How To Lose Belly Fat And Grow Your Glutes

If you're somebody who's trying to grow your glutes but lose stomach fat at the same time, this video is going to be for you because you've probably heard before that you need to eat in a calorie deficit in order to lose stomach fat, but then you've also probably heard you need to eat more to grow your glutes. So which one is it and can you do them at the same time? Well, we're going to talk about if it's even possible for you to do that. If it is possible, what do you do? If it's not possible to do it at the same time, what do you do? And then we're going to talk about how long does it take for you to see the progress that you want to see. So first and foremost, is it possible? The answer is yes, kind of. There are 3 main scenarios this is going to be more possible than the last scenario that we'll talk about. The first scenario, if you are a beginner to following a real strength training program. I don't mean Beachbody, I don't mean Orange Theory, I don't mean HIIT boot camps, I don't mean YouTube video workouts, I don't mean random Instagram workouts. Nothing against those things, and it's— that is all exercising, which is great. I think everybody should exercise, but there's a difference between doing those sorts of things and then following a structured, science-backed strength training program That is written in a way to get you the results that you are looking to get. In this case, growing your glutes. All right? And how— you're going to ask me, Eric, what is a real strength training program? This video would be 4 days long if I went through everything. But if I can give you a couple of key points. Number 1, you want to have proper rest times. So you want to be able to be resting for around 2 minutes in between your sets for your workouts. This is going to allow you to do the next part, which is lift heavy enough to build muscle. So many people get stuck in their workout program just doing like high reps, doing very, very fast-paced workouts. You're not going to grow your glutes that way, especially the more like advanced that you get. You need to make sure you're lifting heavy and properly resting in between your sets. And you're going to ask me, Eric, what is lifting heavy? Generally speaking, I tell people try to get stronger around the 5 to 10 rep range. Sometimes you might do sets of like 5 or 6 reps. Sometimes you might do sets of like 8 or 10 reps, but if you're getting stronger in the 5 to 10 rep range, then that would encompass what a real strength training program would look like. And that's the 4th point to this. Like I said, this could be a very, very long video. I won't bore you to death, but I want to give you the biggest keys. You want to be able to have something called progressive overload. You've probably heard heard that before, right? Progressive overload just means week over week over week, you are getting better. You are doing more. So you're lifting more weight, you're doing more reps, uh, you're doing maybe a little bit of both of those 2 things, right? Maybe you're having better form. You want— if you're always like, let's say you're doing Orange Theory or a Beachbody workout, or you're doing random workouts off Instagram. If one week you're doing a hip thrust for 3 sets of 8 reps, and the next week you're doing a Single leg hip thrust for 5 sets of 8 reps, and the next week you're doing a Bulgarian split squat, and the next week you're doing this, next week you're doing that. How can you get better and how can you improve if you're always doing something different? So week to week to week, you should look to get better and progress in your workouts. I recommend keeping the same workout program for 4 to 8 weeks at a time. And if you need a free workout program from me, there's going to be a link here in the description of this video. You can click on that after the video if you would like. The reason that you will be able to do both of these things, grow your glutes and lose stomach fat at the same time, if you're a beginner to following a real program, is because with a real program, your body will see stimulus and it will see adaptations no matter what. Like, because you just getting on the proper program is going to be enough for you to change your body. And I say this because Even if you're somebody who's been working out for, you know, 6 months, 12 months, 3 years, 5 years, 10 years, but you've never actually followed a real program, this— you still fall into this beginner category. And that's a good thing. Most people think like, oh, I'm a beginner, that's a bad thing. No, that's a good thing because you can do both of these 2 things at the same time. You'll be able to still eat in that calorie deficit because you do need the calorie deficit to lose body fat. You'll be able to eat in the calorie deficit while still Growing your glutes and building muscle. So that is the first scenario. And again, you're going to— you might ask me, you might be thinking, well, Eric, how much of a calorie deficit? I thought I shouldn't go too low in calories. Don't worry. All right. The second part, um, second scenario, is it possible if you've taken an extended time off from following a real strength training program? So whether you just— life got in the way, maybe you had kids, maybe you got injured, maybe you were going to school, maybe work was busy. If you've taken an extended time off, you will also fall into this category because again, if you've taken time off, when you go back to following it, the stimulus that you are giving to your body, your body's like, oh shit, like this is good. Like I need to react to this. I need to change. I need to adapt to this. So usually this is about like, if it's been more than 2 months, I would say that is like taking time off. If you just like you know, you missed a workout here and there, or you went on vacation for 2 or 3 weeks. Like, that's not what I'm talking about. But if it's been more than a significant— I'd say 6 to 8 weeks— you probably fall in this category, and you will be able to do both of these at the same time. And really quickly, before I forget, when I say a beginner, usually that's in the first 6 to 18 months of you following a proper training program. So usually I say 6 to 12, but You can sometimes push it up to 18 months. This is what I would consider a beginner to following a real program. And again, I know I'm like being redundant here, but I want to hammer this home. This is actually following a program. So not just doing random workouts, not just doing random machines, not just doing random exercises thrown together that you saw on social media, following a real program. All right. So that's the second scenario. The third scenario is if you are somebody who you do have a lot of body fat that you need to lose, Let's say, you know, you have 50, 60, 70+ pounds of body fat, even potentially 30 or 40+ pounds of body fat that you need to lose. You will be able to lose fat— sorry, lose fat and grow your glutes at the same time. So those are the 3 scenarios. And remember, you're able to do this basically because when you get on that strength training program, you'll be able to do this no matter what. So you can set your nutrition up to to do this. When it gets— I don't want to say impossible because it's never impossible, but when it gets very difficult to do both of these 2 things at the same time is when you get past that like intermediate to advanced lifter stage. So after you get past those first like 18 months of you following a proper training program, it's going to be harder for you to build muscle and lose fat at the same time. Why? Because your body has already pretty much started to adapt to following the proper program. So over time, this is where we don't just like keep getting stronger and stronger and stronger because like you would— we would all just be like lifting cars and houses and stuff and it wouldn't make any sense. So it gets harder to make progress the more advanced That you get. So if it gets harder to make progress, it gets harder to build muscle, you are then going to increase your calories to optimize your muscle building. It's not that you can't build muscle while you're in a calorie deficit trying to lose body fat. If you are somebody who's more advanced, it's just going to be so slow that you will not really notice any sort of difference with your body. Like, it's just Like, think about if like paint drying and grass growing had a baby. Like, that's how slow it's gonna be for you to build muscle when you get to more of that beginner, that intermediate to advanced stage. You need more calories to facilitate more muscle growth because if you're in a calorie deficit, those extra— you don't have extra calories going around to put towards building muscle and you need them once you get more advanced. You don't need them over here. You need them down here. So that's why if you've seen people on social media do something that we call like a bulk in a cut, they spend periods of times— I can talk about how much— they spend periods of times eating more calories in a calorie surplus, not losing their stomach fat, but they are growing their glutes. So they'll spend a certain amount of time doing that, and then After they spend a certain amount of time doing that, they will then go down and they'll go back into a calorie deficit to lose body fat, lose stomach fat. They won't really grow their glutes, but they just spent a certain amount of time growing their glutes. So they've done this and they've done this. It's just separate as opposed to doing it at the same time. Does that make sense? So it's possible, but it's possible more so if you're this beginner stage. And once you get to this stage, because hopefully no matter where you are right now, I hope you get to this stage where you get to this more intermediate to advanced, because that means you're building muscle and staying consistent and doing all these great things. So when you get there, you might have to take a different approach. So let's talk about what you should be doing if you want to grow your glutes and lose stomach fat at the same time. I'll talk about, uh, if you are a beginner first, and then I will talk about if you are not a beginner. And when, not if, when you get to more of that intermediate stage. All right? So the first thing you're gonna wanna do is, again, eat in a slight calorie deficit depending on how much body fat that you have to lose. If you have 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 pounds to lose, I would probably create roughly about a 400 to 500 calorie deficit. So meaning if your maintenance calories are 2,000 calories, you would eat 1,500 calories per day in your calorie deficit. Because again, if you do have more body fat to lose, you need to lose that body fat for health reasons and just to lose your stomach fat, right? Remember, you're going to build muscle no matter what. If you know, if you're one of these 3 things, you're going to build muscle no matter what. So if you have more fat to lose, go more towards the 500 calorie deficit per day. If you have less fat to lose, like maybe you're like, well, I could lose, you know, 10 pounds or 15 pounds or something like that. Then you might just create a slight calorie deficit, meaning like a 200-300 calorie deficit per day. So if, again, for example, if your maintenance calories were 2,000, maybe you would eat 1,700-1,800 calories per day, somewhere around there. That's generally speaking what I recommend for people. There's gonna be a little caveat here. Some people can eat around their maintenance calories and lose stomach fat and build glutes at the same time. That is for if you are that like— it really depends on the person, but that is like if you are skinny fat where like you don't have a stomach, you don't have fat to lose, but you just don't look the way you want to look. You would then maybe eat a little bit more around your maintenance calories So again, if let's say your maintenance calories are 2,000 per day, you might eat a little bit more towards maintenance calories and then be able to still do both of these things at the same time because you're not really— you're more so building muscle than you are losing stomach fat, right? So that's a caveat there. It's one of those, you know, one of those 3 scenarios. And if you need more help with how many calories you should be eating, what are your maintenance calories, what is a calorie deficit for you? There's gonna be a calorie calculator in the description of this video, so please feel free to go check it out if you would like. All right? That's the first part. The second part to this is you need to be eating enough protein per day. So how much protein should you be eating? Well, I would usually take your goal body weight times 0.8 to 1. So if, let's say for example, I don't know, you want to weigh 150 pounds. 150 times 0.8 is 120. 150 times 1 is 150. So you would eat 120 to 150 grams of protein per day. Again, this is a rough range. You do not need to eat your current body weight in protein unless, unless you're somebody who, again, you maybe don't have a lot of like weight to lose to begin with. You might end up eating more protein like towards your body weight, but Usually just take your goal body weight and multiply it by that. And again, if you need a free protein and calorie calculator, it's in the description of this video. But you would eat that high protein because that's what's going to allow you to build that muscle while losing stomach fat at the same time. And the third thing you're going to do is you're going to do what we said earlier is follow a proper strength training program and lift weights 3 to 4 times a week. A couple of things here. With this strength training program, you're going to lift to build muscle. You're not going to lift to do lightweight for high reps. You're not going to lift to tone the muscle. You're going to lift to get stronger, have progressive overload, push yourself close to failure, because that's how you're going to do this. You are not going to do this through HIIT cardio. You're not going to do this through boot camps. You're not going to do this through HIIT classes. Like, you need to strength train 3 to 4 times a week. And make those sessions centered around building muscle and getting stronger. If you're doing 3 times a week, I would do lower body, upper body, full body. If you're doing 4 times a week, I would do lower body, upper body, lower body, upper body, because you want to hit your glutes 2 times per week. You do not need to do 3 times per week. I think for 98% of natural lifters, that means if you're not taking performance-enhancing drugs, I think that is just too much. I don't think you're gonna be able to recover from that much volume, right? So I would follow that right there. And then again, you're gonna ask me, Eric, what's— how many sets, how many reps, how many exercises for my leg days? Check out the free workout program that I have. But if you want a general range, usually about 4 to 5 exercises on a leg day. Like, you do not need to be doing 8, 10 exercises on a leg day. That is not— That's not good. Like, don't, because you won't be able to lift as heavy. You won't be able to push yourself as close to failure, which means you won't grow your glutes. So 4 to 5 exercises, 3 or 4 of them can be for your glutes. So a leg day might look like this. You have a hip thrust that you start off with, 3 sets of 8 reps, and then you do a Bulgarian split squat, your favorite, 3 sets of 6 to 10 reps. And then you do a dumbbell Romanian deadlift. 2 sets of 8 to 10 reps. Then maybe you do like a leg extension and a leg curl to finish off the workout. That's 5 exercises. That's 3 glute exercises. You have 8 sets of glutes in one workout. If you take those sets close to failure, that will be more than enough. So that's what you would follow. And then again, if you are somebody who is that more intermediate to advanced, you would kind of do what we talked about earlier is you would do cycles of bulk and you would do cycles of cut. And so let me explain this just a tad bit more. When you do a bulk, that is a dedicated period of time that you are putting towards building muscle, eating in a calorie surplus. Generally that's about 4 to 6 months. I'm not even sure if you can see that on the camera. If not, I apologize. But when you go into a bulk, a calorie surplus, you're going to spend about 4 to 6 months there. Because if you're lucky, you're building like 1.5 to 2 pounds of muscle per month, if you're lucky. And honestly, most people aren't even doing that. It's usually around like a pound to maybe a pound and a half. If you only do it for 2 months, you're not gonna build any muscle. Like, you're not gonna see any changes because even— let me go get my pound of muscle here. This is a pound of muscle. But when you build muscle, you don't just build muscle in your glutes. You're gonna build some muscle in your hamstrings. You're gonna build some muscle in your quads. You're gonna build some muscle in your shoulders. And so this 1 pound, for your glutes in particular, it's gonna take time for you to build any substantial amount of muscle. So taking about 4 to 6 months to make sure you're in that calorie surplus, and no, you will not be losing stomach fat during this time. Okay? Are we on the same page there? You will not be losing stomach fat, but you will be growing your glutes. So while you're doing this, understand you will not lose stomach fat. But, but after you spend 6 months in your calorie surplus, you can then go into a cut. You would go into a calorie deficit. I would probably create about a 500-calorie deficit. You would go into that and then you would be able to lose— Stomach fat. Stomach fat during that 2 to 3 month calorie deficit. So this is how you do both at the same time. You dedicate a period of time to each of those. That's what, like, when you see these people doing these things on social media, that's what they do. They dedicate specific time to each. Now you might not be there yet, but you will get there. And that's what I recommend when you do get there, because you'll make the most of doing this and then You're not gonna have a flat stomach all the time. Like, it's not normal. You don't have to either. I don't— I know, like, social media and beauty standards and all these things, you don't— you're not supposed to have a flat stomach all the time, okay? Especially when you're bulking, you're gonna have a little bit of a stomach, and that's okay. Anybody who actually knows what they're talking about is not gonna give a shit anyway. If they don't, you don't wanna talk to them. You want bigger glutes. Nobody ever made songs about having a flat stomach. People make songs about big glutes. So focus on growing your glutes. All right, so that's what you would do. And for the last point here, how long is it going to take you? I kind of just answered that, but it's going to take a long time. I would truly give yourself at least 6, if not more towards 9 to 12 months of doing all of this to see significant progress. Now, if it happens sooner for you, that's incredible. Like, kudos to you. But if you expect it to take 12 months and it happens in 7 months, you'll be stoked. But if you expect it to happen in 2 months and it doesn't happen in 2 months, you think you suck, you think you're a failure, you think you're doing something wrong, and you're gonna end up quitting. So this stuff takes time, especially building muscle. Like, losing body fat, like I said, you could lose a pound of body fat per week. By eating in a 500-calorie deficit. You cannot gain a pound of muscle in a week unless you're on steroids. And if you are on steroids, that's even still a lot of muscle to be gaining in that period of time. So you might gain a pound to a pound and a half per month. So this stuff is going to take a lot of time. And I just want you to understand that because when you have the proper expectations going into it, you will succeed more. Okay. And that's pretty much all I got for you guys. Again, if you would like a free workout program from me or the calories below, you can go to the link in the description below. Or if you're interested in getting coached by myself and my team to help you grow your glutes and lose stomach fat at the same time, there will be a link in the description of this video. Hope you enjoyed and we will chat soon.