Gaining muscle mass and dropping body fat before a competition is hard work. But it’s even harder to do if you slack off and put on a bunch of fat in between. No one’s suggesting that you stay ripped all year. That’s not only nearly impossible it’s not even healthy. But by forming and following a few healthy habits in your daily life, diet and workout routine you can stay lean and make it easier to gain muscle and drop body fat when you need to. 

Healthy Habit 1: Get Plenty of Rest

It’s important to remember that your body is “building” while you sleep. It’s not during your workout but while your body is at rest that it builds and repairs muscle. A tough workout or intense lifting session should be followed by an equally good night’s sleep. Your body needs fuel (healthy foods) and sleep to create, renew and restore. Rest allows your body to recover and it also reduces stress that can affect your ability to drop fat. 

Healthy Habit 2: Drink Plenty of Water

Drinking water is probably the easiest thing you can do to not only aide your goal of dropping fat and building lean muscle, but it is a vital and simple tool for keeping you healthy. Water helps flush toxins from the body that we are all exposed to everyday. Water helps to clean the liver and increase blood flow. Metabolic waste created as a byproduct of all the extra protein you are consuming must be dissolved and removed through water. Dehydration can happen easier than you think. In intense workout quickly drains water and essential minerals from the body. Dehydrated muscles stay fatigued because they retain lactic acid and it’s harder for the muscle to repair. So make sure to drink plenty of clear fluids before and after your workout and throughout the day.

Healthy Habit 3: Take Your Vitamins

Eating a healthy, well-rounded and balanced diet is great. But even for the best of us, it’s difficult to eat the right combination of foods to ensure that we are getting all the vitamins and minerals we need to be our best. And that’s especially true when we are weight training or working out more than usual. You don’t need to spend a fortune on handfuls of pills, powders or liquids. Just look for a well-balanced multivitamin with minerals that will give you most, if not all, of the recommended daily allowance. To improve your body’s chances of properly absorbing and utilizing supplements make sure to take them with a meal.

Healthy Habit 3: Eat More Frequently

If you don’t know it already, the last thing you want to do when trying to drop weight or fat is start starving yourself. Especially if you are weight training, you need to feed your muscle. Skipping meals or practicing drastic calorie reduction will shut down your metabolism, giving you less energy for your workouts and slowing fat loss. When you are trying to gain muscle mass you need to add a lot of extra calories to your diet. But if you try cramming all those calories into a couple of meals you will be losing out. Your body will be much better at breaking down and properly absorbing the calories and nutritional content if you break up your meals to every 3 – 4 hours.

Healthy Habit 4: Eat More Fish

One of the ingredients most lacking in the Western diet is fish. When we do order up seafood in our favorite restaurant we all too often end up eating something battered and fried in oil. If you have an option, skip the batter and go for grilled or sautéed fresh fish. There is an abundance of fresh fish choices that will do great things for your body and you mind. For starters, fish has one of the healthiest fat/protein ratios available in a food source. Fish is also a vital source of the healthy oils and fatty acids our body and brain require. Some oils from fish can reduce unhealthy levels of cholesterol and improve heart and circulation function. Fish is also an excellent source of many vitamins and minerals. 

By: Chris McCombs
Chris runs Boot Camps Irvine in Southern California. Chris has become one of the fitness industry’s leading sources for online marketing and Fitness Business Strategies advice. To find out more about Chris and how he can help you promote and grow your fitness business visit http://www.kickbacklife.com