As the summer vacation draws near, many people realize that they will have to work out the excess that has accumulated since winter. But is there really any point in starting to build muscle and eat well when a few weeks from the beach or is it just a way of reassuring yourself?
Too late, weight loss is long term
Unfortunately, it is too late to build the physique of your dreams. Achieving important sporting goals takes time and persistence. This is a lifestyle that needs to be more or less constant and it usually takes several years of practice before noticeable results. Fat loss is a more or less slow process depending on each person and it will depend, among other things, on the starting point, the hormonal response, the metabolism, etc…
In addition, to be successful in losing fat (which means not resuming it later), you must aim for the long term. The longer the fat loss, the greater the chance that the weight will stabilize afterwards.
But we can have some results
However, you can easily lose a few pounds a few weeks before the holidays. The whole point is to remain realistic with regard to your goals and not to make the mistake of put on a drastic diet with a sudden increase in training volume.
The body prefers gradual changes, sudden deprivations most of the time have the yoyo effect that everyone knows.
Rather than trying to train for a long time and wanting to immediately reduce the quantity of calories ingested, it seems preferable to concentrate on high intensity weight training and to gradually improve the quality of the food, while gradually reducing the foods that promote fat gain.
Nutrition: gradually improve your diet
This can be done for example by removing sugars with a high glycemic index (cakes, sweets) and by improving the quality of lipids (increasing the proportion of omega 3, present for example in linseed oil , rapeseed oil, nuts, avocados, organic eggs… as part of a vegetarian / vegan diet ).
Consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables should also not be neglected in the context of weight control because the antioxidants they contain will be involved in lipolysis (the process of burning body fat). In addition, their intake of vitamins and minerals will participate in the normal functioning of the body and maintain constant energy, necessary to control weight.
The enzymes provided by raw foods will also be very beneficial, they can easily be obtained with salads or vegetable juices . For fat loss, we saw it above, but cutting out high glycemic index carbohydrates will be decisive.
Regarding low or medium glycemic index carbohydrates (pasta, rice …), we can also reduce them slightly, but I advise you not to suddenly switch to a ketogenic type diet (cut carbohydrates).
Finally, of course, protein consumption will also be very important, as much for weight loss as for the maintenance / gain of muscle mass (legumes, cereals, oilseeds … as part of a vegetarian / vegan diet ).
Strength training: focus on the essentials: short and intense
For training, there are still some errors that are visible, such as telling yourself that the longer the training, the more effective it will be. It is not not necessarily the best way to lose weight… Indeed, it is not only the duration of the training to be taken into account to lose calories, there is also the intensity.
Doing short and intense sessions of 30 to 40min maximum (for example Cross Training type workouts, with a mixture of high intensity cardio and strength training) will be more effective in general than doing endless sets of bicep curls and other muscle isolation exercises. In addition to burning very few calories, they have a fairly low functional benefit.
For example, you can try doing a week like this:
This is of course an example, which you can adapt according to your starting point, your level of strength and your cardiovascular capacities. But it is to make you understand the logic consisting in not necessarily basing you on the traditional training of musculation, with series and precise times of rest. Of course, it also works, you just have to not hesitate to mix the methods and make sure you have a fairly high intensity (heavy loads for example)!
