by Ken LeClair

Of course we all want to be ripped and hot so what to do?  Assuming you’ve been working out at the gym or at home and you have some muscles to showcase, the next step is to lose some of the body fat that obscures their definition under the skin.  The guys and dolls you see in the muscle mags have single digit body fat as in 5%-7%….the rest of us have double digit in the teens or twenties…So we need to get our body fat down which is not the easiest thing in the world.

The only way to do this is to cut down on the amount of calories we eat, and the safest way to do this is get on the scale and multiply how many pounds you weigh by 12.  The number you come up with is how many calories per day you can eat in order to lose body fat at a maximum rate while cutting muscle loss to a minimum. So if you weight 200 lbs, multiply by 12 which is 2400 calories per day or 180 lbs X 12 = 2060 calories per day etc..It is essential that you eat 1 gram of protein per 1 lb of body weight, chicken has about half the calories of beef so that’s a no brainer..You should consume 15% of your calories in the form of fat as in olive oil,canola oil… the remainder of your calories come in the form of carbohydrates and these should be veggies, salads and 100% whole wheat breads or 100% whole wheat pasta. Divide these calories in 5-6 meals and space them evenly throughout the day with a meal 1 hour before a workout and the next meal as soon as possible after a workout.

Keep working out with an emphasis on compound exercises like squats, deadlifts, bench presses, shoulder press, pullups( or pull downs) and of course crunchs for abs..Remember 2 days per week is not enough and five days per week is too much. General rule of thumb is 3 sets of 10 reps per exercise doing 60% of your 1 rep max…If the most you can squat in 300 lbs then squat 180 lbs etc..

I have to lose 12 lbs how about you?