Workout Routine | Women | Men

Do you have any questions about how much protein you need a day to lose weight, build muscle, or maintain muscle while losing fat? Or how many grams of protein you should eat for optimal health and function? If so, you’ve come to the right place. In this evidence-based guide, I’m going to cover everything you need to know about protein, including… What Does Protein Do? How Much Protein Should I Eat Per Day? Where Should I Be Within The Ideal Range? Is It Safe To Eat This Much Protein? What Are The Best Sources Of Protein? What About Vegans And Vegetarians? How Do I Eat Enough Protein Without Going Over My Calories? What Are The Best Times To Eat Protein? How Much Protein Can You Eat At One Time? Ready? Let’s begin… What Does Protein Do? Protein is responsible for the growth and repair of all of the cells and tissues in your body. In fact, your muscles, organs, skin, hair, nails, bones, certain hormones and much more are all made up of some amount of protein. Protein is also the provid

QUESTION : I’ve always seen people (including you) recommend that people trying to lose fat or build muscle should eat a high protein diet, with the exact recommendation most often being 1 gram per pound of body weight. Sometimes a little lower, sometimes a little higher. However, I recently read that an intake this high could be dangerous – particularly for the kidneys – and it should therefore be avoided. But is this really true? Is eating too much protein bad for you? ANSWER : Ah yes, the good old “is too much protein bad for you” question. It’s a question that is most frequently asked by a misinformed diet-conscious person who – in their quest to learn how to lose fat or build muscle better or faster – somehow came across some crappy article from some crappy source claiming some crappy crap about the dangers of eating too much protein. Yup, that would be the very same macronutrient they were previously told to eat a lot of because of how required it is for gaining muscle

QUESTION : I’m trying to lose weight, and I just wanted to know how much cardio you think I should do? How many times per week? How many minutes each time? I’ve also been reading a lot of your articles and I’ve seen you mention that doing too much cardio can lead to muscle loss, so I was also wondering what you’d consider “too much” to be? ANSWER :  If you’re a regular reader of mine, then you probably know my general opinion of cardio. Which is… I think it sucks . Especially as a tool for improving body composition (losing fat, building muscle ). For that sort of thing, I actually think cardio is highly overrated and much less useful than most people think/hope it is. I also do not find typical forms of it (like jogging on a treadmill) to be all that fun or enjoyable. Plus, like the person asking this question mentioned, there is legit potential for cardio to negatively effect muscle maintenance. So to recap, I think cardio is overrated, boring and doing too much has the potential t

Let’s say your goal is to lose fat, build muscle or something similar. Let’s also say that in order to reach this goal as quickly and effectively as possible, you’ve determined that you need to do both weight lifting and cardio. Cool. Now let’s also say that you’re going to be doing both types of exercise on the same day as part of the same workout session. In this scenario, there’s an important question you’re going to need to answer: should you do cardio before or after weights? Let’s figure that out right now… Which Comes First: Cardio or Weights? For most people, if cardio and weights are going to be done during the same workout session, then… Weight lifting should be done first , and cardio should be done after . Why is this, you ask? Well, many of the reasons you’ll typically see people give for doing cardio after weights involve stuff (e.g. hormones, glycogen levels, afterburn/EPOC, etc.) that is either insignificant in the grand scheme of things or just plain old myth-based

I’ve previously covered the basics of bulking and cutting  the right way and the wrong way. In case you missed it, here’s a quick recap… A person would “ bulk ” when their primary goal is to build muscle . A person would “ cut ” when their primary goal is to lose fat . To do this the right way and get the best results possible, the true goal while bulking is to build muscle while keeping fat gains to an absolute minimum. When cutting, the true goal is to lose fat while maintaining all of the muscle you’ve built. If you do it the wrong way like so many people do, you’d gain too much excess body fat while bulking and/or lose too much lean muscle while cutting and basically spin your wheels and get nowhere. A person would then alternate between phases of bulking and cutting until they’re as lean and muscular as they desire. Now after hearing all of this, there are always three questions that come to mind. Which phase should I start with? Should I bulk or cut first? How long should ea

Whether you want to build muscle, lose fat or do both, there’s a good chance you’re going to come across the terms bulking up and cutting in your quest for figuring out how to best reach those goals. In fact, I’m sure many of you have already done a couple of “bulk and cut” cycles over the years, and many others are probably thinking about doing it for the first time. How nice. The thing is, how successful these bulking and cutting cycles have been for you in the past and how successful they will be for you in the future depends on a bunch of factors, the most important of which may just be understanding what these terms DO and DO NOT mean and applying them accordingly. So, let’s start with the basics. What Are Bulking And Cutting? Honestly, they are just stupid words used to describe building muscle and losing fat . The reason I call these words “stupid” is because they are quite broad, and that leaves an opening for them to be interpreted many different ways… some of which are VER

When it comes to losing fat, there are primarily two different categories of workouts a person might consider doing…  cardio  and  weight training . Now in the cardio category, we can break it down even further into stuff like steady state or interval training. And while this is all wonderful stuff that I get asked about approximately 30 billion times a day, we are going to skip right over it for now and focus on the weight training workouts. But I swear, I will cover all kinds of cardio topics eventually. Now in terms of weight training and losing fat, there are primarily two different types of workouts you can do. Or, more accurately, two different  purposes  your workouts can have. The Two Purposes Of Weight Training During Fat Loss When we are trying to lose fat, we really have 2 different goals. The first is to actually lose that fat. Obvious, I know. The second however is to avoid losing muscle while we are losing fat. As I’ve explained before, we may call it weight loss , b