In an unofficial survey taken at gyms across the world, getting toned is the number 1 goal for most women at the gym.

Which is a great goal and feels even better when you actually get toned!

You’ll feel strong.

You’ll feel more confident.

You’ll be firmer with a more defined shape.

But there’s a huge issue with everyone trying to get toned…

They spend all their time working out (and eating) in a way that gets them LESS toned!

Then after a month of working so hard get frustrated as hell when their body is loose, flabby, or “skinny-fat”

But it’s the only result they’ll ever get because that’s how they’re training their body.

THERE’S A BETTER WAY TO GET TONED.

In this week’s Youtube, I break down how getting toned works, the best way to train for it, and how you can eat to make sure you get toned ASAP.

Check it out below, or read through the transcript underneath.

What is up everybody coach Jumha here, and today we’re going to be breaking down the step-by-step process to getting toned. This is pretty much what 90%0 of women that get into lifting and training want from their body they want to be toned. If you’re a coach or trainer yourself you probably heard that as a goal several hundred times and in this video we’re going to be breaking down what it means to get toned the wrong ways to do it and how to actually achieve that for yourself.

What Does It Mean To Get Toned?

Getting toned is really just a BS marketing term that is used to sell things, It doesn’t actually have any real meaning in the fitness space. We know what you mean when you say it though. When you want to get toned you want to look lean you want your body to be firmer and you want to have some definition as well. You don’t want your arm to be one big round sausage, you want it to be able to show some definition and give it some shape.

So we know what you mean when you say it but because of it being used as such a big fancy marketing term we’re misled in what it takes to achieve that.

The Wrong Way To Get Toned

There’s no exercise that is going to tone your legs and you can’t shake weight your arms into getting more toned. It’s a process that takes time but with a smart plan and with what you’re going to learn in this video it can be a faster process.

Most people think that to get toned you should be as small as possible. You want to be as thin as possible to get toned so, in that pursuit of being smaller, losing as much fast as possible they do a lot of cardio. They do a lot of HIIT training to lose as much fat as possible and depending on where you’re starting out losing fat can help but at a certain point, you won’t be able to lose enough fat to get toned anymore.

There are a couple of reasons for that for one we all have a body fat settling point and this topic can be an entire video on its own but what it means is there’s an amount of body fat that your body feels best having and if you go too low or go past that point your body is going to resist losing fat and it’s also going to make sure that you know it’s uncomfortable with where it’s at.

Body Fat Settling Point

This happens all the time with bodybuilding competitors, especially females. They’ll have a lot of negative biofeedback when it comes to being at that really low body fat percentage because their body doesn’t want that. Your body is going to fight back by giving you all kinds of negative biofeedback lowering your energy, giving you insane cravings, giving you a super high appetite, lowering your libido, and for females losing your cycle. All of these are ways that your body is trying to tell you, “hey this low body fat is not for me. We need more body fat on us!”

Not only that, as soon as you increase calories if you were below your body fat settling point you’re going to naturally accumulate more body fat. So if you wanted to try to get as thin as possible route, you’re going to have a lot of struggles maintaining that image once you get to that point because you’re going to have to diet and do cardio year-round to maintain it.

What It Means To Get Toned

Obviously, that’s not enjoyable and it’s not sustainable. This is why if you want to be toned and lean in an enjoyable way that also coincides with your body fat settling point what you need to do is spend some time building muscle. If you’re someone that thinks you need to lose 5 to 20 pounds to get to your goal image you’re probably somebody that needs to take time to build some muscle.

*demonstration in the video to show why muscle building leads to being toned*

hey, can you come to help me out for a demonstration he doesn’t know what we’re doing yet no I don’t okay so grab this and pull it to the other side yeah just like layer them so imagine this is your skin and the fat underneath your skin right now even at a low body fat percentage you know there’s nothing in here you can’t see any definition it’s just a flat area and that’s what you’re going to experience with your skin if you just focus on losing fat and not building muscle because the muscle underneath it that you build is what’s going to give your arms, your legs, & your midsection shape.

It’s what’s going to create definition and curvature and the lines that you want to see when you flex when you’re walking around. You can see that with these examples of women that were already pretty thin as they were but weren’t toned. Getting thinner for them wouldn’t help, they needed to build muscle if they wanted to get the body that they wanted and that was the only way to do that.

You could see this example apply to professional athletes too. If you watch the summer Olympics long-distance runners are typically very thin people. They don’t have a lot of muscle on them and as a result, they actually don’t have a lot of definition. They’re not very toned but they run more than anyone else in the world and expend a lot of energy. Despite that, they don’t have the toned look that most people are after. Yet, more people will train like marathon runners than they would like a sprinter. Who, if you look at their body types, is going to be more in line with what people are looking for. They’re muscular, they have definition, they’re lean. Now I’m not saying that you need to be as muscular as a sprinter but what I am saying is you can learn a lot from people who have similar body types to what you want. Just this side-by-side comparison shows that building muscle will get you closer to the body that you’re looking for. As opposed to trying to lose as much fat as possible.

Benefits Of Building Muscle

Muscle building is what getting toned is! You get leaner, you feel firmer, you have more definition – which is what you’ve been after the entire time! Which is what you think of when you think about getting toned. Not only that, but building muscle has so many benefits. You’re going to get stronger. Which is going to build your self-confidence, and if you’re a mom or parent you’re going to be able to set a good role model as a strong parent for your children. Having more muscle in your body is also great for your joint health and your hormone health. Most importantly of all, it increases your resting metabolism. So instead of needing to diet and do cardio year-round, you can eat more food, do less cardio, and always look lean. Who wouldn’t want that! There’s no downside to adding muscle to your body. Now the question is, how can you build muscle?

How To Build Muscle

There’re a lot of different things that you could do to build muscle but some of the main principles are: needing to strength train three to five times a week with a smart strength training program that emphasizes progressive overload.

Eat at caloric maintenance or at a slight surplus (if you don’t know what that is you can watch this video about calorie deficits here).

Have 0.7 to 0.9 grams of protein per pound of body weight. so if you weigh 100 pounds you want to be between 70 to 90 grams of protein per day and you want to have 1.5 times that much in carbs. So, using the same example, that means you’re going to have 105 to 135grams of carbs per day.

You want to keep your non-exercise activity high, so aiming for 7,000 to 12,000 steps a day is going to be really helpful for you.

Finally, doing all of those consistently for a few months will lead to building muscle.

Before You Start Building Muscle

Now before you get started with building muscle, there’re a couple of things we need to know. You’re going to have to shift your focus pretty strongly if you want to do this properly. It’s an entirely different pursuit than losing fat. Muscle building is a slower process than fat loss, so patience is going to be key here. I recommend dedicating at least six months to building muscle, if not more. Trying to go in and out of a build isn’t going to yield you any results and can have the process take three times as long! So instead of building muscle for a month, trying to cut off the fat the next month, and alternating that way, just commit to six months of building muscle at least before cutting off the fat and getting to the leanness that you want in the end. This will help you get it done sooner because you have a singular focus and you’re not trying to achieve two different goals at the same time.

It’s important to know to recognize and understand that going through this process means you’re going to maintain or gain weight and that’s okay! It’s completely normal and it’s kind of what you want when building muscle. It’s important to make peace with this before starting because trying to resist that is only going to create a lot more stress and keep you stuck in the same spot with the same body for a longer period of time. You can always take the time to lose the fat later on in the future but it’s really important to dedicate the time to build the muscle right now so that you can get to the body that you want sooner rather than later.

Again you could spend years trying to limit how much weight you gain by doing little cuts in between builds or you can spend eight months doing a build three months doing a cut and getting the body that you want in only one year.

If you struggle with getting enough protein in your day get a free copy of my Stoopid Simple Cookbook: 30+ recipes that are high in protein and really easy to make.

This is a hard perspective shift for a lot of people to make. If you really want to be serious about this you don’t want to talk yourself out of it getting professional accountability can go a long way. Working with a coach is going to help you get out of your head, reduce stress, and make sure that the process is as fast and seamless as possible. So that you could get to your goal body without facing the roadblocks of yourself the entire time. Plus working with a coach that’s been there and done that is going to make sure that every step that you take is intentional and taking you closer to your goal as opposed to just trying to guess and make some stuff work.

If you’re ready for coaching you can apply for a free strategy call with one of our coaches to see if you’re a good fit and we can get you started on a muscle-building program right away! You can apply for that free strategy call with the link in the description.

Stoopid Simple Recap

So stoopid simple recap here: if you want to get toned and you’re down to your last 5 to 20 pounds that you think you need to lose, it’s probably best to start a dedicated building phase for at least six months where you strength train three to five times aweek, eat at caloric maintenance or at a slight surplus, intake 0.7 to 0.9 grams of protein per pound of body weight, and one and a half times that much carbs on a daily basis, and keeping your NEAT activity up getting 7,000-12,000 steps a day.

If you found thishelpful make sure to like the video and share it with a friend or if you have any questions make sure to comment them down below! I’ll always get back to yourquestions and make sure that they get answered. Subscribe we have new videos coming out every week and until next time stay stoopid!