throne.
The quad stomp helped Cutler create history by becoming the only bodybuilder to reclaim the Sandow trophy after losing it. Many bodybuilders have copied the quad stomp on the Olympia stage since, but no one can ever replicate the emotions, intent, and chutzpah conveyed by Cutler.
Jay Cutler Competition History
1993 NPC Iron Bodies Invitational, Teenage & Men’s Heavyweight, 1st
1993 NPC Teen Nationals, 1st
1995 NPC U.S. Tournament of Champions, Men’s Heavyweight, 1st and Overall title
1996 NPC Nationals, Heavyweight, 1st (Pro Card)
1998 IFBB Night of Champions, 12th
1999 IFBB Arnold Classic 4th
1999 IFBB Ironman Pro Invitational, 3rd
2000 IFBB Night of Champions, 1st
2000 Grand Prix England, 2nd
2000 Joe Weider’s World Pro Cup, 2nd
2000 Mr. Olympia 8th
2001 Mr. Olympia, 2nd
2002 Arnold Classic, 1st
2003 Arnold Classic, 1st
2003 Mr. Olympia, 2nd
2003 Ironman Pro Invitational, 1st
2003 San Francisco Pro Invitational, 1st
2003 Russian Grand Prix, 2nd
2003 GNC Show of Strength, 2nd
2003 Dutch Grand Prix, 1st
2003 British Grand Prix, 1st
2004 Arnold Classic, 1st
2004 Mr. Olympia, 2nd
2005 Mr. Olympia, 2nd
2006 Austrian Grand Prix, 1st
2006 Romanian Grand Prix, 1st
2006 Dutch Grand Prix, 1st
2006 Mr. Olympia, 1st
2007 Mr. Olympia, 1st
2008 Mr. Olympia, 2nd
2009 Mr. Olympia, 1st
2010 Mr. Olympia, 1st
2011 Mr. Olympia, 2nd
2011 Sheru Classic, 2nd
2013 Mr. Olympia, 6th
Building Muscle After 50: Guidelines and Workout Program
Strength training, bodybuilding, and powerlifting are often seen as activities best suited to people in their 20s and 30s. And, let’s be frank, things like the size of your biceps, rock-hard abs, or your bench press one rep-max are a much bigger deal when you’re young.
Folks in their 50s are usually less interested in athletic performance or looking like a Greek god or goddess. Instead, they’re more focused on warding off middle-aged weight gain, managing their blood pressure and cholesterol, or avoiding the aches and pains that come with getting older.
However, not only is strength training still important as you age, it could actually help you live longer.
Forget about lifting weights to look good, although that’s still a benefit even with you’re in your 50s. Building muscle improves many aspects of your health and fitness, including pushing back the day of your funeral!
In this article, we reveal some of the biggest benefits of building muscle in your 50s, how to do it, and a program to follow. We’ll also answer your most common after-50 strength training questions.
The Benefits of Building Muscle After 50
Humans are, by nature, lazy. This is no bad thing because it’s this laziness and inherent drive to preserve energy that has led to most of the technological advancements and luxuries that we now take for granted.
We use mechanized transport instead of walking, mains water instead of drawing water from wells, electric lights instead of fire, and supermarkets instead of hunting and gathering. Life is, by and large, pretty easy.
However, that laziness means that many people are sedentary and struggle to find the motivation to exercise regularly. Because of this, it is critical to understand the benefits of working out.
Knowing the benefits will give you a greater reason to participate and stick to your workout routine. You’ll know WHY you are doing it, which can be a powerful motivator. The next time you are thinking of skipping a workout, just remind yourself of all the benefits you’ll be missing out on:
Muscle and strength preservation
Muscle mass naturally peaks in your mid-30s and declines by between 3-8% per decade after that. This muscle loss is called sarcopenia and helps explain why older people are usually far weaker than their younger counterparts. Age-related muscle loss can have a significant impact on many aspects of your life, from your ability to walk to your balance to being able to get out of bed to longevity (1). Muscle loss is also closely linked to poorer mental and physical health.
The good news is that regular strength training can slow this rate of muscle loss to a crawl, and you can also regain lost muscle at almost any age. Sure, building muscle is more challenging in your 50s than in your 20s and 30s, but you can still do it.
Easier weight management
As muscle mass tends to decline with age, fat mass increases (2). This is often called middle-aged spread, referring to the gradual expansion of the waistline. Losing muscle decreases your metabolic rate, and being less physically active means you are more likely to have a calorie surplus. All these factors contribute to weight gain.
Building muscle can help make it easier to maintain your weight or lose fat. Muscle is metabolically active tissue and uses more calories than fat. Preserving your muscle mass can help prevent the metabolic slowdown generally associated with advancing age.
Increased bone mass
Like your muscles, bone mass also decreases with age. This is called osteopenia, which, if ignored, can become osteoporosis, a medical condition characterized by weak, porous, fracture-prone bones.
When you strength train, your muscle pull on your tendons which, in turn, pull on your bones and the tissue surrounding them, called the periosteum. This stimulates the osteoblast cells, which are responsible for bone growth.
As your muscles get stronger, so too do your bones. Stronger bones are less prone to fractures. Broken hips are a leading cause of disability in older people (3).
Blood glucose management
While it’s normal for your blood glucose levels to rise and fall, chronically elevated blood glucose can have a significant impact on your long-term health. If unchecked, chronically high blood glucose can lead to:
Diabetes
Obesity
Kidney disease
Heart disease
Circulatory problems
Impaired immunity
Nerve damage
Blindness
Strength training improves your body’s ability to utilize glucose. After training, blood glucose is diverted to your muscles and liver, where it’s stored as glycogen (4).
Lifting weights also improves your insulin sensitivity, which is the hormone responsible for controlling your blood glucose. Better insulin sensitivity means your body can metabolize sugar and carbohydrates more easily.
Combined with a healthy, low-sugar diet, lifting weights can help manage or even prevent chronically elevated blood glucose.
More stable, mobile joints
Joint pain often goes hand-in-hand with getting older. Your knees, hips, and shoulders have seen a lot of use over the last five or more decades and will probably show some signs of wear and tear. Joint pain can be enough to put some people off working out.
However, building muscle can help reduce joint pain or prevent it from worsening. Stronger muscles help stabilize your joints, preventing unwanted movement and taking stress away from the bones. In addition, the stronger you are, the less challenging things like walking, lifting, and carrying become, which also helps reduce joint stress.
Many strength training exercises are also good for your mobility – the health and range of motion of your joints. They can also help reduce joint pain (5). Squats, lunges, pulldowns, and push-ups all enhance mobility as they build strength.
While you may need to adapt your workout according to your joint health, avoiding exercises you find uncomfortable, building muscle should have a very positive impact on how your joints feel and function. Joints typically weaken and stiffen from lack of use, and not because of exercise. If you want your joints to stay healthy, you need to use them.
Improved neurological function
If your muscles and bones are your body’s hardware, your nervous system is its software. Lifting weights has a powerful effect on your nervous system and will improve how it functions. The neurological benefits of strength training include better balance, improved coordination, and greater proprioception (7).
Improved neurological function will help you move better, making the day’s activities easier. You’ll also be less prone to falls, which are a serious cause for concern in older adults.
Better mental health
Leading on from the point above, building muscle isn’t just good for your muscles and bones but for the old brain box too! Regular strength training can have a profound effect on many aspects of mental health, including:
Better memory
Improved creativity
Increased problem-solving ability
Lower risk of depression
Reduced anxiety and stress
More positive outlook
Lower risk of dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, etc.
Mental and physical health are closely related, and building muscle has a positive impact on both.
Better posture
Posture is the alignment of your joints. When you are in good posture, there is very little stress on your bones and muscles. However, poor posture is much harder on your muscles and joints and can even affect blood flow to your brain.
Regardless of age, lifting weights is one of the best ways to strengthen the muscles you use to maintain good posture. Exercises for the posterior chain (glutes, hamstrings, lower back), core, and upper back are crucial for fixing slouches and rounded shoulders.
Posture can deteriorate with age, which results in changes in your center of gravity and balance (6), leading to an increased risk of falling. You’ll look and feel younger and move better if your posture is good.
Improved cardiovascular fitness and health
If you want a stronger heart and healthier lungs, you must do cardio, right? While cardio is good for cardiovascular fitness and health, strength training is also beneficial. Lifting weights involves short periods of work followed by brief rests. This is basically interval training, which is a popular form of cardio.
Compound exercises like squats, bench presses, and bent-over rows engage multiple muscles, which, in turn, demand a lot of oxygen. This leads to an increase in heart and breathing rate despite not being a typical cardio workout.
While cardio training is rarely a bad idea, it’s reassuring to know that strength training is also good for your heart and lungs.
As you can see, building muscle is “big medicine,” even after your 50s. Use these benefits to motivate you to exercise regularly and consistently. Your efforts will pay off!
However, older exercisers should still check in with their primary physician before starting a new workout plan. This information is not meant to replace your doctor’s advice.
Guidelines for Building Muscle After 50
Now you know WHY you need to build muscle after 50, let’s move on to HOW to do it. Follow these guidelines to ensure you get the most benefits from the least amount of time and effort while making your workouts as safe as possible.
Build your workouts around compound exercises
Exercises come in two main “flavors,” compound and isolation. Compound exercises involve multiple muscles and joints working together, providing the biggest bang for your workout buck. Compound exercises also tend to be more functional, i.e., they mirror the demands of everyday life.
In contrast, isolation exercises are typically less functional and less efficient. You need to do a lot of isolation exercises to train your entire body compared to just 3-5 compound lifts.
That doesn’t mean isolation exercises are bad, but for the most productive workouts possible, most of your workout time should be spent on compound exercises.
Read more about the differences between compound and isolation exercises here.
Choose exercises you enjoy and tolerate well
Fitness experts love to argue about the best way to build muscle and strength. It gives us something to talk about over our post-training protein shakes! However, enjoyment and tolerance are the real determinants of what makes a good exercise, at least for those in their 50s.
Enjoyable exercises leave you wanting to come back for more and not dreading your next workout. However, those exercises should also suit your body and not cause unnecessary discomfort and pain.
So, if you hate bench presses because they hurt your shoulders, do something else instead. Even if it isn’t the so-called “best” exercise, sticking to what you enjoy and can tolerate means you are more likely to work out consistently, and that’s what really matters.
Do at least ten sets per muscle group per week
While you don’t need to do a lot of long workouts to build muscle in your 50s, you need to do enough to produce the desired results. According to science, that means doing at least ten sets per muscle group per week but less than 20 (9).
You can spread these sets across several workouts using a split routine where you train different muscles on different days or, more efficiently, using full-body workouts.
Doing at least ten sets per muscle per week will ensure you get the desired results. And while you can do more, there is a point of diminishing returns, and subsequent improvements will be less significant. More work will also be harder to recover from, which could affect workout intensity or frequency.
Lift weights 2-4 times a week
You don’t have to go to the gym every day to build muscle in your 50s. In fact, 2-4 workouts per week work best for most people. This provides a good balance between working out and time for rest.
As you hit your 50s and beyond, your body takes longer to recover from bouts of intense exercise, and training before you are recovered could harm your progress. In many cases, working out less and not more often is the best approach.
So, there is no need to become a gym addict in your quest to build muscle. Anywhere from 2-4 workouts per week will get the job done.
Train with lighter weights for higher reps
According to bodybuilding lore, building muscle involves lifting moderate to heavy weights for 6-12 reps per set. While undeniably effective, this type of training can be hard on your joints and may not be appropriate when you’re in your 50s.
However, research suggests you can build muscle with light weights and high reps, provided you take your sets to within a couple of reps of failure (10). So, instead of hoisting 50-pound dumbbells, you can use the 20-pounders and get similar results.
This is also good news if you have high blood pressure, osteoarthritis, or any other condition that may preclude you from lifting heavy weights.
Warm up like a pro
Like a classic car, your mature muscles and joints need extra care to avoid breaking down. This means warming up is critical if you want to prevent injuries. You don’t need to spend all day on your warm-up, but you should dedicate 10-20 minutes to getting your body ready to train.
A general warm-up consists of some light cardio followed by dynamic mobility and flexibility exercises for the muscles and joints you’re about to use. Depending on how you feel and your injury history, you may also need some dedicated foam rolling or movement prep exercises to work out the kinks. Time spent warming up is seldom wasted.
You can read more about warming up for strength training here.
Prioritize mobility and flexibility
In addition to losing strength as you age, older muscles and joints tend to be stiffer and less mobile. This can make some exercises hard or even impossible and affect how you move. The more sedentary you are, the more likely you are to be stiff and immobile.
However, like muscle mass and strength, you can win back lost flexibility and mobility at almost any age. You’ll look and feel younger if you are supple and move with ease instead of creaking about from place to place!
So, prioritize mobility and flexibility. Don’t just stretch on the days you work out. Instead, stretch every day to keep your muscles and joints flexible and mobile.
Check out our stretching archives for more information.
Consistency is king
Sadly, you cannot store fitness. While a couple of missed workouts won’t hurt, more than two weeks off training will cause noticeable decreases in strength and muscle mass. Staying away from the gym for several months could mean losing all your hard-won gains entirely.
As such, consistency is the byword for successful muscle building after 50. You need to keep showing up, and only illness and injury should keep you from your workout plan.
The good news is that even a couple of short workouts per week can preserve your existing muscle mass, so doing something will always be better than nothing.
Look for ways to make your workouts as consistent as possible. You’ll find a host of handy tips here.
Respect your body’s need for rest and recovery
Do you remember when you could party all night and work all day without missing a beat? Well, those days are gone! Now you are older, your body needs more time for rest and recovery, and you need to accept that your progress depends on more than just your workouts.
Make sure you get a good 7-9 hours of sleep per night, and also take days off from exercise to give your body the extra time it needs to recuperate. You are not being lazy; you’re merely respecting your body’s increased need for rest.
Pump up the protein
Protein Sources
Building muscle requires a slight caloric surplus and a diet rich in nutrients. However, arguably the most important thing you need is adequate protein.
Protein foods like eggs, chicken, fish, legumes, soy, nuts, etc., contain amino acids, which are the building blocks of life. Amino acids are constantly being broken down and used in your body. Ideally, your intake should exceed what’s being used, putting you into a positive protein balance. However, consuming too little protein means that breakdown will exceed rebuilding, which will limit muscle gain, and could even hasten muscle loss.
Make sure you consume adequate protein so your body always has enough of the materials it needs to repair and build muscle. This usually means about one gram per pound of body weight, but you can get a more accurate protein intake recommendation here.
Don’t just lift weights
As essential as strength training and muscle-building are, they’re only part of the total fitness and longevity equation. If you want to live a long, strong, healthy life, you should balance your strength workouts with cardio and activities that enhance brain health. Vegging out in front of the TV all night will probably NOT extend your life.
Examples of other complementary activities include:
Walking and hiking
Swimming
Cycling
Traveling
Learning new skills, e.g., a language or musical instrument
Artistic or creative activities
Reading
Journaling
Socializing
Most stimulating activities will help ward off the aging process. What you do doesn’t even have to be hard – it just needs to engage your body and brain.
Accept your limitations
While building muscle and strength training are something of a fountain of youth, they can’t hold back the aging process indefinitely, and some decline is unavoidable. Your body changes as it gets older, and so too do your physical abilities. Trying to train as you did in your 20s and 30s is a recipe for injury and heartache. So, shift your sights and accept that you may be unable to do everything you want. Take it from one who knows; this can be a bitter pill to swallow, but there are plenty of things you can still do, including building muscle.
Focus less on what you used to do and more on what you can and want to do in the future.
Start slow, build momentum, and then keep going
If you are new to exercise, the last thing you should do is dive head-first into an intense workout program. Doing too much too soon is a great way to end up sore, injured, and frustrated.
So, start with a program you can complete relatively easily, and gradually increase the workload as your body gets used to exercising regularly. Build up over several months to drive your fitness and strength forward and upward. Getting in shape is a marathon and not a sprint.
Try to make your workouts as automatic as possible. In other words, make them fit your lifestyle so you don’t have to think too hard to do them. For example, exercise immediately after work on the way home to save you from having to go back out. Make this your routine 3-4 days a week. Or, set up a home gym and do your workout on rising.
As we said before, consistency is king, and you’ll get much better results if you create a workout plan you can stick to. Not for a week or a month, but for many years to come.
Building Muscle After 50 Workout
You now have all the information you need to write your own after 50 muscle-building workout. However, to save you the time and effort, we’ve designed one for you.
This is a full-body program you can do 2-3 times per week on non-consecutive days, e.g., Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. This will allow you to accumulate the recommended ten+ sets per muscle group per week.
The exercises are 50+ friendly and should build muscle and enhance function without compromising your joints.
Do this work out for the next 2-3 months and then progress to a more challenging plan when you feel you are able – such as this one. As mentioned above, make sure you precede your workouts with a thorough warm-up.
Building Muscle After 50 – FAQs
Do you have a question about building muscle after 50? No problem, because we’ve got the answers!
1. How much muscle can you build after 50?
How much muscle you can build after 50 depends on several variables, including your current level of muscularity, body type, training history, diet, motivation, and dedication. For example, novices who are a long way from their genetic potential will probably build more new muscle than a more experienced lifter who is already quite muscular.
So, rather than trying to predict how much muscle you can build after 50, focus more on actually doing it. That’s the only way to discover the answer to this question.
2. What is the best diet for people in their 50s?
Ultimately, the best diet for building muscle AND being healthy in your 50s is the one that provides your body with all the nutrients and calories you need, is based on clean or natural foods, and that you enjoy. This means there are lots of different eating plans you can choose from.
However, many experts believe the heart-friendly Mediterranean diet is one of the healthiest. It’s often linked to a long, disease-free life.
3. Can I change any of the exercises in the after-50 muscle-building workout?
While we have carefully chosen the exercises in the after-50 muscle-building workout, you are free to change them if necessary. For example, you could do single-arm dumbbell rows instead of cable rows or push-ups instead of dumbbell bench presses.
However, if you do make changes, ensure that you use similar exercises to keep the program balanced.
4. Can I do the after-50 muscle-building workout every day?
The after-50 muscle-building workout is a full-body plan meaning it trains all your major muscle groups in a single session. Doing it every day would not give you enough recovery time between workouts.
It’s generally accepted that a muscle group takes 48-72 hours to recover from training, so an every-other-day approach is best. If you want to work out every day, you should do cardio on the days between strength workouts or adopt a different training split.
However, older exercisers usually benefit from at least a couple of complete rest days per week, as the recovery rate may be slower.
5. What weights should I use in the after-50 muscle-building workout?
Unfortunately, only you can answer this question. You’ll need to experiment to find a weight that takes your muscles close to failure within 12-20 reps. If you can’t do 12 reps, the load is too heavy, but it’s too light if you can do more than 20. Pick a weight that keeps you in the 12 to 20-rep sweet spot.
However, don’t panic if you occasionally fall outside of this range. Providing you reach failure, it’ll still be productive. It’s just that 12-20 provides a nice balance between weight and time efficiency.
6. Are there any supplements that will help me build muscle in my 50s?
Contrary to what some nutrition companies want you to believe, you can build muscle without supplements. Provided you train hard and eat right, your muscles will grow. Supplements are a relatively recent invention, yet people have gained muscle for thousands of years!
That said, there are a few substances that may help you gain muscle more quickly, either by providing your body with more of what it needs to grow, increasing workout intensity and/or duration, or accelerating recovery.
Useful supplements include:
7. Can I keep lifting weights in my 60s and beyond?
You can and should continue lifting weights for as many years as possible. Your body operates on a system of “use it or lose it,” and if you stop training, your muscles will gradually weaken and shrink. After a few months, you’ll be right back where you started.
The only way to maintain your existing muscle mass, or at least reduce the rate of muscle loss, is to keep on hitting the gym like your life depends on it.
However, your workouts will undoubtedly change as you enter your 60s, 70s, and beyond, but that doesn’t mean you should stop challenging your muscles and working hard.
You don’t stop exercising because you get old; you get old because you stop exercising!
Building Muscle After 50 – Closing Thoughts
You can build muscle at any age – even your 50s and beyond. Yes, it IS harder, as the bodily processes that build muscle start to slow after your mid-30s. But with time, effort, and dedication, you can keep getting stronger and more muscular long past middle age.
In fact, many lifters continue performing incredible feats of strength despite their advancing years, such as Mark Felix, Nick Best, and Odd Haugen. And there are plenty of veteran bodybuilders who still pack plenty of muscle mass, despite being in their 50s and beyond, including Tom Platz, Dorian Yates, and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
While you may never recapture the strength and muscularity of your youth, you don’t have to be weak and skinny, either. Use the information in this article to keep making gains regardless of your age.
References:
Chang SF, Lin PL. Systematic Literature Review and Meta-Analysis of the Association of Sarcopenia With Mortality. Worldviews Evid Based Nurs. 2016 Apr;13(2):153-62. doi: 10.1111/wvn.12147. Epub 2016 Feb 4. PMID: 26844538.
Hiol AN, von Hurst PR, Conlon CA, Mugridge O, Beck KL. Body composition associations with muscle strength in older adults living in Auckland, New Zealand. PLoS One. 2021 May 28;16(5):e0250439. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0250439. PMID: 34048458; PMCID: PMC8162602.
Massini DA, Nedog FH, de Oliveira TP, Almeida TAF, Santana CAA, Neiva CM, Macedo AG, Castro EA, Espada MC, Santos FJ, Pessôa Filho DM. The Effect of Resistance Training on Bone Mineral Density in Older Adults: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Healthcare (Basel). 2022 Jun 17;10(6):1129. doi: 10.3390/healthcare10061129. PMID: 35742181; PMCID: PMC9222380.
Jiahao L, Jiajin L, Yifan L. Effects of resistance training on insulin sensitivity in the elderly: A meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. J Exerc Sci Fit. 2021 Oct;19(4):241-251. doi: 10.1016/j.jesf.2021.08.002. Epub 2021 Aug 19. PMID: 34552636; PMCID: PMC8429971.
Latham N, Liu CJ. Strength training in older adults: the benefits for osteoarthritis. Clin Geriatr Med. 2010 Aug;26(3):445-59. doi: 10.1016/j.cger.2010.03.006. PMID: 20699165; PMCID: PMC3606891.
Mayer F, Scharhag-Rosenberger F, Carlsohn A, Cassel M, Müller S, Scharhag J. The intensity and effects of strength training in the elderly. Dtsch Arztebl Int. 2011 May;108(21):359-64. doi: 10.3238/arztebl.2011.0359. Epub 2011 May 27. PMID: 21691559; PMCID: PMC3117172.
Lee IH, Park SY. Balance improvement by strength training for the elderly. J Phys Ther Sci. 2013 Dec;25(12):1591-3. doi: 10.1589/jpts.25.1591. Epub 2014 Jan 8. PMID: 24409027; PMCID: PMC3885846.
Li Z, Peng X, Xiang W, Han J, Li K. The effect of resistance training on cognitive function in the older adults: a systematic review of randomized clinical trials. Aging Clin Exp Res. 2018 Nov;30(11):1259-1273. doi: 10.1007/s40520-018-0998-6. Epub 2018 Jul 13. PMID: 30006762.
Baz-Valle E, Fontes-Villalba M, Santos-Concejero J. Total Number of Sets as a Training Volume Quantification Method for Muscle Hypertrophy: A Systematic Review. J Strength Cond Res. 2021 Mar 1;35(3):870-878. doi: 10.1519/JSC.0000000000002776. PMID: 30063555.
Lasevicius T, Ugrinowitsch C, Schoenfeld BJ, Roschel H, Tavares LD, De Souza EO, Laurentino G, Tricoli V. Effects of different intensities of resistance training with equated volume load on muscle strength and hypertrophy. Eur J Sport Sci. 2018 Jul;18(6):772-780. doi: 10.1080/17461391.2018.1450898. Epub 2018 Mar 22. PMID: 29564973.
How to Gain Weight with A Fast Metabolism – The Best Strategies and Tips
With over 70% of the American population overweight or obese (1), a fast metabolism is often considered an enviable trait. People with a fast metabolism burn more calories at rest, which makes it harder for them to gain weight.
People with a fast metabolism can often eat whatever they want without getting fat (2).
However, a fast metabolism is a disadvantage for some people, especially those who want to gain muscle and build strength. These processes invariably require a caloric surplus, and a fast metabolism can make it hard to eat enough to recover and grow.
The good news is that, while it will take some work, it is entirely possible for someone with a fast metabolism to gain weight. We reveal the best strategies and tips.
Your metabolism is your ability to convert food into energy, and your basal metabolic rate, or BMR for short, is the number of calories your body needs per day to maintain your current weight at rest.
These two things are intrinsically linked, and the faster your metabolism is, the higher your BMR will be, too.
When you add your BMR to the number of additional calories you burn per day during planned and incidental physical activity, you get your Total Daily Energy Expenditure or TDEE.
Building muscle and getting stronger usually requires a calorie surplus. That means you must consume more calories than your TDEE. These surplus calories are used to fuel training, for muscle repair and growth, and for recovery. Recommended calorie surpluses vary from 300-500 calories for lean gaining to 1000 or more during a full-on bulk.
If you have a high BMR, eating enough food to create the necessary surplus can be hard. A lot of food you eat gets burnt by your overactive digestive system, leaving nothing left over for muscle growth.
This makes it much harder to gain weight and build mass.
While there is very little you can do about your fast metabolism, there are several strategies you can employ to make it less impactful so you can still gain weight. That said, people with a fast metabolism will sometimes still struggle to gain weight, which is why they’re often called hardgainers.
Does your metabolism burn hotter than a fiery furnace? Do you eat a lot but still find it hard to gain weight? Use these tips and strategies to gain weight despite your fast metabolism!
1. Track your food intake
A lot of people who struggle to gain weight fail to track their food intake. This means they have no idea if they are eating enough or have created a sufficient calorie surplus.
Food tracking used to be time-consuming and laborious. After weighing and measuring your foods, you had to look up the calorie values in a book, use a calculator to work out your intake, and then write everything down in a food diary. It was a DRAG!
Nowadays, you can use any number of apps and online resources to make the entire process quick and painless. What used to take hours now takes minutes, and you can even scan QR and barcodes to save you from having to input your foods manually.
If you are not in the habit of tracking your food intake, it’s time to start. After all, if you don’t know how many calories you’re eating, you’ll never know if you have the necessary surplus. You might think you’re eating enough to gain weight but, in reality, your calorie intake maybe falling short of what you need.
2. Increase your calorie surplus
Most nutritional advice suggests you need a 500-calorie-per-day surplus to gain weight. While that recommendation can work for people with a normal metabolism, it might not be sufficient for those with a high BMR.
So, increase your calorie intake to create a more significant surplus. For example, if 500 extra calories per day aren’t working, go for 750 or even 1000.
Going back to point #1, remember to track your food intake to ensure you really do have a calorie surplus. No surplus means no weight gain – period!
3. Eat more calorie-dense food
Some foods are more calorie-dense than others. Calorie density refers to the number of calories a food contains by weight or serving. Some people with fast metabolisms find it hard to eat enough food to create a calorie surplus. They may have small appetites or simply don’t have the time or means to eat enough food to gain weight.
One way around this problem is to build your meals around calorie-dense foods. Some of the best calorie-dense foods for weight gain include:
Bananas
Beans
Bread
Butter
Cheese
Chicken with the skin left on
Desserts
Full-fat yogurt
Ice cream
Mayonnaise
Nuts and seeds
Oily fish
Olive oil
Pasta
Peanut butter
Potatoes
Red meat
Rice
Sour cream
Whole milk
Including these foods in your meals or eating them as snacks will naturally increase your daily caloric intake. You still need to eat an abundance of fruit and vegetables for good health, but make sure higher-calorie foods are your nutritional mainstay.
4. Consume more liquid calories
Some people find it hard to eat enough calories. They feel full after a few mouthfuls of food and cannot chow down the vast volume of food needed to gain weight. Even high-calorie foods are too filling.
Consuming at least some of your calories in liquid form is the perfect solution. Liquids are less filling than solids, allowing you to consume more calories with less effort.
You can drink a commercial weight gainer or, probably healthier, whip up your own. Here’s an example recipe for a liquid meal that contains about 750 calories:
2 scoops protein powder
1 cup rolled oats
2 tablespoons peanut butter
2 tablespoons honey or maple syrup
1 cup of dairy or non-dairy milk
1 ripe banana
Dump all the ingredients in a blender and blitz on high speed for 30-60 seconds and consume immediately. Add some water if you prefer a thinner shake.
5. Eat more frequently
Most people find it easier to consume more calories by eating several medium-sized meals instead of a couple of big meals. This will help you feel less full. Unfortunately, eating so frequently means you’ll probably have to carry food with you. However, this doesn’t have to be too inconvenient if you prepare food in advance and use a cooler.
For example:
Breakfast – 6 eggs, 3 strips of bacon, toast, oatmeal, orange juice
Snack – ½ cup of mixed nuts and a banana
Lunch – pasta and chicken salad
Snack – protein bar and a large glass of full-fat milk
Dinner – steak, baked potato with sour cream or butter, mixed vegetables, plus dessert
Snack – large bowl of full-fat yogurt with chopped nuts, strawberries, and honey
While this is still a lot of food, eating every 2-3 hours will make hitting your calorie intake goal more manageable.
Try also find calorie breakdown per meal
6. It’s okay to eat junk food now and then
Junk food is notoriously high in calories, and most of those calories come from fat, refined sugars, and processed carbs. While junk food is one of the reasons that 70% of adults and kids are overweight and obese, it can also help someone with a fast metabolism gain weight.
After all, what’s got more calories: a grilled chicken breast and salad or a pizza?!
While most of your meals should be nutritionally balanced and healthy, eating junk food from time to time will make it easier to consume the calories you need to gain weight.
So, where most dieters allow themselves a cheat meal occasionally, someone with a fast metabolism can probably afford 4-5 cheat meals each week. However, the rest of your diet should be clean and healthy.
7. Get more sleep
Too little sleep can undermine your weight gain efforts in several ways. Firstly, your caloric expenditure is lower when you’re asleep than awake. Your body “powers down,” saving valuable energy.
Secondly, if you are awake, you are more likely to move around and waste energy on otherwise avoidable physical activity.
Finally, not getting enough sleep can raise your stress levels. Stress can make you less hungry, revs up your metabolism with adrenaline, and interferes with various metabolic processes, including muscle building. Needless to say, if you want to gain weight, more sleep and less stress are a must.
So, get more sleep – 7-9 hours is about right for most people; not just at the weekend, but weekdays, too.
Read more about the importance of sleep for muscle gain here.
People with a fast metabolism not only need to eat more, but they should also try to move less to protect their hard-eaten calorie surplus. This means limiting non-training physical activity as much as possible.
As famous Australian strength coach Ian King likes to say:
Don’t run when you can walk
Don’t walk when you can ride
Don’t stand when you can sit
Don’t sit when you can lie down!
In simple terms, hard-gaining fast metabolizers need to learn to be lazy. That means no pick-up games of basketball, no unnecessary cardio, and no long walks in the moonlight…try to reduce non-training physical activity to the minimum. Instead, save your energy for gaining weight.
9. Train hard, train heavy, and go home!
Hardgainers with a fast metabolism only have a limited amount of energy for training. Long, very frequent workouts use the calories that should be reserved for gaining weight. The more you train, the more you’ll need to eat, and as you know, that’s not always easy or practical.
Avoid draining your calorie bank and undoing your surplus by keeping your workouts short, infrequent, and intense.
Aim to get in and out of the gym in 40-60 minutes, limiting your workouts to 3-4 sessions per week. Focus on big bang-for-your-buck compound exercises, and don’t do any more sets than you need to. As eight-time Mr. Olympia Lee Haney used to say, stimulate, don’t annihilate.
If you do cardio, just do a couple of 20-minute workouts per week, which will be enough to enhance your fitness and health without wasting too many valuable calories. However, you may even want to skip the bike or treadmill entirely if you still struggle to gain weight.
Related: Ectomorph Workout – The Skinny Guy’s Training Guide
10. Monitor your progress and adjust your diet and workout accordingly
If you don’t measure something, you cannot manage it, and the only way you make sure you are making progress is to hop on the scales and weigh yourself.
However, your body weight can fluctuate by several pounds each day, so you must weigh in at the same time and under the same conditions to determine if you are making progress. So, for example, if you weigh yourself after a big meal one day and then when your stomach is empty the next, your readings will not accurately reflect your results.
For consistency, make sure you weigh yourself at the same time each day. Set a schedule, e.g., every other day at 7am, and record your readings. Also, weigh yourself after you’ve been to the bathroom and naked or in your underwear so that you get the truest reading possible.
Even then, your weight may still fluctuate, so look for trends rather than day-to-day changes. So, providing your weight is trending upward, you don’t need to make any changes to your diet or exercise regimen.
However, suppose your weight remains unchanged for a week or more. In that case, your calorie surplus may be insufficient, so you need to eat more, exercise less, or use one of the other strategies in this article.
Gain Weight FAQs
Do you have a question about how to gain weight with a fast metabolism? No sweat because we’ve got the answers!
1. How many calories do I need to consume to gain weight?
To gain weight, you need to consume more calories than you burn, which is called your Total Daily Energy Expenditure, or TDEE, for short. Anything above this number is said to be a calorie surplus.
Depending on the speed of your metabolism and how fast you want to progress, you should be able to gain weight with a surplus of anywhere from 250 to 1000 calories a day. Start with a relatively small surplus and see how you go. If you aren’t seeing the results you want, increase the surplus by another 250 calories.
Once the scales are moving in the right direction, you can continue with the same caloric intake until you reach your body weight goal.
2. Do I have to count calories to gain weight?
While counting calories can make it easier to control your progress, you don’t have to do it to gain weight. After all, millions of people manage to gain weight who have never counted calories in their lives!
Suppose you aren’t currently gaining or losing weight. In that case, it’s safe to say your calorie intake is equal to your calorie expenditure. So, if you want to gain weight, you need to eat more to tip you into a positive energy balance.
Adding a 500-calorie meal or snack to your current diet should be enough to help you start gaining weight. For example, an average peanut butter and jelly sandwich contains 350 calories, so if you have one and a half servings, you’ll get a little over a 500-calorie surplus without weighing or measuring anything. Add more sandwiches if your weight gain stalls.
While this approach is less accurate, it can work and is ideal for those who prefer not to spend time weighing and tracking their food.
3. Can I just eat junk food to gain weight?
Junk food is invariably higher in calories than so-called clean foods. This makes them appeal if you want to gain weight. However, junk foods are also devoid of vitamins, minerals, and fiber and often contain ingredients that are unhealthy, such as artificial additives, chemical preservatives and colors, refined sugars, and trans fats.
So, while eating junk food is an easy way to get more calories, it could also harm your health.
While your progress may be slower if you mostly eat clean, and you’ll probably need to eat more food, going the non-junk food route will be better for your health in the long term. That said, the occasional slice of pizza, cheeseburger, candy bar, or bowl of ice cream won’t hurt you.
4. Will eating more make me gain fat or muscle?
Providing you are lifting weights regularly, you should gain both muscle and fat when in a calorie surplus. The amount of fat vs. muscle you gain depends on the size of your surplus and your muscle-building genetics.
If you feel like you are gaining fat too fast, you need to reduce the size of your calorie excess or train a little harder. However, most people with a fast metabolism tend to accumulate fat slowly and lose it quickly, too.
5. How fast can I gain weight?
Your rate of weight gain depends on several factors, including the size of your caloric surplus, how active you are, your age, and your dedication to training. As such, it’s impossible to say how quickly you will gain weight.
That said, we have a weight gain calculator that takes many of these things into consideration and estimates when you’ll reach your target body weight.
Enter all the variables to discover how long it will take to hit your goal weight.
6. Are there any dangers of trying to gain weight with a fast metabolism?
Gaining weight with a fast metabolism should be safe, providing you do it sensibly. This means you don’t force-feed yourself and mostly eat healthy foods. You should also avoid becoming overweight/overfat, which is bad for your health.
Monitor your blood pressure and body fat percentage to keep things as safe as possible. Speak to your doctor if you start to feel unwell.
7. I have a manual labor job and am active all day. Can I still gain weight?
Manual labor jobs can make it hard to gain weight because of the sheer number of calories you burn during your working day. For example, a 170-pound man can expect to burn anywhere from 1800 to 3000 calories in eight hours doing moderate to vigorous manual labor, e.g., digging, chopping wood, lifting and carrying, etc.
Needless to say, you’ll need to consider this high energy expenditure when determining your TDEE and calorie surplus. However, provided you eat enough, even the hardest working manual laborer should be able to gain weight. That said, you’ll need to prioritize your diet and avoid overdoing it in the gym.
Closing Thoughts
In many ways, a fast metabolism is something of a blessing. People with a fast metabolism don’t usually gain fat easily and are less likely to become overweight, even if they eat unhealthily. That said, that same high metabolism can make it hard to gain muscle and could mean you are skinnier than you want to be.
The good news is that it IS possible to gain weight with a high metabolism.
That said, people with a fast metabolic rate will need to pay extra attention to what they eat to ensure they create the calorie surplus necessary for weight gain. They may also need to dial back on their non-training physical activity. Other lifestyle interventions may also be required, such as getting more sleep, avoiding stress, and looking for additional ways to be less active.
If you’ve got a fast metabolism and want to gain weight, these are the sacrifices you’ll have to make to reach your body weight target. However, your hard work WILL pay off!
References:
National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases: Overweight & Obesity Statistics https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-statistics/overweight-obesity
Galgani J, Ravussin E. Energy metabolism, fuel selection, and body weight regulation. Int J Obes (Lond). 2008 Dec;32 Suppl 7(Suppl 7):S109-19. doi: 10.1038/ijo.2008.246. PMID: 19136979; PMCID: PMC2897177. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2897177/
How to Lose 10 Pounds in a Week – Four Proven Strategies
It’s generally best to lose weight slowly and steadily. Most experts agree that losing 1-2 pounds per week is optimal. That rate of weight loss is sustainable and not too hard to achieve. You won’t need to starve yourself or exercise to exhaustion.
But, while a slow rate of weight loss is generally best, there may be times when you want to lose weight faster. For example, you may have entered a powerlifting or martial arts contest and need to be a certain weight to compete. Or, perhaps, you have a big school reunion coming up, and you’re desperate to fit into your old high school cheerleading outfit.
It’s usually best to plan for these things well in advance so you don’t have to rush to lose weight. However, life has an annoying way of derailing the best-laid plans, and an event you thought was months away can arrive far sooner than you expected.
In this article, we reveal the four best strategies for losing ten pounds in a week.
The Realities of Losing Ten Pounds in A Week
Before you begin your attempt to lose ten pounds in seven days, make sure you understand the realities of what you are trying to achieve:
A lot of the weight lost won’t be fat
Your body weight is made up of several different components, including muscle tissue, internal organs, bones, skin, fluids, minerals, and fat. When most people talk about weight loss, what they actually want is fat loss.
However, the chances of losing ten pounds of fat in a single week are very low. You’d have to eat next to nothing and exercise for several hours a day to burn the 35,000 calories that ten pounds of fat contain.
So, a large proportion of the ten pounds you lose will be water weight. Water is heavy, and one liter weighs a little over two pounds. Shedding water weight is relatively easy, especially compared to fat loss.
You can and will lose fat in a week, but a significant percentage of your ten-pound weight loss will be water.
You’ll almost certainly regain some of the weight you lost
Losing ten pounds in a week will result in temporary weight loss. Once you return to eating and drinking normally, you’ll regain at least half of what you have lost. It’s very unlikely that you’ll be able to sustain your new weight for more than a day or two.
As such, you should time your efforts so you hit your lowest weight on the day you need to be ten pounds lighter, e.g., the day of your weigh-in if you are cutting weight for a sporting event.
Such rapid weight loss is unsustainable
Just because you can lose ten pounds one week doesn’t mean you’ll be able to lose another ten pounds the next. Such dramatic weight loss is unsustainable. Trying to lose another ten pounds in such quick succession could be dangerous. A slower, more consistent approach to weight loss approach is usually best.
Losing ten pounds in a week could be unhealthy or even dangerous
You’re going to have to exercise and diet hard to lose ten pounds in a week. You’ll also have to manipulate your water levels to reach your ten-pound weight loss goal. Invariably, this will cause dehydration and may even lead to electrolyte imbalances which can affect muscle contractions and even your heart.
Athletes use these strategies all the time to compete within their chosen weight categories, but they also accept there are risks to losing so much weight this quickly.
This is not going to be fun!
Losing ten pounds in a week is going to take effort and determination. You’re going to feel tired, hungry, and possibly unwell. You may not sleep well, and you’ll probably feel moody or anxious.
So, before you begin, ask yourself if the result will be worth it. In all but a few cases, slow and steady weight loss is best.
Four Strategies for Losing Ten Pounds in a Week
While there are no guarantees of success, these are the strategies you need to use to lose ten pounds in a week. The more of them you implement, the more likely you are to reach your weight loss target.
Create a significant daily calorie deficit
While much of the weight you lose over the next seven days will be water, some of it will be fat. That is, providing you eat fewer calories and force your body to burn fat for energy. For every pound of fat you want to lose, you’ll need to burn 3,500 calories more than you consume.
For most people, a 1000-calorie-per-day deficit is realistic and sustainable. This will invariably mean slashing your food intake, but that’s the price you have to pay to lose weight fast.
To determine how many calories you need to consume a day, you need to:
Estimate your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE) using this calculator.
Subtract 1000 calories from that number.
Track your meals and consume that number of calories over the coming week.
Increase your caloric expenditure
Eating less is only part of the weight loss and fat-burning equation. You’ll lose weight faster if you increase your caloric expenditure and create an even more significant calorie deficit.
It doesn’t matter what you do to burn calories, but you should aim to expend an additional 1000 calories per day through exercise and non-exercise physical activity. While this might sound daunting, it probably adds up to an hour of exercise plus a couple of hours of walking, gardening, household chores, and general purposeful movement.
Combined with your 1000-calorie dietary deficit, burning an extra 1000 calories a day should result in losing about four pounds of fat in seven days.
Learn how to burn an extra 1000 calories per day here.
Cut your carb intake to less than 50 grams a day
Low-carb diets aren’t necessarily better for fat loss than a more balanced diet. However, they are good for weight loss. Most dieters lose several pounds during the first week of a low-carb diet.
When you cut carbs from your diet, your body has to use stored muscle glycogen for energy. Glycogen is glucose bound to water molecules. As your body converts the glycogen into glucose, it releases the water, which you then excrete. Eliminating this water from your muscles will lead to rapid weight loss.
How much you’ll lose depends on the size of your glycogen stores. However, low-carb dieters often lose 3-5 pounds within the first week.
However, getting your carb intake to below 50 grams per day won’t be easy, and it means you will have to eliminate many nutritional staples from your diet.
Foods to avoid at this time include:
Bread
Rice
Pasta
Potatoes
Cereals
Sugar
Junk food, including candy, soda, chips, etc.
Most fruit
Instead, your meals will need to be built around proteins and fats. The good news is that foods high in protein and fat are very filling. Good options include red meat, fish, eggs, and full-fat dairy. You can also eat plenty of leafy green vegetables and other low-carb plant foods.
Do a water cut
The above strategies should get you close to losing ten pounds in a week. That said, if you want to be certain to hit or even exceed that goal, you may want to try a water cut. This is the process of ridding your body of excess water.
However, this is also the riskiest weight loss strategy, so only do it if you are determined to lose ten pounds in one week.
This is how you do a water cut:
Day 1 & 2 – consume one gallon of water per day (normal water intake)
Day 3 & 4 – consume two gallons of water per day
Day 5 – consume one gallon of water
Day 6 – consume half a gallon of water
Day 7 – time to weigh yourself; you should now be at your target weight
So, how does this method work? Good question!
When you initially increase your water intake, your body starts flushing out the excess, and you’ll find yourself peeing more than usual. But as you lower your water intake from day five onward, your body continues to expel water at an accelerated rate, despite drinking less.
This creates a negative water balance, where you are excreting more than you consume, leading to significant weight loss.
Of course, you’ll regain all that water weight when you start drinking normally again. But, your weight should be at its lowest on the morning of day seven.
You can also sweat off a few extra pounds by working out or hitting the sauna. However, this should be unnecessary if you have done your water cut correctly.
Losing ten pounds in a week is usually easier than keeping that weight off. Dehydration, a high exercise volume, and a very strict, low-calorie, low-carb diet are unsustainable. Your weight will quickly return to normal as soon as you stop doing these things.
You may be able to avoid fat regain if you continue to eat and exercise sensibly, but you’ll soon rehydrate when you start drinking normally. For these reasons, slow and steady weight loss, where you drop 1-2 pounds per week, is usually the recommended approach.
A Better Way to Lose Weight and Keep It Off
If the idea of working so hard to lose ten pounds in a week, only to regain it soon after, is unappealing, you should consider a more conservative approach to fat loss and weight management.
The best strategies for easy, sustainable weight loss include:
Create a modest calorie deficit
There is no need to starve yourself to lose weight when you have more than a week to reach your weight loss target. A deficit of 500 calories per day should be sufficient for most people.
Ways to do this include:
Reducing meal size
Cutting out sweets and snacks
Using low-calorie ingredients
Adopting a low-fat diet
Skipping meals (intermittent fasting)
Choose a sustainable diet
Extreme diets are almost impossible to stick to for more than a few days. Hunger and cravings will invariably wear down your willpower, and it’s only a matter of time before you cheat or quit your diet entirely.
So, pick a diet you know you can stick to and that you’ll enjoy. After all, food should be one of life’s pleasures and not only a source of energy and nutrients.
Track your food intake and progress
If you don’t measure something, you can’t manage it. So, start using an app to analyze your food intake to make sure you are hitting the required caloric deficit. Also, track your weight to make sure you are achieving the results you want.
If your weight isn’t changing, you may need to increase your deficit slightly or do a little more exercise.
Exercise moderately and regularly
Super long and ultra-intense workouts make great social media posts but are usually impractical for the average exerciser. Very few of us have the time or energy to work out for several hours a day.
So, instead of training like a pro athlete, commit to working out 3-4 times a week for 40-60 minutes each time. This should be doable for most people and sufficient to enhance your weight loss efforts.
Combine strength training with cardio
While all exercise is good for weight loss, you’ll probably get better results by combining cardio and strength training. Cardio burns calories, while lifting weights will help preserve your muscle mass and maintain your metabolic rate.
Many people fall into the trap of doing nothing but cardio to lose weight, but this is a mistake. While cardio does burn fat and calories, it can also cause muscle loss. Losing muscle makes it harder to lose weight and keep it off, and you could end up “skinny fat,” where you look slim, but your body is soft and weak.
Combining strength and cardio training is like one plus one equals three!
Increase your NEPA
Woman Looking After Plants
NEPA is short for non-exercise physical activity and is one of the most powerful things you can do to lose weight and keep it off. Examples of NEPA include:
Anything that gets you up off your butt and moving counts as NEPA and burns calories for faster, easier weight loss. Look for ways to inject more NEPA into your day. NEPA often registers as “steps” on activity-tracking apps and watches. Try to clock up 10,000-15,000 steps a day for best results.
Be patient!
Weight loss of a pound or less per week might not sound impressive but lose that amount weekly for several months, and you’re looking at a significant change in your body composition.
You could look like a whole new person in less than a year!
Not only is a slower rate of weight loss sustainable for longer, but it will also be easier to keep it off.
In contrast, rapid weight loss is invariably followed by rapid weight regain. This phenomenon gives rise to the term “yo-yo dieting,” where your body weight goes down only to rebound back up soon afterward.
So, be patient and don’t try and lose weight too fast. In almost every instance, slow and steady wins the fat loss race.
How to Lose 10 Pounds – FAQs
Do you have a question about losing ten pounds in a week or weight loss in general? No worries, because we’ve got the answer!
1. What is the best diet for rapid weight loss?
It really doesn’t matter what diet you follow when trying to lose weight fast. The most critical thing is to create a significant calorie deficit, so your body is forced to burn fat for fuel. Ideally, you should limit your calorie intake to 1000 calories below maintenance.
That said, the very low-carb keto diet may be beneficial because it promotes glycogen depletion, which hastens water and weight loss.
However, any diet that keeps you in a calorie deficit will work, so choose an eating plan that fits your lifestyle and food preferences.
2. Can I have cheat meals while trying to lose ten pounds in a week?
If you feel you need cheat meals during a one-week diet, you probably don’t have the right mindset for this weight loss challenge. Cheat meals during such a short diet will almost certainly derail your progress and undermine your results.
Surely you can tough it out for a week and just stick to the plan?!
Losing ten pounds in a week means committing to the process and ignoring cravings and hunger pangs. If you don’t think you can do this, you should look for a more conservative diet and resolve to losing weight more slowly.
3. How much weight will I regain at the end of the week?
Initially, most of the weight you regain at the end of your seven-day, ten pound-diet will be water. As such, you could gain as much as five pounds in a matter of hours. It all depends on how much hydrating fluid you consume after your water cut.
You will also regain fat if you start consuming above-maintenance calories. However, fat regain will probably be slower, especially if you eat sensibly and don’t binge. That said, you can avoid fat regain completely if your calorie intake remains equal to your calorie expenditure.
4. Is water cutting safe?
Water cuts are best described as safe-ish. The protocol outlined in this article is not especially extreme, and the risks are pretty low. Other water cuts lead to much more significant weight loss (20+ pounds in 24-48 hours) and are much more dangerous.
However, there is always a risk when manipulating your hydration levels, including dehydration, cramps, nausea, heart palpations, heat stroke, kidney problems, low blood pressure, confusion, unconsciousness, and death.
Consider these risks before embarking on any type of water cut.
5. What is the best workout for losing ten pounds in seven days?
The aim of exercise during a rapid weight loss diet is burning calories. Ideally, you want to burn about 1000 extra calories per day. Combined with your 1000-calorie deficit, this should result in about 4-5 pounds of fat loss in a week. The rest of your weight loss will be in the form of water.
So, it really doesn’t matter what type of exercise you do so long as you burn the required number of calories. You can do short-but-intense workouts or longer, more leisurely workouts – both can burn a similar number of calories.
Including strength training in your workouts is a good idea, as it can help preserve muscle mass and prevent atrophy. However, as you’ll only be dieting for one week, muscle loss should be minimal, provided you consume sufficient protein.
Related: Calorie Burning Calculators
You could even skip exercise altogether and just walk and be more active. However, this will entail a lot of movement and may be impractical if you have a sedentary job.
Most people get the best results by combining sensible daily workouts will reasonable amounts of general physical activity. However, be aware that, as the week progresses, you will probably start to feel tired and are going to fatigue more quickly. Make allowances for this in your workouts.
Related:
Closing Thoughts
It usually takes months or even years to gain weight and become overfat. Too much food and insufficient activity and exercise put you into a calorie surplus, and those unused calories are then converted to and stored as fat.
This is why most people tend to gain weight gradually over several years and not all at once.
However, despite slow weight gain being the norm, most people want to lose weight as fast as possible.
Unfortunately, while you CAN lose weight quickly, and dropping ten pounds in a week is entirely doable, rapid weight loss is seldom sustainable or enjoyable. Plus, rapid weight regain is practically unavoidable.
So, by all means, use the strategies in this article to lose ten pounds in seven days, but understand this weight loss will probably be temporary, and a slower, more conservative approach to weight loss will invariably be more successful.
How To Lose 15 Pounds in a Month: The Ultimate Guide to Transform Your Body and Boost Your Confidence
Everyone experiences undesired weight gain at some point in their life. Some people realize they have gained extra weight when they notice love handles poking through their favorite shirt; others have an epiphany when they have difficulty bending over to tie their shoelaces.
Whether you gain weight in your early teens or late 40s, it is usually because of the same reasons. Since the causes of weight gain are timeless, so are its remedies. Avoid reinventing the wheel every time you want to lose a few pounds.
Most people want to lose a lot of weight in a very short period. Ask a newbie about their transformation objective, and they will probably tell you they want to lose 15 pounds in a month.
Interestingly, most people quit their weight loss journey without achieving their goals. Setting unattainable goals is one of the most common reasons why most people never attain their transformation objectives. The lack of experience and guidance takes a close second and third.
Is it possible to lose 15 pounds in a month?
Yes, you can undoubtedly lose 15 pounds in 30 days. However, just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. Losing 15 pounds in 30 days without a plan and proper guidance can be a disaster and lead to health issues.
In this article, we’ll uncover the science of weight loss, discover if it’s safe to lose 15 pounds in 30 days, learn about the best ways and diet to lose fat quickly, and go over some of the most popular questions on this subject. We have a lot to cover. So, sit tight and read on.
How Weight Loss Works
Weight loss ultimately boils down to calories in vs. calories out. You must be in a calorie deficit to lose weight, meaning you must expend more calories in a day than you consume. Once you are in a calorie deficit, your body starts burning stored glycogen for fuel, leading to fat loss.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), cutting 500–1,000 calories from your daily diet can result in a weekly weight loss of 1–2 pounds. Staying in this range will keep your physique transformation journey gradual, steady, and sustainable. [1]
But how does restricting 500 calories a day lead to a 1-pound weekly weight loss?
Per the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), a pound of body fat comprises 3,500 calories. A shortfall of 500 daily calories results in a 3,500 calories weekly deficit (500 X 7), allowing you to lose a pound of body weight. [2]
That said, a pound of body fat does not equal a pound of body weight. However, several studies have shown that a 500 daily calorie cut results in a weekly weight loss of one pound, and hence, this is often used as a standard while designing a weight loss diet program. [3]
Per the CDC guidelines, restricting your daily caloric intake by 500–1,000 calories will result in a weight loss of 4–8 pounds. However, our objective here is to lose 15 pounds in a month.
How many calories do I need to cut to lose 15 pounds in a month?
In line with the CDC guidelines, you would need to cut approximately 1,875 daily calories to lose 15 pounds in a month.
Is Losing 15 Pounds in a Month Safe?
Is a 1,875 calories deficit possible? It depends on your current lifestyle. Folks coming off a bulking diet and eating upward of 4,000 calories daily might find it easy to cut approximately 2,000 calories from their diet. However, if you eat 2,000–2,500 calories daily, a 1,875-calorie deficit can lead to major health consequences.
Most people flock toward fad diets such as the boiled egg diet or the cabbage soup diet for quick weight loss results. However, most of these fad diets have no scientific evidence backing them and can lead to chronic health conditions as they significantly limit your nutrient sources and intake.
Contrary to what most people think, achieving a calorie deficit isn’t limited to restricting your food intake. You can also enter a calorie deficit by burning calories through exercising. Combining a low-calorie diet with a training program is the most effective way of losing 15 pounds in a month.
That said, maintaining a 1,875 calorie deficit is like walking a tightrope. You must consult a healthcare professional before starting a weight loss program, especially if you have an existing condition like diabetes, gallstones, or heart disease.
Factors That Determine If You Can Lose 15 Pounds in a Month
Buckle up for some truly mind-blowing revelations. Hold onto something sturdy while you still have time.
There is no guarantee that you’ll lose 15 pounds in 30 days, even after maintaining a 1,875 daily calorie deficit. You read that right. There are no guarantees here.
Weight loss works uniquely for different people. While your training partner might shed the desired 15 pounds in 28 days, it might take you more than a month. Many factors influence weight loss, including:
Genetics
Your genetic makeup dictates how your body reacts to your diet and training program. Some people will lose fat faster than others. Plus, some folks lose fat from a specific body group before the results replicate in other areas. For example, your training partner might lose fat first from his belly, whereas you might see the magic of your transformation program first on your face.
Your genetics will also determine where you store body fat. You must work around your genetics and design a training program that best suits your needs. Individuals that hold fat in the back of their upper arms should add arm exercises in their workouts to combat the bat wings and tone their guns.
Remember, your genetics might slow you down, but they will not stop you in your tracks. This is also why beginners must always track and assess their progress. Make necessary changes as soon as you discover you are not going in the right direction.
Related: Weight Loss Calculator
Experience
Training and dieting experience is one of the most undervalued aspects of a transformation journey. People that have undergone a physical transformation before experience faster results than newbies.
The quick results are the result of muscle memory. Plus, people that have done something before know what works for them and what doesn’t, saving them considerable time.
Newbies have no reason to hang their heads low. If you lack the experience to fast-track your transformation progress, you can hire a healthcare professional with a proven track record to help you achieve your goal.
Gender and Age
On average, men shed weight and build muscle mass faster than ladies. It is primarily because of testosterone — the male sex hormone. Females tend to store a greater amount of body fat in their lower bodies, whereas males hold it in their upper bodies.
Further, the essential body fat storage in men is 2–5% and 10–13% for the ladies; it is the amount of fat required to maintain life and reproductive functions.
The natural testosterone levels in both genders decline with age, which results in a higher body fat percentage. Weight loss also becomes more difficult with age.
Metabolism
Your metabolic rate plays a crucial role in your weight loss journey. A high metabolic rate helps you burn calories throughout the day, even when you are physically inactive. Men generally have a higher metabolic rate than women. Plus, your metabolic rate declines with age, making weight loss more complex as you grow older.
Use this basal metabolic rate (BMR) calculator to determine how many calories you need daily to maintain your basic body functioning. The BMR calculator uses your age, gender, weight, height, and body fat percentage (optional) to determine how many calories you burn throughout the day.
Regular exercise can help increase your muscle mass and burn body fat, which can help boost your metabolic rate.
According to a popular myth, eating small, frequent meals throughout the day can result in a faster metabolism. However, several studies have debunked this theory. According to a 2015 study, increasing meal frequency from three to six per day might increase hunger and the desire to eat. [4]
To lose fat, you should focus on staying in a calorie deficit instead of trying to tweak your metabolic rate. Find a meal plan that suits your lifestyle and works for you, and stick to it long-term for optimal results.
Training, Nutrition, and Recovery Program
Most people never achieve their transformation goal because of substandard training, nutrition, and recovery program. These folks follow a cookie-cutter transformation program designed for someone else, which delays their results and leads to muscle imbalances.
For instance, a 190-pound female trying to lose 15 pounds in a month will never find success following a transformation program made for a 185-pound male aiming to shed 8 pounds monthly.
Your diet, training, and recovery program must fit your lifestyle, preferences, and habits. You should refrain from making significant lifestyle changes during your weight loss journey. A night owl should resist the temptation to turn around his life overnight by signing up for an early morning CrossFit class. You must ease into your new transformation journey and focus on longevity.
Consistency
Consistency is the key to a successful weight loss program. Weight loss is complex and challenging. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. You must do everything right to make the needle budge in the right direction. A wrong step, and you will either hit a plateau or put the weight back on.
Plus, losing 15 pounds in a month is a hefty goal. You must do everything as per plan for these 30 days to maximize your chances of success. It means that you cannot miss a training session or meal or cut down on your recovery time.
A transformation program will test your determination, grit, and consistency. The longer a fitness program, the more challenging it is to stick to it. Furthermore, since losing 50 pounds in a month requires you to follow rapid weight-loss techniques, going off track can make the weight bounce back as quickly as you lost it.
How To Lose 15 Pounds in a Month
Sustaining a 1,875-calorie deficit requires you to make adjustments to your entire lifestyle. Although you could cut almost 2,000 calories from your diet just by eating less, it is not ideal. You must balance your training and diet plan to achieve your weight loss goal of shedding 15 pounds in a month.
Notably, folks that want to lose 15 pounds in a month have short-term objectives. These people don’t want to continue this weight loss program for several months. Hence, you must make quick and significant adjustments to your diet as soon as you begin your weight loss journey.
You must also get comfortable making significant lifestyle changes during this transformation program as you are racing against the clock. Thirty days is all you have; you’ve got to make every one of these days count.
Here are 18 changes you must make to your lifestyle to lose 15 pounds in a month:
Set a Realistic Goal
Most people never achieve their transformation objective because they bite on more than they can chew. To be honest, losing 15 pounds in a month is an ambitious goal too. Sustaining a 1,875-calorie deficit for 30 days is easier said than done.
If you do not have a specific reason to lose 15 pounds in a month, you should aim for a more realistic goal, such as shedding 8 pounds in 30 days. This goal aligns with the CDC weight loss recommendations and is relatively easy and safe to sustain over the long term.
Switch To a Low-Calorie Diet
Weight loss ultimately comes down to calories in vs. calories out. You must enter a calorie deficit to lose 15 pounds in a month. Depending on your current lifestyle, you can either adjust your current diet or switch to a new diet to help you achieve the deficit.
The keto and Mediterranean diets are a couple of popular diets that can help you lose weight, but more on these later in this article. Remember, you must choose a diet that fits your lifestyle. Going vegan might help a non-vegetarian significantly restrict his calorie intake, but it will be extremely hard to sustain if you’ve never tried it before. Always ease into a diet rather than switching to a radically different diet overnight.
Do More Cardio
Although exercising and cardio are not mandatory in a weight loss program, they can help you enter a calorie deficit. You could enter a calorie deficit by eating less, working out, or combining both. Using both options will speed up your weight loss progress.
Since your goal is to lose 15 pounds in a month, you must perform two daily cardio sessions to fast-track your results. The first cardio session should be a 30-45 minute low-intensity steady state (LISS) workout done on an empty stomach first thing in the morning. For the second cardio session, do a 15-20 minute high-intensity interval training (HIIT) workout in the evening.
HIIT workouts are an anaerobic form of training, meaning it relies on stored glycogen for fuel. On the other hand, LISS cardio is a form of aerobic exercise that relies on oxygen for energy production.
Weight Training
Most people leave gains on the table by restricting themselves to cardio workouts during a weight loss program. Resistance training can boost your weight loss results in multiple ways. It helps build muscle mass and tone your physique, improving your physique aesthetics.
Muscle mass is more metabolically active, meaning it burns more calories throughout the day than a pound of body fat [5]. Folks with a higher muscle mass will burn more calories throughout the day than folks with a high body fat percentage. Plus, weight training increases your metabolic rate, helping you burn calories even after your workouts when you are physically inactive.
Incorporate HIIT into Your Workouts
High-intensity interval training is one of the best ways to ramp up your weight loss progress. You shouldn’t limit HIIT to cardio. Perform a bodyweight HIIT circuit or incorporate this principle into your weight training workouts to maximize results.
Tabata, AMRAP, EMOM, ladders, and pyramids are a few popular forms of HIIT. Cycle between these HIIT protocols to keep your workout routine exciting and avoid hitting a plateau. You must also program progressive overload in your workout regimen to make consistent gains. Progressively overload your muscles by using heavier loads, increasing your training intensity or volume, or incorporating advanced training principles into your workouts, such as dropsets, supersets, and intraset stretching. [6]
Prioritize Recovery
You break muscle tissue while you are in the gym. Your muscles grow back bigger and stronger while you’re resting. Even if you do not hit the gym or train, you must give your body enough time to recover and undergo changes. The excess weight comes off your body while you’re asleep.
You must sleep for at least seven to eight hours each night for optimal results. Besides sleeping, you can also use nutritional supplements such as whey protein powders and BCAA to speed up your recovery. Massages, self-myofascial release, and cold and hot water therapy are other excellent methods of streamlining your recovery and boosting weight loss.
Eat Nutrient-Dense Foods
Consuming nutrient-dense whole foods will keep you feeling full for longer, reducing your risk of binging on junk food. Furthermore, nutrient-dense foods often have a low caloric content than processed or refined carbs. It allows you to consume a large volume of food without overshooting your daily caloric target, which can help promote satiety. [7]
Eating nutrient-dense foods also ensures that you meet your daily micronutrient needs, limiting the risk of nutrient deficiencies and promoting overall health and well-being. You must eat a balanced diet to meet your daily macronutrient needs. Switch to a high-protein, low-carb, low-fat diet to fast-track your weight loss and build muscle mass.
Limit Refined Carbs
Refined carbs sources such as white bread, white rice, sugary snacks, and sugary beverages have a high caloric content. Plus, they provide little to no nutritional value. Consuming refined carbs can significantly increase your daily calorie intake. However, since these are empty calories, refined carb sources won’t lead to satiety and might even lead to cravings. [8]
Your body digests refined carbs quickly, resulting in insulin and blood sugar level spikes, which can lead to energy crashes, cravings, and increased fat storage, hindering weight loss efforts. These food sources often lack essential nutrients and can hamper your metabolism.
Eat Fiber-Rich Foods
If your goal is to lose 15 pounds in a month, you must avoid binge eating. Fiber-rich foods are a godsend in this regard, as they keep you satiated throughout the day. High-fiber foods also take longer to digest. Additionally, fiber-rich foods, such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes, are low in calories than processed foods.
Eating high-fiber foods also improves your digestion and gut health. A healthy gut microbiome can lead to better weight management and a lower risk of obesity. Foods rich in fiber usually have a high water content, which increases their volume without adding to their calorie content.
Track Your Calories
Losing 15 pounds in 30 days requires you to adhere to a strict dieting regimen. Exceeding your calorie target, even on a few occasions, can disrupt your weight loss aspirations. The most effective way of staying below your calorie limits is to track your calories.
You could use a calorie tracking app, such as MyFitnessPal, to stay on top of your caloric intake. Most calorie-tracking apps have an extensive database of foods and recipes, making food logging easy and convenient. You can skip logging your meals after you’ve settled on a routine.
Tip: Calculate Your Daily Energy Expenditure
Increase Physical Activity
Contrary to what most people think, spending 30 to 45 minutes in the gym isn’t enough to lose 15 pounds in a month. Doing a cardio session early in the morning and sitting at your desk for the rest of the day puts you in the active, sedentary category.
You must program activities throughout your day to limit your risk of developing chronic health conditions associated with sitting for prolonged periods, including high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes. 9]
Walking more throughout the day is a convenient (but not easy) way to ensure you remain active. Beginners can set themselves a 5,000 daily step target and work their way up until they are walking 10,000 steps a day.
Drink a Lot of Water
Staying hydrated throughout the day can keep you satiated, lowering your chances of feasting on junk food. Plus, water is a calorie-free beverage, meaning it won’t add to your calorie bottom line. Drinking an adequate amount of water can also boost your metabolic rate. You must drink at least a gallon of water daily to ensure optional body functioning.
Drinking 500 ml of water 30 minutes before a meal can help limit your hunger. This technique has been shown to lead to greater weight loss in overweight or obese middle-aged and older adults. [10]
Try Fasting
Fasting is one of the most effective ways to enter a calorie deficit. Intermittent fasting is a popular fasting protocol involving cycling between fasting and feeding windows. The 16/8 intermittent fasting (IF) protocol is the most popular fasting method that requires you to fast for 16 hours a day and eat during an eight-hour window.
Unlike most other diets, intermittent fasting doesn’t dictate what you can and cannot eat. In an IF diet, you focus on eating at a particular time during the day. Among other things, fasting helps burn through your glycogen reserves and boost your metabolic rate, which can help you lose 15 pounds in a month. Beginners can start with more conservative IF protocols, such as the 14/10 method, whereas more experienced faster can try the OMAD (one meal a day) diet. [11]
Avoid Cheat Meals
A month is a relatively short period to lose 15 pounds. Although cheat meals have a time and a place, you must avoid them on this program. A cheat meal can put you in a calorie surplus. It is common for people to eat 1,000-2,000 excess calories during a cheat meal.
Offsetting these calories can take you an additional two to three days. Depending on your cheat meal, you could need to cut more than 1,875 calories from your daily diet to get back on track with your weight loss goals. Those serious about their transformation should refrain from eating cheat meals for four weeks.
Cut Out Alcohol
Alcohol is like a double agent. You think it is on your side, but it is scheming with your enemy (body fat) to disrupt all your plans. Alcohol contains a high sugar content; a gram of alcohol generally contains seven calories. Worse yet, these are empty calories that have no nutritional value.
Alcohol consumption increases your appetite and your chances of binging on junk food. It also leads to dehydration and poor sleep and slows down your metabolism. Alcohol does everything that you want to avoid on a weight loss program.
Read also: Alcohol and Muscle Growth – Alcohol Fat Burning.
Manage Your Stress Levels
Chronic stress leads to higher levels of cortisol in your body, which can increase appetite and cravings for unhealthy foods. High cortisol levels also lead to an increase in fat storage in your abdominal area.
Higher stress levels also increase your risk of emotional eating, which never ends well on a fat loss program. Chronic stress can also disrupt your sleep, which can hamper your recovery. Try meditation, yoga, and journaling to combat stress. You should seek professional help if these three methods don’t bring you relief. [12]
Track Your Progress
Since 30 days is a short period for losing 15 pounds, you must track your progress to ensure you are heading in the right direction. Recording your body weight and anthropometric measurement, keeping a workout journal, and taking photos of your physique are the most reliable ways to track your progress.
Remember, you don’t need to track your progress daily. Take your measurement on the same day at the same time every week and make necessary adjustments if you are unhappy with your progress.
Hire Professionals
Most people never achieve their weight loss goal because they follow a cookie-cutter transformation program. Each individual is unique. What might work for your training partner might not work for you. Ensure that you follow a customized training, diet, and recovery program for optimal results.
Seek a professional’s help if you don’t have experience designing a training and diet program. A personal trainer can give you a personalized training regimen, and a registered nutritionist can provide you with a diet plan that fits your lifestyle. Hiring a trainer and dietitian might cost you some money upfront, but it will pay dividends in the long run.
Diets To Help You Lose 15 Pounds in a Month
Although some people can get away with making adjustments to their current meals, others need to revamp their entire diet to lose 15 pounds in a month. If you fall in the latter category, given below are some diets that can help you achieve your weight loss goal. Pick the one that fits your lifestyle.
Keto
A ketogenic diet involves eating a very low amount of carbs and replacing them with fat, as it helps your body burn fat for energy. Studies show that high-fat diets are significantly more effective at helping you shed weight than low-fat diets [13]. Furthermore, a keto diet can improve your training performance as it results in better ATP production than a high-carb diet.
Here is a typical macronutrient split used in a keto diet:
Fats: 70-80%
Protein: 20-30%
Carbs: 5-10%
Next Read: What is Keto Diet? Benefits, Drawbacks, and Sample Meal Plan
Paleo
A Paleolithic diet includes eating whole, unprocessed foods, such as vegetables, nuts, seeds, and meat. The paleo diet involves eating like our ancestors. Studies have shown that a paleo diet can result in significant weight loss and reduce your risk of lifestyle diseases, such as obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. [14]
Check Out: Paleo Dieting: A Comprehensive Guide for Beginners
Mediterranean Diet
The Mediterranean diet revolves around eating foods traditionally eaten in the countries that border the Mediterranean Sea, including Portugal, coastal France, southern Spain, southern Italy, Crete, and much of Greece.
Dieters that eat a Mediterranean diet have lower risks of contracting heart disease and other common illnesses and diseases. These dieters generally live longer and are healthier than folks who eat a standard American or Western diet.
Also Read: What Is the Mediterranean Diet?
FAQs
Do I need to exercise to lose 15 pounds in a month?
No, working out is not mandatory on a weight loss program. That said, doing a couple of daily training sessions can speed up your weight loss progress by helping you enter a calorie deficit.
How long will it take for me to lose 15 pounds safely?
The CDC recommends limiting your daily deficit to 500-1,000 calories, which will help you lose 4–8 pounds safely and sustainably in a month. According to the CDC guidelines, it will take you 2–3 months to lose 15 pounds.
Will the weight I’ve lost come back if I return to my old habits after successfully completing my transformation journey?
Losing and keeping weight off requires lifestyle changes. If you return to your old habits right after achieving your weight loss goal, the weight will come back on just as quickly.
Note: The content on Fitness Volt is for informative purposes only. Do not take it as medical advice to diagnose, prevent, or treat health problems. If you’re suffering from a health issue, are pregnant, or are under 18 years old, you should consult your physician before starting any new supplement, nutrition, or fitness routine.
Wrapping Up
Losing 15 pounds in a month can feel overwhelming, which stops most people from taking their first step. You might not realize this, but you have already taken the first step in achieving your dream physique by choosing to read this article. So, congratulation on taking your first step toward your weight loss goal.
It is absolutely fine to experience self-doubt and frustration before starting to work toward such a big goal; we’ve all been there. Remember, you don’t need to follow all the 18 steps mentioned in this article to achieve your weight loss goals, and you don’t have to limit your transformation timeline to 30 days. Start with making a couple of adjustments to your lifestyle and take your time with your weight loss goal. The results will be worth it. Best of luck!
Related:
References
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Vasim I, Majeed CN, DeBoer MD. Intermittent Fasting and Metabolic Health. Nutrients. 2022 Jan 31;14(3):631. doi: 10.3390/nu14030631. PMID: 35276989; PMCID: PMC8839325.
Xenaki N, Bacopoulou F, Kokkinos A, Nicolaides NC, Chrousos GP, Darviri C. Impact of a stress management program on weight loss, mental health and lifestyle in adults with obesity: a randomized controlled trial. J Mol Biochem. 2018;7(2):78-84. Epub 2018 Oct 3. PMID: 30568922; PMCID: PMC6296480.
Giugliano D, Maiorino MI, Bellastella G, Esposito K. More sugar? No, thank you! The elusive nature of low carbohydrate diets. Endocrine. 2018 Sep;61(3):383-387. doi: 10.1007/s12020-018-1580-x. Epub 2018 Mar 19. PMID: 29556949.
Challa HJ, Bandlamudi M, Uppaluri KR. Paleolithic Diet. [Updated 2022 Jul 4]. In: StatPearls [Internet]. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing; 2023 Jan-. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK482457/
How Long Does Alcohol Stop Fat Burning?
Drinking alcohol is a popular pastime. A lot of people like to unwind at the end of the day with an alcoholic drink or two, and wine is a common accompaniment to meals. A beer with friends can often lead to a fun night out, and what celebration is complete without champagne?
Moderate alcohol consumption, i.e., 1-3 drinks a couple of times a week, is generally considered healthy. However, binge drinking or drinking too often is not. The list of the possible side effects of alcohol consumption is long and quite sobering – pardon the pun.
The risks of long-term and excessive drinking include:
Accidents and injuries
Alcohol dependence
Alcohol poisoning
Anxiety
Brain damage
Congenital disabilities
Dehydration
Dementia
Depression
Digestive problems
Heart disease
High blood pressure
Infertility
Liver disease
Malnutrition
Osteoporosis
Pancreatitis
Stroke
Various cancers, including mouth, throat, liver, and colon
Weakened immune system
Alcohol can also lead to weight gain and interfere with weight loss. Unfortunately, many dieters fail to appreciate just how much drinking can affect fat burning.
In this article, we discuss how alcohol makes it harder to burn fat and lose weight.
How Alcohol Affects Weight Loss
It’s easy to think that a couple of beers or glasses of wine won’t cause any harm. And, from a health perspective, that’s probably true. But even the occasional drink can make losing weight far harder than it needs to be.
Reasons for this include:
1. Alcoholic beverages contain a lot of calories
Protein contains four calories per gram, as do carbohydrates. Fat has nine calories per gram. Alcohol contains seven calories per gram, so close to double that of carbs and protein and only slightly less than fat.
As such, a couple of alcoholic drinks could easily wipe out your calorie deficit for the day, making weight loss slow, if not impossible.
Here is a chart showing the caloric value of some of the most popular alcoholic drinks. Bear in mind that these are standard bar measures, and people who drink at home may pour more generous amounts:
Beverage
Serving size
Calories
Beer
Beer (light)
12 oz (355 ml)
103
Beer (regular)
12 oz (355 ml)
153
Beer (strong)
12 oz (355 ml)
170 to 350
Distilled Alcohol
Gin
1.5 oz (45 ml)
116
Rum
1.5 oz (45 ml)
116
Vodka
1.5 oz (45 ml)
116
Whiskey
1.5 oz (45 ml)
116
Liqueurs
Coffee liqueur
1.5 oz (45 ml)
160
Coffee liqueur with cream
1.5 oz (45 ml)
154
Crème de menthe
1.5 oz (45 ml)
186
Mixed Drinks
Bloody Mary
4.6 oz (136 ml)
120
Cosmopolitan
2.75 oz (81 ml)
146
Daiquiri
2.7 oz (80 ml)
137
Highball
8 oz (235 ml)
110
Hot buttered rum
8 oz (235 ml)
292
Mai Tai
4.9 oz (145 ml)
306
Margarita
4 oz (120 ml)
168
Mimosa
4 oz (120 ml)
75
Mint Julep
4.5 oz (135 ml)
165
Mojito
6 oz (177 ml)
143
Pina colada
6.8 oz (200 ml)
526
Rum and Coke
8 oz (235 ml)
185
Tequila sunrise
6.8 oz (200 ml)
232
Vodka and tonic
7 oz (207 ml)
189
Whiskey sour
3 oz (89 ml)
125
White Russian
8 oz (235 ml)
568
Wine
Burgundy
5 oz (145 ml)
122
Cabernet Sauvignon
5 oz (145 ml)
122
Chardonnay
5 oz (145 ml)
128
Chenin Blanc
5 oz (145 ml)
129
Claret
5 oz (145 ml)
122
Dry dessert wine
3.5 oz (90 ml)
157
Merlot
5 oz (145 ml)
122
Muscat
5 oz (145 ml)
129
Pinot Grigio
5 oz (145 ml)
128
Pinot Noir
5 oz (145 ml)
121
Red dessert wine
3.5 oz (90 ml)
165
Red table wine
5 oz (145 ml)
125
Riesling
5 oz (145 ml)
129
Sauvignon Blanc
5 oz (145 ml)
128
White table wine
5 oz (145 ml)
128
Depending on your chosen beverage, “going out for drinks” could easily add up to several thousand additional calories, leading to weight gain rather than fat burning and weight loss.
2. Alcohol can contribute to belly fat
While it is impossible to spot-reduce fat from your abdomen, drinking alcohol can cause you to spot gain. Go to any bar, and you’re sure to see at least a few beer bellies.
Excess calories from alcohol have a nasty habit of migrating toward your stomach, even if the rest of your body is relatively slim. Belly fat is not just unsightly, but it’s a leading cause of diabetes, heart disease, gallbladder disease, and premature death (1).
A lot of exercisers want to lose belly fat but sabotage their progress by consuming too much alcohol. It’s almost impossible to get six-pack abs if you regularly put away a six-pack of beer, or any other alcoholic beverage, every night.
3. Alcohol makes it harder to make good nutritional decisions
Even a small amount of alcohol can impair your judgment, making good nutritional decisions harder to make. For example, if you have wine with dinner, you may also have a dessert when, sober, you would have sent the sweet trolley away.
While the occasional treat probably won’t hurt your weight loss too much, habitual cheating will wreak your diet and make it impossible to lose weight.
Alcohol can also cause carvings, especially for salty and savory food. A few drinks often lead to a bag of chips, a plate of French fries, a burger, or some other high-calorie indulgence.
Add the calories from your dietary slip-ups to the calories in the booze, and it’s easy to see why alcohol and dieting don’t make good bedfellows.
4. Alcohol can interfere with your workout routine
Eating less is only one part of the fat and weight loss equation. You also need to burn more calories, which most people do through exercise.
Drinking alcohol can rob you of the energy, motivation, and willpower you need to work out regularly and consistently. A night of drinking can make getting up the next day a challenge, let alone dragging your tired, hungover butt to the gym!
In addition, alcohol can interfere with muscle protein synthesis, or MPS for short (2). So, even if you DO manage to make it to the gym, your workouts will be less effective, and you won’t recover as well as you would if your body was alcohol-free.
Related: Does Alcohol Affect Muscle Growth?
5. Alcohol reduces sleep quality and duration
While alcohol can make you drowsy and even fall asleep quicker, the duration of quality of your sleep will probably be lower than usual (3).
As such, when you wake up, you’ll still feel tired. Feelings of tiredness can make it harder to stick to your diet and workout regimen. Your body will drive you to fuel up on fast-acting carbs because it needs energy and doesn’t care that you’re supposed to be on a diet and cutting down on sugar.
Alcohol-induced sleep deprivation, like anything else that stops you from getting a restful night of sleep, is not conducive to weight loss and fat burning. In fact, not getting enough sleep is often linked to weight gain (4).
6. Alcohol puts the brakes on fat burning
Your body views alcohol as a priority fuel and will burn it before using fat for energy. So, if you have a drink and have alcohol in your system, fat burning stops until all the alcohol is metabolized and used up (5).
The duration of this fat-burning stoppage depends on how much alcohol you have consumed, your body size and weight, and your gender.
However, it can take as long as 24-48 hours for fat metabolism to return to normal. During this time, you won’t be burning much, if any, fat for fuel, and your weight loss progress will grind to a halt.
Unfortunately, and contrary to many old wives’ tales, there is nothing you can do to make your body burn alcohol faster. Drinking lots of coffee or eating a meal to “soak up the alcohol” doesn’t work. You’ll just have to let nature (and your liver) take its course.
And if blocking fat burning wasn’t a big enough problem, during this time, your body also increases lipogenesis, which is the act of creating and storing more fat (6). Food consumed during this time is much more likely to be converted into and stored as fat.
So, no fat burning but increased fat storage – talk about a lose-lose situation!
In summary, consuming alcohol makes it harder to lose weight because:
It contains a lot of empty calories
It can lead to increases in belly fat
It makes it harder to make good nutritional decisions
It interferes with your workout routine
It reduces sleep quality and duration
It blocks fat burning
How To Drink Alcohol and Still Lose Weight
Even though drinking alcohol can interfere with fat burning and weight loss, it is still possible to reach your weight loss and body composition goals while sensibly enjoying alcohol.
Here are some tips on how to drink alcohol and still lose weight:
1. Drink in moderation
Small, occasional quantities of alcohol should not impact too greatly on weight loss. So, if you want to enjoy a drink or two a couple of times a week, there is probably no reason not to indulge. It’s generally best not to drink every day, and you should also avoid binge drinking.
However, you still need to account for the calories in your alcoholic beverages when calculating your calorie intake. You may have to forgo a snack to maintain a calorie deficit. Considering that a glass of wine contains about 150 calories, and a large beer has as many as 300, you may prefer to eat your calories instead of drinking them.
2. Choose lower-alcohol beverages
The lower the alcohol content of your drink, the shorter and less pronounced its fat-burning blocking effect will be. As such, you should avoid strong beers, fortified wines, and most cocktails. Instead, choose light beers and regular wine. Lower alcohol beverages will have less of a negative impact on your fat-burning efforts.
3. Avoid high-calorie mixers
In some instances, most of the calories in a drink come from a non-alcohol mixer rather than the alcoholic beverage itself. For example, many drinks also contain full-sugar Coke or lemonade, sweetened fruit juices, sugar syrups, or even cream.
Make sure your drinks contain as few high-calorie extras as possible. Ask for diet Coke in your vodka or rum, have soda water instead of lemonade, and skip the sweet or creamy cocktails.
4. Alternate alcoholic drinks with water
Nights out can involve consuming many alcoholic drinks over several hours. This can lead to consuming a large quantity of alcohol and a lot of calories. You can half your caloric intake simply by alternating between things like beer or wine and water.
Water is calorie-free, and halving your alcohol intake means you’ll imbibe far fewer calories. Diet sodas also have the same effect. Water is also hydrating and will help counter the dehydrating action of alcohol. The lower alcohol intake will also have a less detrimental effect on fat burning.
5. Be mindful of what you eat while drinking
Alcohol can increase your appetite. It causes your blood glucose levels to drop, making you feel hungry. Alcohol also tends to lower your inhibitions and willpower, making you more inclined to give in to that hunger. Cravings can be a problem, too.
So, be extra mindful of what you eat when you are drinking. Do your best not to give in to hunger and cravings. Combined with the calories from alcohol and its fat-burning blocking effect, breaking your diet will surely derail weight and fat loss.
6. Weigh up the pros and cons before drinking
Getting fit and losing weight involves making a lot of choices. You need to choose between going to the gym and staying at home watching Netflix, eating a salad or binging on pizza, and going to bed early or staying up all night playing Call of Duty.
Ultimately, it’s these decisions that determine your weight loss success.
In the same way, you can choose to drink or choose to abstain in the name of fitness and weight loss.
So, consider the pros and cons of drinking and decide if you want that beer or glass of wine. After a few minutes of contemplation, you may discover that you can do without a drink and would rather be lean and healthy instead.
FAQs
Do you have a question about alcohol and fat loss? No problem, because we’ve got the answers!
1. Will I lose weight if I quit drinking?
You will lose weight if you quit drinking if doing so creates a calorie deficit that forces your body to burn more fat for fuel.
For example, suppose you currently drink three beers a night, and your weight is stable. In that case, ditching those beers will probably create a 400-500 calorie shortfall, leading to weight loss. However, if you eat more to compensate, you won’t lose weight and could even gain it if you create a calorie surplus.
4. I want to drink less, but I feel pressured by my friends to drink more. What can I do?
Peer pressure can be hard to resist. It’s often easier to go along with the crowd than go your own way. If you find yourself in a group of friends who drink more than you want to, try the following strategies:
Volunteer to be the designated driver
Avoid buying rounds of drinks and just buy your own
Drink smaller measures
Alternate alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks
Suggest alternative activities where alcohol is not available
Arrive late and leave early to shorten your drinking window
Ask your friends to be more supportive of your choices
Get new friends
While the final point may seem drastic, if you are serious about not drinking but your friends continue to pressure you, they clearly don’t have your best interests at heart.
3. Which alcoholic drinks have the least calories?
Alcohol contains seven calories per gram, and most alcoholic drinks also contain sugar. As such, the best alcoholic drinks are both low in ethanol and sugar. You can find a comprehensive list of calorie values for popular drinks elsewhere in this article. However, five of the least calorific alcoholic beverages are:
Light beer
White/red table wine
Gin
Vodka
Whisky
4. Is there anything wrong with drinking every day?
The negative effects of alcohol increase the more you drink. So, in theory, you could just have 1-2 drinks a day without affecting your health. Daily, moderate drinking is usually considered healthier than consuming the same amount of alcohol in one session, i.e., binge drinking.
Remember, too, that alcohol contains calories and blocks fat burning. So, when you’re trying to lose weight, you’re better off minimizing your alcohol intake.
Finally, if you feel you must have a drink each day, maybe to unwind, you may have a dependency even if you don’t drink excessively. Try going dry for a few weeks to see how you feel. If you crave alcohol, you may need help to overcome your dependency.
5. Isn’t moderate alcohol consumption good for you?
For many years, it was thought that consuming alcohol in low to moderate amounts offered protection against heart disease and other chronic illnesses. This, in part, was due to something called the French Paradox, which describes how France has a lower incidence of heart disease despite a somewhat less healthy diet.
More recent studies have dismissed the French Paradox, suggesting that no amount of alcohol will improve health, and that drinking should not be recommended as a health intervention (7).
So, while the occasional drink or two probably won’t hurt you, it can’t be considered healthy or necessary.
Closing Thoughts
Drinking alcohol can undermine your fat-burning and weight-loss efforts. Alcohol contains almost twice as many calories per gram as protein and carbohydrates. It is treated as a priority fuel, meaning it will always be metabolized before fat for energy.
Giving up alcohol could make losing weight and keeping it off easier.
That said, many people enjoy drinking and don’t want to quit. In that case, it’s worth limiting your intake to 1-3 drinks a couple of times a week and mainly consuming low-calorie beverages. Light beer and refined spirits are good choices, as is red and white wine.
However, even small amounts of alcohol can interfere with fat burning, so if you do decide to drink, you’ll also need to accept that you might not lose weight as fast as you’d like.
References:
Pi-Sunyer X. The medical risks of obesity. Postgrad Med. 2009 Nov;121(6):21-33. doi: 10.3810/pgm.2009.11.2074. PMID: 19940414; PMCID: PMC2879283. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2879283/
Parr EB, Camera DM, Areta JL, Burke LM, Phillips SM, Hawley JA, Coffey VG. Alcohol ingestion impairs maximal post-exercise rates of myofibrillar protein synthesis following a single bout of concurrent training. PLoS One. 2014 Feb 12;9(2):e88384. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0088384. PMID: 24533082; PMCID: PMC3922864. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24533082/
Roehrs T, Roth T. Sleep, sleepiness, and alcohol use. Alcohol Res Health. 2001;25(2):101-9. PMID: 11584549; PMCID: PMC6707127. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11584549/
Cooper CB, Neufeld EV, Dolezal BA, Martin JL. Sleep deprivation and obesity in adults: a brief narrative review. BMJ Open Sport Exerc Med. 2018 Oct 4;4(1):e000392. doi: 10.1136/bmjsem-2018-000392. PMID: 30364557; PMCID: PMC6196958. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6196958/
Cederbaum AI. Alcohol metabolism. Clin Liver Dis. 2012 Nov;16(4):667-85. doi: 10.1016/j.cld.2012.08.002. PMID: 23101976; PMCID: PMC3484320. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3484320/
Baraona E, Lieber CS. Effects of ethanol on lipid metabolism. J Lipid Res. 1979 Mar;20(3):289-315. PMID: 87483. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/87483/
Chiva-Blanch G, Badimon L. Benefits and risks of moderate alcohol consumption on cardiovascular disease: current findings and controversies. Nutrients. 2019 Dec 30;12(1):108. doi: 10.3390/nu12010108. PMID: 31906033; PMCID: PMC7020057. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7020057/
Does Alcohol Affect Muscle Growth?
Alcohol is part of many people’s life. From the occasional celebratory drink to regular weekend-long benders, a large percentage of the population enjoys consuming alcohol. Of course, some people prefer to abstain and don’t drink alcohol at all. But this article is not for them!
Whether you limit yourself to a couple of drinks a month or are a regular happy hour attendee, you probably want to know if and how drinking alcohol affects muscle growth.
The bad news is that alcohol can hurt your gains, especially when consumed regularly and to excess.
In this article, we reveal how alcohol affects muscle growth.
Alcohol and Muscle Protein Synthesis
Muscle is constantly being broken down and rebuilt. This is called muscle protein synthesis, or MPS for short. Your workouts cause increased muscle breakdown, and your diet provides the amino acids your body needs to repair and build your muscles and make them bigger and stronger. Try our Protein Intake Calculator.
So, to increase muscle size, muscle building must exceed muscle breakdown.
Unfortunately, studies show that drinking alcohol, especially in large quantities, can decrease muscle protein synthesis (1). It seems that alcohol disrupts the signaling pathways that tell the body how to build muscle. Alcohol consumption can reduce MPS by as much as 37% compared to not drinking alcohol after training.
So, while you can still drink alcohol and build muscle, your rate of progress is likely to be significantly slower. As such, you should avoid consuming alcohol after training and for the next 24-48 hours, which is when MPS tends to be highest.
Alcohol and Testosterone Production
Testosterone is one of the prime anabolic or muscle-building hormones. Working alongside human growth hormone and insulin growth factor-1, testosterone directly and indirectly drives muscle growth.
Testosterone Molecular Structure
Men produce testosterone in their testes, while women make it in their ovaries, and men typically have ten times more testosterone than women. This is why men are generally more muscular than women and find it easier to build muscle mass.
Testosterone is such a potent muscle builder that some athletes and bodybuilders use exogenous testosterone to raise their levels abnormally high. Most anabolic steroids are testosterone derivatives.
Unfortunately, alcohol is bad for testosterone production, and excess consumption can significantly lower your testosterone levels. It appears that, in large quantities, alcohol is toxic to the testes.
While 1-2 drinks won’t have much, if any, impact on your testosterone levels, consuming 4-8 drinks can lower testosterone levels by as much as 40% (2). Regular heavy drinking can even result in testicular atrophy or shrinkage.
Needless to say, this is a literal kick in the balls for muscle growth!
The good news is that this testosterone-lowering effect only lasts a day or so, meaning the occasional big night out won’t hurt your gains too much. However, frequent overconsumption of alcohol will significantly undermine your muscle-building efforts.
Related: Seven Ways to Boost Your Testosterone Naturally
Alcohol and Insulin Resistance
Insulin is another anabolic hormone that plays a crucial role in muscle building. The main function of insulin is transporting nutrients into your muscle cells. It drives both glucose and protein into your muscles, facilitating recovery and growth.
Consuming large quantities of alcohol has been shown to increase whole-body insulin resistance, essentially blocking the flow of nutrients into your muscles (3). This will impair post-workout recovery and, in turn, undermine muscle growth.
In addition, insulin resistance often goes hand in hand with fat gain. This is because the nutrients that should be entering the muscles end up being diverted to the fat cells. So, smaller muscles and a higher body fat percentage – talk about a terrible combination!
Alcohol and Cortisol
Where testosterone and human growth hormone are anabolic or muscle-building substances, cortisol is catabolic, meaning it causes muscle breakdown. Cortisol is often produced in response to stress. However, high alcohol consumption is also linked to elevated cortisol levels (4).
A little cortisol is no bad thing, as it’s one of the triggers of anabolism and muscle growth. However, too much cortisol, or prolonged elevation, will impede muscle growth.
Alcohol and Sleep
Sleep is critical for muscle growth; it’s when your body gets busy repairing the muscle damage caused by your workouts. Anabolic hormone levels tend to rise while you sleep, as does muscle protein synthesis. So, while you’re pushing out the zzzs, your body is busy repairing and rebuilding your muscles. As such, most people should try and score 7-9 hours of sleep per night.
While alcohol can make you drowsy and may even help you drop off to sleep faster, alcohol-fueled sleep is often of poor quality, disrupted, and not especially restful (5). Poor sleep can have a significant impact on your training performance, recovery, and muscle growth.
Interrupted and insufficient sleep can cause cortisol levels to rise, testosterone and growth hormone levels to fall, and insulin resistance to increase. In addition, sleep deprivation can lower your motivation to train and impair your recovery.
This all means that alcohol-fueled sleep is not good and won’t help you build muscle.
Alcohol and Motivation
Let’s face it – building muscle is hard work. It takes consistent effort and determination to push yourself through workouts that are often uncomfortable and even painful. If you aren’t motivated, you will probably miss more workouts than you complete, significantly undermining your progress.
Motivation can be intrinsic or extrinsic, but ultimately, YOU must drag your butt to the gym and do the work required to build muscle.
Regular alcohol consumption, especially when you feel hungover the next day, can severally undermine your motivation to train (6). You’re much more likely to skip workouts, and your motivation to eat well will probably also take a dive.
The bottom line is if you want to stay motivated and skip fewer workouts, you should limit your alcohol intake.
Alcohol and Nutrition
Successful muscle building has as much to do with your diet as it does your workout. Your diet supplies the calories and nutrients your body needs to fuel your training and repair and build your muscles.
While alcohol contains calories, weighing in at seven calories per gram, it doesn’t have any other beneficial nutrients. In fact, alcohol is an anti-nutrient, meaning it uses resources but doesn’t provide any.
Drinking alcohol, especially to excess, can cause you to make improper food choices and reduce your motivation to eat healthily (7). A poor diet will undermine your workouts and impede your muscle-building progress.
How Much Alcohol is Okay for Muscle Growth?
It’s often said that drinking alcohol in moderation is okay and might even be good for you. However, there are no proven benefits associated with regular alcohol consumption – sorry! That said, a couple of drinks now and then probably won’t hurt you (8).
But what does a moderate alcohol intake look like? And will it interfere with your fitness and muscle-building progress?
According to research (1), consuming 0.5g/kg of alcohol or less won’t affect muscle recovery following exercise. So, for someone who weighs 180 lbs., that’s about 2-3 standard-sized drinks. However, consuming 1.5g/kg of alcohol or 8 drinks will significantly impact muscle protein synthesis and undermine your ability to recover and grow.
So, if you want to drink alcohol without derailing your gains, you should limit yourself to no more than a couple of drinks at a time and have a few dry days per week when you don’t drink alcohol at all. You should also avoid binge drinking, where you consume multiple drinks in short succession.
Alcohol Affect Muscle Growth – Closing Thoughts
While some people prefer not to drink, alcohol can be part of a healthy diet. However, when consumed to excess, alcohol can hurt your gains and undermine your health. This is especially true for habitual and binge drinking.
Your body views and treats alcohol as a toxic substance and reacts very negatively to its presence. Consuming alcohol can impair muscle protein synthesis, reduce your testosterone, increase cortisol, and undermine your motivation to train and eat healthily. It also hammers your liver.
Building muscle is hard enough without sabotaging yourself with alcohol!
So, by all means, have the occasional drink if you wish, but if you are serious about building muscle, keep your intake to a minimum, or don’t imbibe it at all.
References:
1 – Parr EB, Camera DM, Areta JL, Burke LM, Phillips SM, Hawley JA, Coffey VG. Alcohol ingestion impairs maximal post-exercise rates of myofibrillar protein synthesis following a single bout of concurrent training. PLoS One. 2014 Feb 12;9(2):e88384. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0088384. PMID: 24533082; PMCID: PMC3922864. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24533082/
2 – Vingren JL, Hill DW, Buddhadev H, Duplanty A. Postresistance exercise ethanol ingestion and acute testosterone bioavailability. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2013 Sep;45(9):1825-32. doi: 10.1249/MSS.0b013e31828d3767. PMID: 23470309. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23470309/
3 – Lindtner C, Scherer T, Zielinski E, Filatova N, Fasshauer M, Tonks NK, Puchowicz M, Buettner C. Binge drinking induces whole-body insulin resistance by impairing hypothalamic insulin action. Sci Transl Med. 2013 Jan 30;5(170):170ra14. doi: 10.1126/scitranslmed.3005123. PMID: 23363978; PMCID: PMC3740748. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3740748/
4 – Badrick E, Bobak M, Britton A, Kirschbaum C, Marmot M, Kumari M. The relationship between alcohol consumption and cortisol secretion in an aging cohort. J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2008 Mar;93(3):750-7. doi: 10.1210/jc.2007-0737. Epub 2007 Dec 11. PMID: 18073316; PMCID: PMC2266962. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2266962/
5 – Park SY, Oh MK, Lee BS, Kim HG, Lee WJ, Lee JH, Lim JT, Kim JY. The Effects of Alcohol on Quality of Sleep. Korean J Fam Med. 2015 Nov;36(6):294-9. doi: 10.4082/kjfm.2015.36.6.294. Epub 2015 Nov 20. PMID: 26634095; PMCID: PMC4666864. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4666864/
6 – Shamloo ZS, Cox WM. The relationship between motivational structure, sense of control, intrinsic motivation, and university students’ alcohol consumption. Addict Behav. 2010 Feb;35(2):140-6. doi: 10.1016/j.addbeh.2009.09.021. Epub 2009 Oct 1. PMID: 19836901. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19836901/
7 – Fawehinmi TO, Ilomäki J, Voutilainen S, Kauhanen J. Alcohol consumption and dietary patterns: the FinDrink study. PLoS One. 2012;7(6):e38607. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0038607. Epub 2012 Jun 12. PMID: 22719905; PMCID: PMC3373562. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22719905/
8 – Chiva-Blanch G, Badimon L. Benefits and risks of moderate alcohol consumption on cardiovascular disease: current findings and controversies. Nutrients. 2019 Dec 30;12(1):108. doi: 10.3390/nu12010108. PMID: 31906033; PMCID: PMC7020057. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7020057/
How To Gain Muscle Fast: The 12 Most Effective & Proven Tips
Every individual on this planet would gladly embrace the opportunity to effortlessly achieve instant muscle gains. However, life isn’t so easy.
Most gyms have an individual who has been lifting for several months, if not years, but cannot seem to move the needle in the right direction. Also, most lifters cancel their gym cards without achieving their goal physique.
Although most exercisers want a muscular physique for its aesthetic benefits, there is more to it than meets the eye. Building a jacked physique improves your overall strength, functionality, and athletic performance. It also reduces your risk of falls, improves brain health, boosts self-confidence, and promotes a better quality of life. [1][2]
Many newbies think advanced lifters are hoarding secrets that unlock super gains, such as if you read a certain Bible verse just before starting a workout, you’ll be blessed with the physique of your dreams. This is one of the reasons why beginners are always asking for ‘tips’ and ‘tricks’ from much bigger and jacked dudes.
We are sorry to be the bearers of bad news, but this assumption is only partly true. Yes, only partly. There are bodybuilding secrets that only the elite know. However, it is about to change with this article. Also, if you are wondering, reading a Biblical verse before a workout doesn’t do much. (I’ve tried it.)
In this article, we go over the factors that influence muscle gain and the most effective tips to gain muscle mass fast. We also uncover how much time you must expect to wait before seeing noticeable changes and answer some of the most frequently asked questions about this subject. We have a lot to cover, so let’s get right into it.
Factors Influencing Muscle Gains
Several factors determine how quickly you can gain muscle mass. While some are under your control, others cannot be modified. However, it doesn’t mean you cannot gain muscle or speed up your bulking progress. Fine-tuning these factors can get you to your dream physique in a record time. Furthermore, the 12 tips for gaining muscle mass can be clubbed under these factors.
Genetics
Genetic factors play a crucial role in your transformation program. Your genetics determine your body composition, structure, height, weight, and how much muscle mass you will gain in a particular time.
Genetically superior lifters will gain muscle mass and strength faster than their counterparts. However, folks that were left behind in the genetic lottery shouldn’t hang their heads low. You can make the most of what you’ve got by following an effective diet and training regimen.
Related: Bad Chest Genetics and How To Build a Barrel Chest
Hormonal Balance
An individual’s hormonal balance can turn the tide of muscle and strength gains in his favor. Folks with a generous level of natural testosterone production are better positioned to make muscular and strength gains.
High natural test production is the reason the ladies do not gain as much muscle mass as the men. Most steroids are synthetic versions of testosterone that boost your T-levels and muscle-building potential.
Other hormones that influence muscle gain include growth hormone and insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1). Notably, you must avoid tweaking your hormone levels using supplements or gear, as it can have long-term health implications.
Age
Building muscle becomes more difficult with age as your natural testosterone levels decline. The decline in the muscle-building potential for both genders starts to occur after 40.
Although gaining muscle mass will become more complex with age, you can hold onto your gains by working hard in the gym and following a balanced diet. Folks who engage in strength training usually hold onto their muscle mass longer than untrained elderlies.
Muscle Memory
Muscle memory is often overlooked while discussing the speed at which an individual can gain muscle mass. If you are a gym regular, you’ve encountered a person who seems to have undergone an astonishing transformation practically overnight. No, these folks don’t have a version of The Vita-Ray Chamber that Steve Rogers used to transform into Captain America in their basement. Muscle memory hit them like a lightning bolt.
Do some digging, and you’ll find that these folks had a decent physique back in the day and have just recently resumed training. It is much easier for a person to regain muscle mass than for a new lifter to build it. This is why you should never compete with anyone at your gym; you never know where they are coming from. Trying to keep up with them can lead to burning out or, even worse, an injury.
Experienced lifters will start seeing positive results within a couple of weeks after returning to their tried and tested diet and training program. In contrast, newbies should expect to spend 12-16 weeks adhering to a strict fitness routine before they achieve noticeable gains.
Related: Muscle Memory For Bodybuilding – How to Use It to Regain Lost Muscle
Training, Nutrition, and Recovery Program
This is a no-brainer. Your gains will depend on the effectiveness of your workout, diet, and recovery program. You cannot expect to build muscle mass while overlooking any of these areas.
Furthermore, you must be patient and consistent with your transformation journey to reap the fruits of your labor. Some people overlook their recovery to gain muscle fast; however, this can negatively affect their growth potential, lead to a muscle and strength plateau, and increase their risk of injury.
Lifestyle
Your lifestyle plays a significant role in determining how fast you can transform your body. Do you prefer the stairs over the lift? How often do you work out? Do you use a standing desk at work or sit on a chair for most of the day? And finally, do you prep your meals in advance or go out to your favorite fast food restaurant whenever you are starving? These factors will determine how quickly you shed body fat and build muscle.
12 Best Tips on How To Gain Muscle Fast
Spoiler alert: We do not have steroids on this list. All the tips mentioned in this article are WADA-approved (World Anti-Doping Agency) and will help you achieve a jacked and shredded physique while improving your overall health and well-being.
Without further ado, here are the 12 best tips for how to gain muscle fast:
Start with a Goal
Starting their transformation journey without a goal is the first mistake most people make. You must set SMART goals to speed up your results and get the best bang for your buck. SMART goals are:
S: Specific
M: Measurable
A: Attainable
R: Relevant
T: Time-Bound
For example, “build muscle mass” is not a SMART goal. Instead, your goal should be to “build 2 pounds of muscle mass in a month.”
Furthermore, your muscle-building goals will also change depending on your training style. Bodybuilders that train for hypertrophy can expect better muscle-building results than CrossFitters who juggle multiple things.
No, this is not a jab at CrossFitters. It is just that you should be aware of the results you can expect and the difference between different training styles.
Use a Personalized Training Program
Most lifters make the mistake of following a cookie-cutter training program. Not only does this return poor results, but it also wastes a lot of time, effort, energy, and money. Each individual is different and will react to different training programs uniquely.
Owing to a lack of knowledge, many folks with a lagging lower body end up following a training regimen designed for a lifter with a weak upper body. An ideal training program will bring up your lagging muscle groups and polish your strengths.
Furthermore, you must follow a balanced training regimen to speed up your muscle gains. Your workouts should have a balance of compound and isolation lifts. Compound movements will help build muscle mass and strength, whereas isolation exercises will improve your conditioning.
In contrast to the popular practice, you should not eliminate cardio training from your muscle-building training program. Cardio exercises will help lower your body fat, which will improve your muscle definition.
Related: Build Your Program: How to Design the Perfect Training Plan
Work With a Coach
Most people try to do everything on their own in their muscle-building program. Using an expert’s help can speed up your gains by significantly shortening your learning curve. A personal trainer will give you a personalized training program to suit your needs. Plus, he can help avoid injuries by showing you the correct exercise form.
Also, seeking the help of a registered nutritionist can help you lose body fat and build muscle mass. Getting your training and nutritionist to work together can skyrocket your results. Hiring a diet and training coach might cost you a little money upfront but will pay dividends in the long run.
Eat More Calories
Sticking to your regular diet after starting a training program can help with body recomposition. It can result in fat loss and toned muscles. However, you shouldn’t expect significant muscle gains while sticking to the same diet.
You must enter a calorie surplus to build muscle mass, meaning you must eat more calories in a day than you expend. Eating a surplus of 500-1,000 calories daily can result in gaining 1-2 pounds weekly. [3]
However, you must ensure that the additional calories come from nutrient-dense whole foods. Eating empty calories can have counterproductive results as it can lead to a gain in body fat.
Nail Your Nutrition
After determining your daily caloric intake, you must follow a suitable macronutrient (carbs, protein, and fat) split to optimize muscle gains. Follow a high-protein and high-carb diet to gain muscle fast.
Focus on splitting your protein intake into equal quantities throughout the day to boost your recovery and build muscle mass. Furthermore, consume a carb-rich meal two to three hours before a workout to ensure you have enough energy stores to get you through a grueling workout.
Incorporate Progressive Overload Into Your Training
Most people experience muscle and strength plateaus during their muscle-building campaigns. These stagnations result from following the same training routine for a prolonged period. You must constantly challenge your muscles by switching up your training regimen. It will keep your muscles guessing and help you avoid a plateau.
Progressive overload involves gradually increasing the intensity of your strength training routine. You could do it by increasing the weight, frequency, number of sets and repetitions, or time under tension.
Contrary to what most lifters believe, you don’t always need to train to failure to achieve hypertrophy. Pushing your muscles to failure in each exercise can lead to overtraining, which can set you back on your muscle-building goals.
Use Advanced Training Techniques
Advanced training techniques are a progressive overload method. However, they deserve individual recognition. Using advanced training techniques such as super sets, drop sets, and intraset techniques can help ignite muscle growth, as they put your muscles under significant stress.
You can include two advanced training techniques (ATT) in a single workout. Notably, you don’t need to use an ATT in every exercise, as it can lead to muscle exhaustion and overtraining. Beginners should seek expert guidance while using these methods to limit their risk of injury and optimize their performance and results.
Train Each Muscle Group Multiple Times a Week
If you want to build bigger, fuller, and rounder muscles, you should train them multiple times a week. The more often you stimulate your muscles, the more opportunities they have to adapt to a higher workload, which can help them grow bigger and stronger.
Your training frequency will depend on your experience level. Beginners who follow a low-intensity full-body training regimen can train each muscle group up to thrice weekly. However, advanced lifters following a high-intensity regimen should limit their weekly workout frequency to two sessions per muscle group.
Switch Your Training Routine Frequently
Staying glued to the same training regimen for a prolonged period can lead to diminishing results. You must consistently change your training style to keep your muscle guessing and avoid hitting an overhead ceiling. Besides switching training programs, changing training approaches can also be an effective technique for building muscle mass.
For example, if you’ve been following a bodybuilding program for an extended period, you could switch to a CrossFit program for improved metabolic conditioning, which can boost your muscle definition.
That said, you shouldn’t switch your training regimen too often, as it can lead to subpar results. Give your training regimen between 12-15 weeks to work its magic before trying a new workout program.
Focus on Your Recovery
Irrespective of how hard you train in the gym, you cannot make the necessary gains until you give your muscle enough time to recover. Remember, you break muscle tissue in the gym. They grow back bigger and stronger outside the gym, especially while you’re sleeping.
Feel free to take a day off if you feel sore from your workouts. Pushing too hard without proper rest can lead to overtraining and increase your risk of injury. Furthermore, you could use self-myofascial release, massages, and cold plunges to speed up your recovery.
Supplements
Although supplements are not necessary for building muscle, they can help you on your journey to a more aesthetically appealing physique. Furthermore, supplements are a godsend for people who cannot meet their macronutrient needs through nutrient-dense whole foods.
Pre-workout, Whey protein, creatine, and BCAA supplements are all you need to build muscle mass. However, take this with a grain of salt as the optimal supplements for you can change depending on your current physique and training objective.
Track and Monitor Progress
You must track and monitor your progress to keep yourself accountable. Having a SMART goal is like racing against the clock. It will push you to do your best and surpass expectations. You could track your progress using photos, taking body measurements, and keeping a training journal where you record your exercises, sets, reps, weights, and the RPE (rate of perceived exertion).
Sharing your goals and progress with your family, friends, and coaches will keep you accountable. Furthermore, it can motivate your near and dear ones to join you and work towards their best self.
Gaining muscle mass and strength requires time, patience, consistency, and determination. You should be willing to stick to your training goal for a long period. It doesn’t end here. You must work just as hard to maintain your gains.
How Much Muscle Can I Gain and By When Can I Expect Results?
Much Muscle
The rate at which you gain muscle mass and the expected time before you can see noticeable results will depend on several factors, including your genetics, age, gender, hormone levels, training, diet, recovery program, and lifestyle. Further, your commitment and adherence to the 12 tips mentioned in this article will dictate your results.
Most people can expect to build between 0.5 to 2 pounds (0.22 to 0.9 kilograms) of muscle in a month. That said, the amount of muscle you gain in a month isn’t necessarily the same as the gain in numbers you see on the weighing scale. The uptick in your weight could be the result of a combination of water weight, muscle mass, and fat build-up. [4]
Building muscle mass isn’t as simple as it might sound. It requires stressing your muscle fibers to a point where they must adapt and grow bigger and stronger to handle the load. Your body does this by building or recruiting more muscle fibers, increasing their density and numbers.
Furthermore, the amount of muscle mass a beginner can gain will vary from what an advanced lifter can accomplish. Beginners initially experience quick and significant muscle gains; however, their rate of growth tapers as they gain more experience.
Lifters can boost their muscle and strength gains with high-intensity training. On the flip side, their gains might tank if they decrease their training frequency, volume, or intensity.
FAQs
What is the fastest way to gain muscle mass?
A lot goes into building muscle mass. It is a combination of several things. You cannot build muscle mass by tweaking one thing in your daily routine, let alone doing it quickly. Following the 12 tips mentioned in this article will help fast-track your muscle-building progress.
How much muscle mass can I gain in a week?
It depends on several factors, including your genetics, current fitness level, nutrition, training program, and recovery. That said, an average untrained individual can gain around 0.25-0.5 pounds (0.1-0.2 kilograms) of muscle mass per week. However, this rate decreases as you gain more experience and approach your genetic potential.
Can I gain muscle without entering a calorie surplus?
Weight training while sticking to your original diet can help achieve body recomposition and a well-toned and sculpted physique. However, you must enter a calorie surplus and eat a protein-rich diet to build muscle mass.
Note: The content on Fitness Volt is for informative purposes only and should not be taken as medical advice to diagnose, prevent, or treat health problems. If you’re suffering from a health issue, are pregnant, or are under 18 years old, you should consult your physician before starting any new supplement, nutrition, or fitness routine.
Wrapping Up
The 12 muscle-building tips mentioned in this article are backed by science and endorsed by fitness experts and athletes. The quickness of your gains depends on several factors, including your genetics, current fitness level, nutrition, training program, and recovery.
Remember, building muscle mass and strength is not a sprint but a marathon. Gaining quality muscle mass can take time and demand commitment and patience. Pushing too hard too soon can lead to excess fat gain and increase your risk of injury. You must stick to your guns when the going gets tough. Focus on improving in each workout, and the results will follow. Best of luck!
References
Thomas MH, Burns SP. Increasing Lean Mass and Strength: A Comparison of High Frequency Strength Training to Lower Frequency Strength Training. Int J Exerc Sci. 2016 Apr 1;9(2):159-167. PMID: 27182422; PMCID: PMC4836564.
Sherrington C, Fairhall NJ, Wallbank GK, Tiedemann A, Michaleff ZA, Howard K, Clemson L, Hopewell S, Lamb SE. Exercise for preventing falls in older people living in the community. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2019 Jan 31;1(1):CD012424. doi: 10.1002/14651858.CD012424.pub2. PMID: 30703272; PMCID: PMC6360922.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2021). Losing Weight. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/healthyweight/losing_weight/index.html
Krzysztofik M, Wilk M, Wojdała G, Gołaś A. Maximizing Muscle Hypertrophy: A Systematic Review of Advanced Resistance Training Techniques and Methods. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 2019; 16(24):4897. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16244897
How Much Muscle Can You Gain in A Month?
If someone ever invents motivation in supplement form, they’ll become a millionaire billionaire overnight. Motivation is what drives us, and it’s often in short supply.
When your motivation levels are high, crushing your workouts and sticking to your diet is easy. You rise to every challenge and push yourself relentlessly. All your hard work is invariably rewarded with great gains and rapid progress.
However, when your motivation levels are low, even thinking about going to the gym is exhausting. And eating healthy? Forget about it!
Sadly, no supplement can turn your motivation levels up to 11, so it’s up to you to get and stay motivated.
One of the most motivating things you can do is set goals. For example, building 15 pounds of muscle, adding 20 pounds to your bench press, or dropping five percent of body fat. Having a goal gives you something to train and diet for. It provides direction and a way to measure your progress.
Knowing how long it’ll take you to achieve your goals can also be helpful. Having a finish line makes it easier to stick to your diet or workout plan. And what do you do when you reach your goal? Set a new one, of course!
So, how much muscle can the average lifter expect to gain in a month? We reveal the answer!
How Much Muscle Can You Gain in A Month?
Regardless of your age, gender, experience, or diet, regular strength training builds muscle (1). When you lift weights, do push-ups, use resistance bands, or otherwise overload your muscles, you expose them to mechanical and metabolic stress and cause muscle fiber microtrauma. Your muscles respond to these stresses by getting bigger and stronger, which is a process called hypertrophy.
However, because of various factors, the rate of muscle gain varies between individuals.
Some people are better at building muscle than others. Plus, there are external factors that determine the rate of muscle growth, such as diet and getting enough sleep. All that said, some studies have attempted to answer the question of how much muscle you can expect to gain in a month.
1. Beginner gains are real
Beginner gains might sound like bro science, but newbies tend to build muscle faster than their more experienced counterparts. This is probably because any training stimulus is novel for beginners and shocks their muscles into growing. Beginners also have “more room to grow” as they are a long way from their genetic potential for muscle growth.
As such, beginners can expect to gain 2 to 4 pounds of muscle per month (2). However, this rapid muscle growth phase doesn’t last long – 6-12 months being typical.
Beginners usually experience rapid gains regardless of the type of program they follow, even if it’s very basic. In fact, most beginners don’t need advanced bodybuilding workouts to build appreciable amounts of muscle, and a simple full-body program will suffice.
2. Experienced lifters gain muscle more slowly
Muscle gains are slower for more experienced exercisers. This is probably because experienced lifters’ muscles get used to the demands of strength training and no longer perceive it as such a threat.
If you’ve been training for a while, you may have noticed that you don’t get as sore as you used to. This is an indicator that you are now more accustomed to your workouts.
Because of this, experienced exercisers must train harder and often use workout-intensifying methods to continue stimulating muscle growth, e.g., drop sets, supersets, etc. In addition, workouts also tend to be more voluminous and complex.
Experienced exercisers can expect to gain 0.5 to 2 pounds of muscle per month (3). However, the closer you get to your genetic potential for muscle size, the slower your progress will be and the harder you’ll need to work for your gains.
Summary: While the number will be unique for you, most lifters can expect to gain between 0.5 to 4 pounds of muscle in a month, with 1-2 pounds being an acceptable average. However, there are both internal and external factors that affect your rate of muscle growth.
Unmodifiable Factors Affecting Muscle Growth
While there are plenty of things you can do to maximize muscle growth, there are several unmodifiable factors that you cannot do anything about. These include:
Age
While you can build muscle at any age, gains tend to be slower as you get older. Muscle growth rates peak during your mid-thirties and decline after that. As such, younger lifters have the potential to build muscle faster than older exercisers. However, even exercisers in their 60s and above can still build muscle, albeit more slowly.
Gender
Men have the potential to build more muscle than women and build it more quickly. Men naturally have more testosterone than women, which is an anabolic or muscle-building hormone.
Women can build appreciable levels of muscle mass but, on average, will not gain as much or develop it as quickly.
Dominant muscle fiber type
There are three types of skeletal muscle fiber – 1a, 2a, and 2b.
1a (slow twitch) fibers are made for aerobic activities and have a low potential for hypertrophy or growth.
In contrast, type 2b (fast twitch) fibers are made for force production and have much greater hypertrophic potential. The third type of fibers, 2a, are adaptable and change according to your workouts.
Your ratio of type 1a to 2b fibers depends on your genetics, and you can do nothing to alter it. That’s why some people are naturally muscular, while others make better endurance athletes.
Having a high ratio of type 2b to 1a fibers means you have a greater potential for rapid muscle growth.
Somatotype
We are all a mix of three basic somatotypes or body types. Each one has different physical characteristics, including the potential for building muscle.
Ectomorphs are naturally slim and tend not to build muscle quickly or in appreciable amounts. In contrast, mesomorphs are more muscular and build muscle mass easily and more quickly. Endomorphs are also naturally muscular but tend to accumulate fat as well as muscle.
Your somatotype mix, like your muscle fiber ratio, is determined by your genetics and helps explain why some people are easy muscle gainers while others are hard gainers who struggle to gain even a few pounds of muscle.
Related: Body Type Quiz
You can’t change any of these factors – they are the genetic hand you have been dealt. That said, whatever your age, gender, muscle fiber ratio, or somatotype, you can still build muscle if you train hard, eat right, and take care of the unmodifiable factors that affect muscle growth.
Modifiable Factors Affecting Muscle Growth
While you can’t change your age or dominant muscle fiber type, there are several modifiable factors that affect your rate of and potential for building muscle. Pay attention to the following to maximize muscle growth.
Training program
There are lots of different ways to work out, and some are better for muscle growth than others. This is because of the specificity principle, which states your body adapts to the type of training you do.
For example, if you do a lot of running, your body will adapt to make you a better runner. However, running will not improve your ability to swim as the movements are too dissimilar.
So, to build muscle, you need to follow a hypertrophy-specific training program, i.e., a bodybuilding workout. You can design your own or follow one of the hundreds in the Fitness Volt workout archives.
Once you’ve got your program, you then need to train consistently and progressively. Missing workouts doesn’t build muscle, and you need to overload your muscles with more weight and reps to keep them growing.
Then, after 6-12 weeks, you must change your program to avoid plateaus.
Nutrition and diet
The food you eat provides your body with the energy and nutrients it needs to build muscle. You must consume adequate calories, protein, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, minerals, and fiber to build muscle, and any dietary insufficiencies could hurt your progress.
You need a calorie surplus for optimal muscle growth, meaning you must consume more calories than you expend. While you can build muscle without a surplus, your progress will be slower than it could be.
It’s beyond the scope of this article to tell you what to eat to build muscle, but you’ll find all the information you need here.
Rest and sleep
Intense, muscle-building workouts take a lot out of your body. In simple terms, your training breaks your muscles down. To get bigger and stronger, your muscles need time to recover and repair the damage caused by your workouts. Not only do they return to their original state when you rest, they supercompensate and come back better than before.
For this to happen, you must rest between workouts and get plenty of sleep.
It takes 48 to 72 hours for a muscle group to recover from training. For this reason, lifters usually follow a three-times-a-week full-body training plan, e.g., Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, or a split routine where different muscle groups are trained on different days, e.g.:
Monday: Chest and triceps
Tuesday: Legs
Wednesday: Back and biceps
Thursday: Rest
Friday: Shoulders, arms, and abs
Saturday: Rest
Sunday: Rest
Regardless of how you organize your training week, you must avoid training any muscle group too often, e.g., every day. Training too frequently could hinder rather than help you in your quest to build muscle and could even lead to overtraining.
While rest between workouts is essential, sleep could be even more critical for muscle growth. Lack of sleep can undermine your energy and enthusiasm for training, and studies suggest too little sleep can lower levels of vital anabolic hormones, reducing muscle growth (4).
Most adults need 7 to 9 hours of sleep per night, but bodybuilders should aim for the upper end of this recommendation. Even occasional sleep deficits can hurt your progress.
Stress
Stress comes from various sources, including work, relationships, and finances. Excess stress has been shown to interfere with muscle growth and strength development (5).
Regardless of the origin of your stress, it triggers the “fight or flight” response, which causes a cascade of physical and chemical changes within your body, not least the release of cortisol. Cortisol is a catabolic hormone, meaning it causes muscle breakdown. Needless to say, the last thing you want when you’re trying to build muscle is more cortisol and catabolism.
While stress is impossible to eliminate completely, you can reduce your exposure and limit its impact. Strategies for minimizing the damaging effects of stress include:
Get more sleep
Cut back on caffeine
Drink less alcohol
Do not abuse medications or drugs
Exercise moderately
Learn how to prioritize
Avoid perfectionism
Organize and manage your time better
Practice meditation and breathing exercises
Spend time in nature
Talk about how you’re feeling with a trusted friend
Practice gratitude
Avoid people and situations that trigger your stress response
Seek professional help to deal with stress
Supplements
While you don’t need to take supplements to build muscle, there are some products that may enhance your progress. These supplements help optimize your nutritional intake, plugging any gaps in your diet.
Good options include:
Protein powder – to make getting sufficient protein easier
Creatine – for cell volumization, increased endurance, and faster recovery
Pre-workout – for more energy and longer, more intense workouts
BCAAs and EAAs – for less muscle breakdown and quicker recovery
However, it’s important to remember that no supplement will compensate for a poorly designed workout plan, incomplete diet, or too little rest and sleep. Instead, think of supplements as effort multipliers: the harder YOU work, the more THEY work.
Muscle Gain FAQs
Do you have a question regarding how much muscle you can gain in a month? No problem, because we’ve got the answers!
1. So, how much muscle can I gain in one month?
Because of the many factors involved, it’s impossible to give you a precise number of pounds you’ll gain per month. Things like your training status, body type, age, and diet influence your rate of muscle gain.
That said, studies indicate you can gain anywhere from 0.5 to 4.0 pounds per month. However, if you want to maximize your rate of muscle gain, you must pay attention to everything you do in and outside the gym, including your workout, diet, sleep, and stress.
It’s also worth noting that gaining just one pound a month for a year will have a massive impact on your appearance. That’s especially true if you drop some body fat to reveal your definition.
2. What are the best exercises for building muscle?
It’s generally accepted that the best muscle-building exercises are compound in nature, meaning they involve multiple joints and muscle groups working together.
Examples include:
Squats
Deadlifts
Leg presses
Bench presses
Overhead presses
Pull-ups
Pulldowns
Rows
These exercises allow you to lift heavy weights, putting lots of muscle-building stress through your muscles. So, while there is nothing wrong with including isolation or single-joint exercises in your workouts, the bulk of your program should consist of compound lifts.
Related: Compound vs. Isolation Exercises
3. I’m not gaining any muscle – what gives?
Not gaining muscle can be so frustrating that it makes some people give up training altogether. After all, what’s the point if what you are doing is not working? Here are some of the reasons you may be stuck in a muscle-building rut, plus the solutions to your problems.
You aren’t eating enough – make sure you have a 500-calorie-per-day surplus. If your weight is stuck, you probably need to eat more. Eat more if you still aren’t gaining weight.
You aren’t training hard enough – building muscle involves taking at least some of your sets to failure. Push yourself harder, and don’t leave more than a rep or two in the tank.
You are training too hard – if your workouts outpace your ability to recover, muscle growth will stall. Make sure your program includes rest days and that it matches your fitness and experience. Beginners should avoid high-volume workouts, which can hurt more than help you build muscle.
You’re skipping too many workouts – missed workouts do not build muscle. Instead, your training must be consistent if you want to transform your body by building muscle. Find a program you can stick to religiously, as even the best workout won’t work if you don’t do it.
You aren’t getting enough sleep – go to bed eight hours before you plan on getting up. Do this every night, and not just at the weekend.
Cut down on cardio – your body is very bad at adapting to multiple stressors. If you are serious about building muscle, you’ll need to put cardio on the back burner for a while. You can still do 20-30 minutes 2-3 times per week, but more than that could harm your progress.
You aren’t consuming enough protein – protein contains the building blocks of muscle tissue: amino acids. Consume plenty of meat, fish, eggs, dairy, legumes, nuts, seeds, etc., to ensure you’re getting enough. Insufficient protein will undermine your progress.
4. How much protein do I need to build muscle?
It’s generally accepted that you need to consume about one gram of protein per pound of body weight to build muscle. This may be a little more than required, but it ensures you are never in a protein deficit.
Alternatively, you can personalize your protein intake with our easy-to-use protein calculator.
Divide your protein intake throughout the day to ensure your muscles receive a steady stream of amino acids.
5. Do steroids and other bodybuilding drugs help you build muscle faster?
They certainly do! Steroids and other bodybuilding drugs increase protein synthesis, which is one of the mechanisms of muscle growth. They also enhance recovery, so you can train harder and longer.
Drugs used in bodybuilding include exogenous testosterone, human growth hormone, and insulin.
While these substances will undoubtedly speed up muscle growth, they can also harm your health and can even contribute to premature death. Also, when you stop taking them, you will quickly lose much of your chemically-enhanced muscle mass.
Closing Thoughts
While we can’t say precisely how much muscle you can gain in a month, most people should be able to add 0.5 to 4.0 pounds to their frames in that time.
The actual amount of muscle you can build in 30 days depends on several modifiable and unmodifiable factors, including your diet, training program, age, gender, body type, and experience.
However, while we can’t tell you how much muscle you can build in a month, we can tell you what will harm your progress. Too little sleep, insufficient protein, and too many easy workouts will all undermine your progress.
So, get all your training, diet, and recovery ducks in a row and see just how much muscle you can build in a month. And then, next month, do it all again! Keep at it until you have built the body of your dreams.
References:
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