At first I thought about just blowing off the whole workout but couldn’t since I was supposed to work chest & back the day before and blew it off. I couldn’t do that twice in a row. I just determined to work quickly and try to get in enough sets for both chest and back before the gym closed.

After a couple minutes warm up I grabbed a couple of 85 lb.

dumbbells and did a slow controlled set of 8 reps of flat dumbbell bench presses. 3 second negative, 2 second positive. That felt pretty good, so I rested about 60 seconds and managed to squeeze out 5 reps with the same dumbbells on the next set.

After only another 60 seconds rest, I decided that I wanted to do some higher rep sets. So I picked up a pair of 65 lb.

dumbbells and lowered myself to the bench. All of a sudden those 65 lb. dumbbells felt almost as heavy as the 85’s! I could only squeeze out 8 reps! What gives?

Still wanting to do at least 12 reps, I dropped down to the 55’s, once again after only a 45 to 60 second rest. I could only squeeze out 8 reps with the 55’s and they were feeling mighty heavy, too!

Ok, this was getting ridiculous. I dropped down to 45’s (normally I use these for my warm up) and finally was able to squeeze out a set of 12 reps but my chest was on fire during those last several reps. I was huffing and puffing like a steam engine.

Onto my back workout:

Same thing! Resting only 45 to 60 seconds was fatiguing my muscles rather quickly and making me drop to lighter poundages to stay in the rep zones I wanted to be in.

See, I usually do heavy sets of 5 to 8 reps with a good 2 to

3 minutesrest in between. Cutting my rest times to 60 seconds or less drastically increased the intensity of my workout.

The next day I was more sore than I’ve been in a long time.

Obviously I had imposed a stress that my body wasn’t used to.

If you’re going a little stale in your workouts, try reducing the rest between sets to 45 to 60 seconds and see what happens.

You might be pleasntly surprised!

He was not only big but also really lean and showing lots of cuts.

He was about the same height as me and I guessed him to be about 190 lbs.

I struck up a conversation and asked how he stayed so lean. He explained that he was training for a local show that was about two weeks away.

We talked about his diet and other things (he didn’t know he was conversing with the infamous Doberman Dan) and he shared some really good ideas.

He then said something that caught me by surprise…

“It’s obvious you’ve got the muscle mass… but you’d look a heck of a lot better if you got leaner.”

You know what… he was right. I did a bulking cycle a few months back and my bodyfat had crept up… again. I got hooked on the scale going up and up and got up to 190. For a 5′6″ guy with a small frame, that’s a lot. Probably too much.

My new friend told me to quit worrying about the scale and work on getting my body fat down. He said I’d look big that way, too.

I figured this guy was about the same as me, 190 lbs, but was a whole lot leaner. He looked huge. I was absolutely floored when he told me…

He was 164 lbs

That day I went home and immediately started cutting carbs and doing all the things I know I need to do to get leaner.

I’ll tell you the same thing…

If you have a body fat of 15% or higher, you’ll not only look better leaner… you’ll look big, too.

Vince Gironda used to talk about creating an illusion. You can create the illusion of being big by being lean.

Vince always used to say, “Do you want to gain fat or do you want to gain muscle? How much do you think an extra inch on your arms is going to add to the scale?”

Hey look, I’m a proponent of bulking up a little to pack on muscle mass. But there comes a time when ya gotta lean out, too.

Bulk up when you want to pack on muscle mass quick. Then lean out slowly and keep that new mass. The scale may go down but you’ll look a lot big and better.

You’ll look like a real bodybuilder.

Get Underground Mass Secrets for more information on packing on muscle

Eating more lean protein foods has also been proven as an effective strategy to help you burn fat and keep it off because of something called, “dietary thermogenesis” (also known as the thermic effect of food).

In a study published in the British Journal of Nutrition in 2005 (93(2): 281-289), researchers followed a group of 113 overweight subjects after 4 weeks of a very low calorie diet, through a 6 month period of weight maintenance. The subjects were divided into a protein group or a control group. The protein group was simply given an extra 30 grams of protein per day on top of their usual diet.

The researchers found that during weight maintenance, the group with the higher protein intake was less likely to regain the lost weight, and any weight gain in the protein group was lean tissue and not fat. The results were attributed to higher thermic effect and a decrease in appetite.

Although calories will always be the bottom line when it comes to fat loss, studies such as these are confirming what bodybuilders have known for a long time: That calories are not the only factor that can influence your body composition. Your protein intake and your ratios of protein relative to carbohydrate and fat can clearly play a key role in helping you lose fat and keep the fat off.

None of this is news to bodybuilders or to anyone who is already familiar with bodybuilding-style nutrition programs such as Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle. But it’s interesting that such positive results were achieved in studies where protein was increased so conservatively - as little as 30 additional grams of protein per day or a 20% increase above traditional protein recommendations.

Many bodybuilding-style diets (such as Burn The Fat and Body For Life) call for as much as 30%-40% of the total daily calories from protein and some competitive bodybuilders crank up the protein (temporarily) to as much as 50% before competitions.

I’m curious to see if any research is ever conducted with these more aggressive protein intakes. If so, my guess is that we will find once again, that the bodybuilders are ahead of the science when it comes to the manipulation of diet for improving body composition.

The take home lesson is simple: If you remove some carbs and put in some protein - nothing too radical; even as little as trading 30 grams per day of carbs for 30 grams of lean protein - this small change in your diet may decrease your appetite, decrease your body fat and help you keep the fat off after you lose it.

About The Author

Tom Venuto is a lifetime natural bodybuilder, an NSCA-certified personal trainer, certified strength & conditioning specialist (CSCS), and author of the #1 best selling diet e-book, Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle. Tom teaches you how to lose fat without drugs or supplements using the little-known secrets of the world’s best bodybuilders and fitness models. Learn how to get rid of stubborn fat and turbo-charge your metabolism by visiting http://www.burnthefatbook.com/, home of Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle and BurnTheFatInnerCircle , the Internet’s premiere members-only fat loss support community. .