Quick way to look leaner!

I used to do bodybuilding shows back when I was younger.  I had plenty of time to dedicate to training for those contests and no real responsibility .  It was one of the hardest challenges that I ever faced.

From that experience I learned a lot about nutrition and it's effect on the human body. 

The absolutely quickest way to change how you look is to dial in you nutrition program and really start to eat well consistently day after day. You literally can see changes each week. 

Back to bodybuilding. One of the main goals with bodybuilding is to get lean. That is where you really start to see your muscle definition and shape. Many people have good muscle development but it is hidden under both a layer of fat and a layer of water retention.

Eating better and exercising will help to get rid of the fat so what I am going to address is getting rid of the water under the skin that can distort definition and add inches of bloating, making us appear fatter and soft.

You can deal with this issue right now and get that water out from under the skin, giving you a leaner more defined look.

Here are some tips on how to do this:

1. Drink a lot of water to help flush out your body. Actually distilled water works very well helping your body get rid of excess water. You are running to pee all the time but it should subside as you get rid of the excess water.  Stick with it & you will notice a difference! Remember the water intake formula is to take your bodyweight and divide it in half to get the number of ounces you should drink daily.  So if you weigh 200 pounds you should be drinking 100 ounces per day. That's about 12.5 glasses!

2. Limit your sodium to under 2400 mg.  Excess sodium makes your body hold water like a sponge.  It's important to eat foods in their most natural state. Processed and frozen foods tend to contain higher levels of sodium. One example I remember is chicken. Frozen chicken contained around 900 mg of sodium and fresh chicken was around 50 mg. 

3. Severely limit or completely eliminate wheat and dairy.  For some reason these types of food really can cause you to bloat up. Instead of wheat use whole grains such as oatmeal, wild or brown rice and non-gluten products.  Obviously this might be a hard thing for many people to do so focus on cutting back if not elimination.  I have had many clients tell me that they didn't miss these things once they went off of them. Many times they actually felt better.  As for dairy I recommend using a good calcium supplement instead of drinking a ton of milk. Do you realize we are the only species who drinks another species milk.  Plus much of the milk is loaded with hormones and is processed taking much of the valuable nutrients out. The vitamin D is added back in usually in a second rate synthetic form.  My advice is to find a good pharmaceutical grade supplement like USANA and depend on that versus milk for calcium.

These three steps can really help you start to feel firmer and leaner.  Give them a try for yourself and see what you think.  By adhering to these habits you might look and feel a whole lot better!