How to burn fat and keep the muscle?
In the past I always wanted to be just slim and it was good enough for me, but when I grew up I realised it’s cool to be slim AND have muscle. During my first contest preparation I learned that these two are in a quite high maintenance relationship! 🙂
For those who like quick info, the summary comes first.
BCAA supplement helps to build muscle, then helps you to keep them while you diet to lose fat. Train hard and take BCAA before and after workout, you can get yours from www.trecnutrition.co.uk the high speed one is something that I tried, hence I recommend it, vegetarian friendly, link –> click here.
What is BCAA?
BCAAs – Branched Chain Amino Acids refers to 3 amino acids, Leucine, Isoleucine and Valine. Large part of our cells, muscles and tissues are made up of amino acids. They give cells the structure and help with storage and transport of nutrients, help with healing, repair of muscle and bones and with getting rid of waste created during metabolism.
Why BCAA is important when you train?
When you train and try to get lean you will be cutting calories (however some people try to intensify workouts instead of cutting calories, but then you still will need more energy than usual to recover). When your calories are lower the training sessions may become less intense. You are tired and weaker, you lift lighter giving the muscle signal you don’t need them that much. Muscle need a reason to stay. So when your body realises muscles are not needed it will use them for energy. But you worked so hard to gain them in the first place 😀
And there is more… then after work out your body needs to repair and again needs energy for this, it will use a bit of your muscle and perhaps also a bit of your fat. However the leaner you get the harder it will be to lose fat, body needs to hold on to it as a back up energy, to keep you warm and to provide protection to your organs.
To sum up – you could rescue your body and give it BCAA, for energy, to repair, to grow or to maintain what is already has.
So why use the supplement?
Of course you can get BCAA from food, for example from chicken, fish, nuts, cheese or eggs. However there are at least 2 reasons why BCAA supplement is useful.
1st – you won’t be eating all that food just before you workout and you may not have it with you straight after workout. BCAA is just a powder that you can mix with your drink and won’t feel heavy like you would after having a proper meal. Plus it works fast.
2nd – the food you eat may not have all the nutrients that you need when you train hard (various reasons such as food processing, pollution, quality of meat – what animals eat, hormones etc) AND your body may not be absorbing food effectively (digestion problems, smoking, drinking). So supplementing gives you advantage of having amino acids from both sources, food and BCAA powder.
Anyone interested in having a muscular body, and I don’t mean bodybuilders only 🙂 should consider BCAA supplement. All the abs, glutes and nice hair and skin lovers too. Don’t forget what builds those parts!
This is the one I have, see pic below 🙂
