How to Stay Lean and Build Muscle This Christmas! | How to Build Muscle and Enjoy Festivities

The Festive Season Is HERE! And following on from my other Blog post on How To Stay Skinny This

Christmas, I thought I'd make another similar blog for those of us looking to build muscle this Christmas without putting on too much fat in How to Stay Lean and Build Muscle This Christmas...

Christmas is of course a time to enjoy with family and friends and that includes eating and drinking more calories than would usually be consumed! This doesn't mean though that making gains and making progress towards your goals isn't possible though! Here then in this blog I will discuss how I advise you manipulate this period to your advantage so that you don't put on too much excess fat and don't spoil all the hard work throughout the year!

1) Use the Extra Calories To Bulk and Train Hard!! My first thought about

this topic is quite simple that if you know you are going to be consuming a lot of calories over this period, then use those calories to build more muscle! We all know that the body builds muscle more efficiently when it is in a caloric surplus and so with Christmas you know you'll be filling your body with plenty of calories.

So I say keep training hard, use a training plan that focuses on the big heavy compound movements (Squats, Bench Press, Deadlifts, Pull Ups etc.) and make some serious gains during the period! It makes no sense to me at all to try and diet (cut) during this period of time as it will just be too difficult if you want to enjoy this time of year and you'll end up meeting somewhere in the middle and making no progress. So with your training definitely focus on muscle growth (bulking) During this period!

2) Deplete, Deplete, Deplete.. One of the tools I like to use throughout the year really whenever I know a big cheat day (or few days) is coming up and that is using depletion. This means either before, after or either side of a food binge, you deplete your body of it's natural stores of glycogen. Put simply you consume fewer carbs and fats so that you are eating in a caloric deficit. This will help to negate the effects of the additional calories you consume via food and drink, thus limiting any fat storage. Simple really, eat less on the days around your cheat day and it will help to balance it out the extra calories! Something that as I say I use all year round if I know there's an event coming up where I will be consuming far too many calories!

3) Cardio! Another way that you can balance out the additional calories is by

adding in some cardio into your training plan. Cardio of course increases the heart rate thus increasing energy expenditure and burns calories. By adding this in then you may well be ale to burn off the additional calories that you'll be consuming. This will be difficult to do purely by cardio but you will at least be decreasing your caloric surplus no matter what, decreasing fat gain!

I always recommend doing High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) as it is really good at not only burning calories in a short period of time, but also has an after-burn effect, where it continues to burn calories after the workout! So definitely try this method of cardio over the festive period!

4) Keep Hitting The Gym!! This is quite an obvious one but it needs to be said. That is to keep training whenever you can and when your gym is open of course! Too

many people just write off this period and think oh I will take a couple weeks' off which is fine if your body needs a rest and you don't mind putting on some fat. But if you want to maintain your condition and not put on any fat then you need to make sure you keep hitting the gym with intense workouts over the period! Once again make sure you are doing a weight training programme that focuses on lifting big heavy compound movements! If anything you have no excuse to go easy on your workouts anyway because all the additional calories should be giving you all the energy you need to smash those workouts!

5) Keep Active! Another way to balance out the calories is simply to stay as active as you possibly can at all times! Whether this be taking the dogs for an extended walk, or doing a home workout when your gym maybe closed, or going for a good old fashioned jog. All of these will help to increase the heart rate and burn off some of those extra calories that you'll be consuming! Maybe you won't be able to go for a walk along the Great Wall of China, but here's a picture of us doing exactly that last year!

6) Be Careful of Empty Calories! Empty calories are calories that require little or no digestion from the body and therefore require no energy to digest and hence the calories go straight into your system. Typically then these are the calories that are within drinks as they require little to no digestion from the body. My advice then s to avoid drinks like fruit juices and full sugar soft drinks as they are full of calories! Obviously here need to mention the elephant in the room which is alcohol as we all know we will all most likely be consuming more of this over the next few weeks! The best approach when it comes to your alcohol consumption try to stick to lower calories alternatives like spirits mixed with diet soft drinks, as opposed to drinking high calorie beer, wine and cocktails. This will just lessen the calorie content and therefore negate the effects of those additional calories!

7) Save You Calories For The Best Food!... Here's one that I think can make

a massive difference and that is to choose what meal you are going to have a cheat meal on that day and save your calories up for that meal. That means you restrict calories throughout the rest of the day.

Put it like this if on Christmas Eve I know I'm going out for a big family meal, I will eat little or no breakfast, go to the gym smash a workout, then eat whatever I want at the family meal to ensure I enjoy it to the full! Then I will eat not much else for the rest of the day. That's because to me it seems a waste to use up a load of calories on a breakfast that I wont really enjoy that much, so I'd rather save the calories for all the good food later on in the day! This makes you far less likely that you'll add on the fat.

8) Try Intermittent Fasting! This one is similar to the last point made but is slightly more extreme but could be the perfect way for you to stay lean over Christmas! Intermittent Fasting (IF) is an eating protocol whereby you restrict the hours during the day that you can eat. This can be a 10, 8 or 6 hour eating window. So for 10 hours, maybe you'd only eat from 12 midday through till 10 at night. Or for a 6 hour window, maybe 3pm until 9pm. What this does it it constricts the time period that you consume calories, thus making it much more difficult for you to actually eat enough calories to put on fat. It also gives your body a long time without calories and thus it has to use its fat stores for energy, burning fat.

Win win situation Right?...

The tough thing about IF however is of course when you are outside the eating

window. Because you can't consume any calories you are restricted to drinking, water, black tea/ coffee pretty much. So you may struggle with feeling hungry, having said that your body will adapt and you'll become used to it. However this protocol may not be for you, but if you think you could do it then it could well be perfect for you!

9) Be Careful of Snacks! I mentioned this in my Stay Skinny This Christmas blog but it needs mentioning here too, and that is to be careful about the number of calories that there are in the snacks that you eat! This is because a lot of us don't really consider snacks to have that many calories and so you end up nibbling away and then without realising you'll have consumed almost a whole meals' worth of calories! Especially snacks like nuts, crisps, crackers and cheese are all very high in calories and so you have to be careful if you don't want to put on any fat. May choose a healthier lower calorie alternative like carrot batons with houmous. Wanting more healthy snacking ideas? Find more here!

The key then to keep building muscle this Christmas is to first and foremost keep hitting the gym hard! Make the most out of the additional calories by having intense hard workouts. Then to help balance out the additional calories, be careful of what you eat, keep active and increase cardio and use depletion to your advantage. All this should mean that you can stay lean and keep on building muscle this festive period!