How to keep belly fat off while bulking?
Frankly, it’s hard.
It’s not just hard; it’s impossible.
Whenever you are bulking up, you will gain weight, including belly fat.
So how do you keep stomach fat off while trying to gain mass?
How to keep belly fat off while bulking: 4 things to know
There are ways you can minimize how many inches you gain in your waistline by keeping these things in mind:
- Clean diet
- Cardio
- Strength training
- Eat lots
Clean diet
A clean diet means no junk. To reduce your chances of having a 1 massive pack instead of 6-pack abs, you have to cut out all the yummy things in life. I knew someone who was trying to gain mass in the colder months by eating a significant amount of Krispy Kreme donuts.
Now, I would love to tell you that he ate so much Krispy Kreme donuts that he ended up looking like Fat Albert, but I would be lying. It would have been a great story, though.
He would always have his Krispy Kreme indulgence after his workouts. Of which, his body is on a full-blown fat-burning state.
Also, insulin spikes help promote muscle growth. Eating carbs or high refined sugars can help increase your insulin levels. High insulin levels help deliver protein to muscles effectively and quickly.
[source: Effect of insulin on human skeletal muscle protein synthesis is modulated by insulin-induced changes in muscle blood flow and amino acid availability]
Albeit yummy and hard to resist, over-indulging in sweets can be detrimental to your health in the long term. Concentrate on natural fructose such as honey, mangoes, fruit juices.
Cardio
Cardio helps to strengthen your heart and help burn calories to reduce the amount of fat you’ll accumulate.
“During exercise, the heart is subjected to intermittent hemodynamic stresses of pressure overload, volume overload, or both. To normalize such stress and to meet the systemic demand for increased blood supply, the heart undergoes morphological adaptation to recurrent exercise by increasing its mass, primarily through an increase in ventricular chamber wall thickness. This augmentation of heart size is primarily the result of an increase in the size of individual terminally differentiated cardiac myocytes. Adaptive remodeling of the heart in response to exercise typically occurs with preservation or enhancement of contractile function. This contrasts with pathologic remodeling due to chronic sustained pressure overload (e.g., during hypertension or aortic stenosis), which can proceed to a loss of contractile function and heart failure”
[source: Cardiovascular Effects and Benefits of Exercise]
Fundamentally, your heart changes when its subjected to repeated stress. These changes get your body used to high-intensity activities such as running from the missus, lasting 3 minutes in a boxing match, or outswimming a shark.
Moreover, cardio will burn the additional fats you’ve gained in your bulking phase. Cardio is vital if you want to keep the fat off your midsection while trying to build muscles.
The following are exercises you can do to burn your belly fat:
Strength training
Strength training is essential when you are trying to gain muscle mass. Otherwise, eating without exercising will only make you fat. Especially if your diet consists solely of junk such as empty calories like sugar, cakes, and soft drinks.
Working out also helps you burn fats 24 hours after your exercise.
Try incorporating high-intensity interval training in your strength training regime.
The added cardiovascular training is like hitting 1 bird with 1 stone.
HIIT will gradually cut out your workout time tremendously. For example, if you are training your chest today, why don’t you try some HIIT involving your chest muscles?
- Jumping jacks
- Pushups
- Rest
- Wide arm pushups
- Rest
- Staggered pushups
- Rest
- Benchpress
- Rest
- Cable chest flys
- Rest
- Seated chest flys
Do these exercises in a circuit. Your rest time is solely dependent on your level. If you are more in the advanced stage, you probably only need 15 seconds. Do what’s right for you. However, do each pushup to failure.
When you have improved your upper body strength, you might want to consider upping your push up game. The following are for rockstars only:
- Clap pushup
- Superman pushup
Clap pushup
Traditional pushup with a clap. After you lower your chest inches toward the floor, you launch yourself up to do 1 clap. You need enough force, so you have plenty of time to do the clap then lower yourself back down again in a controlled manner.
Superman pushup
Superman pushup is similar to the clap pushup but on steroids. How do you do it? All your body have to launch off the ground, including your feet, legs, knees, hips. Nothing should be touching the earth. You literally look like your flying for 0.19 millisecond, just like Superman.
Pack on calories
To get big, you need to eat a significant amount of calories. Hence, it’s hard to keep the fat off while bulking.
It’s tempting to eat anything when you are trying to gain weight b you have to watch your diet. Otherwise, you’ll end up with a gut that may require more time in the gym to burn.
You need to double your portion or even quadruple it in some cases. Eating clean becomes important when you are eating more than you should.
Just imagine eating donuts full of ungodly amounts of bad fats and sugar. And I know you won’t stop at 1 donut. So, you gobble up 5 Krispy Kreme donuts, and your head is now spinning from the sugar rush.
That’s not how you put on muscles. That’s how you put on fat and a trip to the E.R.
The aim is to gain muscles, so eat proper foods and not just any junk.
Conclusion
Keeping belly fat off while bulking is not an easy task. Sure, putting on weight is easy. The biggest problem when bulking up is the additional fats you’ll gain in the process. Sadly, you can’t target where you want the flab to go.
To gain muscles, you’ll have to pack on the calories. However, they have to be good calories and not garbage. Eating clean is very important to keep your midsection tight and lean.
Strength training is crucial to gaining muscles. Join a gym, or if you are not up to it, you can do workouts at home.
The following is a link to how you can get buff without spending a fortune on gym memberships:
Compliment your strength training with a good cardio program.
That’s it!
You should be taking your shirt off whenever you want to very soon, even in Winter.