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As you get leaner, one of the biggest challenges is measuring body fat percentage and measuring muscle mass percentage.  If you’re trying to lose a lot of weight, the scale is just as good a tool as any.  However, when you’re trying to lose the last 5-10lbs of fat while preventing muscle loss, the scale alone won’t necessarily help.  How can you effectively measure your weight loss results if you don’t know your body fat percentage or muscle mass percentage?  Based my recent experience, your best bet is to combine a variety of different methods.  Even then, it’s tough to definitively determine anything in the short term. Measuring Body Fat & Muscle Mass I recently finished doing Joel Marion’s Xtreme Fat Loss Diet.  While I’ll be reviewing that program separately, I thought I’d highlight how I tracked my results.  First thing to note, this was an experiment and I would not advise taking your weight, measuring body fat percentage, and measuring m...

Have you ever wondered about how to make your strength training workout more time efficient and effective?  Then it’s time to consider a high weight, low reps superset workout routine.  The best way to build strength is by using a heavy weight that you can only lift for a few reps.  Ideally you want to give your muscles plenty of time to rest between sets so that you avoid training to failure.  However, this is terribly inefficient.  This is where superset workout routines can be helpful.  Rather than just resting between sets, you perform a different exercise.  I’ve discussed my preferred way to combine high weight, low rep training with a superset workout in Fitness in a Flash and How to Get a Beach Body but thought it might be worthwhile to provide a little more flavor. High Weight, Low Reps If you’re focused on gaining strength, then I’d highly recommend combining high weight training with low reps.  Muscle fibers experience the most growt...

Today I’d like to discuss branched chain amino acids.  You may have heard of BCAAs before but do they really live up to their claim of being effective for losing fat and gaining muscle?  While I’d say there are many benefits of BCAAs, whether you decide to supplement with them will depend in part on when you exercise and how restrictive your diet is.  For fasted training, I’d highly recommend using branched chain amino acids to help prevent muscle loss while maximizing fat loss.  Any other time, there’s probably only a marginal benefit at best. Branched Chain Amino Acids Let’s start with the basics.  What are branched chain amino acids?  In short, they’re the best building blocks of protein (essential amino acids known as valine, leucine, and isoleucine).  While your body cannot produce BCAAs on its own, you’re likely getting plenty of these amino acids from your diet, primarily through protein.  However, anyone pursuing a calorie restrictive ...

If you’re looking for a way to gain lean muscle mass, then I highly recommend Martin Berkhan’s Leangains Guide.  While my work and family schedule prohibit following all of Martin’s recommendations, I’ve recently tried to implement as many as possible from the Leangains Guide.  Most people will have a hard time believing that a diet centered around intermittent fasting constitutes the best muscle building diet plan, but I’ve seen excellent fat free muscle mass gains when pairing the Leangains approach with the Visual Impact Muscle Building workouts. The Best Muscle Building Diet Plan Most muscle building diet plans focus on eating a lot of calories.  However, this subjects you to potential fat gain.  Whenever I’ve previously tried this approach, I always ended up eating too much and adding a good deal of fat to go along with muscle mass.  Then I would have to work really hard to eliminate the fat while trying to preserve muscle.  Generally known as the ...