How To Stay Shredded Year Round While Enjoying Good Food And Drinks

This article will directly address how to make being in shape/very lean a sustainable lifestyle, as opposed to something that is completely draining and can only be maintained for a short period of time.

Typically, when most individuals diet down successfully and get shredded, they will do their competition or photo shoot or whatever they were preparing for, and then have an entire week binge fest where they eat everything in sight.

Within a few weeks, their several months of excruciating work has completely gone down the tubes and they are back to a bloated, soft, undefined physique.

When you deprive your body for long periods of time, your cravings grow in intensity. Getting very shredded eventually will bring you to a point where you just can’t mentally or physically (or both) handle continuing to diet, train, and do your cardio to the extreme you would need to in order to get shredded, and stay shredded.

I have been guilty of this in the past too, and have made the mistake of increasing my calories all the way back up to maintenance after my cut, only to be shocked (in a negative way) when my body sucked in everything like a sponge and within a few weeks I was up 25+ pounds from my competition weight, and my abs were barely visible anymore.

So How Can You Stay Shredded Year Round And Maintain It Without Going Insane/Wanting To Kill Yourself?

Ok, so I’ve tinkered with A LOT of diet styles over the years, and the number one cause of failure in individuals with respect to being shredded is their inability to stick to a strict caloric intake.

Especially once the calories get very low when you are reaching sub 8-9% body fat levels.

Obviously this will differ for all individuals, but a solid diet style that will allow you to stay in amazing condition year round without wanting to eat 47 pizzas at any given moment and feeling like you are being tortured on a daily basis just to maintain your body is intermittent fasting/appetite control, as well as carbohydrate timing (if you are going to have carbs in your diet).

Intermittent Fasting/Appetite Control

So, delving into intermittent fasting (IF), it is basically a form of dieting where you don’t eat for an extended period of the day (hence “fasting”) and then you have a set window of time later in the day to eat your allotted calories for the day.

So, why is it so great for staying shredded?

I’ll tell you why. First off, when you wake up you are probably not starving to begin with.

I don’t know about you guys, but the one time of the day I’m definitively not hungry is right when my eyes open.

I could go to bed hungry, and wake up not hungry.

Odd, but that’s how my body works, and that’s how it does for many others as well.

So, basically the main premise behind pushing your eating window back as far into the day as possible is to completely offset that feeling you will inevitably get on a low calorie diet where you are craving food like a madman.

When you wake up, if you eat a meal with carbs in it (especially high glycemic ones), you will spike your insulin levels.

When this happens, you just took the first step in making your diet for the day 10x more difficult to stick to.

Insulin spikes make you very hungry, and they will cause you to store fat much more easily for the active time it is spiked in your blood stream.

So, we must take active measures to keep your appetite curbed for as long a period as possible.

When you wake up, the first thing you should do is get big glass of sparkling water.

You can also take your fat-burner at this time if you are going to take one.

The sparkling water will not only fill up your stomach and trick your brain into feeling satiated, but the carbonation will amplify the effect in your stomach and make you feel even less hungry than you normally would be.

Your fat-burner should curb your appetite even more so if you are using a good one.

After your cardio, you would probably be starving normally, but with all this carbonated water and the supplement doing their job, you will notice that you hardly even feel the need to eat.

Ride this feeling and continue with your day as scheduled and forget about food.

If you start to feel hunger creeping up and you want to prolong the fast even longer, now would be a fantastic time to go make yourself a coffee.

A zero calorie one of course.

If you do this, make it black (no added sugar or BS calorie additives).

I'm A Fan Of Death Wish Coffee Lately

You can add Stevia for flavour.

Stevia is a natural sweetener that tastes like sugar but is 0 calorie and induces no glycemic response in the blood, thus not influencing your fast or your insulin levels.

Continue your day, and then before you know it you will notice that you have gone through 2/3 of your day without even feeling the need to eat.

This is a lot easier to do if you keep yourself busy and just focus on your work, as you won’t be sitting sedentary in one spot day dreaming about food.

Now, because you have plowed through the majority of your day without eating anything, you have a far greater window of flexibility with your allotted calorie total for the day, as you won’t have to split your meals into several tiny ones now.

You can have 2 big meals and completely feel stuffed, but while staying well within your calorie goals because you simply were able to control your appetite.

The real benefit of this comes into play when you utilize this fasting window to allow you to go out for dinners, have a few drinks, or just eat foods that fall outside the common scope of “diet foods”, and just enjoy your life in general.

You know how many times I’ve had to refuse good food in the past.

What kind of lifestyle is one where every time you’re out with friends you have to say no to even a single slice of pizza because it will completely shatter your calorie allotment for the day?

This method I outlined above will get you so deep into your day without the need for food at all, that you can strategically utilize it to give yourself a giant window of flexibility where you can now actually fit a bit of junk food here and there into your diet without wrecking your progress.

Stay Shredded Year Round Without Shooting Yourself

While Intermittent Fasting certainly isn’t an optimal way to build size, it is ABSOLUTELY a great way to get and maintain a shredded physique with relative ease.

I honestly think it’s the only way you can stay in a calorie deficit and be a very lean body fat % for long periods of time without feeling like you are going to crash and eventually have a giant binge that turns you into a fat slob within weeks.

With this method, you can actually enjoy a cheat meal when you get really bad cravings, as it will actually fit within the realm of your calorie allotment if you planned your day well.

I hope you guys liked this article and find it helpful for living a more flexible and enjoyable lifestyle, while still staying in fantastic shape.