Natalie Jill explains how to get shredded and lean through diet, training intensity, and progression. She covers the specific nutritional and workout strategies needed to build muscle definition and reduce body fat.
Hi, guys. Welcome back to Happy, Healthy and Fit. Today I'm answering the question, how do I get shredded? Everyone like that word shredded and it means different things to different people. And it's always funny when I get that question, because my first question back is, what is your goal of it? Is it something you want to do for a specific event, competition, or are you trying to get shredded just to look shredded all the time? What does it mean? Because it requires a different train of thought, a different train of training, a different way of training and eating depending on your goal. So first, what is your definition of shredded? To me, that definition is having a lower body fat where you can actually see your hard work and see your muscles. So when you see your abs, for instance, some people would call that shredded, others might take it to an extreme, and only if they see lots of veins everywhere, that's what they would call shredded. But what I always tell people is if you're looking to get shredded, whatever your definition is, for a short period for a competition, something like that, then there's a lot of methods that would get you there temporarily. And that's a matter of tricking your body to use every single thing you consume and eat just to go towards muscle and not leaving any room to store anything for fat. And I don't personally like to train or eat that way because I don't think that's sustainable. I don't think it's healthy long term, and I think it can create havoc on your metabolism when you're doing that for a short term. So my suggestion to people when they ask me that once I know it's not for a temporary option, it is to change your way of thinking about diet and exercise. Because when you're doing everything in intense for you and you're training with progression and you're eating the way our bodies are designed to eat, you will naturally uncover that lean muscle mass and you will obtain that look and also be able to maintain energy and look and feel functional all the time. So it's not an up and down where I see abs one day and not the next. So here's my tips for that, if that is what you're after. The first thing is diet. Now, diet is of course important. However, if you are a true athlete, and I mean a true athlete, not someone who just goes to the gym for an hour every day, but somebody who's truly an athlete, does it competitively, your diet requirements and the way you eat is going to start to have less of an impact on how you look overall versus somebody who is not an athlete and needs to use the diet to make the difference. So what I mean by that is sometimes you'll see a really well known athlete who trains extreme and you'll see them eating whatever the heck they want. And that's because their bodies work much more efficiently, they're burning a lot of calories, they're working a lot harder, and whatever they eat is going to get metabolized a lot faster. So because of the extreme way that they're training, they're going to be able to maintain that leanness really no matter what they eat. Now, if you're not training like an athlete, diet becomes more and more and more important because it does boil down to making sure you're not eating so much that you're storing that layer of fat over you. So if you're training like an extreme athlete, diet becomes less important. Now the commonality with athletes and non athletes though is the best way to eat, to maintain leanness overall is to go back to the way our bodies were meant. And that's eating real natural, unprocessed foods. Real natural, unprocessed foods. Not things that come in a package, not things that have lots of ingredients. So natural foods, things, proteins, meat, any kind of meat, nuts, seeds, any vegetable, fruit, all of that, anything that's natural, the way nature meant it. That is a way to not overeat, to not get too full. It's very hard to be obese or carry this lots of extra fat around when you're eating an unprocessed natural food diet. When we get into eating a lot of processed foods with artificial sweet sweeteners and flavors and colors and all this extra stuff, we end up tricking our bodies into thinking that we need more. We've messed with our taste buds and we end up overeating and having these cravings and eating too much of a variety. And that could lead to that extra area of storing fat. My other tip is to, even if you're not an athlete, you want to think about training like an athlete. So how intense can you be for you? I always say if you want to be lean and you want to be shredded, you've got to train with intensity. But the definition of intensity is, is the same for everybody. It just means how hard can you work. But that level varies for different people. So what might be intense for one person may not be intense for another. But the important part is that it is intense for you. You want to train with intensity and you also want to think about progression. Doing the same reps, the same weight over time. You're going to have less of a result over time because it just gets easier. But if you think about progression, progressively making things harder each time, doing more and more that naturally will help you up the intensity, up the reward value from your workout and create more muscle mass, get you stronger, which ultimately will get you leaner. So just to recap, if you are a full athlete, yes you can eat more than others, diet becomes less important. But eating an unprocessed natural food diet extremely important if you want to to obtain a long lasting lean look. The second thing is to train like an athlete and do intense for you. How intense can you go? The next thing is to practice progression training. So upping it, making it harder, more challenging each time, that is how you get shredded. Now if you want to follow a full 12 week plan that gives you everything you need to get shredded to get fully shredded and do it the healthy way, then check out information on my 12 week super shred program below and I'll get you started. See you next time. Bye.
