Getting ripped and shredded is probably one of the most sought after goals that all men have. It’s just satisfying to know that girls are looking at you with ogling eyes when you take off your shirt and reveal your hard work.

The problem that most people have is that it’s often too late to do anything before the big unveiling. Indeed, you cannot lose much fat without losing a little muscle in 30 days. But what you can do is create an illusion to show people that you’ve lost more fat than you actually did.

Now before I get into the overall plan, I want to clarify who this program is for. If you are above 15% body-fat, lose some body-fat normally first before even attempting this. Why? That’s because even if you were to use the methods I’ve outlined here, you’ll probably see sub-par results and fall short of being ripped.

Day 1-12

In this phase, you will be slowly working into an extreme fat loss state. You will be losing about 1-2% of fat and possibly a little muscle mass if you’re not careful. The main key to this phase is to not cut your calories too far back from your maintenance calorie intake.

The First thing you should do is to find out how much calories you need to maintain your bodyweight. Now, you don’t have to count the exact amount of calories mind you. If you have been maintaining your weight for some time now, the amount of food you’re eating is your maintenance.

What I want you to do now is to start eating 5 meals a day while keeping the total amount of food consumed lower than your maintenance level. Eat very cleanly in this phase, no exceptions. No McDonalds, chips and ice-cream. You want to have a protein and fat dominant diet while keeping carbohydrate intake low. You can eat as much vegetables as you want but don’t go crazy on the fruits. Start drinking about 4 litres of water a day now as well. This is to prepare you for a ‘flushing’ phase later on which is extremely important.

For training, you’re going to train every other day for less than 1.5 hours every workout. Perform total body training instead of splits and concentrate on big compound movements such as the squat, deadlift, bench press and military press. I won’t put limitations on how you should train but concentrate on doing a high number of repetitions and sets with big compound movements. It is important to finish your workout before an hour is up.

An example workout: Squats – 5×10, Military press -5×10, Pull-ups – 3x (as much as possible)

Now, the reason why you should finish weight training in an hour’s time is because you’re going to do intervals after your workout. Choose a form of activity in which you can perform very intensely for a short period of time. Then, simply go fast and then go slow. Repeat as many cycles as you can for 20 minutes.

Day 13-23

In this phase, you’ll continue losing fat through depleted glycogen stores. Decrease your food intake a little and start drinking more water. You should be making frequent trips to the toilet. If not, drink more.

The major change in this phase is the cutting of intervals and addition of steady state cardio. Again, choose a form of activity which you enjoy and do it for 30 minutes after each training session. You should increase the number of minutes of cardio each workout. I personally recommend walking and jogging as the choice of cardio.

Day 24-30

This is it, the final stretch before the big unveiling. You should probably have lost about 2% off your body fat when entering day 24. In this phase, you will only be weight lifting once on day 27. But you’ll have to do your cardio every day for 30 minutes.

The key to this phase is water weight. You can now stop the ridiculous amount of water you’ve been drinking and reduce it to 6 cups or less a day. Your body will still flush out the water in you as it has not adapted to the low water intake yet. This will further shave about 2-3% off your body-fat percentage.

On day 24 to 27, simply do 30 minutes of cardio everyday while drinking as little water as possible. On day 27 and 28, start taking hot baths to sweat out water in addition to 20 minutes of cardio while still drinking as little water as possible.

The last 2 days of this phase is probably the best. You can stop your cardio but still take the baths. Your muscles will probably feel flat from low carb intake. Start eating a high carbohydrate and protein diet these last 2 days to make your muscles look fuller. By day 30, you should feel primed to tear off your shirt and show off your new found leanness to the girls.

Source:

• How to Lose Water Weight Fast and Permanently