How To Get Lean & Transform Your Body Composition

Written by Mark D. Burg

A lean muscular body has many benefits for your physical and mental health. It will significantly increase your attractiveness and give you the confidence to take chances and live your life to its fullest. You can't really put a price on how much optimizing your looks will help you in life.

In the pictures above Hugo and I transformed our physiques in 9 months. If you would like to achieve similar results, keep reading. 

So how can you reduce your fat percentage and increase your muscle growth? 

This article will focus on how to best reduce body fat as it will give you the fastest results and contribute most to a healthy, good-looking body. 

However, a fit body can't be just lean; it has to be muscular as well. I will describe how to optimize muscle growth in another article, but let me briefly touch on this here as both topics are highly interconnected.

Training 

It goes without saying that the most effective way to gain muscle is to do regular weightlifting, aka resistance training. 

In my opinion, it's optimal to train each major body part twice a week. You should increase the intensity over time as your body adapts to the stimulus. This is called progressive overload, which is key to muscle growth. 

It is essential to fully recover between workouts as this is when the muscles are actually growing. 

Make sure your intensity is high enough to stimulate muscle growth but not so high that your muscles don't recover in time for your next workout. 

You could train the whole body in two workouts spread over a week. Or split your activities into push, pull, and leg workouts and train 6 times a week. This is entirely up to you. Every split has its benefits, so you should focus on making it work for you and your weekly schedule. 

Consistency is key. If you are an untrained person, you will see fast gains in your first 6 months. The muscle growth will slow down as you get closer to your genetic potential. It can take 10 years to achieve your full genetic potential, so have the right expectations and make weightlifting part of your lifestyle instead of a quick fix. 

Diet 

To get lean and lose excess fat, it is important to understand the key principles of weight management. 

Based on your genetics and your current fitness level, your body has a Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). 

The BMR tells you how much energy, aka calories, you burn to maintain all essential body functions without gaining or losing weight. 

If you take fewer calories than your BMR, you will start losing weight. However, if you take more calories than you burn per day, you will begin storing it as fat and gaining weight. That's why managing your diet, aka calorie intake, is the key to weight loss. 

There are many ways to estimate your BMR. You can use the formula you will find on most fitness websites, where they will ask for your age, gender, weight, and activity levels. 

Another way is to use a smart scale in your gym or buy one for your home. Pick one option and get the first estimate as a starting point. 

Let's say your BMR is 1700 calories plus 400 calories that you burn on your weightlifting day with some light cardio. So your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) is about 2100 calories. If you consume slightly fewer calories, let's say 2000 calories, you will lose fat over time. If you consume more, you will gain fat. 

You should adjust your calorie intake based on your BMR plus the activities you did that day. So on your cardio and/or weightlifting day, you can consume more calories than on your rest days. However, always make sure that you stay slightly under your TDEE to not compromise your fat loss efforts. 

As just mentioned, you can increase your energy expenditure by adding some cardio to your weightlifting routine. But don't try to out-train a bad diet – it's not sustainable. 

Tracking

To make sure you hit your calorie goal for the day, I recommend measuring your calorie intake daily for the first few months. You can use an app like MyFitnessPal to do that. This way, you will understand how different foods contribute to your daily calories and make necessary adjustments. 

You don't need to track your calorie intake for your whole life. After a few months, you will pretty much know how many calories each meal has. 

However, I would recommend consistently monitoring your weight and workout routines. They will give you a good indication of your overall progress. 

In the end, it all comes down to the eye test: Are my shoulders, chest, and arms growing? Is my waist getting smaller, and are my abs coming through? 

If yes, then keep doing what you are doing. 

If not, then adjust your nutrition and workout accordingly. 

Don't rush it. 

Losing weight should be a slow and steady process. I would not advocate crash diets which will make you lose weight fast but also miserable in the process. 

Once the crash diet is over, you will likely bounce back and gain your weight back on. Besides, on a crash diet, you are more likely to lose a lot of muscle in addition to fat – you really want to avoid that.  

I recommend adjusting your diet slowly and sustainably, which will get you to your ideal weight and keep you there.  

Like your workout routine, you should make your diet a lifelong habit and not a quick fix for the summer. 

Enjoy your food. 

The key to sticking to your diet plan for life is to make sure you enjoy your meals and snacks. It has to be delicious as well as contribute to your health and weight loss goals. 

The good news is that the modern kitchen has plenty of low-calorie dense foods that taste delicious, fill you up, and keep you under your BMR. 

Here are my top strategies that will help you to stay below your TDEE.

Eat low calorie-dense foods 

Low-calorie dense foods are the magic bullet you have been looking for. You can half the number of calories you consume just by replacing high-calorie foods with low-calorie options. You can do that without changing your eating habits at all. 

I would start by addressing the following 5 food groups: 

1. Sugary drinks: use the sugar-free alternatives
2. Cheese & dairy: eat the low-fat options 
3. Steak, beef patty, bacon, sausages, eggs: eat lean meat like chicken breast and use egg whites 
4. High fat & sugary snacks: switch to self-made, oil-free popcorn, fruits (preferably berries), and dark chocolate 
5. High fat & sugary sauces: like with snacks go here for low fat and sugar-free options

Eat more protein 

When you are in a calorie deficit, your body will transform some of the protein into energy. That's why it is imperative to eat enough protein in a calorie deficit – you want to make sure your muscles have enough building blocks to grow. 

Protein also has a thermostatic effect meaning that the body needs to put extra effort to transform the protein into energy. This increases your BMR, which helps to lose fat more effortlessly. 

Protein also fills you up faster and makes you feel satiated longer.


Eat low-fat foods 

High-fat foods tend to be calorie-dense. As mentioned before, it's essential to avoid those as eating only a few will add a lot of unnecessary calories to your diet without satisfying you. So the general goal should be to replace high-fat foods with low-fat options. 

Having said that, good fats have an important function in your body and contribute massively to your overall health. That's why I recommend eating lean fish with high Omega 3 fats.  

If you don't like fish, then feel free to supplement with fish oil capsules daily. 

Eat low-sugar foods 

Even though one gram of fat (9 kcal) has more than twice the calories of sugar (4 kcal), I would not recommend eating a lot of sugar even if you manage to stay under your daily calories. Sugar makes you more likely to crave food and has many adverse effects on your health.

Having said that, you shouldn't be afraid to consume some fruits or have a bit of chocolate or ice cream occasionally. It goes without saying that you can find many low sugar and fat-free alternatives here too. 

Eat at home 

The only way to really know what you put in your mouth is by buying and preparing your food by yourself. This way, you can guarantee the quality of your food and control your caloric intake easily. 

Finally, let me kill one common myth: You can't lose weight and gain muscle simultaneously.

Yes, you can!  

If you are overweight and your goal is to transform your body composition by losing fat while gaining muscle, then you total can do that by following the advice in this article. 

In summary, make sure you check all the boxes below: 

• Be in a small calorie deficit. The only way you will lose weight is by eating less than you burn. 
• Enjoy your diet. Pick delicious low-calorie dense alternatives and enjoy every meal. 
• Train hard. Make sure you supplement your diet with intensive weightlifting workouts.